C’ynyt’s eyes went to a far corner and for some reason Wyst felt dread hit the pit of his stomach.
“I don’t know as I’d call it momentous so much as I’d name it fucking cataclysmic.” Was the former pirate speaking true? “Think about it, when was the last time a female gave birth on your worlds? Twenty-five or thirty yons ago? How will this baby be accepted by those who want something pure-bred and male to draw its first breath?”
C’ynyt stared at each of the other males in turn. “The truth of it is this kid will have a target on her back the moment she exits her human-mother’s womb. No way in hell she will be accepted by your home worlds.” He shook his head and Wyst’s eyes were drawn to the lights glittering off his shaven pate. “She’s a half-breed, for one. And she’s female. From what Bronsyn’s said, both are goddamn unacceptable by your current quest Commander.”
“Which makes the youngling a problem,” Tyshar stated in summation.
C’ynyt nodded solemnly, each movement of his chin scoring within Wyst. “You bet your ass.”
“Are there any measures we can take to change the current tide of public opinion?” Wyst just had to ask, thinking of a time when it would be his pixie, rounded with his child and about to allow their hybrid progeny out into the world.
The pirate’s lips tilted up in a curled position Wyst named as ‘rueful’. “Didn’t work for me and my kind, but you’re welcome to try.”
Wyst felt it then, the fullness of what he’d blithely accepted in following Rykhan and his mate on their journey to protect their unborn youngling from Stege’s plans. That he couldn’t ever go home, never again walk the forests and fields of Nutrol, but had chosen instead to reside on a distant, yet utterly beautiful planet he’d never heard of before. One on which he’d rear his children, listening to their sweet lilting voices calling to their human mother. A world which contained his Pam and their future together, a future tinged with both the beauty of life containing a mate and younglings, but without the normality of the technology he knew.
And in that moment, Wyst knew. Knew Gyed had chosen wisely in not only setting him on a different path than the one he’d sought, but in bringing his little sprite both into his life, and provided undeniable proof she had been chosen to complete him.
It is as it should be bubbled up in his mind and with a fervent heart he sent the thought out into the ether with acceptance and gratitude.
*.*.*.*.*
Blythe had brought out the big guns this time, both with books and the internet. Ever intent on cluing me into what my Leah was facing in giving birth. Birth to a hybrid kid who Dani’s mom said would be a ‘challenge’.
She would know having given birth to two of them herself.
So I took her words as truth, although she’d promised to be there. To help Leah and even me as little Starla came forth.
Or gushed forth, if what I was currently viewing in the laptop’s screen made any sort of sense. Watching a live birth wasn’t for the faint of heart that was damn sure!
“Girl, you’ve gotta stop closing your eyes at the yucky parts,” Dani cautioned. “This shit is real and you gotta face what your girl is gonna go through.”
“But even your mom admits no birth is the same,” I called, but my protest was weak as shit, much like my voice. “Maybe Leah’s will be one of the easy, breezy kind.”
As stink-eyes went, Dani was good at them. “But what if it’s not? What if it goes on for days and she’s weak, about at the end of her endurance, kid not even crowning for fuck’s sake? What are you gonna do then, huh?”
I couldn’t help it; help the tightening of every visceral cell in my body at Dani’s words. Not only because I could picture what was described in my mind’s eye (thanks to a lot of you tube stuff I wished I’d never seen), but because I ached to know how to handle all the worst of that sort of sitch. “I don’t know. Do you?”
My widened, dry gaze went to Blythe, including her in our convo as she removed a kettle full of boiling water from the burner and calmly poured it into teapot she’d prepared earlier. “Yes, I do. And I will be right by your side as you attend to your friend.”
Her gaze slid to Dani. “Stop feeding her fear.”
That Dani’s grin held no measure of remorse told me more than I needed to know about our quasi-friendship. Forcing me to level a zinger her way. “So how did last night’s walk with Ty go?”
