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“I vote aye!” Fallon said instantly, his tail quivering so hard he wrapped it around the leg of his chair to hold it still.
“There are four of us,” I pointed out, drawing the tip of my tail up and down the handle of my hidden knife. “Oaken couldn’t get through the spring snow in the mountains for this meeting.”
The warden tipped his hat in agreement, making the Zabrian badge on it glint.
“As your warden and the liaison to the empire, I am included in the vote.” His eyes turned white, a mere flicker, before returning to their usual orange shade. “And as a man with half a brain in his head who thinks some female influence might be just the thing to tame you lot of uncivilized, white-eyed, feral fools, I have already voted aye.”
“I vote aye! Aye for Fallon!” Fallon said again, nearly jumping out of his chair with what was clearly anxiety that he had not been heard before. “And if these any of idiots do not want their women then I will take theirs, too!”
“You’ve never even been with one woman,” Zohro snapped, “what in the great blazing span of my largest bull’s backside would you do with four?”
Fallon ripped off his hat and scrubbed vigorously at his yellow hair, frowning.
“They would not all be my women,” he said awkwardly. “But one could be mine. And the others could live with us if they so chose. I have space.”
“You have space inside your skull is what you have,” Zohro muttered.
Garrek growled a warning. My tail tightened around my knife.
“Enough,” said the warden, rising from his seat. He towered over even tall Zohro and cut an imposing figure as he rested his claws upon his stunner. “Give me your votes and be done.”
“I vote no,” Zohro said, flinging himself back into his seat under Warden Tenn’s baleful white glare. “I will not further chain myself to this place by marrying. If I am to have sons or daughters, they will be born in the empire of Zabria or not at all.”
Fallon visibly tensed, his hope-hungry gaze going to Garrek.
Garrek rubbed his jaw again and sighed.
“I’ve got a new convict-ward from the empire. I can barely keep him under control and take care of my herd at the same time. We almost didn’t make it through the winter. What am I going to do with a female on top of all that mess?” I thought I could hear the strained tinge of regret in his voice when he heavily but firmly said, “No. I vote no.”
“Unbelievable!” Fallon exploded. “You complain of our lives here and then you shit on the one chance we’ve gotten in dozens of cycles to actually make things better! If we say no, the women will go to Warden Hallum’s men! Warden Hallum! Have you two lost your senses?”
Then Fallon turned to me. I’d never seen the young man’s eyes so white.
“Two ayes, two nays. The vote comes down to you, Silar,” Warden Tenn grunted.
I felt every man’s gaze upon me like a touch.
A woman. A wife. I wouldn’t know what in the bloody blazes to do with such a thing. None of us would. We all came here before puberty. Cut off from society, forever separated from the females of our race before we were even old enough to want them. I barely knew how to speak to these men whom I’d known since childhood. What could I possibly have to say to a woman?
Silent Silar. I liked to be alone.
I forced myself to imagine it – to imagine somebody beside me, in my house, in my space – and my tail went tight with tension. But I could not quite tell if it was a bad sort of tension or not.
It wound tighter.
A woman in my kitchen. In my bedroom.
In my bed.
Something that almost felt like panic choked me at the very same moment that my flesh stirred hotly beneath my pants. Questions pounded inside my head in time with my rapid heartrate.
What would I do with her? How could I keep a female happy here? Here, in the sun and the dust and the ruins of my life? How could I possibly hope to deserve her? A wife!
And how could I turn off this desperate, savage wanting now that it was suddenly here? I’d never dared to allow myself to want something like a woman before. There was no point. When my cock got too hard to ignore, I used my own fist with a grim sort of efficiency and then I got back to work.
There was always work. So much work that it left no more room for wanting.
Until now.
