Kept From the Deep: Venora Mates Book Two

by Octavia Kore

  “That sounds like the plot of a bad sci-fi movie. ‘You need women? Save us and we will sacrifice our women to you, oh, great and powerful reptilian overlords!’” Telisa rolled her eyes.

  Brin actually chuckled as he pulled his arm back. “The Venium aren’t reptilian, but mates would be useful. The fact is, we’re going to die out eventually, and no one on Venora seems to have an answer. If we can believe what Erusha said, maybe it was the capture of the females that started it.”

  “So in exchange for help, humanity will have to sell people into slavery? That sounds like what’s already happening with the Grutex, but with more steps.”

  Being compared to the Grutex raised his hackles, but Brin reminded himself she had no idea what his people were like.

  “Mating isn’t anything like what the Grutex are doing. There is no choosing when it comes to a mate for the Venium. We can’t just select a partner and reproduce. If it was that simple, we might not have to worry about our numbers.”

  “So then how does it work?” she asked.

  “When mates meet, it triggers their reproductive systems. Before this happens, all Venium are infertile. The recognition doesn’t always happen right away, but when it does, it’s impossible for one to miss.” He remembered the moment he’d felt the swelling happen in Jun’s bedroom, right after Raou’s attack, and just like every other Venium male who had come before him, Brin’s body had filled with the urge to reproduce with his mate.

  That would never happen now, and instead of being devastated at the loss of the pups they would never have, Brin found that he’d been filled with a sense of relief, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He could be with his mate without the constant fear of her becoming pregnant. Brega would have to face the fact that her bloodline had come to an end, that there would be no pups for her to train.

  The only thing holding him back now was their uncertain future, and where Nuzal fit into everything. They needed to talk about it, to get it out once and for all so that they knew where they stood. Brin wouldn’t deny that the fact she was human caused him a great deal of worry. While Brin was mated to her for the rest of his life, Jun could realistically decide she wanted nothing to do with either of her alien mates.

  “If that’s the case, how would we know which people to send to Venora?” Telisa questioned.

  Brin sighed, mentally and physically exhausted. “I honestly have no idea how they’d decide to go about something like that. Maybe they could ask for volunteers and have them brought up to the ships to see if they react to any of the crewmembers? This isn’t my area of expertise.”

  Telisa eyed the crippled engine and grinned. “I’m guessing neither is engineering. Come on, I’ll buy you lunch. I haven’t seen you eat at all today, and if you die, I’ll have to deal with Jun.”

  “Well, if you’re paying…” Brin shoved the tools to one side of the walkway before following Telisa out of the room. Maybe getting a meal into him and taking a break would help him look at the engine with new eyes.

  The doors to the small common area slid open, and Brin groaned. Half of the rescued humans were gathered around the lone food replicator, and the sound of their raised voices filled the room.

  “How the hell did you manage this?” someone grumbled.

  “Who let the klutz touch the machine?” another shouted from somewhere off to the left.

  “I’m sorry,” a small voice came from the center of the group. “I was hungry. I only pressed the button we were shown.”

  “What’s going on?” Telisa asked.

  The crowd turned as one, parting to let a small female through. Her head was bowed, causing her dark hair to curtain half of her face, but Brin could see the tears welling in her eyes. He crouched down, kneeling in front of her when she stopped.

  “Was the replicator giving you problems?” he asked.

  The female nodded. “I swear, I only pressed the button you told us to and it just shut off.”

  “She’s got the touch of death,” one of the human males grumbled.

  “Okay, that’s enough. Lay off of her.” Telisa’s stern tone left no room for argument, and the male lowered his gaze before shuffling away.

  “I’ll take a look. I’m sure it’s something simple,” Brin told her, but as he approached the machine, the touch screen that normally displayed the menu items sparked and crackled, sending up a small plume of smoke that made the humans gasp and fall back. “I’ll have to take it apart,” he told Telisa with a sigh when she came up beside him.

