by Viola Grace
Iula tutted and went to work. “And after you got those units all dressed up. They were so pretty, and the children enjoyed seeing them in the winter parade.”
Lyra smiled. “Dommor was happy to do it. I was pretty sure my unit had a snowflake on its butt.”
Yatal grabbed a piece of fruit, and Iula slid him a knife. “You did. I thought that it was Dommor being whimsical, but now, I am thinking about snowflakes with a new appreciation.”
Iula stared at Lyra for a moment. “You know Dommor?”
Lyra whispered, “Should I not know him?”
“Iula is Dommor’s great aunt.” Yatal peeled the fruit, segmented it, and handed Lyra a piece.
Iula looked at Yatal, saw what he was doing, and smirked, then she asked, “Did Dommor like her?”
“He would have had her for his own in a heartbeat if she had been amenable.”
Iula nodded. “Excellent. Are there more like you on your world?”
“I have no idea. My family lines are gone. I never had a gathering of associates for... reasons.” She took another piece of fruit from Yatal. There was something at the back of her mind that was revolving around the fruit.
“She was compatible with one of my father’s treatments, so here she is. That is also how she can move the security unit.”
Iula made a face and finished with what appeared to be some kind of an omelette. There was a lot of vegetables and meat involved, but it looked good.
The cook handed them two short-tined forks, and they started eating. Lyra recognized a lot of the items in the omelette from her food at the base. When they got down to the last few bites, they were duelling with their forks.
Lyra elbowed him and got one of the last three bites, he got the second last, and then, she had to let him have the last one. She was still chewing. When she had swallowed, she prodded him in the hand with a fork. “Rude. You weren’t the one shot in the chest today.”
He snorted. “I was under tremendous stress at the thought of losing my mate before I even had her.”
She paused. “Mate?”
He looked at her like she was slow. “Of course. If anyone on this planet tries to get between us, they will be looking at their guts around their ankles.”
“That’s, uh, sweet?”
He kissed her, and she paused before relaxing and turning toward him. He slid a hand into her hair, and he shuddered. The next thing he did was pull her toward him, and after a moment of regaining her balance, she settled into his kiss with her hand touching his neck.
He lifted his head and smiled. “As I said. Mate.”
She stared at his dark eyes and inhaled slightly. “Right. That. Sorry, there is no legal category for a bond as a mate to a Nazuan. If we are mates, I go back to the auction, and I don’t want to go to the auction.”
He frowned. “I am Hmrain by birth.”
She winced. “Legally, a Hmrain is made, not born. There have been no laws enacted on Nazua to cover your existence.”
Yatal blinked. “What?”
“The laws of Nazua only cover pure breeding of either a Hmrain or a Nazuan. There is no category for immigrants or for cross-race births. I can’t be a citizen.”
He sighed. “So, a union with me would untether you from your bond and leave you wide open, so to speak.”
She nodded. “The medics at the education station told me that I was only missing a few qualifiers to be in the compatible ranking. I really don’t want to be put out on an Hmrain bond auction.”
“You are scared.”
She blinked and grimaced. “Yes.”
“But you put yourself between me and an energy blast. You even knew that was coming.”
She swallowed. “That does sum up today’s events.”
He nodded. “Fine. I will let my father change my classification.” He shrugged. “I hadn’t thought about it, actually.”
He set her on the chair and said, “Watch Iula for a while. I will be back.”
She sat and watched the cook. A cup of hot tea arrived in front of her, and the small container of sweetener arrived a moment later.
Iula returned to a bowl that she upturned, and she began rolling and lacing the dough into braids and other shapes. Lyra watched, and she smiled. It was something that her grandmother had done. Her mother had been busy at work and spending time with Lyra, so the breadmaking was something she had only done with her grandmother.
She smiled and watched for a while before Iula chuckled. “If you want to, you can come over here and help. It will keep your mind blank.”
Lyra scrambled around, scrubbed her hands, and took the dough that Iula plopped in front of her. She grinned and shaped the bread into rolls, setting them on the pan that Iula tapped, and when she finished with her dough, more was dropped in front of her. She mimicked the same braid that the other woman had managed and tucked the loaf onto the pan. More dough, and she laughed and kept going.
When the load of bread was done, she looked at it and blinked. “How long does this last?”
Iula picked it up and put it in a proofing oven. “Three days. This kitchen feeds the entire staff of the overseer’s house. We go through a lot of bread.”
Lyra scrubbed her hands. “Can I do anything else? Food prep was something I was trained to do since I could reach the counter.”
Iula smiled. “Your mother cooked?”
“My father. He needed all the help he could get. What can I do?”
“Let me get you a cover. You are going to destroy that pretty dress.”
“It is Yamira’s dress.” She smiled. “It will wash, and if it doesn’t... eh.”
Iula laughed. “You have nerves of steel if you will tempt fate that way.”
“She leads with her right. I am quicker.” She put the wraparound apron on, despite her comments.
A familiar voice rang out, “If you give me practice, I am sure that I can improve.”
