Tempest blinked a few times before she burst out lauging.

"Savior? Are you out of your mind? I’m no one’s savior." She shook her head and tried to walk away but Rynax stood in front of her, stopping her progress.

"Wait. Just let me talk to you for a moment." He put his hands up in mock surrender.

Tempest looked around the room and realized that the shopkeeper was no longer standing there. She wondered if he walked off simply because he knew things were about to get bad and he didn’t want to get in the way of a stronger alpha.

She really had no way of telling if someone was a beta or an alpha aside from staring at their junk and she didn’t want to have to do that.

"Did they tell you why you were brought here?" Rynax questioned.

Tempest sighed and leaned her weight to her hip. She was already tired of this conversation but she knew until she talked to Rynax he wasn’t going to leave her alone. She’d met countless people like him on earth. They were annoying but persistant.

"Yes, they think humans will be compatible with your people and may be able to help with the population." Tempest nodded her head. It was the simplified version, but that is what she thought her objective here was.

"And did they tell you what would happen once you completed that goal? What happens to your child? What happens to you after that?" Rynax questioned. He was trying to keep calm, but Tempest noticed that he was getting rather tense. Either he was trying to scare her or trying to tell her something very important.

Tempest thought on the question for a moment. She didn’t know what was to happen to her if she’d completed her task, mostly because she had no plans on doing so.

Would she be required to take the child with her? Stay here and raise it? Would she be farmed out for other alphas so she could have as many babies as possible? Tempest had no idea.

"It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to do it. I was told I didn’t need to have sex with anyone I don’t want to, so there’s that." Tempest shifted her weight to her other leg. She was getting uncomfortable talking to Rynax about this.

"I figured as much. In fact, everyone figured as much. But you have to understand the people aren’t going to give you a choice. They are going to make you have this child. It’s not so much to figure out if you can conceive; they already know you can."

Tempest perked up at that. "What are you talking about? How can they know? I’m the first human to ever go through this process."

"You are not. The higher-ups are just hiding the truth from you. If you have this child, you will be a target, but you will also be proof that it is not the lower class that has the problem creating children, as the royals are trying to make us believe. They are doing this to us...poisioning us."

"That’s crazy. Why would the royals harm their own people?" As soon as the words left Tempest’s mouth, she knew they weren’t as crazy as she claimed.

She’d read of many societies that tried to erase a line simply because they thought they knew better.

"Because we are rising up. There are more alphas in the lower classes than there are in the royal classes. Soon it will be one of us that is to take over."

"And you think if I have a child, it will solidify the lower classes’ hold, help them rise to power."

"I do. The royals and council want us to believe that we are defective. They make it seem like they are trying to help us, doing all they can to resolve the problem when they are really the ones who’ve created it. Your choosing Dron could possibly be the best thing you could’ve done. The royals have no hold on him. They’ve already written him off as tainted and cursed. He is the worst of us. The absolute bottom of the barrel. There should be no way that he should be able to conceive. So if you do, it means there is hope for the rest of us."

The information whirled in Tempest’s mind. She didn’t want any part of this. Didn’t want to be responsible for a coup.

"So you’re saying sometime soon, someone is going to grab hold of me and force me to mate with them? I’m not too sure they are going to get very far with Dron by my side." Tempest scoffed.

"Dron isn’t by your side now, is he?" Rynax looked around, and the fear that had started to dissipate flourished in Tempest’s gut.

"You wouldn’t... you can’t..."

Rynax shrugged his shoulders, "Don’t worry little one. I’m not here to hurt you. That’s not my style. I’m too pretty to fight." He caressed his jaw.

"You think they’ll try to go through Dron to get to me?"

"Yes, absolutely. In fact, I’m pretty sure that some have already tried."

Tempest thought back to the fight outside the house. Dron told her it was because they didn’t think she belonged there. She made this whole plan to show the people that she wasn’t so bad, that she could be one of them if they let her. Now she wondered if that was the wrong thing to do.

"You said they already knew that I would be able to conceive. Are you talking about the higher ups that know or those trying to rise to power?"

"Both, though neither side will admit it. There was one human found deep in Skoq with her alpha mate. She was pregnant. The high royals had them killed.

The royals know if the lower classes believe they can cure this curse they will demand more humans be brought. The lower class know that if they tell the royals they have proof that it works, the royals will just kill the offspring off. "

Tempest couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It had to be false.

"I don’t want this responsibility."

"Like I’ve said. You don’t have a choice. You’re here now. There are those who are just waiting for the right moment. Probably when you go into heat."

"Go into heat?" Tempest scoffed. "I don’t go into heat. See. This is how I know this won’t work."

"They didn’t tell you about your heat? Moon goddess, curse them all..." Rynax squeezed his eyes shut and lifted his shoulders all the way up to his ears.

"They didn’t tell me because it isn’t going to happen." Tempest could hear her voice getting more frantic.

"You will have a heat. In a week or so." Rynax opened his eyes and stared at her. "It will happen, and when it does, the alphas around you will go nearly feral to get to you. It’s then that you can be impregnanted."

Tempest thought about it. Was he talking about ovulating? That happened on Earth, but there was no heat that was associated with it. She just wanted chocolate and to be left alone.

"I don’t believe you." Tempest was through with this conversation. She didn’t want to know.

"Fine. I’ll leave you for now, but I want you to know that if you need me, I’ll be around."

She scoffed again, "What? You want to be my friend now?"

"I want you to live. If you need a friend, then that is what I’ll be. You can trust me Tempest. I might be the only person on this planet who you can believe." Rynax stepped to the side and let Tempest walk away.

She waited for him to stop her again. When he didn’t, she heaved a sigh of relief. She didn’t want to believe what Rynax had told her. She wanted to believe that she really had a choice in all of this.

Could it really be possible that the people in this place were simply waiting for her to become an incubator.

Was Dron part of it all? Was that why he’d agreed to go along with her plan to leave so easily? The more she thought about it, the more confused she seemed to get. She wanted to believe that Dron was on her side, that they were kindred spirits.

What if he was just waiting for her to go into this so-called heat? Waiting for her guard to go down so she could allow him to mate with her.

Suddenly she felt like she was being played for a fool. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

She wouldn’t give in.

She wouldn’t, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think that she could do all this on her own.

Quickly she turned back around and walked to Rynax, who was still standing where she’d left him. She raised her wrist. "Put your information in here so I can contact you."

Rynax bowed slightly, "That’s the smartest thing I’ve heard you say since we met."