Often when he looked upon his mate in this fashion, she would suddenly glance up, as if she could feel his gaze upon her.
But not this night. Her gaze strayed not once to him, even though her cherished Golden Son sat beside him.
Strange, he thought to himself, just as his son said, “Maybe you should talk with Wolf Mama behind a rock.”
Xenon’s flame started at the suggestion. “Talking behind a rock” was the code he used with Fated Mate to signal his mating wish. They had not enjoyed nearly as much privacy on this long journey as they had back at the Zone 7 station, and so it had become necessary to hide behind a large rock whenever he wished to be with his mate in this manner.
An inconvenience to be sure, but a much better alternative to what would have happened to them all if they had remained at the glacier station.
“Why do you say this?” he asked his son now, though his male works swelled with immediate approval of the suggestion.
“Everybody happy because she say we almost there. She talk happy and say everybody dance. But her flame…”
Golden Son did not finish, but he did not have to. Xenon’s eyes once more found where Fated Mate stood. Towering over the group of older female lupin she was speaking with as she rocked the newborn pup.
She smiled and nodded, often bending her neck forward to brush her lips across the top of the pup’s head as she so often did with the Group 7 babies. To others, she would appear animated and just as joyful as the rest of the Far Travelers. But the Far Travelers could not see what Xenon and his son saw. The dark red and black swirl of Fated Mate’s head flame, agitated and obvious—but only to drakkon eyes.
“You are correct, Golden Son,” he decided out loud, rising to a stand.
Once again the Group 7 females scattered like small vermin upon his approach. But in this case, he did not mind their fear, as it left him alone with Fated Mate and the newborn she held so close.
“I do honor you with this feast, Reverence.”
Her eyes shifted left, then right, in that odd way of hers, before she answered, “Um, thank you. I’m sure the Far Travelers appreciate it after that huge journey.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Yeah, totally.”
“Then why do you not appreciate it?”
“Oh.” She rapidly blinked. And it seemed to Xenon that her head became even more enflamed. “I do. I do appreciate it. Of course, I do. Thanks!”
“No gratitude is necessary, Reverence. It is your honor due.”
She tilted her head but did not say anything further.
And though she had been nothing but accommodating during their long journey, he found his chest flame, agitated with awkwardness as he pointed out, “It has been many moons since last we did congress. Would you like to talk with me behind the rock? I believe it might help with the agitation you experience.”
“The agitation? Oh, you’re reading me again.”
Yes, his readings of her flame had come up more than once in inflamed conversation. She made her feelings about disliking when he did so plain, and she had forbidden their hatchling from doing it at all.
Out of Reverence, neither Golden Son nor his father pointed out that it was biologically impossible for them not to read her flame. And usually Xenon tried to keep himself from referring to the emotions he could so easily discern, as it seemed to vex her greatly.
“I only point this out so I might help with whatever has upset you.”
“I’m not upset. I’m stressed. And you know, I should probably get some sleep. So…”
She trailed off, but he understood her unspoken message. After each birth, the Great Wolf Mother always slept with the mother and young. To keep an eye on things, Fated Mate had told him privately, but of course this, too, had been turned into ritual by the Group 7 lupin.
So he was being dismissed…along with his request for congress.
A few wingbeats ticked by, then Xenon said, “Reverence?”
“Uh, yes?”
“I would have your eyes.”
With what seemed to Xenon much effort, she looked up to meet his gaze. But before he could say anything, she rushed to tell him, “Now that we’re here and we’ve stopped, they’ll probably be fine if I step back a little from overseeing their births. But now probably isn’t the time to end the tradition.” That said, her eyes shifted back to the pup.
Many unreverent thoughts filled his head. He imagined commanding her to give the baby to its mother and come away with him. He thought of peppering her with more questions until she told him what truly caused her head flame to agitate so.
However, in the end, he walked away. Back to Golden Son.
