‘I see.’ My head drooped.
I thought of how Ashleigh knew of this world and its people. Because Kov Ohx talked to her. Even when he wasn’t allowed to. How Hel Bihter had gazed at Cristina as if she was his sun, moon, and stars when he thought no one else was looking.
So their behaviour was taboo. The Horde was ignoring it because most of them broke the taboo, too?
‘Wyrm is close with a powerful male.’ An unidentifiable tenor warped his voice. ‘My Second, Sah Rahm. But he forced me to make an example of him and now he opposes me.’
‘You’re their leader. Isn’t it your right to punish them?’
Gosh, listen to me.
Encouraging a tyrant to further his oppression.
‘The political divide in my Horde is complicated because of the recent decisions I made. I am under scrutiny by the old ones, and I already intervened where a human female is concerned. My Second will no longer hesitate to use my interference in these matters to incite rebellion.’
Grimacing, I began to realise we humans hadn’t landed in the most stable of regimes. Worse, we were political chum. ‘You intervened?’ I drew a blank. ‘When?’
‘On my warship.’ His face darkened into a fearsome visage. ‘The male struck you.’
My steps faltered at the memory of pain crackling along my cheek and jaw.
‘Grace,’ I whispered.
The memories I possessed of her were the sound of her agonised screams. The First’s uncaring expression as he ordered her euthanised. As if a human were livestock. I remembered shrieking he had no right to kill her. Then I’d taken a hit to the head, and things turned hazy.
Cristina said I’d helped.
I’d just struggled to believe the First actually listened.
‘Bihter took ownership of her. It sowed discontent. To meddle again so soon would cause a fracturing.’ He shook his head. ‘The Horde must remain unbroken.’
The way Arj Wyrm stared everyone down, and Bhyr’s restraint in acting against behaviour he disavowed now made sense. Wyrm could get away with it. And he knew it.
Stomach churning, I tried again. ‘But she–’
‘It is not done.’
–needs help, I finished. The hard muscles along his spine rippled with tension. I let it go. I’d been lucky he’d indulged my questions as much as he had.
I glanced over my shoulder.
Kov Ohx had Ashleigh close to his side. He spoke in an urgent whisper. She stood with her hands wrapped around her middle, tears on her expressionless face. She’d had no luck convincing him to speak to Arj Wyrm either.
While her warrior seemed sympathetic, if the First would not intervene, nor would he.
I’ll try again tomorrow.
There had to be something the First could do. If not him, one of his Horde. He’d let Hel Bihter take a woman from that psychopath Sah Rahm. Taking Ella from Arj Wyrm wasn’t an insurmountable task, was it?
I shook my head to shift the horrific afterimages stamped on my retinas and studied my surroundings.
It was important to know where everything was in relation to the First’s home if I would engineer an escape.
Back at the nest, the day passed without further drama.
In the middle of the night, I cricked open an eye to peer at the ceiling. The rustle of furs drew my attention to the body sliding from under them.
Curled on my side, my palms came together and tucked under my head.
The First stood at the foot of the bed. Glowing hot rocks outlined the line of his back and curve of his buttocks.
‘First?’
‘I am here. Sleep.’
My eyes opened wider. ‘Are you going somewhere?’
He brought up his holosphere then sighed.
The soft sound made a strange feeling move through me. I leaned onto my elbow, pulling the fur to cover my breasts. ‘Do you need me to–’
He stalked from the nest.
‘No, thank you, Indie. I’m fine, Indie.’ Rolling my eyes, I flopped back. ‘Rude.’
I eyed the rumpled bed.
Tired of sleeping on the floor, I scampered onto it and rolled around on its warm plushness. The illicitness of my defiance gave me tingles. I’d slink back to the floor before he returned. No harm, no foul.
The plan was doable until I let the comfort seep into my bones and fell asleep.
The next time I peeled open my crusted eyes, I lay sprawled on my stomach.
My face mashed into the bedding where the First’s scent was strongest. I sniffed, groggy, rubbing at a pillow scar carved into my cheek.
