Date: June 6, 2440 Time: 1:00 PM
“T’Mari,” Matt said quietly, his eyes on the road ahead, “I don’t think I can apologize enough for how I treated you.”
She turned slightly toward him in the passenger seat, her brow furrowing. “I don’t understand.”
“I was trying to be patient. I was being cautious. Truthfully, I was still a bit scared about how I was feeling. I knew you were trying to get my attention, but I was trying to make sure you really wanted it—and not doing exactly what everyone is accusing L’Tani of,” he admitted. “You were careful—subtle—in how you released your scent. It was subtle. I admired your control. But I ignored it, and I shouldn’t have. I was trying to do right by everyone else, by not letting my own feelings get in the way. I should have at least told you how I felt.”
“Then I should be the one apologizing.”
Matt shook his head. “No. This is one of those cultural collisions where, if we both keep apologizing, we’ll end up carrying guilt neither of us deserves. The truth is, I was drawn to you the moment we met.”
She had waited so long for this conversation, but now that it was happening, she wasn’t sure what to do with the hope blooming in her chest. Hope, after all, could be just another way to fall.
“I didn’t do anything to cause that.”
“You were simply yourself—and that was more than enough. Green skin, different physiology, different world—none of that mattered. You’re a woman. A striking one.”
“Not especially attractive by V’ren standards,” she said softly.
“Well, I’m probably not winning any beauty contests by yours either,” he chuckled.
“Actually,” she said, a faint smile touching her lips, “you’re considered quite attractive by many V’ren women. My mother and a few of her associates have discussed it. And of course, there’s L’Tani.”
“Do I find her beautiful?” Matt asked, anticipating the unspoken question but still watching the road. “Yes. And your mother, too—in their own ways. But you… if I saw the three of you as paintings in a gallery, I’d admire each. But you’re the one I’d overspend on to bring home, just to look at every day.”
“Then… you’d let me try again? With you?”
“Not while I’m driving, please,” he said, lowering the windows a bit.
She laughed, fully rolling hers down. “Yes. That would be bad. If you have feelings for me, why did you let L’Tani use you?”
“She didn’t use me. She has genuine feelings for me, too. She also did the one thing all of your social training told you was wrong. Her distress led her to do what you couldn’t—or wouldn’t—at least not in the too-short time we had together. She made the first move.”
“That is not our way,” she said, angry at her sister all over again.
“I know. It is the V’ren way to shame women who lose control, who act out of need rather than restraint—especially when it crosses social boundaries. She needed to be held, to be told someone would take care of her and let her grieve the loss of her M’yani.”
“I didn’t know you knew of that. She hasn’t said anything about it to anyone, as far as I know.”
“Your mother told me. I’m hoping Angelina can get her to talk about it while we’re gone. I told you both my door was always open. She came to me frustrated and upset. She needed to be comforted and held. She came to the one person she thought wouldn’t judge her for showing weakness. She was honest about her curiosity—she wanted to know if I would respond to her scent, because she had lost everyone who might have provided her with a child under your caste rules. What she did, how I responded—that’s what makes her shame, the shame she feels now, my fault. I didn’t have to respond by running my tongue from her collarbone to the tip of her ear.”
“You are so far above us—even if you were just a lord and not a high lord—it would have been improper for me to make that first move. And you’ve seen the scandal it has caused, and the loss of her status. I could not risk that. I would become useless to you as an advisor. The V’ren wouldn’t have believed I didn’t seduce you. I have a duty to all of my people. She did too—and threw it away.”
“There will be cultural fallout, and she will survive. The caste system won’t survive. I know it. You know it. And W’ren knows it.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“No, but it’s obvious. Even before you landed here, there were too few of you to create a new colony with a complete, intact caste structure.”
“W’ren told me he came to the same conclusion years ago,” she said. “That does not change what she did.”
“Public perception matters, and if the V’ren shame her for it, they’ll pay a price for it among the humans. I also won’t let her be shamed for it. W’ren, K’rem, and Angelina are currently doing their best to tell two truths to anyone who will listen: I invited her into my bedroom, and she helped me get through something that was emotionally binding me to the past.”
“You are a very confusing man,” she said, watching him. “Then you will stay with her?”
“She helped me get through something. She helped me feel I could be intimate again. She cleared my past, so I could have a future. A future I hope to have with you. Do you even want a future with me still, after what happened?”
“Is such a thing even possible? Could we have a future?” she asked, turning to get a better look at him as he slowed down and pulled to the side of the road.
