by Pearl Foxx
It didn’t take her long to find him. She may not be as connected to the movements of the hive as a Draqon, but she already knew Maxsym well enough to know he’d be at the center of the hive, in the midst of the people, holding court like a prince.
He sat in the centermost and deepest spring with a throng of people surrounding him, reclining against the toned, tanned legs of a beautiful female Draqon with auburn hair and violet eyes.
Everyone looked up and went quiet as Niva approached.
She cleared her throat. All eyes were on her. The air was most certainly thinner up here. “I’m worr—” She bit off the word. Who was she to be worried about him? Instead, she asked, “Has anyone seen Zayd?”
Of course, as the words left her mouth, she recalled Grace explaining that the entire hive knew exactly what had happened last night between them.
Her blush returned, and if she could have summoned the mountain to open beneath her and gobble her up, she would have. Better to die boiled in lava than from the current blush heating up her face.
When Maxsym turned his crooked, devilish smirk on her, his light-colored eyes gleamed. “Zayd? No, can’t say I’ve seen him lately. Figured after last night you would be the one seeing the most of him.”
The harem of women around him chittered with laughter. The one whose legs he laid against stroked a hand down his muscled chest, her eyes locked on Niva’s.
Niva held her ground and gritted her teeth before speaking. “Can I speak to you privately?”
She doubted he had ever done anything private in his life, but shocking her completely, his expression softened, and, with a nod, he stood, completely nude. He preened in front of her for a moment until she rolled her eyes.
After Maxsym put on a pair of dry leathers, they drifted a safe distance away from the Draqons’ capable hearing.
“You look worried,” he said when they stopped beside a bridge. A glimmer returned to his eyes. “Did Zayd not—”
“I’m asking if you’ve seen him this morning,” she said, nearly growling. “He shifted and vanished last night. I’m worried. He wasn’t…” She steeled herself. Maxsym needed to know. He was Zayd’s best friend. “He wasn’t okay. Something was wrong.”
Maxsym’s expression instantly changed, like a slip of ice falling from a mountain peak to reveal a swath of pale, virgin snow beneath. “What do you mean he vanished? You haven’t seen him since?”
She shook her head. “Something happened. He should be back by now.”
“Fuck,” he growled. His scales rippled beneath the sunlight, prickling and spiking like a dog’s fur before a fight. “When will that bastard ever stop punishing himself?”
“What is he punishing himself for?”
“Sotu’s death. He blames himself. But it was a fucking accident. Could have happened to anyone.”
Before she could ask more questions, Maxsym strode back to the group. Even though they hadn’t heard the exchange, the other Draqons reacted to his tension as he approached. Barely slowing, he instructed, “Get the battle pairs. I want to be in the air in—”
A high-pitched keen echoed down the mountain pass. A warning call—Niva knew enough about the Draqons to recognize that sound by now. It meant nothing good. And she instantly knew it was from Zayd.
Apparently, so did everyone else. Some shifted and flew, while others ran. As Maxsym raced by, still in his two-legged form, he grabbed Niva’s arm and hauled her along after him.
A slash of pain slivered across her belly, taking her breath away.
A crowd gathered around the central springs. The steam hung heavy in the air, thick and foggy. Wings rustled, and the scraping of scales hissed, echoing in Niva’s ears. The keen came again, right above her and crashing faster with every second, but the mist was too dense to see clearly.
Something struck her back, sharp and pointed. Deep. She reached around but found nothing there, but the sensation intensified under her flesh the louder the beating wings became.
The other Draqons surrounded her, their bodies appearing through the fog. Everyone looked up.
As Niva turned her attention skyward, she caught a flash of red and orange. Maxsym had just enough time to jerk her out of the way.
Then Zayd hit the ground.
Hard enough to crack the mountain’s rock.
Hard enough to rattle her bones.
To shake her soul loose with a gasp of pain, a hollow echo she felt deep within her body.
The pain. Bright across her vision. Slashes. Bright red.
