A short round of chuckles. "Tedra has aged very well in comparison to average humanoids. The Sha-Ka'ani do also, due to their healthy environment, but Tedra has the added benefit of her Sec 1 training that she keeps up, grueling exercises that have honed her body into a lethal weapon-well, considered lethal on other worlds. But she's forty-four. I should know, she belongs to me."

"I thought that was the other way around and you belong to her?"

"Matter of opinion," Martha muttered.

Brittany didn't believe the handsome couple up ahead were Dalden's real parents, so what was she suddenly nervous about? Because the second phase of "convince at no expense" had begun, apparently. A spaceship hadn't done it. So now new actors and a make-believe whole planet were supposed to. She should be relieved. Her greatest fear before leaving the ship had been that she'd be back in her own bed by tonight, with the space next to her empty. But that wasn't on the agenda yet.

"Showtime," Martha said as the group up ahead stopped waiting for her to join them and approached her instead.

Martha was being cute, but that was too close to how Brittany viewed all of this. A show for her exclusive benefit, just actors following a basic script and improvising where needed.

"Welcome to Sha-Ka'an, Brittany Callaghan, and welcome to my family "

Oh, God, that sounded really nice. Her own family had grown apart and rarely saw each other anymore. They kept in touch, but she missed that closeness of when they'd all lived together. One of her lessons on the journey had included that Sha-Ka'ani families usually stayed together, that when children reached adulthood they stayed in the same town, some in the same house. A few females might end up with a lifemate in another town or country, but that was a rare exception, since warriors tended to pick their mates from women known to them in their own town.

Following Tedra's welcome, she got a tight hug and a whisper by her ear. "Relax, kiddo, we don't judge here. When a warrior makes his choice there's no reversing it, so he gets wished happy. Some take a long time to decide, some know instantly. Either way, it's something they know. Too bad women never gain that kind of certainty."

Was that a joke? Tedra was grinning when she stepped back. Yet what she'd just said was kind of the reverse of the way Brittany knew things to be. Women knew right off when they were in love. It usually took the recipient of that love a heck of a long time to figure the same thing out. There were exceptions, surely, but on the average, women won hands-down in the instant-decision-making category.

Seeing her close up, Brittany still couldn't believe that Tedra was forty-four years old. "Aged well" was a definite understatement. She'd probably make a really cool mother-in-law, though. Brittany wasn't so sure about Challen, who was very intimidating with his size and his look that seemed to be analyzing, but was otherwise inscrutable.

Tedra now turned a stern expression on Dalden. "Six months' absence, never again, Dalden. Contrary to the Ancients' adage, absence does not make the heart grow fonder, it's farden well painful. Never again. And your father agrees with me-for once."

"Do not give the impression that I never agree with you, woman," Challen rumbled curtly. "That would be an untruth of the size you call whopper."

Tedra snorted. "You only agree when it suits you, never when it suits me."

That caused a grin from the big guy. A yank to him that had to have hurt when Tedra collided with that big body. A slap on the backside that had to hurt even more.

"We will agree to discuss the matter of disagreeing later," Challen warned.

"Wanna bet?" Tedra shot back.

She then pushed away from him, grabbed Shanelle's arm, and marched off toward the front of the building. Challen and Falon followed more slowly. Dalden took Brittany's hand again to bring up the rear.

At her hip, Martha suggested in a cheerful tone, "Don't mind them, kiddo. Their way of joking around takes getting used to."

"Joking, huh? Sure."

Dalden gave her a glance. "Martha is correct, but it is my mother who will take getting used to. She does not behave as a Sha-Ka'ani woman should."

Brittany stopped, demanded, "And just how would a Sha-Ka'ani woman have acted? Smiled and thanked her lifemate for banging her around?"

Dalden looked confused, but Martha wasn't, and said instantly, "Put the brakes on, girl. Tedra's body is conditioned to take damage and not feel it. She wasn't hurt; if she even felt that love tap, I'd be surprised. Challen would cut off his hand before he'd actually hurt her. Most warriors feel the same way about their women."

"Do you?" Brittany asked Dalden.

"Certainly," he replied, somewhat indignant that she'd needed that reassurance.

Certainly, she repeated dryly in her mind. But he was talking about physical pain, not the mental kind that could sometimes be just as excruciating- What would a warrior's philosophy be about that? As long as it didn't leave a bruise, it couldn't hurt?

She got the sneaky suspicion that phase two was going to be more emotional than visual. Bog her down with anxieties and uncertainties so she didn't notice when she started believing it all?

« ^ »

BRITTANY BEGAN TO RELAX ON THE SHORT RIDE TO Sha-Ka-Ra, Dalden's hometown. They weren't showing her things anymore, had perhaps finally concluded that it was a waste of their time and effort. She got flimsy excuses for this new tack, but she didn't really care.

There had been nothing outside the building to see except the front of the building they just left, and a hill on the other side was close enough to kill any views. It could have been an illusion; she wasn't allowed close enough to it to check it out. There were three vehicles there to transport the lot of them, and they an piled in.

Airobuses, they called them. They could have been remodeled normal buses. Remove the wheels, make the front streamlined instead of flat, extend the length to twice normal size, and voilà a space-age weird-looking vehicle.

There were cushy chairs in the first section behind the pilot's pit, but most of the vehicle was just a cargo bay. They were supposedly used to collect and deliver trade goods to the outer reaches of the planet, but they had to remain more or less invisible, so they had preset routes that took them high enough above the clouds to not be visible from the ground. They required pilots, even though there was nothing for the pilot to see other than a large monitor. No windows, even up front, the excuse being that if a warrior had to be brought to the Center on one for some reason, they made it as painless as possible for him by giving him no visible reminder that he was flying while he was in the air. There was no sound, either, no feeling of lift-off, no feeling of any movement at all, for that matter, just a low, steady hum barely heard. The landing points for these buses were called stations, all of them located far enough from the major towns, again, to keep the people from being reminded of their existence. It didn't dawn on Brittany until they arrived at their station just what that was going to mean.

Views. Incredible, far-reaching views of the majestic sort. The station sat at the base of a mountain they called Mount Raik, a mass so tall its point was capped with ice even though the climate was tropical. Mostly flat land spread before it, some cultivated with grains and vegetables. Forests were in the distance, with multi-colored trees, reds, greens, yellows, blues-blue?-and every shade in between. She saw long purple shadows on the horizon that could have been other mountain ranges, too far distant to define. She saw what might be a small lake in a field of wildflowers.