by V. K. Ludwig
The air around what Naney had told me was the gathering area hung thick with the scents of charred meat and herbs. Several fires burned, their flames casting a warm light onto the Jal’zar who gathered around.
I sat among them, letting a soft strip of tendetu fall apart on my tongue before I suckled the grease from my fingers. A swallow of mokhot rinsed it down, my tongue curling at the tartness of the wine-like beverage. As much as I was their enemy, the camp we’d reached an argos ago fed me like a guest.
An old male, his hair graying between his black strands, took a leather bladder and filled my clay mug to the brim once more. I didn’t dare refuse and insult their hospitality. Never had I gathered with Jal’zar before, and the experience was confusing.
Because I liked it.
Wanted more of this life.
Children toddled about, pointing out my lack of tail before their mothers swatted them away. Females cooked strips of meat on stones they’d placed on the embers. Males, either too old or compromised to fight, tossed small engraved bones into the ash in some sort of game.
Naney sat across from me, looking all sorts of beautiful with how those metal clasps on her braids reflected the flames. She cradled a baby, stroking its tailclaw — which hadn’t hardened yet — over a small, gray nose.
The baby giggled.
She laughed.
I smiled.
What a wonderful mother she would make one day; gentle and soft when she hummed for her children by the fire like she did now, but harsh and relentless when she taught them to hunt, fight, and brave the plains.
I’d told her I never dreamed.
But that wasn’t true, was it?
I’d dreamed of my horned son not too long ago, the sensation of dreaming so unfamiliar and strange to me that it had seemed so… real. Could my seed take root in Naney’s belly? Scholars said no, but they’d also claimed it impossible to mate with a Jal’zar female.
Picturing her as my son’s mother was easy at that moment, the thought sending a wave of joy over me. By the time it reached my stomach, it soured and ate me from the inside. What an outrage that would be. Warden or not, they would make it impossible for me to keep Naney and the child safe.
My nails dug into the clay mug. There was that word again, they, sending my mind into a confusing spin.
I was they.
Beside me, the male raised his hand in some sort of religious gesture before he held the sat sphere up. “Mekara works in mysterious ways, sending us a Vetusian to bring our females to safety.”
I offered a non-committal grunt.
The silence which followed tensed my muscles, no matter how brief. For suns, I’d been at odds with myself, not knowing what to do. Betray the Empire? Or betray myself by pretending I wasn’t growing affection for Naney? Somewhere between angry fucks and angrier fights, this had gotten… complicated.
“We should rest so we can leave with the first light,” Naney said and handed the child back to its mother. “Perhaps Mekara will grant you sleep.”
I hoped not. Naney occasionally left cuts and bruises on me, but never had she seen me truly vulnerable, weak. I wouldn’t start now by whimpering in my sleep all night.
“Explain this claiming thing to me.” I scooted closer to her as soon as the old male left. “The warrior told me about a soulbond the night I captured him, but I shrugged it off as nonsense.”
Naney clasped a mug between both hands, the dark brew she constantly sipped on bittering the sliver of air between us. “Zovazay. It’s what we call the bond a male creates by driving his tailclaw between a female’s ribs. His hum will ease the pain and complete the bond.”
The mention of that sound alone flared a new wave of something I’d since identified as pure jealousy. “What kind of bond?”
“A soulbond.” The certainty in her voice made it clear the warrior hadn’t lied. “It connects their souls, allowing them to share each other’s feelings of body and mind. If one of them dies…” she shook her head and took another sip, “the other might share in the mate’s death as well. Some of the females you met are bonded already, but they stay away from their mates for this very reason.”
“Yet another weakness I’ve never heard of.” I emptied my mokhot and let the sting of the alcohol arm me for what I was about to ask next. “The male we encountered today… Did you want him to claim you?”
Her voice dropped into a whisper. “No. He was foolish to let the rut cloud his thinking. Only a male who proves himself strong and capable of caring for a mate claims a female. He was weak.”
