by Pearl Foxx
Kinyi.
His eyes popped open. He started to shout for her, but he only sucked in lungfuls of water through the narrow nostrils of his snout, which had kept water out of his lungs. He was on the bottom of the ocean, his massive body like an anchor weighing him down. The fire in his chest surged up. Plumes of blood puffed through the water in front of him.
For once, the bitter crush of his madness was buried deep. Maybe it was the bullets in his chest or the water in his lungs, but he felt completely in control. Completely sane.
None of it mattered. He surged off the ocean floor and rocketed upward.
When he burst through the water’s surface, he roared, clearing his lungs and turning his breath to fire. He’d never seen the flames so blue, so hot. High overhead, a ring of fire burned. The ships. Even the top of the Vydal burned, the spires warping into molten-hot dripping glass.
He twisted around and searched for Kinyi. Was she still in the water? Had the waves taken her away?
Following her scent, he jerked in the air and found her lying on the Vydal’s front courtyard. Two men stood beside her. They looked up at him in terror.
He dove.
The Vydal’s glass walls shook when he landed, and the rampart’s walkway cracked beneath his clawed feet. He rose to his full height, stretched out his wings, and screeched again.
The ground quaked as Zayd and Maxsym, with their mates astride their backs, landed right behind him. The Vilkan ship set down farther away, and a hatch opened. When Tane glanced back, three massive, snarling wolves prowled out from the ship’s glowing interior. They joined Zayd and Maxsym behind him.
Tavorn grabbed Kinyi off the ground, his arm around her throat, and pulled her against him. He pressed a knife to her throat, his eyes wild. “Stay back!”
He dragged her back a few paces. Gideon stood at his shoulder, but the human commander hardly looked scared. He simply watched, his eyes dancing with amusement as the shifters advanced on the Vydal’s front doors.
Above them, ships streaked across the sky like falling stars. They struck the ocean with a sizzle and sank. Some careened off the Vydal’s walls and exploded. Metal parts ricocheted down around them. Overhead, a high-pitched crack of glass sounded.
“You should let me go,” Kinyi said from the Hyla’s arms. As she spoke, her throat bobbed against the knife and cut her. A trickle of blood ran down the pale column of her throat.
Tane snarled. At the sight of blood on her neck, his madness threatened to rush back to the surface of his mind. But Kinyi winked at him, and a surge of reassurance washed down their connection.
“We came for Gideon,” she told the Hyla holding her. “We don’t have to kill you too.”
From their backs, Niva and Ronnie notched their arrows and leveled them on the Hyla.
Kinyi slammed the back of her head into the Hyla’s mouth. She grabbed the blade with her bare hand and twisted around, letting the sharp edge slice through her palm.
Tane felt the fire and the blood welling in his own hand. He felt the pain. He also felt Kinyi’s thrill as she took the knife from the Hyla’s grip and stabbed him through the heart.
She looked up, still smiling, as Gideon retreated toward the doors.
The amusement had disappeared from his face.
He whirled and raced for the door.
Tane blasted a stream of fire across the Vydal’s door, creating a blue burning line that cut off Gideon’s retreat.
The human commander stopped and slowly turned back. He glanced between the shifters before staring solidly at Tane. “Even if you kill me, we’ll keep coming,” he said, voice low. The blue fire spread closer toward his back, but his words didn’t contain an ounce of fear. “It’s human nature. Now that we know something exists in the galaxy that doesn’t belong to us, we have to take it. One way or another. You can’t fight us off forever.”
“It’s sad you think like that,” Maxsym’s mate said. Her caramel-colored hair twisted in the wind. She lowered her bow and patted Maxsym’s neck. “Goodbye, Father.”
Maxsym lifted into the air. The gusts of wind rocked into them as he took off from the ground. He flew Ronnie back toward the jungle.
The fire pushed Gideon forward a few more paces. He could reach out and touch Kinyi if he wanted, and Tane stood only a few steps behind her. He could kill the commander right then. One blast of fire would rid them of their enemy forever.
