Buying His Mate Read Online Free Page A

and then, called in first, she had left them standing outside, still speculating as to what would happen in the room with the sky-people. At least Gretchen knew the answer to that question now, though her attempt to fool the sky-people had ended in abject failure. She wondered idly whether any of the other girls would get spanked before they reached the entertainment room.
    “Finally,” said Mr. Gramling, “we’ll board the shuttle and take off for Athena—that’s what we call our home, which you call the sky-star. When we get there, you’ll spend your first few days in a special area of the station, under observation to make sure you’re transitioning to life on Athena in a healthy way. Your master or mistress will visit you there, but you won’t go home to his or her quarters until our doctors are sure you’re ready. Do you understand?”
    This made the most sense of all. “Yes, Mr. Gramling,” Gretchen said, feeling strangely confident now that she had heard the whole of his instructions. With the exception of the very first part it all sounded reasonable. Of course, it left the shameful question of what would happen when she went home to her master’s or mistress’ quarters entirely open, but something about knowing more than she had when she walked in made everything seem at least a little less frightening.
    “Alright,” said Mr. Gramling. “I’ll ask your first question, and then my friends here will ask some more. When you think about having a baby, Gretchen, what comes into your mind? Once you get up to Athena, it won’t be long before you have a little one in that cute tummy of yours. How does that make you feel?”
    Gretchen’s blush, which had gone away entirely as she gained more knowledge about what the Taking meant, returned at full force. She thought about babies, of course. How could you not think about babies when you lived in the enclosure, where girls seemed to get pregnant almost as soon as they turned eighteen, and then just to stay pregnant under the protection of the sky-people’s mechanical defenses and the men of the relict tribes with whom the sky-people had made their arrangements about the Taking and the enclosures?
    Gretchen had taken care of what seemed like hundreds of babies in the enclosure’s nursery where she, like so many of her friends, worked alongside their mothers. She loved babies and children, but beyond an awareness that she would almost certainly be a mother herself sometime, she had not thought of how it would happen, even when the enclosure’s chief had come to her house and told her that she had been chosen for the Taking.
    After a moment, though, she felt like she had an honest answer. “It makes me happy?” she said without a great deal of conviction, but also knowing that she didn’t lie. “I’d love to have a little one of my own.”
    She heard Martin’s voice, then. “On Athena, babies stay with their mothers for the first year of their lives, but then we place them in a common nursery, and they learn to treat every adult with equal respect. We don’t have families on Athena the way you do here on Earth. How does that make you feel?”
    On the face of it the question seemed to be intended to discover whether Gretchen might cause trouble when they took her baby away on his or her first birthday, but Gretchen thought that perhaps she had heard a note in Martin’s voice almost of regret about the laws of his home.
    “It makes me sad,” Gretchen said. “I think it would be hard.” She wondered if her master or mistress might punish her for crying over having to see her baby cared for by another.
    One of the other men said, “They take very good care of the children in the nursery, of course. And you will be allowed to visit as much as you like. That’s in the law.” It sounded to Gretchen like he, too, felt disquiet.
    But then Ms. Renton said, “More important, you’ll get used to it, dear. And you’ll have another baby to think