by Stella Sky
“That’s sad,” I said.
“Still... if Kodyn says,” he said evenly.
“What if he’s wrong?” I asked: dared. “Didn't you ever try and connect with Ordyt? See what you felt?”
“I can’t do that,” Nadirath said in a tone that was unreadable. If he were jealous or amused, I couldn’t tell. “Kodyn is a born Exerott, not me. And I can't see any reason why he would lie about it. Can you?”
I shrugged and looked up at him, finally meeting his eyes. “No.”
He swallowed and moved closer to me, inspecting me. “I hesitate to have you here, Elise. The humans are our sworn enemies.” He paused because he knew how uncomfortable he’d just made things.
“Are you bothered? I mean… nobody’s going to get hurt by little old me.”
He rolled his shoulders and raised both brows, considering it. “I… am not bothered. We’ve long ago understood we hadn’t yet wiped out you humans.”
I licked my lips and began to feel pointedly uncomfortable. Was he saying that one day he hoped to wipe us all out?
“It's not safe here for you,” he said lowly. “But if you are not bothered then neither are we. We don't fear you.”
“Have you...” I paused to consider my words. “Do you still feel the pull?
He looked my body up and down again, sexually enticed suddenly as he ran a hand down my cheek. “But I'm trying to be a gentleman.”
“Thanks,” I laughed. “I don't know what that must be like but—”
“Elise,” came Kodyn’s voice, calling down the hall. He looked at me, incredulous, eyes wide and furious. There was an expression covering his face that I could only peg as jealousy and it made my stomach lilt. I swallowed like a child in trouble and gave a half smile to Nadirath.
“Gotta go,” I said to the tall Vithohn, shrugging my way down the hall to Kodyn.
We walked back to his room in silence, him grabbing me by the arm and tugging me forward. Finally, I lurched away from him and ripped my hand from his grasp.
“What?” I snapped.
He gave me a piercing stare, and his mouth gaped when I yelled. He shoved me into the room, and I felt all the more irritated, like I had ‘disobeyed’ him.
“What are you doing?” he asked, clearly irritated.
“A common question tonight,” I breathed out slowly. “I’m not some property you can just lead around,” I snapped.
“No, you are my guest, and you’re under my charge. Now, what were you doing?”
I searched his room for anything to distract myself with, but he followed my eyes and stepped in front of me. “I was... I went to the prison,” I said with a casual ‘I dunno’ shrug.
“Why?”
“Because!” I fumed. “I don't understand what the hell happened out there. You all just ganged up on him and what... you're going to kill him instead of studying him?”
He bit his lip and closed his eyes, taking a moment to see things from my point of view, hopefully.
“He's a traitor, Elise,” he snapped.
“You don't know that!” I laughed in frustration and threw my hands in the air, walking to the open window and staring out at the millions of stars that were crystal clear from his tower.
“I know,” he said forcefully. “I felt it.”
“He was your friend! And then you just…” I cringed, recalling their interaction. “He begged for mercy,” I said, as though that sentence alone made me the winner of our argument.
“I won't let mercy stand in the way of saving my people. Elise, stay out of this,” he warned.
‘You don't even know what could happen if he is one of them! What if the Kilari are tracking him now? What if you kill him and they swarm the base, or he infects you guys somehow? You're doing your whole base a giant disservice.”
“I brought you here to help your cause, no questions asked!” he shouted, his tone falling flat at the end. Then he went calm again and offered me pleading eyes. “I expect the same in return.”
My heart sank at that, and he turned away from me before I could continue our argument. He seemed defeated somehow.
It was a strange sensation because usually I loved winning. But he turned from me and walked toward the bed in our circular room, and I felt rotten.
I sat in the chair by the door with my legs pulled up to my chest. My entire body could fit on that oversized chair. It felt amazing to have something so plush cushioning around me: not like the ratty old hotel we were staying at.
