Page 57 of Rauf: Minotaur Mates

One thing at a time.

The engine took two tries to catch. I waited until it stopped threatening to die, then pulled out through the gate. Drev was watching the road now. He raised a hand as I passed, and I lifted mine from the wheel.

I watched the brush on either side. Yesterday I’d driven this road too fast to see anything but the next turn. Today I noticed every place a man could crouch and let a vehicle pass.

Was that human out there somewhere lying in wait to cause trouble? What was he doing in New Knossos? There wasn’t anything of real value here, at least not anything that could justify the expense of interplanetary travel.

I wondered if the Protos Empire had sent him. We were the monsters who’d gotten away from them, who’d won our freedom and left without looking back. The empire might still want to teach us a lesson.

I remembered standing in the sand with blood running down my wrist, trying to keep my grip on a weapon while the male in front of me tried to do the same. The crowd had been shouting for one of us to finish it. They always wanted more, especially when we were too tired to give it to them.

During the revolution, we had given them plenty. I’d driven a guard into a wall, taken his weapon, and stepped over him because another was already coming. Alarms screamed through the passages. Males fell, and the rest of us fought over them because stopping meant losing the way out. There was no end to a bout, no order to return to our cages. We kept killing until the ships were ours.

We had paid for this planet in blood. I wouldn’t let anyone take it from us.

But that wasn’t why I was in town today.

I stopped in front of the Alien Matchmaking Agency office and let my truck idle.

The office occupied a good stretch of the street. Someone had painted the door recently, though there was already a scrape across it where a horn had caught. Through the window I could see the back of a broad chair and a desk with papers stacked on one corner. An ordinary room, where a male could walk in alone and come out with someone who wanted to share his home.

I shut off the engine.

Hesitation was for cowards. I stepped out of the truck and walked inside.

There was no clerk at the front desk. No Nezara. A pen lay across an open file, and a cup sat beside it. Someone had found time to settle in and then fuck off again.

“Hello?”

No answer. I glanced toward the door at the back.

It wasn’t that early. Where was Nezara?

I was about to call again when the back door opened. Nezara came through carrying a thin folder. She paused at the sight of me, then shut the door and approached the desk.

“Rauf, hello.”

“I’m here to submit to your program.”

Her lips pressed together. I could see the smile she was trying to keep off her face. “Submit? I’m not looking for obedience. Merely husbands.”

“You know what I mean. What do I have to do?”

“Please, take a seat.” She gestured to the chair in front of her desk and took the one behind it. I stayed where I was. “I promise, the process is fairly painless.”

I sat. The chair was solid and deep enough that I could have leaned back. I stayed on the edge.

“Let’s get this over with.”

“That’s the attitude I love from suitors. Let’s go over what you’re looking for in a bride.”

“I want Teresa.”

Nezara’s hand stopped on the folder. She studied me for a moment, the amusement fading. “And how does Teresa feel about that? I will not forcibly assign a woman to a minotaur just because he wants her.”

My first impulse was to tell her I hadn’t come here to be accused of forcing anyone. I caught the words before they left my mouth.

I didn’t tell her that Teresa was asleep in my bed, covered in my scent. I didn’t tell her that I knew what her sleep-roughened voice sounded like.