by Octavia Kore
Ita grumbled, her mouth moving in an odd fashion as if she were actually speaking, but she stopped with an indignant growl as Otheo rushed forward, his excitement mentally slamming into Esme as he skidded to a stop just on the other side of the wall, his clawed feet kicking up dirt and tiny pebbles.
“Whoa!” Esme shouted as Otheo leaned over the wall and stuck his face into the sling. His long, black tongue slid over Eina’s chest and face, and his nostrils flared. Otheo made an excited sound, something like a chirp as he nuzzled the baby’s curled hand.
“That is enough, you foolish beast.” Tairgon laughed, shoving gently at the side of Otheo’s head. “He means the youngling no harm, but Otheo is still learning proper manners.”
Ita snorted as if she agreed with the statement and stepped up to the wall, bumping her offspring out of the way so she could lower her head.
Get it together, Es, she thought to herself. They said these guys won’t hurt us. Esme raised her hand, releasing a breath as she reached out and pressed her palm to the vouken’s snout. “All right, I’m touching a dragon… no big deal.” The female stared at her with big violet eyes that pulled Esme in, demanding her attention.
Esme was aware of Zadinir looming over them, but she couldn’t seem to look away from Ita. Something was happening between Esme and the vouken, something she couldn’t explain and it seemed to stem from their point of contact. It was a strange feeling, like a string going taut in her mind. Esme could feel Ita as if they were of one mind, like they were sharing an existence. She felt the creature’s joy and excitement over what was happening between them and leaned forward to press her forehead against the vouken’s scaly head.
Trakseer said they weren’t used for riding, but Esme couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like. As if she’d been given a command, Ita pulled back, turning her big body so that her side was pressed against the wall and crouched down low. She stared expectantly at Esme, curling her horned tail against her haunches.
“Xuvri, take Eina for a minute?” Esme scooped their baby out of the sling before depositing her in her mate’s arms. She kissed Eina’s head and then turned back toward the wall, climbing up and over the stones. Before any of the males could protest, Esme was sliding onto Ita’s back, doing her best to avoid the long spines that ran down the vouken’s neck.
“These won’t hurt me, right? They’re not venomous or anything?” she questioned, realizing she probably should have thought to ask that before climbing on.
Tairgon stared at her. “Only the barbs on their tails when they feel threatened, but—”
“Get down!” Xuvri hissed, his red eyes wide.
“What are you doing?” Trakseer asked.
“I’m going to ride her.”
“You are going to do what?” The look of utter shock and confusion on Tairgon’s face made her grin.
“Stop that.” Xuvri narrowed his eyes on Zadinir, who used his snout to nudge her mate’s hip. “Esme, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Not a good idea? Although it was probably one of the most impulsive things she’d ever done in her entire life, this felt right. There was no fear up here, only a sense of safety and security flowing through the newly formed bond. The moment Esme was settled, with a spine held carefully in each hand, Ita began to move. She started with a slow trot, and when Esme was comfortable with that, Ita switched to a full out run.
This was a freedom Esme hadn’t felt in years. Laughter rolled up her chest and spilled from her lips as she clutched the spines. Up here on top of Ita, with the wind rushing over her face and hair, Esme almost felt free of her past, like she was finally being released from the hold it had on her.
Before meeting Ky and Xuvri, Esme had considered her “gift” to be a curse, a horrible side effect of whatever the Grutex had awakened within her. As awful as her life on the Kaia’s ship had been, beautiful things managed to grow from the experience. She would always cherish the memories of her first baby, all those moments she was given with them, and now she was being given the chance to be a mother again and to have a family who cared for her, and maybe even loved her. When her emotions threatened to get the best of her, Ita began to purr softly, and like Xuvri’s rattle, it calmed her.
Ita turned back toward the males and Esme waved when she saw Ky standing next to their mate, a smile stretched across her face. “I rode a dragon!” Esme laughed, the adrenaline of the ride leaving her feeling giddy. She leapt onto the wall when Ita stopped and then threw herself into Ky’s arms. “Did you see that? It was amazing!”
“Here for less than a day and you have already managed to bond with a vouken.” Ky laughed, brushing Esme’s windswept hair away from her face. “I should not be surprised Ita chose you. Noiket is Ita’s other mate and Zadinir’s bondmate. He and I bonded a long, long time ago.”
Esme followed Ky’s gaze back toward the tree line and was surprised to see another massive vouken appear. Like the other three he was black, but where the others were red, this one was a brilliant blue that shimmered like Ky’s fushori. How something so large could disappear so completely among the brush and other foliage was mind-blowing. The male’s teeth chattered as he approached, and he lowered his head as his frill expanded.
Ky placed Esme on her feet and stepped up to the wall. “I know,” she cooed. “I am sorry I left you behind.” The vouken danced in place, huffing and flaring his nostrils until Ita snorted and nipped at his haunches. “Are you going to forgive me?”
“Do all the female vouken have two mates?” Esme asked as Xuvri pulled her into his side.
“The males are only able to reproduce in bonded pairs. Noiket and Zadinir have been together for as long as I have known them.”
