by Zoey Draven
He made a rumbling sound in the back of his throat and went quiet. Water trickled and I felt the heavy weight of his eyes, but I avoided them.
Finally, he said, “The Dakkari believe that starlings are powerful beings.”
My hand paused on his chest and I tilted my head, meeting his gaze.
It was an unspoken invitation, one he answered with, “In the stars, you become everything.”
“What?” I whispered, not sure I understood.
“You feel the loneliness of endless space, but you also hear a million beings’ prayers, their hopes, their tragedies, being lifted up to you, whispered towards the sky from their homes, towards their deities. The Dakkari believe that starlings are born hearing those prayers and that they are closer to Kakkari for it. We believe that you become a thousand different species in that moment, that you would be neither human nor Dakkari, but everything.”
My breath hitched when he pressed a small, gentle kiss to my lips.
“I am not surprised to learn you are a starling, rei thissie,” he murmured against me. “For I felt your power when I first felt you taking my soul.”
My heart gave one powerful thud and then I looked at him as if I’d never seen him before.
I felt a little dizzy looking at him, my head throbbing, the blood in my ears rushing, and I wondered how we’d gone from him trying to send me away this evening…to me wondering if this was what falling in love was like. This dizzying, maddening, uncomfortable sensation that grew with each passing moment.
Swallowing, I looked back to the cloth, blinking, and I resumed the circles over his chest as if he hadn’t spoken at all.
I washed him in silence, methodically, distracted. When I reached his lower abdomen, my breath hitched as his hardened cock brushed my forearm, almost searing me with its heat. His nostrils flared and a harsh breath expelled from his chest.
Underneath the water, I saw his cock bob, the flushed head surfacing briefly. He wasn’t shy in his arousal. He never had been.
The warmth between my thighs returned in a rush and I swallowed. I found I wanted to touch him, explore him, but I didn’t know if I should or even how I would begin.
“Nelle,” he rasped.
His cock brushed against my arm again when I circled down towards his hips and I paused, my lips parting, when I felt him pulse against me. I didn’t pull away. I kept my forearm steady.
His thick swallow reached my ears and I looked up at him. Whatever he saw in my expression made his eyes flare and he gripped my hand, pushing the cloth away. It sunk to the bottom of the bathing tub, forgotten.
A strange ringing started in my ears when he guided my hand to his cock, erasing the indecision from my mind. My sex throbbed when I heard his roughened curse, when he wrapped my hand around his impossible heat.
“You can touch me however you wish, kalles,” he rasped. “Or you can stop.”
Unconsciously, my grip tightened at his words, dragging a deep, delicious groan from his throat.
“Come into the bath, thissie,” he rasped. “I need to touch you too.”
I shook my head, though my voice sounded far away and my eyes were locked on his cock underneath the water. “I’m still bleeding.”
My flow had lightened considerably since yesterday. My bleeding would most likely cease tomorrow on the fourth day, but I didn’t want to dirty the bath water regardless.
“I do not care,” he protested before I watched the column of his throat tighten and his chest heave, all because I’d ran my fist down to his base. My hand didn’t encircle him completely, but I was still fascinated—and aroused—by the reaction it wrung from him. “Vok!”
“Does it feel that good?” I questioned, tilting my head to the side, excitement winding its way to my core.
A strangled laugh came from him. “I told you to come here…and I will show you how good it feels.”
“No, Seerin,” I said, the prospect leaving me shy.
“Very well, rei thissie,” he rasped, his eyes hot and focused on me. “But when your bleeding stops, I will touch you as I please. Lysi?”
I shivered. I could only nod.
“What does rei mean?” I asked him softly. Sometimes he used it, other times he did not. I had a suspicion but I wanted to be certain.
His jaw ticked. I tightened my grip and stroked back up his shaft. His face twisted and his back bowed.
“Seerin,” I whispered, licking my lips.
“It means ‘my,’” he finally choked out, his chest heaving.
Longing burst in my chest. Longing to belong to someone and have someone belong to me. He’d been calling me his. Why did that word sound so sublime?
I squirmed on my knees, squeezing my thighs together.
“I think you care for me too, my demon king,” I told him softly.
He froze.
His expression changed, ever so slightly, but he didn’t confirm or deny my words. Suddenly, his hand was stilling my own before he unclasped my grip from around his cock, and I frowned when he stood from the bath.
His voice was cold, different, when he said, “You can do my oils now, alukkiri.”
Kneeling, I watched him with confusion as he roughly dried off his wet skin, his cock bobbing angrily against his abdomen. His dark mood had returned, as palpable as my racing heart, but I was left reeling, wondering if I’d done or said something wrong.
I hadn’t, had I?
The only thing I could think was that he was angry, or embarrassed perhaps, that he cared for me. I knew he did. But why would he not admit it unless he wished he didn’t? Unless I shamed him in some way? I’d always known that he was a Vorakkar and I was a human, but I thought that perhaps it didn’t matter to him.
But it seems like it does matter, I thought, familiar rejection tightening my chest, making it difficult to breathe.
Gone was my desire. Left in its place was an icy chill that rivaled the temperature outside. The tension in the voliki had changed from charged and exciting to heavy and thick.
