“Feel free to start without me.”

“You know I can’t.”

Right. Because it was a sin for a guy to masturbate on this planet, while sexing a woman into a coma was apparently just fine. “I need a little more time,” she said.

He hissed at her, caught himself by the end of the snout, and then suddenly leapt up and came at her. “You do it,” he ordered, beckoning tersely at her with one hand and himself with the other. It wasn’t a sin if it was her hand, as he’d explained before. Ah, the fine points of Lizard Law. “Until you’re ready, eh?”

She closed her eyes, pretending to be a woman on the edge of exhaustion, like her heart wasn’t going like an engine and her stomach wasn’t tying itself in knots. ‘Breathe,’ she thought at him, so hard she was giving herself a headache. ‘Please, just start breathing.’ Aloud, she said, “I need another min—”

“Now!”

She dragged her eyes back open to see how serious this was.

It looked pretty serious. Those patches on his throat were still out and brilliantly yellow, his spines were flat and his eyes were glazed and staring. It made her think (as she had thought so often this long winter closed in with him) of the mummies at the bottom of that old laboratory, and those three terrible little words—he’s still sick—which had never quite left her mind.

She sat up and rubbed once more at her neck. His eyes tapped at her hand, lingered, and flicked away. He grimaced at her, badly disguising his impatience, and went back to sit on the bed. He fidgeted now and then, most often checking the tightness of a belt he wasn’t even wearing, but at last those yellow stripes began to darken.

They watched each other.

“I’m not hurting you, am I?” he asked suddenly.

“No, you’re fine.” She got up, stiff from huddling on the floor, and joined him.

“Fine, eh?” He grimaced again, trying to be playful, but his jaws were a little too wide. Like the thuoch, it was a see-how-hard-I-can-bite look, whether he knew it or not.

“Better than fine,” she amended, reaching up to rub briefly at his brow-ridges. He put his arm around her, pulling her onto his lap so he could scrape his chin along her neck. The danger appeared to be past, but she thought she’d better be sure.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Ready,” he replied at once, catching her hand and pulling it downwards.

She made a fist on the empty air before he had her where he wanted her. “Because I’m starving.”

“Oh.” He glanced over at the mimuts, which were nowhere near done cooking, then sighed and set her aside, reaching for his loin-plate. Putting himself away wasn’t easy for him, clearly, but he did it and he didn’t even look that upset anymore. His neck was black, his spines were up; he never had done his slow-count of six, but he seemed to be all the way back in his own head.

Relief hit her almost as hard as the fear she had refused to face all this while. She reached out impulsively and caught his wrist as he was tightening his belt. “Thank you,” she said. For letting himself be put off or just for being himself again, she didn’t know, but the gratitude was real.

He smiled and tapped his knuckles along her brow, then swept her hair away from the back of her neck and bent down to lick the place where he’d bit her. “I should have been gentler,” he murmured, nuzzling her. “I lose myself sometimes.”

She knew.

If he noticed the strain in her smile, he did not comment, but he did finish dressing. All the way. Right down to his boots.

“Are you going somewhere?” she asked tentatively, meaning, ‘Are you mad?’

“Just a short walk.”

It was a terrific way to get him completely cooled off, but it still unnerved her.

“Right now? It’s getting dark.”

“I’m restless.” He fetched his coat and shrugged into it. “While I’m gone, you can start to pack. We leave tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” She looked over at the fire, as if the Meoraq of ten minutes ago could still be found there, waiting to tell her how dangerous the road still was and how much safer it would be to hold off for a few more days, and then a few more and a few more. “Are you sure?”

“I’m very restless. Besides.” He came back to the bed and pulled her up (roughly, far too roughly) for one of his clumsy, unfeeling lizard-kisses. “I want to get you home before the baby comes.”

Of everything he’d said and done, ever, that was easily the most shocking.

“You what?” she stammered, following him stupidly to the mouth of the cave stone-naked. “The what?”

“It was different tonight,” he mused, looking her over. And grinned again, with predatory suddenness and unmistakable pride. “Maybe I felt it happen, eh? I need to pray…but yes. I think I just gave you my first son.”

He beamed while she gaped, incapable of speech, and then he was out through the flap and away.

* * *

It was a good night, dry and not too cold, with a smudge of moon to light his way and the scent of new growth in every breath—a perfect night for a man to be alone with thoughts of impending fatherhood.

He didn’t think about it often, but after twelve years as Sheulek, Meoraq knew he had sired children. Certainly, he had been summoned to acknowledge several over the years, but with the exception of that bad business with Lord Saluuk in Tothax, it had only been the last step before marrying off their mothers. Oh, there were Houses whose lords might be keeping their daughters free in the hopes of the highest possible marriage—Lord Arug came immediately to mind—yet there probably weren’t many. Proof of fertility was a far more valuable asset than pretty looks or even virginity, and there was never any guarantee that a Sheulek would live to retire and marry. With three Swords in active service (Salkith counted, even if he was only a Sheulteb), House Uyane might be supporting a hundred sons somewhere in the world, but if so, Rasozul had never deemed the matter important enough to mention. Meoraq had never put a bastard in the belly of some servant, which was more than Nduman could say (or Rasozul, come to think of it), so whatever children he’d sired, they were honorably got. If one of them were to come to his gate, Meoraq would welcome him as kin, but this was not the same as being a father.

Odd. He’d never given the idea of fatherhood much thought beyond the same vague sense of anchoring resentment that went with all a steward’s responsibilities, but being married was certainly turning out much better than he’d ever thought possible. Maybe having children would be the same way.

Such were his thoughts as he traveled the well-worn path between the cave and the fall where they drew their water, diverting now and then when the urge took him. There, the pock-marked tree that bordered the edge of their training grounds; Amber’s aim with the spear was as miserable as it had ever been, but she’d really taken to the sword. Here, the remains of the short wall she’d made, where she’d attempted to shield herself while pelting him with packed snow; she still insisted she’d won that battle. And there, the grass-cushioned patch where she’d coaxed him to lie with her on the first day after a long stretch snowed in. He lingered there, thinking how fresh and clean everything had smelled that day, how even the sounds seemed clearer, especially her ear-piercing yelp when that blot of snow slipped from the branches overhead and dropped down the back of her loosened britches.

He did not realize right away that what he was feeling was nostalgia. Strange feeling to have. But if he was nostalgic, that meant a part of him was already leaving and so he supposed it must be time, in spite of all his misgivings.

So be it. They could be in Xi’Matezh in half a brace and home by the turning of the year, and if he was right about putting his child in Amber’s belly tonight, and if humans carried the same as dumaqs, it would be born around the Day of Redemption.