  “Well, shit.” She waved her hand in front of her face.

  “Someone get Nuzal. We’re going to need to venture out for water and something to eat while I try to repair this.”

  “You heard Brin,” Telisa said. “Time to make stone soup.”

  “He was in the medbay last time I saw him,” one of the females spoke up. “I’ll go get him.”

  Brin slanted a look at Telisa, thinking, not for the first, that humans said the strangest things. “Yes,” he said slowly. “The hunger will sit in our stomachs like… a stone.”

  Telisa threw her head back and laughed before placing her palm over her face. “Bless your heart, Brin.”

  Chapter 26

  Nuzal

  With every day that passed, Nuzal felt himself falling further into his feelings for his little human mate. The gentle, patient way she handled the other humans, even those who didn’t seem to like her or want to cooperate with anything she said, made him hopeful that he might find acceptance with her. He tried to be respectful of the fact that she hadn’t initiated anything between them and she might never see fit to do so. He’d even given Brin as much space as he could manage given the small area they had to work with.

  Instead of focusing on the things he couldn’t control, Nuzal turned back to the storage unit in the medbay, and wondered if sorting and cataloguing the contents within it for the sixth time was too much.

  “Nuzal!”

  One of the human females, Harper, appeared in the doorway, her face flushed and her eyes wide as she looked up at him. He was making an effort to commit their names to memory, but so far, he could recognize a few of them. “The replicator broke and Brin asked us to find you.”

  “I know nothing about the replicators,” he told her, closing the doors to the storage unit before securing them.

  With a final sweep of the bay to make sure nothing had been left out, Nuzal stepped through the doors, grimacing when Harper scurried out of his way. She recovered quickly, a considerable improvement just from the day before.

  “He said something about going out to find water and food,” she said, running alongside him as he moved down the hall toward the common area.

  Outside the ship? They knew nothing about the surface aside from what they could see through the windows, and that wasn’t very much if he were being honest. Sensors indicated the atmosphere was suitable for them, but Nuzal was hesitant to allow anyone off of the vessel unless it was dire.

  The smell of smoke reached him a few paces out from the room, and Nuzal felt panic well up inside of him. If they lost the ship, there was no way they were ever going to be able to leave this planet. What if there was a fire on board? What would he do if Jun or Brin were injured? He sprinted through the door, his heart pounding in his chest as his eyes darted around the room, searching for the danger.

  His dramatic entrance startled some of the humans closest to the entrance, but he didn’t stop to apologize. Brin stood in front of the smoking replicator, his shoulders and the muscles of his back bunched as he yanked on the frame of the machine. Nuzal felt arousal course through him, and a rattle danced up his chest before he could stifle it. Brin turned his head, his glowing blue eyes drifting over Nuzal as his fushori flashed for a split second.

  “You sent for me?”

  “The replicator is…” He looked down at the smoking interior and frowned. “Currently nonoperational. I’ll have to take time away from repairing the engine to fi
x this, but we can’t go too long without provisions. I need you and a handful of volunteers to go out and gather water and anything edible you can find.”

  “You want me to find volunteers?” Nuzal questioned. “I’m sure they’ll be lining up to go with the Grutex.” His words dripped with sarcasm.

  “Why can’t you go out with us?” One of the males asked, giving Nuzal a wide berth as he skirted around the wall.

  “If Brin goes, that means one of us has to fix this thing, and I don’t know about any of you, but I have absolutely no idea how a replicator works,” Telisa spoke up.

  “I’ll go with you,” Roman said.

  “I wanna go too,” Layla stepped up next to Roman. “I broke the replicator, so I want to help, and I’ll be useful if we happen to run into any natives.” A descendant of a rare, nearly extinct race known to the Grutex as Leq’anis, Layla had the ability to understand and learn language at a far faster rate than even their best translators.