“The humans might know we exist,” Kinyi said, “but they will learn what happened here tonight. How an entire legion of your people came to save one man and none of them returned. I don’t think your kind will be sending any more battleships to Kladuu. Not for a long time.”
Gideon inclined his head toward Kinyi, his eyes bright from the fires raining down from above. “Perhaps you’re right, but we would have made far better use of your shifting abilities. What good is such a talent if you don’t use it?”
Behind Tane, the Vilkas growled and advanced. Zayd let out a deep rumble in his throat that had his mate murmuring softly toward his massive, scarred head. Tane smiled on the inside. Kladuu might not be his home anymore, but he felt the connection with the shifters around him.
They were family. And they would do anything to protect their home and each other.
“Why do humans think everything has to be ‘used’ or exploited?” Kinyi asked. “We don’t need to search out foreign planets, stripping them of their resources and killing their people to feel accomplished. That isn’t our version of being useful. It’s high time a planet stood up and fought back against your forces. Maybe now the humans will think twice before they pillage a planet to its bones. If not”—she shrugged—“I’m sure there will be aliens out there to remind humans of their place.”
“Wishful thinking,” Gideon spat, disgusted. He glanced over his shoulder, looking worried for the first time as blue flames kissed his heels. He had to feel the fire’s heat. “Do you not think you will go back to fighting and killing each other once I’m gone? You can’t be so naive as to think everything will be united and peaceful after this.”
The Vilkas pressed closer, their growls low in their throats. Zayd angled up beside Tane. They were close enough to smell Gideon’s sweat as it beaded across his forehead and rolled down the side of his face.
“I think I speak for everyone here when I say we don’t care what you think.” Niva slung her bow across her back, her dark hair blowing behind her. Zayd snorted out a curl of smoke.
The sound of cracking glass came again, but this time like sharp, staccato splinters. Everyone looked up. The tallest spire swayed in the fire-choked air. The glass was curled and blackened, the reflection of the blue fire eerie so high above.
Kinyi turned back to Gideon. “Looks like your crystal palace is about to crumble. I hope your time on Kladuu was worth it.”
She stepped back beside Tane. The Vilkas slowly returned to their ship, their dark eyes on Gideon the entire way. When the Vilkan ship lifted off the ground, so did Zayd and his mate. Tane extended his wing, and Kinyi climbed onto his back.
He let out a long breath of relief once she’d settled astride him.
The cracking grew louder. Another spire joined the first in a dangerous dance.
“Just kill me,” Gideon snarled. “I know that’s what you want to do.”
Tane felt Kinyi shrug. “Why get our hands dirty? We never liked the Vydal anyway. So gaudy.”
Tane beat his wings and lifted into the air. Gideon shouted after them, but his words were lost in the rush of wind and the howl of glass shattering all around him.
Tane, Zayd, and the Vilkas flew up high and fast to get out of the way as the Vydal finally came crashing down.
It had stood long enough for the Katu and the rest of the Vilkas and Draqons to get the innocent Hylas and servants to shore safely. The only person within the palace’s limits was Gideon, and as smoke, fire, glass, and metal crashed down around him, even he would be gone for good.
The ocean swall
owed up the Vydal with a great sucking wave, pulling the city into its depths as everything folded into itself. Above, some human ships made off with only a few sparks of the blue fire singeing their hulls. They flew straight for the wormhole near the double moons. Others only managed to limp away before crashing into the ocean. A few more fell into the jungle, setting off a smattering of small explosions across the horizon.
Tane spiraled high above it all, his eyes on the ruin below.
His fire hadn’t spread to the jungle, but the destruction was still vast. The Kladians would be cleaning it up for a long time after he was gone. Perhaps he hadn’t taken innocent lives this time, but he still felt dirty and wrong. His fire would always feel like that, even though it could also feel so good.
