by Pearl Foxx
Jude put a hand on his arm. “Come on, Gerrit,” she said. “I’m tired. Thank you for the party, Tavorn.”
“Certainly,” the Hyla said without taking his focus off Gerrit. “I’ll have someone show you to your room.”
Too furious to trust himself to speak, Gerrit gave a sharp nod. But before he could pass by Tavorn, the Hyla said with inkeel-like sliminess to his voice, “And Gerrit?”
“What?”
Jude’s fingers dug into his bicep in warning.
But Tavorn’s smile only inched wider, and Gerrit once again thought of the mawfin beneath his feet.
“I’ve posted Merick outside your door tonight. How can I put this delicately?” He paused, a finger on his chin as if he had to consider his words carefully. But Gerrit knew he’d been waiting all night to say them. “We will expect your mating rituals to be completed in full. With no doubt. Otherwise, we will consider dear Jude rightfully ours.”
14
Jude
Jude expected their room to be a chamber inside the main cathedral-like building—she told herself she really needed to stop thinking of the vast structure as a cathedral, given the orgy she’d seen happening underneath the glass floor of the ballroom as they’d left—but their room was nothing of the sort.
They reached their “room” via a maze of meandering floating glass pathways that intersected a small village of huts supported by stilts above the ocean waves. Some were occupied, with warm lights blazing and music humming from behind the walls. As they followed the bare-chested Hylan servant, Jude caught the occasional bout of strange chiming laughter. Like the rest of the Hylan architecture, there were no windows or doors to give the occupants any privacy.
The servant led them to the end of the pathways where a larger hut loomed. Its walls were made of a simple raw wood, the roof a thatched layer of palm fronds that rustled in the salty ocean breeze. The lights glowed like a warm smile from within, and even though everything about this place set Jude’s teeth on edge, she felt a small bit of comfort at the sight of the cozy hut.
“Here you are,” the servant said with a bow. “Ring should you need anything else. There is a comm dash in the wall next to the door.”
“Thank you.” Jude watched as the servant’s scales rattled with a shiver as she slipped into the water instead of walking back the way they’d come. As she dove down, her legs melded into a solid tail, her feet stretching into a tail, which she used to splash the water before disappearing.
What would that be like? To just call up another form and take off? Jude’s skin prickled.
“I assume,” a deep voice said from farther down the pathway, “Tavorn informed you I was to guard your room tonight?”
Merick ambled down the pathway, his smile dark in the flickering shadows of the hut.
“If you think for one second—” Gerrit started, chest rumbling.
“Oh, I don’t think. I know.” Merick smiled and stopped a few feet away. Jude felt Gerrit vibrating next to her. “Tavorn’s orders, you see.”
“You’ll stay back. If I smell your scent at any point tonight, I won’t hesitate to rip your head off. Understand?”
“Tavorn said—”
“I don’t give a fuck what Tavorn said. I’m sure you’ve heard about a Vilka’s mating night.” Gerrit’s canines were longer than Jude remembered when he snarled at Merick. “Tavorn will understand if, in my mating frenzy, I attack another male who comes too close to my mate.”
Jude’s heart banged against her ribs. She couldn’t help it. Whether she’d wanted a husband or not, Gerrit’s words were pretty fucking hot. Mating frenzy? Yes, please.
Merick’s eyes narrowed, but he took a step back down the pathway. He inclined his head. “Just as long as the ceremony is official. Otherwise …” He shrugged, gaze sliding to Jude. She glared at him. “Someone else might be inclined to finish the job.”
Gerrit twitched. Jude grabbed his arm before he could lunge at the Hyla. “Stop,” Jude whispered to him. “He’s just baiting you. Let him jerk off out here if he wants to. We’ve got better things to do.”
Jude shot Merick one final glare before pushing Gerrit through the hut’s front door.
“I hate that asshole,” he growled.
Jude rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Yeah. Just can the testosterone for a second. Do you think there’s something to eat in here? My appetite is back.”
