Page 22 of Mated By Twilight

Leah, her back to them, turned to find what they were staring at.

And she smiled.

It was bright and open, not a trace of discomfort or anxiety. Her cheeks turned a lovely shade of red, and her gaze lowered for just a second before raising again, shy but not unwilling to meet them. He would much rather the shyness over her unease.

“Hey,” she greeted cautiously but brightly. “Are you done with rehearsal?”

“We are,” Tillos said, stopping behind her chair, reaching out to run his thumb along her jaw as Sollit pushed her hair back behind her ear. She smiled, leaning forward into their touch.

“Have you already eaten?” Sollit asked.

She shook her head – the human way of saying ‘no’. “I was waiting for you two.”

Tillos smiled, pleased. He wouldn’t have minded if she’d eaten with her new friends, of course not. But that she’d waited for them meant she’d been anticipating seeing them again.

“We’re going to go, Leah,” one of the females said, getting to her feet. The others agreed, all of them standing and filing out, tittering to each other, giggling wickedly as they passed by.

“Shall we?” Sollit asked, offering Leah his hand for her to stand.

She took it, smiling at him, then at Tillos as he let his hand trail down her upper arms.

Chapter 10

Leah

It was like they couldn’t stop touching her. Leah wouldn’t say that either brother was inappropriate, but they kept reaching for her. If one had to step back or lean away, he’d turn her attention onto the other brother until he returned. Making sure that she was never alone or ignored. They were so good at it, moving around her and coordinating with each other without a word, she was hypnotized. They handled her like they’d been trained.

The galley – it was a ship, so this wasn’t akitchenas she’d been so dutifully informed – worked remarkably like a high school cafeteria. There was a line where you picked up a tray at the beginning then worked your way down. But instead of a buffet full of food trays and dubiously clean tongs or bored lunch ladies scooping food for you, there were a series of machines that created synthesized food. Fully synthesized, she’d been informed – nothing was grown or slaughtered for their food.

She had already done it once for lunch earlier with the others she worked with, and they’d shown her how to get her food. Going through with Tillos and Sollis, however, she didn't even have to hold her own tray. Tillos and Sollit got their trays, then kept her between them, asking what she liked, if there was anything she couldn’t have, if there was anything she wanted to try, then choosing things to put on their trays for her.

For lunch, she’d just grabbed something one of the other girls had picked. Which had resulted in what she thought was a bowl of noodles but turned out to be a bowl of worms. That was when she’d been told the thing about them being synthesized, not alive, but that didn't matter when she was looking into a bowl of slimy, pink, segmented worms. They might not be alive, or have ever been alive, but she did not care. She also hadn’t wanted to be rude, so she couldn’t bring herself to throw them away and try something else.

Slimy worms tasted like vitamins and were the absolute worst texture on the tongue. She didn’t know why the other girl stomached them, but Leah very nearly didn’t want to try dinner.

But with Tillos and Sollit stepping in to take over, not a single worm found its way onto either one of their trays. There weren’t any human recipes loaded into the synthesizer, however there were a lot of avanava style foods, which they were eager to get for her.

They picked a table in the corner of the cafeteria and put her in the corner, Tillos and Sollit each to one side of her. They pushed their trays close so that she could take whatever she wanted, as they picked up their utensils.

The forks were longer than she would have expected, and they only had two tines - like she was eating with a wide fondue fork. The spoons, however, were deeper than she was used to. Almost like she was drinking from a tiny bowl. These were the Standard utensils used by the Coalition, they were designed to accommodate as many species as possible. And every species was larger than humans, so they had bigger mouths.

Still, it took a bit of time for her to get used to it as she poked and picked at everything the males had chosen for her. Theypointed out what each thing was, what it was made of, and even described what it tasted like so she’d get no surprises – though after the lunch worms, she didn’t think it would get much worse.

Turned out, she was wrong.

Avanava were a reptilian people. Their scales, compared to a species like, say, the ratchi, were much smaller and more delicate. They seemed almost like skin with a scale pattern, though she could feel the difference whenever they touched her. They tended to be omnivorous, as they explained to her, though their people had a fairly large vegetarian population.

However, a staple of their entire diet, to her horror, was bugs.

Insects, they explained, had been domesticated in the same way as farm animals on Earth. And, like the farm animals on Earth, the domestic versions weren’t the same as the wild ones. They were bigger, meatier, and bred for both taste and nutrition.

And they werebugs!

Leah grimaced at the round, fried beetle-like bug on the end of her fork. She’d initially picked it thinking it was like a meatball or a hushpuppy or something else fried. No. Turns out, it was boiled – the bug just looked breaded, brown and bumpy.

“It’s good,” Sollit assured her, chuckling at the face she was making. “It tastes kind of rich and meaty. Boiling it seals all the flavor in the shell.”

“It’s also quite good for you,” Tillos added. “That particular insect is beneficial for digestive health.”