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Was it worth it even if he won? Even if the general was not a man she’d like to see lording it over her kingdom, or any kingdom?
She frowned, wondering how many people had to die or be badly injured to qualify this as a disaster. And wrong.
These were questions she’d never needed to think about before.
She liked people. Making anyone die had never been on her agenda.
Realistically, Drake was on this course anyway, she’d merely hung onto his hand as he stalked into battle.
She was a pawn.
It didn’t make her feel better.
Sassi brought out artificial lights so Calli could read and still watch over her city. Not only were there a few books from the palace library, she also had her father’s memoirs from the safe in his old study. Only her brothers and she had been able to access it, for the safe had an old genetic fingerprint lock. One day it would fail and then, she’d been told, it would take a battle laser to open it.
Currently, nobody had those. Unless an Overwatch sat was nice enough to lend its weapons.
The memoirs, all eight volumes, drew her far more than any other book. Before she’d not dared to read these. They were passed on to the next ruler. Her brothers had probably not bothered looking for them. She’d thought they’d begun writing their own, but it seemed not. There was nothing in the safe.
Within their covers were tidbits of info about mauleons and also her father’s ideas for the future of the kingdom. If her brothers had read it, they’d ignored his wishes. For one thing, her father... she tapped the page while she thought... had wanted to legitimize mauleon and human marriage.
Then she discovered another passage, and this made her rub her forehead, where he noted the surveillance of her whenever she entered the city. Had her brothers known of her hobby? If so, they hadn’t cared.
A few times as she read, she had to stop to let the tears run down her cheeks. These had been written by her father...
Calli sat back into the chair, sighed, and let herself hear and see what lay far below. The fires in the city were mostly out. No shots had been fired for ages and dawn was blossoming. Her eyes felt as if they’d been scoured with a wire brush. Those near the fighting would’ve had a far worse night.
She’d not touched the palace texts and she really should. Truthfully, she was scared of what she might find. He’d been so adamant she research his people.
Courage. Puffing out a breath, she hunched over the first text and began to read. Though facts were fairly sparse about their sexual biology, she found details in a few books.
When they mated for the first time, mauleons often did not enter the female to the fullest depth. Like her—she gulped—most females were unable to dilate enough until their tissues learned to accept the male. And here was the ickiest bit.
She rested her finger beneath the words on the page and reread it.
A chemical in the mauleon’s semen will enter the tissues and the bloodstream of the female and promote relaxation of the vagina during the next sex act. Often the male will feed the female both her and his fluids for this reason.
“Fuck. Ewww.” Way too gross. He’d done that. She slapped her forehead, grimaced, and read onward.
Mauleons believe that when two people are a perfect match the pheromones and hormones align to make them irresistible for each other. Supposedly this also helps the female to physically accept the male, to lubricate and dilate more. They call it the torm. Some human studies have equated it to the chemical alterations detected in humans when they fall in love.
And wow, did that make her blush, even with no one else watching her read this.
She slammed the last book shut. What rubbish.
The heat cycle of mauleons was different. Humans did not have the same hormones as mauleons.
“I mean,” she whispered, purely for herself, “they just don’t.”
Women produced eggs and all that but there was none of this exaggerated heat and sexual attraction, was there? This was too animalistic.
Frowning, she gulped down a cup of water that Sassi had left then levered herself to her feet.
She needed sleep, desperately. Making her way to bed, she figured she now knew what a zombie felt like. When she woke, she must contact Drake and demand he tell her exactly what had happened.
The palace guard. She froze. Why had they not knocked and informed her of anything?
Because the general had them under his thumb? Or Drake? She marched to the door and flung one wing open, startling the guards.