Esme tilted her head, watching their female. “How did you find us all the way out here?”
“Inara,” both Ky and Trakseer said at the same time.
The big male watched Ky with eyes as blue as the stormy sea back on Earth for a moment longer before he dipped his head over the wall. “I missed you, my Noi,” Ky whispered as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Very, very much.”
There was a sadness in the way Ky spoke that made Esme wonder what her female was hiding. Maybe coming to the village had been about more than Esme and Eina’s safety? Esme realized she actually knew very little about her mates’ past, but they had time now and she meant to make the best of the chance they’d been given.
Life here was going to be wonderful. She just knew it.
Chapter 21
Kythea
“This is the house you grew up in?” Esme asked as she stepped through the doorway into the entrance. “It’s beautiful.”
The female’s golden hair caught the fading light of the sun as she moved farther inside, and Ky had to clench her hands into fists to keep from reaching out and running her fingers through it. Ky wanted to braid it for her, to brush it away from her shoulders, to wrap it around her hands and pull Esme close.
You are not helping yourself, Ky chided. Her own hair was surely something of a mess at this point. She and Esme had bathed on board the ship before they left, but the journey here hadn’t been easy and they hadn’t even taken the time to clean themselves up after arriving.
“Yes. My family has lived here for generations,” Ky said, reaching up to touch the two long braids on either side of her head. “Gulzar and I made many memories here as younglings.” She looked up at the wooden beams and smiled at the deep gouges left by her brother’s claws. He’d climbed them often as a youngling, to her mitera’s unending frustration, laughing as he swung from the exposed timbers that ran along the ceiling.
“Did you find what you needed in the temple?” Xuvri asked as he came up behind her, his claws brushing over her xines.
“I found more questions than I did answers,” Ky told him, leading her mates into one of the gathering areas. “I attempted to ask Una about the things I learned from Amanda while we lived in the dome. I wanted to know if they were true, but each t
ime I asked, I received a strange response, something I have never been told before now.”
“What was it?” Xuvri propped his massive shoulder against the cream-colored wall, watching Esme as she explored the room with Eina.
“I was told I did not have access.” There were so many things Ky wanted answers to now that she was back home. Amanda told her of the legend of Atlantis, a mythical Earth city that disappeared beneath the okeanos never to be seen again. It couldn’t be mere coincidence that her own people had a similar legend of a city called Atlantia, which had been lost to them when the portal to the human world was destroyed. Was it possible that everything she knew, everything she’d been taught from such a young age wasn’t the truth? If they’d been lied to about one thing, what else in their history was false?
Ky glanced toward Xuvri and wondered if the stories of the “tainted” and “wayward” ones had any sort of truth to them, or if they’d been made the enemy to serve someone else’s selfish purpose. Una, Ven, and Nem had chosen Xuvri as her mate and had even chosen Oshen as Gulzar’s bondmate. Why would they do this if they were as bad as the elders had always made them out to be?
The only thing that had tainted her male was the poison. Just the thought of that black liquid heated her blood, but there was a far more pleasant fire burning in her belly that refused to be ignored. Ky fought it off the entire time she’d been inside the temple, trying her best to repress the need that coursed through her, but it obviously hadn’t gotten any better. Many first heats resulted in pairs lying in bed together for days so they could sate the desire the moment it raised its head, but they weren’t a pair and they weren’t anything like most mates. Having Eina before they’d even mated meant they had to do things differently.
“I know Amanda was the human woman Xuvri took, but I don’t remember hearing about who she was and how you know her,” Esme said. Xuvri shifted uncomfortably, his head lowering until he was staring at the ground.
“She is Gulzar’s human mate and the one we mistook for a goddess when she arrived in the village,” Ky said, forgetting that she hadn’t finished explaining when they were on the ship. “Come sit with me.” She held out her hand to Esme and pulled her toward the plush seating that lined one wall. “The story is long.”
“This might sound dumb, but I wasn’t imagining anything so… modern.” Esme said, running her hand over the cushion as she gazed around the room.
“After we settled within the dome, Amanda shared with me that she had not expected such modern amenities either. According to her, she was most amazed by the indoor plumbing.”
Esme’s eyes widened dramatically, and she slouched back into the seat as she pulled Eina from the sling. “Couches and indoor plumbing. Be still, my heart.”
While Esme nursed Eina, Ky began her tale, starting from the very beginning with Gulzar’s claims about speaking with a goddess and how not only had others in the village not believed him, but how even her family had doubted him. She told them both about the day Gulzar brought his mates home, and how there had been an uproar within the village, about the whippings her brother received for it, and then how Amanda shocked them all when she explained that her people were not what they’d been told. She recounted the way the elders had fought it, how Gulzar and her mitera stood against the males, and everything else up to and including Amanda’s abduction by Xuvri.
“Your people are claiming that the Grutex originated from Venora?” Xuvri asked, his eyes narrowing as he crossed his arms over his chest. “There is clearly something wrong with your statue. This village is filled with hybrids. I would bet that this was an experiment that got out of hand.”
“Our history is not wrong.”
“No? It was wrong about the humans. Why not about the Grutex?”
