Disclaimer: Everything you recognize is owned by the Wachowski siblings. I am merely playing with their toys.

Summary: "You are royalty now. I'm a splice, you don't understand what that means. I have more in common with a dog than I have with you."
Being a space queen isn't all flying boots, pretty dresses and handsome-wolf-splice-soldiers. Jupiter starts asking questions and learning more about the splice/human divide.

Sunshine Through The Rain

She'd been a queen for a few weeks now, and while Caine gave her kisses and took her flying and Stinger welcomed her gravely to his house whenever she needed an escape, she could feel a tense undertone. There had been a glorious few days after Balem's defeat and their safe return to Earth where cleaning houses had made her feel purposeful instead of pointless and where she and Caine had had a glowing, glorious camaraderie.

Then the representatives of other Houses started showing up, and things took an abrupt nose-dive.

When houses Taurus, Theleces, Sarago, Felidictes, Deteron, and Shorno (and 12 others whose names she hadn't learned yet) sent a steady stream of representatives bearing felicitations, gifts, and proposals, she had nowhere to meet them but Stinger's house. Stinger was doing her a favor to allow her to use his space, and she was grateful.

Then she was horrified, and embarrassed. These representatives all seemed to expect Kiza, Stinger, and Caine to wait on them like servants, as thought they were Jupiter's servants, instead of her friends and allies. The first few representatives were merely aggravating, but things started to get worse.

1 male representative carelessly reached up and fondled Kiza's breast when she brought him a glass of lemonade, as though she was a particularly pretty vase instead of a woman. Stinger stiffened, Kiza froze, and Caine growled quietly, but none of them moved to stop it. After a horrifying couple of seconds, Jupiter realized they were weren't going to do anything about it. She realized they were waiting for her to do something about it.

"C-Caine," she whispered, too shocked to say more. He knew her well enough to take that as a carte blanche for action. He surged forward, and Stinger was a fraction second behind him. The representative protested wildly as he was frogmarched back to his ship with furious hands that left deep bruises - but nothing more.

"Your Majesty!" he cried as they drew him inexorably away, "What have I done to displease you? Please! Majesty!"

Jupiter had half expected them to kill in Kiza's defense, but they didn't even take a swing at the human. She watched out the window with her arm around Kiza as he was thrown aboard the ship and made to leave.

Kiza's eyes were dry, but her lips were pressed tightly together as they watched. Jupiter swallowed down hard, but still felt a giant lump in her throat.

She had heard of this kind of behavior when wealthy clients tried to take advantage of cleaning staff, but her family worked as a unit to make sure that never happened to them. She'd never seen it happen, though, but her family worked in units and no one was left alone, so maybe no one had ever tried.

"Kiza," she whispered when the space ship launched and Caine and Stinger turned back towards the house, "Is that..." She trailed off. She didn't even know what to say. As usual, Kiza cut straight to the matter.

"He's a human," Kiza whispered, with tears welling up in her eyes. "And I'm a splice. Splices don't have rights, feelings, autonomy." She gritted her teeth and angrily wiped her tears away. "Earth has spoiled me," Kiza cursed. "I'd forgotten what it's like out there."

Jupiter's face went pale. "You mean, this has happened before?" she gasped. She tightened her grip on Kiza, and Kiza glumly surrendered to a hug, tucking her face into Jupiter's neck and huddling into her.

Caine and Stinger were entering the house now, looking grim, but Jupiter ignored them in favor of Kiza.

"Yes," Kiza whispered into Jupiter's neck. "This is normal."

Jupiter was filled with a kind of sick disbelief, and she raised her wide-eyed gaze from Kiza to Caine and Stinger. After a moment of grim eye contact, she flapped a hand at them and said, "Get over here," and they did.

Stinger came up behind Kiza while Caine came up behind Jupiter. Stinger wrapped one arm around Kiza stretched his other arm over Kiza and Jupiter's shoulders to rest on Caine's shoulder, gripping it tightly. Caine mirrored him on the other side with one arm around the girls and one arm reaching out to Stinger. Then their wings unfolded and curled around the group, safely bracketing Kiza in the middle.

