“OH!” Flustered, I shrank down farther into Tokre’s arms. Save me, husband, I wanted to shout. Save me! Save me from this cheap flattery my crazy bum is actually falling for!
That naughty twinkle in the healer’s eyes had my stomach doing flip flops, clenching and unclenching. The sensation while not foreign to me, combined with my aching crotch, was equal parts pleasant and unpleasant, and what the hell is wrong with me?
Glaring, prudish lip purse firmly in place, eyes squinting to tiny little angry slits, I informed him primly, “Not that you’ll ever be seeing them again, Jolly Green Squatch. The goods,” I parroted back at him, “that is.”
Noyel snorted, grinning, then threw his head back and laughed. His hands on his stomach, he let it go, guffawing his little hairy heart out.
I tried to glare up at him, I really did, but there was something so disarming about his laugh, the infectious rumble of it, how free and easy, smooth yet deep. There was a carefree quality to it I envied. When had I laughed like that? I couldn’t remember.
“Lindy-mine need a healer? Need medicine? Need Zhuii go get Rothy?” Zhuii had moved closer while I’d been distracted. The beast was so close now he was practically on top of us.
“Isn’t this weird for you two?” I asked instead. “I mean, you two grew up together and are…?”
Zhuii pulled back as if I’d just backhanded him. “Kehkoh not- Zhuii not…” The large beast’s shoulders slumped and he made a noise in his throat. “No. Not weird for Zhuii,” he eventually mumbled.
Now what did I say? I wanted to ask him but feared I might make it worse.
Tokre, watching the exchange, lifted his hand to place it on Zhuii’s shoulder. Though Zhuii shoved it off, he looked up to give Tokre a small smile.
“I thought he couldn’t read lips?” I asked no one in particular.
“Smell,” Zhuii murmured quietly. “Tell from smell. No need words.” With a pained grimace, he admitted, “Zhuii not same, like others. Zhuii… different.”
“Well, aren’t we all, at this point?” Was that why he had blue hair?
“Zhuii lots different. Zhuii part Zhubarbeast.”
“And that’s what? Like the baboon of Abominables? Do you have a blue heinie hidden beneath all that fur?” Peeking in the general direction of his backside, I almost expected Zhuii to slap his hands to his cheeks protectively and give me an indignant old woman’s pissy huff.
Zhuii, plopped down in front of us, his hands folded into his furry lap, chin dipped, was staring down at his thick finges. With a chuff of surprise he grunted and his head shot up. “Zhuii Zhubarbeast not blue heinie. Rosie lindy listening?!” I’d struck a nerve, hard.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “Continue.” Miming zipping my lips, I waited.
“Zhuii not same. Not same like Zhubarbeasts, either,” he growled out with disgust. “Zhubarbeasts hunt females. Force females to… to…”
“I get the picture,” I murmured, then grimaced, remembering belatedly I’d just agreed to shut up.
“Zhubarbeasts are like us, but wild, feral, completely untamed, with blue fur, horns, a tail, and a hell of a lot more arms,” Noyel explained.
I tried to picture this centipede like horned beastie but couldn’t. Glancing to Zhuii curiously, the only trait he held was a bit of blue fluff. Was he really shunned for that? How fucking stupid.
Zhuii swallowed hard. “They bad, take pregnant females, females in heat. Steal them away… take them.”
I assumed he meant sexually, by whatever means necessary. I shuddered just thinking about it. Those poor females.
My eyes widened as I stared at Zhuii. Was he implying that his mother had been taken by one of these… raped by one of those Zhubarbeasts?
“Zhuii bad blood. No one claim Zhuii. Zhuii left for Zhubarbeasts,” the orange-eyed beast explained.
“Left you? Like, as a baby?” I sputtered.
Zhuii nodded, but his gaze dropped. “Kehko find Zhuii in woods, take Zhuii home. Zhuii too little, Kehko say. Zhuii would have died.”
Oh my fucking god…
“Kehko hide Zhuii, keep Zhuii safe. Zhuii, uh, Zhuii bad sometimes, though.”
“Bad?” How could a little baby, a child, be bad-bad?
“Zhuii get mad. Be bad. Bad mad. Zhuii no good little beastie. Sometimes very bad mad.”
“Bad mad?” I mumbled.
“Zhuii different,” was all he’d say.
“They found you? That’s why they made you leave?” I guessed, but Zhuii shook his head.
