by V. K. Ludwig
“That he’s supposed to become warden of the Empire after your death.”
“A hybrid leading the Empire,” he scoffed. “That’s going to make headlines once it comes out for sure.”
His hand glided along my waist, over the sway of my hip, and toward my knee. Hot and wet, his tongue lapped the dip beneath my throat while his fingers burrowed between my thighs.
“Come to Earth with me,” he rasped as leisurely strokes parted my legs. “Be my mate. Be the anam ghail of Warden Zavis da taigh Broknar for all the galaxies to see.”
There was no stopping how I reacted to my bonded mate, writhing against his touch, wanting him to seed me. “We can’t be together.”
“Yes, we can.” That certainty in his voice… it only deepened my need for him. “Times are different, Naney. What better way to show the universe that there can be unity between us? I want to care for you and Zerim the way I couldn’t before.”
“Mmm…” The way he pushed over my leather covering teased one moan after another from me. By Mekara… so long since I’d been touched like this. “What about the woman destined to be yours?”
“I met her out of obligation once. She’s beautiful, with skin even darker than yours. I braved a spider for her, a dangerous beast capable of causing terror across Earth’s female population. ‘Oh my God,’ she said when I smashed it, ‘thank you so much for saving me.’” He must have sensed that new wave of heat flaring around my earlobes because he chuckled low. “Zara doesn’t yap or hiss, and she certainly never choked or tried to stab me.”
“She sounds lovely,” I snarled.
“She’s a wonderful female.” He pressed his palm against my mouth before I managed to bare fangs. “But she’s not my female. Whatever the deal is with our bond, it’s stronger than the Gaia link because I don’t want her. She bores me to death. I want your snarls, your hisses. Fuck, I would even put up with your damn tail choking me every now and then if only I can be with you.”
I grappled at my fraying resolve that we could never be together. “It’s only the doing of zovazay.”
“Uh-uh. I wanted you before the bite, before the sting.” His fingertips slipped behind my leathers and dipped into my wet cunt, stroking me, pulsating against the spot that sent tendrils of pleasure through me. “Wanted you so badly, I couldn’t stay away from the female who fought me hard but fucked me harder.”
My nipples grew to aching points at his raw words. “It was lust that brought you to me, Zavis. And it was my heat that drew you in and accepted you.”
“Yeah, I figured you’d say that.” A devious grin tugged on his lips, broadening when he fucked me with two fingers, the male so pleased with my gasps. “Why do you think I came here during your heat?”
“Because you knew I would be defenseless.” So vulnerable, I writhed for him even now, a sun after his return, taking pleasure from his hand where I just wanted him to fuck me. “Zovazay makes me receptive to my mate, amplifying my heat and the need I have to breed with you. Nothing but nature.”
“Nothing but nature, huh? Nothing but lust.” He nibbled my chin, gently at first before he bit down in earnest, curling his fingers inside the sheath of my sex. “From what another shimid told me, your heat will only last a couple more suns.”
And then I would send him away with no hesitation. But not yet, because my womb ached for his seed, even though my mind reeled at the potential consequence of another child.
“Zavis,” I crooned and reached inside his pants, his veined cock hard against my touch.
His deep groan set off sparks inside my womb as his fingers stroked me to new heights of pleasure. They spread when he bucked into my fist, but his hips stilled as he focused on my pleasure, fingering me toward my crest.
“Your seed, Zavis,” I mewled when he made no attempt at taking his cock out, let alone rut me with it.
“This is all you’ll get.” His palm pressed against my pubic bone, pulsating there until, at another curl of his fingers, he pushed me over the edge. “There… come on my fingers, kunazay. Just like that. Fuck, how beautiful you are when you’re this tame.”
My lungs faltered to a halt, and not even a yelp made it past my clenched lips as my peak rolled through me. It tingled along my cunt, burned into my womb… but it wasn’t enough.
And he knew.
He grinned and said, “Sorry, but no more.”
