Page 5 of Gairo

“Don’t you remember me? I’m Zyloxia, your heart-mate.”

BACK TO THE CABIN

VERONICA

“What the actual hell? I’m under contract with Gairo right now. Get your hands off my man.” I pulled Gairo away from this new crazy lady. He was mine, or at least he was mine for the year of the contract. I didn’t like anybody es laying claim to him.

“Fuck you. Move.” Zyloxia glared at me. “I can smell him on you. I don’t blame him for bedding an outsider, especially because he apparently doesn’t remember his own heart-mate. He can have a real match with his own species, not some stunted Earth human.”

She was being savage about my size. Gairo was much larger than me, and Zyloxia was, too. “You might be his species, but you can’t give him a child like I can.” I stuck my chin out. “Come at me.” I made a motion with my hands.

Zyloxia looked at me. “If you’re pregnant and a surrogate, I can help him raise the child after you leave at the end of your contract.”

With those words, she crushed me like a pile of bricks falling from the sky. I had already told Gairo that I intended to leave once I popped out the kid. I wanted to travel around the galaxy by myself, or at least I had wanted that back at the colony where I was born. Zyloxia was saying that she’d take my place with Gairo and our baby. It made a lump appear in my throat. I had trouble swallowing.

Seeing the tension between all three of us, Gairo cleared his throat. “Zyloxia, we’ll have to discuss this later. My planned trip with my mount will have to be canceled.” Gairo shook his had at me. “I wanted to prepare my aki to meet you, but it’s not going to work out today.”

* * *

With sorrow,Gairo took me in relative silence back to the cabin. As soon as we were back, I burst out, “You can’t believe Zyloxia.” I didn’t want to lose him to her at all. “She’s totally new.”

“She thinks that she’s calling me by me real name. Soren named me when I was found with amnesia.” Gairo shook his head at me.

“I need some time with Zyloxia,” he confessed to me. I felt like he had just stabbed my wind pipe with a rusty blade.

“I don’t want you to talk to her at all.”

He bit his lip and waited for a few moments. “I’ll return.” He left me alone in the cabin, the place where we had been going at one another for weeks. It was my fault that he thought that I was going to be leaving. It seemed like a neat solution when I was back in the colony. I had escaped imprisonment by agreeing to have a warlord’s baby on another planet.

I realized in the silence that followed the closing of the door that losing Gairo to Zyloxia was worse than being bound to a male and raising a child together. I had seen plenty of wives of space marines wither away while they waited for men to come home.

I understood my mother better now. My father was traditional and following the male-centric rules of the colony, to an absurd extent. My mother and aunts had made sure that I had freedom as an apothecary. As much as the men had wanted to punish me for heists, my mother and aunts had made sure that all the punishments lasted for as little time as they could. They knew that my spirit chafed inside of the colony. They hadn’t been able to save me from everything.

For all the bad in my father, I knew that the way that he felt about my mother was true love. She had prevented me from being forced into a marriage inside of the colony for my entire childhood. I saw some of the girls who had married space marines and came back for Christmas. Now that I saw Zyloxia offer to take my place, I was more willing to stay with him and raise our child. How could I convince Gairo that I wanted to stick around after I said that I wanted to leave?

VERONICA’S FUTURE

GAIRO

“Iknew I’d find you here. You always sit under the stars when you’re troubled.”

Zyloxia had found me again. “How can you know that about me?”

“I’m your heart-mate. I know that you have a younger brother and that your parents died within the last year.”

I breathed hard, thinking about my amnesia and the prospect of family that I could not remember somewhere else on Aesirheim. I knew that Zyloxia couldn’t be my heart-mate, because I already felt the stirrings of my heart with Veronica, the mother of my babe.

Zyloxia came with her lips puckered, for a kiss, and I backed away.

“I have to get back to Veronica.”

“Have an affair. You just can’t remember me now, but you’ll regret it later.”

I didn’t think that I would. “Thanks for telling me that I still have a brother.” I’d have to look for him later. Genetic testing that I’d already done for my surrogacy match should help me find my brother later.

* * *

When I got backinto the cabin, Veronica’s face was red. “Did you hook up with her?” She snarled, her hair a mess.

---