045: Whispers in the Dark

[Orion]

I've never seen my mother so angry before.

I know that pacing cannot help, but I can't find a way to calm my nerves. I can still smell my mate all over my skin and I want to be with her so badly that it aches. Not just my body, but my soul craves to be with her, to connect with her in the way that only I can.

When we lie side by side after our act of love, our bodies returning to our more familiar form, I held her close while she cried. Here she was, in the arms of the man who took away the one person in her family who cared enough to try and find her when she disappeared.

"I have over a dozen brothers and sisters," she wept. "But nobody came looking when I disappeared. My mother was my father's favorite concubine, but I was their only child, and when she died, I had nobody left to defend me in the palace. Father spent so much time working on the surface that when I failed to return from my excursion, nobody thought to look."

"I'm your family now," I swore to her. "I will never