by Octavia Kore
The human female gasped at the sound of his voice, and he turned his gaze on her, letting his eyes roam over her face. There was terror in her eyes and in the way her chest rose and fell rapidly with each breath. It did nothing to dissuade his perusal. If anything, it only added to his excitement.
Take. Possess. Hunt.
No. No, that’s not right, Xuvri scolded himself.
What had the dark-haired female told him? “I ran because I was afraid of you.”
So much of what that human had told him that day made sense to him now, but he still couldn’t understand why the warriors had been lied to. Why would the council have told them that the running and the fighting was their tradition if it was not? The Grutex were no strangers to Earth, so how had they gotten it so wrong? Perhaps this was not true for all of humanity, but only a portion of them.
Xuvri’s gaze cut toward the covered tube. The other female… the hunt had excited her. She’d laughed when he caught her, telling him it sweetened their deal. Their deal. Without the fog of madness hanging over him, the memory of their pact was a little clearer. In exchange for the delivery of a healthy offspring, Xuvri had promised to return her to Earth, to let her go on with her life. Surrogacy, she’d called it.
But the Tachin scum had ruined everything. He’d failed her.
Xuvri gritted his teeth, reaching out for his mates, seeking their comfort. The hybrid female trembled as he brushed against her mind, her eyes going wide as the thread between them went taut. She slid into place, nestling into the spot within him where she belonged.
The human female’s connection was weaker, more fragile, and yet he felt her strength all the same as he coaxed her mind to follow. When she slipped into her spot, struggling only for a moment before settling, he sighed.
With the three of them finally connected, Xuvri closed his eyes and let his head tilt back against the cold floor of the ship. A deafening silence filled the room, and when he opened his eyes again, he found his human mate openly staring at him. A combination of terror and confusion swirled in those brown depths.
His hybrid mate muttered something he didn’t understand before tugging the belt at her waist loose and slipping it from around her hips.
“I may require a little more time to heal before I’m able to breed you,” Xuvri murmured, letting the back of his clawed finger drift over her thigh.
“Oh, God.” The human’s face scrunched up as she watched.
Is she jealous? She shouldn’t be. I will breed her as well once I’ve healed enough. I will see to the pleasure of both my mates.
With a firm, but gentle grasp, the hybrid female removed his hand, her voice stern as she placed it on his chest above his broken plates. Xuvri’s upper eyes shifted to the human, watching as she brought her lifeblood-covered fingers up to stare at them as if that would cleanse them.
“No,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “Never. Not again.”
Was she upset over his injuries? “I do not plan on ever letting this happen again.”
His hybrid mate spoke again, gesturing to the human, but she frowned. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one unable to understand her. Normally, his translator would have taught him the language, just from the little that she’d said, but if it wasn’t supplying him with anything then her language was unknown to the Grutex. Or it had been purposefully wiped from their system.
“I have no idea what you’re going on about,” the human female huffed. “I don’t know what language you’re speaking, Ky.”
“I apologize,” the hybrid, Ky, said with a frown, reaching over his body and taking the human’s hand. “It is the language of my tribe. I forgot myself.” She tried to place the human’s hand on the cloth, but she jerked back. “I need your help, Esme.”
Ky. Esme. He repeated his mates’ names in his mind.
The sound of their voices sent a shiver through his aching body, and when his hybrid mate slid her arms beneath him, rolling him so that she could slip her belt under him, Xuvri nearly groaned aloud. She worked quickly, tying the length around his chest so that it put pressure on his wound and freed up their hands.
The human, Esme, moved closer, her eyes on the other female. Xuvri didn’t even try to quell the urge to touch her. He stroked the tip of his finger over the back of her hand, marveling at the glow that emanated from his plates there. How did I get it so wrong?
She jumped back with a yelp as if the contact startled her.
He looked between them, wonder filling him. “My mates.” Saying the words aloud made his entire body vibrate with need and excitement. He had mates.
“No.” Esme shook her head as she stared down at the fading red glow.
Xuvri frowned. “Yes.” He glowed for her, for both of them. There was no use in denying it now.
“No!” she shouted, slamming her clenched fists onto her thighs. “I didn’t ask for this! I don’t want this!”
“Esme,” Ky spoke gently, drawing the human’s gaze. “We are rarely given the mates we ask for. Una does not do what we want, but what we need.”
“Well, whoever Una is, you can let them know I don’t want this, and I definitely don’t need this!”
Ky frowned and sighed as if she were dealing with stubborn offspring. “Una is the sun goddess. She is the dam who created us all.”
“To your people.”
“To all.” She was patient. “She created all in the universe, not only my people.”
“Back home, we call that your religion, and I’m gonna pass. I used to believe in some magic being in the sky and look where that got me.”
Ky pursed her lips and nodded. “I do not know of this magic being in your sky, but Una is not merely a religion. She is always with me, in everything I do. I hear her in my mind and in my heart.”
“You… you hear voices in your mind?” Esme’s brow raised over one of her eyes.
