Page 29 of Challenged

It is tempting to answer her jab with more teasing words, but her question deserves a serious answer, so I breathe in all my amusement, let my expression settle into seriousness again.

“If you hope to find another mate, you will find you have no real choices,” I say. “You may decide you wish to give your heartspace to another, but they would not accept it. Lina has chosen you for me. Any other raskarran would desire only the female Lina chooses for him.”

“Who is this Lina, and why does she get to decide?”

“She is our goddess, the goddess of the forest that we call home.”

I am always surprised by how unimpressed humans are by goddesses, and my Angie is no exception. Her eyes harden. Her tone when she speaks is flat and dry.

“Right, of course.” She grimaces, then fixes her expression in a neutral arrangement. “And I suppose there’s no way of getting her to, ah, un-decide?”

“No.”

“But what if this-” She gestures between us. “-is the one time she’s wrong.”

“She is not wrong.”

I smile, because every word my Angie speaks makes me more certain of this. Even when she is searching for ways to escape our mating bond, I can see the speed of her racing thoughts in her eyes. Can read the workings of her headspace in the way she wrinkles her nose. She is a quick and clever female and this delights me.

“You say that with such confidence, but you don’t know anything about me.”

“Very little,” I agree. “But what I do know tells me that I wish to know very much more.”

“And what if you learn things you don’t like?”

“Unlikely,” I say, grinning. “You have already tried to pull the tail from my back and the hair from my head. You have secrets within you worse than this inclination for violence?”

The words are out before I can contain my temptation to tease her. My Angie glares at me, the fire in her eyes flashing beautifully. But she sighs, containing her impulse to spar with me for now.

“I apologise for pulling your tail and your hair.”

There is something in the flat way she says it, as if she knows it is the right thing to say, but does not feel that truth in her heartspace. It almost makes me laugh. Ferocious little female.I hope she realises soon that she does not have to contain that ferocity around me.

“You were in an impossible position,” I say. “You sought proof of your circumstances and it was an effective way to get it. There is nothing to apologise for, my Angie.”

She stares at me for a long moment, blinking slowly. Her mouth opens and closes a few times, as if words dance on the tip of her tongue but do not manage to leave it.

“That’s it?” she says in the end, her tone disbelieving.

I shrug. “I would be a fool to hold your intelligence and ingenuity against you. They are attributes I admire.”

“You admire the fact that I attacked you?” Her eyes remain narrowed as she looks at me. “Not: ‘I’ll let it slide this time, but you need to think about that attitude and whether it’s productive going forward’? Not: ‘you need to understand that you owe me your respect’? Not: ‘aggression is unbecoming of you, the fairer sex should be gentle’?”

She says these things in a false voice, condescending and dismissive, and I know they are all words she has heard before. I have teasingly accused her of a propensity for violence, but it is my heartspace that fills with a desire to terrorise anyone who belittled her so.

“How could you owe me respect?” I say, picking the simplest of the statements to counter. “As you have said - we do not know each other.”

“Because you’re male.” Her tone is disparaging, but I sense that it is towards this attitude, not me.

“I am male by accident of my birth. It is not something I control, nor something I have earned. I do not think being male demands respect any more than being female necessitates gentleness.”

She’s quiet for a long moment, then she huffs, the sound almost an acknowledgement. “I guess we have that much in common, at least.”

I chuckle. “Already you are warming to my charms.”

“Agreeing with each other on one thing doesn’t make us compatible.”

“No, but if we agree on one thing, it seems likely that we will agree on more.”

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