by Octavia Kore
“You use this language because you cannot hear?”
Clara nodded as she chewed, swiping her palm at the corners of her mouth to clear away the juice from the fruit. “It’s mostly used by people like me who are deaf, but there are a lot of hearing people who learn to sign so they can communicate with their family or friends.” She’d only personally known a handful of people who used it.
“Would you teach me?”
“Teach you?” Clara twisted her neck so that she could look at him. “You want me to teach you to sign?”
“Please.”
No one had ever taken the time to learn ASL for her before, not even the foster families she’d spent her childhood with. She’d always been the one expected to adapt, and yet here was Zaheer, an alien on a far-off planet, asking for her to teach him. He was willing to learn even though they already had a means to communicate with one another.
“Okay, if you really want me to, but on one condition.” She leaned her head back against his chest, smiling when he automatically lowered his mouth to hers. “You explain to me what you meant when you said I was going to need my energy for what was to come.”
His lips stilled against hers, and he pulled back just enough that she could see his face. “I told you before that Krunkeeli pups are selected at birth by the High Priest because of certain things they sense within them, primarily the mental bond we use to communicate. Only a bite from the pack’s Alpha is capable of turning a chosen Krunkeeli. I also told you that only those who respond to the bite may house a guardian. Those who do not stay within the temple and become priests.”
“Right, I remember that.”
“You are exhibiting symptoms of the transformation.” One of his hands cupped her jaw, gently tipping her face. “You are not Krunkeeli so I didn’t think it would cause you any harm or affect you this way.”
“Affect me this way? You think that I’m going to change? That I’m going to… transform?” Clara’s heart began to race.
“I think it’s possible that the goddess has selected you to house a guardian, but we can’t be sure until you shift for the first time.”
Pain shot through her sides and lower back, making her grit her teeth. Was this what Zaheer and the other guardians went through as children? How awful and terrifying that must have been for them. “Were you scared the first time you shifted?”
“Yes. There was no one there with me except the other pups and the Alpha. I wished for my mother, prayed to the goddess that she would allow her to come back and comfort me.” Zaheer’s fingers trailed down the side of her neck. “I will be right here with you, Aanih. Do not worry.”
River hopped from her braid onto Zaheer’s arm, sliding down into the male’s lap where he’d curled his tails around Clara’s legs. A tiny set of fangs appeared from the creature’s mouth a second before they were buried into the fur at the tip of Zaheer’s tail. Her mate snarled as his appendage twitched, and Clara tapped the little one’s hip, signing ‘no’ and shaking her head. “Maybe they’re hungry again?”
“Tahi are always hungry.” Zaheer took hold of the baby’s scruff and slipped the tip of his finger into their mouth, prying the tiny jaws apart until he lifted a defeated River into the air. His tails twisted around one another, and Clara watched as threads began to appear. Zaheer wrapped them around his finger before coaxing the strands off and handing them to a now delighted River. The little tahi clutched at Clara’s braid when placed on it, content with the snack.
The muscles in her legs twitched, and Clara hissed at the bone-deep pain in her hips. Zaheer gathered her into his arms, murmuring apologies when she whimpered and groaned, biting her lips against the ache as he stood. He handed her another fruit to go along with her unfinished portions and crossed the room, stepping through the barrier of the treehouse. Like the little tahi in her hair, Clara clung to her mate as he began to descend the tree.
“Are you going to tell me where you’re taking me?” she asked.
A soft smile tipped his lips, and he shook his head. “It’s a surprise.”
Chapter 17
Clara
“You could have at least given me a second to put on my suit before sweeping me outside where anyone who comes across us can see my…” Clara gestured vaguely down at herself. “Everything.”
“No one will see your everything. Don’t worry.”
Clara narrowed her eyes at him. “The male covered head to toe in fur tells me not to worry about my nudity.”
“Talking can help take your mind off of the pain you’re feeling,” Zaheer told her when she hissed again, this time from the needling pain in her feet.
“What should I talk about?” Clara asked when he landed on the ground. She expected him to let her down, but he kept her pressed against his chest as he set off away from the treehouse. “What do you want to know about me?”
“How did you get to our world?”
“It’s a long story.”
“We have time.”
The butterflies in her belly took flight at the sight of his smile. There was no way she’d ever get used to the idea that this male was all hers. She told him the story of her capture and abduction as he carried her through the forest and glossed over a lot of details from her time in the lab, not wanting to recall them just then. He listened without interrupting when Clara explained how she and the other human test subjects escaped the lab, crash landed on his planet, and then were forced to leave the ship to search for food. “That’s what we were doing when you found us.”
“This thing—the device—that the aliens stole from you, what was it?”
Clara took one of his free hands and brought his fingers up to the space just behind her ear, running them over the small bump. It was all that remained of her implant. “It’s called a cochlear implant. If I still had it, the outer piece would connect right here. It allowed me to hear in a way that was similar to what other people hear, but it’s not exactly the same.”
“You chose to get this implant so that you could hear?”
