by Amanda Milo
Swiftly, blue sky-striked black wings form walls around Gracie. The moment before they make contact and wrap her close, Gracie sees them and at the sight alone...
She relaxes. The mere knowledge that her male is here, at her back, has an instant calming effect on her.
It’s a potent phenomenon to witness. Old desires stir deep inside me, and for the first time in a very long time, I don’t castigate myself for having them. I even… consider one female in particular. Imagine what it would be like if we shared this type of bond.
To Gracie’s hob, I call, “Dohrein.” When he pulls his attention from his mate and gives his focus to me, I warn, “She’s going to fall down those steps if she keeps taking them.”
Gracie almost speaks over me. “I’ll use the ramp!” She twists to make eye contact with her male, trying to plead her case.
I lick a fang. “That’s not enough.”
The pair gaze at each other as if they can read minds. Finally, Dohrein meets my stare and says, “She’ll use the ramp. And,” he adds with finality, using his wing’s claws to catch his mate’s hands, “she’ll do nothing but observe.”
Gracie sighs but does not argue.
I’m impressed.
I’m also willing to compromise, to a point. I skewer Gracie with a look. “You’re here to observe only as long as you’re safely able. You so much as stumble—”
“Then I’ll stay in our room at the compound,” Gracie finishes—no fight in her, just hugging the bump of her stomach with a ragged sort of acceptance.
Grimly, Dohrein nods.
Gracie seems to lose a shade of her vibrance. Her appearance etches to something tired and concerned and resigned.
It’s a surprise to me that I take no pleasure in this female’s partial defeat. I think of her as an arch-nemesis—but she is no enemy. She’s an irritation maybe, but no enemy.
Dohrein brings his wings tightly around his mate, wrapping her in the silky, flexible membrane, and I eye them, wondering if the wingmarks she wears on her skin are fresh enough for them to avoid a breeding.
Hob wings hold a powdery substance that clings to the skin of both a Gryfala and a human, and once contact is made, it heightens a female’s arousal to a painful degree. Once the mating need is slaked though, fresh wingmarks more or less offer pleasant feelings without the burning need to breed. For a time.
When the pair starts mouth-mating, I shake my horns and gaze around the canyon, furious at myself for getting in this position where I feel I need to stay here in this over-affectionate couple’s proximity in order to make amends. With a human of all things.
“Hey, Bash?” comes Gracie’s slightly lust-fogged voice.
I make a face. I could go my lifespan without hearing what this female sounds like when she’s heated for breeding. “What now? And grant me a favor: tell me quickly and then leave, because listening to you cavort with your mate is making me nauseous.”
There’s a pause as Gracie digests my words. But if she’s found insult in them, I can’t tell, because her voice is easy when she asks, “Can I observe the quarry goings-on today from your throne? It’s safer for me and the baby. Out of the way,” she tacks on, tone seemingly coaxing—but what it truly is, is baiting. I know that she’s only asking because she wants me to shake her until her neck is broken. There’s no other infernal reason she’d need to sit in my throne. It’s mine. Not some Gryfala’s, not some human’s. Definitely not this cog-damned human’s.
With slow deliberation, I turn back to the pair. Smoke tendrils unfurl from my nose and both Dohrein and Gracie’s eyes follow them, knowing my temper is piqued now. I open my mouth to speak, inhaling a sharp breath—and I catch a scent.
Sunshine, lickable citrus: Isla.
I glance down and I find her right beside me. Arguing with Gracie has made me miss Isla’s arrival!
Gripping the mug handle with two of my fingers (all that would fit inside of the tiny handle loop), I drop my eyes to Isla’s hand, a grateful growl escaping me when I find her palm empty. “Isla, I have been waiting for you.”
Isla is not immediately imbued with forgiveness upon finding that I have been waiting on her with her drink of choice. “Oh, nowww you want coffee, huh? Did you develop a taste for it?”
The scales on either side of my nose bunch as I unconsciously sneer. “I’d rather drink liquid plascrete. It has to taste better. Here.” I press the swamp juice she favors to her hand.