Already he wanted to run from it, from what he’d done. He wanted to limp back home to the Ball & Joint and lick his wounds. He wanted to never feel the fire again. He wanted to be free of his guilt.
Kinyi draped herself over his neck and wrapped her arms around him. She planted a soft kiss on his scales. “Let’s go home,” she murmured.
Tane’s heart sank.
Where his home was, she would never return.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kinyi
Tane washed the last of the soot from his chest, a pair of Arakid silk pants hanging low on his hips.
From the narrow, fur-covered bed in their room inside the Vilkas’ mountain, Kinyi watched him. Against all odds, they’d taken down the human army and sent Gideon to a watery grave where he belonged. Outside the walls of their room, the mountain buzzed with celebration as all the clans—Draqon, Vilka, Katu, and even the few surviving Hyla who had never wanted this war—came together in sheer wonder that they were alive.
Yet, inside their room, Tane could barely meet her eyes.
He draped the rag over the sink and braced himself against the stone basin. The muscles in his shoulders flexed from the effort, his dark skin gleaming like black granite in the light.
Kinyi wanted to wrap her arms around his waist, but she remained sitting. It seemed like, for him, the battle hadn’t ended when the Vydal had sunk into the ocean, sucking down that horrible, tasteless structure and the human commander who would have killed them all.
In his head, Tane still struggled.
But he hadn’t hurt anyone other than the enemy. His fire had been more or less in control the entire fight. And they were both alive to recall the tale. She couldn’t possibly think of any reason why they shouldn’t be drinking and laughing with others, besides taking a romp between the sheets.
They weren’t doing that either.
She’d put on her good pair of thigh-highs that she’d gotten on Earth and worn onto the battleship, and nobody would see her wear them. She sighed.
Tane turned around and crossed his arms over his chest, but he remained in the washroom. “Go on. I’ll be out in a second.”
“We both know you’re lying, so stop.” She shook her head at him. “What’s going on? What are you thinking?”
His expression darkened. Pushing off the sink, he walked back into the room and sat on the bed beside her. His weight made the mattress dip enough that she shifted against him, her shoulder touching his.
“I’m not staying.”
Her gaze flashed to his profile. She searched his face for all the words he wasn’t saying, but he wasn’t giving anything away. “You mean on Kladuu?”
“Yes.” His violet eyes met hers. “On Kladuu. I’m going home.”
She told herself the words didn’t hurt, because they weren’t a revelation. How many times had she told herself not to count on him staying? Kladuu wasn’t his home anymore. Earth was. Cyn City was. That dirty, grungy bar hidden in the shadows on a puddle-ridden street was his home. Just because Kladuu was hers—her entire heart—didn’t mean he would stay.
A person didn’t make a home, no matter how many fools said it.
And Kinyi refused to be stricken dumb by love.
“The Vilkas could take you. Noaz is familiar with the path through the wormhole.” She wanted the words to come out steady and calm like she couldn’t be bothered to care.
Tane nodded. He opened his mouth, but he must have thought better about whatever he was going to say. He snapped it shut and gritted his teeth.
Kinyi didn’t want to investigate too closely how he felt through their connection because he might sense her heartbreak. She blocked it with everything she had.
“Kinyi—”
“No,” she snapped with more forceful than she meant to. “It’s fine. I’m fine. You should go home. We weren’t that special. We just have really great sex, that’s all.”
“Because you can have sex with a hundred other attractive males once I’m gone.”
She snapped her focus to him, glaring, but he smiled softly back at her, his expression not quite reaching his eyes. Forcing herself to relax, she said, “I guess that’s true.”
“You can tell them all about the legend of the White Horn and his giant—”
“Okay!” she laughed.
She swung her leg across his lap to face him and pushed him back against the bed. Straddling him, she held him down, but he didn’t fight. He only stared up at her, his easy smile still in place.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, his eyes trailing down her scales.
Her heart pinched. The words fell off her tongue before she could stop them. “Not beautiful enough for you to stay.”