Ooh, if looks could kill, I would be toast there at the table shucking fresh peas from their pods. The fact Dani’s family kept a garden was both awesome and frustrating by turns. Because in their house if you wanted food, fresh food, you had to work for it.
“Fine,” Dani finally stated on a tone I knew meant I should shut up. But I wasn’t about to, not after her needling me about Leah’s birth and how she thought I wouldn’t be any sort of help.
“Fine as in he finally found the balls to kiss you or just fine because all you did was walk and talk?” I’d already cornered Ty, pumping him for intel on what he thought of Dani. And to tell the truth, I was kind of jealous. If only Wyst had shown that particular brand of gotta-have, she’s-all-I-want commitment, I would’ve never let him go near those women at the truck-stop. And our Ty had already asked me for instruction about kissing her, so it was a viable question in the whole scheme of things.
But maybe I should’ve considered the audience before asking it.
“Dani! You wouldn’t!” Blythe exclaimed, whipping toward her fully grown daughter with a glare.
Shit. It was only a kiss for cripe’s sake!
“I didn’t, mom.” But Dani’s scowl was reserved for me and me alone. One I knew I more than deserved. “I’m still pure as un-driven snow.”
But the girl offered a low-spoken aside. “Only thanks to you, bitch.”
Satisfied, Blythe moved off to do whatever in another room.
“Sorry, but you earned that,” I said, caving because the truth of it was, I really liked Dani. And even more liked her for Ty.
“My dad’ll never approve,” she shot back, her eyes trained on the area her mother escaped into. “So, your guy may be totally hot and completely into me, but unless I get my tra-pa’s permission, nothing is ever gonna happen.”
“How do you feel about him?”
Dani’s eyes went an unfocused sort of soft and her blue lips tilted up into a gentle smile. “He’s the fucking bomb.”
“I know, right?” And my heart soared even as I watched her reach underneath the table to scratch at her thigh. I’d seen Ty naked when he and a couple of his buds had done a Magic Man in the pool at Troon North.
His wahrom encircled his leg about four inches above his knee.
The exact same spot Dani felt the need to scratch.
It was a wonder I kept my ‘metal horns’ to myself, but I couldn’t help whispering a kinda, sorta loud, “Score!” which made the both of us laugh.
*.*.*.*.*
It was the best part of C’ynyt’s rota, at least in his opinion.
The one where his beautiful Blythe came to join him in their bed, completing the full circle of his day. One where he woke up to her, taking her with sleepy adoration for all she’d given him and the ability to rest at the end with her curled, warm and tired against him, recounting their activities that kept them apart during the daylight hours. Of all the blessings he’d experienced after his horrible quasi-death on Earth’s surface, his Blythe was Gyed’s reward for surviving, for all the pain he’d suffered and had been for years and years.
“She loves him,” the beauty at his side murmured, tucking herself into a position she’d claimed as her own so long ago. “I don’t think we can break whatever they have between them.”
His hybrid daughter with a Picari Protector? A male from the very society which had rejected him and those of his ancestors?
Yes.
He could see it; understand the certain symmetry of the pair. Although his heart didn’t want to believe it, to let the female youngling of his heart go, to
release her from his care. “Do you think he is her one?”
“Have you seen her with him? Even without spying her tyrom, I believe she is.” Blythe’s voice held a finality which caused C’ynyt’s hearts to beat both hard and fast.
He reached to the shoulder of his mate which held his own warrior’s stone on the woman he called his own. Four lines of hardness met his fingers, warming as he caressed them, creating fissures of desires in those embedded in both their skins, originating on the opposite shoulder from him. Blythe was such a match for him, so much a part of himself, his touch resounded in his deepest being. “He better deserve her.”
His wife of so many years, the one who had stood by his side, taken on more duties because of his mark of a rebel prevented him from mixing with the humans, kissed him softly. “I think he will. Though she’s making him wait.”