“Not really. My parents gave me up when I was really young and the people who fostered me—who took care of me at the time—thought it would make it easier for me to find a good home if my hearing was fixed.”
“Fixed?” He said the word as if it were something filthy, something distasteful. “You did not require fixing.” She felt the presence of another being, the same one she’d encountered the day she gazed into Zaheer’s memories, and it sent goosebumps rushing up her arms. “You were not broken then, and you are not broken now. My tsa, whatever flaws your people saw in you, know that they do not exist in our eyes.”
The words moved through her, spreading warmth everywhere they touched. No one outside of the few people she’d met in the deaf community had ever come close to understanding, but this alien—her alien—was far more accepting than most of humanity. Clara nestled her face into Zaheer’s chest, pressing a kiss to his white fur as he continued to navigate through the trees.
“It was easier to ‘fix’ my problem than it was to learn another way of communication. ASL takes practice and time that they either didn’t have to devote to it or didn’t want to devote to it.” She shrugged, but Clara couldn’t stop the tears from welling up in her eyes. “Even if the Grutex had been able to somehow give me my hearing, I’m not sure what I would have done. I never felt like being deaf took away from who I was, and some days I wish my foster parents had allowed me to decide for myself once I was older about whether or not I wanted the implant.”
Even with the implant, growing up deaf had its challenges. She’d been the subject of many cruel jokes, had been bullied and mocked, taken advantage of, and had dealt with the looks of pity from others. Clara had fought twice as hard to be taken seriously, and even then it hadn’t always been enough. There was so much more to her than what others saw.
“It doesn’t really matter now anyway.”
“Why is that?” Zaheer asked.
“I don’t need
the implant or ASL to communicate with people. The ability to speak along the bond actually allows me to ‘hear’ someone with far more clarity than the implant ever did.”
Zaheer stepped between two large trees and stopped suddenly, his gaze boring into hers. “If you teach me, then I will speak with you this way if you’d like. We don’t have to speak along the bond if you don’t wish to.”
“I’d love to teach you and get to use it more, but I also like hearing your voice in my mind. From what I gathered during my time with the Grutex, the abilities I gained there weren’t something they could control. We all went through a process of having our bodies awakened and each of us were different. I wasn’t given this ability because I was born deaf. I’m starting to believe that I was born deaf because of whatever DNA was inside me that they woke up.”
“This wasn’t something you were born with?”
Clara shook her head and tried to wriggle around so she could see where they were. “They weren’t always this strong. I remember being able to learn certain things from touching an object when I was little, but I was never able to do the same with people.” Zaheer shifted Clara, turning to the side so she could finally see where he’d brought her. They were standing on the outside edge of a small shaded clearing. The ground here was completely covered in the softest-looking grass, and tiny gray flowers that reminded her of clover blooms. Stones of varying sizes circled the clearing in between the trees that stood like silent sentinels. “What is this?”
“A banith circle.” Zaheer crouched down, setting her on his thigh. “Watch.” He reached down and gently brushed the top of the grass with his fingers.
A ripple began to spread through the clearing, and Clara’s eyes widened when the first of the tiny insects emerged and propelled itself into the air. They were the same guppy-faced butterfly creatures she’d encountered the day after her escape attempt. She’d watched in wonder then, but this time the sight of them was breathtaking.
There must have been hundreds of them inside the circle of the trees and as Clara and Zaheer watched, the creatures organized themselves, forming a beautiful multi-colored tornado of swirling frills and dangling legs. Higher and higher they rose, moving up through the thin lower canopy until they disappeared into the denser foliage at the top. A couple stragglers circled the clearing, drifting away from them as Zaheer stepped inside and lowered himself to the ground.
“I liked the way you smiled the first time you saw the banith take flight,” her mate said, nestling her naked body between his spread legs in the grass before pulling her back against him. Zaheer pressed his lips to her temple when she let her head fall back on his chest, brushing his knuckles over her bare arms.
Clara remembered the grin he’d tried to hide from her that day, and not even the new wave of pain that moved through her body was enough to dull the memory. That he’d thought to bring her here, wanted to share this with her, made Clara’s heart pound a little bit harder. This was probably one of the most thoughtful things anyone had ever done for her in her entire life.
“I want to know more about my mate. Tell me about your people,” he said.
She didn’t want to think about what it was going to feel like if she did shift, and so far he’d been right about talking being a good distraction for the pain. The sounds of Zaheer's bones popping and twisting still echoed in her mind, and she tried her best to block it out, telling him about anything and everything she could think of. He was silent for most of it, stopping her only to request a description or to explain tech to him. Clara ate the fruit they’d brought as she spoke, working her way through them until her stomach protested.
She tried desperately to ignore the strange sensations along her body, like dozens of tiny spiders burrowing and crawling beneath her skin or the sharp twitches of her muscles. Zaheer was patient, listening to her recounting of the crash and how many of them had been injured.
“Were you injured?” he asked.
Clara watched River jump up and down in the grass, their head barely breaching the top. “Just a couple of bumps and bruises, nothing serious.”