Smacking my lips together, I dragged my forearm across my mouth to wipe off drool. I stilled as a shadow in my peripheral vision snared my attention. My heart thudded. I pushed up onto my arms like a frightened toddler. ‘Bhyr?’
‘Here.’ He eased himself onto the mattress. His hand burrowed into the tangle of my hair. Long fingers teased the mass off my face.
His expression stalled my instinctive reaction to shove his hand away. I clasped his wrist instead, brows furrowing. ‘Something’s wrong.’
‘Destruction has claimed one of his Earth Children.’ His mouth turned down at my confusion. ‘A human died.’
It hit me hard. I couldn’t say why. So many of us had died. ‘No.’ Ashleigh, Ella. Cristina. ‘Who?’
‘Arj Wyrm’s breeder.’
I felt the blood leave my face. Relief it wasn’t Cristina made the room spin. Then came the guilt. I swayed and squeezed his wrist, fighting to ground myself. ‘Say her name.’
Bhyr’s expression grew guarded. ‘The name of the breeder is unknown to me.’
‘Of course, it is. What was I thinking.’ My throat tried to close. ‘You don’t know her name, and you didn’t help her.’ My face twisted uglily. ‘I didn’t help her.’
The fingers in my hair fisted. ‘This is not your fault.’
Letting him go, I gave him my back and hugged my knees to my chest. ‘How did it happen?’ I asked after a pained silence. I looked over my shoulder. ‘How did she die? Did he kill her?’ I demanded without giving him time to respond.
I’d decided, no matter what he told me.
‘She got hold of his blade.’
I thought of how the same happened to me. I’d gotten hold of Bhyr’s knife at one point. In what I considered a singular act of uncommon mercy–until I learned about the survival of Grace–the First had let it go rather than punish me. His mercy was the reason I hadn’t mentioned my failed attempt to intimidate him to the other women, unwilling to give them ideas that ended the way Ella’s had. ‘Did she try to–’
‘It was not like with us,’ he interrupted. ‘She was not testing boundaries. She cut her own throat.’ His touch moved to tap my pulse. ‘One slice here, and it was done.’ His hand moved from my neck to trace the curve of my rigid back. ‘It shook the Horde. We did not expect our humans to feel so deeply the shame of defeat.’
‘It’s not shame. It was an escape. She wanted to go home.’ I dropped my gaze to my knees. Ella’s death churned up feelings I didn’t know what to do with. ‘She decided there was no chance of it happening. She did what she believed she had to.’
‘You would not do this thing.’ He leaned closer. Hot blue skin pressed against my back. ‘Would you, Indira?’
My head lifted. I stared at him. ‘You said my name.’
‘Indira?’ He rumbled in my ear and gripped my hip. ‘Would you do this thing?’
‘I’m not saying I’d never make that choice. Who knows what the future holds?’ A dry click accompanied my swallow. ‘It’s not a thing I’d do in my right mind. It’s giving up, isn’t it?’ Wondering if that made me judgemental, I shrugged, and decided not to belabour a moral grey area. ‘It’s harder, but I want to stay alive.’
His eyes fixed on a point beyond me. ‘You are my breeder.’ His jaw clenched. ‘Never do I wish to see you dead in a pool of blood.’ His eyes refocused on mine, stormy with secrets. ‘When we are alone here, I w
ill compromise. I will speak your name.’ He squeezed my hip. ‘You may speak mine.’
‘Okay.’
I had already been doing so in moments of intense emotion. That he invited me to do so meant something.
I wasn’t sure what.
But something.
He lay supine and shut his eyes, breathing slow and even.
Uncomfortable with how his presence on the bed lent an air of domesticity to the scene, I went to slide off it.
His eyes flashed open. ‘Stay?’ His fingers twitched on the furs towards me.
Pulse skipping, I slid back to where I’d been, not trusting myself to answer. I kept as still as possible, my mind leaping and spinning too fast for sleep.
A tear rolled from my watery eyes to wet my cheek.
I brushed it away with a rough swipe from the back of my hand and dragged in a shuddering breath.
‘Stupid,’ I said, inaudible.
