by V. K. Ludwig
The warlord gulped and lifted himself off me, wide eyes flicking down to his pants several times while his chest curled with each exhale that pushed from his lungs. “I… have to apologize. This is not… not me.”
The only thing that required an apology was how he’d stopped. “It’s okay.”
“No. No, no, no.” Head shaking rapidly, he rose and turned away, pulling on his good horn with such force the tip trembled. “This cannot happen. Cannot happen.” He pointed at me but kept his gaze on the door across. “Stay.”
Then he stumbled out of his quarters.
Five
Katedo
Purple flames crackled in the golden metal bowls arranged in each corner of the strategy room, burning the dried and misted bunches of herbs Reiko, one of my shimids, had placed there. It did little to alleviate the dusty tang of old, stagnant air, but safety concerns didn’t allow air handlers in the Chamber of the Five Pillars or its side rooms.
I swiped my finger over the hologram of the interactive map, marking a plateau east of Noja. “Several old ravines offer excellent escape points, should the freeraiders be bold enough to ambush us. The higher elevation will allow our warriors to spot them from afar, allowing us to react quickly and with little chance of losses.”
“A sound strategic choice.” Sevja nodded, her features ashen, as expected considering her mate was recovering from a nasty gash on his thigh where a spiked arrow had struck him. “Let’s hope it won’t come to that. After all, we’ll supply them with several crates of antibiotics.”
In exchange for blood samples.
Since this new strain of ice fever was predominant among the freeraiders, where it had originated, the Empire insisted on those samples. The bulk of them would be sent to Earth. Jessica would keep the rest and study them from inside the Noja lab.
My fangs clenched.
This morning, I’d ground myself along her cunt in my rut-crazed state. I’d gripped her soft flesh, scented her sweet heat, and pressed my hard cock against her… only to spill in my pants like an untried youth.
As unacceptable as my slip of control had been, she was the one who’d brought it about with her condescension, likely on purpose. She’d stormed away from me, challenged me to hunt her, grab her, kick her legs apart, and make her submit—
“Urizayo.”
My eyes snapped to Sevja as I straightened my spine, pretending I wasn’t growing hard all over again. “Forgive me. My thoughts were elsewhere for a moment. You were saying?”
“The Empire insists their virologist be the one to draw the samples.”
Which was only wise since we needed to apply proper infectious disease control. “I suggest we assign an additional thirty warriors to this mission.”
“That could be seen as aggressive by the freeraiders.”
“Jessica’s safety is paramount.” I wouldn’t be made a fool in front of the Empire a second time by letting a woman get kidnapped. “However, she won’t be able to ride out until even the last traces of her heat are gone.”
Sevja clasped her hands behind her back and shifted around nervously, no doubt sharing in my mother’s hopes. “Is it still as noticeable?”
“It was less potent when I woke.” But still intense enough to trigger my rut, if paired with defiance, only manageable as long as Jessica didn’t confront my baser instincts. “Let’s re-evaluate once her heat is over, but keep the warriors you choose for this mission on call to ride out on the fifth sun. Now, I need to get back to Kamenji.”
She dipped her head. “Yes, my urizayo.”
One swipe of my hand deactivated the map, and I turned toward the black archway lit by luminore. With each step that carried me closer to my quarters, my boots dragged heavier across the polished slate.
Once I walked through the door, I would be faced with Jessica, her heat, and this weighty embarrassment of how I’d acted between her legs. Politeness demanded I, at the very least, said hello.
My hand lifted toward my cheek, where a violent itch tormented the raised edges of my scar. I didn’t want to acknowledge her presence at all. Perhaps I should take Kamenji to the market for a meal, regardless of the late hour.
Yes, I would do that.
A solid plan.
It dissolved the moment I stepped into my quarters, and my ears pricked at the excited chatters and cheers coming from the living area. Muscles tightening, I crossed the archway…
… and froze.
Jessica sat at the dining table, one hand holding a fork with a strip of tendetu dangling from it, the other pressed to her mouth to muffle her laughter. A sound so heartfelt and sincere, it sneaked into that void inside my chest, driving out the bitter silence there — if only for a moment.
Her eyes found mine.
My throat narrowed.
This made grabbing Kamenji and ignoring her difficult, but it turned downright impossible when a familiar voice pushed through my daze and said, “Ah, my son. Come and join us for a meal.”
My ribcage shrunk.
I should have known better.
Of course, Mother sat beside Jessica, her bright smile nothing but a mockery as she waved me toward my own damn table. By Mekara, I hadn’t wanted to face this woman alone, but certainly not teamed-up with my mother.
“Where is Kamenji?” I asked and took the chair across from them.
Jessica let the tendetu disappear behind her luscious lips before the fork pointed toward the ceiling. “Up there.”
Just on cue, Kamenji’s shrill voice echoed from where he braced palms and soles against the stalactites. “Look, adi! Do you see how I don’t fall?”
My veins thickened with renewed fear. “Yes, I see, but I’d rather have you come down from there.”
“Jessica is tracking the time,” he said proudly, but all I could do was watch exhaustion tremble his limbs. “Did I break the record?”