Yamira walked toward them with a slight smile. “So, Lyra, you know your way around a kitchen.”
“I do. Kitchens and bakeries were where I found myself after my parents died. They were normal working folk, and I left school when they died. The kitchens were a place where I could do tons of prep work and be finished and done before the rest of the world woke up.”
Yamira nodded. “And keep yourself from contact. Smart. Iula, what can I do?”
Iula blinked. “Wow. So much help today. Right, Lyra, you are on vegetables, and Yamira, you can season the stock.”
Lyra watched as Iula demonstrated the cut that she wanted, and then, she stepped in. The knife tapped in a blur, and she went through vegetable after vegetable. She knew what they tasted like, but the names were a little harder to grasp. Her weird lapses in understanding were what had kept her from the companion rank. She thought that part of her brain shorted out, and that is where the visions were kept.
She finished with the huge stack of veg and turned to see Yamira and Iula staring at her. “What?”
Yamira asked softly. “How do you move so fast?”
“Oh, that is the thing that I got from the enhancement. It goes with the healing, I think.”
Iula picked up the cutting board, and she slid the pounds of chopped vegetables into the soup. “Right. Now, Lyra. What can you do with meat?”
Lyra held up her knife. “What size do you want?”
Iula showed her, and the meat was removed as quickly as Lyra cut it up. Yamira sautéed the meat and then added it into the soup while they all chatted and laughed.
Once the meat and veg were simmering, the pan had been deglazed, and the remaining bits scraped into the pot, it was time to get the bread baking.
Lyra carved designs into the top of the bread and made an egg wash to make the rolls extra crusty. When she finished getting the oven hot, she turned, and Iula and Yamira were sitting, having tea and watching.
She slid the loaves into the bread oven and dusted her hands on th
e cover she was wearing. It was a force of habit. Clean, dry hands prevented slipping.
She turned to Iula. “So, twenty-five minutes, and then it should be good. What next?”
“The meal for the household. Koron likes stuff roasted, and Yatal just wants it cooked.”
She looked at Iula. “Can I use anything?”
“Anything you like. You are going to be eating it, after all.”
Yamira shrugged. “I can always eat around anything burned.”
Lyra laughed and headed for the chiller. She had been watching how much the other officers ate, and she used that as the base for her estimates for serving sizes.
She hummed to herself and moved around the kitchen, chopping, sauteing, and browning.
Once the main course was in the oven, she started on a version of macarons. Using a pulse chopper, she got the nuts into flour. Then, she divided the eggs and whipped the whites into a meringue with the sweetener that the Nazuan used instead of sugar.
There was no paper for a piping bag, so she used spoonfuls that she smoothed out on the non-stick pan. Iula was watching closely.
She pulled the bread out of the oven and listened to it crackle on the cooling rack.
Iula looked at Yamira. “Can we keep her?”
“That is the idea. She brought up some legal issues that neither Koron nor I had considered. They are working to repair the Nazuan charter of citizenry.”
Iula laughed. “Here for one day and already making changes. Well done, Lyra.”
Lyra held up her hands and then went to work on the buttercream for the macarons. “I didn’t do anything. I just started looking for the routes to citizenship here for aliens when I got here. There aren’t any—no matter the completed bond, no matter the benefit that I would be to this world. There was no way that I could ever become a citizen with rights and freedoms. So, I have been batting around the idea of finding a world where I could earn citizenship, but I was going to get into that in my final year of bond.”
She pulled the tiny meringues out of the oven and set them aside to cool.
Half an hour later, dessert was ready, and Lyra had to defend the platter of tiny confections from Yamira and her cook.
Considering how the day started, it was extremely surreal.
Chapter Nine
Dinner was eerily quiet. Lyra was nervous about how Koron was reacting to the food. He tasted. He analyzed. He ate. There were a few nods, but it wasn’t until he reached for a helping twice the size of his first that she exhaled.
Yatal paused. “Why are you so tense?”
Yamira smiled. “This is all Lyra’s cooking. She worked off some tension in the kitchen. She is also exceptionally fast with a knife.”
Lyra ate her portion of food, and she took a roll and split it, the crackle audible in the lull in the conversation.
Koron looked up. “What was that?”
“Crusty rolls. Same recipe, different preparation.” She broke her roll apart and used it to eat her food. Three hands grabbed for the bread, and the crunching was incredible.
Yatal sighed. “I love Iula’s cooking, but she has no soul for bread. I have been cheating on her with a bakery in town.”
Koron pulled the basket of bread toward him, and she laughed as he began to pick them apart and examine them. “Why these particular marks? Why not circles?”
She explained the pellicle, oven spring, and the expansion of gasses that went into making a good loaf of bread. It was only when Iula brought the tray of meringues that the topic shifted.
Lyra ate one, and she analyzed it, figuring how to make things better if she ever did it again. Not everything translated.
“What are these?”
“A type of snack or dessert or sweet? I guess they would be closest to the candy category. Nuts, fruit, whipped butter, eggs, and sugar.”
