Case Study: Interspecies Mating, page 37
“We are mated,” he repeated, getting annoyed. “She’s allowed.”
“But she’s not allowed to bring it back to her room. If you’re not going to do it, I will.”
He let out a breath, sitting straight, annoyed at the ambassador. However, he couldn’t say anything since he was technically his superior. “Fine. I’ll do it now.”
Tzomei made a single sound of acknowledgment, just glaring at him through the comm. He realized that he was waiting for him to get started and he pulled up the notification. Still, he didn’t try to end the comm. Tzomei began working, like he was going through it with him.
“I can handle this on my own, ambassador,” Rizor grumbled.
“Can you? If you’re mate bonded to her, you might not be able to be objective. Or you might be blinded to any trickery or manipulation on her part.”
“Trickery?” Rizor laughed at the very idea of his prim, righteous female being tricky. “You clearly don’t know my mate. Besides, even if she is hoarding my tech, it doesn’t matter. She’s following me back to Hr’ssri.”
“But she could still return to Earth first. She could still bring something with her. And just because you’re mated to her doesn’t mean she’s mated to you.”
“We completed the mating hunt. We are mated.”
“Humans don’t have mates.”
Tzomei was being annoyingly aggravating. He bit back a growl. “This is unnecessary.”
He stubbornly kept his nose up. “We will go through it together. Just to be sure.”
Rizor didn’t argue, but he couldn’t conceal his irritation as he started going through the process. Shoshana was definitely getting punished for this later. He was going to tie her down in their nest and use only her ass. After smacking it a bit. Humans liked that, and he was eager to give it a try. He bet her ass would bounce in the most beautiful way.
Grinning, imagining how much fun he was going to have, he got to work on the alarm.
The alert noted that it was a combot registered to him that entered into the room assigned to Shoshana Carter. And since that was tripped, all previously hidden files related to Shoshana were now available to him. All her work reports, any notes she had ever made on her system, including ones she had deleted, and all of her comm logs.
She didn’t have many. Some of the humans were in the comm room every day, talking to friends or family back home. He really hoped one of them didn’t steal anything. He would hate to have to go through their logs.
Since he knew it was Shoshana, he set the first of the comms to play – at double speed – without bothering to detain her. He bet she would be mad at him later for watching them, but it wasn’t like she didn’t know the consequences for taking tech into her room. Tzomei tried to protest, complaining about him giving her special treatment, but it wasn’t like she was going anywhere, and he continued despite his warnings about him getting in trouble for not doing his job properly.
While Shoshana’s comms played in the background, he got to work on other things. He listened with a smile as his mate talked. She didn’t have any living family, he knew, but the warmth and joy in her voice conversing with her friends more than made up for it.
They discussed work gossip and relationship issues. Shoshana was a great listener, which did not surprise him, and she gave good advice. She also wasn’t shy about giving hard truths – a fact he already knew quite well. She told one of her friends, without even a hint of apology or regret, that the male she had chosen was trash, did not like her, was not worth spending her time on, and would only lead to heartache.
Her friend was not happy to hear that. She argued back. She cried a bit. But Shoshana was steadfast and firm and, at the end, reminded her friend that she loved her, only wanted the best for her, and hated to see her wasting her time on a scrub. He did not know what a scrub was exactly, but he understood via context clues.
He was proud of his mate. She was a good friend. Willing to risk their ire to look out for them. She had done the same thing to him. He was glad he had listened. Tzomei didn’t seem nearly so impressed as he listened carefully. Rizor continued to ignore him.
More friends, more conversations. He felt like he was getting to know his mate in a way few ever would. He got to see how she behaved with him, with work, with her friends. It was fascinating.
And then a male spoke.
“Hey, cousin!”
He frowned, looking back at the video recordings. He called her cousin? Shoshana said she had no family. He quickly restarted the recording, putting it back to normal speed. Tzomei gave him an odd look but didn’t protest.
His female was scowling at the screen. “Cousin? Seriously? Why are you calling me?”
The disbelief in her voice had him leaning in. Confused. Uneasy. Shoshana had never used that tone of voice before. It didn’t even sound like her. Tzomei’s eyes narrowed as he watched the same log.
Who was this male? He looked nothing like her. His skin color was drastically different – a pinker beige rather than her rich, lovely brown. Which was unusual. Human skin color was based upon genetic factors, wasn’t it?
“I just wanted to check in,” the male said, looking confused at her question. Which only served to puzzle Rizor further.
“Do not call me.” Shoshana reached forward as though to end the comm.
“Now, Shoshana, don’t you want to talk?”
Rizor stilled at the same time Shoshana did. The tone of his voice hadn’t changed, but there was something inherently threatening in the way he said it that made Rizor’s mouth open, eager to bite him for threatening his female.
“I don’t, actually,” Shoshana said, her voice tight. Angry.
“That’s no way to talk to me,” he laughed, the sound putting Rizor on edge. “I just wanted to check in on you. Make sure you were okay.”