Jessica swiped over the com strapped to her hand and glanced at the numbers. “Not for another thirteen seconds, buddy. Can you go that long?”
Goddess help me, of course a woman who’d had the nerve to run from a rutting Jal’zar would encourage this madness. “You get down from there right now.”
“I can do it!”
“Down. Now!” When he didn’t bother moving, he left me no other choice. “Don’t make me get to three. One… Two…”
“Three” drowned underneath mother’s excessive clapping and the beep of Jessica’s com, followed by a massive slap as Kamenji’s soles hit the tiles beside me. A wave of pride washed over me, but quickly fizzled into a cramp beneath my sternum. This child had no sense for danger.
“Did you look, Jessica?” Kamenji asked, the bridge of his nose as pink as his cheeks, his strands tousled and sweaty. “Did you see how I landed on both feet?”
“Yeah, I saw it, buddy.” And she encouraged him further with several nods. “You’ve got some mad climbing skills.”
Mother leaned into Jessica. “A talent he inherited from his father. When my Katedo was this age, he climbed the trees and let himself drop straight onto the back of wild yuleshis. By the time he was nine, he had tamed several of them.”
With a sigh, I leaned deeper into the chair, my appetite gone. “And once broke a rib in my carelessness.”
Mother’s smile faded some. “Which healed.”
“Sure it did, but the pain was excruciating and lasted for two moons.”
“And then went away,” she said with a finality in her tone that stilled the air.
Jessica must have noticed, because she cleared her throat, brown eyes tentatively searching for mine. “So, um, Katedo, how old… actually… I still don’t know what to call you. Katedo? Warlord? Warlord Katedo?”
“Katedo will do.” Considering I’d spilled my seed between her legs…
She tilted her head just enough to show a tiny red dot on the underside of her right jaw. A mark my bite had left behind?
The sight sent a pulsing sensation into the roots of my fangs, almost as
if I wanted to maul her all over again. As gentle of a lover as I’d once been, mating my female long and thoroughly, I became rough and dominant when in rut.
“How old were you when you tamed your first yuleshi?” she asked.
“Six,” I mumbled, then waved Kamenji over to me. “Show me your hand.”
“It’s almost gone.”
I wiped over his damp forehead, and stroked a few stray wisps back between his horns. “How was school?”
“Fine,” he said with a shrug. “Boring. I was tired.”
Because he’d gotten up too early in all his excitement over our guest. “If you’re done eating, how about you go to bed a little earlier tonight?”
He agreed and, not too long ago, I would have grabbed his legs and carried him to his room dangling upside down. His gangly arms would have thrown harmless punches at me, and his laughs would have resonated our quarters. Now, he walked beside me, the gap between us mere inches but my son felt planets away.
Like every night, I waited on the low hanging nabu I’d spun for him, which he preferred over his sleeping pod. Swipescreen in hand, I waited until he was done washing. Like every night, he stared at the shadows the stone flowers cast overhead while I read him a story about faraway places.
After I finished, he weaved his tail through the uri ropes. “Can Jessica say good night?”
His curiosity was only natural, but I shook my head. “She’s only a guest, you understand that, right? Jessica will leave in a sun or two.”
“Yeah, I get it.” And yet disappointment colored his voice.
“Alright.” The moment I leaned down to place a kiss onto his head, he didn’t exactly dodge it, but shifted away enough to make it clear kisses were no longer a thing, either. “Wake me in the morning, and we’ll make breakfast together, yes?” I took his grunt as agreement and rose. “I love you.”
He said nothing as I headed to the door and let it slide shut behind me. There, I stood for a few moments, surrounded by the same silence that crept onto the quarters every night, suffocating me with solitude.
With it, came doubts.
In the past, I’d been on many campaigns or travelling across solar systems. What did I know about raising Kamenji? I was probably doing this all wrong, and it showed in how he retreated more and more from me.
He’d been young when Yara had died, crying inconsolably for many moons, robbed of the comfort of his mother’s hum. But he was older now, gaining an understanding of how I’d failed them both.
Perhaps he blamed me.
He had every right.
Clank.
My ears pricked.
I returned to the kitchen, and an odd lightness came to my chest with how, for once, I didn’t find it dark and abandoned. “My mother left?”
Jessica scratched leftovers in the trash and stacked dirty plates. “Uh-huh.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
The white fabric of her dress brushed over her calves as she turned to face me. “Kam and I left a mess behind, and someone has to clean it.”
“Kamenji,” I corrected. “I appreciate the effort, but I would prefer you returned to your room now. And stayed there.”
Her lips pursed. “You weren’t around during dinner, and your mom asked me to eat with them.”
“But I’m around now.”
“Fair enough.” She turned toward the sink and washed her hands. “How come you tamed your first yuleshi at six, and Kam isn’t allowed to? He told me he’s almost eight.”
Her question strained my tendons, not only because it wasn’t her concern, but because I once more sensed a flare of heat at the judgment in her voice. “He isn’t ready yet.”
“Wow, just what does it take?” More condescension in her tone, coupled with a whiff of her sweetness that raised the fine hairs at the nape of my neck. “That kid climbs along the ceiling like a ninja.”
