She sighed. “Well, what is the fallback if there isn’t a representative?”
“That’s not an issue,” Rainair said. “Kex will do it, he’s just being stubborn.”
My mate glared at my friend. “It’s his choice to make, and he doesn’t need to take a job he doesn’t want just because it’s the quickest solution. It will take you time to track down Earth anyway.”
“No, my mate. He’s right. I will do it.”
She turned to me. “Kex, don’t do this just for me. It’s your life, and if you would be more content living in a hut where we could hopefully set up some kind of plumbing, then do that. If you’ll be happier being a spoiled lord living at the top of a tower with no responsibilities at all, do that. Do what would make your life worth it. We’ll figure the rest out.”
I cupped my mate’s face in my hands. “You make my life worth it, my Emily. The rest is just details. And perhaps I was always going to take on the legacy.”
“But you said you wanted peace,” my mate said, placing her small hand on my chest.
“I do want peace, but you bring me peace.” I sighed. “And as Rainair said, I was always going to take it. I just wanted to pretend I had an option for a little while. My grandfather raised me to take over for him, I just expected to have a few more decades.”
My mate pulled me down and planted a kiss on my chin. “We’ll take lots of breaks to your grandfather’s hut. Just the two of us. We’ll find someone to watch the kids.”
“Deal. We can make Rainair babysit,” I said.
My mate turned to my friend. “You’ll have to learn some kid-appropriate stories.”
I pulled my mate against my chest and wrapped my hands around her to hold her stomach. “What do you say, Uncle Rainair?”
Rainair frowned at us. “These are theoretical children, right?”
“Nope,” my mate said. “Apparently Kex has super jizz and humans are compatible.”
“I do not think that translated completely,” I said into my mate’s ear while my friend stood in stunned silence. After a moment, a grin broke across his face and he crossed to us. He wrapped his arms around us both and picked us up.
“That’s fucking brilliant!” he shouted and spun us around in the air. He set us down and my mate laughed. He pressed his muzzle against my mate’s temple, then tackled me in an embrace. “You fucking bastard, I can’t believe you managed to reproduce before me. Fuck, now I’ll have to find someone so we can do pair things.”
I placed my hand on his shoulder. “I hope you will be so blessed one day, my brother.”
We walked on, a happy buzz in the air and my mate on my back where I liked her most. After some time, my mate interrupted Rainair in the retelling of one of his typical love stories. He’d just finished describing the ravenous way a man took his true mate after discovering her.
“Question!” my mate called out in that way she did when she lacked cultural or technological understanding of a specificpoint. “The whole true mate thing, can you explain that a little more? Like, why is atruemate special?”
I came to a stop, a small bead of fear running down my spine. Did she not understand what we were to each other?
My mate tapped me around the middle with her ankles. “What? Is it something I should know already?”
I tapped my mate’s legs, and she dropped. I turned to her, but her expression was confused. “You are my true mate, my Emily.”
“I know you said that, but like, what does it mean? It’s like getting married or choosing a partner, right?”
Over her head, Rainair snorted and I shot him a murderous look before returning my gaze to my mate. I reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder. “There is no choice in it. A true mate—well there are many names for it, but it all means the same—it is the one person meant for you in all the universe. A true pairing. Not one selected by choice, but by souls tied together across the stars.”
My mate frowned, her little eyebrows pinching together. “So, like soulmates?”
I smiled, relieved. “Yes, as if we are joined by the soul.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “So this is like a part of your faith?”
“No, all peoples believe this, it is one of the great uniters,” I explained, but my mate still frowned.
Rainair grunted. “Let me, the love expert, explain. You’re fucking it up, Kex.”
My mate turned to him, and I pulled her back against my chest.