"This is not okay," Jupiter whispers knowing they all can hear her. "This is not okay, and we need to fix it."

Kiza whimpers a little and burrows deeper into her and Stinger, but Caine and Stinger just sigh, sounding resigned.

"Your Majesty," Stinger begins, but Jupiter has known him long enough to recognize that he's about to go into a lecture about how "This is the way things are," and "Things are different out there."

She doesn't want to hear it, so she cuts him off and stares him dead in the eye. She has not been conditioned to find this as acceptable behavior, and she's not going to listen to any justifications.

"This. Is. Not. Okay," she repeated seriously. "We are going to fix it."

Stinger pressed his lips together, but finally nodded. Caine huffs a little into her neck, but presses closer so she takes that as a sign of support as well.

At the next meeting, Kiza stays hidden in the kitchen or upstairs, and things are going well until one representative offers to give her a tidbit of insider information on the House he's representing if she'll let him watch as she whips her defective splice. He says this with a gleam in his eye and a hand over his groin, and then smirks as he tells her, "They do need a firm hand, don't they?"

She feels her hands ball into fists and her nostrils flare with rage. The last time a friend was insulted in her presence, she had been too shocked to say anything, but she has time now to take a deep breath and thing of a truly poisonous way to reply to this, so she does.

"I think I'd find much more pleasure in the situation if the roles were reversed, Shiago, Representative of House Felidictes." She manages to say this calmly, but he does not take her meaning.

"My dear lady," he practically oozes, "I'm honored that you'd grant me such an honor as to whip him for you. How many lashes do you think he could take?" The human licked his lips.

When Kiza had been accosted, Caine had growled in her defense. Now though, when it was his own skin at stake, Caine was dead silent, and Jupiter had a sinking feeling that it was because he was afraid. Not afraid of what the representative could do to him, no. He was afraid of what she would let the representative do to him. Jupiter knew it in her gut, and it made her angry. This anger on Caine's behalf makes her mean.

"You misunderstand me, Shiago," she simpers with a light laugh, "But I'm afraid I don't keep a whip on hand. What would you suggest?"

Behind her, Caine's breathing starts to pick up, and Jupiter knows she must get to the point quickly.

Slimeball Shiago grins a cruel grin and says, "I see your ladyship is wearing a primitive kind of belt - that would be perfect. If I'm not to wield the whip, who will, your ladyship? Or," he licked his lips, "Will you make him whip himself?"

"Caine," she says calmly, and she can hear him swallow. She stands. "Take this belt off of me," she commands him softly. His eyes are shuttered and his brows are furrowed, as if he hopes she's playing a game but he doesn't know and yet his hands are quick and sure. The belt is off in a moment, and he kneels to offer it to her. It's leather, with a heavy metal buckle on one end, and she's never seen a wound from a belt buckle but she remembers the enormous bruises from Balem's pipe and knows this would be very, very, painful.

Shiago, across the room on Stinger's faded couch stands and starts forward with a laugh. "Such obedience!" he crows. She halts him in his tracks with a hand stretched out towards him in a universal "stop" gesture and he stops, still laughing.

She takes a moment to look down at Caine, whose eyes are fixed on her feet, and she runs a hand through his hair and down his face.

"Shiago, Representative of House Felidictes," she says calmly and easily as she toys her hand through Caine's hair and up and down his cheek, "Do you know what this hunter has done for me?"

"Er," Shiago shrugged, uncertain. "He, ah, brought you to the Aegis?"

"This hunter has fought for me," she said softly, still stroking Caine's head. "This hunter has killed for me. I've fallen screaming through the air and he's caught me more times than I can count. He has dived headfirst into danger with incredible disregard for his own safety, and he has saved my life over and over again."

She paused, gathering her thoughts, and Caine finally looked up into her eyes. She gave him a soft smile.

