If they weren’t prisoners, it followed that she wasn’t in a prison cell.
She was in a cocoon.
Intrigued by the possibility, she picked a spot where the incoming light seemed brightest, drew her knees to her chest, and kicked. The web compressed. As she watched, the strands adhered to one another and coalesced into a sheer, shell-like layer.
She kicked again.
The shell fractured. Light bled through the cracks, bright but diffused.
She coiled to deliver another blow.
Someone, or something, outside grabbed hold of one of the cracked pieces and pulled. The shell snapped. The individual came back to wrench away another piece and this time Jay saw what reached in to help her.
A tentacle.
Terror flooded her. Her heart raced. Her hands shook and she broke out in a cold sweat, but she refused to retreat.
Another segment of shell broke away.
She could hear and feel the hum of the aural net, now. It sounded muted; nowhere near as mind numbing as she’d been led to believe it ought to be.
A shadow fell across her. She looked up.
A Chekydran, or at least the head of the creature, extended into the cocoon, sweeping back and forth as if unable to see her. The creature issued a short, inquisitive burst of sound. Apparently satisfied, it drew back and reached for her with two tentacles.
Jayleia braced herself, but they never made contact. Looking again, she saw the tips curling in an unmistakable “come here” gesture. An offer to help her out of the cocoon?
How civilized.
Not an adjective ever attached to descriptions of Chekydran behavior.
She frowned and paused in reaching for those tentacles. How could she know with such assurance what the gesture indicated? Body language didn’t always translate from one species to the next. More to the point, how could a species with only rudimentary visual capability possibly know that crooked “come with me” appendage motion?
She couldn’t still her quaking, so she straightened her spine and forced herself to grab hold of the offered tentacles. She’d expected slimy or sticky. The creature’s skin was cool and dry and soft, despite the faintly sticky segments under her hands.
The Chekydran pulled Jayleia out of the thing she’d thought of as a cocoon.
The creature holding her aloft didn’t look like any Chekydran she’d seen on a view screen. The head had the familiar three rows of vestigial eyes, though they gleamed with iridescent rainbows like polished Novastone. The precious few people who’d survived Chekydran captivity hadn’t mentioned that detail.
This Chekydran had wings. Another detail never before mentioned. Jay tipped her head, studying the play of light on the glossy, finely veined wings lying along the creature’s back. Cocoons. Did that mean the species’ body form varied based on life stage?
It lowered her until her feet touched ground and her legs agreed to hold.
She glanced around. They stood on ochre plain marked by the low, yellow-webbed mounds dotting the ground as far as Jay could see.
Cocoons. The plain was a nursery.
Several more Chekydran, all identical to the one that had freed her, scuttled about on the plain. They shuttled items back and forth, pausing once in a while to dig into the webbing and push whatever they carried deep before covering it.
She frowned, watching the other Chekydran. They spared her not a glance. Only the creature beside her hovered, keeping an eye—or several—on her.
“What are they doing?” she asked, not expecting a response. Humanoids and Chekydran didn’t share similar vocal structures. They couldn’t reproduce one another’s languages.
The Chekydran shifted when Jayleia spoke, jerking her gaze back to it.
She had to force herself to relax when she realized she’d tightened every muscle at the creature’s response.
It hummed and chittered at her.
An answer? One she couldn’t understand. Frustration broke open in her chest and she huffed out a breath. What she wouldn’t give for a translator.
A shrill hum went up not ten meters from where they stood. One of the Chekydran had stopped scurrying. It bobbed and danced in one spot. Two other Chekydran rushed to the scene. The three of them began digging, humming in unison.
Encouragement. Reassurance.
How did she know that?
They stopped digging.
Jayleia realized what was happening as one of them grabbed hold of something with both tentacles and pulled.
Something was emerging from another cocoon.
Damen?
She took a step before realizing it might be a bad idea. The Chekydran beside her didn’t look concerned, assuming she’d know concern in this species if she saw it.
