by Naomi Lucas
“Toaster?”
“A machine to heat and crisp bread.”
“Oh…” That makes sense… But the mention of bread makes my stomach grumble. “And that?” I ask, pointing to a contraption of bent and rounded metal pieces connected together.
“Parts of a bike.” This time, it’s Vruksha who responds. “Orb, off,” he adds with a snap.
The orb’s lights fade and it settles on a silver disk on a ledge beside the stairs.
Vruksha catches my eyes again as he slides forward, making me back up so I won’t accidentally touch him. He scowls when I do. “Follow me.”
His mood has only soured. For a moment, I stare after him and his winding ruby tail that remarkably avoids brushing against anything.
Master of his domain, Vruksha has skills I envy. In my job, knowledge is power. If I’m not constantly learning and honing the skills I’ve already acquired, I could lose my position to someone who has.
And then I feel it, the exit at my back, unblocked and beckoning. His spear is right there, waiting for me to grab it and flee. The realization strikes me like a heady force that steals my breath. Vruksha left the path open, and if I wanted to, I could make a run for it. I could turn and sprint up the steps and hope to the stars I get the hatch open in time before he catches me. I could use his spear on him.
I may never get another chance. A better time to make a run for it.
I follow Vruksha deeper into his den.
Nine
To Trust a Human
Vruksha
I replace the battery to my generator as I wait for the food to warm. My den is powered by a giant generator that I found long ago, locked away. I’ve come to understand it was once used for the airport. It doesn’t fit in the main space where Gemma awaits, but in a separate room off to the side.
It took me months to pry the door open.
The generator takes up the entire smaller room, giving off heat, giving off rich power. I used to stare at it, wondering how such a large, metal machine was made. It used to excite me, knowing it was mine, and no other naga knew I possessed anything like it.
Like my female.
Now such power doesn’t help my mood.
After I led Gemma into my den yesterday, intending to take her to my nest, she could barely pick up her feet halfway through. She yelped when I carried her to a pile of cleaned pelts and forced her to rest. But she would not do so with me so close...
She continues to deny us.
I see it in her eyes, etched on her face, and in the way she looks around as if searching for something to help her escape. Her cunning is easy to see because it’s what I would do...if I were trapped with a being I didn’t want to be trapped with.
I hiss.
Gemma is not like the human females the screens have shown me time and time again. The broadcasts are from those final days before humans and all life was wiped from the face of Earth. Those females held their mates, their children; they fought for them, and their survival. They reported with fear as sickness took hold of them, they followed orders given to them, and they accepted their fates.
Gemma is not accepting hers.
I stuff the dead battery into a side pocket on the wall for it to charge. If I have learned anything living among the unliving relics of the past, it’s that they would die if you let them, but if you don’t, they continue to do their job. And this generator… it needed a lot of handling for it to continue.
Unlike many of my other treasures.
Treasures I have gathered, maintained and learned. Each piece I have found or fought for, collected from ruins across the land. Some are from my father and others were stolen.
My hoard comforts me and shows my wealth amongst the nagas. It also bestows security. But she does not care! She would rather take her chances in the wilds. She’d rather sleep in crumbling structures, with little coverage from the elements and lurking predators.
She’d rather face all of that rather than being protected! She is not keen on being one of my treasures.
Gemma is nothing like the females desperately searching for security and safety on the videos.
Safety and security I have spent years achieving. Years guarding, years perfecting. All in a terrible, primal need to strengthen my domain and keep others away. For what reason before? For me, believing a female would never grace this space, but from the moment I first saw Gemma, my den has become something else entirely.
A nest. For her. For us.
Since then, if I wasn’t watching for her, desperate for a glimpse of her while I scouted the facility, I was preparing for her.
Leaving the generator room, I find my female staring at the food on the burner, holding her ripped shirt and jacket closed.
I long for a peek at her flesh, if only because she’s adamantly hiding it from me. I want it more with every breath.
The food cooking on the burner though? It reeks of bear droppings.
My female seems to like the smell. Her nostrils twitch as I study her. Military rations, packaged and sourced many years ago, I brought them to my den in case of an emergency. And today? I have no interest in going out on a hunt for fresh meat. It’s been nearly a week since I’ve returned to my den, not since Zaku approached the humans.
There is no fresh meat because of him.
Gemma’s eyes find mine, and her back straightens.
I try not to scowl.
Why does she remain tense around me?
“I will not hurt you,” I snap, and she flinches, her eyes going back to the food. I slide to the burner and roll the food over with my tailtip.
“Don’t! You’ll burn yourself,” she gasps.
It’s the first thing she’s said to me today.
I pick up the food and set it down. “I feel nothing but warmth through my scales.” Does she know nothing about this place and my kind? Wouldn’t she have the same technology as I? Do I have to teach her the ways of this world, and the ways of her people too?
She shivers and leans closer to the burner. I leave to find a plate, bringing it back.