"They say he has defective engineering," she murmured, "He tore out a Royal's throat after all. But I've never met a finer or more heroic being. Courage. Honor. Loyalty. Compassion. And my very first ally in this vast universe. And here you are, Shiago of House Felidictes, offering to betray your house and sell me secrets if only one of us whips him." Caine is still kneeling and holding her belt, offering it up to her like knights of old offered swords.

Shiago has started to squirm, sensing that he has misread the situation. "My lady," he begins. She doesn't let him finish.

"I'll be honest with you, Shiago," Jupiter meets his eyes. There is a cold smile on her face. "You're not going to touch him. When I said I'd prefer the roles reversed, I meant that I'd derive great pleasure from watching Caine beat you bloody. And if you are still on Earth in 30 seconds, that's exactly what's going to happen. Do you understand?" she said, with a cold, almost clinical smile on her face.

Beneath her hand, Caine hums happily as he turns to look at the unwelcome guest. With her hand on his cheek, Jupiter can feel as Caine gives a wide smile that shows his fangs.

Shiago stumbles back and throws out a hand as if to defend himself. "My lady!" He protests again.

"28 seconds," Jupiter tells him coolly. He goes white and starts gathering his sheaves, hands shaking in his haste.

She sinks back down to her seat but her hand remains on Caine's head, stroking the hairs at the nape of his neck.

"I wonder," Jupiter muses, "If he'll beat you with the belt until you're begging, or if he'll just skip to the ending and bite out your throat." Caine growls eagerly, and Jupiter smiles blandly.

"21 seconds," she says idly.

At this point, he stops trying to gather his things and just flat-out flees, sprinting towards the ship in the cornfields. 18 seconds later, his ship is powering up and heading for the atmosphere, and everyone in the room relaxes a little. Stinger turns to duck into the kitchen to find Kiza, and Caine -

Caine kneels before her, still offering up her belt. "Majesty," he breathes softly as he gazes into her eyes.

Jupiter tumbles out of her seat to kneel in front of him. She gently presses on his hands until he drops the belt, and then she reaches out with both palms to stroke his face, and then his neck.

"You are precious to me, Caine Wise," she whispers earnestly. Caine's eyes are suspiciously misty, but he moves quickly to gather her to his chest and bury his face in her neck. She continues to pet his hair, his ears, and his back as he holds her.

"Your Majesty," he mumbles, "You would have let me...? Even after the court-martial?"

She turns her face to kiss his cheek. "I meant it Caine, every word." He pulls back from the embrace with a fierce gleam in his eye, and then he is kissing her - wildly, passionately, ferociously claiming her mouth. Her stomach erupts into butterflies, and she eagerly kisses back.

Jupiter squirmed uncomfortably in her seat in front of the Bolotnikov household's sole desktop computer. This wasn't something she wanted to dive into, but she knew she had to. She stared at the Google homepage for a few seconds, and then took a deep breathe and dove in.

"Why did white people think they were better than black people?" she typed in. And she read about Scientific Racism and arguments of how the blacks were suited for hard labor but were not suited for thinking or autonomy. She read about false scientific assumptions and cruel societal norms. When she emerged a few hours later with tears in her eyes and a note-pad full of arguments, she took a breather. Then, she executed another search. "Why did the Holocaust happen?"

She still had so much to learn about the way the 'verse worked, but the gyre was run by humans, and she had plenty of examples of human nature in Earth's history. Understanding the flawed arguments about prejudice and bigotry for Earth's vicious mistakes would be one of the best ways to understand (and fight!) the prejudice that was running rampant through the universe.

When it becomes clear that the representatives are going to keep coming and that she can't just disappear back into her old life, she arranges to hire lawyers, a majordomo, and (at Stinger's insistence) her Royal Guard. With Stinger and Caine's permission, she has filed with the Legion Administrator and appointed Stinger as Captain of her Royal Guard. Stinger and Caine dig through hundreds of candidates before settling on 3 dozen soldiers, some spliced and some not.