She had so much to learn.
A spurt of excitement shot into her chest. She shook her head. How stupid was it to get ramped about studying a species that didn’t recognize humanoids as sentient beings?
Curiosity overcame fear. She sidled toward the three creatures breaking open the cocoon shell. Nothing stopped her, though the Chekydran shadowed her. The hair on the back of Jay’s neck rose at the sound of six legs shuffling in her wake.
Her attendant chortled as they neared the other three Chekydran.
Jayleia jumped.
The three others paused and hummed in their direction, throat pouches vibrating. As one, they stepped back, giving her access to their excavation.
She eyed them. Nothing she’d ever heard about or seen of the Chekydran led her to expect the behaviors she’d so far observed. They weren’t allowing her to look. They were inviting her.
Curiosity killed the xenobiologist?
She crept to the edge and peered over. She yelped and staggered back. Her Chekydran caught her.
It was not Damen.
Hand pressed against her chest where her heart tried to beat free, she straightened and went back for another look.
It was a Chekydran, wrapped up tight and glistening with moisture. It writhed, straining against the membrane entombing it. Its eyes turned up to the diffuse bluish light.
She swore, voice shaking.
This Chekydran’s eyes had pupils that constricted in the light. Those eyes focused on Jayleia. The newborn could see.
The four Chekydran around her intensified their hum as the first tear appeared in the chrysalis membrane.
She watched, fascinated, as the Chekydran emerged a centimeter at a time from the cocoon, then perched on the edge of the hole, waiting for blood flow to straighten crumpled, gossamer wings.
“What a beautiful creature,” she breathed, surprised to find it was true. It shifted something inside of her and while fear of these Chekydran didn’t drop away, it did diminish.
She’d begun to suspect that whatever portion of the Chekydran made war upon her people, these Chekydran were not the same population. Why hadn’t she heard of them before now? This couldn’t be first contact. Could it?
She studied the newborn. How could a species that had seemed to be on an evolutionary path away from sight manage to produce an offspring with such advanced visual structures? Did the young Chekydran fanning her wings to dry them and joining in the hum—how did she know the creature’s sex?—also exhibit commensurate changes in her brain structure to accommodate those eyes?
Was this mutation? Throwback?
She didn’t have time to examine the young female further. Her attendant whipped a tentacle around her neck and yanked her against its throat pouch.
Surprise and terror knifed through Jayleia’s gut.
“What are you doing?” she protested, struggling, as another Chekydran brandished a sharp-tipped foreleg. “Wait! No! Don’t!”
The Chekydran struck, slicing through shirt, skin, and muscle, laying open her abdomen from belly button to pubic bone. Overwhelming hurt slammed through every nerve, sucking the breath from her lungs.
The sharp, metallic smell of blood spilling hot and heavy down legs that no long
er worked filled her head. Her heart labored against panic and shock.
When the creatures began rummaging around in her exposed organs, she screamed until she blacked out.
CHAPTER 31
HE luxuriated in the warmth, the softness, the absence of pain, and in feeling his body becoming whole, or at least as whole as it could be with pieces missing. His brain wouldn’t quite answer his every command yet. Nursery attendants hummed outside his cocoon, lulling him, urging him to sink into healing sleep.
Want kept him conscious, aware. He wanted. Wanted his mate. She was part of him. He couldn’t heal, wasn’t whole without her.
Even through the layers of wyrl-web, he scented her somewhere above him. That alone relaxed him.
Then Jayleia spoke, the words but not the wonder in her tone, got lost in the layers of sound-muffling web. It didn’t matter. He knew that voice—had heard it whispering to him in tenderness and desire.
Above his nest, she said something more, confusion climbing to alarm.
He struggled against lethargy.
She needed help. Needed him. She was his. His to protect, to claim.
Then, as if the web realigned to amplify the sound, he heard something tear, a wet, ripping sound that stopped the heart in his chest in terror. The harsh, acrid scent of her blood bit the back of his throat. Her shriek, filled with horror and agony, broke off mid-cry.
