by V. K. Ludwig
It was a curse.
Twenty-One
Jessica
Kam sat on the metal surface of the workstation, tail lazily hanging from the edge, and pointed at the red button. “This one?”
I cleared my throat, dislodging a lump of dread before I struggled the corners of my lips as high as possible. “Yup. Gotta press down hard, though.”
“Okay.” When the centrifuge beeped and whirred to life, he rose into a squat and peaked through the glass at the top. “Whoa, that’s fast. How long does it take?”
“Not long. Once it’s done, I’ll set up the microscope so you can watch your plasma, hmm?”
Nervous energy swirled within my ribcage and, for once, I didn’t hope but fear that it was my soulbond. What did it mean? That Katedo was in trouble? Injured? They should have returned a day ago.
But Kam watched the centrifuge as if he didn’t have the slightest doubt about when and if Katedo would return. “Maybe we can watch a movie… look! It’s amimi!”
Sure enough, Neshta knocked on the glass of the side door, and my pulse extended into my fingertips. When she gestured me to come outside, I put the centrifuge on auto shut-off, and jutted Kam toward the decontamination chamber.
Those robotic arms didn’t move fast enough, and each whirr of the hydraulic put a tingle into my palms. It wasn’t until we stepped out of the chamber and into med bay, did it morph into a damp itch.
“By the Three Suns, what happened here?” My eyes jumped from one bloodied warrior inside a restoration tube to another, then snapped to Neshta who hurried toward us. “Where’s Katedo?”
The old female pressed a hand to her sternum and heaved. “He returned… returned to his quarters… so many losses.”
I could see that.
Med bay reeked of blood, filth, and urine, something I hadn’t noticed shut away inside the lab. The restoration tubes muffled most of the screams from the warriors inside them, but the groans of those lined along the glass wall on stretchers? Gods, they drove bile up my throat, and I’d seen my fair share of misery. Still, Katedo wasn’t here, which meant he was in better condition than these poor souls.
Kam pressed himself closely against me, and clutched my arm before he gave a tug. “Is that Sevja?”
I turned my head.
Her yellow irises caught mine.
I stared at them for what felt like minutes though couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Still, not once did she blink. Dull and abandoned, her eyes remained as unmoving as her body, save for the flat inhales slightly lifting her chest.
I hurried over to where she rested on one of the stretchers and kneeled down. “Sevja? What’s wrong with her? Healer!”
“My urizaya.” A male healer kneeled down beside me, his green eyes narrowed as he spoke softly. “There’s nothing to be done for her. Her soul is with Mekara until she decides to… to re—” His tongue smack-smack-smacked against his gums, but only until he startled himself out of it and bowed his head. “I… my apologies, urizaya. I don’t know what came over me.”
A foreboding chill crept up my spine, quickly brought to a standstill when Neshta tugged on my arm and said, “We better leave now.”
“What about Sevja?” I asked and rose, unable to rip my eyes from this catatonic state she was in although she carried no obvious injuries, aside from minor bruising.
“We call this dedozay, a lost soul.” Something pitiful came over her features, and while her eyes reached mine, they never quite stayed with me. “Faruk is on his way to Mekara. Death pulled his life breath from this realm, and almost ripped her along before their soulbond broke. It is for the goddess to decide if Sevja is already welcome within Mekara, or if she will return to us.”
Tears welled so quickly behind my eyes I could neither blink nor fan them away. No. By the Three Suns… No!
The healer bowed once more before he swiped his palm over Sevja’s eyes to close them. “We’ll take the best care of her.”
At Neshta’s next tug, I let Kam’s searching fingers intertwine with mine, and turned toward the main tunnel that connected all major structures. “Katedo?”
Neshta shook her head. “Nothing serious.”
She guided me this way and that, my mind oblivious to how my feet followed as if by sheer muscle memory. By the time we finally reached the sealed door, my heart throbbed so loudly between my ears I didn’t even hear what the posted guards said.
