“Maybe because she never noticed.”

“How could she not? It was so bad before she left that we could never get a servant after dark whenever she had been around them.”

Tedra hid her grin against his chest. His grumbling tone was nothing compared to his annoyance at such times, and those times had been many. Tedra had felt nothing but pride and a degree of amusement that so many men wanted her daughter, so much so that each of them was compelled to seek out a Darasha female after merely being in Shanelle’s presence.

She was suddenly understanding Challen’s reason for these competitions a little better. Too many of his own warriors had asked for Shanelle, and although he might have preferred she go to a warrior he knew well, Tedra also knew he had decided he couldn’t play favorites in giving her to one of them. If only there hadn’t been so many offers…

“Do you mean to tell her?” Challen asked.

“And ruin her homecoming? She’ll find out soon enough when the competitions are over and she has to pick one of the finalists-oh, Stars!” Tedra gasped with the realization. “You’re going to give her away in just a few days, aren’t you? Challen, I only just got her back! Couldn’t you have waited?”

“Too long has this been delayed.”

“So I’m to lose her already?” she whispered forlornly.

“And where do you think she will go?” he chided. “These are Kan-is-Tran warriors who will ask for her. She will not be taken so far that you cannot visit her as often as you wish.”

She was annoyed enough to remind him, “Have you forgotten there are visitors also competing?”

“You were the one who insisted visitors be allowed to participate when they began asking to do so.” And they had asked because Rampon at the Visitor’s Center had somehow found out the true reason for the competitions and the word had spread from there to all the ambassadors, and from them to their home planets. “In fairness did I allow it,” he added, “yet have I no intention of choosing a visitor for my daughter.”

“Not even that High King Jorran who is so confident he can beat the champion of all the warriors?”

“Especially not that condescending High King. Sooner would I-”

What he would sooner do was interrupted by the light rap on the door. “Mother, are you there?”

Tedra pushed herself out of Challen’s arms and started toward the door even as she called out, “Come on in, baby.” But when Shanelle did, Tedra was glad she was blocking her from Challen’s view, and put her arms around her to whisper urgently, “Hide your face in my shoulder and keep it there. If your father sees those swollen lips, he’s going to kill whoever got them that way.” To Challen she said, “How about taking off for a while, babe? I’d like a private mother-daughter chat before dinner.”

“So I am to be kicked out of my own chamber?”

“Humor me and I might play challenge loser tonight.”

He laughed and whacked her bottom on his way out the door. As soon as the door had closed, Tedra hugged Shanelle happily.

“So it’s happened? You found the man you want?”

“Mother… don’t… squeeze!” Shanelle gasped out.

Tedra released her immediately. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” And with even more alarm and the beginnings of a new anger, she demanded, “Are those bruises on your arms?”

“I offered to take her right into a meditech,” Martha answered before Shanelle could, “but she wants to enjoy suffering for a while.”

“What in the farden hell happened?”

Martha turned on one of her driest tones. “To hear her tell it, she got run over by a solidite paver.”

“So let her tell it,” Tedra snapped. “Shani? Did someone beat you, for Stars’ sake?”

“No-it just feels like it.” Shanelle sighed and led her mother to the backless couches in the center of the large room as she continued. “I really thought this was it, mother. The man was absolutely gorgeous. Once I’d seen him, I couldn’t think about anything else. And he made me feel so- so-”

“He knocked her socks off,” Martha supplied with a chuckle.

With a frown Shanelle turned the computer link off, while with the same frown Tedra took the unit and set it on the large square table that the couches surrounded. “I’ll talk to you later,” Tedra told the computer, her tone warning that she was presently blaming Martha for whatever had happened. And to Shanelle, “So if everything seemed right, what went wrong?”

“Everything. But in the beginning, nothing. He seemed so perfect, even if he was taller than I would have liked. That didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except what he was making me feel. And he felt it, too. He came right to me. And, Stars, he was even ready to fight Corth for me.”

“To fight Corth?” Tedra said incredulously, but then with dismayed understanding, “We’re not talking about a warrior, are we?”

Shanelle lowered her eyes. “No-but he’s as big as one, nearly as big as father. And he acts like one more than he doesn’t-except for one major difference. He’s emotional-possessive, jealous, passionate-too passionate, actually, and that’s where everything went wrong. He didn’t have much control of his passion to begin with, but when we were about to join, he-he lost it completely. He wasn’t aware he was doing it, but his arms just about crushed me, and when he breached me, it hurt so bad I fainted.”

“Oh, baby.” Tedra’s sympathy poured out, her arms going around Shanelle very carefully. “You’ve always had a low tolerance for pain. The slightest little scrape or bang as a child and you’d be screaming your head off.”

Shanelle’s expression turned wry. “I’d like to think I can take a scrape or bang these days, mother. I didn’t will myself to faint. This was pain of an unacceptable level.”

“But a breaching is painful. I know you kept your innocence intact for your father’s sake so your lifemate could have it, but it looks like you should have visited a meditech instead.”

“It’s a moot point now.”

“Is it?” Tedra sighed. “All right, so we’ll class it as one of the most horrible breachings on record. As long as the man made up for it afterward, then-”

“There was no afterward. When I woke up, I just wanted out of there.”

“Wait a minute.” Tedra was outraged. “Are you saying you got no pleasure to make up for the pain? That’s indecent! I’ll-”

“Mother-”

“-crucify that bastard when I see him! He should have insisted-”

“Mother! I didn’t want him to touch me again.”

“But you needed to be shown it’s not all pain, and who better to show you than the man you picked yourself?”

“You’re not listening, mother. With him it was all pain-or at least too much pain. He was too rough even before he lost control. And he did insist we continue the joining. In fact, he wasn’t going to let me leave until we did. I had to ask Martha to change his mind.”

“I’ll bet he just loved that.”

“Sure he did, enough to swear he was going to destroy Martha first chance he gets.”

Tedra grinned. “I’ll bet she just loved hearing that.” The audiovisual console in Tedra’s dressing room chimed right then, so she added, “I’m not answering that, Martha. I told you I’d talk to you later.”

“Maybe it’s not her,” Shanelle suggested.

“Of course it is. It drives her crazy that she can’t get around on this planet like she could on Kystran-and does on the Rover, popping into any audio console and computer when she wants. If her main housing hadn’t been turned off when she left to get you, she’d be yelling at us right now, instead of dialing for permission to speak.”

Proof was the end of the chiming coming from the dressing room. All of Tedra’s advanced machines were stored in there, away from Challen’s sight. The room was so crowded with the wonders of other worlds that there’d been no room to add Brock’s housing when he joined the family. So he was kept in another room-otherwise Martha would have borrowed his console to have her say.