“Which is as it should be,” he groused, giving up all pretense of talking about his daughter and rolling into the soft warmth of his heart’s own. “Come love me, mica blay.”
“With pleasure,” she whispered, turning to him and aligning the stones, the tyrom they shared as her tongue met his.
*.*.*.*.*
“No, no and oh hell, to the no,” I yelped, drawing both men’s eyes to me. It was me and Wyst and Ty in the bedroom at the Droos’s house. A borrowed room, but one I’d already set about claiming as mine, what with the print-outs of the pics of my guy and me I’d taped to the walls. Our smiling faces emblazoned on simple copier sheets, but more than captured in the pics our connection more than exemplified in the snaps. “We aren’t leaving until Wyst is fully recovered. Leah still has time before she pops.”
“But we needs to go, pixie,” Wyst replied. “I can protect you on the last part of our journey.”
Yeah, he probably could if what I received in bed a couple of times of day was any indication. The warrior had stamina that was for damn sure. And don’t even get me started on how he’d learned to find the all-access pass to make every one of my pinks things quiver.
“Do you think he’s 100% good to go, Ty?” Though Wyst was slow to speak, I couldn’t restrain myself. “As in totally healthy and stuff?”
“I think it is safe to rely on what your mate knows to be true,” my dark-skinned friend replied. The bastard! I was looking for a way to keep Wyst from traveling for a least another couple of days.
Who knew what we’d encounter at the ranch? And that was even without thinking about what could go wrong on our trek to get there. Let’s face it, Wyst and I tended to attract trouble when we were together. Whether it was from escaping truck-stops ho’s, or home-grown, would-be thieves and doings of Picari-kind, we seemed to be in constant battle or on the run.
Though I had to admit, once we were at C’ynyt’s place, things had gotten easier.
“Bronsyn thinks we should convince the Sulari to join us in South Dakota,” Ty said, turning the conversation to different matters. “The two have become friends and I think he worries for our cousin’s safety and continued existence, especially in light of those Picari who are sure come on our heels.”
“And you, Tyshar?” Wyst, for once, cut to the chase having seen the interest Ty had in Dani. Shit, it was hard to miss by anyone’s standards. And I do mean anyone, her father included. Making me shoot a gaze at the scary, bad-assed dude every time Ty entered a room where Dani was present, wondering if that day was the day Dani’s dad would lose his shit at the connection between his daughter and our Ty. “Will you be able to take yourself away in order to help our brother and his mate?”
Ty blinked deep and turned his chin away.
Leaving me to somehow think of old Pete, of gas station/mini-mart fame.
The first person we’d met in Wayward.
Pete had come by often, visiting with one and all but mostly he’d sequestered himself with Wyst more than anyone. The two had become best-buds, which I thought was an unlikely pairing. That was until Wyst confided in one of our very enthusiastic afterglows, after one of our erotically stellar, breath-stealing joinings, Pete reminded him of his grandfather.
And in that moment, Ty’s response was like Pete’s whenever he talked about his wife. A simple, plain yearning that defied any sort of description by me or anyone.
“She completes me in a way I do not yet understand.”
Tyshar’s words spoke of a desire not for only closeness, not just content to have her near. But to hear her voice, the ache to have his Dani within eyesight whenever she spoke. Within range enough to hug her tightly, to touch her if he had a chance.
And glancing at Wyst, I knew the feeling.
More than.
So it was after Ty left to find his rest on C’ynyt’s lumpy couch, I went to my man. The warrior I knew who held my heart as much as I held his, but who I still hadn’t claimed. Not out loud anyway.
But I would.
Someday.
Chapter Twenty Eight
All three of the Protectors hung their elbows over the fence, watching Earth’s version of the nublers, or what passed for such beasts called ‘horses’ there on his pixie’s planet. Beings which only had four legs instead of six as they cavorted in the corral.
“So similar, yet so not what we’re used to,” Tyshar mumbled, his eyes traipsing over the beasts that ran within the enclosure, muscles quivering as they passed by. “Have you ridden them, discovered the differences?”
