by V. K. Ludwig
“My name is Jessica, and I’m fully aware of the risks involved.” Because I’d spent the last weeks reading everything I could about Jal’zar and this soulbond males could create with a sting and a hum. “But sending me back? There has to be an alternative.”
The way he smacked his tongue momentarily kept his nostrils from flaring. “We have no suppressant available this moment since they expire too quickly, and they’re produced on Odheim. You may return once you’re no longer ovulating or reliably treated.”
“That could take months considering the sparse number of flights offered to Solgad.” Knowing my luck, the board members might even change their minds and send a guy in my stead. “Isn’t there a safe place where you can lock me up for a few days?”
“No. Young males will soon perceive your scent throughout Noja, and the current weather conditions make it impossible for me to send a woman into the plains.” Rolling his shoulders, he turned away, clearly determined to rid himself of me. “Your skills as a healer will still be needed once you return.”
“They are the healers.” I waved toward Nick and the other three guys, all standing there, useless and dumfounded. “I’m the virologist.”
The warlord froze mid-turn, and his upper lip peeled back enough to let a loud hiss of frustration cut through his fangs. Those scars on the left side of his face stretched taut, their dark purple shade making it clear he’d been carrying those for a while. How did he get them?
The female beside him stepped forward. “My urizayo, the warlord’s quarters are sealed and could contain her scent if—”
“Absolutely not.” He gave a curt nod toward the Jal’zar warrior who’d brought us to this room. “Order everyone to clear med bay, as well as the northern wing toward the skyport. Right now.”
“Yes, my urizayo.” He dipped his head and disappeared into the hallway.
Underneath my white uniform, an itch spread across my skin. “The stargazer that brought us here lifted off the moment we left the launch pad.”
That didn’t deter the warlord from waving me toward the door. “At this point, I would put you onto my personal ship and fly you to Earth myself.”
My arms turned so heavy I had to unfold them, and let them dangle by my sides in defeat. Perhaps it hadn’t been the best idea to sell all my stuff back on Earth, but it wasn’t like I’d had the intention of ever going back there.
With a sigh, I shouldered the bag drenched with spilled heat suppressant, and walked up beside him. “Alright. Back to the skyport with me.”
He offered a grunt in reply and lead me along the confusing maze of now eerily quiet hallways. Bright overhead lights illuminated them all, probably color-coded for navigational purposes though it made no sense to me. The female followed behind, clearly someone who knew her way around a weapon, given that chest holster loaded with knives that strapped around her uniform.
“Sorry for the turmoil,” I said in a desperate attempt to break that uncomfortable silence, but the warlord only offered another grunt. “So, once a male claims me, others won’t perceive my scent anymore, correct?”
“Once?” His head turned my way by a single degree, and his brow took on a skeptical arch. “Certainly, you meant to say if ?”
I quickly nodded. “Uh-huh.”
His finger tugged on the high collar of his black uniform as if he needed to make room for his next swallow to go down. “Yes. Your scent would become less… intense.”
Intense enough it affected him as well, which meant he was currently unmated. Flaring nostrils, rigid posture, clenched jawline as if he struggled against the urge to sample the air. I’d learned a thing or two about the Jal’zar physiology during my training.
He was fighting the rut.
The urge to claim and breed me.
That thought tingled more than it should, given the current situation, but a male crazed with lust and desire for me? With the raw need to bind my soul to his forever? When had someone wanted me with such a passion?
Never.
Not that I needed hundreds of Jal’zar males to do so.
Only one.
“Perhaps you should let one of the males claim me so I can go back to med bay and do my job.” I forced a laugh. He arched his brow even higher. “Must be beautiful, your soulbond. Two beings capable of perceiving what the other one feels? Both stripped bare of all lies and pretense?”
I’d experienced my fair share of both.
That would never happen again.
“Yes, that is certainly a romantic version of it that might appeal.” He lifted his hand toward the gruesome scar on his face as if to scratch, but the moment he noticed how I watched his movement, he dropped it by his side once more. “Nobody likes to talk about the—”
His black boots came to an abrupt halt, and whatever cultured demeanor this male had displayed to this point disappeared. A wide stance replaced it, along with fangs hissing aggression and a tailclaw that whistled through the air.
My eyes followed the warlord’s gaze.
My stomach tightened.
A young male lingered pressed against the metal-lined wall only a few steps ahead. His tongue smacked noisily against his gums as he tasted my scent, and rapid jerks tugged on his shoulders. That couldn’t be good.
With one swipe, the warlord wrapped his tail around my waist and pulled me closely against him even as he hissed at the other male once more. “Return to your quarters!”
“Y-yes, my urizayo,” he mumbled and lowered his head, but his next step brought him closer to me, his arms trembling. “I c-can’t… the female, she… eshja gra adem.”
Katedo’s tail tightened around my waist, claw pointing toward the warrior. “She’s not yours.”
The female accompanying us leaned into the warlord, one hand going toward the bone handle of a knife as she whispered, “Another male is approaching from behind.”
“I know,” he ground out, opening the top button on his collar. “And we are still a long way from the—”
A hiss cut through the air.