“Tonight, we will sleep as drakkon upon the ground,” he announced to his son. A rare treat as they were both deeply aware of how little Great Wolf Mother cared for their drakkon forms.
Tonight, he would let her have her way, he decided. But tomorrow…
Tomorrow he would get his answers.
Xenon was right about that, as it turned out. But the answers he sought did not come in the form he’d expected.
The next morn, he gave early rise and found his son in wolf form beside him. He, like his mother, was larger than any of the other pups his age. Over twice as large in Golden Son’s case. But unlike the other pups and his mother, Golden Son still did not have much control over all his forms. And he often shifted from wolf to drakkon, or drakkon to wolf over the course of a night.
But after Xenon shook him awake and his son morphed into a drakkon to receive his father’s message, Xenon couldn’t help but think how small he appeared. What would have happened to him if the red drakkon had been able to tell the rest of the group of his existence?
Pushing that dark thought out of his head, Xenon told Golden Son of his plan, and that he could be found to the east upon the plains if such need arose. His son agreed, and fell back into his sleeping wolf form so fast that his drakkon wings remained folded upon his furry back.
Golden Son was the greatest honor Xenon had ever received, yet even he knew not what to make of his strange hybrid nature at times.
No matter. Xenon would do whatever it took to keep him alive. Including kill any drakkon who found their camp and tried to label Golden Son an anomaly.
Any and all of them, he vowed, as he launched himself into the air and gave the surrounding areas a dark patrol.
But so far, there were no other hominids he could see in this area. He had spotted a few tribes during the northern part of the journey, and he suspected if he went south, there might be more hominid tribes gathered closer to the equator.
But for now, without knowing it, Fated Mate had found the perfect place for them to hide. So far from Zone 7 that the other drakkon might not think to look this deep into the unsettled lands. And in a mountain range, which provided good cover, making them difficult to see from above.
He flew east, determined to find the steppe bison Fated Mate assured him lived in these lands, even though they had yet to come upon a herd. However, she should not have doubted his clever treasure. He soon found what looked like a pack of furred tapirs without long noses, grazing upon a grassy flatland east of the mountain she wished to call home.
However, just as he decided to set his course back, another drakkon call rent the air.
Bringing his tail, he turned to see his son zooming toward him. “Blue Papa! Blue Papa! Come quick! Wolf Mama need you!”
He followed his son, but only for a short distance. For as it turned out, she was not back at the camp she had commanded the Far Travelers to set up, but at the mountain she had told them they would soon call home.
By rote reverence, he shelled in the air, converting from drakkon to his hominid form so he’d set down on two feet instead of four. He found her kneeling on a long ridge of land on bent knees, screaming sobs issuing from her mouth as she rocked back and forth.
Calm her. Protect her. Help her. Those were his first and only thoughts upon finding her. For
she was crying much harder than the night she came upon the two full moons.
But what had upset her so this time? He looked around for answers.
Beside him, his son set down, too distressed to reshell as was their habit. “She tell me make myself drakkon, and take her to new mountain after you go,” he told his father, as if in answer to his unspoken question. “She say we must go now. So I take. But after we come she hug me and say strange words I no understand. I know not why, but strange words make her cry. I no understand. She yell strange words, and also say they should be working on ‘the gate’ many times. What is a gate, Blue Papa?”
Gate… Wasn’t that the term she had used to describe the fating portal?
Xenon looked around again, but this time his answers came like an icicle falling upon his head. An empty ridge, too high to be seen from the valley floor, but in direct contact with the sun’s bright light, no matter the time of day. It would be, if he were choosing, the perfect place to install a fating portal.
Understanding chilled his fire blue. The story coming together as if she had told it herself. Her crying not because of something she had found, as had been the case with the two moons. But because of something she had not found.
And now he suddenly understood why she had been unable to look him in the eye last eve. Why she had denied his request to “talk.” She had been planning to leave this place. And Xenon… With the help of the only gate she knew for sure had worked. And she would have taken Golden Son with her.