The thought of his refusal angered and terrified me at the same time. “You’re cruel.”
“I’ll gather luplap for you, make you tea, warm your belly. Dammit, I’ll even chant prayers to Mekara with you.” He lapped at my lips before he kissed me, then pulled his fingers from my cunt and brought them between our mouths so we could share the taste. “But I won’t fuck you or take a single ounce of pleasure in any way, shape, or form. Not while you’re in heat.”
I might have hissed at him then. “Why not?”
“Because this is more than lust for me, Naney.” His whisper hung in that sliver of air between us as he pressed his forehead against mine. “It is love… has been since before the bond. And as much as you want to tell yourself that you didn’t grow affection for me all that time ago because you can’t possibly love me, that this is only your nature and can never be more, that lie will run its course in a few suns.”
Eighteen
Zavis
I punched my son bloody.
While I knew little about how to be a good father, even I understood that wasn’t how it was done. To say this situation turned out more complicated than I’d anticipated would’ve been an understatement. Convincing Naney to come to Earth with me had posed a challenge from the start — Zerim made it near impossible.
Mug clasped in hand, I crossed the gathering area where females rolled up nabus for our upcoming move to another tree. Naney tied leather pouches shut that contained her dried herbs and shoved them into a saddle bag that rested on the ground.
“Here.” As promised, I reached her freshly prepared luplap tea, brewed the way Jal’zar females had taught me on Odheim. “We ran out of syrup, so it’s quite bitter.”
She tried to hide that hint of a smile coming to her lips, as if I didn’t sense her joy over my gesture through our bond.
Naney could pretend all she wanted. I remembered every detail of that last night we’d spent together in the nabu. How we’d held each other, caressed each other, opened up to each other. She might not have allowed herself to love me then, but by the Three Suns and Mekara combined, she would now.
“My cramps are tolerable.”
But they grew stronger each sun I spent in her presence, and I’d learned why. Her kind carried an egg sack at the end of her uterus, like one massive ovary. It inflamed during her heat, with semen being the only thing to bring true relief. As her bonded mate, she was only receptive to me now.
I stroked through her hair. “I love you.”
Her gaze sunk then, but I didn’t care. It was something I should have told her then. But I hadn’t, and now I would tell her ten times each sun, making up for fourteen sun cycles deprived of the opportunity.
“Aren’t you worried about our son?” I glanced around camp. “He’s been gone for two nights.”
“Zerim returned an argos ago with a kill.”
I hadn’t seen him return. “He’s still avoiding me.”
“He often seeks the silence of the plains behind the yoni to do the gutting.” The moment I turned away, she added, “Give him time, Zavis.”
As much as I wanted to, I didn’t have time. We didn’t have time. About one thing Naney had been right: I’d drawn too much attention when I rode across Solgad to find her. Little had I known that my detection might put my hybrid son at risk.
I turned away and rounded the yoni, steadying my steps on the massive boulders lining the outcropping. Vines covered most of it, the water within cold with little salt content.
I knew I’d found Zerim when a warning hiss cut through the heat, followed by, “You’re not wanted
here.”
He kneeled in the dirt, not sparing me a glance as he fleshed a hide with the broad edge of a stone. His hair, put into one large braid, rested between his dark gray horns. As much as I’d thought he looked nothing like me at first, that wasn’t quite true, was it?
Purple eyes, tail, white hair…
From afar, anyone would have thought him Jal’zar. But Zerim was much taller, his entire frame wider, stronger, and not quite as agile as his full-blooded kind.
I leaned against a boulder only a few steps beside him and jutted at the skinned and ash-rubbed beast dangling from a low branch. “You hunted down an ushti?”
“And two tendetu.” Both draped over a rock with arrows protruding from what had been a straight shot to the heart.
A wave of pride swept over me. “Your mother said you’re an excellent hunter. Have you ever shot a gun?”
“When I was six, I relieved a Vetusian of his gun and shot him straight through the eye after he tried to capture Mother.”
