by V. K. Ludwig
Against the tension in my muscles, I turned to walk off beside her. “Backup is coming. Let’s get moving. Our yuleshi took off, so we better make certain we’re out in the open where Sevja and the scouts can find us.”
Kamenji watched me warily, but eventually trotted up beside me.
“You know,” I said, “You can’t jump a yuleshi like that unless you know the secret trick.”
“What trick?”
The way his curiosity seemed to drive out his pain put something warm into my chest. “It needs to be done when the berries on the tree are rotting. You climb up, and toss some on the ground. They won’t eat much, but enough to get them… tired. Like when people drink too much mokhot. Wait half an argos, and they’ll be too lazy to fight much, even without a yalat.”
“You hear that, Kam?” Jessica asked with a smirk. “Your dad the yuleshi-taming legend’s a fraud.”
His eyes widened, and he stared at me as if… as if I was the smartest and strongest Jal’zar he knew. And only the strongest Jal’zar deserved a female, right?
I took Jessica’s hand and helped her navigate the slick ground. No more running. I wasn’t ready yet to offer her zovazay but, by Mekara, I would give her all those things she needed to feel safe until I would be.
Fourteen
Jessica
Covered in furs, Kam slept soundly in his sleeping pod. I’d given him something for the pain and, combined with the exhaustion of the incident, it had taken this kid less than five minutes before he’d passed out.
Katedo pressed a kiss to strands still damp from the shower Kam took after a shimid had assessed him. “His hair is going to be a wild mess when he wakes.”
I shivered in my soaked dress. “He’ll sleep for the rest of the day, and perhaps through the night. It’ll help the tendon relax, so everything can ease back into place. Lots of children dislocate their elbows. It’s no biggie.”
For a moment, I expected him to mention how lucky Kam had been, or how much worse this could have ended, but instead he said, “He’ll be fine.” A nod as if to reassure himself. “Just fine. In two suns, he’ll go dangling from the ceiling again.”
The frown lines on his forehead told me it took him true effort to say that, but he’d done it. “Probably. He’ll have quite the story to tell his friends.”
Katedo’s wet soles squeaked over the tiles as he stepped into the hallway, and closed the door. “Thanks for taking care of him.”
“He’s a sweet boy, Katedo,” I said. “You’ve done well with him.”
“Next, we’ll have to take care of you.” He gripped my waist and picked me up, ripping a small squeal from me. “The plains cool down drastically during a torrent.”
Wrapping my legs around his waist, he stepped into a room with thousands of old-fashioned books and even scrolls lining the shelves along the walls. At least a dozen holograms flickered in some sort of office separated by a wall of glass.
“Your room?”
He nodded. “For now.”
“You read a lot, don’t you?”
He walked us into the cleaning chamber. “My father insisted I read at least an argos each sun. Over the cycles, it turned into a habit. Lots of time to read in the evenings when I’m alone.”
That last word resonated my very soul.
His voice command activated the water, which cascaded from a wide opening carved into the rock, and pattered onto the blanket of fragrant moss below. Plumes of steam wafted between the glass surround, filling the air with a familiar scent.
“This is what you smell like,” I said when he lowered me down, and I tentatively brushed my toes over the pale-green, curled leaves of the plant. “Like mint, but smoother.”
“Is it pleasant?”
I smiled up at him. “Very.”
He dipped down and pressed his lips to mine, swallowing my moans as I lost myself in the kiss and the warmth that engulfed me. Arms wrapping around me, he let his tongue stir my lust for him one stroke at a time. His fangs nibbled and tugged until I moaned and softened in his arms.
Gradually, the kiss dissolved, and he brushed the tip of his nose against my earlobe, whispering, “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Drenched and heavy, the fabric of my dress resisted as he lifted it over my head. For a moment, it clung to my cheeks until, with a final tug, Katedo pulled it off and dropped it to the ground.
“How beautiful you are.” His breath whispered against the side of my neck where he kissed me, while his thumbs circled my hardening nipples. “Like a vision from Mekara.”
