Page 75 of Baited

“It should,” the madame growls, patting my hand. “We’re here.”

We’ve pulled up in an area which looks residential, and I’m not entirely sure where we are until I get out and see what’s behind us.

It might not be as big as the Tatatunga dome, but it is a dome nonetheless, a dark and brooding church to a death cult.

My chest tightens, and the pain in my head intensifies briefly. I put my hand over my eye, and the throbbing dissipates, and I can hurry after the madame who is entering a leafy courtyard through a gate.

Once inside, I realize what the place is. A pleasure house.

Across the courtyard is a willowy Trefa female who moves as if she’s on wheels towards us.

“Birrix!” she says as she reaches us, embracing the madame and rubbing her chin on her ears one by one. “What a delight!”

“It’s good to see you, Jikki,” the madame says, her face wreathed in smiles.

“And is this the one?” The Trefa madame, Jikki, looks around the madame at me.

“Yes, this is the one who fell in love and had to come halfway around Trefa to find her mate and the father of her child.”

“What?” I look between the beaming madames, “I’m not…I can’t be…”

Madame Jikki smiles. “You don’t think we’ve had plenty of experience in this regard? Birrix can spot a pregnant worker from orbit.”

The madame chokes on her laugh. “Not exactly, but you, my little human, are most definitely pregnant.”

“You can’t possibly know that, not if I don’t know it,” I fire at the pair of them, at once horrified they’ve drilled to my deepest anxiety and embarrassed they’ve found me out.

She opens her big bag and brings out what I can only describe as a wand. She holds it out at me. I don’t move.

“I tested you on the way here. Provided this works for your species, it won’t be wrong.”

I snatch the thing from her. It lights up blue in my hands, and symbols which state “with young” light up along the side.

“Aside from the when and how…” I gasp, my mind going a million times an hour. “This can’t be…”

“Ah, the folly of the young,” Madame Jikki says.

“I’m not young. I’m thirty-four.” I gasp, but breathing seems to be getting difficult and my vision is narrowing.

I’m far too hot, plucking at my jacket, attempting to get it off as the planet spins around me and everything dims.

Until all I can hear is Blayn’s voice in my ear, calling my name. A cruel trick of my head because he’s the only creature I want in my life.

And he’s the one creature denied to me.

BLAYN

The air outside the dome shouldn’t be any sweeter, but it is. I suck down lungful after lungful.

“Vrex it, Blayn!” Rych grabs me by the wing and tows me into a nearby alcove where neither of us fit.

“What?”

“You want to be seen?”

“I’m vrexing sure someone is going to see two Gryn gladiators who should be under lock and key sooner or later.” I shake out my wings and back out of the alcove.

“Where are you going?”

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