Stella passed the bag with Ktak's uniform through the door crack to her and noted her state of undress. Could have been worse. She looked quite happy too. Ames was getting to keep all his bits. For now. The parting kiss was cute as well. Ames had used the ladder, part of his usual work kit to reach the required height. And then they were off. She was still thinking how to broach the subject of how much of a challenge this was going to be for all parties involved when Ktak spoke.

"I'm in trouble, arent I? About Ames...", she asked.

"Yes," Stella admitted. "But I am quite good at sorting this sort of trouble. We will figure something out. You two need to keep it private until we do..."

Apparently she had already asked Ames to keep quiet too. Smart girl.

There were three problems with the situation and she described all of them to Ktak.

First was a human rule - chain of command should not have pairings between levels. If a pairing occured anyway, one would need to move. Ames had remembered this rule correctly. The Commander being top of the chain made this quite difficult problem to solve without splitting them up.

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Second issue was that Tamare law had no clauses for pairings, no accomodations of any sort. They havent had any at all for a very long time. Stella thought about this a bit more. But they perhaps had once? And the Tamare never actually threw anything out... She needed to dig a bit deeper on this.

And the third was Council's ban on Tamare "harvesting" any more material from other species. Convincing them that this pairing was a genuine, real deal thing, not a Tamare plot to get some fresh human DNA was going to be a challenge.

She did not worry about some Tamare trying to take advantage of Ames's position. The Commander was scary and brutally fierce when she was protecting Ames. She had had a reason to interrogate Mtak, and the way he flinched when her name was mentioned was a sight worth seeing. Word would get around.

Ktak confimed this as well. "They will not touch Ames. He's mine. They can try, but it wont end well for them..."

Stella opted for teasing, "Do you think he will know the difference between you and your brood-sister?" , but regretted it immediately.

Ktak's face turned grim. "She would regret touching what is mine, as she did when we were small and she touched what was mine."

Stella's words had awakened a new feeling in her. If the books were something to go by, this was jelaousy. She could not help to wonder... Would he know? Maybe some day he would meet her and she would know. She wondered, if the heartbreak if he did not was going to be enough to kill her.