With a scoff, Johan muttered, “The letter Jae was ordered to write?”

  Biting back the hiss I wanted to send that horrible man’s way, I set my gaze on my eldest brother. “Gerald, are you still apprenticing at the bakery with our mother?”

  Johan rolled his eyes, but Gerald was kind enough to smile back. “Yes, I helped bake your wedding cake. Mom decorated it.”

  “I loved it! I never knew cake could be so many colors. We’re not allowed to eat it at the academy.” Leaning forward with a conspiratory smirk, I said, “But I have had a bite or two of chocolate cake over the years. Your kaleidoscope of vorec colors was a fun surprise!”

  Proudly, Gerald smiled. “For hybrid rights.”

  Johan turned on the teenager, showing teeth. “What rights do they need? They are half animal.”

  Verbally abusing my brother set something off inside me I didn't understand. But there was no reigning it in.

  Snarling, I leaned forward and put my hideous clawed hands on the table. “Listen here. You have no right to be disrespectful to my brother. I don’t care who you are. Clearly, you have an issue with the fact that this wonderful woman gave birth to me, but you married into my mother’s family, so deal with it. I haven’t seen her in ten years, and you are spoiling a moment I have dreamed of since I was five!”

  Trying to smooth things over, my mother's husband put his hands before him, palms up. “Johan, man, come on. Not everyone here agrees with your views. We have an important guest in the house,” he pleaded, gesturing not to me but to the esteemed General Cyderial.

  The great arena champion.

  With a voice calming and in opposition to my aggression, Cyderial addressed Johan directly. “It's okay, Richard. I would like to hear his point of view regarding hybrids. Please, Johan, share your thoughts with the room.”

  The unkind human male was only too happy to comply.

  “We have reached a point where humans have an established future on Risa,” he spat, glaring directly at me. “There is no longer a need to corrupt the human genome with prehistoric lizard DNA and give our limited resources to hybrid freaks. Fact is, everyone in this room knows we don’t need to shoulder the expense of maintaining your kind anymore. I fully support the End Date Decree that terminates hybrid life at the age of fifty and imposes a ban on the creation of more lizard abominations! The law will be ratified in a year or two,” he said, smug, nodding as he crossed his arms and leaned back with a smirk. “You have my word on that.”

  My back was up, my eyes blazing, but at my side sat a calm, collected, and very dangerous male. With a soft smile just for me, Cyderial shared my accomplishments. “Lorieyn has guarded field workers since she was fifteen. Your resources come from her diligence. Moreover, she has been wounded in the field three hundred and sixteen times but has never lost a single farmhand. She is the only hybrid recruit who can boast such a record. Are you so sure you wish to remove her from her post?”

  My unwanted mate defended me to a raging idiot.

  Taken aback by how strange it all was, I didn’t know what to say. Not when he spoke of my service as if he was proud of me. The strange bubbling between my hearts led me to wonder if I wanted him to be proud of me. Because it felt really good.

  And not just because he was my commanding officer.

  There was something positively lovely about his tone when he boasted on my behalf, something that soothed my ruffled feathers and coaxed me to control my breathing.

  A strange power he held in that moment to keep me from thrumming, to keep me from crying, to keep me from feeling alone in that room full of relations.

  A room that was dead-silent despite his praise.

  To my speechless mother, I offered a correction, “The general is exaggerating. I was only in the infirmary a handful of times. We heal so quickly that it’s rarely necessary to seek treatment.”

  Cyderial took my hand, placing our joined fingers on the table for all to see. “Not every wound requires surgery or the setting of bones. Vorec are dangerous, and yes, they have sharp claws. Full humans cannot heal from a lacerated abdomen the way you can. You can take twenty strikes, where a single one would leave Johan bleeding out as he tried to stuff his entrails back inside his body.”

  Puffing out his chest, if a little pale, Johan boasted, “I have trained in the use of a sword and have killed three vorec.”

  Three? That was it? A ten-year-old hybrid would’ve killed at least three. I asked, “All three at the same time?”

  “Well… no,” he said, as if my question were absurd.

  Seeing how soft he was, how little definition he possessed, I asked, “And you were able to breathe in the fog?”

  “Why would I go into the fog when we have high-functioning filters?” Sitting taller, he added, “Every year, we push them out farther. The atmosphere of this planet will be fully converted for human use in a century or two.”

  The angry human extremist was delusional. One could not force an entire planet to conform to the whims of a foreign species. Nature would fight back, and a man of his caliber would not make it five feet into the fog.

  It wasn’t that I wanted to encourage his delusion, but I just had to know. “If you were not in the fog, how did you kill three vorec?”

  Leaning toward me, Cyderial explained, “Humans pay a great sum to chase vorec in enclosed hunting grounds. It's considered a sport. The beasts' claws have been clipped, and they are fully muzzled. They are usually somewhat sedated as well.”

  I recoiled.

  That was so cruel!

  “I see.” The man was as spineless as he was deluded. Perhaps I could be a little hateful as well. “As your sister-in-law, I would be happy to take you into the fog sometime, if you’d like to try your hand at facing down vorec in real life.”