“Yes. She guides my hand, brings me clarity when I am unsure. Una comes to me in my dreams as well.” Ky shrugged. “I do not expect you to understand. I was raised from a very young age to open myself to her for all of the duties I would take on as one of her priestesses.”
Their voices faded as he stared up at the ceiling of the ship, focusing on the dried lifeblood splattered across the dark metal. He’d died, hadn’t he? Perhaps it had just been a wish. The last things he remembered were the dark-haired female’s mates bursting through the door and the pain that tore through him as the beast’s teeth and claws broke through his plates. He’d felt almost relieved then, knowing he would finally be free of the madness that had plagued him. There would be no more pain, no more mourning for the loss of his offspring and the woman who had tried to give them to him.
Laurie.
For so long, Xuvri lived with their memory, with the knowledge that he couldn’t save them. Many of the offspring died within her womb, but one of them, a mauve-skinned male with dark eyes, had been delivered. He’d never laid eyes on something so small and delicate, but his offspring was underdeveloped and not equipped to handle life outside of the female. The little one’s last breath was drawn in the crook of his arm, and he hadn’t been able to bring himself to ask Laurie to try again after that.
Waking up to find his mates hovering over him was not something he would have ever imagined, and yet they were here with their hands covered in his lifeblood. His fingers itched to touch them, and his arms burned with the need to wrap around them, to pull them into his lap and convey the amount of affection he felt for them. He wanted them to know, needed them to know, that they were his and that he would die a million times over to keep them safe.
Everything was still so confusing, and his memory of the events that took place after the encounter with the beast was unclear.
“What happened?” he asked.
Ky’s breath huffed out as she turned narrowed eyes on his face. “You tell us.”
“I was attacked.”
“Why?” Esme asked.
“I made a mistake,” he told t
hem. Many mistakes. “The explanation of which may be lengthy.”
Esme gestured vaguely at the ship. “We’ve been here for two days and this storm still hasn’t let up. I think we’ve got plenty of time to hear it.”
He risked losing his mates before he even had the chance to claim them, but they were his. Why would the goddess give them to him just to rip them away when he opened himself like this? Unlike many of the warriors he knew, Xuvri could admit when he was wrong, and showing Esme and Ky this now would help in the long run.
“I took someone who did not belong to me.”
“Someone who didn’t belong to you,” Esme repeated. “People can’t belong to another person. You kidnapped someone.”
You belong to me, little female, he wanted to tell her, but thought better of it. Now wasn’t the time to stake his claim.
“You took Amanda,” Ky said, her fushori racing over her skin as she watched him with an accusatory gaze. She was breathtaking like this. “You are the one who took her from our home in the village. Oshen thought he killed you when they rescued her.”
Xuvri shook his head, grunting as he turned to push himself up until he was sitting. His head swam for a moment, his chest throbbing angrily as he tried to get his bearings. “I didn’t know that it was wrong,” he told them, gritting his teeth as propped himself up against one of the overturned tables.
“Didn’t know it was wrong?” Esme laughed humorlessly. “You’ve got to be kidding. How the hell didn’t you know kidnapping someone was wrong?”
“Our warriors were lied to,” Xuvri said. “We were told of a species, one we’d encountered lifetimes ago, that had the potential to correct and prevent the abnormalities that were presenting themselves in our young. Warriors had to prove themselves to join the hunt.”
“The hunt? Is that what you call chasing humans down and kidnapping them?”
Xuvri turned to Esme. It was clear from the way her face scrunched up that his human mate found him abhorrent. Or perhaps it was just his actions she took offense to? Either way, after what he’d learned, he knew winning her over was going to take time.
“Yes,” he answered honestly, seeing no reason to smooth over the actions of his people. “The council was responsible for preparing us, and I know now that things they told us were lies. Whether or not it was intentional, I cannot say, but I can’t imagine males with such knowledge of the planet and the species would have gotten it so wrong.”
“What did they tell you?” Ky asked.
“That the hunt excited the humans. They wanted to be chased, to be hunted. The harder they fought, the more they desired you to prove yourself, to show them that you were worthy. It was their way of consenting. According to the old logs, it was the way our people once mated, back before the females became scarce and our troubles with fertility began. It made sense to us that another species might practice the same mating rituals. It was how I met her…” His eyes darted toward the tube. It was covered with a blanket now, but he knew she still floated within the liquid the Tachin had placed her in.
“You didn’t bother to ask them?” Esme questioned.
“The first female I found called herself Laurie.” The sound of her name in the air was almost too much. When was the last time he’d said it? “She never disputed what the council told me. So, no, I never asked her if this was the human way. The chase excited her, and she included it as part of our deal.” Xuvri glanced over at the tube again. “In exchange for her eventual return to Earth, Laurie agreed to carry and safely deliver one of my offspring.”
Ky’s mind brushed against his, and her face twisted as if she were experiencing his emotions. The memory of Laurie’s touch, the way she laughed when he caught her those first few times before the losses started, sent a pang of guilt and sadness through him. They’d both known she wasn’t his true mate, but she had been his friend, and her death was one of many things that had plunged him into madness.
“What happened to her?” Ky asked.