She doesn’t take it. “Is this an apology?”
I shove the mug at her harder. “Do you want your poison or not?”
Isla’s lips curve.
From her, it’s only the slightest of reactions—but I feel a stone lift off of my hearts that I didn’t even know was there.
Isla’s brow takes a lazy climb up her forehead. “I feel like this is an apology.”
I sigh long. Loudly. “Stop chattering at me and take your cursed mud water, female.”
She doesn’t heed my order. And rather than being afraid that I’ll drown her in this dirt-piss in a cup, she tests me by busting her figurative tail against my backside. “You could say the words,” she coaxes. “Like this: ‘Isla, I’m sorry I was kind of a dick. I’m an asshole to everybody but I don’t like being an asshole to you because it’s nice having a friend. I wasn’t thinking.’” She shrugs. “You can paraphrase.”
My voice is drier than winefruit that wrinkles to death under the sun. “Thank you for your permission.”
In answer, Isla gives me a long look, one of chiding warning, I think. I flick my ears at her, giving her a warning look.
She reads me, because with an air of magnanimity and charity, she accepts the peace offering, wrapping her hand just beneath mine on the handle, her skin brushing my scales. “I forgive you.”
“I’ll show you where your forgiveness can be stuffed,” I mutter.
Her silver gaze dances and I have to blink stars out of my eyes when she dazzles me with her smile. “And thank you. I love coffee.”
Snorting fire at her absurdness, I decide to share something I think she ought to know. “As penance, I have volunteered to help till rows of your precious coffee beans.”
Isla’s eyes brighten to a lighter shade. “Did you really?!”
Bringing my claws up, I scratch the base of an ear. “Yes. Two fields’ worth.”
“Aww, Bash!” Isla says.
Her voice is so pleased—is so heavy with approval at what I’ve committed myself to—that my tail starts to wag.
Without glancing down, I shift and stomp on it.
Even pinned to the stone though, it still tries to twist back and forth happily.
Isla’s giving me a large smile, one that stretches her pliable alien face, and she makes a show of taking her first sip of her rancid beverage. “Mmmm, that’s the good stuff,” she claims, gaze dropping to the contents. Her brow furs jump closer together, and her eyes dart up to mine. “How did you know I take cream and sugar?”
“I have smelled them in your beverages.”
She appears genuinely surprised. “Wow. You have a good sniffer.”
I blink down at her. “If that’s your way of saying I am observant, then thank you, I think.”
She smiles at me again, and it makes my hearts… do strange things. Pump faster. Heat strangely. I’m not certain I should like it, no matter how oddly good it feels.
She takes another sip of her beverage, and pleasure slaps me like I’ve been broadsided by a teasing female’s tail. “It was a compliment, in case you weren’t sure,” she adds, grey eyes gazing up at me with a softer expression than even a moment ago. You’d never suspect that her beloved drink tastes like something a yanak drops out of its hind end, her mood towards me is so instantly improved. The rank liquid might actually be magic.
I commit this knowledge to memory, and clear my throat. I glance away—and that’s when I see that all of the humans are watching us.
Peeling back my lips, I expose my fangs, readying a bal
l of fire in my throat… only to swallow it, feeling it burn a path all the way down to my stomach. Because it’s my fault the humans are standing around us dumbly. All the humans are still waiting to water themselves, I realize.
INFERNOFIRE! I want to snarl at them for the delay this is causing to the very beginning of the workday—but just then, Isla brings the rim of her mug back to her lips and downs another grateful swallow of her life-necessary, beloved coffee. When she lowers the mug, she’s beaming at me.
I turn back to the herd, a less-dark glower on my face. “Come here. Collect your nutrients.” To my bemusement, a few of them twitch like they might step forward—but they still can’t quite bring themselves to hydrate while I’m in their midst.
I jump when a hand closes on half of mine. I look down and find Isla, her mug gripped by her short arm, pinching it against her chest, which has freed her hand to tug my own. “If you aren’t here to glare at everybody, they’ll trample each other for their coffee, believe me. Get out of here, friend.”