The entire room was black, with only the light from the stars peeking into the room. It felt like hours before I finally crawled back into Kodyn’s bed.
I came in on all fours and found his arm, snaking myself under it like a cat.
To my surprise, he was still awake. I looked up at him and could sense the emotion in his voice as he whispered, “He is a Kilari. I know it. I wish he wasn’t, but he is.”
“Okay,” I said and quickly whispered, “But, how do you know?”
“Fiona told me.”
I swallowed but said nothing. The scanner he'd stolen... was this all part of it? Why had he been content to let Ordyt live up until now if he’d known all along?
I felt myself falling in love with Kodyn. It was undeniable. But I found myself wondering if he would ever let down his walls or if he would ever trust me enough to give me the answers I needed.
The next morning the Vithohn gathered in the courtyard, corralled together by a lust for violence and blood. There, in the early hours of the morning, forty Vithohn flooded the courtyard and ripped Ordyt apart, piece by piece. They tore his flesh, and the Voth shot him with their energy beams. The rest of them pulled muscle from bone with their tentacles.
Ordyt never fought back, and I couldn’t think of one good reason why I cared so much. But I did
Chapter Eight
Kodyn
It had been days since the demise of Ordyt, and my relationship, or whatever it was, with Elise was rocky, to say the least. We hadn’t spoken for two days, even though she shared my bed. It was as though she hated me.
She would look for ways to make me jealous: to bother me or worry me.
I wondered if she knew the real danger she was putting herself in by being exposed to the Vithohn warriors, especially on nights when she did so without me around to protect her.
She wanted to get them on our side, I assumed. Did she want to flirt with them? Make it easier to get an alliance without me present? The idea infuriated me.
I watched the Vithohn around me treat her like a lofty prize, and it makes me wary: a wet feeling in the pit of my stomach that wouldn’t go away. All I wanted was to pick the willing Vithohn and be on our way: to check in with Nadirath about the alliance and take her away from this place.
Up until we arrived here, Elise had been a willing spirit to me: ready to give her love to me at a whispered request. But since Ordyt’s sentencing, she boiled hot and cold. And in some way, I supposed I deserved it.
Some days she went distant and others she would be at my side like a pet: curled up next to me and sharing her whispers. It made me sick wondering if she’d ever shared her secrets with others. I wanted them all.
I was nothing but distant to her, even though all I wanted to do was wrap her up in love.
She stayed in our lab: a place no real warrior would let her go if they weren't blinded by her beauty or her charms. Yet, there she was. Invading our space and searching through our files as easily as she was breathing. Our soldiers: warriors, hard and hoping for the chance to press against her.
I walked up the hall and watched as they fawned over her: watched a hand go on her shoulder, and long Vithohn fingers trace down her cheek. It was then I knew she was going to be trouble for me.
“What’s going on?” I said, approaching the pack and worming my way through the crowd to Elise.
“Did you know the humans have cyborgs?” one Vithohn, Taraxen, said with a fascinated emphasis. “Half human, half robotics. Can you ima
gine one in a fight? Better than a pure human, from the sounds of it.”
“But not nearly as physically appealing, right?” Elise teased: a touch of honey sweetening her flirtatious tone.
“I would be surprised,” Taraxen said with a cocked brow, looking her body over and pulling back from devouring her.
“That’s sort of like Ordyt though, isn’t it?” asked Endodran, another Vithohn warrior. “Something pretending to be one of your kind when it isn’t?”
Elise shot me a look: a fire that lit at the mention of our shared source of tensions over the last few days.
Thanks, Endodran.
“No,” Elise relented, breaking the hard stare she has cast at me. “The cyborgs don’t try to hurt us.”
“Come with me,” I said, breaking their conversation and looping my fingers through hers.
She pulled away, sending the other three Vithohn exploding into a fit of riled laughter and jeering. That’s how it worked with the Vithohn: once one got another going, they couldn’t stop. Their egos would flare up until the circle of them exploded into a wild competition. They would incite one another to see who could be the cruelest, the most violent, or the most bothersome.