A weapon he was able to fire because he was a hybrid, which likely overrode the genetic reader on the triggers. “So much about that gun safety I wanted to teach you.”
His upper lip peeled over his small fangs. “Vetusians can only teach hate and destruction.”
He’d clearly inherited the hate part. “You’re half-Vetusian.”
Another hiss. “I am Jal’zar! Born and bred right here on Solgad.”
I shifted on the boulder. “Yeah, I know. I’m the one who bred you.”
There was a hitch when he scraped the stone over the hide, and his eyes flicked toward the end of his tail for the fraction of a second before he mumbled, “I am Jal’zar.”
Great. Not only did my son hate my guts, but he also suffered from an identity crisis. Not that I blamed him after what Naney had told me. It made convincing him to come to Earth unlikely, given he’d spent all his life proving to himself and others that he was Jal’zar. If he didn’t come, neither would Naney.
I observed him for a while.
Where did Zerim fit in?
He was a male born to do a female’s job, for the first time in the history of Solgad. Without a tailclaw, he would never claim a mate in the traditional sense. Or never at all?
“In that case, how about you teach me?” I walked over and kneeled beside him. “I’ve never fleshed a hide before.”
He was quick to toss to me the rock, ridding himself of this strenuous-looking task. “Scrape it with long, even strokes. Press too hard and the skin will rip.”
Gooey, gelatin-like stuff wetted my fingertips as I worked the rock over it. “Like this?”
“Whatever.” He rose and walked over to the dangling ushti, making quick work of gutting it.
“Did your mother tell you—”
“She told me everything,” he clipped. “That you betrayed her to keep the females safe. That you freed Jal’zar whores.” He turned, pointing an actual gutting knife at me. “It changes nothing.”
If that kid wasn’t stubborn like his mother… “Changes nothing? Your mother—”
“My mother is the strongest person I know,” he barked loud enough that I jumped to my feet and dropped the rock, fully expecting another fight. “Instead of feeding herself, she fed me and a dozen others. I was five when I first learned shredded tree bark isn’t truly a meal. The bowstring bloodied her fingers from hours of hunting. She chanted prayers to Mekara until her voice was hoarse. You don’t deserve her, Vetusian.”
“She’s my soulmate,” I ground out. “Once you come to Earth with me, I’ll give her everything she deserves. A comfortable life where she knows no hunger, no war. I will marry her as is custom there, and will provide well—”
“Everyone knows you lost your fortune.”
The truth of that stung. “I can still afford a few clay mugs, a rock and, if you behave, I might buy you a bow.”
He scoffed, “I won’t come to Earth, Vetusian.”
The way he said that word dripped with contempt. “So that’s the issue here? What I am?”
“What you are doesn’t matter!” His sudden shout echoed from the surrounding rock as his steps toward me crunched the grit underneath his naked soles. “You left her alone. In the moment of her greatest need, you abandoned your female, leaving her to fend for herself, to survive with your son in her belly.”
My stance widened with each aggressive lash of his tail. “I had no choice.”
“You had four choices.” He squared his shoulders. “North, east, south, and west. Instead, you turned your back on her and escaped to Odheim, leaving her behind with a fate she couldn’t rid so easily.”
My eyes flicked to the bloody gutting knife. “There was no room among your kind for me then, and there’s no room now.”
“But there’s room for us on Earth?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting,” he said. “How many Jal’zar live on Earth?”
I ground my molars together, not liking how he spun my argument around on me. “None.”
“None.” He tightened his fingers around the bone handle of the blade. “Go home, Vetusian, while you still can. I won’t allow you to bring more misery upon her.”
I jutted toward the knife. “You going to stab me with that?” It clinked to the ground right then, and adrenaline seeped into my veins at the sight of his clenching fists. “If you attack me again, she’ll sense it. Your mother will come running and have both our hides.”
He sidestepped toward the wide-open plains. “Not if we bring enough distance between you.”
