He turned to the receptionist still fluttering about helplessly behind him.
“Tiri, please bring me a loaded neuro-translator injector,” he murmured over his shoulder, not daring to take his eyes from the quivering female, lest she decide to flee and harm herself further.
He couldn’t abide the idea of his female getting further hurt. And she would be his.
He slowly slid forward, empty hands still outstretched, and he spoke in what he hoped she would understand as low and soothing tones. Her muscles tensed, her eyes darting to his outstretched hand and then to the curve of his dark claws. Her eyes quickly lifted to his face and her expression became puzzled.
“Will you hurt me?” she asked.
He paused, uncertain how to reassure her. He shook his head.
“No, little female, I will never hurt you,” he said slowly as he reached forward and unhooked the terrible harness. He couldn’t believe that any male would put a harness meant for training beasts on a delicate female.
She glanced at the Kampi twitching on the ground as he drew in painful gasps of air, and then at him again. Relief flooded through her scent, pushing back the stench of fear. Her eyes widened when the harness fell away. Within a beat of his hearts, she flung herself into his arms, scrambling against his torso and ducking her face into his shoulder.
His arms tightened around her. He stroked a soothing hand against her back that shuddered beneath his palm. His tail wound up to wrap around her too, to let her find safety within his coils.
“It is okay, female,” he crooned. “You are well. You are safe now. I won’t let any harm come to you.”
Tar-denovak, the Itashvanda head of security, stood to the side frowning at him. Professional disapproval warred with masculine satisfaction at seeing the male beaten down.
“You know, if I wanted the Kampi beaten into a bloody pulp, I would have done it myself,” he growled. “You were supposed to only aid the female, not attack him. There are regulations on the space station, Doctor. We all have rules we must follow.”
Vadal raised an unconcerned brow. “As of twenty minutes ago, I am no longer staff on the space station. I am willing to suffer the consequences. It was worth it,” he said as he snarled at the Kampi being restrained by a light crimson Forad and a dark green Indivi.
The female in Vadal’s arms froze, her eyes alert and expressionless as she watched the male on the ground as he was bound and then lifted to his feet. The Indivi gave them a toothy grin and a flirtatious wink at the female as they escorted the Kampi out of medical. She flinched and drew deeper into his coils until she saw Tar-denovak. Suddenly, the female smiled.
“It’s you! You came back,” she said happily.
Tar-denovak approached and returned her smile in kind. Vadal suppressed the ingrained need to warn the male away from the female. The Itashvanda was his friend and hadn’t done anything threatening or harmful toward the female. Like the Vori, the Itashvanda were a matriarchal society. Their males respected and treated females with care.
Vadal knew he was being irrational, but he felt protective of the little human and didn’t want to relinquish her to the other male.
Tiri chose that moment to pop up behind him with the injector. His friend nodded and backed up to give him room to work. This wasn’t going to be pleasant. With no way to warn her and ask for her to keep still, Vadal tightened his coils around her to force her to be still and jabbed her as gently as possible behind the ear with the long needle, implanting the translator.
Her muscles seized and she cried out in such an alarming manner he almost dropped her. Instead, he made a conscious effort to relax, and he handed the injector back to Tiri so that he could resume his efforts at stroking and comforting the female.
“It’s okay. It is done now. The pain will go away shortly.”
She made a small choked sound in her throat and stared up at him wide-eyed.
“I… I understand you,” she whispered in awe.
To his relief, fear slowly drew back from her countenance, although she winced slightly when he bared his fangs in a grin. He immediately pressed his lips together in a closed-mouth smile. Humans weren’t the first species to be discomforted by the long fangs of a Vori. He cursed himself for not thinking of it.
“Yes, I apologize that I could not warn you. I applied the neuro-translator. I imagine that not being able to understand anyone was frightening, and I wanted to remedy that immediately,” he soothed.
She began to relax against him.
“Thank you,” she murmured, pressing her body deeper into his embrace.
Vadal felt conflicted. He wanted her, but she was hurt and needed to be put into a healing sleep. His cocks raged at him inappropriately. It is not like he’d never felt sexual interest before, although he refrained from acting on it.
Even far from Vora, on the space station where a male could do much that was taboo on his home-world, Vadal kept to his moral standards and had not sampled the female flesh readily available for credit. He had been tempted many times, but for a Vori the first breeding was sacred. It belonged to the Mother of the Nest in her honor and by tradition was given with their mate. He would not dishonor himself by surrendering inappropriately to his lust for no other reason but to slake it.
Yet now that he held an unattached beautiful human female with such a delicious scent, he knew that there was no resisting. He wanted her for his own, to secure in the depths of their nest and press her between himself and his nest brother. He wanted nothing more than to wrap his tail around her now. She triggered all his hungers, and the ripe smell of her fertility made his cocks pulse painfully. She was in season, ready for breeding.
He no longer wanted to search the Mate Index for a female, even though he knew it was legally wrong. No, this was the female he wanted.
His female.
He was determined to return to Vora with her, one way or another.