“I don’t want to be rude,” Elise said, pulling her hand from mine and using it to fix the long bangs that fell in front of her face. An excuse to leave my touch, for certain.
“Come with me, now,” I said, growing more furious as the seconds went by.
“Ah, look, Kodyn doesn’t want to share,” Kirasoull, the third Vithohn said, laughing wildly.
“After what the humans did to Fiona, and this is how you repay her?” Endodran taunted with mock incredulity. “By plunging into another’s wet, hot center?”
“That’s enough,” I snapped, eyeing them all one after the other.
“I’ve had it with you and these humans,” Taraxen said, equally as infuriated with me. “All we’ve seen is you cater to them over and over.” He grabbed Elise’s arm, and my eyes went wide. “I’m ready to find out what all the fuss is about.”
Taraxen pulled Elise close to his body and pressed himself against her, hard and needy, fondling her body even as she tried to escape his grip.
I gritted my teeth at the gesture and watched as the other men lost their control, screaming and shouting vulgar curses for what he should do to her: how they should use her holes.
And then I’d had enough.
I inhaled sharply and screamed, “Get off of her!”
With a sharp jab of my elbow into Endodran, he quickly backed away, though still watched with a heightened energy from afar as I took on the other two Vithohn.
Kirasoull swung a punch at me and was quick with his shield as I tried to retaliate. They were animal now, with only one focus: Elise’s body. Their biological instincts had taken over. She brought out a sanity in them that they now craved: needed fulfilled.
I let out a fierce battle cry and used my tentacles to try and connect with Kirasoull. If I could just connect, I would be able to weaken him by draining his power for myself, but he kept putting up his shield.
Finally, I channeled the energy from my tentacle enough to let out a fist-sized ball of light and lightly pinged the heat against his shield, causing him to draw back out of shock. The energy wasn’t enough to hurt him, but it was enough to stun. He locked eyes with me, drawing back his shield. Then he ran.
“Elise, come here,” I ordered and watched as the petite woman I had been sharing a bed with struggled to get away from Taraxen: his massive arms keeping her firmly in place.
I launched toward him and put both tentacles on his arms, picking him up with all my strength and slamming him into the metal wall behind him over and over.
The Vithohn’s breath left him in a large huff as I cracked his frame against the wall. By the second pound, he had let Elise go, and she ran to me. I wanted to stop then, tried to even, but my anger was overwhelming.
“Kodyn, stop!” Elise pleaded and grabbed my arm, but I didn’t stop.
‘Is this what you wanted?’ I wanted to scream at her. But instead, I said nothing, continuing to crash his limp body into the wall before throwing him with force to the ground.
Kirasoull had long run off, but Endodran still stood at the end of the hall, stuck in a mode of maniacal laughter as he watched, with madness, our fight.
I grabbed Elise’s arm after that, dragging her down the hall with me and violently shoving past Kirasoull.
We made our way to my room, and I locked the door tightly behind me, furious with her.
“I don’t like that,” I said firmly, my voice shaking with rage.
Elise hoisted herself up on a wide dressed, kicking her legs and looking down at her fingernails like nothing had happened.
“We were just talking,” she said whimsically.
Then I knew she was trying to infuriate me.
“I don’t care,” I snapped, walking in front of her, lecturing her like a child. Except on my planet, if a child behaved the way she just did, he would get be sent into a smoke pit to die.
“You don’t talk to me for days, and then you go and put yourself in dangers for what? For spite?” I scoffed.
She set her hands on her tightly armored thigh and looked up at me, raising a perfectly arched, pale brow. “Do you know women at all?”
I blinked, taken aback.
“Of course it’s out of spite!” she announced, hand flung into the air. “What you did…” she trailed off.
I grabbed her shoulders and shook her: locking my eyes and sharing an intense gaze with the green irises that looked back at me. “What I did!” I shouted, “Was none of your business!”
