Mated To The Enemy

“Mother please, stop packing these kinds of outfits in my luggage, what are you thinking?” I shook my head at her.

“You folded your underwear wrong,” she announced, like this is a crisis worthy of an intervention. She stepped over the piles of clothes on my bed—combat boots, academy-regulation tops, the single formal dress she insisted I take “in case there’s a ceremony or a scandal”—and zeros in on the small mountain of folded things in my travel trunk.

I was halfway through shoving my second combat knife into the side compartment of my duffel when I said, “If the academy inspects my underwear folding technique, I’ll happily drop out and save us all the trouble.”

She did not laugh, which was how I knew she was building up to something.

She cleared her throat. “So. Before you leave for Norsen… we should talk about a few things.”

Here it comes.

“I swear, if you’re about to lecture me about shining my boots—”

“Sex,” she interrupted brightly.

I blinked. “I’m sorry?”

She squinted at me mischievously. “I’m thinking you are of age now and you might want to have experiences of your own. You know there will be boys at your academy and you may even find your mate there.”

“For the love of the moon goddess, please tell me we’re not about to have the conversation I think you are trying to have right now” I stared at her, hoping my suspicions were untrue.

She clasped her hands together. “Yes we are. We are about to have the talk, I am going to be telling you how to enjoy yourself without getting pregnant.”

I groaned painfully, already dreading the conversation.

“You’re going to be surrounded by boys. Young men. Some of them, not very bright. With abs and urges.” She clasped her hands together again like she was discussing table manners. “I just want you to be… safe.”

I stared at her. “I’m going to a military academy, not a mating campaign mother.”

“Yes, but you’re very pretty. And stubborn. And sometimes bad decisions happen on cots or under staircases or—”

“Oh my gods, stop talking.”

She kept going. “Do you need—”

“If you say the word condoms I will set myself on fire.”

Her lips twitched like she was trying not to laugh. “You could at least pretend you’re open to the conversation.”

“I would rather spar blindfolded with a starving rabid wolf.”

“So dramatic,” she muttered.

I threw a rolled shirt at her and she flicked it off with two fingers like it personally offended her.

“Mother please.. No! I won’t be needing any of that lecture, the other girls at your seamstress’s school may need your motherly insight to what sex should or should not be.” I said, rolling my eyes at her.

Her expression changed and I knew what was coming.

“Do you really have to go? I know you are old enough to do whatever you want but does it have to be that