Her answer itched somewhere on my chest but, no matter how long I scratched over my shirt, it wouldn’t go away. “I would care well for my mate. And I’m strong.”
“You are, and you fight well.” She shook her head slightly, as if a ridiculous thought had just crossed her mind. “The woman on Earth destined to be yours is a lucky female.”
The thought of my anam ghail used to excite me. But now…? All it did was rouse a sigh from my lips. I’d told Torin that I hoped Earth females were placid, but now it sounded all sorts of boring. Naney’s stubbornness, her fighting skills, her determination… I adored all those things on her, which did nothing to cure my possessiveness.
Because, dammit, I wanted her. Wanted that female who fought me hard but fucked me harder. The beautiful, hissing, scratching spitfire I could never have, no matter how strong my longing.
“We should sleep,” Naney said and rose, abandoning her mug to the ashes. “In their kindness, the people prepared two nabus for us over there by that tree.”
A tree I climbed moments later with much less grace than she did. It grew a few paces away from the mother tree of the group, making it clear their hospitality and trust reached no further than this. I eventually made it to the secluded branch she balanced along.
She pointed at the nabu hidden among the privacy of thick foliage, their fragrance flowery and sweet. “Try not to die by falling out.”
I climbed into it, took my boots off, and carefully placed them on a nearby branch. “I won’t find sleep.”
Slender legs stalked into my nabu, where Naney sat beside me and lifted my shirt. “Let me look at your wounds.”
She lifted the leaves she’d used to cover two gaping holes — one from the arrow, one from the tailclaw. Whatever paste she’d pushed in there numbed the pain, the skin around already less inflamed.
“It will heal well but will leave scars,” she said.
“Solgad has the habit of leaving plenty of those behind.” I took her hand and trailed her fingertips over the one she’d left on my stomach, enjoying how her breaths shortened. “This one is my favorite.”
She licked her lips but shook her head. “I should leave.”
I grabbed her wrist but gentled my touch as I let my fingers slip along hers, allowing them to intertwine. “Do you want to leave?”
“No.” She almost choked on the word. “I’m confused, Zavis.” As she should be. Killing someone of her kind couldn’t have been easy. “Your seed shouldn’t bring me any relief. Your embrace isn’t the one where I should find comfort.”
“Just like your closeness shouldn’t touch places of my soul I didn’t know existed.” That made her look at me, and I held her hand tighter. “But we do all those things to each other, which makes me wonder… could you become pregnant?”
“No.” Her head shook so fast it put a slight sway into the nabu. “Jal’zar need zovazay to rouse seed and womb into creating life.”
“Good.” Anything else might have disastrous consequences, so why did my heart drag heavier on its strings?
Because I might have wanted that child.
With her.
Horns and all.
I slung my arm around her waist and pulled her against my chest, nose shoving through her braids, nuzzling the skin I found underneath. “Stay with me until the sun rises. If the night in the yoni taught me anything, it’s how much I enjoy holding you.”
When nuzz
les turned to kisses along the side of her neck, she moaned. “Why are you helping us, Zavis?”
“My best bet would be an existential crisis.” I brushed my fingers along the sway of her hip, lifting her dress higher one stroke at a time. “Either that or I like you more than I should.”
Naney neither hissed nor snarled when I tugged her leather covering aside, but instead, she reached for my belt. “If you were Jal’zar, would you claim me?”
“Yes,” I rasped with no hesitation, and then helped her unbutton my pants before I guided her fingers over my hard length. “I would have claimed you the night we met. Grabbed you by your hips, pushed you down on my cock, and stabbed you. Then, I would have made that noise.”
If I were Jal’zar.
But I was not and had no way of claiming her, no matter how every part of my body wanted to. Would she even allow it? Or would she send me into the dirt like the Jal’zar male?