“You know these lines are recorded, right?” She was irritated now. She didn’t sound afraid of this male, just annoyed.
And that made his scales itch. This conversation was wrong. Entirely wrong. He didn’t want to hear anymore. He had to listen.
“Rizor,” Tzomei started, a warning in his voice he hated to hear. He didn’t respond as the recording kept playing.
“What do you want, John?”
Was that the male’s name? He committed it to memory, determined to find him. Hating that he didn’t know exactly why he needed to. Knowing that something was wrong. Hoping that Shoshana would declare that he was a family member that she despised. It wasn’t common among a clavas, but humans could dislike their kin, right?
“Is that any way to speak to your cousin, Shoshana?”
“It’s a way to speak to a giant pain in my rear. What do you want?”
He started to relax. That had to be it. She just disliked him and didn’t want him trying to contact her while she was here.
Even as he had that thought, he knew it wasn’t true. Earth couldn’t comm them. The base had to comm Earth. But she sounded surprised to hear from him.
No. Not surprised. Angry.
“Shoshana, are you forgetting the purpose for you to be up there?”
Rizor froze. His gut sinking. Tzomei was rapidly tapping out a message to someone on his end of their comm.
“No, not at all. I’m here to look out for the human subjects and make reports to Earth regarding their safety.”
As desperately as he wanted to, he knew he couldn’t believe that smile on her face. He knew it wasn’t genuine.
He was going to be sick.
“Right. You’re there for the benefit of humanity.”
“Subtle, John.”
It wasn’t. That hadn’t been subtle at all. He might not know exactly what they were talking about, but there were only so many things those words could mean.
“You’re not getting… cold feet, are you?”
Rizor didn’t know what that meant at all. It was a human phrase that had no meaning to him. But the male’s tone wasn’t encouraging.
“Cold feet? Is that what we’re calling it? I was trying to call my friend. How did you even hijack this call? Wait, don’t answer that. I’m sure you’re not going to tell me.”
His claws were denting the hard plastic of the desk from the force of him squeezing. The comm had been intercepted, but again she wasn’t surprised. She was preempting any reply he might make about the question.
They might not be related, but they certainly weren’t unfamiliar with each other.
“Shoshana,” his voice was low and deliberate, “you are aware that you’re not part of the experiment, aren’t you?”
“What’s your point?”
Rizor’s eyes immediately moved to the time stamp on the recording. She was already part of the experiment by then. She didn’t say that though. She wasn’t denying his words.
“You’re an employee. A human employee. According to your contract, we can demand your return from the base at any time.”
Rizor looked right back at her. To see her reaction. To see if she would protect the idea of being separated from the base. From him.
Her expression was completely blank. Unmoved. Unsurprised. Uninterested.
“That still isn’t a point,” she said like it meant nothing.
Something inside of him started to ache and burn. A horrible feeling. A familiar feeling. One he hadn’t experienced since meeting her.
“The point is: if you’re not doing your job, there’s no reason you should be there.”
That also hadn’t been subtle. It was too easy for Rizor to see what was going on below the conversation. He might not know exactly what they were talking about, but he knew that it was something she hadn’t told him.
“I’ve been here less than two months. What exactly is it you think I should be doing?”
“What we hired you for.”
“And I will.”
Rizor choked at her careless words. Heart pounding painfully in his chest. The heat of betrayal sparked a fire in him he wanted desperately to be banked.
“Just as soon as it’s convenient,” Shoshana continued, shrugging like it meant nothing, “and there’s not a chance that I won’t, er, get ‘terminated’ for doing my job correctly.”
The desk cracked under his grip.
“Good. I’m glad. I would hate for you to have to come back early-”
Rizor slammed his hand on the screen. Ceasing the video. He couldn’t hear anymore. His stomach was already in knots. The hurt swirling with betrayal and a familiar sense of overwhelming anger that he knew only too well.
For a long time, all he could do was sit there. He hadn’t opened his door after the end of his midday break, and he was grateful for it. He didn’t want Shoshana to see him like this. To know she had gotten to him.
The benefit of humanity?
Her job?
It sounded like she had been sent here for a specific reason. The humans had been allowed full control over who they picked as their social worker. Since she hadn’t been part of the experiment, it hadn’t mattered who she was, just that she could do her job.
No. This wasn’t true.
The part of him that refused to believe his mate capable of betraying him refused to believe that something was going on. Shoshana had clearly not liked the human male John. Maybe there was more he didn’t understand.
“Well,” Tzomei started, disturbingly calm. “I suppose that’s enough proof.”
“What?” Rizor could barely focus back on him.
“She must be taken into custody.”
What was Tzomei saying? He wasn’t making sense.
“Shoshana is mated to me. She’s not…”
“No. You’re mated to Shoshana. There’s a difference.” Tzomei’s harsh words made him flinch. Reminding him, horribly, of what made humans so strange and different. “And it doesn’t matter anyway. Being mated to you doesn’t mean she never intended to return to Earth. To bring them advanced tech. She can do both.”