“Seerin,” I said, rising from my knees, my jaw set, wanting to give him a chance to explain, wanting to believe I was only making it all up in my head.
“Neffar?” he rasped, his back to me, rummaging through something in his cabinets.
“Why are you being this way?”
“I am not yours, Nelle,” he growled. “Do not ever think of me as yours.”
“But I can be yours?” I asked, furrowing my brow, not understanding. “Why are you allowed to call me yours but I cannot do the same?”
“Believe me, I will not make that mistake again,” he rasped and I barely held back my flinch. When he turned to me, a tall, yellow bottle was in his grip. His oils.
So, this was a rejection.
I wouldn’t lie, it stung. There I’d been…thinking I was falling in love with him as he talked of starlings. My inexperience with males had never been more evident than it was right at that moment.
And he’d flipped so quickly, my words obviously a trigger, something he’d been thinking about. Why else would he react so strongly?
“I see,” I said softly.
Then a tiny flame of anger snuffed out a little of the hurt. Perhaps I didn’t hold onto pride as much as others did. Perhaps I was a little pathetic in his eyes—I couldn’t be certain anymore how he viewed me. But if he believed that I would touch him now, knowing that he was only interested in sex and repelled that I’d called him ‘my demon king,’ then he had no idea how brightly my pride could shine.
“You can start with my back,” he rasped, stalking towards me. He seemed even larger in his anger and he held my eyes, as if daring me to challenge him.
This Seerin was cold, biting. This Seerin I didn’t recognize. Perhaps this was the darker Vorakkar underneath, the one who’d ordered my punishment unflinchingly, but certainly not the one who’d been hell-bent on saving me from fever and infection.
Perhaps they were one in the same and I’d been blind to it.
If caring for him and assuming he cared for me was wrong then he could very well go find another alukkiri, our agreement be damned. I didn’t care. Not anymore.
Something in his gaze flickered, but I didn’t wait for him to reply. My head had begun to throb, so I turned my back.
I left the voliki without another word.
Chapter Twenty-Three
That night, I went to the training grounds. I was too upset to return to my tent. The idea of sitting inside, with Seerin’s words ringing through my mind endlessly, left me restless.
The training grounds were empty, as I suspected they’d be. The whole encampment was quiet. Only a crazy person would be out in the dead of night during the cold season, but the numbness I felt enveloping my body felt good.
I walked to the weapons rack and plucked off the bow and the quiver of arrows. As I walked, I inspected the Dakkari arrow of steel, memorizing the lines, the expert way the fletching tilted up, and wondered if I’d ever be able to make something so intricate. Would I be in the encampment long enough to learn how?
I frowned, feeling my chest pinch slightly at the thought. I thought of Seerin. I felt like my hand was still warm from his cock and I drew in a ragged breath, trying to ignore the hurt that burned in my belly.
One, I thought quietly, in desperate need of a distraction, the frostbitten mountains.
Two, the glow of the barrel fire.
Three, the blackened hide roof of the weapons rack.
I picked a different target since the post at the far corner reminded me too much of Seerin and his kisses and the bargains we’d made in the dark.
Instead, I leveled the bow at the opposite end of the enclosure, at a tall pole with a flag posted at the top. It was the image of a shield and a sword.
Holding my breath, I nocked the arrow. I adjusted my grip, though my fingers were beginning to tighten and freeze.
Exhaling, I released and the satisfying sound of the string snapping met my ears, followed by the satisfying thud as the arrow bit into my target.
Success.
I nocked another. It hit.
Another…it hit.
I emptied the quiver into the pole, stacking the arrows up high until I wasn’t certain I’d be able to pull them down.
A voice came to my right.
“You are an archer?”
I cried out, startled, and whipped around…only to find a familiar warrior standing within the shadows of the weapons master’s tent.
I relaxed when I recognized him. The brother of my lirilla. The warrior who’d tried to get me warm after the fence had collapsed.
My heart was racing from the sudden disruption and my exertion from the bow. I watched as he stepped closer to the fence of the training grounds until he was just on the other side.
“An archer?” I asked softly. “No, I’m not.”
He frowned, looking back towards the pole, at the ten arrows lodged into it. “Yet you have the skill of one.”
“I was a hunter,” I explained.
Hesitant understanding dawned in his face. He was young and handsome, I noticed, his features strong. His hair was black, trailing to his waist. His eyes were ringed in red. He looked like how I’d imagined his grandfather, the weapons master, would’ve looked in his youth.
“That was why the Vorakkar whipped you?”
“You know about that?” I asked quietly. At his words, my wounds felt tight, though the flesh had already healed over. Would I always feel them? “Were…were you there that day?”
“Nik,” he replied, his lips pressing together at the prospect. “But the Dakkari like to talk. You will find that soon enough.”
“Then yes,” I said. “He saw me hunting and did what he had to do.”
I didn’t want to talk about Seerin, especially since I’d come out here to escape him.
“There are not many skilled archers among the Dakkari hordes,” he said further. “How did you learn?”
