* * *
Silas lay alongside her, spent. He had meant to hold her down and fuck her from behind, to simply take his pleasure from her and walk away, but he could not. He wasn’t the mercenary Commander Norrin thought him to be. He had a heart and even if he wanted to, even as his judgment told him it would be easier to have no emotional attachment when the time came to give her back, even to treat her as less than human, he could not.
Rowan turned her face toward him and he watched her eyes as her pupils returned to their slanted shape, understanding why so many were frightened of the breeders. He wondered how the villagers would react to her today.
Last night when he had spoken with the elders, he had told them the whole truth of why he had said yes, why he had brought a breeder into their village. They already knew of the threat against the settlement, but there was more. He had told them that his son was alive, that in exchange for two breeder offspring, he would be given back his son, the boy he had never met, the child who had been stolen from him while still inside the womb.
Almost ten years ago, two women had come into their settlement in the middle of the night. The one who had been older and very ill died within hours but the other, she was injured and frightened, no, terrified of something. She had been a runaway breeder, somehow having escaped one of the colonies. Ina was her name. He still remembered how she had looked that night when they had found her. He had taken her in and he had taken responsibility for her even as the villagers had warned him it was an ill omen, that she did not belong, that the colony would find her and punish them for hiding her. But while caring for her, Silas had fallen in love with the breeder, and, against the advice of the elders, he had taken Ina as his wife.
Until colony soldiers had found her that is.
Silas was on a trading mission when they came or he wouldn’t be alive today, but as it was, others, innocents, had paid the price in his place. He wished he had been here. Wished he had died rather than let them take her, take his wife and his unborn child and execute two of the villagers as an example to the others.
After what they did, after seeing Ina’s body, he had assumed the child had died as well. Until just a few weeks ago that is. Until Commander Norrin had come in search of him with his brigade of soldiers surrounding the settlement. Until he had come with news of his boy.
Alastair and Jonah knew Norrin would reduce the settlement to ash without a second thought if Silas resisted and understood that as long as Silas had the tiniest hope that his son was alive, he would do whatever he had to do to get him back. But they had also warned him that it could all be a trick. That the blood tests that confirmed that the child, who was called Tobias, was his son could have been fabricated. And even if they had not, that Commander Norrin had no reason to hold up his end of the bargain once the breeder offspring and the breeder herself were delivered back to the colony.
“And what of the breeder?” they had asked. “What of the lives you create with her? They too will be your children.”
Silas pushed those words from his mind.
No, they would be breeders, not like Tobias who was fully human. The thought made him angry, made him think he should have fucked her like he wanted to, should have hurt her and been done with her.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice a whisper.
Her softness, her trust, only served to deepen his own guilt and, without a word, he stood and went into the bathroom to wash, leaving her lying there alone and confused.
* * *
Rowan couldn’t make sense of what was happening. One moment, he was tender, the next cold. She now sat picking at her breakfast while he watched her. They had both bathed and she was dressed in her white dress.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
“Just sore,” she said, forcing the last of her bread into her mouth, not wanting to waste food as he’d warned her not to.
Silas stood. “I have some work to do but I’ll take you around the settlement so you can keep busy while I’m gone. You know you cannot leave it, you understand that, yes?” he asked.
“I know,” she said, turning up her wrist to point out the tracker. Her eyes then traveled to his marking. “What is that?” she asked. “I’ve never seen anything so intricate.”
He looked down at his arm. “It’s a tattoo. Permanent ink.”
“How is it done?”
“Needles.”
“Oh. It must have hurt?”
“It did, but I needed it at the time.”
“Does it signify something then?”
He considered, then smiled a lonely smile. “Another time. Are you ready?” he asked, standing.
“Yes,” she said.