Page 14 of Seeded By Two

She turned on her heel and marched toward the door.

Her palm barely touched the sensor and it whooshed open.

She shifted her weight to step outside.

I quickly stood up. “You misunderstand me. This is about Seeding you.”

“It’s about a whole lot more than that, buster.”

Buster?

“You’re asking me to have a kid that will be in the limelight his — or her — whole life!” she said. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone — least of all my own kid!”

I smiled. “I am pleased that is your response. Some accept without a moment’s thought, making me wonder if I made the right decision. I can see I made the right one this time.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not the type to just jump into a decision without thinking about it first.”

I nodded, impressed. “I understand. This is not a decision to take lightly. How much more time do you need?”

She ran her eyes over me, her anger giving her the fire she needed to meet my eyes. “Let me get this straight. I get Seeded and receive a stipend to help raise the kid. They will never need for anything. And there are no obligations and they’ll never be taken from me. Did I understand right?”

I understood her desire to ensure the kid would be hers and no others.

Perhaps if my mother had fought a little harder for me when I was a kid, the Royal Guard would never have been able to take me…

But no, that wasn’t a fair comparison.

The life of a poor farmer was not the same as that of a human.

“Yes,” I said. “You understand correctly.”

Beth gnawed at her bottom lip. “Then I don’t need to think about it any longer. If it means security for my baby for the rest of its life… well, I think that’s something I can live with.”

And then she did a very curious thing.

She marched toward me and extended her hand, open-palmed, facing to one side, and looked at me with grim determination.

I stared at the hand, peered at it to see if she had anything in it.

But it was empty.

My eyes flicked up to hers and I cocked my head to one side in confusion.

Beth stepped forward, closing the distance between us, and took my hand — which up until that point had been hanging by my side — and shook it.

It was the most bizarre thing I had ever witnessed.

“This is how we make a deal on Earth,” she said in way of explanation.

“Oh,” I said, thinking there must have been some kind of exchange of bodily fluids or hormones or something as part of the process.

Surely it couldn’t just be a shake of the hand with these Earthlings?

I shook her hand back, matching the same speed and movement she had with mine. “Then it’s a deal.”

Finally, she yanked her hand free, ending the shake.

I wasn’t sure what it was meant to prove or what I was meant to get from it or how it bonded me and my word to hers, but it didn’t really matter.

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