He bellowed in rage and protest, fighting the confining wyrl-web, until the queen herself entered the nursery and forced a curtain of unconsciousness over his tortured heart and mind.
Damen woke, aware that he once more controlled his body and his brain. He’d thought he’d understood the price of being someone else’s puppet. He’d been wrong.
While entombed within his own skull by whatever illness the Chekydran had given him, he’d betrayed and murdered his mate. The smell of her blood on the web above him was old. The intermittent rain that swept through on the cloud bands of the Chekydran home world hadn’t yet arrived to wash away the stinking stain.
Damen’s heart shriveled and he squeezed his eye shut. He’d believed he’d known exactly how brutal the Chekydran could be, but until now, he hadn’t glimpsed the depths of their cruelty.
They’d infected him, taken over his body and his mind, and used him to find Jayleia. Why allow him to remember the feel of her lips against his when they’d obviously intended to rip her open all along? What more did they want of him?
Did the creatures realize or care that they’d cut out his heart when they’d murdered her?
Damn it. He could still taste her kiss, still smell her all around him.
Above his nest chamber, a Chekydran hummed.
“Queen. Alive,” resounded in his head.
Damen frowned and opened his eye. How had the nursery attendants known he’d awakened? He hadn’t struggled since Jayleia’s scream.
Alive? Which queen? Theirs? Or his?
Thinning his lips, Damen fought his way to the top of the nest chamber, turned, and kicked. The shell fractured. Another kick, powered by rage and despair, shattered the shell. Pieces rained around him.
The towering, glittering Chekydran queen stood above him. Indigo rainbows played over her carapace and oversized wings. Her trill brushed him, washing over his awareness like a mother’s reassuring caress.
It loosed the knot of self-loathing roiling around in his stomach, but couldn’t soothe the knife-sharp pain in his heart or silence the buzz of rage in his head.
She extended a foreleg.
Damen ignored it and climbed out of the cocoon under his own power. He drew breath to demand Jayleia’s location only to find he didn’t need guidance.
He followed her scent trail to the nest next to his. Dropping to his knees atop Jay’s sealed nest chamber, he glanced at the Chekydran queen.
“Is it safe to open it?”
“Sleeping.”
He resisted the urge to swear. He didn’t know how the Chekydran queen had managed to implant a translator in his head, but she had. Meaning that no matter how well intentioned the manipulations, he’d been modified by the Chekydran.
Once upon a time, he’d been unable to think of anything worse. Then he’d listened, captive audience, while the Chekydran had killed his mate.
He dropped to his knees beside the nest chamber. Jayleia’s grave? No. He caught no sickly, sweet odor of decay. Not her grave. Hope swelled in his chest, crowding his pounding heart, searing the backs of his eyes. He entertained the sudden ache along with the glimmer of belief that she might have somehow survived.
Unable to draw a full breath, Damen began digging.
He needed to see her, to touch her, to feel her warm and breathing. Needed to know he hadn’t destroyed her. Yet.
Nursery attendants approached, whether to help him or hinder him in opening Jayleia’s chamber, Damen didn’t know.
The Chekydran queen warbled, and the attendants stopped, throat pouches quivering in appeasement.
He cleared away the loose wyrl-web. The shell had formed on top of the chamber.
Good.
She’d have emerged on her own within the next several hours.
He glanced at the horrifying stain of her blood on the webbing only a few paces away. Her wound should have been mortal. How long had they been cocooned?
She’d healed quickly. Apparently, her healing trance worked in conjunction with Chekydran medical technique.
Shaking away hesitation, Damen punched the shell. It cracked. Two more careful strikes allowed him to grab pieces and wrest them from the top of the chamber.
Her scent, still tainted by a hint of blood, reached him. He closed his eye and breathed her in. One tiny piece of his heart unclenched.