To house them, luckily her Intergalactic Advocates Bob, Shirley, and Neeka and her majordomo have made headway with identifying her holdings and arranging for funds in USD. She purchases a large plot of land near Stinger's quiet farmhouse, and the Keepers that now belong to her waste no time in building her a beautiful and practical mansion - not nearly as elegant as Kalique's, as sensual as Titus's, or as dramatic as Balem's lodgings, but enough to house her and her guards and meet with any visitors in peace.

She tells her family that Katherine Dunlevy's friend's aunt's cousin is old and in need of a full-time companion to clean the house and look after her, and that the pay is good and she'll be able to send home money to them so they won't need to work as hard. And then, she moves out.

Next, she starts to build her space fleet. The advocates tell her she has inherited several ships of various sizes, and she coordinates with Captain Tsing and Stinger to get them modernized and outfitted for battle.

She's been kidnapped and almost killed so many times that she would rather be prepared for any future occurrences, and she wants Caine to have all the equipment he needs to stage any future rescues that might be necessary.

Then Kalique sends her a gift of a tailor and dresser, siblings that are spliced with something like a parakeet with soft bright feathers for hair. She treats them kindly, but they are baffled when she insists that Caine consult with them on wardrobe design to make sure the outfits are able to hide weapons and provide at least basic body armor.

She asks Caine to teach her some basic self-defense and insists that her growing number of attendants learn as well.

Slowly, her circle of influence starts to grow.

She goes from tolerating the representatives to toying with them, working out signals with her legal team (who sit in during every meeting to make sure she's getting full and complete information) that when someone lies or misleads according to the law, they will tell her. Caine with his near omniscient nose sits in as well, and signals when he smells a lie.

After the first 2 representatives to cross her had been driven from her presence by threat or force, they apparently spread the word, because the most offensive mistakes were not repeated. In fact, while most representatives ignored her attendants, some blanched white at the sight of Caine. A few even bobbed a tiny bow in his direction, and she always treated those with more patience than the others. Just as hurting the ones she loved was a sure-fire way to earn her ire, treating her dear ones with respect was the best way to earn her favor.

When Jupiter sits down with her advocates and looks at the laws for splices compared to the laws for Entitled, it's so foul that she has to take periodic breaks to practice shooting things. Kiza and Larissa, a fox-splice in her Royal Guard, have both tried skeet shooting and, enjoying the challenge, have come up with an even better version. Instead of plain clay disks, each disk has been painted with a face of a Royal House so Jupiter can memorize their names and faces - and take out her frustration at the same time.

Some of the laws for splices are eerily similar to the Jim Crow laws and Nazi restrictions that she's read about, and that makes her angry. When she looks into the steps that must be taken to change the laws, she feels a sick sort of apprehension as she realizes that this massive change cannot be completed in her life-time...

At least, not in her natural lifetime.

Research into past law changes for the Entitled show this is true - it takes millenia for Entitled to change, and she feels sick in the knowledge that she can't have it both ways.

If she holds true to her anti-planet-harvesting-killing-billions-to-make-youth-serum-people-juice-Regenix principles, she will die before any changes to the splice codes are ever made, and she will be complicit in allowing a system of horrible oppression and misery to continue.

If she takes Regenix to stick around and fight for splice rights, she will have to condone and buy and use people juice, made from people like her family and her neighbors and her friends - innocent people.

She spends a few days thinking over this dichotomy and agonizing over the decision so much that when a band of bounty hunters snatch her up during a visit to the grocery store, she's actually relieved to have something else to worry about.

During the ensuing fight, her Royal Guard corners the hunters and she is used as a hostage, the lizard-splice behind her trembling and angry as it presses a gun to her head. In a rough voice, the fox splice demands, "Let us go free and we'll let your Queen live. If you don't, we'll kill her."

All the adrenaline rushing through her body is forcing her instincts to make snap judgments and instant decisions. As the bounty hunters insist that her guard has 2 choices and 2 choices only, it makes the dichotomy she has been struggling with so desperately seem instantly, perfectly clear -

She can do neither. She can do both. There is always more than 2 choices. The dichotomy is false because she can do whatever the beeswax she darn well pleases.