I told her to be patient.
My eyes closed as the last image of Ella drifted across my vision. I’d barely known the girl, and hadn’t liked what she’d shown me, but dammit. Couldn’t she have given us longer than an evening to help her? She’d foisted responsibility of her suffering onto us. Why wimp out before we could act? Or was she right to take decisive action with her own fate?
Who the hell was I to judge what a person did while desperate and trapped?
Did such thoughts even matter now she was gone?
Exhausted by it all, I stretched out on my stomach.
Head twisted towards the only comfort to be had, I opened my eyes to watch the First… Bhyr… sleep.
15
Bhyr
First dawn a peaceful hush around them, Bhyr trailed the pads of his fingers over the curved line of his female’s hip.
Her shoulders shifted with her snores. Leg cocked at the knee, an arm flung to the side, she lay still.
Resting beside her had been a revelation. Her hands curled and grabbed, feet twitching. Slender legs scissored and bent at odd angles. Her head rolled side to side, and her elbows acted as weapons when she turned.
When she first wriggled across the sleeping mat, he wondered if she taunted him. It took a half-span of glaring at her face–her eyelids fluttering–that he’d realised she slept. He’d considered putting her back on the floor, but his mind offered solid resistance to the idea. He wanted her within arm’s reach. If he told himself it was for rutting rather than the simple pleasure of her presence, who would know but his god?
In the end, he had surrendered and contorted himself around her sprawled limbs.
Bhyr studied her body with a lavish eye. Unique, curious things he’d missed during his official examination grabbed his interest. The healing pod had recorded data on her physiology to broaden the analysis he’d stolen from the Rä communications matrix. However, using his hands to map the soft angles of his human female was far more satisfying and educational.
The length of her back stiffened. He glanced at her triangular face. Eyelids cracked open, they fixed on his.
Over an awkward silence, they studied each other.
Indira rolled onto her back. She lifted the mane off her forehead and bunched it in a fist at the side of her neck.
The corner of her mouth hitched into a smile. ‘Hi?’ Her voice was thick with sleep.
‘Good Rising.’ He sounded as uncertain.
Bhyr had not decided how to move forward with his breeder. The rotation prior disturbed the Horde more than she realised.
It disturbed him.
The night before, Bhyr stood over the body of a dead human female. He had imagined Indira in her place and become frantic with the need to touch her. To find her safe in his bed had eased something wild and savage deep within his soul.
She would sleep beside him from now on.
How his newfound desire to see her unharmed reconciled with her ultimate fate as his breeder, Bhyr did not know.
He did not wish to think on it while she lay soft and pliant beneath him.
It was better she did not know how she unsettled him. The female was trouble enough.
‘Late to be checking the inventory for imperfections.’
‘What is this?’ he asked.
He ran a finger over a raised scar bisecting her right clavicle. The bone underneath had broken then healed.
‘Accident.’ She yawned, her jaw cracking. ‘Fell off my bicycle. Went over the handlebars. I was a clumsy child. Drove Babi mental. Are we comparing war wounds?’ Her hand danced in the air over the worst of his scars. ‘You win.’
Bhyr followed the fall of her hand as it returned to lie slack on her stomach.
It perturbed him how he wished she had taken the liberty to touch him.
‘This.’ He traced the jewel set in her nostril arch. ‘What is its meaning?’
Ra pierced their quills with gold. Verak pierced their ears with silver. Humans used gemstones. The desire to prettify the body wasn’t a need the Azteka and Baxnonian’s shared. The Azteka told their stories in waede, but it was not permanent and changeable generation to generation.
‘My nose piercing?’ She rubbed it. It glinted in the low light. ‘My mother had one. So did her mother before her. They were Hindu. It was Babi that was Sikh.’ She glanced at him. ‘Not that you care what that means.’
‘Your ways interest me.’ Understanding her was of greater interest, but he kept that to himself. ‘Tell me.’