  “If it’s okay with you all, I’d like to come along.” Clara’s voice slipped into his mind, and from the looks on the faces of the others, they could hear her as well. Her telepathy and her ability to gain impressions through touch, something passed down to her from her ancestors who originated from a planet very close to Venora, had made her one of his earliest allies among the humans.

  “Xavier,” Brin said, turning to a younger male standing at the back of the common area. “Do you mind going? They could use another set of claws.”

  Xavier’s gaze fell on Nuzal, and he could almost feel the distrust radiating from him. Along with the claws, the male sported a set of gills, marking him as one of the Venium descendants.

  “Sure thing.” He nodded.

  “Great!” Telisa clapped her hands. “We’ll call you the Fellowship of the Forage. Let’s arm you and get you out there.”

  A few of the humans laughed at Telisa’s words, but the meaning was lost to him, and after a quick glance at Brin, Nuzal knew he wasn’t alone in his confusion. Those who had agreed to go with him followed Telisa out the doors, while the rest of the humans in the common room chatted quietly. Some watched him with suspicious eyes as he approached the Venium. He curled his tail around his own leg, not knowing what to do with it or even how to act around the male.

  “Is your comm still working?” Brin asked without looking away from the interior of the replicator.

  “It is.”

  “Are you able to scan any of the vegetation you find out there? We need them fed, but we can’t risk poisoning the humans, or ourselves, for that matter.”

  “It’s no longer connected to the Kaia’s network, but I should still have access to the comm’s internal database. We’re close enough to the Tachin’s planet that they should have catalogued whatever we find out there.” Nuzal took a moment to glance around the room for her, but he’d known the moment he stepped inside that his mate wasn’t here. “Where is Jun?”

  “Most likely with Esme, trying to talk her out of murdering you in your sleep.” Brin twisted the head of one of the bolts, frowning when it didn’t move. “Do me a favor? Don’t tell her until you’re all back on the ship. I don’t want her sneaking out. I can’t risk her.”

  Nuzal didn’t want to risk her either, but something told him Jun was going to be less than pleased when she found out about this.

  “These might help.”

  “Goddess above, Clara!” Brin growled, his hand slipping from the bolt as he jumped. The female held out a bag of tools, a small smile tugging at her lips, no doubt amused by whatever it was she could hear in Brin’s mind. “Thank you.”

  Clara nodded, but the mischievous sparkle in her eye made Nuzal frown. Aside from his mate, Clara was his favorite human. She was kind and patient, forgiving even when it wasn’t in her best interest. That look, though, it told him she was up to something. She turned on her heel before he could question her, darting through the doors and back out into the hall.

  Brin’s hiss drew his attention and he turned back to see him sucking on the side of one finger. When he pulled it away, dark lifeblood welled along a jagged cut. Nuzal was no stranger to lifeblood; he’d even been covered in Brin’s during the surgery to remove the human toxin from his body, but the sight of the injury, even as small as it was, set his heart racing.

  He pulled a small vial from the pouch that hung at his hip and grabbed Brin’s hand, inspecting the cut. With the flick of his thumb, the top popped off and he carefully dribbled a small amount onto the wound. Brin tried to tug his hand away, but Nuzal’s loud rattle seemed to startle him into compliance.

  “You’re worse than Jun,” the Venium grumbled, but he settled down and let Nuzal finish his work. “It would have healed just fine on its own.”

  “Now it will heal even faster,” He told him, brushing his thumb over the top of the finger. The spark of awareness, of something he now associated with the attraction he felt for his female and her Venium mate, moved through him. “I should get the packs for water collection.” Nuzal said, feeling far more awkward in that moment than he could ever remember feeling in any of his lives.

  He dropped Brin’s hand, turning away and passing through the doors, not wanting to make a fool of himself. Roman and Xavier stood near the airlock, checking the Grutex weapons Brin had given them when they escaped the Kaia’s ship.

