Genesis by Kaitlyn O'Connor Page A

accepted that as a testament to their strength of mind, body, and will. To refuse to yield to something so basic to their nature was to have power over their destiny--not much, granted, but at least something. Abstinence ceased to be nearly as much torture over time, but the need never completely went away.
    Partly it was because he allowed himself to think that, even if he did breed a child on one of these females, it truly would not be Hirachi . He would not be giving one of his own kind into the hands of the Sheloni .
    Partly, though, it was because his interest in the female had turned to fascination and the fascination had turned into obsession. If he had not watched her day after day strolling back and forth just beyond his reach, he might not have come to such a pass.
    Then again, he might have anyway, he acknowledged wryly.
    Her strangeness, especially her frailty, should have put him off, revolted him or at least not appealed. Instead, those things had instantly riveted his attention, fascinated him.
    Her fear should have disgusted him. Any weaknesses he detected within himself did--and he had certainly not looked for such a thing in a woman in the days before, when he had been a free man. He had wanted a woman of strength and intelligence to bear his young when he had considered the possibility of being able to do such a thing--when he had been naïve enough to believe there was a chance of destroying the threat of the Sheloni and building a life.
    Not only had it not, her fear had aroused something inside of him that he hadn’t even been aware was there--a fierce desire to protect. It had made him feel stronger, more capable, more determined--and stupid.
    It had given him a false sense of his manhood and his abilities as a fighter.
    Which was why he’d been so stupid as to throw himself between her and the damned droid, even knowing he couldn’t stop the thing, and gotten cracked ribs for his stupidity.
    He’d been enraged when she’d taken the infant. It was Hirachi . It deserved freedom or a quick death to prevent its suffering.
    It wasn’t her kind. She looked at him most of the time as if he was a monster, and he’d thought she would surely ignore it. Instead, she had picked it up and coddled it, coaxing it from the brink of release--teaching it the weakness of dependence.
    And in the process, even though he had tried his utmost to distance himself from the infant, tried hard to feel nothing for it so that he could focus on what was best for it, he had lost his ability to shield himself from his emotions. Her determination to protect and nurture the infant when she was even less able to protect the child than their own women were had begun his fall from interest to an obsession to have her.
    To begin with the fact that the alien females seemed perfectly content to accept slavery made him doubt their species was particularly intelligent, especially since they didn’t even appear to have the capability of communicating with each other except with some sort of bizarre hand language. They had the capability of speech--both females tended to babble excitedly when they were together, but obviously it wasn’t much more than babble because he could see they weren’t actually communicating by the puzzled looks they exchanged.
    When it had finally dawned on him that they weren’t communicating because they were each speaking two totally different languages, he’d thought maybe they were from two different worlds. But it seemed farfetched that the Sheloni had found two species so similar on two different worlds, especially when both were so similar to the Hirachi . True, there was a notable difference in their skin and hair color, and the brown one was even smaller than the pink one, but he decided they had to be from the same world if for no other reason than the astronomical odds of finding three different worlds that was home to three such similar beings.
    Besides, they had both appeared in the hold of the