She shifted slightly to get a better look at Jaran. By moonlight his strong features appeared chiseled in silvery granite. Like a blanket, his golden-feathered wings covered his upper body except for the arm he had flung across her stomach. The weight of it began to feel more constricting by the minute.
The symbion sex hormones had worn off, leaving her once again able to think clearly. Now, in the middle of the night, she remembered that Jaran was the man who considered her an outsider, the boy who had called her a freak because her parents had been born on another world.
She could choose to forget those things and accept him as the skilled lover he'd become, or she could continue to carry the hurt around as a burden on her soul. The choice should have been an easy one to make, but it wasn't.
He must have sensed her watching him because he began to stir. Lara decided she would pretend to be asleep, but Jaran's eyes popped open before she could close hers. He met her gaze in the pearlescent light and smiled. "How long have you been awake?"
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"Not long." She worked at keeping her voice low, though it seemed odd to whisper intimately with someone she was more used to yelling at or ignoring completely.
"Are you cold?" He stretched a wing to cover her since the white sheet from the previous night was gone.
She should have protested but instead snuggled deeper beneath the protection of his wing. Part of her wanted to be flying home to the research station, but the rest of her was far too comfortable to move.
"Laramee, I don't want you to worry about Odan's warning."
"I don't understand why you chose me, Jaran. I'm the last person to make a good match for you."
The corner of his upper lip tilted up, and he reached out to brush a strand of hair from her face. "Judging by the way we spent this evening, I would argue we are a perfect match. We fit together as though we were made for each other."
Lara failed in her attempt not to laugh. "Aren't all men and women supposed to fit together?"
Jaran scowled, but this time she didn't see the face of her childhood tormentor. She saw a man whose ego had been slightly bruised by her dismissal. "Are you saying that what occurred between us was average? That any two people could have—"
"No." She answered quickly, suddenly loathe to hurt his feelings. "No. This was ... better than anything I've had before."
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His smile returned, this time devoid of the arrogance it usually held. "I agree. And I think, in time, we can improve upon it even more."
Beneath the warm covering of his outstretched wing, his hand found her hip and slid seductively along the curve of her waist. Lara did her best to ignore the stirring of her symbion hormones. In a moment she'd be moaning for release if she let this go on. "That's the point, isn't it, Jaran? We may not have time. Aren't we only making things worse for ourselves if, in the end, the committee dissolves our union? All this time spent preparing for the mating cycle to begin will be wasted if we must ultimately go to other mates."
Jaran growled, and the warmth of his hand disappeared from the curve of her hip. He pulled his wing back and folded it behind him, exposing Lara's naked body to the slight chill of the midnight air. "I told you we will not be separated. Don't you trust me?"
Lara sat up. Reluctant to drag herself out of the comforting embrace of the alor fibers, she shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. "I..." The truth was no, she didn't trust Jaran because she still didn't understand his motives.
He sat up as well. "I see."
"What do you expect of me, Jaran? We've spent over twenty years at odds with each other. How can you expect my trust when you taught me to detest our every conversation? You hated me for nothing more than my human blood. To ask me to—"
Jaran vaulted off the bed, his wings fanning out behind him. "I never hated you, Laramee."
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She raised a brow. "Right. You told the other children I ate symbion eggs." That grievous rumor had cost her several friends. On Icarus the thought of eating an unborn symbion was tantamount to cannibalism. "You tried to convince me that my symbion would rip itself off my back and fly away in the middle of the night to escape my human taint."
Jaran bowed his head. "I was a child."
"You were not a child when you told me I should leave Icarus with my parents because I didn't belong here. If you felt that way, why would you choose me as your mate?"
He didn't respond. He'd turned his back to her and had planted his hands on his hips as if contemplating a believable answer.
"Why, Jaran?"
"Because I wanted to erase all of that. The boy I was—my mother taught me to despise the human influence on Icarus."
Lara blinked. She knew very little of Arilani, except for the vague references to a rivalry for the attentions of her father.
Her parents had glossed over the details of the Icarian healer's attempt to kill Zara, and they'd never held her crime against Jaran. "I only heard that your mother worked diligently with Dr. Danson to start the breeding program. She wanted to allow artificial insemination when Jidar was still against it, and she was to have been mated with my father."
The last words stuck like glue in her throat. It almost made her nauseated to say them.
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left her without a mate for what would be her last fertile cycle."
Lara nodded. "So she dropped my mother out of an aerie.
If she hadn't managed to climb into a symbion feeding net and one of the nesting females hadn't joined with her, she would have died." Lara hated to think of the torment her mother had suffered, lying injured for days in a broken alor net at the foot of one of the long-deserted aerie islands. Wild symbions had fed her and guarded her, but her condition had deteriorated until she was near death. Then, finally, one of the birds had bonded with her and saved her life.