In the moment with a gun pressed to her head she remembers all the self-defense lessons that Caine painstakingly coached her through and Stinger laughingly supervised. She remembers the two tiny maulers that Caine ordered for her and Stinger taught her to use and the clever holsters her tailor made so she would always be armed and never be helpless again.

She makes eye contact with Caine and smiles. Then she folds herself in two as she throws her elbow into the gut of the splice holding her captive and in that moment of opportunity, Caine and her guard strike.

The bounty hunters are killed in the resulting skirmish, and she runs to Caine as her Royal Guards clear the premises and the keepers begin blanking passersby. He holds her tightly and she kisses him fiercely, grinning as she rides the waves of her adrenaline rush.

Then she gets back to her office and gets down to business looking for alternative sources for Regenex. She reminds herself that as much as her father looked for the best in people and reached for the stars, she is also part of her mother - mathematics professor who is strictly practical. She will keep the compassion and idealism of her father and she will temper it with the pragmatism of her mother. The pragmatism may mean hard choices in the short term - but if those short-term sacrifices lead to long-term triumph, then she can't afford to turn them away.

If she can find or create a cruelty-free source for Regenix, that would save BILLIONS of lives each century - and those billions of lives weighed together are worth more than the hundreds of lives that it will cost to keep her alive long enough to figure it out and make it happen - especially if those lives have already been ended.

And if she can work on freeing the splices while she's at it, those are more and more millions of lives that are changed for the better because of her actions.

She makes up her mind. She will dedicate her life and her power to finding alternate sources of Regenix, and to fighting for Splice Rights. And she will stay alive long enough to make the changes - even if it means using Regenix - because no one else is doing a damn thing.

She has the power, the prestige, and the ideals to make a change. She just has to stick around long enough to make sure the change really sticks.

Because she will need allies to make such radical changes, she reaches out to Kalique and begs help with the social scene.

Kalique invites her to small social gatherings on Cerise, and after several months of these 'soft openings,' she hosts a grand fete to officially welcome her mother's Recurrence to her new life.

Most of the Entitled she meets are generally creepy in one way or another. She's noticed that the sleaziest representatives correlate very well with the snobbiest Houses. In contrast, she notes that those few representatives who showed respect to Caine were also showing the most respect to her in person. She wasn't sure if it was because they actually believed in Splice rights or if they were just trying to get on her good side - but either way, she preferred their company.

She begins to build relationships. She still has no idea who she can trust, but she begins to get to know people. Her early interactions with her not-children taught her that 2/3 Entitled are willing to lie, trick, threaten, and kill you and your loved ones in order to get an advantage over you, and the other 1/3 isn't necessarily trustworthy either - the other 1/3 might just be more sneaky. So, she goes into each interaction with both eyes open, never committing to anything, never believing what she hears because it is always a half-truth or even a bald-faced lie.

After a few months have passed and Balem has not been resurrected, the Commonwealth accepts Jupiter's testimony along with the video evidence uploaded from the Jupiter Refinery security cameras that confirm her story.

Due to an out-of-date will that was made when Seraphi was still alive naming her as his sole heir, and due to recompense laws to protect Entitled from schemes and plots like Balem's plot against Jupiter, she inherits everything Balem owns.

Her staff surges as she's taken onboard a huge network of seeded planets, refineries, resource planets, and corporations. She's also had a huge influx of personnel, and she hires another majordomo and a personal secretary to help keep things running smoothly. She's inherited a fleet of ships, and several alcazars, all of which lend her even more consequence.

All harvests are immediately suspended, all Splices are immediately offered the opportunity to buy their own contracts for pennies on the dollar, all employees are offered career counselling, and Jupiter begins to roll out the compassionate business guidelines that begin her legacy.

On Earth, there is a sudden earthquake in Africa that kills hundreds of thousands, and Jupiter organizes a subtle yet effective relief effort, and then, when she is mourning the loss and the devastation - has a sudden idea.