His head lifted enough to peek at Tokre. “They find Kehko baby.” He avoided saying Tokre, probably knowing the male might recognize his own name, if he could read his name on someone’s lips.
“Kehko know him different too. Tokre loud, cry a lot. Memnin, Kehko mate, him say Tokre different. Tell Kehko get rid of baby. Kehko no get rid of Tokre. Kehko banished. Take Zhuii and Tokre here.” A small smile lifted his lips as he glanced towards the back wall. “Kehko make Zhuii place for Zhuii when bad. Zhuii learn to- to be good.”
“She punished you by putting you somewhere when you misbehaved?”
“In Zhuii’s place.” Zhuii nodded. “Zhuii not hurt other Lo denaii there.”
“Like Tokre or, uhm, Kehko?” Kehko, obviously, was Bekbah, the ‘difficult one’.
Zhuii gave a shake of his shaggy head. “Zhuii never hurt Tokre or Kehko. They Zhuii’s. Zhuii never hurts Zhuii’s… Zhuii’s…”
I had to blink several times and quietly take a deep breath before asking, “Family?”
Another shake of his shaggy head. “Zhuii no family, no one claim Zhuii. But Zhuii have Tokre and Kehko.”
They were his family, or what constituted as one, whether he knew it or not. I honestly think he doesn’t.
Looking to my mate, I told Zhuii, “Sign for me, Zhu. Ask Tokre if he claims you. If he thinks of you as his kin, his family.”
Surprised, Zhuii lifted his hand and began to sign. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Noyel picking up the bag he’d set down to walk it over to the table and rifle through it. Peeking at us surreptitiously, his lips tilted into the faintest of smiles. He was pleased, but why?
Zhuii’s grunt of surprise had me looking to him.
The beast’s eyes were wide and he was blinking rapidly, clearing his throat gruffly like he had something stuck in it.
“Why you no tell me?” he choked out, forgetting to sign. “Zhuii no leave Tokre and Kehko. Zhuii go, leave, protect Kehko and Tokre. Zhuii have needs. Need to dig, make Zhuii place, Zhuii home. Not want to, but need.”
Instinct, is what he was trying to say, I was thinking. If he was part this wild beast thing, all animal and who knew how that could affect him, how much humanity they might or might not possess. Maybe these nasty beast things had weird drives, sudden urges, spikes or something, a heat? Or they went into musth, like male elephants. Rut? Zhubarbeast hormonal fluctuations that led to some nasty shit? These were animals, beast-beasts, and the animal kingdom was not particularly kind.
Did that make what they did to unsuspecting females okay? Hell the fuck no, and I hoped with every fiber of my being a shit ton of them got their balls handed to them, literally, or worse. If these Abominable females were anything like their males, I hoped they tore some Zhubarbeast shit up.
Damn, what that must do to Zhuii, knowing that, how he’d been made, the ugly circumstances of it all, his mother abandoning him, that couldn’t have been easy.
While I sat there ruminating, I missed something said, signed, between the males. Before I knew it I was involuntarily partaking in a group hug, gentled for my benefit when I squeaked at Zhuii’s sudden lunge.
“Never left Tokre. Tokre Zhuii brother, too. Never leaving Zhuii’s family. Ever,” Zhuii’s swore, his deep voice rumbling over the top of my head as he nuzzled it. His voice was thick with emotion. Arms bulging with muscles banded around us, wrapping around Tokre’s body as my beast-husband held me, enveloping us.
“Well, do
n’t forget me,” Noyel grumbled good-naturedly, and got in on the action, too. On his knees by my legs, he wrapped his long arms around all of us, giving us a squeeze that made Tokre grunt.
I laughed, surprising even myself.
“This is nuts. We’re all mental, you guys know that, don’t you? You are all fucking nuts,” I mumbled into someone’s furry body part, on a chuckle. Squeezing my hand between beastly furry bits, I gave what I hoped was Zhuii’s stomach a few gentle, reassuring pats.
We sat there like that for I didn’t know how long, until the heat this bunch put off had me sweating buckets.
“Mmmm.” Zhuii made a happy, rumbling noise, his skin jerking beneath my fingertips.
A purr building in his chest, right along with Tokre’s, Noyel noted, “You smell nice.”