She left Gerrit safely inside the door and started nosing around the hut. It was beautiful, she had to admit. Lightly colored wooden slats lined the floor with intermittent sections of glass that revealed a lit path of ocean where fish swam back and forth. Cushions were piled about with candles burning along the floor. A spiral staircase wound up to the second-floor loft. At the back of the hut, another door led out onto a deck with burning torches and more cushions. But a low table in the middle of the room grabbed her attention.
It was covered with food.
She hurried over to it and started to shove small pieces of meat into her mouth. She didn’t even care what sort of meat it was; it was tender and juicy with a spice that made her tongue water.
At the door, Gerrit glanced back out into the darkness and let out a long breath. She imagined Merick must have retreated farther down the pathway. Otherwise, Gerrit wouldn’t have left his spot by the entrance to come join her by the table.
“Blessed Avilku, what a night,” he said, voice rumbling as he raked a hand through his hair.
“You’re not kidding.” Jude switched to the cakes and crammed a tiny round pink frosted tart into her mouth. A blast of fruit spread across her tongue, sugary and sweet. She groaned. “This is so good.”
“I’m glad your appetite is back.”
The words weren’t pointed, but the food in her mouth still turned ashy. She thought of the girls behind the curtains and had to force the last bite of cake down her throat. “Yeah,” she mumbled.
“Jude, I promise the flesh trading won’t stand. I just have to—”
She held up her hand. “I understand. I mean, as much as I can.” It had occurred to her, in that sweeping ballroom, that they were miles out at sea with no one around but the Hylas. It wasn’t just that they were surrounded, but that they had no way of getting back to land. At least not without the Hylas’ help.
They were stranded.
Gerrit paced around the hut and tugged at the buttons on his shirt. His jacket already lay discarded across a cushion, his feet bare. As she watched him prowl about, she pulled off her own heels and sighed in relief, or as much as she could considering the corset.
“My father thought the Hylas would be good allies. They’re the oldest and strongest clan, and with them beside us, the Draqons attack less. But he dealt with an older generation of Hylas, the mages before Tavorn, when he negotiated the treaty.” Gerrit stopped and shook his head, his gaze out on the ocean. “I don’t know if Tavorn’s generation wants peace.”
Jude snorted. “After that party, I think I know what they want.”
He turned back to her, a sad smile flickering at the corners of his mouth. His eyes were red, and the skin around them was drawn. “I wish you could see my home. You haven’t gotten the best welcome to Kladuu.”
“You don’t say? What with the flying lizards—”
“Draqons.”
“—attacking every five seconds and the giant-ass mosquitoes and our little flippered friends, I hadn’t noticed.”
With a slight chuckle, Gerrit shook his head and went out onto the back deck. Jude found herself drifting after him. The hem of her dress dragged across the floorboards with a soft hiss, and she longed for the moment when she could take it off, but since she hadn’t seen any other clothes lying around, she decided she could deal with the tightness a bit longer.
Gerrit leaned against the railing. The breeze ruffled his hair and the panels of his open shirt. Beneath the moonlight, his burnished bare chest glowed. Staring at him like this, Jude was captivated by how striking he was. Her stomach
dipped, and deep in her core, she felt a smoldering heat.
He was the most beautiful person she’d ever seen.
Gerrit’s nostrils flared, and he turned around, eyes unblinking as he stared at her.
Shit. This keen sense of smell thing was really screwing her over.
She held up her hand before he could comment on how her lust smelled. “I’m blaming this tight corset. It’s cutting off oxygen to my brain. I’m not thinking clearly.”
Suppressing his grin, he pulled off his shirt, and his arm muscles flexed with the effort. She just stared when he offered it to her.
“Jude?”
Jolting herself back to the moment, she took it. “What’s this for?”
“So you can take off your dress. My shirt is likely more comfortable.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah.”