What if - instead of harvesting planets all at once and killing off all the inhabitants, there was a small refinery that only harvested people who had already died?

She felt a little dizzy and sat down for several moments, not sure how she felt about stealing dead bodies and using them to make people juice.

On the one hand, it's still people juice.

On the other, it supplies the same valuable product without actually killing anyone. She supposes it's the difference between murdering your rich uncle to get their inheritance, and letting your rich uncle die a peaceful and natural death and then getting the inheritance anyway.

Google tells her that over 150,000 people die on earth every day. When she adds that number up with her other planets, that's a huge number - bigger than the total harvest of Earth would have been, and yet with no killing.

And although the result is the same (People juice for Regenix) the method is so very different that she summons Chicanery Night, the Jupiter Refinery manager who worked for Balem and begins asking questions.

He is hesitant, because it's always been easier to just swoop in and harvest in giant operation. But he agrees to lead a trial operation on Earth using only naturally-deceased humans in a small corner of South America. She keeps him under near-constant surveillance with multiple spies in place, and he operates under very strict ethical guidelines.

After several months, they've worked out the kinks and the tiny refinery is producing a couple canisters per month. She quietly sets up more tiny refineries dotted across the planet - no killing, just using the people who are already dead.

She's pretty certain this method is going to evolve as her planets become more intelligent and capable of saving lives, but she has decades or centuries to plan for those problems.

In the meantime, she's not giving up on alternative sources of Regenix. She's put out a couple of feelers and hired some very bright researchers. If Balem had survived, she would be in a nasty battle within House Abrasax over the future of the company and the production of Regenix, but as she's inherited his holdings, she's inherited the bulk of the business as well.

Kalique stays mostly to politics, but since she insists on providing a United House Front, she often has to sway much closer to Jupiter's political beliefs in order to preserve that front. This makes more and better waves for Jupiter as Kalique gently massages people into doing what House Abrasax (and by extension, Jupiter) wants them to do. Kalique is the subtlest of the siblings, and so she does her work well. It helps that Jupiter isn't asking her to change anything Kalique actually does - Kalique simply gets to manipulate other people into doing what Jupiter wants. A few laws are minorly amended. A few more treatment options are opened for Splices. A few more employment options and protections for splices from their splicers. Things begin to improve for splices, and tiny requirements at the Commonwealth begin to ease and lighten with barely any notice.

Titus is still sulking. She's happy to ignore him.

Then he catches wind of the changes she's made in the legislature, changes leading to one specific instance - a splice marrying an Entitled.

He shows up in a drunken rage, furious because he's guessed her plans and he doesn't like them. She's astonished to see him being so honest but it's probably because he's so drunk that he's not sure he's actually there.

"Him?" he shouts as he throws one of her inherited vases at the wall. She's sitting on her throne with a mauler in her lap just in case he gets too close. Caine is off-world, which actually works to her advantage, and her guard is scattered about the room duly ignoring his temper tantrum.

"Why would you marry him!?" he screams as he kicks one of her couches. "You could have had ME! You nearly had ME! And now you want to marry HIM?"

He is nearly frothing at the mouth as he shouts and swears and moans. After a good 40 minutes of wailing, he finally sinks down onto her (now thoroughly abused) couch and faces her tiredly.

"Why?" he asks weakly. "This must be a nightmare, and Famulous is simply taking too long to wake me."

She tilts her head at him and asks, "Why not?"

He sputters at that. "He's a SPLICE! And you're an Entitled! And we could have -"

"Titus," she reminds him gently, "You only tried to marry me so you could kill me and take my planet."

He pouts at that - not the flirty, sensual pouts from her stay on his Clipper. This is a genuine, childish pout as she refutes his point.

"Titus, there's a very fixed attitude about splices and pure-humans and entitled, but there's no actual argument for why those attitudes exist. When you look deeper, you'll find that those cultural mores for splices don't have any basis in fact. For all they have a few different characteristics spliced into their genes, Splices are across the board stronger, faster, and more powerful than humans, with enhanced senses and abilities and equal or even greater intelligence. Humans and dogs share 82% of their DNA, did you know that? When look at a Splice, more than 99% of their DNA is human. The only differences are simply to make them even more capable," she said earnestly.

