Page 8 of Loaned to the Leonid Knight

Gideon frowned, and his employer didn’t take kindly to the puzzled expression on his face.

“Stop staring at me like I’ve lost my mind. Listen, is anyone else around?”

“No, sir. I’m in your office, sorting the e-communications as normal.”

“Excellent. I want you to come to theComet Stalker, Gideon.” Farhet swallowed several times and looked over his shoulder. “I’ve already cleared it with Bastet Mercy. I’ve made a substantial donation to the immunology ward and the Queen Health Center.”

“That’s very generous, sir. I—”

“I know you don’t understand! Shut up and listen.”

Gideon resisted the urge to just shut down the call. The job was good. Paid well. Provided status that he would never find anywhere else on Leonid-One. Well, not in this district or many of the others. No one like him would ever live in these opulent surroundings, have these lavish things at his disposal.

And when there was no other future aside from working and then dying, it might as well be a comfortable living, yes?

Satisfied that Gideon would be silent, Farhet continued. “Your odd coloring wasn’t passed down to anyone else in yourfamily, was it? No siblings, no cousins? No parents, aunts, or uncles?”

“No one, sir. As I told you when you hired me several years ago, I have a regressive genetic trait. My sisters did not have it.”

His sisters would have been turning thirty this year. Seven years gone. So much life left unlived. They would be ashamed of him, being a meek little errand boy.

What else was a Knight like him supposed to do with no family to speak of, no Pride to be a part of?

“So no one in your generation? No cousins?” Farhet pressed.

Gideon shook his head. “No one else in my family had it. One Pantherite relative in a sea of Leonids has meant that the Leonid genes and coloring are dominant. My... My other affliction, the white speckling, that’s another genetic mutation. It’s specific to me, and likely what caused the melanistic coloring. It may have nothing to do with having distant Pantherite relatives.”

“Relatives? More than one?”

Gideon blinked slowly in order to hide his rolling eyes. If a person had a Pantherite relative, then yes, he must have had more than one, realistically speaking. His great-grandmother had parents, and they would have had parents, etc., etc... But aloud, Gideon replied, “Only one.”

“Good. And you say it may not even be the Pantherite lineage; it could be a genetic mishap? Something any unfortunate soul could be cursed with?”

Count to ten. Don’t swear. Don’t quit.

Itisa curse, isn’t it? He’s not lying.

“Yes, sir, it could happen to anyone.”

“Even my son.”

“It could.”

“Excellent!”

Well. That was unexpected. “If you say so, sir.”

“No, what I mean is that if you come aboard theComet Stalkerand act as my substitute to breed the human Queen, and your strange discoloration is passed on, I could say it’s simply a rarity, a twist of fate. And I’m sure there are some treatments I could use on the cub to fix him.”

To fix him? If this condition were fixable, wouldn’t his parents have pursued it?

Maybe. Maybe not. They never thought anything was wrong with you. To them, you were simply different. Do you remember when you went to the Tigerite Keys when you were little? That one and only vacation? No one looked at you twice. It’s only here. In this place, where pure blood and wealth are all that matter.

Yes, but for as well as this contract pays, it’s not enough to leave Leonid-One and start over someplace new. No matter how often my parents said it didn’t matter, around here, it does. In my life, it always will.

“Fur dye. Skin grafts. Something. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I want you here within the week, and the female should be fertile then.”

“Wait. Sir, are you asking me to provide— Well, to mate with your surrogate? And she would bear my son or daughter?”