do.”
“I know,” he said in a voice only she could hear, “but I can’t stay away from you for long. It’s a need I have to be in your presence.”
She ducked her head slightly. “I know how you feel. It’s the same for me. I don’t understand it, and I’m not sure I entirely like it.”
He kissed her cheek tenderly. “It is what it is. Such is the way between true mates. In time, perhaps, we’ll grow accustomed to it, but for now, I need to be near you.” He kissed her lips then, with just a hint of the passion he always felt now, just beneath the surface, when she was near. The other women in the room made their presence known with a few low whistles and hoots. Ginny pulled away, blushing beautifully. Tigh smiled as he leaned around her to wink at the assembled ladies. That they were comfortable enough to tease their captain said a lot for her style of leadership.
“I’ll see you ladies this evening.” With a parting wave for the crew and a last caress to Ginny’s soft cheek, he left. He had much to do before this evening.
Tigh found his most trusted adviser, Councilor Torm, in the library that had been made available to them.
“Tigh, my boy, it’s good to see you. Though all of us are envious that you have found your mate so easily among the humans.” Torm eyed him suspiciously. “She is your true mate, right?”
Tigh nodded. “Without doubt. She is the only one for me. I would not lie about such an important thing as that. In fact, you know as a Zenai novitiate, I cannot lie.”
“A rare thing in an emperor.” Torm sat heavily at the table he’d been using as Tigh joined him. “So, why have you left her side? Newly mated, it is very difficult to be parted.”
“I’m experiencing that firsthand.” Tigh rolled his eyes as he called up a new display on the library table. “But she has work to do, future empress or not. Plus, I’ve just learned something that I need to research a bit more before we go home. Torm,” he sought the older man’s counsel, “do you know what the humans call my intended mate?”
Torm’s eyes narrowed. “Velkir-y.”
“You knew?” Tigh was shocked at the knowledge in the older man’s gaze.
“You didn’t?” Torm countered. “Ah, but then, you were stuck away on that mountain and never heard about the humans’ victories against some of our most talented captains. You never heard about the ace the humans called Velkir-y. At first, when intelligence reported her call sign, many thought it blasphemy. We thought the humans were taunting us deliberately. It caused many ship captains to go after her, targeting her and her ship, the Sarasota, specifically.” Torm sighed heavily. “Which, in turn, caused many of our ships to be lost.”
“She was that good?” Tigh felt his spine tingle in awe and a bit of fear at the idea of what his little mate had done in the war and how much danger she had been in.
Torm nodded. “She is that good. Her crew is the best the humans have to offer.”
Both men were silent as Tigh thought over the ramifications of the human ace captain being his true mate, and the best female crew being the first women to come to Solaris. If he didn’t know better, he’d think the ancient Zenain prophecy was coming to pass. But it had been many thousands of years since the Zenain priesthood had been formed to protect and preserve the teachings of the Zenai in preparation for a time when the ancient prophecy would be fulfilled. Tigh doubted that a prophecy of millennia could come to fruition during his time, but somehow… Somehow, all indicators seemed to point to that awful truth.
“They were not taunting us.” Tigh’s voice was low as he called up the human legends from the database. He turned the viewer to Torm, switching on the three-dimensional display. “They call her Valkyrie, after one of their own cultural myths.”
Torm read furiously through the material, as Tigh did. The parallels between the legendary warrior maidens of ancient Earth and the prophesied women of the Zenai were uncanny.
“The high priest must see this.”
“I agree.” Tigh called up all the data he could on Valkyries and saved it to a disposable chip until he could get it fed into the memory banks of his ship. If the prophecy really was coming to pass now, during his