Page 74 of Hot Zone

Tessa glared at him. “I haven’t asked you to marry me nor have you asked me.”

“But on your planet, the mother and father of a child are expected to marry, are they not?”

She blinked in apparent surprise. “It is customary, but not required. Many people choose to be single parents in my time. You don’t have to marry me.”

“But you will be angry with me until I do?”

“Good Lord, no!” she exclaimed.

He frowned, deeply confused. Contrary woman. She railed at him for impregnating her without marrying her; and then when he offered to do so, she turned him down! “Do you want me to marry you or not?” he demanded, roundly frustrated.

“I—no—well, maybe—No!”

A glimmer of amusement shone through his frustration. He said dryly, “Forgive me, but perhaps you could be slightly clearer in your answer? This ignorant alien hasn’t the faintest idea how to interpret that reply.”

She huffed. “It’s not that simple. People who get married love each other. They want to spend their lives together. They have things in common. They like sharing time together. They want to raise a family together.”

“Ahh.” He turned all that over in his mind. It was the way the commoners among his kind lived. Supposedly, they were happy with that. He’d even heard they scorned the lifestyle of the nobles and called it empty and debauched.

Not that debauchery was all bad. He rather enjoyed that aspect of his status as a star navigator. But what she was asking of him—to give up all of that—to live like a commoner…His political status depended heavily on the number of star navigators he sired. To date, he’d produced an impressive twelve. Only Kentar had produced more, and the man was nearly twice Rustam’s age.

Love, huh?

His kind never spent enough time with a single female to develop feelings remotely akin to love. He wasn’t allowed to spend that kind of time with a woman. As soon as one was pregnant, he was expected to move on to the next female who was ready to breed.

Viewed from Tessa’s perspective, he could begin to understand how nobles could be seen as shallow and incapable of real feelings. Perhaps the critics among the commoners were right.

Rustam didn’t even know if he was capable of giving Tessa this love she demanded of him, if they were to marry. What in the hell was he supposed to do now? He was completely at sea in a foreign culture, playing a game whose rules he didn’t have the faintest idea of. And his future with the most extraordinary woman he’d ever met lay in the balance.

The thing was, he couldn’t leave one of his children behind on this planet, especially now that mankind had mastered time-jumping. Star travel would not be far behind if a person with the right kind of talent came along. Such as the child of one of the greatest Centaurian star navigators of his time and a wildly talented human female who might very well carry the star-travel gene herself.

The thought broke across his consciousness with the force of a tidal wave.

Tessa had the star navigator gene.

What else could explain the incredible, inexplicable star flights they took every time they made love? It had been right there before his eyes the entire time, but he’d been too besotted to see it or perhaps had intentionally ignored the evidence right under his nose.

She was a nascent star navigator.

And his orders from the Centaurian Federation were crystal clear.

Eliminate every human female who displays a talent for star navigation.

He had to kill the woman carrying his dreams and his child.

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