I bunched the silk of her dress around her hips and took myself in hand. Prodding her entrance, I took my time to wet my cock on her drenched slit, leisurely stroking up and down. Never had we been like this before — me making the most of every moment, her not fighting what we were about to do.
“Your belly would swell with my child.” I entered her on a groan, shivering at how tightly her cunt gripped my cock. “And you would tickle his nose with his tailclaw like I saw you do earlier.”
“A son?”
Careful strokes prepared her for me while I kneaded her breast through the soft cotton, running a thumb over her hard nipple.
“Many sons. Many daughters. All great warriors,” I whispered and clasped her chin, turning her mouth to meet mine. “Kiss me.”
Our lips connected, not in a kiss but in a battle. It burned and seared with how she once more dug her small fangs into my lower lip. This time, I didn’t pull away. I bit back, kissing her into the kind of submission that was bought with blood and pain.
That, and a hard thrust in retaliation as I growled, “Stop fighting us.”
Naney sucked in a gasp of air, not releasing it until I eased back into a calm rhythm. She kissed me, soft and sweet, showing me the warm female underneath the layers of hatred and hardship.
Twice we’d fucked, sating my lust and her heat alike, but this time was different. I kept my pace even, my strokes gentle, as if we had all the time in a world that wasn’t consumed by war and chaos.
The nabu barely swayed with how I eased in and out of her, all while stroking a belly that wouldn’t grow my child, breasts that wouldn’t nurse it… and the occasional tear running down her cheek. They continued throughout. I counted them all, yet there weren’t enough for all the Jal’zar I had captured or killed.
“I’m sorry, Naney.” For what I was. For what I couldn’t be. “Not much longer and we’ll run out of ways to fund this damn occupation. It’ll be over soon, and we’ll leave Solgad.”
Those words choked my throat like a vice. As much as I wanted to see our ships leave — I had never wanted them to land in the first place — I now feared bringing all this to an end.
Would a strong male claim her once I left? Would she fight him as fiercely as she’d fought me; would she scratch his chest while she rode his cock?
The thought pumped liquid rage into my veins, and my fingers dug into her waist, holding her in place as I thrust deeper once more. He would drive his tailclaw between her ribs, hum for her, and bind her soul to his.
By the Three Suns, I wanted to do all those things to her. The urge to mark her as mine so no other male would ever dare come near her raged within me. It spread across my skin as a shudder crept into my jaws, ached around my molars… until I clamped the base of her neck between my teeth.
She tensed in my arms. “What are you doing?”
I bit down.
I drove incisors through her skin and into her flesh until blood warmed my lips. I mauled her like a savage, groaning when her cunt squeezed my cock so tightly my breath stalled.
Naney jerked, moaned, and muffled her scream against her arm as she reached her orgasm. I followed behind her, muscles contracting in one massive spasm as I spurt my seed inside her womb.
Her little body slackened immediately, placated by my seed. But her eyes! By the Gods, they blazed fire as she stared back at me, irises reflecting the stray rays of the blood-red moon as her shaky fingers brushed over her torn skin.
“You’re insane, Zavis da taigh Broknar.”
Insane. Deranged. Doomed. “Says the female who milked the last drop of seed from my cock the moment I chomped down.”
“You bit me.”
Blood streaked her white braids with how I once more nuzzled the area behind her temple. “You can handle it.”
Something unreadable came over her face. “Why did you do that?”
I wiped my mouth on my shoulder and suckled the remnants of her blood from my teeth. “A few sun cycles from now, you’ll carry the scar of the Jal’zar who claimed you and his baby on your hips. I want you to have all those things and call me a selfish bastard… but this scar will never allow you to forget me. That’s only fair because there’s no way I could ever forget Naney the shimid.” I placed a kiss beside the wound. “This mark represents everything I would give you, if only I could.”
Her eyes glistened with new tears but she blinked them away. “You’re no male easily forgotten.”
I slung my arms as tightly around her as I could. “Stay with me for the night. Please.”
