by V. K. Ludwig
When she had little to say to that, I leaned against the trunk, glancing at Ceangal, who disappeared between shrubs. Going for a walk. “When you tended to her heatstroke, did you notice something amiss?”
“Yes, half her soul was missing.”
“I’m in no mood for this, Uresha. Is it possible she carries a transponder under her skin?”
“Possible, yes.”
“Have you noticed one?”
She shrugged, then turned back to the tree.
“You are about as helpful as those runes.” I pushed myself off the trunk. “The only comfort I take in this is the fact that she won’t suffer once Katedo comes for my head.”
Her life would continue as if I’d never stung her.
Shoulders rounded, limbs heavy, I followed Ceangal’s trail. I had more reasons to doubt than to believe her, and yet my bond urged me to see it for myself. Had she indeed infiltrated us?
Her sandals left noticeable footprints. And then there was her habit of plucking flower petals. She often rolled them into little balls between her fingers before she dropped them and smelled her hands. The woman had odd habits. Odder was how I loved observing them.
When I found her east of the smallest pond, so focused she didn’t notice my approach, I leaned against a nearby boulder. I watched how she counted the different shades of gray on the rock wall toward west. A gentle breeze swept through her auburn hair before it fluttered through my stomach, where it stirred hunger, longing, wanting.
Wanting things I’d neither planned for nor did they serve my goal; kept me from it, even. As much as I ached to lick that sweetness between her legs and sink myself into her cunt to seed her, I would have been content with a kiss.
What a terrible development.
Kisses made no child.
When her gaze dropped to her arm, that flutter in my stomach turned into a storm beneath my ribs, and the world fell to pieces around me.
By Mekara, I’d been set-up.
Black nanites formed on her arm…
…in the shape of trees and flowers.
As though she used her skin as a canvas, she let the black scales form petals and leaves of varying shapes and sizes, entirely in control. Until I took a step toward her, twig snapping underneath me, and nanites distorted before they disappeared altogether.
Green eyes shot to me and narrowed. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to understand that you can control your armor just fine. Who set me up? Katedo? Empire? Both?”
She folded her arms in front of her chest, white dress once more transformed into a jumpsuit by how she’d tied a knot into the silk between her legs. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
I grabbed her wrist fast enough she couldn’t dodge it, ignoring the ache in my chest at her discomfort. “Twice, Nafir witnessed how you willed your armor. Why didn’t you the night I came for you?”
“Because I couldn’t.”
Ceangal ripped her hand away, but there was nothing she could do against my tail. I wrapped it around her middle, pulling her against my chest hard enough a grunt dislodged from her throat.
No, not a grunt.
A… moan?
Fake. All fake.
“Close your armor.” Liquid anger pumped through my veins. And straight into my cock. “Close it!”
Her lips trembled as she whimpered, “I… I can’t.”
But she could.
I’d seen it!
“Liar. Where is the transponder?”
When she tried to wiggle herself free, I grabbed her arms to hold her still. Except, my palms rounded her shoulders, ran down the soft silk covering her back, and stroked the sway of her ass. Not a single nanite lifted, so I grabbed her flesh, dug my fingers into it.
“Your scent is killing me.” I rocked my hard shaft against her stomach with each groan resonating my throat. “I swear I want to drape you over a rock and rut you so hard, you’ll scream your secrets at each punishing thrust.”
Her head lolled back, exposing the remnants of the cut my tailclaw had left there. I lapped at it, and my bond tugged whenever she moaned, but it vibrated when she rolled her pelvis in search of friction. Her lust lingered on the sweetness coming from her cunt. This was it. Zovazay!
“Toagi, stop.” I would have, if she hadn’t moaned her plea, eyes fluttering shut as she rolled her hips against me, wanting me, feeling me, sensing our bond, I was certain. “Mmmh… please stop.”
“You’re almost in heat,” I whispered, my ribcage too small, too fucking narrow to contain how my bond chirped and sang as she grew pliable in my arms. “Do you feel our zovazay now? Sense how it wants you to give in to me? Give me your soul, Cean—”
Pain flared in my right toe.
It escalated when she stomped onto my foot a second time. Her damned elbow followed, lifting into my periphery before she knocked it right against my temple and sent a stab into my brain.
“There is no bond.” She untangled herself from my tail, chest heaving as she stumbled back a few steps, her eyes wide with panic. “You don’t have my soul, and you never will!”
A flock of seya birds burst from the shrubs at her shout, their wings flapping nervously to the jagged beat of my heart. How could she deny our soulbond and moan at my touch all in the same breath? She had felt something just now; otherwise, she wouldn’t have accepted my touch. Invited it, even.
Anger flared back to life at her rejection. “Do you carry a transponder, yes or no?”
Blotches of nanites raced up and down her arms with no rhyme or pattern to it but chaos itself. “What?”
“Did Katedo set me up and equip you with a transponder to find my tribe? He knew I was coming, didn’t he? The technicians we bribed sold me out.”
However much her eyes narrowed, it only lasted for a second before she shook her head. “No. I don’t carry a transponder.”
“Make me believe you.”
“Let me go!”
I wanted to strangle her.