  My mother interposed before Johan might respond to my baiting, “Lorieyn, it’s been nice seeing you, but I’m afraid tea is out of the question. I think you should leave now.”

  I recoiled as if she slapped me.

  Hurt, I swung my head her way, only to find firm resolve had stolen her smile, a protective hand clasping Johan’s shoulder.

  “You are ordering me from your home, when this… hateful fraud is welcome to sit at your table?”

  Even though she said it gently, she may as well have ripped out my hearts and held them up for me to see. “I'll walk you out.”

  Tears already gathered in my eyes, and they were going to fall. They were going to fall, because the pain of her rejection might just kill me. Had Cyderial not been there, I’m not certain I would have found my footing. I would have just sat there, staring at her, confused.

  But he drew me from my chair and guided my shuffling form from the room so we might follow her to the door.

  I didn’t understand. This woman claimed that she loved me in every last letter she sent.

  Passing through the portal, we emerged into the sun, but I didn’t pay any mind to the warmth or the smells of her wonderfully overcrowded garden. I didn’t notice details of the laundry drying on the line or the buzzing of afternoon insects.

  I was blind to it all.

  At the threshold of her pretty gate, my birthmother whispered a hasty apology, as if being overheard by any nearby humans might cause real harm. “He could keep me from my grandchild; you must understand that. I don’t agree with his rhetoric, but my daughter will need me.”

  My daughter.

  As if I hadn’t clung to the same title these last ten years. As if it didn’t belong to me at all.

  Because I was no more than the half-lizard child she sold when it turned five.

  “I have loved you my whole life,” I muttered. “I used to cry myself to sleep when I was lonely for you at the academy.” Gesturing to her fine home, I sniffed. “I suffered, so you could have all of this. Do you even think of me as your daughter?”

  She tried to assure me, wielding a sad smile and flapping hands. “You were a wonderful child, and look at how far you’ve come. The wife of a general! You don’t need me anymore. Dana does.”

  I had needed her every day since she handed me over to the academy on my fifth birthday. “I’m not his wife. I’m his mate. And unlike you, he can’t ever throw me away.”

  “Lorieyn, please. My children have to come first.”

  What did that make me? “Goodbye, Jae. Don’t send me any more cakes.”

  5

  My mother didn’t want me.

  Following in devastated silence, I allowed Cyderial to draw me away from my mother’s house. Offering no resistance as he guided me back into the bustle of the market, where he no longer tried to tempt me with shiny things.

  The male was on a mission to get me to his vehicle.

  Acting much the same as when we arrived, the crowd around us gawked, moved out of our path, and whispered amongst themselves as I stumbled by.

  Not that I cared in the slightest.

  I could hardly even think straight, could not comprehend how this happened.

  How could my own mother not love me?

  Didn’t she know she was my world? What I went through for her?

  Incapable of another step, ugly words vile on my tongue, I felt the foundation of what I built my life on crumbling right beneath my feet. Yet, no matter how much I wished it might, the street did not open up and swallow me whole. “I am loveable. I know I am.”

  Even still, the life had been sucked right out of my chest.

  Dismissed. I had no value to her. She’d already gained her house, after all. Found a husband and birthed ten fully human children.

  Right there, out where everyone could see, hiccupping sobs stole my breath.

  Just like they had when that same woman dropped me off at the academy, trading me in for her cash prize.

  How many times had I seen the itty-bitties come in heartbroken, crying like I did? How many times had I scooped them up, held them tight, and promised them they were wholly loveable? That they were wanted?

  “She sent me letters. She made that cake.” Had Cyderial really ordered her to write me every year? I couldn’t tell, not when he was looking at me with so much pity. “Why did she let me think she loved me?”

  Without those letters, I would have given up long ago. “Cyderial, they abuse children at the academy, trying to turn us into soldiers. And I survived it, because I wanted my mother to have a great life, even if mine was awful.”

  He didn’t admonish my outburst or gloat. Cyderial gave me time, drawing me to his chest so I could cry all the harder, and held me when I was weak.

  Arms tight around my body, he murmured softly, “To be frank, my dear, it went better than I anticipated. And I am proud of you for standing up to that ingrate when he bullied your brother. Being thrown out of a house for defending your family is your birthmother’s failing, not yours.”

  But if I hadn’t said anything, maybe I would’ve still been there. Maybe my mother would have served me some of her special tea.

  And all of it would have been a lie, so what did any of it matter?

  “You’re a bully, and I stand up to you all the time. That doesn’t make me special.”

  “I love you.” A kiss landed on the top of my head.

  And though it felt nice, his declaration could not have been from the heart. His love would never be the love I lost from my mother. Sorrow finding a friend in its closest compatriot, rage, I felt the flutters of real anger and drew back to snarl, “That’s different! You heard a song and went crazy. Your love has nothing to do with me as a person. It’s purely a biological response.”