She made no attempt at leaving my embrace, her voice thin when she said, “My pains are gone.”
As was the edge of my hunger for her. My cock softened inside her cunt, my muscles relaxed, and my mind detached from reality. I’d slaked my lust, yes, but I was far from satisfied.
“A moon ago, I saw cones of electricity.” Already my arms eased their clasp on her, fully expecting her to leave because she had no care for me beyond the nature of her heat. “They swirled across the ashes in all shades of blue, and their funnels sucked in dust.”
Silence stretched between us for what felt like eternities until she finally said, “Unutej. Restless spirits.”
“Unutej,” I echoed, and my heart stopped for however long it took her to take my hand between hers. “What else is out there that has no translation?”
“Many things.”
And she named them all while the night grew darker. Explained them to me, giving me the Jalut names for each, telling me about how Mekara did this and Mekara did that.
And I listened while I stroked through her braids, wondering what this was between us. With nature and lust placated, why would a Jal’zar and Vetusian embrace each other for argos?
“Zavis?” she asked after a while.
“Hmm?”
Her thumb stroked over my bottom lip. “You’re not going to betray me, are you?”
“I’m too scared of you to dare it.”
A cute little smile rounded her lips. “When was the last time you slept?”
I shrugged. “Perhaps two suns ago. Maybe three?”
“Let me try something,” she said and pressed her hands against my temples. “Gift him rest.”
My head jerked.
My eyes fluttered shut.
Then, nothing but darkness.
Except for a bright string that hummed at the center of it. It emanated an odd sense of safety, something to hold on to while its resonance lured me into sleep.
Twelve
Zavis
I’d known Torin wouldn’t be happy when I rode into camp with two bloody wounds, choke marks on my neck, a blueish-green bruise on my forehead — and no Naney.
What I hadn’t expected was the way he stomped toward me, his jawline stiffer than his starched collar as he shouted, “Where the fuck were you?”
An odd choice of words in an even odder display of emotions, considering he always kept his shit together under the scrutiny of others. But others weren’t around; in fact, our camp was eerily quiet, almost… abandoned.
I dismounted and opened the saddle girth, the tiny flask of poison Naney had given me for the Jal’zar captive suddenly heavy in my pocket. “Where is everyone?”
“I had to issue a total lockdown on our camp,” he snarled. “Nobody is allowed to leave. Five warriors are locked-up in cells.”
“Another brawl?” They became more frequent among our warriors as frustration over no progress spread. “Detrimental as they are to morale, shutting down the camp seems a bit—”
“I could have used some help, but you weren’t here. No, you disappeared once again, for over a sun, only to return bloody and bruised.”
The rage in his voice did not go unnoticed. “What can I say, Torin? You know how these Jal’zar—”
“Where is the shaman?”
Safe from us. “She didn’t feel inclined to be questioned.”
“I can see that,” he said with a dismissive swat toward my shredded shirt. “We have no shaman and no new leads to the whereabouts of the young warriors. Five of our own are suns away from execution.”
That word pierced through bone and marrow. “Execution? By the Heat of Heliar, what have they done during my absence?”
“Precisely, Zavis, your absence,” Torin echoed, the weight of his stare unnerving. He pinched the bridge of his nose, then jutted me toward the Com Central building. “They have yet to stand trial, but I have no doubt of their guilt. Once you see this, neither will you.”
I dropped the saddle of my yuleshi onto the dirt right along with the headstall. A smack against its rump, and the beast trotted off toward the enclosure where we kept them. Then I followed Torin toward the largest module at the center of our camp.
“I posted additional guards at each exit point,” he said as he typed the access code into the holographic control panel. “All other warriors are confined to barracks. Engineers and scholars are ordered to remain inside their buildings and require passes to move about between them.”
I followed him inside Com Central, each of my footfalls over the silver palathium floor like an earthquake with how stiff my muscles had gone. “Would you please tell me what happened?”