If her plan had worked, she would have left him without his son or his mate.
But it had not worked. And now she would be forced to deal with the mate she had just attempted to leave behind.
“Go back to the camp,” he chirred to his son.
“But what is wrong with—”
“Go back to the camp,” he repeated. “And do not return until I caw for you. Tell the Far Travelers this as well.”
24
Xenon had never known such rage.
Shortly after Golden Son flew off, he grabbed Fated Mate by her arms and unshelled. With no reverence whatsoever, he lifted her into the air, ferrying her to a high cave that sat flush with the mountain’s rock wall.
He threw her into the dark space without so much as a whisper of reverence.
And then he waited. Waited for answers.
Her sobbing ceased nearly as soon as she found herself stuck in a dark cave with Xenon in drakkon form.
Yet no words pushed into his head.
“I would have your explanation.”
No answer.
“If you think you can manipulate me again by taking away congress, and your voice, you are sorely mistaken.”
And that was when he finally got an answer.
“Oh, you want to fuck?” she asked inside his head.
Then she yanked the hide dress over her head in one furious motion, before tossing it aside. “Okay, then, let’s fuck. I’m all for it! Let’s do it!”
Such crude words, which sometimes he liked. She knew this, and he could feel a new manipulation rolling off her.
But then she did the thing she knew turned his fire to tempest. Found the nearest wall in the dark cave, and braced herself against it. Presented herself for mounting. Bottom stuck so far out that he could see the heat of her arousal smoking the air between her thighs.
He was reshelled and on her before he could stop himself. His foot in her thigh, both penises finding their homes in an instant. So many moons, and the hot relief of being back inside her wet heat caused him to lose his original intent for several moments as he mated her hard against the cave’s rock walk.
She began to moan, and a new frenzy overtook him. Wanting to mate her. Wanting to melt her. Wanting to punish her for trying to leave.
Which made what he did next that much harder. Yet he did it. Pushed deep inside her, and forced himself to remain there, heavy against her back, without movement.
“You will tell me why, Female 7-133. Why you tried to leave me. Why you tried to take our son,” he pushed into her head. “You will tell me now!”
25
You will tell me now.
His question cut through Fensa’s haze of lust and confusion and frustration and anger. So much anger, she didn’t know where hers began, and his ended.
The mate bond became stronger over time her mother had once confided to her after Fensa helped her haul Papa onto the nearest couch after he’d passed out on Christmas Eve with a bottle of vodka. Vikingfjord Vodka—ha-ha—had become his poison of choice. And as for Christmas Eve…though Norway had not become Christianized, his time-displaced mother had started a tradition of a private family gift exchange during their village’s annual winter Jul festival, followed by her telling her three children and husband a Santa-fied version of Odin’s wild hunt.
It had been a lovely time, anticipated by the children and their pagan father alike. And Olafr had enjoyed the story and gift exchange more than anyone else in his family. That is until they were all slaughtered shortly after that year’s jultide celebration.
As a result, the Christmas tradition he held most dear made it impossible to enjoy Christmas in the years to come with his mate and daughter. But that Christmas, something snapped within Fensa.
Goaded on by Ola, the twin sister her mother could not see, she had demanded to know why Tee allowed this every year. Why not send him away at Christmas instead of letting him ruin it repeatedly for them both?
“You’ll understand when you’re mated,” she’d told Fensa as they pulled off his boots. Sometimes the bond can be sweet as it was with her cousin’s marriages, she’d explained, and sometimes it could be toxic. Like the one that kept her mother in the Upper Peninsula house with her drunkard husband, rather than allowing her to escape with her daughter to celebrate with their more stable cousins in another state. “And that toxic bond only becomes stronger over time.”
Fensa had not understood her mother’s words then. But oh did she understand them now. She shifted her body, trying to get her mate to fuck her. Desperately needing him even as hate swelled inside her chest.