I held her tighter instead. “No.”
Her fist pounded against my chest, but it didn’t hit me nearly as bad as that thing coming through our bond. Something I hadn’t been able to name before once more peeked from the deepest layers of her soul, so dark, so violent it seared beneath my ribs.
“You want to know the truth?” she spat, burning her gaze right into me. “I can control my armor just fine when nobody is looking, but it all goes to shit when people do. Because everyone is always staring at me. All the time staring at me, commenting on every single damn fucking thing that isn’t any of their business! Ceangal took her first steps and fell. Ceangal went through her finals and failed. Ceangal had her first date and got stood up. Do you have any idea what it feels like when people constantly stare at you? Expect great things of you? Gossip about you?” She trembled in my arms. “Point at you?”
That saliva that had pooled underneath my tongue went down like thick poison, and shame bittered my gums. Yes, I knew exactly what it felt like when fingers pointed, and this reminder brought about painful clarity.
The way her nanites flickered uncontrollably, the threat of tears glistening in her eyes, how her entire body shook… she truly couldn’t control it.
Ceangal was no infiltrator.
No, she simply carried the burden of her father’s name, and how heavy it must’ve been all these sun cycles. She knew of the satellite code, of course. She’d likely figured out that I had a com cube. Now, she mapped out landmarks for her rescue, likely with the intention to communicate them.
By Mekara, the wit of that female pleased me more than the fact that it could cause my downfall.
What a fool I’ve been.
Her next blink unleashed a flood of tears, each one hollowing my heart because I’d put them there, but she kept her voice steady. “It was my choice to come here so I could escape it, Toagi. The moment the media gets wind of this, they’ll be all over me again no matter how it ends. You stol
e my chance to bring peace and gain some for myself once and for all.” She sucked in a stuttered breath. “I won’t let you steal anything else from me.”
All strength leeched from my muscles, and I released her, not daring to turn as she ran off. The urge to go after her, to hum my lungs out, was strong, but that would only upset her more.
So I did neither.
No, I remained rooted, my chest aching with how the bond vibrated in chaotic dissonance as if someone had struck three chords at once.
Her anxiety.
Her doubt.
Her anger.
I felt it stronger than anything else before.
Because I’d exposed the pains of her soul.
Chances were that she would never acknowledge our bond…
…unless I stripped myself down to the pains of my past.
Eleven
Ceangal
I sprinted toward the tree, dodging children who played in the dirt, females who weaved baskets, and males who fleshed the hides they’d brought from their hunt.
Hard breaths burst in and out of my nostrils, and the high heat sucked my gums dry. A puckered lump formed at the back of my throat, tingling whenever final drops of tears ran down my sinuses and along my throat.
“Urizaya.” The moment I reached for the tree, Mayala clasped my shoulder. “Whatever is wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Everything was wrong!
I was in the wrong place with the wrong Jal’zar warrior, who made my body react in ways just plain… wrong. How could I have ground myself against him like that? Moaned his name like that? Relished his touch like that?
Ridiculed myself like that…
“The sun is getting to me.” A poor excuse but the only one I came up with, so I grabbed the rope ladder. “Let me lie down and rest until the sun goes down.”
I climbed into our nabu. There, I rolled myself up, wiping my face over my arm, but the air had already dried my tears, leaving the skin around my cheeks somewhat taut. What was wrong with me?
Nothing excused how I’d gone weak at his closeness, his touch, at how his breathing had accelerated with raw need as he kneaded my ass. I was exhausted, physically and mentally. Yes, that was it, no matter how much he wanted to blame it on a bond that did not exist. Did not exist. Did not exist…
The nabu swayed ever so slightly, followed by Toagi’s voice. “I handled that poorly by letting my temper cloud my thinking, and I want to apologize.”
But he had only been slightly off, hadn’t he? I’d been mapping the area for suns. Chances were he’d figured it out now, not necessarily making escape impossible, but much harder. I needed to leave this place. Needed to get away from him.
His finger gently ran along my arm until his touch disappeared behind nano armor that once more did its own thing. “Do you wish me to hum for—”
“No.”
He cleared his throat, cleared it again. “Since you told me about your armor, it’s only fair I tell you about my claim. That’s the deal I offered, right?”
If he thought that would get me to turn, then he was absolutely right. So I did, hating how those bubbles expanded beneath my sternum as purple eyes locked with mine.
Toagi propped one arm underneath his head, and tortured his upper lip for long moments before speaking again. “Zovazay brings two souls so close to each other, there is no room for anybody else. Our mate becomes half our soul, half our conscience, half our very existence.”
“Toagi, I already told you—”
His thumb brushed over my lips and silenced me. He stared at them with ardent concentration, and his brow lifted higher with each second my nanites didn’t appear. Why wouldn’t they lift there at his touch?
“My father, the late urizayo, went on campaign when tribes warred against each other,” he said. “He raided a smaller one, and came upon a silver-haired female in heat who fought him so fiercely he stung and seeded her.” His breath hitched, and he released a stuttered exhale as his gaze dropped to the nabu. “When the campaign was over, and the female was growing round with child, he took her home to his tribe. Home to his… urizaya and their son.”