He wasn’t undressing for her; she’d been silly to think he was. Besides, if he had been, she should have been offended; she wasn’t one of those girls by the curtains who could just be used. But part of her had entertained the thought of him taking off the rest of his clothing and leading her up to the room upstairs as his bride.
She went back inside the hut, casting a glance over her shoulder, but Gerrit had already turned back to the ocean to give her privacy.
Thinking of Merick outside, Jude climbed up the spiral staircase. The upstairs loft had open cutouts along the back wall overlooking the porch. A wide bed was inset into the floor, the mattress piled with pillows and soft, thin blankets of silk. A few white blooms had been strewn across the bed and on the floor, along with more candles.
Jude kicked a few cushions out of the way and got down to the business of extracting herself from the damn corset.
She’d only gotten half of the laces undone when, in a sweaty, cursing fit, she kicked over a candle. The flame licked onto the floor. She grabbed a pillow and flung it onto the growing fire, batting at the flames and cursing even more.
“Jude?” Gerrit called up from the back deck. “Do I smell smoke?”
Jude slapped out the last of the flames and blew a piece of hair off her face. “No!” she shouted back. She pulled back the charred cushion and examined the damage. The floorboards were a little crispy, but she could easily cover it up. No big deal.
“Do you need help?” Gerrit offered from outside, his voice softer, but Jude heard the rasp in it. If he came up here now and helped her out of the corset, they’d be in bed within seconds.
She didn’t trust herself. “I’ve got it,” she called back. With a jerk, she ripped the corset free and sucked in a lungful of air. “Fucking sadists,” she growled before pulling on Gerrit’s shirt.
When she rejoined Gerrit out on the porch, she was far more comfortable. His shirt hit her mid-thigh and she had to roll up the sleeves, but she could inhale without seeing stars, and that counted for far more than the extra skin she was showing.
Outside, Gerrit had taken a seat at the side of the deck, where he could dangle his feet into the water.
Jude cocked a brow at him. “Aren’t you worried about one of those big shark things coming up and biting your legs off?”
He glanced back at her, mouth open around a retort, and froze. His eyes swept down her body, lingering on her bare legs, and slowly came back up to her face.
She smirked. A part of her—a large, significant part—was pleased she’d struck him dumb even in his plain white shirt. She thought she saw more appreciation on his face now than when he first saw her in that stupid dress.
Clearly, he was an alien who appreciated the simpler things in life. Her good opinion of him was growing.
Corsets could fuck off.
She joined him at the deck’s edge but crossed her legs beneath her instead of putting them in the water. His scent, a mix of ocean salt and his own deeper spice, warmed an ember deep in her belly, and a bout of nerves tingled down her arms. “So,” she said just to end the silence, “I guess this is technically my honeymoon, then, right?”
He looked at her, half of his face lost in the shadows. “What’s a honeymoon?”
She scrubbed her palms on her bare thighs and stifled a nervous laugh. Since when was she the type to get nervous around a good-looking guy? Okay, fine. He was ridiculously hot. “Never mind. It’s nothing. Just a human thing.”
He drew in a deep breath. “Why are you nervous?”
Rolling her eyes skyward, she huffed, “Please stop smelling my feelings. It freaks me out. I don’t need, like, a play-by-play of what I’m feeling, okay?”
“Sure.” His lips twitched. He kicked his feet back and forth beneath the water, sending little white-capped eddies circling around his knees.
Like this, he was a young, happy man. Almost light-hearted. But she’d only seen this side of him a few times. Normally, he bore a heavy weight on his shoulders, one that made him seem far older than his youthful years. She wanted to understand that weight while they had a moment to breathe.
She told herself it was natural curiosity and not this pull she felt toward him.
“What happened to your father?”
Gerrit’s feet stilled in the water. “What do you mean?”
“What you told Tavorn back in the jungle.” Jude paused, uncertain how to proceed. Finally, she just dove in. “About your uncle.”
“My uncle killed him.”
Jude bit her lip, sensing Gerrit free-falling through his memories beside her. “Were you there?”