“Your people did not land here by choice then?”
“I’m assuming we landed here because it was the closest planet.”
Zaheer wrapped his lower arms around her waist, resting his hands over her stomach. “I’ll remember to thank Layla for breaking that food machine. We might have never found you if it weren’t for her.”
Despite the growing pain and discomfort, Clara laughed. She wasn’t so sure Layla would see it the same way.
“My guardian did not like the male who accompanied you on your search for food.”
“Oh, really?” Clara rolled her eyes. “Is there a particular reason, or was that simply because he was another male?”
There is no male that could compare to our tsa.
Every muscle in Clara’s body froze a split second before she jerked upright, her head whipping back and forth as she stared into the forest around them. The way the soft, silky voice slipped through her mind hadn’t been anything like hearing someone along the bond. This had felt like it was coming from her, but Clara had no idea how that was even possible.
Zaheer’s hands cupped her face, drawing her attention back to him. “What is it?”
“I… I don’t know. I swear there was someone in my head just now.”
“Clara.” Zaheer spoke her name like a command and her eyes darted up, locking with his.
A shiver of fear ran down her spine as he leaned in closer, and she swore she could feel waves of energy radiating from him, crashing over her and pulling her under. Clara was drowning in that endless black gaze, and just when she thought she might actually sink, Zaheer spoke one, quiet word along the bond.
“Shift.”
Something inside of her snapped, and blinding pain the likes of which she’d never known pulsed through her, setting fire to every inch of her body. White patches appeared on her arms and hands, replacing her already pale skin. Clara lurched forward when her stomach twisted, spilling its contents all over the grass as she arched her back.
Don’t fight me, the voice in her mind spoke gently. It will be over soon. We will be whole. We will be complete.
Yes, she wanted to be whole, wanted the pain to stop. Her skin burned and she fought the urge to claw at it like a wild beast, to tear it from her body in the hope that it would give her relief. Bones broke, shifted. She screamed until she was sure her throat was bloody, but it didn’t matter. There was one last white hot jolt of pain in her skull and then… peace.
“Am I dead?”
Laughter like tiny bells filled her mind. Not dead. We are very much alive.
We? Clara tried to sit up, but her body felt heavy and awkward. It moved in strange ways as if it didn’t quite recognize her commands. Her head lolled to the side and when she finally got control enough to look down, Clara was stunned by the sight of two massive white paws beneath. She reared back, but her legs slid out from under her as she scrambled to catch herself.
“Easy! You’ll injure yourself before you can even get on your feet.” Zaheer’s voice soothed her rattled nerves, but when Clara looked down at her body and caught sight of the four long legs sprawled on the grass, her heart began to race anew.
“What happened to me?”
“You shifted, and you did it so well, Aanih. You’re so beautiful.” The being in her mind practically purred at his words of praise. Clara lifted her head in time to watch as he shifted, transforming into the sleek black hellhound. “On your feet, Clara. Lean against me. There you are. Good.”
Her claws—claws—dug into the soft grass as she struggled to keep her legs from buckling beneath her weight. She leaned heavily against Zaheer’s guardian as they stepped out of the banith circle. The thick undergrowth in some spots proved difficult to navigate, but with her mate’s help and encouraging words from the being—her guardian—in her head, Clara found she was gaining back some of the control she’d lost.
/> There were so many new scents to explore, and her eyesight was far sharper than it had ever been. Her guardian bounced around in her mind like a child at an amusement park for the very first time. She wanted to smell everything, climb the trees, jump from boulder to boulder. River scurried across Clara’s back and neck before settling on top of her head.
As they walked, Clara became more and more aware of others just on the outside of her mind. They were restless and agitated and Clara wanted to reassure them that everything was going to be okay.
Their signatures were unfamiliar to her, but she felt a spark of recognition from her guardian. Our pack.
Having the being in her head was almost like hearing through the cochlear implant for the very first time. She’d had to learn to hear different sounds, had to learn which of those were words and what they meant. Just like then, Clara felt like she was playing catch-up. Zaheer and his pack had already lived with their guardians for years, while she and hers were just getting started. She had so much to learn still, but her mind and body were exhausted.
Back on the crashed ship, before Layla’s accidental destruction of the replicator that led to them having to forage for food, Clara had taught one of the other survivors, Esme, how to block others from her mind using mental doors. Being able to control those doors meant the other human could lock out her abuser’s memory. It was also useful for blocking others from hearing your thoughts, conversations, or simply invading your mental space. As curious as she was about this new… part of her, Clara pictured the wall in her mind closing, shutting out everyone until there was nothing but the sound of Zaheer’s quiet encouragement.
“A little further. You’re doing really well.”
Clara glanced around, struggling to identify where they were. She’d only been this far into the forest twice: once before her and Layla were captured and again with Zaheer. As they moved further in, Clara began to feel tiny vibrations beneath her paws and the smell of damp soil and water filled her nose. He was bringing her to the river.