The cheerful singing below, the screeching of birds above, and the creaking branches beside us… it all faded away. As did time, encapsulating us in this moment of absolute stillness. Toagi might have been his father’s son, but not the urizaya’s.
“I’m a bastard, Ceangal.” He stated it like a fact as if he’d heard that word thousands of times and had repeated it double that throughout his life. That pained me. “What my father did, bonding a second female to him, was a great sin. It corrupted the bond to his urizaya beyond repair, which then reverberated with nothing but hatred and torment.”
I didn’t want to, but something inside urged me to reach for his smooth cheek. “And your mother?”
“When I was born, my father sent her away after he declined his urizaya’s wish to kill her.” His eyes closed for a brief moment as he leaned into my touch. “From what he told me, she never made it back to her old tribe. She died fighting off some freeraiders who tried to take the things of worth my father had given her. Or perhaps he had her killed after all. I’ll never know.”
My stomach tightened. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. Her suffering ended somewhere in the ashes while that of the others dragged on. Even after her death, his bond to the urizaya, Njekata, never healed. Needless to say, she did not like me very much.”
Had Njekata been one of those who’d tried to kill him? That question worked on me, but not as much as the memory of Mayala’s words. She’d told me females hummed for their children. Who had hummed for Toagi? With the way he’d reacted when Mayala called his hum jarring, how he asked me if it was true… was it possible that he didn’t quite know how?
“You asked me if I have any idea what it feels like when people point fingers,” he continued. “I do. All my childhood, I’ve been pointed at.”
Something inside me fractured at the pain I found at the depth of his eyes, and the touch of his fingers reappeared on my arm. It tingled across my skin, breaking down a layer of nanites one scale at a time.
“Whenever someone asked Njekata who I was, she said I was nobody.” His caress trailed up along my neck, and his nails gently raked over my scalp before they twirled reddish strands around a gray digit, the contrast mesmerizing. “Luckily, my father raised me as his son alongside my brother, providing me with education on politics, languages, leadership.”
“I can see that.”
Toagi spoke the common language without the trace of an accent, improvised to meet his tribe’s needs as well as he could, and clearly thought things through. Had he access to Noja and didn’t need to hide, this tribe might flourish.
“It took me many prayers to Mekara until I understood that I am not nobody,” he said. “I am my father’s son, and no rule exists saying that I have less claim to this tribe. It is mine. I fought for it. I bled for it. I… killed for it.”
A strange sensation gripped my chest, dark and sad and void of love, like an emptiness at my core without explanation. My life had been filled with love, so why would I suddenly feel this… abandoned?
Unless this wasn’t my emotion…
When I swung a hand to my chest as if trying to rub it away, Toagi placed his hand atop mine, saying, “What is it?”
“Nothing.” Definitely not a soulbond to a Jal’zar I barely knew. Who’d stolen me. Who used me as a pawn. “Just, um, heartburn.”
He lifted a brow. “Heartburn?”
“Uh-huh, like, a sour bubbling right here. I’m not used to the food, that’s all.”
“Right here, huh?” I didn’t like how he rubbed my hand where something once more tugged underneath. Hated how his eyes softened with hope at whatever he imagined this meant. But my muscles snapped tight when he added, “Probably tugs sometimes, too.”
“Nothing tugs.” Because my soul was my own. “So the warlords won’t accept your cl
aim because you were the ba… um, I’m sorry.”
“The bastard. You can say it. That’s what most people called me before they called me urizayo, and it holds no power over me anymore.” Which confirmed my earlier fear. “The truth is, the warlords who gathered to oversee the transfer of power didn’t quite know what to do with the situation when my father passed. Even among Jal’zar, a female can only receive the seed of her bonded mate. Never had they heard of a warlord who’d sired potential heirs with more than one female: only one being the urizaya.”
“So they favored your brother.”
He nodded and rolled onto his back, gunmetal strands falling onto his chest as he stared up into the foliage. “He was older and trueborn. Still, we both competed in the trials the other warlords set us, along with a handful of ambitious, young warriors who fought for the title. It is how warlord Razgar received his tribe. He made it out alive the fastest while the son of the former warlord burned to death.”
His words drove a shudder across my arms, no matter my memory of how Dad had mentioned it once. If an heir survived, he was favored over the other competitors. If not, well, the strongest became the leader. Only the best warriors made it out alive — and Toagi had been one of them.
I took a deep breath, and still, my voice came out a mumble. “You slit your brother’s throat during the trials to make yourself warlord.”
As corrupt as it had first sounded to me when Mayala told me, now I couldn’t even bring myself to flinch at my statement. His absent stare, how he dragged a finger over the scar on his abdomen, the sucked-in cheeks… Toagi’s childhood had likely been filled with little affection, but all the more anguish. While I couldn’t condone what he’d done, I could understand what had led to it.
He sighed, once more turning to me, immediately letting his tail drape over my legs when he noticed how I tensed at the sway of our nabu. “Is that what they told you?”
My chest lightened. “Are you saying it’s a lie?”
“It’s not entirely true.” He must have seen relief in my face because he immediately added, “I didn’t slit his throat. I punctured his brain with my tailclaw.”