Chapter 3
Reggie watched the large winged male frown at her before looking over at the Gorgon man. His long fangs had alarmed her when he’d smiled at her, but she found herself quickly getting used to them. She recognized that he wasn’t threatening her in any way with them. They were just a part of his very interesting appearance.
“Doctor Vadal, I am going to have to remove the female and take her to security until transport can be arranged to return her to Earth,” he said, his voice taking a wary tone as the doctor’s arms and the massive coil of his tail tightened around her protectively.
Reggie dug her fingers into his shoulders, feeling the thick mass of muscle beneath his lab coat. After being kidnapped from Earth, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go back yet. The idea of being alone and vulnerable made her panic spike. She clung desperately to Vadal, determined to not be pried off the male if she could help it. The doctor was the biggest, scariest being in the space station, second only to the winged male at their side as far as she could tell.
She felt safe with Vadal.
“I don’t want to,” Reggie muttered thickly, her voice heavy with unshed tears.
Vadal’s heavy, warm hand stroked through her curls and he pressed his cheek against the top of her head. His whole body curved around her, wrapping her within his warmth, a strange contrast to his serpentine features.
“Do not worry, female. I won’t let him take you away,” he murmured softly. “I will take you to Vora with me. Will that comfort you?”
Reggie paused, considering it. She’d already been toying with the idea of tossing her name into the Mate Index and starting a new life on another planet, and she felt safe with Vadal. If she went anywhere, she would rather it be with him. Burying her face against him, she nodded into his chest.
The other male made a sound of disapproval. “This is not how things are done, Vadal. You know that. Earth demands that any illegal humans be returned to their planet promptly when we find them. I can probably come up with an excuse for you envenomating that male, but how am I to explain this?”
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Vadal hissed irritably. “To what purpose should we return her, Tar-denovak? She has already been stolen off Earth once. Do we return her so that the Kampi’s relations get another shot? You know they will consider it a matter of pride to recover her. Especially after I envenomated their young male. She is safer with me on Vora.”
“Vadal, you cannot keep her as a mate. The authorities on Earth will throw a fit if they become aware of yet another female they are not being compensated for. You are risking my station here.”
“She will be my mate only if she will have me. I will not risk her life or wellbeing.”
What Vadal was saying made sense. She stroked a hand against the scales of the tail wrapped tightly around her and smiled up at him. As for being mates, she wasn’t exactly sure how they would do that physically, but she was slowly getting used to dangerous appearance. Sure, she’d imagined something a bit more—human, or at least bipedal so she knew what to do with everything. Still, he wasn’t unattractive to her. She’d always seen Medusa imagery as something exotic and beautiful. Now she was getting used to it in the flesh, she could imagine possibly being with him if things went down that road.
Tar-denovak ground his teeth audibly. Poor guy wasn’t going to have such impressive chompers if he kept doing that.
“Fine,” he snarled. “But if anyone asks how you acquired a human female, you will not breathe one word of my name. I do not want to be involved in this.”
Vadal extended a hand to touch his claws lightly on the other male’s arm.
“Thank you, my friend.”
Tar-denovak’s face softened, barely perceptible. “Good luck,” he said stiffly. He adjusted his wings against his back and left medical without a backward glance. Vadal breathed out deeply.
“Okay, female. Let’s get you cleaned up and take care of your wounds. We will also need to get you inoculated against common diseases and viruses.”
“Reggie,” she corrected.
He looked down at her and smiled, an adorable peek of fang showing. “Reggie.” He turned it about on his tongue a bit as he carried her through the doors into his office. “That is an unusual human name.”
Reggie chuckled, her split lip paining her enough to make her wince. Vadal frowned when he noticed. Placing her on a large examination chair, he swept her hair back with one hand and looked at the small cuts on her face. He grabbed a rounded device that strapped securely to his palm and began to pass it over her body, starting with the cuts on her face.
As soon as her lip stopped stinging, she grinned at him.
“Reggie is short form of my full name, Regina,” she said.
He cocked his head quizzically. “Regina is a beautiful name. Why do you shorten it?”
She couldn’t help but laugh at his observation.
“I never liked it. It means queen, and that’s so not me. Reggie is more me.”
He returned the device and considered her. “So it is a name you have chosen as a matter of personal identity.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Among the Vori, it is common that our species chooses new names when we come of age, to establish our identity as adults in our community.”
“Humans don’t do that. We just grow up often using different nicknames. Sometimes that’s just among close family and friends, but I prefer everyone call me Reggie. The only people who call me Regina are my parents.”
Her smile slipped thinking of them. She really couldn’t even consider them family anymore after the way they’d reacted to her divorce.
Reggie jumped with a thick forked tongue darted out, scenting the air. He frowned down at her.
“You are sad, Reggie. Why?”
Boy, nothing got by this guy if he could smell emotions.
She didn’t answer right away. A thin coil reached for her, the tip running down the side of her face as it burrowed into her hair, twining with her lifeless locks. She pulled up her Reggie Rah-Rah mask and smiled at him.
“No reason, Vadal.”
His frown intensified. “You aren’t being truthful,” he observed, a hint of anger in his voice.
Reggie sighed and wrinkled her nose at him.