  “Lorieyn, that’s not true.” He dragged me right back to him, with no care for the gaping crowd. “I am capable of love, you know. And I choose to love you, with your smart mouth and hidden agendas. I love all the things about you beyond a purely sexual impulse. Which, yes, I have that too, but I have loved you enough to wait ten agonizing years for you. In that time, your mother forgot how much she loved the little girl you once were. Maybe she had to. I expect the loss of you would have been devastating.”

  Like that, sorrow swept away the anger, my lip quivering, as I said, “I remember her being really nice. She’d hold me until I fell asleep and dressed me in pretty clothes she made just for me.”

  “Someday, you are going to be an amazing mother, and you will remember this moment when your children need you most. You will be there for them.” Cupping my face in his hands, Cyderial was oh-so gentle as he wiped away my tears. “You will protect them. Even when they are a hundred years old, you won’t forget—they will still be your little ones. You are not the kind of person who could give their baby away for profit and move on with her life.”

  Eyes wet, tears all over my face, my meaner parts had one more jab. “If you had not taken me away from her for all those years, she wouldn’t have stopped loving me.”

  “Do you really think that’s true?” It wasn’t said in cruelty; it was said in compassion.

  No.

  I loved her fiercely for ten years, honored her every day in my heart. She birthed other children, real children, and my value to her had already been cashed in. Knowing the cost of bearing me, she had chosen before I was born to give me up and walk away.

  Such adoration in his eyes, Cyderial offered a soft smile. “We must take these moments of disappointment and turn them into something we can build from. We can choose not to repeat the mistakes of our forebearers. We can choose not to let other people dictate our worth or our happiness. Jae should be ashamed of her lack of pride in her wonderful hybrid daughter. You are remarkable, you are brilliant, and you are loveable.”

  Sniffing, I pressed my shaking lips together and nodded.

  It was difficult to associate the man talking so compassionately and wiping away my tears with the cold-blooded general I despised for so long. They were two entirely different creatures. And to imagine I was accepting comfort from him?

  Who was I?

  How could I have allowed myself to cry in public?

  To allow strangers to witness a moment that was very personal and private, not something for gawkers to whisper about.

  And there were so many of them.

  “Cyderial, everyone is looking at us.” Some were pointing their communication devices right at me.

  “Who cares? Let them look.” He pulled me into a tight hug so I might hide my face should I choose. “You are the only thing I am concerned about right now.”

  Sanctuary was in that embrace. Melting into the arms of the monster who turned my life on its head, I found shelter. A place where I was safe to grieve and remember, I am wholly lovable. Even if I didn’t feel it in that moment.

  Perhaps I would hate myself later for allowing such a man to hold me this way. Or, maybe I had to choose to survive as best I could, even if it was with a difficult mate I would have never chosen.

  A mate who was letting me cry all over his uniform as he stroked my back and hushed me.

  There was some comfort to be found in his embrace, but it wasn’t enough.

  My pain at my mother’s rejection was so astounding that it physically hurt.

  Unlike injuries from training or battle, it was not going to heal quickly or vanish without a scar.

  All thoughts of touring the city fled. I just wanted to forget the day ever happened.

  Do anything to make such loss go away.

  I didn’t want to think. At all.

  Reaching for Cyderial’s neck, I pulled his head down so I might whisper this all to him. I begged him to take me to bed and make me feel better. To use every trick. To do whatever he wanted if it would allow me to rest in oblivion when it was over. And then I sobbed in relief when he promised me he would do all I asked and more.

  I woke groggy and swollen about my middle to such a point it was difficult to sit up. Earnest to keep his promise, Cyderial had done much to distract me from my sorrow.

  Maybe too much, considering the size of my belly.

  It protruded, the pressure great, yet the plug held firm.

  Fat with cum.

  That’s what I was now.

  Hearing the clatter of a man cooking in his kitchen, I inhaled the scent of something delicious and found my body did not consider itself full enough. Hunger made itself known, my stomach grumbling something fierce.

  But satisfying my body in that manner would have to wait.

  With privacy enough to look over what had been done to me, what I willingly participated in, I let my touch linger over the swell of my stomach. The initial shock of such a metamorphosis didn’t upset me as it had the day before. Not now that I knew what to expect.

  The skin of my belly was taut, yet it didn’t hurt when my fingers danced over it.

  Even the pressure behind the plug felt… good?

  Satisfying.

  Natural.

  Maybe even a touch perverse.

  Perhaps some part of me might even appreciate what he could do with me. The animal side was quite content.

  Shy to do it, but wanting to know, I let my fingers reach around my belly to the mound I could no longer see. My slit was a bit swollen, soft to the touch, and extremely sensitive. My breath caught with one swipe, surprising me that something so simple might curl my toes.

  But the more human parts of me were… intrigued. Bearing down on that thick, waxy, plug left me gasping as if it were something else deep inside me. Little shockwaves warned me not to do it again, fluttering about that plug, simulating climax.

  No… not simulating.

  Sensitive as I was, I orgasmed.

  Quietly as I could, gasping little sips of air to keep my unexpected pleasure silent. Hand pressed between my legs as if I could hold it in, make it stop.

  A minute later, the waving cramp that churned all he left inside me settled. And I knew better than to try such internal explorations again.