But there was no movement from behind. He had her pinned against the rock. Female 7-133, he’d called her. Switching from her reverent titles to the one he’d labeled her with when she’d been nothing more to him than an unusually large mouse on his atomically-flawless examination table.
She didn’t respond to his command for answers. How could she?
“I have been nothing but reverent to you. Your most faithful acolyte.”
“I didn’t ask for that!” she snarled back at him inside her mind. “I didn’t ask for you to put me on a goddamn pedestal.”
“Yet can you not deny I have done everything you ever asked of me?”
No, she couldn’t. And if he only knew how she’d struggled with the decision to leave him. She’d seen what a late divorce had done to both her parents. Hollowing out her mother. Killing her father.
“It wasn’t about reverence or respect or anything else you hold dear.”
Silence. And then with a very deliberate action, she felt him pull out of both holes. To her embarrassment, her sex immediately began clenching at the air. Wanting him back. Missing him, despite her attempt to leave.
But next came fingers on her shoulders, turning her to face him.
Why? She didn’t know. She couldn’t see his face in the dark, as he said, “On my planet, we do not allow drakki to leave those to whom they are bonded. The punishment for such attempt is death. Understand then that you have committed the gravest crime a drakki can perform against her bonded mate where I am from. And you have perpetrated this great wrong against me, your most reverent acolyte.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t your planet,” she pointed out.
And though his expression didn’t change, she could feel the intense spike of rage across their mate bond. “I am your fated mate. You will keep no secrets from me. Tell me.”
Fensa clamp
ed her lips tightly. Which was silly because they only spoke over the mate bond outside of bed.
To her shock, his voice boomed inside her head, “TELL ME!!! Or I vow to you, Female 7-133, I will lossse all reverencccce. Thissss cave will become the only home you know for the resssst of your life. Ssssso you will tell me, or you will die here. Alone. And as for Golden Sssson, he will be told he no longer hasssss a mother. We ssshhhall give you no mourning reverencccce, and over the nexxxxt millennia will he eventually forget the duplicitoussss female who gesssstated him!”
Fensa stared at him. Then stared at him some more. Before an ugly smile broke out across her face. “And there you are,” she said, her voice tight with bitterness. “I was wondering when I’d meet you. The dragon beneath all that good sex and reverence.”
His hand slammed into the wall beside her head. “Do not sssay that ssssacred word upon your lipssss. After what you did attempt, it hassss become apparent to me you have no understanding of it, primate, and despite your civilization claimssss, no ability to ever learn. You are jussst as incapable of reverenccce asss you are of understanding my language.”
Okay, Fensa was intelligent. And before she came here and got mated into becoming Queen of the Group 7 wolves, she was a huge nerd, with like zero percent ability to boss anybody. Especially considering she’d spent all but a few months of her adult life in a mental facility being treated for severe schizophrenia.
So yeah, she might be a nerd. A huge, certifiably crazy nerd. But fact: she was still from Detroit, a member of what her grandfather had called, “the baddest muthafuckin’ wolf gang on the planet.” She’d be damned by both her Detroit and Viking families if she was going to let anyone speak to her like that.
“Okay, what you need to understand right now is the only thing I want to learn less than your fucking rules of reverence, is your goddamn language. Guess what that means, lizard? You can go fuck yourself. I tried to forget you’re a dragon. I really did. But now I know who you really are. You ruined my life, even before I got here! And now you’re going to ruin the rest of it, now that I’m stuck here! Go ahead and do that. But don’t try to act like I’m the motherfucking barbarian in this situation and you’re the civilized one, right before you leave me up here to rot, and fucking traumatize our son because I didn’t live up to the lame-ass standards you cling to from another fucking planet. Fuck your planet! Fuck your whole fucking crew! And especially, especially fuck you!”
NAGO, His Mississippi Queen: 50 Loving States, Mississippi (The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 1) Page 33