“I don’t understand how it’s working,” she mumbles, still staring at the burner.
“Batteries. Power?” I pick up the ration and put it on the plate for her.
I may not burn easily, but she does. Humans—as far as I know—don’t have scales.
“Batteries die, erode, and power needs electricity. Both are things that Earth should no longer have.” She shakes her head.
I turn off the burner. She blinks, rubs her eyes.
Lost in thought, my female is. Lost in thoughts that are not of me.
“Earth has both. But you need to know where to look for them,” I explain. I like hearing her speak, the sound of her voice. It’s not often I hear anything more than the buzzing of my machines or the hum of my heart, the orb, or screens in my den. A real human voice, with real inflection, is strange and exciting. “Everything living died, not the things made by the living,” I add.
“But preserved without upkeep? For so long?” She pokes her ration. Steam wafts from the perfectly formed rectangular shape. “Human tech and Lurker tech?” She blows on her food.
A growl sounds from her belly when she does.
I settle across from her and watch. It will be interesting seeing her eat.
She visibly shrinks from my gaze when she realizes I’m staring.
I keep my scowl off my face. The tension between us bothers me. She is afraid of me.
“Both, perhaps,” I answer.
“You don’t know?”
“I never cared to find out what was made by who, only how the things worked and how they could be useful to me.” My gaze shifts to the many objects around my den. “The rest has never mattered.”
“And you? Where did you come from?”
“Me?”
Her face turns to my tail, to its long length, until she’s facing me head-on again. “You are not human,” she clears her throat, “Not entirely. Nor are you a Lur
ker or—or a Kett, or any other sentient species in the universe I know of, and I know all of them. Where did you come from, why are you here, and how do you know the common tongue?”
“You know little,” I say.
Her brow furrows. “I assure you I know plenty.”
“Yet you don’t know what’s around you, or the home you originated from, and your men are struggling to navigate both. That is clear. Even from the forest, that was clear.”
“How would you know that? We’ve only just arrived.”
“They would have never given you to us if they did.”
A pink glow rises to her cheeks that compliments her hair. I ache to sink my fingers into those strands again and bury my face in her tangles. They would be beautiful spread across my nest. They would also be beautiful wrapped around my member, soaked in my spill.
“We can’t find the technology. Using it isn’t the problem.”
“It will be. Eat,” I demand. The steam rising from her ration has diminished greatly in the last few minutes.
She opens her mouth then closes it when a soft rumble from her belly sounds the space again. She gently picks up the ration and nibbles the side of it. Her eyes go distant as she chews.
I lean forward. She only has blunt teeth, no fangs. I’m amazed that her teeth are sharp enough to tear into the ration. My fingers twitch to pry open her lips and see.
Her throat bobs, and she lifts the ration to peer at it. “Interesting,” she says. She takes another bite, this one bigger, more assured. I don’t know how she does it. I’ve eaten these rations twice before when I could not rise after a terrible wound, and I had to force them down my starving throat.
I still don’t know what was worse, the gash to my lower tail tendon or the taste of the ration.
On her third bite, I ask, “Interesting?”
“It tastes like chocolate. Really weak chocolate.”
“I cannot stand the smell or taste.”
“Chocolate is a delicacy for humans. It only grows on Colony 6.” She finishes the ration, and her eyes meet mine. She flinches like she always does when she notices me watching her and wipes the back of her hand across her mouth. “We’ll figure out how to use the technology once we find it. We have experts,” she says, returning to the previous subject now that the food was gone. “People who have spent their entire lives studying Lurkawathians and their technology.”
She licks her lips and my blood races. Her lips seem soft and sweet. The need to ravish them claws at me. To do more than that feasts on my instincts. Even if she tastes like rancid chocolate...
This is a dance I do not know.
I thought I knew how mating would work, but this is not what I imagined. It’s confusing. After fantasizing about having her in my nest and taking my member inside her, the fact that I’m desperate for just a touch of her eyes eats up my insides.
She is repulsed—frightened—when I mention joining with her though.
She chose Azsote.
I do not understand why. I want to convince her that she should have chosen me all along, that I am worthy of her, but she wants to talk about other things.
Unimportant things. Things that simultaneously alarm me and bring back the curiosity of my youth.
I’m afraid that if I force her to confront her fate, she will only choose another male. Again. I will answer the questions she asks because I want her voice in my ears, but there are things on Earth that she does not need to worry about.
The Lurker tech being one of them.
That is why I can’t let her leave my den, not anytime soon, and it has little to do with the bears, pigs, and the Death Adder nearby. Although the pigs worry me.
I don’t know what pigs she has up in the stars, but the pigs here on Earth… They are intelligent, ferocious, and cruel. They will eat anything and chase prey for miles. They travel in large packs and are incredibly resilient. The best a hunter like I can do is kill one to distract the rest, because they will stop to eat their fellow rather than come after me.