“I have,” Rykhan stated firmly. “They are viable, considering their limitations in the lack of extra limbs.” Eyes gleaming, the Protector pointed out certain ones. “She’s shy, but fast. That one? Yes, he is a prize. Swift of foot but distracted by his ladies.”
Wyst’s gaze moved to the stud who chomped and used his body to press the females of his harem into submission by running them into the boards. “He wields a strong command over his females and his young.”
Rykhan turned his head to his warrior brother. “Which is the natural order of males and their females?”
Wyst couldn’t help his chuckle. “Only if the female lets him. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but not all females, human or otherwise, easily relinquish control.” The other two warriors laughed along with him as they moved from corral towards the outbuildings.
“I know we’ve only been apart for a little more than a wend, but I miss spending time with those of my own kind, who speak my native language.” Rykhan’s head was down as if watching his steps, his hands shoved in his pockets as he made his confession.
Tyshar clapped a hand on one of Rykhan’s shoulder in reply, but turned the conversation a different direction. “So outside of taking care of your mate and the animals, how have you spent your time? Have you been working on fortifications or defensive measures to secure the property?”
“It took me three days to make the main house livable since it has not been inhabited in a while. With my Leah close to birthing, I did not want her to breathe in the dust or the fumes of the cleansing agents.” Rykhan sighed and glanced at the first outbuilding. “It’s probably just as bad in each of the three small houses as well as the upstairs rooms in the main house. Fair warning, you will need to clean whichever place you intend to stay.
“As for defenses, I have been in contact with Arbrynt who had me order a satellite TV dish which he says can be added to, providing a level of security. I also discovered a room underneath the kitchen which can be used for hiding although Leah can no longer safely navigate stairs in her condition. I’d be grateful for any additional ideas and help in making the ranch safe.”
Wyst cleared his throat and thought of how to word his next question. “Your mate has grown larger, much larger since last I saw her. Is that normal for human females?”
“Dani’s mother believes she will bring forth your daughter within the next two wends,” Tyshar added.
“Which means Jyrl’s estimation was off by more than a bit.” Rykhan shook his head and turned to look at the main house. “Why am I not surprised? To speak honestly, I’d wonder
ed if I was going to be the only one to help my Leah when her time comes and have spent a fair amount of heras on Earth’s internet to study the birthing process.”
Wyst’s feet stuttered to a stop and he looked at his friend in shock. “Males can help deliver a youngling?”
Rykhan frowned before replying. “I do not know about others, but if I am all the help available I’ll do everything I can to help my mate bring our daughter forth.”
“I think that was one of the old customs, Wyst, and not a statement of fact. Since you grew up on Nutrol surely you assisted in the birth of your animals, correct?” At Wyst’s nod, Tyshar continued. “I believe it is much the same in all mammals, including females. Although I cannot tell you the reasoning behind the old strictures of no males attending the birth of their younglings.”
“New planet, new rules,” Rykhan announced with a grin and a shrug before opening the heavy door leading directly into the kitchen.
“Now I for one am hungry. Do you think you can talk your mate into preparing the meals now that you’re here? Tsiran knows my female and I have tried, but no one has your pixie’s touch in the kitchen.”
“The Pam is not my mate,” Wyst growled but turned his head away as he felt a guilty heat hit his face. “Tyshar will probably recite the Tragyard long before I will.”
His words met the mark in turning Rykhan’s attention to their darker-skinned brother. “You have found your mate?”
Tyshar didn’t respond except to go to the refrigerator and grab a bottle of water.
Rykhan’s frown more than spoke of his confusion. “Who is the female? Someone you recently met?”
Still the other warrior said nothing, calming drinking as his eyes roamed over the eating area attached to the fully appointed kitchen.
“Do not tell me it was the Basule female who traveled with you on the two-wheeled, death-trap of a transport you arrived on!”
Wyst Page 27