“There was something wrong, something missing.” His hands moved along his xines, tugging at them as they writhed. “I tried to tell the Tachin, tried to explain to them that she wasn’t mine, that Laurie wasn’t the female I saw here.” Xuvri brought a finger to the side of his head and tapped against the hard plating. “She wasn’t right,” he murmured, feeling the sharp claws of the madness rake against his mind and pluck at the threads that connected him to his mates. “She wasn’t strong enough to survive what they put her through.”
“Who?” Esme’s voice trembled.
His eyes shot to her, and he growled low in his throat at the terror he saw on her face. She shouldn’t be afraid. He would protect her. He wouldn’t fail them, not this time. “I told the Tachin it was only a dream. How could this female exist? How could she be all of these things? He tried to make her in this image… he wanted to fix her… but she couldn’t––” Xuvri choked on the words, unable to force them past his lips.
Show them. Show them what he did to her—what you let him do.
He wasn’t a male who kept secrets, and these were his mates. There was nothing in the universe he wouldn’t share with them, not even the one thing he regretted the most in all of his lives. Xuvri pushed himself up off of the floor, grunting when the movement tugged at his wounds. His whole chest ached, and he pressed his hand against the cloth the females had placed there.
“You will reopen your wounds,” Ky chided, her hands shooting out to clutch at his arms. “Easy.”
It was such a simple touch, clearly not meant to be anything other than a reminder for him to mind his broken plates, but it sent a shiver through him all the same. The light in her eyes dimmed when he removed her hand.
“I have to show you,” he told her before glancing over at Esme. “You deserve to know what was done.”
Every muscle in his body burned and ached as they stretched, unaccustomed to moving after such a long period of inactivity. He stumbled more than once, his tail swinging behind him as he struggled to find his balance. It had been so long since he’d actually looked at Laurie, and to be perfectly honest, he wasn’t at all sure why he’d let the Tachin male bring her on board. His hand fisted in the blanket a moment before he gave it a sharp tug. Xuvri looked away as the blanket slid from the top of the tube.
Twin gasps filled the air. He knew what they were seeing, knew the horror that was coursing through them because he’d felt it as well the first time he saw her. “They tried to make her look like the female in my dreams, but I know now that this wasn’t possible. I was seeing you.” He dared a quick glance toward them. “I was seeing two females, not one.”
“What the fuck…” Esme whispered.
“I believe they thought modifying her in this way would somehow cure whatever it was that caused the loss of our offspring. None of them made it to term, and after this... she didn’t survive the procedure.”
Esme frowned, her eyes locked on Laurie’s floating form. “She’s dead?” Xuvri inclined his head. “I don’t—there’s something moving.”
Xuvri spun to face the tube and nearly tripped over his own tail as he stumbled backward. No. It wasn’t possible. Laurie was dead… She was gone, but the curve of her stomach, the obvious swell that hadn’t been there when they landed on Venora contradicted that knowledge.
“She was pregnant,” Esme mumbled, moving toward the tube. “She is pregnant.”
No. He shook his head as he watched the golden strands of her hair float around her face and shoulders. They hadn’t mated since well before the loss of their last offspring, and she’d been gone for too long, far too long to be like this. As he reeled from the shock, movement caught his attention, and all six of his red eyes locked on her abdomen. There, as if resting just beneath her skin, something rolled, twisting and turning within her.
Laurie wasn’t dead.
She was carrying offspring.
Chapter 5
Esme
“This isn’t possible,” the Grutex
whispered as his hand hovered over the outside of the tube. “There was no brain activity… They said she was gone.”
Esme shook her head, staring up at the woman floating within the fluid. Her stomach moved as a limb pushed at the skin already stretched too thin. The sight reminded her of an old sci-fi movie where the alien’s offspring burst out of the person’s chest. Was that what was going to happen here? Was the baby trying to escape? Fuck me, I’ve watched way too many horror movies. “Then she’d be brain dead. Just because her body’s functioning doesn’t mean she is.” She turned to look at the male, and her heart nearly leaped from her chest when she found all six of those red eyes on her face.
She wanted to run, to turn tail and escape the room and the ship. Get out, you idiot! Run! Leave! Her mind screamed, but by some miracle, or perhaps her own stupidity, her feet stayed firmly planted on the ground.
His head tilted and he took a step toward her. “What does brain dead mean? Explain.”
Esme swallowed past the lump in her throat, running her hand over the goosebumps that rose on her arms. “It means that she is dead, technically, but there’s something keeping the rest of her body functioning.”
Small bubbles floated through the clear fluid surrounding the woman as the strands of her blonde hair drifted out around her face. Mismatched limbs were sewn to her body, the dark mauve color a clear contrast to the paleness of her skin. Dark vines, just like Ky’s and the Grutex male’s, rested against her shoulders and upper chest.
Even after the nightmares she’d witnessed in the lab, the sight of Laurie’s mutilation was horrifying. With her eyes closed and her lashes resting against her cheeks, she looked like she was only sleeping.
Esme rested her hand against the tube, exhaling softly as something washed over her; a sense of peace and recognition. She circled the massive container and noticed a thin wire that floated behind her.