She staggered and nearly fell to her knees as Zayd shifted in a heap of scales and fire.
Maxsym was the only thing keeping her standing, and that was by sheer force as he nearly dislocated her shoulder.
Blood pooled beneath Zayd. For a beat, no one moved. Then everyone did at once.
They surged toward him the way blood pumped back through a body’s veins to its center, its heart. Maxsym, dragging Niva behind him, pushed through, shouldering past the whimpering Draqons.
In the center, Zayd staggered to his feet, his glorious body naked but covered in blood and seeping wounds. Niva felt each wound etched into her own flesh.
His pain, in that moment, was hers.
It was like he was inside her again. Like she was on his back again. Like they were one body.
He lifted his head. Silver-blonde hair streaked with red fell over his scarred face, and his smoke-colored eyes locked on hers.
He knew it too.
He felt her too.
“Zayd,” she whispered.
The word cut through all else, and he recoiled from her like she’d struck him. He straightened to his full height and snarled, sending his people scattering away from him. Only she and Maxsym stayed close.
“What happened—” Maxsym started.
“Get the Vilkan Alpha on the comms. I caught the Hylas in the unsettled region—with guns.”
Zayd’s words landed like cracks of a whip. Even Maxsym stood a little straighter.
Niva breathed through her nose to keep from panicking. She could smell the blood. Zayd’s blood. It was sweet in the air, thick in her nose, hot at the back of her throat. She felt his hands on her from last night, her body stretching around him, and she blinked and saw him in front of her, staring at her, bloodied and battered. A circle was engraved in his shoulder, sinking to the sinew beneath. A bullet hole. “You were shot.”
“The Hylas have guns?” Maxsym ignored the obvious fact that, yes, clearly the Hylas had guns—they’d shot Zayd with them. “How? They have the tech ban.”
“Does it look like I fucking know?” Zayd spat. “We have to warn the Vilkas. I chased the snakes off, but they were heading straight for the Vilkan mountain.”
Niva’s stomach dropped. Vera. The baby.
But Zayd. “You need stitches,” she said. “The wound is still bleeding and will get infected if we don’t get the bullet out of there.”
Finally, Maxsym looked at his friend’s shoulder, but Zayd only glared at her as if she’d shot him.
Perhaps she had. It was her fault he’d flown out there and straight into a Hylan hunting party.
He stalked past her, muscles flexing, blood dripping down his legs.
Niva stared after him, her mouth hanging open.
Maxsym followed, giving her arm a slight brush before whispering, “I’ll see that he gets treated. He’ll be okay.”
And then they were gone, the other Draqons rushing away to fortify the perimeter, and Niva was left in the spring’s mist, alone.
Chapter Thirteen
Zayd
Zayd pulled on the first pair of leathers he found lying inside the transmissions room. They hung loosely on his hips, the blood from those fucking cowardly snakes acting as a tacky glue to hold the leather to his skin.
“We’ll get you the weapons double time,” said the Vilkas’ Alpha, Gerrit. His voice crackled with static through the comm. The mountains messed with the transmissions sometimes, and Zayd had
felt a low-pressure system in the air during his turbulent, limping flight home. “If the Hylas have that level of artillery, you need to be prepared. Expect a convoy at the base of the mountain by the end of day tomorrow.”
“What I want to know is how those fuckers got guns to begin with,” Maxsym snarled into the microphone.
Zayd stood against the wall with his arms over his chest. The rest of the transmissions room had cleared out with one pointed glare from him. He didn’t need the hive panicking when they found out the Vilkas’ Alpha was sending some of his most powerful weapons to the Draqons in case of an invasion.
“At this point,” Gerrit said, “we have to assume the worst. Savas could have gotten word of our location to the humans, and the humans could have supplied his allies with the firepower.”
Maxsym hissed. “Fuck that.”
“Hey, I know. I want to be wrong, and I hope to hell I am. But until I’m proven incorrect, I don’t want you up there without the means to shoot back. Those bows are handy, but they won’t do shit against a gun.”