Well, that was just fantastic. While Torin sat on Earth and played tea party with his daughters after he braided their hair, I had to beat some sense into my Jal’zar son. Guess that was what one got when making a baby with a spitfire like Naney.
Fuck it.
He’d denied my existence for two suns.
This was an improvement.
My legs crossed on their own, following him toward a copse of young trees, the underbrush thick with tall ferns. Underneath me, the drought cracks weaving across the plains widened, promising pain once I hit the ground.
We stared at each other, observed each other’s movements, assessing the flow of the motion and potential weaknesses. Once we returned bloodied and bruised to camp, Naney would first lecture him and then scold me. For a moment, that sounded like a family. A dysfunctional one, yes, but family, nonetheless.
“How’s your fang doing? Still wiggling?”
“It’s fine.” He swiped his tail at me.
My left leg pulled out from underneath me, but I steadied myself on his horns. “Stop pointing your horns. Makes them too easy to grab.”
“Perhaps I want you to grab them.” Because he tried once more to toss me, this time against a tree trunk.
I didn’t let him, and instead yanked him toward me. “Never try a move on someone already familiar with it.”
Lifting my legs, I let my weight pull him toward the ground. My spine crashed against it, ripping a groan from me. Not nearly as loud as his, though, when I braced my soles against his stomach and kicked him into the dirt.
I immediately pressed my shin against his ribcage as my other foot pressed down on his tail. With the way he bucked and kicked his knees into my back, holding him down proved a challenge.
“Your cockiness cost you your defense.” I sent my fist toward his jaw… and punched him. “By the Heat of Heliar, will your armor!”
He groaned, fangs shifting, face scrunching with pain. “I don’t know how!”
Another, much lighter punch. “Bullshit. You’ve done it before.”
He tilted his head and scratched the sharp point of his horn across my cheek, sending a deep burn into my skin. “The scales close because of the pain.”
“You’re not supposed to close them because of pain, but before that!” I grabbed his horn and pressed one side of his face into the ash, then readied my fist for another punch. “You see where I’m aiming?”
His pu
rple eyes widened, and his nod struggled against my clasp. “Yes.”
“Imagine where it’ll hurt. Focus on that one area and think pain. Three, two, one—”
I punched again.
My fist met hard scales.
Knuckles cracked.
Pain stiffened the joints in my fingers and, when his knee kicked against my back once more, I rolled off him. Ash choked the back of my throat with how I groaned, the strain so violent I couldn’t move my arm.
The sensation stood in stark contrast to that wide expansion of my chest, ribs almost cracking with the pride swelling within. “There! Now you got it.”
“Yeah, now I got it.” That prick kicked his heel right into my side.
I grabbed his ankle and pulled. He didn’t fall, but it unbalanced him enough that he paddled the air and spun. That was when I swiped my leg against his, bringing him down beside me.
We lay there for a while, both of us heaving, coughing against the cloud of ash. A warm trickle along my cheek told me his horn had cut me deep enough to need stitches. That scar would go well with the one his mother left on my stomach.
“You fight well,” I said after a while.
There was a moment of silence, then a sigh before he finally said, “Not as well as you.”
“For starters, the Empire trained me since I was four.” Groaning, I rolled onto my stomach and pushed myself onto all fours. “I might be old, but that translates into experience. Not to mention that I’m heavier than you, and taller. But your main problem is that you’re uncertain about your center of gravity.”
At that, his head turned to face me. “My what?”
“Your mother is an excellent fighter and taught you well,” I said. “Problem is, she taught you to fight like a Jal’zar, quick and agile. But you’re not, Zerim. Certain moves will never become as defined, no matter how hard you practice. What you need is to listen to your body, and then modify them.”
He tortured his lips before he mumbled, “I’m Jal’zar.”
By Mekara, he was worse than his mother. “Right. But you’re a tall Jal’zar, correct? Probably heavier than others your age?”