Rizor was struggling to think. He couldn’t digest what Shoshana had said on that recording and also argue with Tzomei at the same time. He needed to talk to her. She had never mentioned this John person to him. She never said anything about being here for an ulterior reason.
She had never spoken to him in that hard, toneless voice. It was like she was a completely different female.
“She will have to be brought into custody,” Tzomei was saying, completely unconcerned with what he was going through. “Her rooms searched. She will be evicted from the base.”
“She cannot. We are mated. I can’t…”
Tzomei’s glare was cold. “Your life won’t be forfeit for being rid of her. And can you prove that she is mated to you? Can you prove she cares for you at all? Maybe this was part of her plan.”
No. That wasn’t…
Shoshana wouldn’t…
Rizor couldn’t think. He could just shake his head. Trying to deny Tzomei, Shoshana, himself. Everything he had just heard. He just needed a minute to think. To try to understand.
“Rizor,” Tzomei snapped at him. “You are head of security. If you cannot handle this, then someone else will. Shoshana will be taken into custody and her belongings searched. Her eviction is guaranteed.”
Rizor said nothing. His hands clenching into the desk until it cracked as his heart and mind raced.
“Fine.” Tzomei opened another comm. “Command: Comm security personnel-”
“No.” Rizor cut him off.
Tzomei glared. “Rizor, I am not without sympathy for you, but until a decision is made, Shoshana must be taken into custody, and if you won’t do it-”
“I said, no.” Rizor sat back in his chair. Glaring back at him. Tzomei hissed, lips drawn back in a threatening snarl.
He was sick to his stomach.
But his decision hardened in his gut.
Pulling up his comm, he put out a call to the other security team members.
“This is Rizor. Prepare the brig. We’re placing Shoshana Carter under arrest.”
Chapter 40
Shoshana
Humming to herself, still riding high from the conversation with Hass, Shoshana tried not to count down the minutes to the end of their shift. She couldn’t believe that not sharing one meal with Rizor was enough to make her miss him. But she did. And she was already thinking of how much she was going to enjoy their reunion tonight.
There really was something different about mating. She’d never felt like this for anyone before. It was incredible.
Rizor didn’t open his door after lunch. She imagined he was trying his hardest to finish his work with as few interruptions as possible. She fully expected him to open it any minute though and come over to tempt her into doing something naughty in her office again.
She missed him enough that it likely wouldn’t be hard for him either.
She giggled at the idea, belly bubbling with excitement.
The door leading into the dome whooshed open – a sound much louder than the smaller doors into their rooms. But that wasn’t what caught her attention. This time of day, it was pretty normal for it to open and close as people came and went.
What caught her ear was the loud, hard stride of heavy, booted feet.
She turned in her chair, curious.
Shoshana didn’t know them well, but she recognized the various aliens clad in the security uniforms that turned into her room.
Frowning, she looked around. “Is there something wrong?”
They didn’t answer her.
One of the female domini came around the desk, grabbing for her arm.
“Shoshana, please do not resist,” she said, her voice cold and rigid.
“What’s going on?”
Shoshana didn’t try to pull free as she was yanked to her feet. She looked at the others, confused and afraid as they began tearing her office apart. Opening her files, looking through every drawer, feeling around every corner. One of them bent over and checked under her desk. Someone began looking through her computer.
“What are you guys doing? What’s going-”
Her voice cut off on a gasp as her bracelet was removed. Not even a second later, something locked around her wrists. It was a familiar feeling, but one she hadn’t experienced in a long time. They were different from what she expected – thicker, softer on the inside, and wider. But they were cuffs.
She was wearing cuffs.
When she was younger, she took handcuffs like a champ. She knew to shut up and glare balefully at every officer around her. She took her right to remain silent all the way to court, not even caring if she ended up in prison.
But she wasn’t the same person, and as she felt them lock in place, a completely unfamiliar panic reared up in her throat, choking her as she began to twist and thrash.
“What is going on?!” She demanded to know as the female domini grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out of her office.
There were more security forces in the hall. Standing around, staring at her as though she were a stranger.
And there were even more in her room. She could see them through the open door as they went through her stuff. Searching through her drawers. Going through her bathroom. Upending every bag.
She had seen this before.
“Will someone please tell me what’s happening?” She asked loudly, her voice echoing through the hall as she turned around desperately.
The door to Rizor’s office swooshed open and he was there. Her mate, strong and beautiful, and she immediately felt relieved.
He would make it better. He would get them to stop.
She smiled at him.
His cold eyes glared back at her, making her belly clench with fear.
“Rizor?” She said weakly.
He looked at her like she was a stranger. Stared at her like she meant nothing to him. His gaze was distant, untouchable.
“She didn’t have time to hide anything, boss,” the female holding her said. “We got her before she could move.”
Shoshana stared at him. Willing him to intervene. To do something. To stick up for her and get her out of this.
“Did you search her?” Rizor asked, his voice like ice.
“Rizor,” she tried again, about to take a step closer to him.