“Because he has poor risk assessment skills, which is exactly what gets children killed when they try to tame a yuleshi too soon.”
Drying off her hands, she met my gaze straight on, challenging with its intensity. “Perhaps you should—”
“Should?” A scoff escaped my lips. “Are you giving parenting advice?”
“I figured it’s worth mentioning that it requires risk exposure for someone to learn how to assess it.” As if this woman didn’t lack it just the same with how she once more provoked an argument over something that wasn’t her business. “Look, I know it’s not my place to—”
“You’re right, it’s not your place.” My finger stabbed toward the stairs. “Your place, Jessica, is over there in that guest room, preferably in the tub.”
“For your information, I showered before you—” She swung her hands up and walked off. “You know what? You’re right. The issues between Kam and you aren’t any of my business.”
“Issues? Kamenji and I have a very close bond, and—” A tremble ripped through my voice, and my pupils fixed on the rapid flutter of her hem. “Do not run from me!”
“I’m not running,” she snarled over her shoulder, and pointed at her naked feet. “I’m literally dragging my soles over the tiles.”
That twitch along my shaft said otherwise, and my legs stumbled into pursuit all on their own. “Do you have children?”
Her escape came to a sudden halt, and her shoulders bobbed once before she swung around, hands planted on her hips. “If I had children, I wouldn’t be on Solgad.”
Against the violent energy coursing through my muscles, I forced my joints to stop moving. “So you know nothing about raising a child, alone or otherwise, but have the audacity to tell me what I should do?”
Something dark came over her face as she took a step toward me, filling the slither of space between us with a sweetness that swelled my ava, my knot. “I don’t need to be a mother to…”
She said more after that, her voice sharp and cutting but all I could perceive was the rush of blood in my veins. It pumped into my cock until my ava ached, and tingled along my arm until my fingers stiffened…
…in her hair.
Because I’d once more dug them into her curls, gripping them, fingertips cooling at the dampness I found there. The woman hadn’t lied. She’d showered, as instructed, but it did little to hide that intoxicating scent of her heat.
“Katedo.”
Her voice pushed through a dense fog that obscured all sense and reason, all reminders that I could not have this female no matter how willing. And she was willing, going limp in that arm I’d slung around her middle, so wet between her legs I smelled it. I wanted to slather my tongue with it while coating hers in my seed, thick, warm, and freshly stroked from my ava for her to drink.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her full breasts warm against my chest. “Where are you taking… mmmh…”
She moaned when I lapped at that mark I had left on her jawline, and already my fangs pulsated, eager to do it again. To clasp down so she couldn’t wiggle, couldn’t escape, entirely subdued for mating. Beneath me, our feet moved toward my bedroom.
I let my lips search for hers, and groaned into her mouth when I found them. My muscles swelled with the need to rut her, aching as if they no longer fit my marred skin. I wanted her pinned underneath me. In my bed. On my furs. Wanted her screaming and writhing. I wanted all those things, needed them like my next breath.
But only until my tailclaw scratched along the metal doorway with an ear-shattering eeeeeek.
My ribs curled around my organs.
My muscles locked into a spasm.
If I claimed this woman with a prick of my claw and the sound of my hum, I would connect our souls within Mekara. She would be my kunazay, my urizaya, my soulmate, the female I would be bound to protect.
And I would fail her.
I ripped my lips from hers, gripped her arms, and pushed her away, throat going dry at the sight of her dazed look. “Go to your room before I get you killed.”
Brown eyes blinked up at m
e with confusion. “What?”
“Go, Jessica,” I said. “And don’t come out again until your heat is gone for good.”
Six
Jessica
The sharp bite of bleach lingered inside the lab, a state-of-the-art facility I hadn’t quite expected when I first arrived at Noja. Overhead high-density lights spanned across the ceiling, all equipped with a holographic recording and display system, and a scanning function that detected potential areas of contamination.
Takay, a healer they’d assigned as my lab assistant, carefully placed the rotary evaporator on the silver work surface I’d prepared for it. “What about the bioreactors?”
Glass clanked as I took one container after another from the equipment box the Empire had provided, and placed them onto the metal shelves that spanned the length of the workstation. “I don’t really care where you put them, as long as you keep them as far away from the agitation system as possible.”
He gave me a lopsided smirk, hiking his gray cheek toward that black eye he’d reportedly received the day Katedo had carried me off. “Figured as much, but I didn’t want to start setting things up without your approval.”
“Yeah, well, I was quarantined for a few days." And Katedo truly hadn’t allowed me to come out of the guest room again until my heat ended. “Not that there’s much work for me to do here until we have those blood samples. Did you set up the centrifuge?”
He gave a wink, his eyes a fascinating shade of lavender that went oddly well with his tightly braided, dark reddish-brown hair. “Even gave it a test spin.”
“Good thing I brought it with me, considering the one the lab came with is busted.”
“I already called a technician.” He leaned against the wall, hands shoved into his black uniform pockets, and watched me. “Have you had a chance to explore Noja?”
