The eatery was just plain enough to look cheap without looking seedy. It did, however, not sport its own parking lot.

“No, no, I insist,” Vanaka said as she clambered into the driver’s seat. “I’ll park it. You three just wait there.”

The two ansoti had to obey their mistress, and with both of them out on the curb Saketa supposed she’d better just go along. She joined the two outside the eatery, and kept the sword next to her like a cane.

“I will just find a convenient spot, then I’ll join you,” Vanaka went on from behind the controls. “It shouldn’t take long.”

She drove off, and Saketa was left alone with the pair.

“I have watched her become quite a skilful predator in the last couple of years,” Erine said as they watched the car head off into the distance. “But she can still lack subtlety in other ways.”

The woman turned to Saketa with a little smile on her lips.

“She wants us to get to know each other a bit, I suppose.”

“I gathered that.”

She took them in under circumstances more comfortable than a car interior. Losan had the kind of honed, powerful body, alertness, and warrior’s aura that made her believe he was indeed a Vylak’s bodyguard. Erine was far less noticeable, and that seemed to be entirely on purpose. She seemed comfortable with being quiet and soft.

“Well, I suppose there is no reason to disappoint her,” Saketa said. “But you have an advantage. Clearly you have been told stories about me.”

“Just the one story, really,” Losan said. “Repeated.”

“Yes,” Erine said. “And allow me to give you my own thanks, for getting her to safety. We were all so relieved when she and her father returned.”

Saketa simply nodded.

“I understand that you nearly came back with her,” Losan said. “That you were very nearly one of us.”

Saketa touched that spot on her neck, and either felt or imagined another tingle.

“It was close, yes,” she admitted. “I think one more bite would have done it.”

She thought back to the parting on that dock on Xivioth, and just how much she’d had to marshal her willpower to turn the offer down. For a moment there it had all felt so very tenuous. She might even have gone along if Vanaka had simply asked more insistently. She wasn’t even sure that she would have resisted if Vanaka had led her somewhere private for a final, claiming bite.

“But there wasn’t one more bite,” she said out loud. “And I had a war to take part in.”

“So you did,” Erine said.

The ansoti looked into her mistress’s direction.

“She confessed to me, once or twice, that she was a bit afraid you would be angry with her once the venom cleared out of your system.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“My people know predators intimately,” Saketa told her. “There is no point in holding grudges against them.”

“Well, I am glad for her sake that her fears were unfounded.”

“But enough about your mistress for a moment,” Saketa said. “What can you tell me about yourselves?”

“I did a stint in the military,” Losan said. “It doesn’t matter which one. I just didn’t have any other way to learn skills. After that I took a course as a bodyguard. It earned me a living, and some free travel. In time I… well, found myself on her homeworld.”

Saketa remembered the Vylak being quite cagey about which world that was exactly, and supposed it was a rule.

“Vanaka told me later she’d already bitten me twice when… well.”

He went a bit distant, as he thought back on a moment that had shaped the entire rest of his life.

“She was straddling me. We were all alone, in the cheap rented room I was using, and that was when she came clean. About what she was, and how it all works and that she wanted me to stay with her and her family permanently. I would have a lasting home. And if I didn’t accept, she would just erase the conversation, and that would be that.”

He touched that spot on his neck.

“I accepted, and she sealed it.”

He rubbed the spot, and something about it annoyed Saketa a bit.

“What else was I going to do, between the hold she already had on me, and her pitch? But I had the option to walk away.”

“And how do you feel about it all, now that you’re in her embrace for good?” Saketa asked.

“Mm. Stepping back and looking at it all neutrally, I sometimes feel that I probably should complain,” he admitted, although his even voice didn’t match his words. “But… that just isn’t how this works. I have a place now, by her side, and a home. I have security for life, and she never gives me anything to complain about.”

“It is how they survive,” Erine said. “Well, one of the ways. Their culture heavily stresses choosing their lasting partners carefully, and fostering a good relationship. They cannot afford tensions in the household.”

“That makes sense,” Saketa said. “So, you are the security officer of this little group?” she added at Losan.

“I am,” he said. “It is my job to be alert, and decide which chances to take. Well… she makes the final decisions, of course. But I give her my perspective and she…”

He looked frustrated for a moment.

“... usually listens.”

It occurred to Saketa to look around, to be certain that no one was close enough to overhear their conversation. No one was, and she supposed the ansoti were accustomed to being on the lookout for just that.

“I recall that when the venom was at its thickest in my veins,” she said to him, “I felt compelled to demand she not make suggestions, for fear of it affecting my decision-making in dangerous circumstances.”

“One learns to manage the leash,” he said, and the ease of the words in his mouth felt a bit surreal.

Saketa turned her attention to Erine.

“And you?”

“Oh, I was born to this life,” the woman said. “My parents are both ansoti to one of Vanaka’s aunts. We were all just a part of the clan. That didn’t… mean that I had to be embraced by someone as I grew up, but that is usually how it goes. And I wanted to be a full part of the household, with everyone I’d grown up with. And once Vanaka started growing and needed an ansoti of her own… well, her parents selected me to be her first.”

Erine touched her lips, and Saketa realised she was making an effort to not show too much pride.

“She was young enough that I was something of a caretaker. It’s been nice, watching her come into her own.”

“Mm. And now you are travelling all over?” Saketa said to all of them.

“It is interesting,” Losan said. “It keeps me sharp, and useful.”

“And it makes her happy,” Erine said.

Saketa nodded. She’d inquired about the two of them, and it all led back to their mistress. That was just how it worked, she supposed.