even have one? I tilt my head at the huge, regal blue alien standing before me. “You’d really do that? You’d really give me anything I want just to open my legs?”
“To willingly open your legs, k’vani. To not cry when I breed you. As I said before, I cannot abide your tears. Tell me what I must do or pay to make you want to be bred…to ensure that you move beneath me like you did in the red forest, as I fill your womb with my seed.”
The memory of how I humped him in the red forest makes my face heat with embarrassment. And I have to look away from his intense, unblinking stare.
I fold my arms over my naked breasts and say, “It’s not that I don’t want to be bred. I want to be a mother, but I don’t want to have my kid taken away from me and never see him again if it’s a boy. And if it’s a girl, I don’t want to bring her into a world where she must starve for half of the year, because we’ll only have access to rations after I’m done with womb service.”
“Your people are given plenty of supplies,” he answers, running his black diamond eyes over my body. “And you do not appear to be starving.”
Again, I’m hit with the wish to cover up my nakedness. But all the blankets are located on the sleeping mats directly behind the blue alien. And I get the feeling Kel D’Rek won’t let me pass if I make a move for the one thing that might help me conduct this conversation with a little bit of pride.
Settling for recrossing my arms, I answer, “They have to fatten the twenty-one-year-olds up for the ceremony because your babies won’t take if they let us get too skinny. Trust me, I didn’t have this extra padding last year or any of the ones before that. And that’s because we’re most definitely not being given plenty of supplies. There’s at least one to two weeks of rationing added every year, even though that supply drop is supposed to be enough to get us through. Last year, everyone but the twenty-one-year olds who were either pregnant or about to get bred got put on meal-a-day rations for three entire months. And the quality of the seeds and livestock we’re given also seems to be going down. This year, we had to start hunting pigeons early because we couldn’t get even two of those Xalthurian chickens you guys gave us to breed.”
His ridges vibrate. “We are sending the same amount and quality of goods. Perhaps your people lack the competence to make best use of the supplies you’ve been given.”
“Lack the competence?” I repeat, my mouth dropping open with insult. “And how do you know what we’re being sent? Have you even been keeping track?”
“My prime minister has assured me of this,” he answers.
“Okay, has your prime minister talked with our leaders at all about the increased need for rationing? Or taken our population growth into account?”
A pause. Then he answers, “I am not sure. Until recently we were embroiled in a war that required nearly all of his attention. In truth, I do not believe he has visited the planet since accompanying me there, two solars ago. But he has received reports about how you are faring, I am sure of it.”
“You’re sure of it?” I repeat. “But you haven’t actually seen or looked over these reports yourself?”
His ridges are really vibrating now. With anger or confusion? I can’t say for sure, but my curiosity is definitely piqued.
“It would seem you are suggesting your Kel should do his prime minister’s job.”
“Oh, for moon’s sake—” I start to tell him all about himself and his barely even stepped foot on our planet prime minister. But then I stop myself.
Think, Kira. You’ve got to be smart. Cursing him out all the way to his three moons and back won’t feed your people…or save you from stepping off a cliff like Elle.
Okay…okay, yes, technically I’m a virgin. Zinnia loved romantic entertainments, and maybe I had some notion that someday I’d look at a guy in my village and realize he was The One. But there’s no such thing as happily ever after. If the last two years after Elle’s death have taught me anything, it’s that. I’ve got to focus on the real, here.
Stuff like my parents and Zinnia back home. Probably worried out of their