She dared not satisfy it. “Dtimun, you must tell her the truth.”
“No.”
“She will see it for herself, when you mate,” she persisted.
“We will conduct the pairing in total darkness,” he said, evading her eyes. “I will make sure that she does not see me. She will not know.”
Caneese frowned worriedly. “Our laws require that we use no artificial means of camouflage during a bonding ceremony. How will I explain that to the witnesses?”
He cocked his head. “You will find a way around that,” he said with affection.
She shook her own head. “You presume too much.”
“I do not.” He bent and laid his forehead against hers. “It will change everything, once she knows,” he said bitterly. “I do not wish it to happen. Not yet.” He lifted his head. His eyes were sad and reflective. “She plans to have a memory wipe. The child will be regressed. She will go back to the Holconcom and remember nothing. But I will have the memory of it. Of her. I do not wish to remember her distaste.”
“You underestimate the intensity of her feelings for you,” Caneese said simply.
He laughed shortly. “Do you not remember the one time we revealed ourselves to a party of humans, during the Great Galaxy War?”
She grimaced. “They were primitive humans...”
He turned away. “I will not risk it.”
She didn’t press him. It would have done no good. He was too much like her. Neither of them would retreat from a decision, once made.
“The bonding will take place tomorrow, after Komak’s genetic manipulation, Madeline,” Caneese told her gently. “Are you certain that you are rested and healed enough for the procedure?”
“I’m just sore and a little weak,” Madeline assured her with a smile. “We don’t have a lot of time, if we’re to save Chacon and the princess.” Both the enemy commander and the Cehn-Tahr princess had recently gone missing.
“I still do not like it,” the older woman said solemnly. “It is a very great risk.”
Madeline moved closer to her. “I’ll be the commander’s eyes and ears,” she said softly. “He’ll be all right.”
Dtimun’s eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline. “You presume to protect me from harm?” he asked in a hopelessly arrogant fashion.
Madeline grinned at him. “I always try my best to protect you, sir. I’ll remind you that when we were in Ahkmau...”
“Not again,” he groaned.
Caneese laughed out loud. “What is this, about Akhmau?”
“I operated on him under battlefield conditions when he went prematurely into the dylete,” she recalled smugly, reminding Caneese of an earlier conversation. She frowned. “Well, in one stage of it, anyway. Can you still call it the time of half-life when it’s only one of many?” she added thoughtfully.
“Call it what you like,” Dtimun said gruffly. “I am going to bed.”
“You sleep well, sir,” Madeline said. “If I hear anything threatening outside, I’ll attack it for you.”
He muttered something under his breath, turned on his heel, and stalked back across the balcony.
Caneese was grinning, overcome with mirth. “I have never seen him in such a state,” she chuckled.
“I get on his nerves,” Madeline said, grinning back. “It keeps him on his toes. He does tend to brood.”
“Yes. Even as a child, he was like that.”
“You’ve known him that long?” Madeline asked.
Caneese’s eyes softened. “I have.” She studied the younger woman quietly. “You are uneasy about the bonding. You have never known the touch of a hunting male.”
Madeline’s heart jumped. She averted her eyes. Uneasy was an understatement.
“You must not dwell on it,” Caneese said. “But you must use your strongest sedative. You are frightened of him in the darkness already. This will augment it.”
Madeline flushed. “His eyes glow...”
“We have feline eyes,” Caneese reminded her.
She frowned. “He said something curious. He said that you keep more secrets than we know, and that you aren’t what you seem.”
“There have been incidents, in the past,” Caneese said carefully. “When humans...”
“Stop there,” came a commanding voice into her mind. “Say no more to her.”
Caneese grimaced. “Well, it is nothing that concerns you,” she amended. She smiled. “You should try to rest. Tomorrow will be stressful.”
Madeline hesitated. “What is it like?” she asked, the words almost torn out of her.
Caneese only smiled. “You will understand soon.”
Madeline sighed and turned away. “I suppose so. Good night.”
“Sleep well.” Caneese bit her lower lip as she watched the fragile human female walk away. Madeline was concerned, but Caneese did not dare satisfy the other woman’s curiosity. She hoped that Madeline could summon enough nerve not to run, as she had tried to, just before her own first mating. It was not a memory she liked to revisit, despite the pleasure of the ones that followed.
* * *
KOMAK HAD USED a curious mixture, which contained bone marrow cells and Cehn-Tahr DNA, as well as an accelerant whose properties he would not disclose, to facilitate Madeline’s transformation into a human with the strength of the aliens with whom she had served for almost three years. After he finished with the initial procedure, he injected another mixture into the artery at Madeline’s neck with a laserdot. “You must not be nervous,” he said gently. “I assure you, I know what I am doing.”
She managed a smile for him. “For a time-traveling magician, you’re not bad, Komak.”
He chuckled. “So I am told.”
She studied his face. “You know, you do use human facial expressions more than any Cehn-Tahr I’ve ever known.”
“You are remembering the traces of human DNA in my blood, when you typed and cross-matched it to transfuse the commander at Ahkmau.”
“Yes.”
He removed the laserdot placer. “We all keep secrets. That one must remain my own.”
“The commander and I think you’re related to someone who lived in this time period.”
“You are both astute. I am.”
“Can you tell us who?”
He smiled and shook his head. “That is one subject we must not visit.”
“Do you have human DNA, or was it just a glitch in my equipment, as I thought at the time?”
He put down the laserdot and looked her in the eye. “Answer your own question. Do I resemble a human?”
She sighed. “No, Komak,” she had to admit, smiling. “You look like the rest of your species.”
He was amused. She did not know the true tech he employed, although he had let her think she did, and he had no intention of telling her. To do so might reveal too soon the secret Dtimun kept from her. He smiled back. “We are all one color, one race. Unlike you humans, who come in all colors and races.”
“There’s a legend that my people were once all tea-colored,” she recalled.
He