“I really have nothing to worry about in my life, so it is nothing. My parents gave me everything when I was growing up. A lot of people have sadder stories than I do.”
“I am not speaking to those people at this moment. I am speaking to you, my Reggie. You are who I see, smell, and taste in front of me. It’s you who are the focus of my being, all that I care about. So, I ask you again: why are you sad?”
Reggie sighed and made a show of looking quite disgruntled. In truth, it touched her that despite how alien he looked with his masculine Gorgon features, he connected with her. Though he barely knew her, he valued her. And apparently, he was like a dog with a bone when it came to her wellbeing.
“My family, especially my parents, they don’t want anything to do with me. My husband left me, and it caused some problems for them. They blame me for it.” She laughed bitterly at the thought.
Vadal shook his head, unable to comprehend. “I don’t understand. Mates are forever. A male Vori is physically unable to leave his mate—it causes him great pain to do so. Many even choose to follow their mates into death due to the emptiness of being without our mate. Mates are one being together.”
“That sounds… beautiful, Vadal.” She imagined a world where males and females cherished each other and never left each other. They wouldn’t leave each other for a younger, firmer model.
He grinned down at her, his red eyes sparkling like rubies when the machine near them beeped. “That is all, Reggie. You are healed and completely vaccinated. Time for us to go home.”
“To Vora,” she grinned, a sense of excitement settling over her. This was her ultimate do-over and she had Vadal there with her. She wasn’t going to be alone.
His thick lips curved up. “Yes, Reggie—to Vora.”
***
It had taken all his willpower to not betray his horrified feelings what Reggie described. Her mate leaving her and her family shunning her—Vadal couldn’t wrap his mind around it.
He had many cherished memories of his parents in his childhood nest. The musky smell of his parents and the warmth of their coils wrapping around him and his siblings. He never went without knowing how much they loved him. Upon reaching adulthood, they’d encouraged him to relocate closer to Evath to pursue his dreams. Their absence was a constant emptiness inside of him.
There was a reason why many Vori kept to their same familial territories. The Vori, by nature, were clannish and close-knit. In the old days, it wouldn’t be uncommon to find an expanse of hidden nests within a singular family territory, defended by the large groups of kin. His own clan had dwindled over the generations, like many others.
Sometimes, he toyed the idea of returning to his clan territories when he found a mate. He had kin still living there, and his parents too, who would welcome his return. His practice was in Evath, but maybe Reggie would like the cool mountains of his clan ground better?
He looked down at her as they moved into primary corridors of the space station. She was eagerly looking around at everything of interest, her face alive with curiosity. As much as he would love to give her the time to explore, he didn’t want anyone to notice that he was escaping the space station with a human. Strictly speaking, what he was doing defied the will of the Council, and therefore very illegal.
“Come, Reggie. We must make haste,” he murmured.
She seemed to catch her wandering attention. With a brisk nod of her head, she picked up her pace. As they neared the port, Vadal could almost feel freedom in their grasp when a familiar voice shouted out.
“Reggie? Regina Witlock?” the Edoka male shouted. Vadal recognized the dull silvery ambassador from Edokora. Ice ran in his veins hearing the male identify his female. Had he found his mate only to have her taken from him?
“Doctor Vadal, stop!” Sha’melor shouted.
Vadal slid to a sto
p but coiled his tail around his female, moving her just behind him. He snarled as the male approached. Sha’melor slowed to a reluctant stop a tail’s length away from him and frowned, his empty hands held harmlessly out in front of him.
“Doctor Vadal, what are you doing with Regina Witlock?” the male inquired, his voice calm and giving nothing away. Vadal hissed a low rumble at the Edoka. Edokas were a race of fierce warriors, but a Vori outweighed them twice over with dense muscle through their heavy torsos and coils, assets necessary for living on their homeworld.
The endless black of Sha’melor’s eyes peered around him to his female. His face tightened with concern that immediately insulted Vadal. He would never mistreat a female, much less his female.
“Regina?” the male murmured.
“She prefers to be called Reggie,” Vadal groused, unable to bear hearing the male misname her against her wishes.
The male smiled at him briefly. “My apologies. Reggie, are you okay?”
Vadal stiffened as he felt Reggie push her way through his coils. He wanted to growl and haul her back into their safety. Yet as it was not right to forcibly restrain a female, he lowered himself carefully to rest on his loose coils, his eyes never leaving her as she faced Sha’melor.
“Yeah, I’m Reggie. Who are you?”
The ambassador grinned, a look of relief on his face. “Thank the gods! My mate will be very happy to know that I have found you, and that you are well.”
He hesitated, looking her over slowly. “You are well, correct?”
Reggie laughed softly and Vadal felt a possessive feeling swell within him that she was laughing for this other male. The fact that he smelled of a mated male was the only thing that kept Vadal from attempting to establish his territory.
Although everything yielded to the choice of the female, males were not above warning each other off. More than one male had to be disciplined in the larger harems that females kept when one of her males ran off those members they objected to. In fact, if enough males objected, they would work cooperatively toward that end and accept punishment from their mate happily.
The Voris' Mate Page 3