Page 14 of Owned By Two

The assistant made her way to the door. “I’ll be right outside in case you need me,” she said, casting an apprehensive look at me before shutting the door behind herself.

What was that look for? I wondered. She thought I wasn’t going to allow Lizzy to leave, was that it? I doubted I could succeed at that even if I tried. I admit the thought did cross my mind for a flicker of a second, to hold her here, keep her in my arms until Steyatt was over…

But I didn’t think Lizzy would stand for it.

She ran her hands through her hair and over her face. Then she looked up at me, her mind a million lightyears from where we were standing. She blinked and the tears she’d been holding back ran down her cheeks. She hastily wiped them away before tucking strands of hair that had fallen across her face back behind her ears.

She smiled, but it was broken and sad. I wished I could take the pain inside her and wear it instead. But the pain was a part of the grieving process and I would not deny her the ability to move on.

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know how to deal with something like this… how I’m supposed to deal with it.”

I placed my hand on her shoulder. When she didn’t shrug it off, I gently rubbed her soft skin. Even now, it sent electricity through my entire body.

“I don’t think there’s a wrong way to react in a situation like this,” I said comfortingly.

“You think?” Lizzy said apprehensively. “I mean… I hardly knew my father. He left me when I was very young. He was always off chasing some business idea he thought would make him rich. He got close a few times, my mom said, but none ever seemed to quite work out. He sent back what money he could… but he was never much of a father. He was only the man who knocked my mother up.”

I frowned at the expression. Knocked her up? What did that mean? I could tell from the context what it meant but how did hitting a female get her pregnant? Was it a human thing? I didn’t think I would ever get the hang of human expressions.

“And now that he’s dead… I don’t know,” Lizzy said, flopping down on the corner of the bed. “It’s weird. It’s like… a distant relative died, not my father. Does that make any sense?”

I sat beside her and wrapped my arms around her. “It makes perfect sense. Death can cause all sorts of emotions, many of which we could never predict. But in the Elkik culture, it’s but a link in a chain of what it means to be alive. After all, you cannot die without living first, and so it is a blessing to even be here at all.”

Lizzy nodded but once again her mind was distant from me.

“As it is your father who died, they will wait until you arrive before they begin the funeral ceremony, right?”

Lizzy pushed back from me and looked up into my eyes. “Wait?”

“Until after Steyatt,” I said. “Your father is already dining in the halls of the Great Feast and whatever happens to his body now is of no consequence.”

Lizzy blinked at that. “Maybe that’s true in your culture, but it’s not true on Earth. It’s a big deal to make sure the physical body is in good shape before it’s laid to rest.”

There was another confusing expression. Laid to rest? Surely a dead body could only rest? And could human cadavers move in ways other than lying down?

“I have to go to him,” Lizzy said. “I don’t want to. I don’t feel a strong pull to go there and do it… but what other choice do I have? He is my father. I mean, he was.”

Relegating her father to the past tense like that seemed to shake her more than anything else we had said up until that point. I was only making things worse.

I knew it was selfish of me to ask, but I couldn’t help it. I had formed a bond with Lizzy and I didn’t want to see her leave. Not now. Not when we had the whole of Steyatt week ahead of us.

“What about us?” I asked. “You with your Seeding. And me with sating my Steyatt?”

“I’m sorry,” Lizzy said, pushing lightly against my chest to put a little more distance between us. “I can’t go on with this, not with my father’s death hanging over me. I hope you can understand.”

I did… and I also didn’t.

I understood our cultures were different, understood she needed to leave… but couldn’t she understand the bond we had formed was special? That it was sacred and not something to be tossed aside so easily? That there might only be one time in our whole lives where we might meet someone who matched us so perfectly?

A bond such as ours — such that I thought we had created even with the very first meeting, did not come along often. If ever, in an Elkik lifetime.

“I’m going to let the assistant in now,” she said. “I’m sorry about this. I really am. But I have to go to him.”

I opened my mouth to speak but she had already turned her back to me and was moving for the door.

“Have you made your decision?” the assistant asked.

Yes, I thought. I want her to stay. I want her to be my mate for Steyatt…

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