The moment we stepped inside and the locks clanked in place behind us, Kam rushed into the living area where Katedo leaned with one arm braced against the rock wall. “Adi!”
Katedo turned around, squatted down, and wrapped his arms around Kam. They dug their fingers into each other’s hair, whispering things in Jalut, but Katedo eventually picked him up.
When he straightened, I all but threw myself against them, trembling at their body heat that seeped into me. I needed Katedo to hold me. To pull me deep into his embrace, pressing my ear against his chest until I could hear the strong beat of his heart.
He did none of it.
Instead, he sniffed the side of my neck, curled his upper lip, then stepped away from me before he lowered Kam onto the couch. “I’m filthy.”
“What happened, adi?” Kam balanced with his shins on the top of the couch’s backrest. “Did you win?”
Katedo brushed his hand over his tousled braid. “I wouldn’t say that.”
He looked gruesome, no matter how he must have tried to wipe the blood from his body. Faint streaks remained here and there. Not his, though. Aside from a massive dark purple bruise on his calf and a glistening hole on his intact horn, he seemed mostly unharmed.
At least on the outside.
On the inside, I wasn’t so sure.
Something was… different.
His features were all wrong, scars stretched to capacity by a rock-hard jaw, robbing him of all the tenderness I knew he possessed. It was gone now, replaced with something so harsh it restarted that earlier chill.
Vertebra by vertebra, it climbed my spine, faster when Katedo’s eyes flicked to an open, rectangular box on the table beside him.
He sighed. “Rogon is injured but he’ll recover. Razgar’s yuleshi had to be put out if its misery. But Faruk…”
He gulped so hard it narrowed my own throat, turning my voice brittle when I said, “I saw Sevja at med bay. I’m so sorry.”
His head sunk. “I underestimated my opponent. Where I expected a bunch of small freeraider groups cobbled together, I found a strategic formation we weren’t prepared for. It was… my fault.”
My molars clenched together at that word, but they ground when his cheeks hollowed as he tortured his lips. He was a wall, impenetrable, and my zovazay was worth shit because I couldn’t gauge what was going on inside him. Why was he this distant?
Neshta held her arms outstretched at hip height, fingers pointing upward in prayer position. “And Zerim?”
“He’s fine,” Katedo said, and his eyes once more flicked to the open box on the coffee table. “We lost much but they lost more. The plateau, however, is safe. Ami would you…” Lips pressed into a thin line, he turned toward Kam and stroked through his hair. “Can you go with amimi for a while, so I can speak with Jessica? I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
The hairs lifted along my arm. Talk to me about what? As if on instinct, I rounded the coffee table, eyes flicking toward that box. Why did he keep staring at it? What was in that box?
“We will make ourselves useful and take care of affected mates, right?” Neshta had a way of making every smile look sincere, and took Kam’s hand. “Remember, Kam, a warlord always places the needs of his tribe first.”
Katedo and I waited, both equally still, frozen in place until the familiar whoosh of the door announced their departure. Each second after that cooled the warlord’s quarters by an additional degree, though it could have been that chill which now permeated my bones.
“You’re acting weird.” Another flick a
t the box, eyes catching on the elongated shape of glass or plastic within.
When I looked back at Katedo, his eyes were just as fixed on the box, a frown lining his dirt and blood-crusted face as he said, “Your scent intensified quicker than I anticipated. When I came here, it permeated the entire quarters.”
Another step to the left.
Another glance at this box.
That was when I saw it, the familiar plastic ends that would click into my heat suppressant dispenser. My mind wandered to how the healer had smacked his tongue as if tasting something he shouldn’t have perceived since I was bonded.
Unless I wasn’t.
And wouldn’t that explain—
No, I was jumping to conclusions.
Many women would if they’d been led around by their nose like I had, but I wouldn’t let doubt fog my thinking. Katedo wasn’t like that. He was honorable, and devoted, and caring, and… yeah, he was all those things. There was a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.
My lips trembled too hard when I tried for a smile, so I stretched them into a stupid grin instead as I waved at the box. “Worried that you’ll rut again?”