As punishment for her crime, Arilani had been exiled prior to the start of the mating cycle, yet she'd managed to become pregnant by one of the Icarian males assigned to bring her food and supplies on the isolated island that was to be her prison for ten years. Upon her death after only five years in exile, Jaran had been taken to the royal aerie and given to Jidar and Namara to raise.
"The story she told me was different," he said, "and made your mother out to be the villain who planned to sabotage the breeding program. I denied the truth when I learned it because I loved my mother and couldn't believe she would do something so terrible."
Sympathy softened Lara's resolve. She'd never considered that Jaran had been told lies by his mother, but it made sense. Discovering that every other Icarian knew the real story of her treachery had to have been devastating for the young orphan.
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"She never told you which male was your father, did she?"
Half a dozen guards had been assigned to care for her on the distant, isolated aerie to which she'd been taken on Jidar's command, with her symbion wings damaged to prevent her escape. All of them had denied mating with her, and though Jidar knew one of them had to be lying, he'd refused to punish them all.
"She did. And she made me promise never to reveal his name."
Lara's eyes widened. This was another burden heaped on Jaran when he was too young to fully understand the implications. All these years he'd known who his real father was and had never let on. "Surely it doesn't matter now. Jidar can't punish him. Is he still alive?"
Jaran flicked a wing at her. "You're right. It doesn't matter.
I was raised by Jidar. He will always be my father."
Lara settled back ont
o the bed. "Do you trust me, Jaran?"
He pinned her with a steely glance. "I would like to."
"Then tell me who your father is. I would never tell anyone."
He hesitated for a moment, then shook his head. "As I said, it no longer matters."
To punctuate the finality of his statement, Jaran spread his wings and swept out of the room.
She wanted his trust, but refused to give hers in return.
Jaran wanted to blame Lara for their argument this morning, but deep down he knew his own reluctance to share his secrets with her lay at the root of their problems. The logical side of his brain told him the only way to break down 93
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all the barriers between them was to lay himself open to her and tell her all of his true feelings. His irrational side, the side that had foolishly kept his mother's secret for all these years, wasn't yet ready to evolve.
After avoiding his mate for several hours, he'd found her in the east garden, examining a tree that seemed to be losing its foliage. She'd dressed, and again he marveled at how her half-covered body could be so alluring.
When she noticed him watching her, she greeted him as though none of their earlier conflict had occurred.
"Daralei asked me to look at this apple tree. I think it's developed a root disease. We may have to remove it before the blight spreads to other parts of the garden."
Jaran nodded absently. "If you think that's best. These are your gardens now. Your decisions will be law regarding what is done with the plants here."
For a moment she looked like she might protest, and Jaran feared they'd end up rehashing the same argument that had driven him from his quarters in the middle of the night. He tensed, prepared to defend his actions, but her expression softened.
"I'll try to save it. It's a beautiful tree. I have some treatments I can try, but I need to go back to the research station for supplies."
"Of course, but perhaps you could wait until tomorrow? I'd like you to do something with me today."
She raised a brow, and her lips quirked. Jaran smiled, wishing he was talking about what she clearly had in mind.
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"Not that. I mean, I still have dozens of mate pairings to perform and as co-leader you can ... you should be present."
Her fingers trailed off the leafless branch she'd been caressing, and she scrutinized him as if trying to find an ulterior motive for his request. "I don't think I'd be any good at it."
"You may be better than you think." He held out his hand.
"Come on. Spend the day in my world."
With a glance at the ailing tree, she stepped along the tiled path and took his hand. "But tomorrow I have to—"
"Yes. Tomorrow you'll save the tree. Today you'll help me build the next generation of Icarians."
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Chapter Ten
To Lara's surprise, she enjoyed spending the day with Jaran, performing their duties as co-leaders of the Icarian tribe. She'd never been present at a mate pairing other than her own before, and she hadn't expected to become caught up in the joy of each couple as Jaran pronounced them united. Everyone had seemed thrilled with the choices he'd made for them, no doubt largely because his decisions were based on what he knew to be their own preferences.
Everyone who came into the audience chamber that day left smiling and eager to begin their lives together.
"I had no idea you were so perceptive, Jaran," she said when the last couple had left to join the mating celebration in the gardens. "You made a lot of people very happy today."
He raised a brow. "I will confess my secret, if you will confess one of yours."
"What kind of secrets do you think I keep?"
"Tell me why you chose to stay on Icarus when your parents went to Daedalus. Kiala told Odan that you'd longed to see another planet, but you passed up the opportunity to work at the botanical station there."