Her voice even fucking hitched like she might cry. And then her eyes were burning, and her throat tightened. With a growl, she went to jump off Tane, but he grabbed her hips and held her in place.
“Kinyi …”
She hated that his voice sounded like that. Like he felt sorry for her.
She tried to get up again, but this time, he twisted his hips and rolled on top of her in a motion so smooth she knew it was practiced. How many women had he done that to before? When he went home without her, how many women would lie beneath him, staring up at his wicked violet eyes, and feel their hearts beating out of their chests?
“Even if we didn’t have a connection, I would know everything you were thinking from your facial expressions alone. Never play poker,” he told her.
“Get up,” she snapped. “I’m going to go find a hot male to bed tonight.”
“No.”
She hissed at him. Before she could even lift her head, he had her wrists pinned above her head with one hand, his arm barely flexing with the effort. Did he always have to look so casually sexy? Her mouth watered, and her core ached with heat.
He stared down at her for so long that her surge of anger burned out to a faint sizzle. Then it disappeared completely. His expression turned sad and a little lost.
“What?” she asked so quietly it was almost a whisper. “What is it, Tane?”
She thought he wouldn’t answer. Finally, just as quietly, he said, “I don’t belong here. Not after what I did.”
The raw emotion in his words threatened to rip her to shreds.
He released her wrists to run his hands over his face and through his short hair. In the room’s light, she could just make out the fine laugh lines around his mouth.
“When will you forgive yourself for that?” she asked, pushing up on her elbows so she could stare into his eyes.
“Forgiveness is for heroes, Kinyi. I’m nothing of the sort. In this world, I’m better off a legend than a real person.”
She sat up and cupped his face in her hands, bringing her face closer so they were practically nose to nose. “All that guilt you feel?” She squeezed his face until he nodded in response. “Do you think it will just go away when you return to that shitty, smelly bar? Do you think you’ll be happy hiding from who you are for the rest of your life? Let me answer that for you. No. No, you won’t. Because I felt your joy when you were shifted. I felt your love for the air. Sure, you’re a little crazy, but so am I. Why hide from that? Why run away like a coward when you could st
ay and make a new legend for yourself?”
His brow furrowed. When she released his face, he took her hand and kissed her palm before returning her stare. “How can I make a new legend? How is that possible when all I’ve left behind me is a trail of death?”
Her eyes widened, and she waved her hand toward the door separating their room from the rest of the mountain. “Do you not hear that? That celebration? I guarantee if you walked out there right now, they would cheer for you. Unless they’re too drunk. These Vilkas drink some strong shit. But you saved a lot of lives today and almost single-handedly won an entire war. That’s your legend right there, waiting for you to take it.”
He considered her words for a long moment. Hope fluttered in her heart.
“A man is probably lucky to get two legends in his lifetime,” he said, his eyes trailing across her face, leaving a warm glow in their wake.
“Incredibly lucky,” she agreed.
“But,” he said, and her hope sank with that one little word, “the luckiest man would be the one who took you as a rider for life.”
She stared back at him, her breath tight in her chest.
“Legends aside,” he said, pushing his hands through the loose strands of her hair, “I would be luckiest to have you. I think being the male who mated the great, fearsome Kinyi is legend enough for me.”
Her heart was a wild thing in her chest. Her grin was foolish. “That would be legendary, but I’m not leaving Kladuu. Not for that soggy city on Earth. That’s not my home, Tane.”
He brought her in for a long, slow kiss, and she deepened it by opening her mouth for him. They kissed like they’d had their entire lives to learn each other’s bodies, to trace their favorite paths a million times. Kinyi pressed herself against him, already wanting his tongue elsewhere on her body.
“I love it there,” he agreed, pulling back from their kiss, “but I don’t think it will ever feel the same now that I know you exist.”
Kinyi brushed her lips against his, feeling her smile tugging at her cheeks. “I won’t ever let you forget either. I’m spiteful like that.”