Each of his steps toward me quickened my pulse, robbing my joints of strength. One of them, my knee, buckled slightly when he turned inches from me and sat on the couch.
“I feel terrible for deceiving you, and it can’t go on like this.” His chest curled into itself, and the skin bunched around his eyes as his pained stare locked on me. “By Mekara, I tried to tell you after my rut, I truly did.”
My breaths turned into tiny little swallows of air, my throat narrowing to the width of a needle. “Tell me what?”
He cocked his head. “You know.”
“I don’t.”
I couldn’t.
Wouldn’t for a second consider that Katedo had lied to me. He might not have been forthcoming about Takay, whenever he sent the poor guy on guard duty in a bout of jealousy. But lying? Flat out lying? About something this significant? No, he wouldn’t do that. And about what anyway?
“You’ve known ever since the sun feast,” he said. “Ever since you had a chance to observe a couple that shared zovazay, you’ve known that there’s nothing the like between us.”
My lungs constricted.
Why would he say that?
“But you said—” My voice failed me, so I cleared my throat. “It’s slow to develop.”
Elbow propped against his thigh, he lowered his forehead into his palm. “Did you ever sense any of my emotional state?”
Never. “It’ll come.”
“Are you sensing any of my pain right this moment?”
No. “A little, maybe.”
“You feel nothing,” he mumbled, tilting his head just enough in his palm a trickle of blood oozed from the hole in his horn before it ran down his temple. “Because there is no zovazay.”
“That’s not true.”
“I lied to you!” Perhaps I would have jumped at his bark, if it wasn’t for how my body froze as that chill finally reached my heart, searing through the muscle. “Zovazay requires a sting between your ribs while I hum to ease your pain. When I rutted, I did one, but not the other. I never completed the bond.”
“But you hummed for me.”
“Argos later.” He rose, walked over, lifted his hand for my cheek, but the warmth of his touch never reached me to drive out that chill. He dropped his hand by his side, leaving me in my frozen state. “I never called you kunazay because, while you are many things to me, you are not my soulmate.”
And yet his words slashed through my sternum, broke ribs and shattered dreams, leaving my chest a gaping, bloody mess as if I was. How could there be no zovazay when I felt it aching at my core, shriveling the thread, fraying it, thinning it until—
Pop.
It broke right then.
Imagined, probably, just like the entire rest of this illusion I’d once more allowed to entrap me. Nothing but a pipedream burning up, and I had no idea if I was mad at him for being a liar, or mad at myself for being an idiot.
I stared at the injector insert. Odd, how two black clasps managed to strip my reality of its pretty veil, exposing my stupidity. Whatever I’d felt inside me wasn’t a soulbond. Only figments of a sad mind, so desperate to belong it had ignored all hints.
“Wow. Just… wow.” I turned away, took one step, didn’t know where to go, then turned to face him once more. “Gotta be honest, I feel pretty ridiculous right now.”
Katedo sucked his lips into a bloodless, light gray line. “I’m sorry for deceiving you like this. Somehow, I slipped into this lie and couldn’t find a way out of it. Eventually, I figured it would be best to sting you again during this heat and complete the bond. To just… fix this mess.”
All tension slipped off my muscles, allowing my lungs a full inhale. That wasn’t so bad. Did he lie to me? Yes, but I could see how that happened. The rut, the sudden sting, how Kam and Neshta had stormed the bedroom… But he would fix it now.
“Okay,” I mumbled, breathed down that disappointment clogging up my throat because nobody was perfect, and looked at him. “So… like… when do we do it? Now? Probably not a good time in case I pass out again, and you really can’t spare your shimids and healers right now. Once I’m fully ovulating?”
“What?” His brow first arched then furrowed, and his head shook slowly as if in disbelief, but gained concerning momentum until it came to an abrupt halt. “Mekara give me strength, I’m only making this worse. How do I make you understand—” He pressed his palm against his mouth as if to muffle a scream, then reached both out to cup my face. “You’ve seen Sevja, haven’t you?”