The male ahead sprinted toward us, sharp ends of his horns pointing straight at his warlord. “Eshja gra adem!”
One moment, the warlord’s tail pushed me against the hard wall. The very next, he wrapped it around the male’s horn and, with one pull, sent him stumbling to the ground. The warlord fell to his knees, lifted his arm, and let his elbow crash down against the male’s head full force.
“Take her!” The female shouted against the clink of a blade, and my mind dizzied with such speed the outlines of many Jal’zar melted right before my eyes. “I’ll hold them back.”
A set of hands gripped my waist.
My feet lifted off the ground.
Gravity suspended itself for one ragged breath, two, three—
Whomp.
I dangled from the warlord’s shoulder, heart pounding against the constant shift of his muscled back while blood pooled so quickly around my face my earlobes heated. He held my thighs in a tight grip as everything around me bounced and distorted into fragments of pure chaos.
Males growled and yapped.
The warlord’s tailclaw whistled.
Many times, that distinct thump of a body slumping to the ground resonated whichever hallways he sprinted along. Lights changed from blue to purple to red. The air cooled around me. My cheek pressed against black fabric that turned slightly damp with his sweat.
He barked out an order.
A hydraulic door opened.
When it buzzed shut again followed by several click-click-clicks, he lowered me to the ground without saying a word. The warlord only heaved, though a faint growl rumbled somewhere deep in his chest. He pressed a hand against the metal wall, leaned over, and drew in one frazzled breath after another.
Hair a wild, puffy mess around me, I brushed my black curls back and tried to smooth them into compliance. “Where are we?”
“My… quar… ters,” he bit out each syllable, eyes clenched shut and lips peeled bac
k over his fangs.
Incoherent thought processes, struggles to articulate himself, heavy breathing… more signs of a male approaching the rut, but he seemed quite versed at fighting it.
I blinked up at the vaulted ceiling of the entryway, richly decorated with symbols that had been carved into some sort of white, porous rock. Metal lined the walls, almost like silver palathium but it had a soft, purple sheen to it. Wooden furniture stood against it, and a large white fur rested on the gray-tiled floor.
“Thank you for protecting me.” No doubt this could have ended badly, and my knees still trembled from this display of what a rut looked like outside a medical textbook. “Can any of them get in here?”
He shook his head.
I exhaled in relief. “So I’m safe.”
A chuckle burst from his throat, but it shriveled into a sigh at the end as he backed away from me. With each inhale, his broad chest expanded so wide his uniform seemed too small to encase it all. Thick, gray veins lined the sides of his neck, leading up to a face even more battered looking with how he clenched his jaws.
Instincts couldn’t be eradicated, but the warlord appeared rather self-disciplined and controlled, not offering a single advance toward me. If anything, he seemed determined to stay away.
Why didn’t the most powerful warlord have a mate? Of course, the media had reported on how freeraiders had kidnapped the warden’s daughter the night before he was supposed to marry her. But what about the time before that?
“I’m sorry for how my heat affects you,” I said. “I know you’re fighting the rut.”
His stunning blue eyes took me in, dark blue like the ocean during a full moon. “I haven’t rutted in many solar cycles. It will not… will not happen now.”
As much as his voice frayed as he spoke, the certainty in his proud posture rounded my spine. I’d volunteered to marry one of the warlords a few months back, even if it meant going through the procedure of altering my DNA for nano armor. Happily ever after didn’t exist for me on Earth with the way it glorified the gaia link: soulmates coded into the DNA of those luckier than me.
But there might be one on Solgad.
Too bad the committee had promptly turned down my application since, as an orphan with nothing to her name, I wasn’t important enough, because this Warlord Katedo sparked my curiosity. He didn’t radiate the virility of a young male, but the solid strength of a tested leader who’d seen a thing or two.
As had I.
That appealed to me.
Others might find his broken horn and that massive scar on his face appalling. To me, it spoke of dedication and loyalty to those under his protection, which ranked much higher than a pretty face untouched by life.
His eyes snapped to the ceiling. “Air handlers. Exchange on highest setting.”
The round tube above us whirred to life, and a blast of air swept through my strands. A pile of papers scattered into a room that lay behind an archway of intertwined branches. Almost like a cave, the same white rock lined its ceiling and walls. While they lacked the carvings from the entryway, hundreds of small stalactites absorbed the luminescent sheen of pale-blue vines that snaked around them.
My feet stumbled over there all on their own, and my fingertips brushed along the sandy white rock while my lips parted in awe. How cozy this place was with those many planters holding a variety of flowers, the furs draped over the black couch, the scent of exotic plants in bloom—
“Too… fast…” the warlord growled, gripped my hair with such force my scalp burned, and gave a yank.
I crashed against his hard body with a small yelp, which quickly drowned in my tightening throat with how he angled my head sideways, exposing my neck.
He smelled my hair.
Inhaled my scent.
A mix between fear and arousal that shouldn’t be there drove a shiver across my body. It sucked all strength from my wobbly knees, amplified by that faint tap-tap-tap that resonated from behind his slightly parted lips as he tasted the air.