Opening his eye, he noted that the nursery attendants had set her into a cramped nest chamber and packed healing gel around her. It hadn’t been fully absorbed yet, and Jayleia’s bowed head gleamed with a coating of the substance.
Damen didn’t care. Hooking his hands under her arms, he eased her to the surface and sat back, drawing her into his lap, her back against his chest. Her head tucked beneath his chin, and he folded his arms around her.
She sighed and snuggled closer.
Every nerve in his body lit in response. His heartbeat eased. He smoothed long strands of damp, black hair that had escaped her braid from her face, before subsiding, content to hold her until she woke.
A tendril of sound soothed the ruffle of anxiety at his core. The Chekydran queen sang, urging him to let go of thought, of worry.
Damen resisted for a split second. Then the tension ran out of him and he rocked Jayleia gently in time with the thrum of the queen’s wings. His own chest vibrated as he hummed in unison with her. Another voice joined in, off pitch, toneless. Jayleia.
She dreamed the Chekydran hum. She was the hum walking the world. Wings darkened the skies and made the air tremble with the joy of flight. Plain after plain of teeming nests rolled before her. The forests, rivers, and stones resonated with the lives they nurtured. Long ago. It was all gone, now. Only empty nests remained. Sorrow. Loss. Death.
Jay woke humming, surrounded by the scent of sweet, spring rain and new growth. Peace settled deep inside of her. She sighed and opened her eyes.
And stared straight into the huge, iridescent gaze of the biggest Chekydran she’d ever seen. She remembered a tentacle wrapped around her throat. Shock. Pain. Blood.
Her heart jumped. Panic grabbed her in a tight fist. She struggled to back away.
A solid, warm chest and two arms wrapped around her prevented escape.
“They won’t hurt you again,” Damen rumbled. “Jayleia. They won’t hurt you. Not now.”
Damen.
Held against him as she was, she felt the words vibrate from his chest into hers.
They wouldn’t hurt her, now? Why not? What the Three Hells had happened? Why had it happened at all?
Fear beat at her but she had to look down, to see what ruin remained of her bo
dy. Such a vicious abdominal wound should have been fatal.
Nothing.
Jayleia blinked and sat up, pulling out of Damen’s embrace. Had she dreamed the attack? No. He’d known. Somehow, he had known what had happened.
The owner of the iridescent eyes trilled.
“Strong.” The trill resolved into a whisper in Jay’s head.
Frowning, she put a hand on her belly. No wound. No blood. Even her clothes were clean. Only a neat, precise slice remained in her shirt to prove she hadn’t imagined the attack.
She shook her head. Smooth, unmarred skin. Something as ferocious as that attack should have left a mark. Her quaking fingers found it then, three narrow scars. She brushed the cut shirt aside and peered at her belly. The wound looked old and long healed, the raised flesh only a shade lighter than the surrounding tissue.
Another trill and burble.
She felt the sound as the brush of a reassuring hand on her cheek.
“Daughters. Strong.”
Jay looked back into those crystalline eyes.
Daughters?
The creature straightened slowly as if aware of her fragile grip on the terror still beating against the inside of her skin.
It had to be Chekydran. Huge, glittering wings rustled, fragmenting rainbows across their surfaces. This one had no tentacles. An extra set of wings seemed to have taken the place of the appendages, though it still stood on six legs. The dark sheen of its carapace defied color description. It encompassed every color she could identify as well as far more she couldn’t.
It was beautiful and graceful for something so large.
“Daughters,” it repeated.
Jayleia cocked her head, waiting for the word to make sense beyond the definition. Why were the creature’s vocalizations resolving to words inside her head at all?
“She is the Chekydran-ki queen,” Damen said.
“Chekydran-ki?” Her voice sounded rusty and raw.
“It’s what they call themselves,” he replied. “They’re a different race than the Chekyrdan-hiin. The Hiin are the ones attacking us.”
Jayleia noted and filed the distinction.
“Nothing will hurt you,” he assured her. “Go. She wants to show you.”
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