  In the storage to the left of the door, Nuzal pulled out five packs. They were lined with waterproof material, meant to be used as emergency containers in the event of… well, something like this, he supposed. When warriors were out on missions, they couldn’t rely on the water pods the replicators produced, so they carried the packs instead.

  Nuzal passed two to each of the males, and also to Clara and Layla when they reached them. He took four packs for himself and a few of the empty tool pouches, thinking they might use them to hold whatever food they managed to collect.

  “Are you ready?” Roman asked, stepping up beside Nuzal as he pressed the release on the door.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Xavier grumbled.

  Clara and Layla stepped past Nuzal, gawking at the world around them as they took their first steps through the open door. It was one thing to see the surface through the windows of the vessel, but it was something else entirely to be out in it.

  Nuzal hit the button to close the door and stepped out onto the soil, enjoying the feel of the grass beneath his feet. It was something he hadn’t experienced since his last life, and he hadn’t realized until then just how much he’d actually missed it. There was a soft grunt behind him just before something fell against his back. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find when he spun around, but it certainly wasn’t Jun.

  “Were you trying to leave without me, big guy?” she asked with a smile.

  Her voice drifted over him, caressing his exoskeleton as if it were a physical touch. It swirled up his sides, settling over his chest before nestling somewhere deep inside of him. With gentle hands, Nuzal lifted Jun from his back, scanning the immediate area for any sign of a threat.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked her, frowning when he saw Roman and Xavier moving toward the tree line.

  Calls and whistles from what he assumed was the native wildlife rang out from the depths of the forest that surrounded them. Now that he was outside the ship, Nuzal realized he recognized some of the trees. The rippled white bark of the icia tree made them look like pillars of milky ice topped with dark foliage. Their branches hung low, some even sweeping the forest floor as they stirred in the light breeze.

  Silvery clouds spun gently around the snow-capped mountains that towered over the landscape. The peaks were so tall and imposing that their shadows nearly reached the landing site. Nuzal could just make out the trickling sound of running water in the distance, most likely runoff from the melting snow and ice. They would head there first, before the planet’s sun slipped behind the mountains.

  “Sort of reminds me of Earth,” Jun whispered, staring up at the blue
sky as she gripped his forearms, ignoring his question entirely.

  “You shouldn’t be out here.”

  Jun’s brows drew together as he set her on her feet, waiting for her to get her balance before he released her. “Why not? Clara said you were going out to gather some supplies and I figured I’d come along.”

  Nuzal turned to Clara, whose normally pale cheeks had turned a bright red. Her eyes narrowed on Jun’s face and she frowned, shaking her head. It still fascinated him that humans could change color in this way.

  “Oops,” Jun pressed her lips together as if she were trying not to laugh. “I guess I wasn’t supposed to say that.” His little mate tugged at one of the packs on his shoulder until he gave in and handed it over. She slung it across her chest. “Too late now. I’m outside, so we might as well get going before we lose the light. Wait for us!” she shouted, running after the other humans.

  Brin wasn’t going to be pleased about this, but if there was one thing Nuzal had learned in his short time with their mate, it was that Jun was stubborn and she didn’t take orders very well. He followed after her, his long strides eating up the space between them.

  Chapter 27

  Nuzal

  “This way,” he called, snagging Roman and Xavier’s attention before jerking his head toward the sound of the stream. “There should be a water source nearby where we can fill the packs before we start our search for something safe to eat.”

  Nuzal led their group into the shade of the forest, taking in lungfuls of the fresh, clean air. Every fiber of his being seemed to rejoice at the cool breeze that danced across his face and the soft grass beneath his feet.

  Jun and the others looked as if they enjoyed it just as much as he did. He watched his mate reach out to touch one of the icias, only to pull her hand back at the last minute, as if she expected the bark to bite.

  “They’re safe to touch,” he told her, placing his palm on one of the rippled trunks. It was smooth against his fingers, and he trailed the tips up and down one of the sides. “The Grutex call them icia trees.”