Ky pressed her lips together and frowned. That wasn’t Una’s fault. Yes, it seemed her people had made a mistake somewhere in their recounting, but that didn’t mean everything in their history was wrong. “We are not a brand new race of people, Xuvri. There are ancient texts that tell the tale of how the forefathers of the Grutex were born of Una and lived on this land. Where is the proof that your ancestors did not leave this planet?”
“I lived many lifetimes before this one, Ky. I may not remember everything, but I think leaving my planet behind would be one of them.” His xines thrashed against his shoulders as Xuvri moved away from the wall.
“Many lives?” Ky asked. “How is that possible?” She listened as he explained their rebirthing process, a concept that she honestly struggled to understand. Her people believed that death was just another journey everyone went on, a way to give back to Una and to celebrate with her a life well lived. It made her wonder if this process was why Xuvri’s people were considered tainted. “You said you do not remember all of your lives because this rebirthing has begun to affect your memories?”
“Yes.”
“Then how can you be so sure our history is incorrect when you cannot even recall your past?” Ky cocked her head to the side, smiling at the glare she received from her male. “My people are proof that yours once lived here. Look at Gulzar and Trakseer. Amanda believed them both to be Grutex when she arrived.”
“Okay, okay.” Esme held up one of her delicate hands. “Let’s not get into a fight about this. I want to know what happened to Amanda after you took her. The whole story this time, not some glossed-over version.” She looked pointedly at Xuvri.
Their big male’s shoulders slumped, and his gaze shifted back toward the floor as if he were embarrassed. He gave Esme exactly what she asked for, telling them about how Amanda had bitten him and tried to bash him upside the head with a stick, about how the darkness inside of him had coveted her unborn young, and also of her compassion and the empathy she showed him even when he hadn’t deserved it. He told them of Oshen’s beast and how he hadn’t fought him, how he’d almost hoped he would die because the thought of continuing on in that state of chaos was too much to bear.
Ky felt sick. Oshen was the brother of her heart, and imagining his allasso form tearing her mate apart was not something she wanted to do, but it was far more than that. Xuvri’s gift, the same one she and Gulzar had lived with, had almost cost him his life. Ky didn’t know what other factors were at play within him, but she suspected the poison had hastened the process. That Amanda had been able to see that this behavior wasn’t Xuvri, that to this day she refused to speak ill of someone who had hunted her down and stolen her away from her own mates, broke Ky’s heart.
She wanted to make this all right, to fix the damage their past might have caused, but Ky had no idea where to even begin. Amanda had made her position clear many times, and Ky knew it was a point of contention between her and Oshen. She’d forgiven him, but her mate hadn’t and swore he never would. Ky didn’t blame Oshen for his hatred, but she wasn’t sure what that meant for her and her mates when it came to their family.
“You said the statue of Una inside the temple told Amanda about everything that had gone on with… everyone, and then Amanda explained to Gulzar that humans aren’t gods or goddesses, that we’re just aliens?” Esme asked, her brows drawing together as she pursed her lips.
“Yes. When my family and I moved to the dome to escape the elders, Amanda told me that she suspected the statue was not actually Una, but an AI.” Ky looked at her arm and grimaced. Now that she had been given one from the Venium, she could see the obvious similarities between the two. “I just want to find out the truth, if that is possible at this point.”
“It told you that you didn’t have access, though.”
“Yes, but that makes no sense to me. I have been tending to the goddess—the AI,” Ky corrected herself, “since I was very young and this has never happened.”
Esme frowned as she switched Eina to her other breast. “Maybe when you left the village and gave up your title, your access was taken away?”
“I was recognized as the high priestess when I addressed her. I have never asked these question
s before, so I have no way of knowing if this is new.”
“What about a password?” Esme asked.
Ky was not familiar with the term. “What is a password?”
“It’s a word, maybe even a phrase or series of numbers, that someone can set that will unlock something. It’s like a key. Back on Earth, we use them to protect all sorts of things when we don’t want other people to be able to get to it. Maybe someone set up a password to keep others from finding out something they wanted to keep hidden?”
It seemed possible that the elders might have done something like this. If they were hiding things like her mitera suspected, then it would make sense that they wouldn’t want some nosey priestess to find out. “How would I go about finding this word?”
Xuvri’s tail twitched behind him as he approached the couch. “When it was discovered that we were losing our memories, many of the Grutex began to keep journals of their lives, a written record so we could look back and remember accomplishments. Would your elders or priestesses have kept things like that?”
“There are old texts that have been handed down,” Ky said. The texts were normally kept by the elders, but now that those monsters were banished, Ky would need to find them herself. Assuming they hadn’t stolen the books from the temple when they left. “I could ping my mitera and ask her if she has any knowledge of it since she was a priestess before I was born.”
A loud knock at the entrance to the home echoed in the room, but before Ky even had the time to stand, Xuvri was in the hall. “Go back and stay with Esme,” he told her when she caught up to him.
“It is most likely Trakseer,” Ky said, trying and failing to slip past her mate. Xuvri blocked her route, and she growled at him half-heartedly. “He said he would bring the evening meal to us, so behave yourself.”