“Fine!” she yelled back, trying to shrug out of my grasp. “Then I’ll stay out of your business just like you want me to and you can stay out of mine.”
My face neared hers, so close I could see my breath ghosting on her face and moving the strands of hair that fell across her eyes. “I brought you here.”
She raised both brows, arrogant.
“Then I’ll leave,” she said simply.
My stomach went sick. She was impossibly human sometimes.
I wanted to let her go: to abandon my plan for revenge. But, then I thought about her trying to wander her way back to Scarlet Heights, and it made me feel even warier.
“Elise,” I said, trying to calm myself down. “He was a Kilari,” I explained slowly. “I won’t say it again. Now stop this.”
She pulled back, trying to get my hands off her, and ended up slamming into the wall behind her. “What happened?” she fumed, narrowing her brows. “What aren’t you telling me? Why would… why did Fiona send Ordyt here, and if you were so fine with it then, why aren’t you fine with it now? Who was she with? What did you steal?”
It was clear that her questions had been building for days. I wasn’t sure how to answer most of them.
“Relax,” I said, releasing her finally. I brushed my hand down the side of her pale cheek. “I was fine with it then because I didn’t believe her.”
I hated admitting it, but it was the truth.
She swallowed. “But you believe her now?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I believe you.”
“But…” Elise blinked, and her face went red as her eyes searched mine. “I didn’t believe he was a Kilari.”
“But you believe they exist,” I said. “And that’s enough for me.”
There was a long silence between us then, and Elise drew her tongue across her bottom lip, thinking.
“So,” she finally said, her high pitch cutting the tension in the air. “What you’re saying is… this is actually your twisted way of telling me you trust me?”
I laughed. “Something like that.”
She stared at me, suddenly serious, and then leaned in and kissed me. Her tongue searched my mouth like she was digging for treasure, gliding across my teeth and then finally meeting my tongue. She flicked inside my mouth and then gently sucked at my tongue when it
approached her lips.
I moaned at the action and couldn’t help but run my hands over her armored navel and up to her flat breasts. I pressed my hands into her chest and then slid them down her back, pulling her to the edge of the dresser so she could feel how hard she was making me.
“Mmm,” she breathed. Then, in a whisper that was both gratuitous and soft, she demanded, “I want you inside of me.”
My mouth met her again, never breaking contact, even as I undid her pants and slid them down her legs. I could feel her kick off her boots and get one pant leg completely off. With one leg still clad in armor, I pushed the loose leg to the side and pulled the front of my pants down.
Elise guided me into her and started bucking against me, but I slowed my pace. I opened my eyes and watched her as I thrust into her.
I wanted to let loose and pound her hard, but something inside me told me not to. So I watched her. I took in every breath and every moan of pleasure she sounded off: relished the way her green eyes rolled back as I brought my hand into the mix of our bodies.
The expression on her face intensified, and I felt myself getting close. I quickened my pace then, and the dresser shook from underneath us.
I looked over Elise’s small body and, even though she was still clothed, I could picture her small breasts jiggling as I moved deeper inside her. The thought of it sent me into waves of hot pleasure: groaning out and listening for the sounds that Elise had climaxed as well.
“So…” she breathed heavily, smiling at me. “Fight over?”
Chapter Nine
Elise
“Where’s Kodyn?”
The husky voice of Nadirath startled me as I blinked, jolted out of my daydream. I turned to the muscular Vithohn, noted the way that the purple markings scattered across his smooth face.
“Dunno,” I said with a shrug.
Nadirath watched me with a curious expression and then smiled, leaning back in his chair. We’d assembled in a large dining hall in their immense fortress. It looked like a Medieval castle and a futuristic spaceport had a child together: its vast towers and crowned spires speaking of old kingdom’s, while the metal walls and brightly lit white ceilings marked obvious scientific architecture.