This advice seems to be true and that is why I allow myself to follow it, striding through the throng of humans, distantly enjoying how they edge back and leap away from me.
All while I do this, Isla walks beside me. Isla still holds my hand.
An odd, buttery, salty scent hits my nostrils, and I stiffen. A swivel of my head and I confirm my suspicion: Gracie and Dohrein are sharing a snack the humans call popcorn, and the pair are munching on it, eyes wide with interest and trained on me and Isla.
The glee is clear to see on their faces when their gaze trains on our hands.
My dorsal spines clack together.
Isla’s head comes up. Then she peers around me and finds her human leader. Rather than being irritated or upset at being observed, she seems entirely unperturbed. At least until she glances up and sees whatever expression is chiseled across my face. She frowns. “Problem?”
Not rudely, but not apologetically either, I tug free of where her fingers grip mine.
I turn, and I walk away.
There’s a long, weighted moment of pure silence. Then Isla shouts loud enough for the canyon to ring. “I DON’T HAVE COOTIES, YOU JERK!”
Slowly, I retrace my steps, returning to where I’d been standing with her. My ears snap flat, and smoke plumes from my nostrils. “Repeat that.”
Just behind Isla, humans are rushing to get their coffees. With my irritation plainly engaged, they’re desperate to finish filling their cups and mugs and containers lest I begin a killing spree. Creator forbid that I turn their coffee-ing station into a slaughtering grounds before they can sip their polluted water. Soft curses and rushed whispers fill my ears, but Isla doesn’t waver in giving me her challenging stare. I slap the ground with my tail blades, growing impatient. “Repeat what you said.”
Isla crosses her arm over her chest, still clutching her coffee, and folds her short arm under her other, tucking it with practice under her breast.
My glare loses some of its intensity. I can hardly glare at all when her breasts are firmly in my scope of attention as they are. She’s touching herself.
Isla snaps her fingers under her breast, and my eyes obediently shift to focus firmly on this breast. “I said that I don’t have cooties,” she repeats. She sounds… amused.
I raise my eyes from her chest to meet her sparking gaze. “And what else did you say? The second half.”
Isla’s lips thin. “You’re a jerk.”
Just like the first time, my translator provides me an image of a painfully bright pink-furred… thing. It has a scooped bill for a mouth, round bead eyes, clawed paws, and… flippers with thorns on its heels. I’m not certain what it is or what it is supposed to be. I’m not able to determine what the connection is to this alien creature and myself. “Why do you call me this? What is a jerk?”
Off to the side, two of Beth’s Na’rith pirates suddenly start laughing uproariously.
In a hissing, threatening whisper, their mate asks, “What did you do?”
The Na’rith’s wave to the hobs and Rakhii amassed in this quarry, all of whom are looking as nonplussed as I feel. “Everyone who got a translator upgrade from us gets the same image definition for the word ‘jerk,’” one snickers.
“And what’s the image?” Beth asks, eyes darting worriedly to me, then guiltily around to everyone else.
The other male grabs his side, doubling over, still laughing. “A pink platypus!”
Beth begins blinking rapidly. “A what now?”
“A pink—” her pirate is guffawing. “Fluffy! Platypus!”
Beth scratches the top of her head, pressing her lips together, looking more dumbstruck than afraid now. Then she starts to look outraged. Rapidly so. “Wait, don’t you give yourself all the same translation upgrades?”
Catching her eye, apparently reaching the heart of their hilarity, the males begin wheezing as they nod.
“So every time I’ve called you guys jerks?” Beth demands. “You’ve popped a pink fluffy platypus into your heads every freaking time? No wonder you smile at me like idiots!”
“EXACTLY!” the first Na’rith cries. “It’s hilarious!”
Isla clears her throat, making my gaze swing back down to her. “I’d like to amend my insult. Bash? You’re a rude cow.”
My translator supplies me with a large-framed bony alien land animal with horns. “Acceptable,” I decide. I stride past her, intending to head for my workbench. “Follow me, Isla.”
“I’d rather not,” she replies.