"From what I can tell," she continued, "the reason our society fights so hard to keep splices on the lowest-rung of society is because deep down, we know that if we allowed splices to stand on equal footing with equal opportunity, they would almost certainly outshine us."

Titus fumed at that, but given his relationship with the deer-splice Famulous, his brilliant and devious co-conspirator and assistant, he couldn't actually refute this. He'd actually thought it himself, more than once.

"Titus, you're a very clever and devious man - I have no doubt that if you wanted to meddle in this plan and ruin it for me, you would find a way. I hope you don't do that, because you're my family and I'm getting used to you, and because the next time Caine asks permission to kill you, the memory of your support during this moment will be a very good reason for me to keep you alive." She was only slightly joking.

Titus gave a long gusting sigh. "Famulous has always been smarter than me," he admitted softly. "And quicker, and bolder, and sneakier. If she'd been given my inheritance instead of me, you can be certain she'd have doubled it by now instead of squandering it like I have." Jupiter is sure he must be still stupidly drunk or drugged in order to share this with her. She decides to take a chance.

"Well, the new technicality changes in the laws mean that you could marry her and give her management, and she'd probably have built you a nice little empire within the decade," she suggested.

He snorted, And then sighed again. And then he fell over onto the couch and started snoring.

Jupiter stared for a moment, and then arranged for Famulous to be called to fetch him.

4 years have passed since she first learned the truth about Earth. She has done her work well - the political climate has changed enough and House Abrasax has gained enough allies and enough dominance, and the legal requirements have been opened, so Jupiter asks Caine to make a change.

Because Lycantant mate for life and because they've both been so very busy, they haven't actually consummated their relationship. He often sleeps in her room tangled together with her and spends most of the day by her side. But, she's wanted to be 100% sure that when he goes to her bed, it's because he wants to and because he chooses to. She also wants to show him just how serious she is.

She arranges to take a month off from business, trusting her highly competent staff to keep things running smoothly at least that long. Then, she sends Caine on a quick errand to pick up a very important package from one of her Earth refineries.

In the package is a note smothered with her scent. It says,

My dearest Caine,

There are many dark and terrible things in this universe that I would willingly forget,

but there is one revelation shining brightly and bringing peace and shelter to my heart.

That revelation is YOU.

I used to think there were 7 billion people in the world, and when I met you, you instantly

stood out above the rest - more compassionate, more bold, more brilliant. You lit a light

in my heart that these past 4 years have only fanned into an inferno - I know now there are

far too many people in the universe to ever count - but I stand firm that you are the best and

brightest of all of them. As the sweet song says, "I know you too well to say you're perfect,

but you'll see my sweet love, you're perfect for me." Truly, Caine, you are perfect for me.

I hope you feel the same.

I have spent the past 4 years maneuvering and manipulating and finally have achieved my most

selfish goal - it is now possible for us to marry - not as Entitled and Consort, but as husband

and wife - as mates. As partners. Nothing would make me happier than having you as an equal

at my side. Will you be my mate? Will you marry me?

I'm not sure if this method of asking you is because I'm so dreadfully nervous that I can't breathe

and can't bear to face you, or because you spent a week hunting me before we ever met and this is

a romantic reminder of that. In any case - I have disappeared from Earth. And if you want to marry

me, and be my mate, my partner, my husband, my life - you're going to have to find me.

Fetch me home and make me yours?

I love dogs. I've always loved dogs. I just love you more. 3

Your Majesty, Jupiter

Caine reads the note twice, and then a third time, and as he reads it, he's fighting back tears. He brings it to his nose and smells it deeply - a trace of her, smiling and crying as she writes this note. He picks up the scent particles of a newly built (and still very secret) space port in Russia, and has his first clue.

The hunt is on.