“And you talk so eloquently for a beastie,” I quipped. And just because, “That lovely smell, it’s sweat, bud. You all are like a sauna with me squashed up in this dogpile. I’m assuming that’s why you all are acting like oversized back massagers? You like my particular brand of stink?”
“Lindy-mine’s smell?” Zhuii asked abruptly, the surprise in his voice giving me pause.
My hand stopped stroking what I assumed was Zhuii’s abdomen and I felt around a bit, jerking my fingers back when I felt the bottom of what was undoubtedly a belly button and the top of his massive erection. That thing was standing straight up, pressing into his stomach eagerly, as if to search out my touch. “Good grief,” I muttered, shaking my head.
Zhuii’s purr sputtered out. If ever there was a more disappointed sound, I’d yet to hear it.
Squeezing my eyes shut tight, a bit dizzy with all of these new, unforeseen to me events, the idea of Zhubarbeasts roaming around and Rek on the loose, my own personal safety, foremost in my mind, I sighed long and loud.
“Okay,” I said suddenly, relenting, “but I’m calling the shots, and no sex, none, unless I initiate it.” For Tokre, I added, “That means no mating unless I say so, and if I say no, you stop right away. Alright? Even if I make you wait a bajillion years! You all understand me?”
“Yes!” Zhuii all but shouted.
“Alright- I mean, ahem, yes.” Noyel’s arms gave another not so gentle squeeze that had me chortling at this mad shit, all this madness that is my life, and shaking my head.
How? Just freaking how? And yet I couldn’t answer it. I couldn’t.
Abominables, banished clan-mates, Lo denaii, Zhubarbeasts and Zhubarbeast Abominable hybrids, lusty, asshole warriors wanting to ‘fix’ me, just… how? And, more importantly, freaking wow…
I’m giant, big ol’ furry balls deep in snow beast-landia and things are getting hairier and hairier, literally. I’m swimming in mates, I thought, a wild giggle slipping past my lips because why the hell not? Help!
“Silly,” Zhuii said on a chuckle. “Why my Lindy-mine laugh?”
“Lindy-mine,” I chortled, “has lost her ever-loving mind, that’s why! I’m to have three husbands?! Three?!” Even if I did intend to keep two of them at bay in the bowchickawowow department for the better part of this century, and possibly the next. And maybe even after that. But they didn’t need to know that.
And speaking of…
“Here.” Wrangling my hand free, holding it up, pinkie out, I wiggled it. “Hook it here, fellas. This is a pinky-swearing kind of affair.”
“Pinky-swooring?” Zhuii eyed my wriggling digit curiously. “Why we do that?”
“Uhm… because…” Think, Rosa, think. “Well… because to my people, your word is your bond, right, but not everyone keeps their word. This… this is, like, better than that. It’s… a pinky swear- Hmm… This is binding.”
“How so?” Noyel’s head popped up and he cocked it, the action making me think of a curious dog.
A curious dog I’d just kinda agreed to be a mate to. Gah!
“Erm… so… a pinky-swear, uh, it’s like a… a… It’s like a curse!” I blurted in a rush. I wanted to mentally smack myself even as the words tumbled free, but what if they didn’t know, and believed it? It could happen.
“A curse?” Noyel murmured dubiously.
“No-yell,” Zhuii whispered, doing a terrible job of it. “What a curse?”
“I don’t… I don’t know,” the blue-eyed beastie admitted reluctantly. And I had my out.
“It’s a binding contract, and you can’t go back on it, otherwise bad things will happen. Terrible. Horrible things.”
“Even if Zhuii good?” Zhuii’s wide face bunched and he made an annoyed noise.
“No,” I was quick to add, “the curse doesn’t hurt you if you keep your end of the bargain. You know, whether you choose to do what you are or aren’t supposed to. If you keep your part of the deal, you’re good.”
Zhuii made a sound in the back of his throat. “And Lindy-mine wants a pinky-swaur from her mates?”
My pinky wiggled again. “If you want to be my mate-husband, yes.”
The orange-eyed beast couldn’t hook his finger on mine fast enough, his other arm lifting from around us, until his hand was high enough Tokre could see what he was signing at him. Tokre, working his hand free, signed something back.
“Zhuii okay with that,” the shorter beast agreed. Looking to me, he shrugged. “Tokre say we family. Promise stay family. No leaving.”
The cool, calculating look on my face slipped a little. Shit, he wanted me to promise what? “Oh, I didn’t put that in there. That’s a totally new promise,” I argued, though as gently as possible.
