“If the fountain were not running—” I point to the unhinged jaws of the snake, the defender of this place. “—then it would not be safe, because that would mean the filtration system had failed. But our ancients built this place to withstand time.” I drink deeply from the pool, relishing the fresh water, the cool zip of it across my tongue. A ragged laugh trickles out of me as I run my hand across the smooth bark of one of the huge zitsu trees that’s taken up residence in the main temple.

“I suppose even the ancients didn’t plan for the tenacity of the zitsu.” I motion to the tree, then settle my back against it and watch my pretty female. Tentative, she dips her hand in the water, scooping it out and drinking from it as I did.

“Oh god,” she moans. “This tastes so good.”

My cock grows hard at the noise of her simple pleasure, and I grunt. What I wouldn’t give to be the one causing her to make that small sound.

Her throat moves as she swallows. Her gaze drifts from the pool to the water rushing from the snake statue.

“It’s some kind of filtration system, isn’t it?” Her eyes narrow, and she stands, brushing her palms off on her filthy pants. “I don’t want to muck up our drinking water, but I need to wash this stuff off. I could really use a bath.” The words trickle out of her, murmured so quietly I know she’s mostly talking to herself and not to me.

I don’t mind. I’m relieved she’s talking at all. I’m relieved she isn’t terrified and shaking on the floor after the Crigomar attack.

I’m pleased she has relaxed enough around me that she even considers it.

I stretch my arms behind my head and give her a toothy smile, the kind I saved for females at Suevan settlements, though none of those other species were half as enticing as this human creature before me. Her smooth, unblemished skin, the color of a ripe quarn fruit, the pink tinge across her cheeks and nose that makes me want to nibble on it, to see if she tastes as sweet.

I know she does.

I drink her in, as though she is what will quench my unslaked thirst: the full berry-red lips, her ample muscled curves, the lush fall of her yellow-gold hair. I wrinkle my nose. It’s not quite as lush or yellow now, what with the muck of the swamp sticking to it.

Immediately, shame fills me.

My little human is filthy. I have not taken very good care of her.

“You should bathe in it.” I don’t have anything for her to get clean with. I glance around, as though some sort of cleansing oils will appear, but this isn’t my palace at Perzovir. There are no servants here to wait on us, to treat my little wife as the princess she is.

“What do you think?” she asks me, pretending to rub her arms. The algae from the water around the temple crusts across her skin, flaking off as she grazes her fingertips over it.

Not for the first time, I want to find the tech that assured us the translators would be safe and effective and shake him.

“Yes,” I say, nodding my head.

She repeats the Suevan word, mangling the guttural syllable, nodding her head, her eyes narrowed.

A smile breaks across my face, and I stare at her, astonished and inordinately pleased.

She says it again, and a happy laugh comes out of her. “God, I am beyond excited to get clean. This stuff—” She pulls a sheet of green muck off the back of her hand. “—smells rancid.”

Sighing contentedly, she yanks her shirt off, then her pants, and I go stone still.

Gen’s been shy about her body, more shy than other species I’ve been with before, but now? Now her body is bare save a scrap of fabric around her chest and another between her legs. She splashes into the pool, a blissful smile on her face.

“It’s so deep,” she muses. “Much deeper than I thought it would be.”

I cannot bring myself to look away from her. I want her to say that about me. I want to be deep inside her.

She doesn’t mean that, though. She does not know what she does to me, doesn’t know that I have spent the last week and a half lusting over her, loving the chase, loving her feistiness. It is not often that a female resists my advances. It will only make it that much sweeter when she finally sees how happy I can make her.

I must be patient… but I am a prince. Patience was never a part of my lessons. My hands fist at my sides.

“I wish you could talk to me,” Gen says, scrubbing at the dirt on her arms. “I want to know what this place is. Did you know I went to school for history?” She stares, waiting for a response, a response that she will not understand.

I grunt. “I would like to hear more,” I tell her.

“Right,” she says, and her smile turns sad, and a little lonely.

“I can hear you. I understand you.” I point to my ears, then lower myself into the water. Her gaze focuses on me, and I wade out to where she floats in the middle of the pool. “I know you cannot understand me, my wife, but I want to hear more of this history you studied. History is important to my people, sacred and interwoven with our beliefs.”

I pause. Water clings to her cheeks and eyelashes, and the urge to kiss it away grips me. There’s something about this female, something beyond how I’ve felt about any of the other females I’ve lain with over the years. There is a softness to her under her feistiness, and it calls to me.

“It was before the Roth invasion,” she says quietly. “After that, everything changed. I entered the Federation military. I had to get really hard, really fast. We all did. I think… I pushed myself harder than I had to. Everyone looked at me and thought I was just some delicate, pretty girl, and I hated it. I hated that it made me feel weak.” Gen studies one of the stone snake coils jutting from the temple wall. “Once the Roth came, it was like I didn’t want to be me anymore. I didn’t want to be cute Genevieve. It felt like I couldn’t be her anymore. And now I’m here. And I feel like I’m not sure who I’m supposed to be now.”

She falls silent, her lips pressed thin.

I hate that she can’t understand me. I hate that she’s feeling this way, but I like that she’s talking. I love how she is talking to me. Sharing parts of herself she keeps in shadow under that brittle exterior.

Of course, she likely only feels comfortable talking to me so honestly because she needs someone to listen—and knows she will not understand anything I tell her in response.

I swallow.

“I understand,” I say, gazing deep into her unusual blue eyes. “For so long, I have been raised to rule Sueva. Raised to lead my people, my people who are slowly dying out, thanks to the virus. The pressure—” I pause, scrubbing at where some of the scum sticks to my scales. “The pressure to be the prince my people needed was too much. I have made bad choices. I acted spoiled. I slept my way through the other species on my trips to the settlements. I tried to prove myself against the Roth, and maybe I did, but… but now? Now, the separatists threaten everything.” I take a deep breath, blowing it out slowly as I voice what troubles me most. “And I fear it is because of me. Because I have been a weak leader. Because I cannot fill my father’s shoes.”

I lapse into momentary silence, my father’s words echoing through my head. You do not take Sueva seriously. You do not take yourself seriously. You will not be king until you can prove you have outgrown your childish needs and selfish behaviors. I have not spoken to my father in months, preferring instead to divert myself with the novel thought of taking a human wife, of preparing a home for her in Perzovir, our capital, and the idea of helping our species survive.

And here she is, before me, a vision in the water of the many-faced-goddess’ temple, her head cocked to the side, listening, though she cannot understand the words.

She’s more than I ever bargained for, and suddenly, I know I am not enough.