‘Well, at sexual maturity it was a tradition to undergo the piercing. It then wasn’t removed once the girl married. It used to honour a goddess, Parvathi, but now it’s more of a fashion statement. I got mine after my mother died, instead of getting my ears done. It made me feel closer to her. Even if I didn’t believe what she believed.’
‘Married?’
She waved a hand. ‘Nothing you need to know.’
Grunting, he poked at the divot in her abdomen. He could not hide his revulsion. ‘Why is there a gaping hole here?’
The healing pod had refused to close it, no matter how many times he’d tried.
‘Creeps you out, doesn’t it?’ She plunged a finger inside and wiggled it around.
His flesh crawled. ‘Well?’
‘It’s my navel. The place I attached to my mother before birth. It’s how she fed me.’
‘Attached,’ he muttered. Who could have imagined such a thing? ‘This?’ He traced the outline of a lighter coloured splotch on the smooth mound of her breast.
‘Birthmark.’ The sleepy focus of her gaze fled. ‘You want to put me on my belly now.’
His tongue tingled. ‘We must mate each rotation.’ His hand settled on her waist and nudged. ‘It is so–’
‘I’m not interested in any explanation you have to give.’
Bhyr stilled.
‘What?’ She refused to roll over. ‘It’s not like I can stop you, is it? I’m at your mercy. You’ve made that clear. Have at it so I can get on with my day.’
‘Is your schedule full?’
She gave him a caustic look. ‘Ooh, sarcasm. So you can learn human sensibilities.’
Irked, Bhyr mounted.
The face-to-face position was hard on his legs, shaped as they were, but his engorged barb was extending.
An agonising ache spread through his extremities, and a tremor shook his limbs.
He moved his hand down the soft pouch of her stomach and between her thighs to activate the Keeping.
Her body turned rigid. Fear whisked across her face. ‘Please don’t do that.’
‘If you are not needing release the same as me, it will hurt as I enter you.’
Moisture gathered at the corner of her eyes. ‘Please?’
Cursing under his breath, he keeled over onto his back and flung an arm over his eyes. His bulb sac knotted and cramped. The air on his daulm was a thousand licks of flame. He told himself her wants were inconsequential in the face of his need, but his desperate attempt to minimise her fear rang hollow.
Th
oughts splintered by the throb of his loins, he could not comprehend why.
Movement jerky, Bhyr clasped himself in a fist.
His beliefs discouraged self stimulation, but this far along, his mating frenzy would not stop until he spent his seed.
He groaned, back arching.
‘Stop.’ A hand ripped at his.
Relieved and frustrated, his fist flexed open. Veins in his shaft bulged.
He lay rigid and panting.
She hissed. ‘What is this?’
When he opened his eyes, hers showed too much white.
‘Is it pain?’ she asked. ‘A fetish of yours? Is causing or feeling pain the only way you muster the desire to do this?’
‘No.’
‘I’m sitting here watching you abuse yourself. It looks like torture. For what?’ She leaned forward, leaned back. ‘Why the hell would you do this? Why take me from my home and use me and dehumanise me for this?’ She threw the word with the force of her indignation. ‘What’s the point?’
‘To breed a son.’
She smacked her palm to her forehead with a strangled curse. ‘You want a child so bad you’d endure this?’
‘I want a son.’ He bit the words through a clenched jaw. He would do anything to hold his heir in his arms. ‘Pain is life.’ He held fast to the teachings of his ancestors. ‘We conceive life in pain, birth life in pain.’
‘Oh, Bhyr. That has to be the worst philosophy I’ve heard.’ She shook her head. ‘Why didn’t you try to find someone who would make this whole process for your people easier? Who values what you value, so it would be a good experience rather than a trial to suffer through. Even humanity has artificial insemination if you can’t manage it for physical reasons. There’s no shame in it.’
He focused past the heat in his groin to peer at her with forceful intent. ‘This is not too much for me. I can take you.’
‘Well, bully for you. I can’t take part in this.’ Her hands flapped. ‘I didn’t realise it was painful for you.’ Horrified comprehension swept over her expression as she stared at his twitching body.
He caught her gaze lingering over his scars.
‘These are displeasing.’
Bhyr Page 14