That lured a giggle from me. “Is there a chance Takay ended up with guard duty again that night?”
“He did. I was tailclaw-stabbing jealous,” he confessed with no hesitation. “Though I swear the one before that was Sevja, but I might have encouraged her decision. Takay is young. A clean slate without a single scar to mark his failings.”
I inched toward him, and stroked my palms up along his waist, over his chest, around his neck until I cupped his face, enjoying how he didn’t pull away. “Your scars show that you get up and keep going for those under your care, Katedo. That’s a beautiful thing.”
There was that frown of disbelief again. “They don’t repulse you?”
“Not one bit.”
He didn’t shrink away when I let my hands run down along his muscled body. Not a flinch when I hooked a finger to his waistband, though his breathing turned faster, so I stopped.
“Keep touching me.” A kiss to my forehead. “I want you, Jessica. Want you in ways that go beyond heat, or rut, or instinct.”
My heart stumbled over a few beats, tossing around in my chest before it fell into a faster rhythm. He meant it, didn’t he? Whatever had shifted between Kam and him earlier also affected us.
Palming my chin, he brought my gaze to his. “As much as this affection between us scares me, I won’t run from it anymore. But…” He gulped. “Can you be patient with me?”
“I can." No hesitation. Not a single thought wasted on it, because Katedo was worth the wait. “Baby steps are progress, too, as long as we walk together in the same direction.”
He opened his pants and peeled the wet fabric down, letting his cock swell upward before it bounced from the constraints. Thin veins lined his swollen ava, and his generously ridged shaft jerked with the same need that throbbed around my clit.
“Now you see all of me,” he said, and stepped out of his pants, standing straight and proud before me. “Every imperfection.”
“Not to mention gray ass cheeks.”
“You’re unbelievable.” His smirk disappeared as he cupped the back of my head and kissed me.
He turned away and stepped underneath the water in all his naked glory. It gushed down his onyx hair and over his firm pectorals, before it trickled down the inverted triangle of his ribbed stomach, rinsing ash and grit from him.
Wiping his face, he stepped out of the water and waved me over. “Come here. The water’s warm.”
He guided me underneath the stream. Hot droplets collided with cool skin, sending a wave of goosebumps across my body as I stripped my panties to the ground and rinsed the filth off.
When I shifted to let the warmth run down my back, my eyes flicked to where he wrapped his fingers around his thick knot. With a tight grip and a groan, he ran his fist upward. Cum spilled from the slit on his crown and dripped onto the moss beneath, but he let the final drops pool onto his fingertips.
He brought it to my mouth in offering. “Taste me.”
A common courting gesture for a Jal’zar male who tried to entice a female. And I accepted it, suckling his fingers into my mouth, lapping the creamy-sweet fluid before I spread it across my gums.
Katedo groaned, and his tongue smacked. “Do you like it?”
“I want more.” So I let my knees sink into the mossy ground.
“Suckle as much from my cock as you’d like. It’s all yours, Jessica.” Gentle fingers stroked over my scalp, tensing when I twirled
my tongue around his knot. “By Mekara, do that again.”
I did, then wrapped my lips around his shaft and kissed up along his ridges. By the time I reached his crown, a generous amount of cum had pooled there, some dripping off his cock in a long string.
Greedy for another taste, I lapped across his crown before I suckled the jerking thing into my mouth. More of the delicious fluid dripped warm and sweet onto my tongue. At the next big swell, I knew why.
Black eyes burned down at me, Katedo’s pupils so dilated the blue ring of his irises was barely there. Gods, he was close to the rut, the way he shored up his grip on my head told me as much. Every muscle along his arm contracted as he ran his tight fist up along his cock, sending surge after surge of seed into my mouth.
I swallowed it with a gulp.
Katedo growled in response.
Heat gathered between my legs at the sound, so deep and rumbling, it infused my blood with raw desire. “You’re about to rut.”
“No,” he forced the syllable through clenched fangs. “Will not… not rut.”