“I did.”
“I love you, Jessica. With all my heart, I love you. Love how you make mundane moments special with nothing but your presence, love when you seek shelter in my arms, and how you always welcome Kamenji in yours.” An inhale stuttered across his lips that seemed to suck all air from our surroundings. “It’s because of my love for you that there won’t be zovazay.”
Okay… okay… understandable. There was a lot going on right now. “Not anytime soon.”
“Never.”
Numbness spread across my skin. The same kind that had paralyzed me in the ruins of Paris when armored warriors had stormed toward me. This couldn’t be happening. Not again. I’d told him I would be patient, but never was a long time.
“Jessica…” Those fingers intertwining with mine, I didn’t even feel, I’d gone that bloodless. “You are my urizaya. This doesn’t change the way I feel for you. Do I not make you happy? Am I not spoiling you with everything I have?”
“Yes.” And how much of that had he done because of his guilty conscience? “And how exactly will this work? At med bay, a healer reacted to my scent which flustered him and embarrassed me.”
A low growl he had no right to voice slipped his lips. “I will ensure a continuous supply of suppressant.”
“Do I… what? Inject myself for the rest of my life?” I waved toward the box. “Is that even safe?”
“The medication solely suppresses your scent, not your cycle. It’s perfectly safe for long-term use.”
Long-term use.
I cringed at that word almost as hard as at never. “And what if the medication runs out? Doesn’t get delivered in time? Breaks? Spoils? What if I develop side effects after a while? You say it’s safe for long-term use, but that’s only in theory. That stuff hasn’t even been around that long. Then you have an urizaya broadcasting her heat to every warrior—”
“You are mine!”
“But I’m not!” Once again, I wasn’t anybody’s anything. Not a daughter. Not a wife. Not a soulmate. “How do you think this will work?”
“It has worked so far, hasn’t it?” Where the way he toyed with my curls usually calmed me, it now only drove a rancid anger into my stomach. “I’m giving you everything.”
“Everything but your soul.”
His nostrils flared. “I
pet you, I hum for you, I stroke you, I satisfy you as thoroughly as possible, I give you all the riches I can afford—”
“I don’t want riches,” I snapped. “I want to belong.”
His upper lip twitched right where the scar split it, almost as if he pitied me or something. “No Jessica, you want zovazay because it’s more convenient than having to trust.”
“Trust? You deceived me, Neshta, Kam… and you expect my trust?” My hands pulled from his grip on reflex, and I took a step back. “I understand why you would think like this about zovazay, I really do.”
“No you don’t. Because you have no idea of the pain it can cause. Not only for me, but you as well. I almost died, Jessica. You have no idea what would await you, had that happened.”
“Oh, because I don’t know what it feels like to lose people I love, right? I don’t remember my mom’s face, but I remember the pain I felt when I lost her. It still flares up from time to time. And you know what?” A gulp hiccupped at the back of my throat, dislodging those first tears which ran down cheeks that warmed with anger. “Considering I have nothing left, I almost embrace it. That pain is nothing but a reminder that, once, there was love in its place. That’s precious, Katedo.”
When I turned away toward the door, he clasped my shoulder. “We can be together without zovazay.”
I felt his gaze on my back as I sunk my own to the ground, my voice brittle. “Ask me why.”
“Why what?”
“Ask me why my ex-husband left me.”
A sigh, and then, “Why did he leave you?”
“I’ll never know because he never told me just what I did wrong or where I could have done better. Did he fall in love with someone else? Did he get fed up with how I folded the towels? I have no fucking idea. He spoiled me, too. Made everything seem perfect, cradling me in this false sense of belonging.” I didn’t turn around to look at him when he tugged on my shoulder. “You know, I wasn’t mad at him for calling it quits. Sometimes, things don’t work out and that’s okay. What hurt me was that he made me believe something that turned out to be an illusion. A lie.” I walked away from his touch, grabbed the damn injector insert, then hurried toward the door. “And you did the same.”