His hand trembled in my curls, and he fought for precision around every word he gradually pushed across tight lips. “You will walk very slowly in my presence. Yeki?”
With each of my nods, his grip on my hair eased some. “Very slowly.”
“Under no circumstances will you run.” The cool tip of his nose brushed over the thin skin of my neck. “Not toward anything, but most definitely never away from me, or you will trigger my instinct to chase.”
That savage statement tingled me in odd places. “No running.”
“You will not argue with me, you will not defy me, you will not provoke me in any manner that might set off my rut.” He detangled his fingers from my hair, but it seemed to take him great effort because they were clenched and stiff when he waved toward a small set of stairs. “The warlord’s quarters are generous. You may choose one of the bedrooms, and remain there at all times, unless I am not present. Bathe often, so we can get this scent under control.”
Three
Katedo
I paced between couch and glass table, not daring to inhale the tantalizing sweetness lingering inside my home, so I sucked it through my fangs in little gulps. “She needs to leave my quarters.”
“It took me an argos to clear the vault in front of your door of males, urizayo.” Sevja sunk deeper into the black leather couch, her braid disheveled, her arms covered in bruises. “Escorting her to the skyport is close to impossible.”
“We’ll put the entire tribe under lockdown.”
“Her scent will permeate all of Noja the moment she steps outside this room, and many young males will kill each other in their shared quarters.”
Yes, they would. “Then we will reassign quarters. Families will have to share accommodations for a few suns so we can separate those young males lured by her scent.”
“Urizayo…” The inflection in her tone tightened my muscles. Of course, Sevja would tell me that— “Given the size of the tribe, such an undertaking would take us many suns. We’re already lacking enough quarters as it is.”
Something I was well aware of, but desperation demanded a solution to this disaster. “By Mekara, then I will leave my quarters. Surely, there has to be one spare room available somewhere in this damn city.”
Even bedding down inside the yuleshi stables would be preferable to this torture. I’d rather inhale the steam from the muck heap than the scent of Jessica’s heat. A sweetness so potent, so fucking seductive I teetered at the edge of the rut.
A scent worth killing for.
Which explained why I had left such a mess behind out there. Broken bones, minor lacerations, a few concussions. As per Sevja’s account, I’d injured eighteen of my own warriors when I carried the woman to safety.
Safety.
That thought lured the same kind of disillusioned chuckle from me as Jessica’s earlier remark. She thought herself safe from Jal’zar males outside my quarters, not knowing that she was locked up with the deadliest one of them.
Every female I touched, died.
And her body was begging to be touched.
“I need to get out of here.” Before I succumbed to the rut and claimed something I could not keep safe, and therefore didn’t deserve. “You will see to her needs and make certain she stays in here until her heat passed.”
“Yes, my urizayo,” Sevja said on a sigh, watching how I collected a few important holoscreens I needed to take with me. “I already checked the import schedule, and made certain more suppressant will arrive before her next heat. What are the instructions for Kamenji?”
My rummaging came to an abrupt halt as my fingertips numbed. Clearly, Jessica’s scent challenged my rational thinking. If I left my quarters, what about my son? I could barely keep him safe and contained in my own quarters.
As if Mekara had made it her goal to taunt me, Mother stepped into the living room. She placed a kiss between Kamenji’s horns, who stood beside her, and that grin on her lips spread higher each time she sniffed
the air.
The wrinkles around her eyes deepened. “It is true then. There is a heated female in your quarters.”
“Temporarily.” My eyes fell to my son—now cleaned up—and lingered on that brown spot on the corner of his lips. “This situation has no effect on your punishment for sneaking out. Go to your room.”
His pupils flicked to Mother for the fraction of a second before he shrugged. “I don’t wanna go to my room.”
“You will.”
“But I wanna meet the Earth woman first.”
“Kamenji…”
His nostrils fluttered. “It’s Kam.”
There was an involuntary twitch somewhere between the corner of my eye and my temple. Four moons. Four moons I had thought on a name that would exude strength, cunning, honor, but now he wanted to be… Kam.
“There, there.” Mother patted his horn and, apparently, my entire son into easy and quick compliance. “Do as your father says. It is almost time to sleep anyway.”
Just like that, Kamenji skipped off, and I turned my attention back to Mother. “As if he’s going to sleep with all that chocolate I’m certain you fed him. He’ll dangle by his tail from the beams all night.”
Instead of justifying it or, at the very least, denying that brown spot was chocolate, she cocked her head and asked, “What color hair does the woman have?”
Black like the clouds before a torrent, with soft curls that had tickled my skin, the ends bleached into a dark brown. “Does it matter?”
Mother stroked the end of her braid which rested on her shoulder, the strands a mix between brown and many shades of dark gray. “How I long to meet her.”
“I sent her to bathe.” For the second time, because her scent refused to subside. “I’m trying to find a more… appropriate solution for this. The woman, Jessica, has to remain in my quarters. I would prefer to bed down elsewhere until her heat has passed.”
“That is your choice, son.”