“It’s okay if you do.”
His jawline hardened as if trying to suppress the faint smacking of his tongue. “Need you to… to…”
I licked from his testicles all the way up to the tip of his cock. “Need me to what?”
“Just…” His palm smoothed down along the back of my head before his grip tightened in my strands. “Need you…”
He would have yanked me to my feet by my hair if it wasn’t for how I gripped his thighs and worked myself up to stand. Before I knew it, Katedo loomed behind me, his cock hard and throbbing against my ass as he walked me toward the glass.
My breasts squeaked over the wet surface as he pressed me against it. He gripped my wrists and brought them over my head, pinning them there with one hand. The other went searching for my clit.
Even in the clouded daze of the rut, he circled the way I’d showed him, answering each of my moans with a satisfied grunt. The way he kicked my legs apart with his heel ripped a gasp from my throat, and my hips circled in search of his cock. I wanted this with all its claiming roughness.
Bending his knees, he nudged against my drenched entrance. There was no pulsing, no slow rocking into me, or preparing. Katedo pushed inside, not asking neglected muscles to adjust for him. He demanded it with each stretching intrusion, each sharp thrust as he wedged his thick cock into me and seared along my walls.
His fingers gripped my wrists tightly as he drew back, then drove back into me until something tried to spread me wider. No, not something. It was his knot, and I might have thanked the Three Suns that he’d stroked so much seed out of. It didn’t take long until he filled me completely, and my clit fluttered and pulsed beneath the workings of his fingers.
Every single of his ridges, I felt pulsing against my inside as he fucked me from one shiver into the next, hard nipples aching against the constraint of the glass. Nothing about this was gentle, but it was true, and raw, and so primal in nature my womb spasmed.
Katedo moved naturally, driven by lust and impulse while his fangs raked over my shoulder blades. They dug into my skin here and there, but he always placed kisses in-between — little reminders that, somewhere at the back of his mind, he was lucid enough to reassure me that this was more than instinct.
Between moans and panting, his strokes stirred our shared pleasure to new heights. My back arched to meet his every beat, and he rolled his hips behind me until my pussy convulsed.
He roared, fucking into me harder. “Enu gra adem.”
I didn’t know what that meant.
Except for the last word.
Mine.
I clamped down on his cock then, my mind fogging at the intensity of my orgasm. It shook me to the core, and every muscle in my body tensed at once.
My senses heightened.
Like possessed, Katedo slung his arm around my belly, bracing me against his thrusts. At the last one, he pressed himself tightly against me, pulsing his hips as I felt him release inside me. Each spurt, I sensed swelling against my walls, once, twice, until—
Sharp pain ruptured around my ribs.
All air burst from my lungs.
My ribcage curled around the organ, disabling my next inhale until my vision blurred. Black fog followed, swallowing my surroundings until it ripped me into darkness.
Fifteen
Jessica
Something burned along my nostrils and pierced my brain so hard my eyes snapped open. “What happened?”
“Calm,” a Jal’zar female said as she held a small mug to my face, the contents biting and rancid enough my stomach contracted in warning. “Nothing is quite so certain to return ones wits as a lungful of ushti scat.”
I blinked my surroundings into focus.
The female staring down at me from purple eyes looked the way I felt, ancient, her wrinkled face dotted with black liver spots. What little remained of her white hair, she carried open with wooden beads clasped around the occasional strand.
“Where am I?” The moment I propped myself onto my elbows, pain radiated somewhere on my right side. “By the heat of Heliar, something’s hurting me.”
Deep and rich, a soul-penetrating hum encapsulated every fiber of my being, dulling the pain into a mere twinge. It intensified when Katedo sat down beside me on what had to be a bed, his dark brows drawn as he cupped my cheek.
“It’s your wekhja.” He lifted the hem of a tunic that wasn’t mine, only to reveal a purple leaf stuck to the side of my ribcage, the area around it red and swollen. “I fell into a rut and stung you.”
“You… what?”