Lara's first instinct was to question why her personal dilemma, shared only with Kiala, had made its way to both Odan and Jaran. Instead, she considered her answer and decided at this point there was no shame in telling Jaran the truth, or part of it at least.
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"I didn't want to miss the mating cycle. If I'd left, I might have found a human mate on Daedalus, but if I didn't, I could not have come back here to be joined. I miss my parents, and I would have loved to see the colony on Daedalus, but I couldn't give up being Icarian."
"The committee should hear that. They should know the sacrifice you made for the tribe."
"I'm not sure it will be enough." Lara shook off a sudden melancholy. Perhaps if the committee dissolved her union with Jaran she would go to Daedalus to work. At least with Caleb and Zara she would feel like she belonged.
Jaran moved to stand next to her. He brushed a thumb over her cheek and looked into her eyes. "You're everything the committee could demand for my mate and everything I could ask for."
Lara's heart raced. She'd been careful all day not to allow memories of last night to interfere with her thoughts, but now, looking into Jaran's tawny eyes, all she could see was the two of them tangled in bed. Her muscles began to coil, and beneath her clothing her nipples hardened.
Their day was done. They could go back to his bedroom—
their bedroom—and allow their symbions to take control of their emotions.
Jaran leaned in and brushed his lips over hers, drawing a moan from her. Her wings twitched, signaling the awakening of her symbion.
"Don't you have a private chamber for this?" Odan's voice interrupted, echoing from the stone walls of the audience room.
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Jaran stepped back, but his feral gaze told Lara he wasn't finished with her. "You've already been paired, Odan. Go away."
"I'd like nothing better than to go to my aerie and be with Jehri, but I had to stop here and speak to Lara first."
Lara transferred her gaze to Odan and fought to overcome the sudden rush of mating hormones her symbion had produced in response to Jaran's brief kiss.
"I've made a list of tasks that previous co-leaders have accomplished. I thought you might want to look it over."
Lara crossed the room, eager to see the paper Odan produced from the messenger pouch he wore, but Jaran intervened.
"These tasks won't be necessary."
"They might." The joviality drained from Odan's voice.
"The committee plans to vote in ten days."
Lara pushed Jaran's hand away and took the paper Odan had written on. "Why so long? Why don't they just get on with it?"
"Because someone argued that you should be given an opportunity to prove your worth."
"You?" Lara gave Odan a half smile.
"Me. And Daralei. There are others who haven't yet made up their minds, but the opposition is growing."
"This is nonsense." Jaran blustered, and his wings twitched.
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worth when she'd rescued Jidar's ailing grandmother from a storm-swept aerie. With no storms brewing on the horizon, and no elderly Icarians trapped on distant islands, Lara had little chance of pulling off that feat.
The other tasks seemed outrageously dangerous or difficult. "Hand raising an orphaned symbion ... I could do that if there was one available," she said. "But it would take a lot longer than ten days. Aiding in a difficult birth ...
considering there won't be any Icarian births for nearly a year, that one's out. I coul
d string fishing nets in the Minarian Strait, or place daily offerings in the northern temple for a year ... if I had a year."
Jaran grumbled. "Odan, this is ridiculous. Some of those tasks were performed hundreds of years ago and would be totally unnecessary today. Lara is a scientist. She has much more to offer than stringing fishing nets."
"It's about posturing, Jaran. It's about a dedication to our culture, not modern accomplishments. Half of the people of our generation are scientists, inventors and teachers. Lara needs to do something that will set her apart from everyone else."
"Here's one," Lara showed the list to Odan. "Retrieve a black egg from a symbion nest. Why would that be—"
Jaran grabbed the paper from her hand and crumpled it.
"Collecting oddities is no more worthy than working to increase our food supply, and Lara has done that since she received her degree."
Odan gestured with a wing tip. "Listen to what I'm saying, Jaran. It's about traditions."
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"I've never seen a black symbion egg," Lara mused. "I've never even heard of one." Her mind whirled. Kiala might be a source of information. Her friend monitored symbion breeding grounds. If any of the birds had produced a black egg recently, Kiala might know.
"The black eggs are very rare. They're unfertilized and they never hatch. They harden to stone, but many symbions protect them anyway, sometimes for years. Generations ago, so my mother told me, the black eggs symbolized eternity because they could not break or rot. Given as a gift to the Icarian leader, they represented a wish for him to live forever."
"What happened to the egg when the leader finally did die?"
"It was cast into the ocean along with his body. That's why you've never seen one," Odan said.
Jaran had walked away and was glaring out the nearest window, his wings partially spread, signifying his agitation.
"Legends will not help us, Odan."
"This is the only task on the list that I might be able to accomplish," Lara said. "I need to speak to Kiala."
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