Yatal took the first one, and then, his hand shot out to grab five. His father gathered a pile to guard while he investigated, and his eyebrows lifted nearly to his hairline. “This is like... what are those things you bring from that shop?”
“Berry bombs.” Yamira collected several, and she ate them daintily.
Koron offered her some of his.
Lyra chuckled. “Don’t let her fool you. She had ten in the kitchen.”
She finished her single and was surprised when another one appeared on her plate.
Yatal smiled. “I doubt that you ate ten in the kitchen. You hardly ate anything.”
“I don’t eat much if I cook. I have been tasting it for too long.”
Yamira mumbled around a mouthful, “How can you not eat a ton of these?”
Lyra smiled. “Because once I know what they taste like, I am done. The fun is in the experiment.”
Koron looked up and stared at her. He blinked slowly and then said, “We are working on a path to citizenship for you. I already put Yatal on the Hmrain registry earlier today. I have just been neglecting to do that until he brought up the situation that you pointed out to him.”
She smiled. “I just want to get back to the job I am bonded for. Driving a security unit.”
Koron nodded. “About that. There is a new exoskeleton that you might be ideal for. It isn’t suited for a guard post, and we would need to run some tests.”
She sat back and snorted. “Of course, you would.”
The entire table laughed.
Just for a moment, she felt a flicker of family seated with this deadly collection of beings. What did that say about her?
Lyra found out that her favourite thing about the overseer’s house was that someone else did all the dishes.
She sat in a chair and looked out at the lights of the city while the others did whatever it was the nearly immortal beings did after stuffing themselves at dinner. She had her legs drawn up to her chin and felt herself drifting off.
Lyra sat up and headed back up the stairs, logically heading for the blue bedroom she had woken up in. She yawned as she walked, and Yatal walked toward her, picking her up and carrying her down the hall and toward a double-wide door. She blinked up at him.
“You are sleeping with me.”
Her heart sped up. “What?”
“You are going to be sharing my bed while you and I are here.”
“That implies we will be somewhere else.”
“We might be. Come on, get into bed.”
He set her down next to the bed that was nearly wide enough for his wingspan. She flipped back the covers on her side, yanked the dress off, and put it on the floor. She slithered between the sheets and had the covers to her chin in no time.
She pulled her hair over her shoulder and under her cheek. She didn’t trust him not to do something unspeakable with it.
He pulled back the sheet on his side of the bed and reached out to pull her up against him. Her eyes widened. That was a lot of bare skin and more muscle than his uniform hinted at.
Her sleepiness was burned away as her body lit on fire from within. Nononononono. She tried to calm herself down, but her hormones were running riot. She shifted her thighs and winced at the moisture that had started to emerge.
“Why are you tense? We are only going to sleep so that you can get used to me.” He pressed a kiss to her neck, and she heard him inhale sharply. “Lyra?”
She let out a strangled, “Yes?”
“Are you aroused right now?”
She could feel her skin on fire from the blush as well as the arousal. “Maybe.”
He leaned back and rolled her toward him. “Any particular reason?” He was smiling in the dim light.
“Um. Long day? It can happen for a reason or randomly. I usually just deal with it.”
He ran a hand down her hip and rested it on her thigh. “Deal with it how?”
“Um... with my hands, usually. It doesn’t take long.”
He pushed the sheet down and lowered his head to kiss her neck, collarbone, breasts, and he kept m
oving lower and lower. She wasn’t sure what to do, but she knew that the feel of his mouth on her skin was amazing.
She gasped and moaned when he slid of his tongue crossed her navel. Lyra let out a low groan when he slid her thighs apart and lay between them, and from there, her mind was a bright blank.
The first orgasm hit when his tongue moved across her clit for the first time. She could feel his surprise, but then, he slid two fingers into her and felt the grip of her body. He spent the next ten minutes learning the best method of attack, and then she let out a hoarse scream and arched against him. She really hoped that his parents didn’t have excellent hearing, or she was going to have a problem making eye contact with them the following day.
She was sweaty, limp, but still eager for more when she pulled Yatal’s head up and wrapped her legs around his torso in a not-so-subtle invitation. He took her up on it immediately.
Lyra felt the press of him against her, and then, he eased inside. He moved into her carefully, his eyes narrowed as he paid attention to the resistance of her body around his.
The moment that the tension would have moved to pain, he stopped. She was panting shallowly, and he looked down at her before he leaned in to kiss her and started moving.
Her mind gave her flashes of the same scene in a thousand different iterations. She was with him, he was thrusting into her, she was on top, he was behind, her brain was showing her what a future with him would be like, or at least this portion of their future.
The pleasure of a thousand moments ripped through her, and she dug her nails into his shoulders as the tension inside her shattered.
He pressed deep and groaned as he held himself inside her, and she felt the sharp bite on her neck, and her body went off again.
She gasped and was rung out.
Yatal released her shoulder and licked at the skin for a second before he chuckled. “Huh. Healing already.”
He was still inside her when he rolled them to the side, her leg high on his thigh.
Yatal stroked her back, and she shivered.
“So, Lyra, that was unexpected.”