But pig meat is the tastiest meat, which means I will be facing them again soon to procure some so I may hear Gemma moan.
I will feed my female the best food there is, and chocolate rations that must be a thousand years old are not the best.
She wipes her hands on her pants and stands. She peers at the stuff around us now that she’s awake and fed, rising on her tiptoes to eye the items further down the bunker. My nest is in the back, hidden, and I wonder if she’s looking for it.
I tense, my member pressing against my scales. I hope she is searching for it.
My nest. Where my scent covers every inch, where she will soon bask naked for me to gaze upon, getting my scent all over her. Where I will hold her down and claim her body. Where I can tie her up in my tail...
The mating act between humans is… feverish. I have studied what the screens have shown me thoroughly.
“Do you have any Lurker tech here?” she asks.
My hands' clench. She is not searching for my nest at all.
“Yesss.”
“Can I…” She meets my eyes. “Can I see it?”
I sit back, mulling her question.
“No.”
“No?” A wrinkle forms between her eyes.
“You and your people are here for their technology. You’ve made that abundantly clear.” It’s powerful and hard to find because the other nagas and I keep it hidden, but I know where there are caches of it. “I want something in exchange,” I decide on the spot.
She regards me warily. “Exchange?”
I nod, rising. Her eyes flip to my tail, which slides to coil around her. She pulls her limbs in. “I want to see you in exchange.” I indicate her body.
This is a fair exchange, but the way the blood rushes from her face tells me otherwise. She grabs hold of her torn clothes and bunches them in her small hands.
I will not relent.
“You want to see me?” she whispers.
She knows what I mean.
“As badly as you want to see this alien technology. And much more so.”
“That’s unfair!”
“Why?” I cock my head. “You have seen all of me. It is only fair I get to see you.”
“You showed me your cock of your own volition, not because I asked,” her voice quickens. “That’s completely different.”
“You are a communicator, aren’t you?”
Confusion flushes her face. “Yes… but—”
“Then you know what making a deal is, and how deals benefit both parties? I will show you what you want if you do the same for me.”
The blush returns to her cheeks. “My body is not part of any deal, especially one made between males who think they’re unbeholden to anyone else.”
Her words anger me, but I keep it locked away. “There are no males here but me, Gemma. Only me. Only ever me. If your human males hadn’t discarded you, I planned to steal you anyway. I was readying to do just that before Zaku approached the facility. Your body and who it belongs to will never be questioned again. It is mine by right.”
“No, Vruksha, it’s mine.”
I slip my tailtip closer to her feet, and she doesn’t seem to notice. “And the Lurker tech you so desperately want is mine.”
She crosses her arms, pulling them to her chest. Another shield, one she uses often against me, though a weak one at that. It makes her chest rise, emphasizing her curves, and I like her curves.
We stare at each other for a time, and I can see thoughts running behind her eyes.
An hour passes in silence, neither of us backing down. She is considering the arrangement.
My pelvic region tightens, the scales around the sheath of my member itching to release it.
When I think she’s about to give in and accept this perfect exchange, she rises, turns her back on me, and steps over my tail. I watch as she finds a corner between some of my treasures and curls up on the ground, facing the wall. Her stiff shoulders rise and
fall for a while, and when they ease, the tension brought on by our exchange leaves her.
The little human has shut me out.
Again.
Impatience and curiosity settle within me.
Hours go by as I watch her sleep—or try to sleep—adjusting and tossing, again and again. At one point, I bring a large bear pelt from my nest and wrap it around her, and watch as she snuggles into it with a sigh, loving the way her red hair gathers amongst the fur. I debate picking her up and carrying her to my nest where I know it’s most comfortable.
I wanted to the night before, but whenever I approached, she shrank from my touch.
My exhaustion builds as the day comes to an end. Still, I wait, keeping her trapped, unable to leave my post.
I want her answer. I have all the time in the world.
I know she’s thinking about my proposal between her dreams.
That is why she tosses and turns. I grin.
How badly does she want what I have? What only I can give her? The warmth and protection I can offer? I only ask for one thing: her submission—for her to choose me.
When I finally manage to tear my eyes from her body, I leave my bunker to check the position of the sun, finding the world has returned to dusk. Our third day together is coming to an end—and I still have not claimed my mate.
I snarl at the rising moon and head back down.
She’s sitting up, waiting for me as I descend the stairs.
She’s decided.
My blood races through my veins.
Ten
Past the Point of No Return
Gemma
I hate him.
I repeat it again and again in my head as I try to sleep. Why can’t I believe it?
I’m beginning to trust him. Giggles linger in the back of my throat at the absurdity. He hasn’t hurt me or forced himself on me, he’s fed me and given me a warm place to sleep, and now I have this pelt wrapped around my body… the largest, softest blanket I have ever experienced.
There’s no reason not to trust him, right?