He nodded. “My father was half gone to the moon madness, and he was so scared. That’s what bothers me most about it.” He gripped the edge of the deck until his knuckles turned white. “He kept asking me what was happening. He didn’t understand. I couldn’t comfort him, and he died terrified and confused.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“What about your family?” he asked, and she sensed he just needed a moment to collect himself.
She sighed. “My father wasn’t a good man. Not like yours. Not even close. He liked to hit my sister and me. When I was old enough, I took her and left. I joined the military that day.”
He watched her carefully, his bright eyes narrowed. “He’s who you’re running from.”
She remembered their conversation in the cave after the Draqon attack, when they’d been so close to this very conversation they were having now. But now, looking at Gerrit, she saw his pain and grief. She saw him. “Yeah.” She offered him a sad smile. “And you’re running from the memory of your father. You don’t think you deserve to be Alpha.”
Gerrit’s jaw flexed. “He was a better man than I’ll ever be.”
“You didn’t kill him, Gerrit. It’s not your fault.”
“No, but my uncle Savas will pay.” He lifted his face toward the moons streaming silver light above them. “I vow it,” he added in a whisper. Jude’s skin prickled at the promise that felt like so much more than just a few simple words. “Before the madness progressed, my father was a great Alpha. His legacy is one of peace for Kladuu. And unity. Flesh trading has no place on the planet, and my father fought to banish it. I won’t let Tavorn get away with this. I won’t shame my father’s memory that way.”
She stared at him as he gazed into the water. At that moment beneath the moons, she thought she was beginning to understand the alien beside her. He wasn’t so complicated after all. Just another person trying to make his father proud. Trying to live up to a precedent set before him. The weight of it hung heavy on his shoulders. Not to mention that, as the new Alpha, his father’s people constantly measured him against the great leader who’d come before him.
She couldn’t imagine the pressure.
“The medicine must be pretty important, then,” she guessed, “if you’re willing to bite your tongue on the flesh trading.”
Gerrit’s chest rumbled around a growl. “Tavorn knows it too. We need that medicine, and he’s taunting me by parading the flesh trading right in front of my nose because he knows I can’t say anything.”
“Why do you need
it so badly?”
He took a deep breath and leaned a little farther over the water. While he watched the fish swimming beneath them, Jude watched him. “You know that Draqon you killed?”
She grimaced. “Yeah.”
“Shifting comes from …” He paused as if reconsidering what he’d been about to say. Censoring himself, Jude thought, to keep a secret. She deserved it, though, because of what she was.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I understand why you can’t tell a human all your secrets.” She tried for a smile, but it came out weak.
“I trust you,” he said, and her heart swelled. “But shifting isn’t this innate ability. It’s not something we can do inherently, and it’s becoming harder for new offspring to shift back to this form. Some, like that Draqon you killed, are trapped in their second form. After their first shift, which sometimes happens when a baby gets too excited or upset, they can’t shift back. They’re stuck.”
His words horrified Jude. She imagined a little baby, helpless and caught in a body it didn’t understand, screaming and crying for comfort. She shuddered. “That sounds awful.”
“It is. And it’s happening more and more often. Some clans, like the Draqons, will scar their trapped shifters and cast them out.”
Jude gaped at him, horrified. “Who could do that to their baby?”
“The Vilkas used to, but not anymore. To have a trapped young one is like a death. You lose your child to their animal forms. Most clans cast out their young because it’s too hard to see them day after day, stuck in a body with no control. In a way, I understand.”
Jude didn’t. It disgusted her. But she bit back her automatic judgment. “And the Hylas’ medicine will help the trapped ones?”
“Yes. And if the rumors are true, it could prevent it too.” His jaw flexed, and she watched his throat bob up and down. He turned to stare at her, his eyes unblinking and raw. She thought she could see straight down to his soul right then, in the silver glow of the moons. “My people need that medicine. I won’t stop until I get it.”