Matt just looked at her for a few moments before he said, “T’Mari of House Thr’ron. Do not play games. Do not ask rhetorical questions. Simply answer me with what you feel in your heart, right this moment. Do you want a future with me? Do you want to be my wife? Do you want to be the mother of my children?”
T’Mari looked at the seriousness in his face. No anger. No impatience. No expectation other than that she answer what was in her heart. She started to speak but felt a lump in her throat that had nothing to do with the tightness in places much lower. The word squeaked out like the voice of a little girl trying to sound confident, but she managed a full “yes” before the first tear of happiness rolled out of her eye and down her cheek. “Yes,” she said again, this time holding down the happy laughter of love as she said it at least three more times.
“Good, because I very much want that too. When the time comes, you won’t need pheromones to seduce me,” Matt said, glancing at her. “You have a very willing partner already.”
“I find that strange. Not unwelcome—just… new. V’ren men enjoy the intoxication during bonding, but to seek physical intimacy for its own sake? That’s unusual.”
“For humans, especially human men, it’s not,” Matt said. “Some even engage in it with no concern for their partner’s pleasure—just their own.”
“That’s… sad,” she said, the mirth fading. “I fear many unintended pregnancies among mixed couples, then. I cannot imagine a man not excited to be a father. My uncle—he may never be one. He wasn’t the only one who lost potential mates in the attack. L’Tani wasn’t alone.”
“Did you lose anyone?”
T’Mari shook her head. “No. But I didn’t care for the men my matrix offered. There were boys—some just infants—matched to me, but no men I would have chosen. Even before I knew humans and V’ren could conceive together, I had decided. I wanted you as my mate, even if children were never possible. You showed respect. You made me laugh. You care for people—not just our people. That meant everything.”
Matt was quiet for a moment, then said, “I spoke with a geneticist. A human one. She thinks, with your technology, we could have children—even if not naturally. She said she could almost guarantee it.”
“Angelina said her sister was a geneticist.”
“Same person. But don’t mention this to her. Angelina and Kawami don’t exactly get along—and I’m part of the reason.”
T’Mari turned her head, curious.
“When I was twelve, Kawami was fifteen. She seduced me—on purpose—then made sure her parents caught us. It was to spite Angelina. She wanted to prove that if Angie wouldn’t take me to bed, she would. She even spread rumors that she had succeeded where her sister had failed.”
T’Mari’s eyes widened. “That almost ended your friendship with Angelina?”
“It nearly destroyed it. What I didn’t know until more than a year later was that Kawami got pregnant. She had an abortion. Told the story casually, like it was no big deal—like it would hurt when I found out.”
“Abortion?” T’Mari repeated, stunned. “She terminated a healthy pregnancy?”
Matt nodded. “No medical reason. Just… chose not to carry it or even tell me she had gotten pregnant.”
“That’s unthinkable to us. Among the V’ren, where pairing is difficult and fertility is becoming rarer still.”
“Exactly. You work hard to find a mate. For many humans, it’s an accident.”
“I cannot imagine a woman denying a man a child,” T’Mari said.
“Most human men don’t view fatherhood the way I do. If I had known… I would have asked her to marry me. My family would’ve expected it. I would’ve done my best to love her. To raise our son.” He kept his eyes on the road, hoping the wind through the open window would dry a tear he wasn’t sure he could hold—not even after thirty years.
“W’ren said something to me earlier that struck me in a very big way. Would V’ren men raise a child not of their own body if it meant becoming a father?” he asked, thinking about the children abandoned every year in every major city he had ever visited—but also the idea of adoption if they couldn’t conceive.
“I’ve heard it happens among the lowborn,” she said, thoughtful. “Our social castes are fairly rigid, and things like this are rare for us, so it’s not well studied. K’rem would, I think. But he—he prefers the company of other men. For him, I think it would be an easy yes.”
Matt raised an eyebrow. “Is that taboo among the V’ren? Being gay, men only being attracted to men?”
“Not for moral reasons, as I have heard it is among humans. But in our class, men are expected to father children and form politically advantageous relationships. Some have discreet relationships with other men—usually after fathering children. I am told among the lower castes it is more common.”
“Men hold no interest for me,” Matt reassured her. “But since I’m definitely feeling the effects of what you’re trying very hard not to do while we’re talking about children, I think we should stop for food. Somewhere outside. There’s a place for burgers up ahead, in Booneville.”
He turned the A/C to full, cracked the back windows, and dabbed a bit of vapor rub beneath each nostril—just in time to take the exit.
