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and watered it down. “Yes, your father did mention that you had outwitted his guard and your caretakers when you were younger.”
    She nearly sprayed the wine that she had been sipping across the table. “When did you talk to my father about me?”
    “When he was trying to talk me out of offering for you, and again after you ran from me.” He took his own goblet to his lips and she watched a drop of wine cling to his lips, and had to fight the urge to lean forward to lick it off.
      She shook her head to clear it. “I wasn’t running from you Raanan . I was running from the faceless man that my father was trying to match me to . He refused to tell me who he had chosen for me, and I panicked. I ran.”
    He propped his chin up on his fist and she felt his mind delicately touching hers. No longer bound by the heat of lust, she realized what he was doing fully. “You are an empath . The Azon blood that your mother gave you had that talent in it.”
    “Yes. Does it disgust you? I know that many Nyal are appalled by psi abilities.”
    “My skin isn’t pure Nyal either, Raanan .” She lifted her watered wine. “To the shame in my family tree!” She laughed outright at his appalled look.
    “I have spent over a year in the stars Raanan , alien races are not so alien to me anymore.” Her mind welcomed the light touch and she sat quietly letting him rifle through her emotions.
    “You really didn’t know whom your father had chosen. He told me that you knew, and that it was why you ran.”
    “WHAT ?! ” Her shriek rent the air and a few servants appeared in doorways, he waved them off.
    “He told me that you had heard that I was your suitor and that is why you ran. I was then responsible to hire trackers to bring you home.”
    “You sent the hunters after me?”
    “Of course. And I arranged with your father to have you sold in the Grand Arena to teach you a lesson.” Servants began to file in and set the table with plates and a variety of foods, hot and cold.
    “You arranged for me to be humiliated like that?”
    “I did.”
    Fury washed through her. He had thought she had run, had her dragged home, and had her sold in public to teach her a lesson. Only one question still was hopping in her mind. “Then why did you buy me?”
    He tapped his fingers against his goblet, “I asked myself that when I went to the Grand Arena, I asked that when I sat amongst the wealthy and titled noblemen who were salivating at the thought of burying their cocks in your soft warm body.
    “I asked myself why when the bidding escalated to the point where your presence was required to entice the buyers. And again when you came out, proud and still with the whites around your eyes showing your panic and your scent declaring your heat.
    “When the auctioneer began to stroke you and the bidding climbed into the stratosphere and I pledged the income of a small asteroid I knew I had to have you, and when I realized that I had brought the mating mask of the Adonai family with me without knowing it, I knew you were my mate.”
    She was shaking with reaction to his statements. “Your mate, for a breeding contract?”
    “My mate until I die. The empathy is a family bond. Not shared by casual conquests.” He turned to the food. “Eat something. I didn’t feed you properly during your heat. You need more energy.”
    Numbly, she turned to her food. One of the servants had loaded it with a selection of treats and she dug in with her mouth on automatic and her mind in chaos.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Eight
     
     
    Dinner was silent. The clink of cutlery on fine porcelain was the only sound. For once in her life Ceres had nothing to say.
    “Do you remember the time you left the palace and ran to the Roja Festival because you wanted to watch the dancers?”
    She had been eighteen and had just finished a heat. She had wanted to see how normal women in the villages attracted mates without their family’s intervention. The dances at