My head spun.
Whatever happened to patience?
His lips pressed into a bloodless line. “This is not how I wanted this to go, but I was too far gone when we coupled.”
What did this mean?
That he’d claimed me?
The female moved aside as Katedo leaned over and pressed a kiss onto my forehead, whispering, “I’m so sorry about the pain.”
“Hum for her, urizayo,” the female, who had to be another of his shimids, said. “It will ease the pain and quicken the healing.” She cast her dull purple eyes over me, which narrowed as she shook her head. “This zovazay needs much nurturing. Much nurturing. Perhaps because she is not Jal’zar.”
Zovazay.
Warmth filled my core in ripples and waves, caressing over that emptiness I’d carried there most of my life. He’d truly claimed me as his mate? Had connected our souls within Mekara?
“And the fever?” he asked.
“Long gone, urizayo, but I wish to send a message to Uresha, the shimid of Warlord Toagi. Perhaps she can shed light onto why she lost consciousness and broke into a sweat.”
“Thank you, Reiko.”
When the female left, her many bone necklaces and bracelets clanking at each step, I placed my hand onto Katedo’s arm. “Your shimid?”
“The oldest of the three, and an expert at healing such a wound.” He carefully lowered himself down beside me, one arm propped underneath his head, and stroked my shoulder. “How are you feeling?”
“Confused.” I hissed at a sudden burn around the wound, and Katedo’s hum flared up again, caressing me one smooth purr at a time. “You have a wonderful hum.”
“A bit rusty, but I’ll polish it for you in no time.” A twitch tugged on his scarred upper lip. “You scared me when you went limp underneath me.”
“Didn’t see that coming, huh?”
“No,” he said on a chuckle, but only for a second before his face straightened once more. “We need to talk but first, I want you to know how much you mean to me, Jessica. I want you in my life. In our lives.”
My heart fluttered; nothing but irregular palpitations as I stared at the leaf covering my sting. Wekhja, Katedo had called it, the wound that connected our souls. Reiko said it needed nurturing, but I felt it inside me, bright and radiant.
I had a soulmate.
Pure,
undiluted joy shot through me in tendrils, digging into my core like those roots I’d never had. They grounded me in this moment, for once making me feel like I wasn’t floating alone through life at the risk of being swept away and forgotten. For the first time, I… belonged.
To Katedo.
To Neshta and Kam.
My very own family.
Against the burn spreading across my ribcage with each movement, I reached my hand out to play with a strand of his black hair. “And I want you.”
“Look… there’s no easy way of saying this.” He tortured his upper lip, suckling it between his fangs as he clasped my cheek tighter. “Earlier in the shower, I completely lost control. I hadn’t meant to sting you… without your consent, but to assure you of my commitment to us. To tell you that I won’t run away anymore from what’s painfully obvious: I want to be with you. Might even have courted you without noticing.”
My heart clenched at the sincerity in his voice. “You suck at courting.”
“Clearly, I have much to learn from my son, oh vision of Mekara,” he said on a scoff. “What I’m trying to say, Jessica, is that—”
“Adi!”
The moment Kam stormed toward us, Katedo gripped his horn and brought him to a stop. “Wekhja, Kamenji. You have to be careful around Jessica.”
He fumbled with the hem of his red shirt. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay, buddy,” I said. “Hey! How’s your elbow?”
His eyes widened, and he bent and flexed his arm with several clacks. “It’s making funny noises.”
“They’ll go away once the tendon readjusts. Does it still hurt?”
He glanced at his dad for a moment before he nodded. “A little.”
“It’ll be gone tomorrow.”
“Where is amimi?” Katedo asked. “Didn’t I tell her that—” He pinched the bridge of his nose the moment Neshta stepped into the room as well. “By Mekara, whatever happened to please remain at your quarters until I sorted this out?”
The old lady barely bothered with a swat in his direction. “Is it true? All of Noja is gossiping about how the shimid had to tend to our new urizaya, but not a word to your ami?”