My skill meant I ate or I did not, I thought, slightly irritated by his question, though I didn’t know why. Perhaps Seerin’s darkened mood had rubbed off on me.
“It was necessary to learn,” I told him instead, walking over to the pole, pulling out as many arrows as I could. But the shafts were icy cold and slipped from my grip. There were three that were too high for me to reach.
“Do you mind if I watch you?” the warrior asked next, leaning his forearms against the fence, looking as if he had no intention of moving.
“If you want to,” I replied. I stood a little farther back than I did last time and asked, “Why are you out here, anyway?”
“Why are you?”
A surprised laugh rose from my throat. Obviously, I wouldn’t tell him of what happened with Seerin, so I said, “I just didn’t want to be inside right now.”
He shrugged. “It is the same for me. I enjoy the cold season. Most Dakkari like warmer temperatures, but I always thought it was more pleasant in the cold.”
“Even this cold?” I questioned, looking back at the pole, bringing my bow up. I tilted down slightly, trying to loosen my fingers when they curled too tightly.
He was quiet until I let the arrow fly. It hit, a little more left than I’d aimed for.
Then he said, “Lysi, this cold. It makes everything seem…quiet.”
“Then you must be sad when the cold season comes to an end,” I murmured, glancing over at him.
“Lysi, a part of me. But the end of the cold season also means traveling to a new home, so I look forward to it as well.”
I paused. I’d always figured the hordes moved around, following their game, but that was before I saw the massive layout of the encampment…the fences, the tents, the pyroki enclosure.
“Neffar?”
“It just seems like a lot of work to move this place somewhere else,” I told him, waving my hand at the encampment behind him.
“It is,” he said. “But during the cold season, we protect the encampment with the fence and build larger enclosures for the pyrokis’ nesting grounds. Once the cold season ends, it is not as much work. You will see for yourself.”
“I return to my village after the cold season,” I informed him, nocking another arrow.
“But the Vorakkar surely wishes for you to stay,” he said quietly, his voice dropping. “Lysi?”
My breath left me but I didn’t release the arrow. “Why do you say that?” I rasped, turning to him.
He shifted. “Like I said, the Dakkari like to talk.”
I frowned. “And what’s been said around the horde?”
“That he has taken an interest in you,” he explained, with only slight embarrassment. “Why else would you be sharing his voliki?”
“Because my own needed to be built,” I explained, feeling strangely defensive. “There were other tasks to finish first.”
“A horde child could build a voliki,” the warrior scoffed. “It would have taken a day at most.”
Yet I’d stayed in Seerin’s bed for much, much longer.
Well, of course, I thought after thinking about it. He wanted sex.
“It’s not like that,” I protested. “The Vorakkar has no interest in me.”
My words didn’t satisfy me, however. Just that evening, Seerin had told me if he was a human male in my village, he would have claimed me long ago. Had he meant sex or something else, something more?
“Rath Kitala’s Vorakkar took a human Morakkari recently,” the warrior said next. “Most are wondering if our Vorakkar will do the same.”
Shock held me frozen as longing and disbelief created a strange mixture of bubbling emotion in my chest.
“What do you mean? Another Vorakkar took a human as his wife?”
“Lysi,” he said, inclining his head. “You did not know?”
> Of course not.
How could I have known? Seerin certainly hadn’t offered up that information.
I am not yours, Nelle. Do not ever think of me as yours.
His words felt like they’d punctured through my chest.
“I assure you,” I told the warrior, “that the Vorakkar has no interest in me for his Morakkari. That I know for certain.”
“So that means you are free to choose a mate?” he questioned next, something in his tone making my brows raise.
I surprised myself with my chuckle. His small, crooked grin caused embarrassment to rise within me.
“I’ve never considered it,” I told him. At least, not within the horde.
I’d always dreamed of having a mate, of having love, of having children. So many children. Family. But my yearnings always seemed so unattainable that I’d written them off as fantasies. Fantasies I visited whenever I got overwhelmed with loneliness, though they always seemed to make me feel lonelier…so I tried not to think of them at all.
Yet when Seerin had spoken of a Morakkari, when he’d whispered to me in the dark that I wasn’t alone as he kissed me, I’d felt that similar yearning, returning to me in full force as if it had never left. Only, in addition to that yearning, there’d been hope.
I cleared my throat when it felt tight. I was shivering, I realized. I walked a short distance away, replacing the bow and the quiver of arrows on the weapons rack.
“I hope I can choose a mate soon too,” the warrior told me with another shameless grin. For a moment, that grin made me feel better.
I chuckled again, though it felt like the last thing I wanted to do.
“Can I walk you back to your voliki?” he asked quietly, when he realized I was done in the training grounds.
“Yes,” I said, giving him a small smile. “I would like that.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
From the shadows, I watched Nelle and the young warrior—Odrii was his given name—walk away from the training grounds, towards her voliki.
A savage feeling had risen in me when I’d first heard them speaking, when I’d heard the young warrior flirt and hint at mate courtship. Though Nelle likely wouldn’t understand his meaning, Odrii had essentially announced his interest in her. If other Dakkari had been present, it would have seemed like a formal declaration of courtship.