“Fine,” Zayd snapped, shoving himself up from the wall and toward the comm unit. He hated talk of guns. Hated that he needed them from the Vilkas. Hated that he needed anything. Dammit, he hated everything right now. “Just get them here. We’ll handle the Hylas.”
“Be careful,” Gerrit said over a rip of static.
Zayd was about to prowl out of the room and find a bottle of dionaea flower liquor when Gerrit added, “One last question since I have you.”
Zayd turned back to the radio. Maxsym shot him a raised eyebrow. The Swarm Master didn’t have kind feelings toward the Vilkas, and Zayd couldn’t blame him, but times had changed and it was time the Draqons changed too.
“What?” He couldn’t have helped the snarl in his tone even if he had wanted to.
“Vera, my Beta’s mate, is worried about Niva. Is she doing okay? I…” Gerrit paused, clearly struggling for words. Zayd’s eyes narrowed. Hadn’t Niva said something about the Alpha? About him breaking her heart? “Well, I didn’t do my best with her. I’m afraid she never found her place here.”
Zayd leaned around Maxsym and took the mic from him. Into the comm, he growled, “She’s fine. This is her home now. And she’s a fuck of a lot better off here than with you.”
He ended the transmission with a rip of static.
“I see the fighting didn’t fix what the fucking stirred up,” Maxsym said to him, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “Maybe you should go fuck her again to fix what the fighting couldn’t and what the first fucking started.”
“Fuck you.”
“I’m lost. How many fucks is that exactly?”
Zayd strode from the room. Before he could slam the door, Maxsym shouted, “And clean those wounds, you filthy bastard.”
No one bothered him as he stalked back to his quarters. He tasted ash in his mouth. His teeth ached with acid. There wasn’t a step he took where his scales didn’t rattle in frustration. The dark-lined tattoos on his back, covered in dried, flaking blood, stretched across his skin, flexing with anger to be freed. The desperation to take to the air was a tight-gripped throttle around his neck. Almost like panic, like he would never take a deep breath of air again. But he knew better than to shift like this, when he was at his weakest. That was when his mind lost focus and he hovered on the line of madness.
He went to his quarters. He jerked the leather flap back and took two long strides into the dark room before he smelled her.
Niva.
She perched on the edge of his bed with her arms crossed. Her eyes narrowed first at him and then his wounds. Her scowl darkened. “Do you even care that you’re bleeding to death?”
“I’d hardly call it bleeding to death. It’s just a—”
“If you say it’s just a flesh wound, I’ll punch you in the face.”
His skin sparked at her tone, electrified between pleasure and pain. “You wouldn’t,” he snarled. “You don’t have it in you.”
“Oh, I do.” She straightened off the bed and stood to her full, tiny height. “And you’re going to treat that gunshot wound now.”
“It’s fine. It’s already—”
“And beyond that, you will not, and I repeat, will not treat me like a quick fuck,” she said, and the foul word for what they’d done last night on her full, perfect lips had him hardening. “I don’t know what happened with you last night, but you don’t have the right to make me feel so amazing and then just… just… just leap off a cliff!”
Dark spots bloomed across her cheeks, and her lips quivered with rage. He felt the hot spark of it within his belly. Even now, without touching her, he felt her.
Just like he knew he would.
He hated himself for it.
“You shouldn’t care what I do with myself, Niva. You deserve to be with someone worthy of a mate like yourself.” His jaw clenched around the next few words, but he forced himself to say them because he knew how much they would mean to her. “Worthy of a rider like yourself.”
The emotions—first shock then joy then unabashed anger—played across her face like a space storm.
“Worthy of me? I’m not some gilded prize, you know,” she sputtered. Her hands clenched into little fists. Her crackling anger filled the room, seeped into him, and doused the embers of his own rage. It was like with her, in this room, he unwound.
He breathed.