Ah. She hasn’t yet forgiven my offense. “Fine,” I allow. “Try not to scrape yourself while you gather stones today.”
“I’ll do my best with that,” she calls to my back, and I can hear her sarcasm plainly.
It will be nigh to impossible for her not to scrape herself, especially when her soft human skin is likely already surface-damaged from quarry work.
“I’ll find you when I’m ready for you,” I inform her.
There’s silence for long enough that I separate from her by a considerable distance before she shouts, “Whatever!”
She shouts it so loudly everybody can hear her response again, and again, and again—because it’s ringing around the stone walls for what seems like a small eternity.
Now if the quarry were singing with a hundred workers busy at work—no one would be able to discern the echo from the general cacophony. That there is no general cacophony can only mean one thing.
Not one person is yet working.
A disgusted scan of the crowd and I see all eyes on either Isla or me, like we’re here for their entertainment.
Oh, enough of this.
I fan my tail blades, my tail swaying back and forth behind me in a deadly dance. “Would the counsel truly blame me,” I ask no one in particular, “if I began strangling a human at the beginning of each shift? Surely the rest would find this proper motivation to fall in line, and mind me, and be steadfast in their duties. Perhaps I’ll institute a rallying song. ‘Strangling one a day keeps idleness away.’”
No one responds to my question verbally, but suddenly all of the humans are scrambling to get to work.
...Precious coffees clutched in their hands, of course.
CHAPTER 12
ISLA
(Crying Counter: Nobody has cried today… Yet.)
“Isla,” Bash calls from behind me.
I keep my back to him. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
Smoke blows past me, and I know it’s because Bash exhaled one of his smoky Rakhii breaths. “Is your desire to listen a prerequisite to hearing commands? Since you don’t seem to know this, I’ll inform you that it’s not. Now come here.”
“No.”
“Isla,” Bash warns, his tone turning more flinty. “I am the master here—”
I groan and drop my head back on my shoulders. “You are on such a power trip with that!”
Bash moves so that he’s crowding me, his heat an intimidating wall at my sp
ine, which means our eyes connect because he’s looking down at my face. He’s all scowly, of course. “I want you to follow me and do as I say,” he informs me. Then his gaze flits around my face before he takes a breath so big, it makes the scales I can see above his shirt collar spread wider as his chest and throat expands. “Please.”
“Earlier, you didn’t want me so much as touching your hand. You shook me off like I was a bug, so,” I spin around, moving back a step and glancing pointedly at his hands. “I’m surprised you want me with you at all.”
Bash’s head cocks slightly, like he’s processing information. “Was taking my hand in yours an idle touch for you?”
“It’s a friend thing. Friends can hold hands,” I inform him of something he should already know. “Are you aliens really that different with this?”
Bash stares me down. “Here, a male takes a female’s hand to show interest, to claim, to comfort, to bond.”
“Well, we—and by ‘we’ I mean humans—can mean all of that too.”
“But you didn’t,” Bash grates softly, and I start to get the feeling I wasn’t the only one who got slightly hurt back there when I took his hand. I mean, he rejected me by dropping our connection, but now I’m thinking he thought he had a reason. He dropped my hand in reaction to his feelings being hurt.
It’s a revelation for me.
He continues speaking, almost explaining, I think, and he even manages to toss in another order. “When you took my hand, it was not an idle touch to me. You don’t intend to become my mate. Don’t palter with me.”
“It can be a friendly gesture, where I’m from. And Bash, I would like to be your friend.”
“Friend,” he repeats, carefully. He scans our surroundings and grits his teeth. “Come with me,” he orders again.
When I don’t immediately leap to follow him, he tips his horns to me like someone would shrug and say, ‘O-kay then.’ He turns, stalks to the woman closest to me, and takes her by the arm. “You’ll do. You’re near the same size.”
She looks absolutely terrified. “I was working! I haven’t done anything wrong!”
“Yet,” Bash tells her. “You haven’t done anything wrong yet.” Smoke curls up in front of her face as he emits a slow exhale. “And if you start your infernal weeping, I start beating hobs.”
