The Morcai Battalion: Invictus. Diana Palmer

her partner for the event.

      She found him standing on a stone patio, his hands behind him, watching the sun set over the distant mountains.

      He heard her footsteps and turned. In the robes he wore at Mahkmannah, he was like a stranger. She wore robes, too, of course, but was less comfortable in them.

      “You have concerns,” he mused as she approached.

      “Yes. Nobody will talk to me about it,” she said irritably. “They talk around it.”

      He gave her a long look. “You must remember that women in my culture are not as self-possessed and independent as you are. We have traditions that have existed for millennia.”

      “I’m not denigrating your culture,” she said. “I just want to know what’s going to happen.”

      He raised an eyebrow and gave her a look of mock astonishment.

      She actually blushed. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she gritted.

      He laughed softly. “It is irresistible. The brawling, insubordinate medical chief of staff who sends her underlings running for cover, reduced to blushes and confusion about a process so basic that it is familiar even to children.”

      She glared at him. “I might remind you that I’ve spent the past twenty-nine years of my life as a neuter, basically without gender,” she said curtly. “I’ve never felt...well...the sort of things women feel with men. With males. I mean...” She couldn’t find the words.

      He turned and moved closer, so that he could look down at her face. His hand came up and touched her red-gold hair lightly. “Madeline, you are making much work of a natural process.”

      She sighed. “Sir, can’t you just tell me, soldier to soldier, what I’m expected to do? Caneese is the only Cehn-Tahr woman I could have asked, and she said that it was only necessary to yield and endure it.” She shook her head. “Is that what the women of your culture do? Simply...yield?”

      He cocked his head. “You have seen few young Cehn-Tahr women, but you spent some time with Princess Lyceria. You have also been exposed to Dacerian women. Do you notice a similarity in comportment?”

      “Yes,” she replied. “They’re very docile, gentle females. Intelligent, but not assertive.”

      “Exactly.”

      “Then they...simply submit.”

      “Yes.”

      She frowned. It troubled her. “Wouldn’t such a docile sort of female tend to exaggerate the violence of an encounter if she didn’t, well, participate in it so much as endure it?”

      One eyebrow went up.

      She grimaced. “I’m sorry. I’m finding it difficult to explain what I mean. It’s complicated to discuss something so intimate with you.”

      “Indeed. You and I have engaged in many verbal battles over the years, but our encounters have been nonphysical. This one will be.”

      She searched his eyes, looking for any sign of what he was thinking. “What do you expect of me, sir?” she asked in a soft, uncertain tone. “What is it like?”

      The question, added to the sudden burst of pheromones exuding from her body when he stared at her, kindled a helpless reaction. His face tautened. Like a snake striking, his hand shot out and suddenly grasped her long hair at her nape and jerked, pulling her face up to his. The eyes stabbing into hers were jet-black. “It is like this,” he said in a voice which sounded so alien that at first it was barely recognizable. It was similar to the sound a cat might make when it was angry, except with words instead of hisses. His head bent, so that his eyes filled the world, and the pressure of his hand forced her body close to his in an arc, thrilling and frightening at the same time.

      Her heart jumped up into her throat. He seemed, for the first time in their long relationship as commanding officer and subordinate, so alien that she almost didn’t recognize him.

      “You begin to understand,” he whispered, in that same odd tone, and for a split second, in a flash of presence like the blinking of a light, he seemed to be taller, far more massive than he looked. She must be hallucinating, she thought.

      Her hands flattened against his robes, feeling the strength and warmth of his chest under them.

      “I am not what I seem,” he said.

      She was a little intimidated, but she didn’t let it show. She nodded. “I know. My instruments and my senses don’t coincide.” His eyes changed color yet again, to a burnished gold, almost glowing. She didn’t know what it meant.

      His hand lessened its pressure on her hair and became oddly caressing. “Weakness is prey. It invites brutality. Do you understand that?”

      Her lips parted. “The more a female yields control, the more a male exercises it.”

      He nodded. His gaze dropped to her throat, softly vulnerable at the angle. “We are a passionate species,” he whispered, bending his head. His mouth opened and slid over her throat. She felt the faint edge of his teeth. Even they felt different than they looked, different than her instrument readings described them. The slow rasp of them against the vulnerable skin of her throat should have been frightening. It was only exciting. Her heart began to race.

      His nostrils splayed as stronger pheromones rushed up into them. “Delicious,” he rasped. And suddenly his tongue slid over the soft flesh, abrasive and stimulating.

      Her nails stabbed into his chest and she gasped audibly.

      He laughed.

      She was alive as she’d never been alive, on edge, shivering with sensation and curiosity. He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. His own narrowed. His chin lifted arrogantly. He looked at her as if she already belonged to him. She recalled that expression from earlier, non-physical encounters and realized that he had been possessive of her for a long time.

      “We are a warrior culture,” he said in a deep, velvety tone. “We conquer. For generations, our women have been taught that submission to the violence is the only way to survive it.”

      Her breath was coming in little spurts. “Is that why they’re so afraid of it?”

      “Yes. They dread the onset of the mating ritual, because they fear the aggression of the male. They have been taught that it is not feminine to meet passion with passion.”

      She was seeing things she’d been blind to. His calm demeanor was a front. He could control his actions, except when he was exposed to Madeline’s involuntary pheromones. What she was seeing now was the true male, the true creature, without the veneer of civilized conduct.

      “That is essentially correct,” he said curtly. His hand contracted again on her hair and brought her face very close to his, so that she could almost taste his clean breath in her mouth. “I have forced a change in the protocols. The mating will take place in total darkness.”

      Her senses were heightened, but the odd statement kindled her curiosity. “Doesn’t it usually?”

      “No,” he said flatly. “It is an innovation.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell her why.

      He stared down at her with mingled concern and hunger. Her taut features betrayed her fear, even as she tried to hide it from him in her mind. “You are already afraid of my eyes in the absence of light. Added to that, you will experience the violence that goes with the feline response to desire.” His voice rasped. “I cannot control it.”

      “I know that. Your eyes startle me at night. But I’m not afraid of you. Not really.”

      “You know that I will not hurt you deliberately.”

      “Of course,” she said simply.

      His hand contracted harshly. “But remember this,” he said in a harsh, alien voice. “If you bend your neck to my teeth, I will make you pay