“I loved being with you last night, and when we flew… it was amazing!” She was practically shouting, throwing her hands in the air. “Don’t give me some stoic bullshit about you being too messed up or too scarred or too… too… whatever! Okay? Because I don’t care. I want you, Zayd. I want to be your rider.”
His heart sank. “I had my rider, and I lost her.”
Her shoulders sagged, and her eyes filled with pity. He hated seeing that expression on her face. He wanted the anger to return. He deserved that at least, not her pity.
“I know you lost your mate. I don’t know how it happened, but I’m guessing it has something to do with those scars you keep hidden all the time. You loved Sotu. I get that. But you can’t keep punishing yourself.
The look in her eye tempted him to believe her. It had been over five years since he’d lost Sotu. While the horror of that battle, of feeling her body slip off his back, would be with him forever, he thought there might be room inside him for something more. He was willing to look, to explore his soul, for Niva.
“But you’re not off the hook yet,” she added. She pointed a slender finger at him, her dark brow cocking above her simmering green eyes. He’d gotten his wish: the anger had returned. “I need to hear you say that I’m more than some quick fuck. That whatever happened last night was important.”
His heart ached. “It was important.”
She blinked, surprised he’d relented so easily. Then she nodded. “Okay then. Right. Well I’m sorry you’re upset. I don’t know why you think I don’t deserve you, and I won’t push you to move on if you’re not ready—”
“I betrayed my Queen.”
She paused again, completely frozen. Eventually, she closed her mouth and took a steadying breath. “Because you were with me?”
He shook his head. How could he tell her? How could he lay it out so a human could understand? But then, by the expression in her saddening gaze, maybe she knew. Maybe he didn’t have to say anything. It made it easier to speak the words he barely let himself think.
“I’ve been with other women, but they never mattered. I’ve betrayed her because, for the first time, I’ve felt connected to you. Like when we flew, I felt everything you did, and my mind was calm. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that at peace, even with Sotu. I knew you in those moments, and I let myself be known. It was terrifying but… Gods, Niva, it was the best thing I’ve ever felt in my entire life.”
Her eyes welled with tears, but she swiped them away. Jerkily, she dipped her chin again. “I know. I know. I felt it too. So… so it’s settled, then.
I’m not just a quick fuck. I matter. You matter. This is important.” She squared her shoulders at him, still holding on to her anger. He fought back a smile. “So, let’s act like it. Okay?”
When he didn’t respond, she took his silence as acquiescence. Perhaps it was. He didn’t know what it felt like, because he doubted he had ever acquiesced to anything in his life before.
She picked up a bundle of supplies on the bed behind her—medical bandages, he noted with a renewed scowl—and strode over to him. Standing so close, almost touching chest to chest, she was small enough to fit beneath his wing, had he been in his second form. But like this, she was just the right size for him to tuck against him and hold until she let loose of that little ball of rage.
“We also need to talk about how you just flew off and got into a brawl with a bunch of Hylas.”
His mouth almost quirked into a smile. “I had it under control—”
Before he could finish, she jabbed her finger into the knife wound in his stomach, making him hiss with pain. The floor tilted, and taking advantage of his dizzy moment, she shoved him back on his bed. He fell against the feather mattress with a growling snap of his teeth.
“Oh, stop it. You aren’t going to bite me. I’m a trained medic and midwife. I know what I’m doing.” She ripped open a fresh bandage and poured stinging liniment over it. Enough to drip excess onto the floor. Enough to make him howl with pain if she touched him with it.
“Wait. That’s too much,” he warned, but she was already on him, pressing the bandage to his stomach.
He howled.
Chapter Fourteen
Niva
The next morning, after Niva had finished her morning meal, she made her way down to the hot springs on the south side of the hive, near where she had originally entered the hive.
It was strange to think it had been a little more than a month since she’d come here to a new strange new place, a complete alien—in every sense of the word—to the people who lived here. And now she felt like she’d finally found her home, like she’d been accepted and welcomed.