Noyel stiffened and blinked. Zhuii gave no indication what I’d just said bothered him, his finger still firmly hooked with mine.
“Why not do it all at once?” Noyel was getting the same funny look I had on my mug, his beautiful blue eyes narrowing shrewdly.
I had a wonderful poker face when I had time to practice it. On the spot, I was fucked.
A promise of forever? My upper lip started to sweat, until I felt like I had a salt water mustache. Those sweaty dew drops followed along the top of my forehead and about a million other places, all at once, springing up to trickle, a few literally gathering to trickle down my spine in nervous sweating fueled rivulets.
No. No. It doesn’t matter? What does it matter? I mean, why am I sweating promising forever, when the main goal here is putting off the sex bidness and buying myself some time? And protection—can’t forget that. They say they want forever, and are willing to swear to it even under guise of a cursing…
A promise from them to never leave could come in handy… Couldn’t it? Like, say, if I admitted at some point and time in the near future I couldn’t handle that much peen action? Feign a broken vagina?
“And you all will promise to wait until I’m ready to do the beastly bump and grind.” Nodding, I looked to Noyel.
With a grunt, Tokre’s pinky hooked on mine, curling around it, right above Zhuii’s, tightening fractionally.
“Together forever,” Noyel announced, curling his long pinky finger over my much shorter one.
“And we shake on it!” I proclaimed, snorting out a laugh as my hand lifted and fell in some ridiculous pinky-pact shake.
Three happy, rumbling purrs kicked up as I snort-laughed my brains out, my laughter vibrating into Tokre, who took it as a personal challenge, upstaging everyone.
CHAPTER 16
The rest of the day was weird, Noyel and Zhuii leaving in the afternoon to finish some kind of beastly village group chores or something, and Tokre, at my insistence, had himself a short rest—a short rest that my mate made very clear was a couple’s affair. There was spooning, and cuddling, and much crooning and petting, but I didn’t have to slap away a single feisty paw, not once.
His sudden gentlemanly demeanor was probably prompted by our last attempt at this mating sex business. Outwardly thrilled, that deep down demented side of me pouted slightly at the lack of interest. I mean, not even a crotch pet with a little ridiculous, horny, cooch crooning? What kinda alien beast man
is he? A more realistic one, because this isn’t a freaking movie. Either way, my tunnel o’ love thanked him profusely.
When I awoke from our joint slumber, Noyel and Zhuii were back, bustling about as I snuffled myself awake.
After that the bickering beasties just kind of hung around, though they did help with Tokre’s chores, since I insisted he was incapable of doing them himself at the moment.
After much maneuvering and growled discussion, I discovered these Abominables actually did have a type of beastly outhouse. Several, in fact, which I demanded Zhuii take me to. I’d have picked Tokre to take me in a heartbeat but he should be resting, and Noyel should stay with him, of course, to make sure the snarling butthead complied. And, well, protection. Who knew what kind of insanity Rek was capable of.
Sliding to the edge of the bed, I mumbled a few colorful things under my breath.
“Maybe Rosie-lindy not-” Zhuii began on a chuckle, to be cut off by my very enthusiastic, “Pfft!”
Hand waving, slashing through the open air, I wasn’t having it. This was happening. A toilet? Whuh? Oh, we were so doing this.
Never had my thighs screaming so hard as they did the last few days. It was hard not to grimace as I stood. No wonder Joanie threw out those squats workout vids! Holy crap!
“Oh, we’re doing this,” I stated firmly. “and you are going to take me around to each and every one, so I know the general location of each, should I need to find them by myself. And then you’re going to skip, run, hop, jog, jump, my butt back over here, no detours, no if’s and’s or but’s. You feel me, cotton candy punk rock fluff?”
“No defloors? Zhuii feels you…?” The beast scratched at his head, slightly befuddled by my ‘funny talk’ but trying.
Tokre was opposed to the entire thing from the get-go, no porto-beast-potty trips, no bed rest, no telling him what to do, but he eventually caved.
It was only after much negotiating via Zhuii, hinting at what might happen to me, my mental state, should I not find some semblance of normal in my suddenly crazy life, a lot of snarling on everyone’s part, a bit of waterworks on mine, though I tried to hold it in, and the condition that I rested the second I got back—because broken vaginas aren’t going to just magically heal themselves, right? Har-har.
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