Cleo
CLEO
I can hear voices and there’s the scent of woodsmoke in my nostrils, along with the spicy smell of Maxym’s feathers. None of it makes sense to my foggy brain. I put my hand to my head and rub over my eyes before I open them.
I find I’m looking up into a cave roof. Lights are dotted within it like stars. They’re almost too bright.
“Hello, little scrap,” Maxym intones, his face coming into view.
I’m lying in his arms. He’s sat on a large couch which is covered with blankets. When I turn my head, a fire burns brightly in a small grate.
“Where are we?” I croak.
“It’s a long story,” Maxym says. “Here, drink this.” He lifts a glass with pale green liquid to my lips.
I take a sip. It tastes like orange, and I take a gulp of the cool liquid which is like a silky balm to my rough throat.
“Easy,” he rumbles. “You’ve been out for nearly twenty nova-hours.”
“The dome…the creatures…” I splutter over the glass. “I was…injured?” I inspect my arms, even though I know it was my back. I’m wearing a long dress I don’t recognize.
“Healed,” Maxym rumbles, a strange look in his eye.
“The Bogarok invaded. They do that.” A male Cirmos, his stripes much darker than Tibi’s, appears from around the couch.
I look at Maxym. “Those things were Bogarok?”
“Foul creatures,” he growls.
“More than that, they only attack somewhere if they’re being directed to do so,” the Cirmos says. “So, it means they’re the advance party. Something else wants Trefa.”
“Who is this?” I ask Maxym, who seems surprisingly unconcerned about the proximity of the Cirmos.
“This is Pryax. He saved you and treated me.”
It’s then I see the bandages wrapped around his arm, along with a long tube snaking from it to a fluid-filled bag hung nearby.
“You were hurt? We were hurt?” I gasp, tears springing to my eyes as my hand goes to my stomach.
“You will all be fine,” Pryax says soothingly, although I note he keeps his distance. “The treatment to remove the poison from your system worked, and your unborn young is unaffected. The gladiator will live. I’m sure he’s had far worse.”
Maxym gives him a rather wet grin. “I have,” he slurs proudly.
“What have you given him?”
“Something to relax. He was on edge, wouldn’t stop pacing, and this space is not designed for those wings,” Pryax grumbles. “Plus he kept opening his wounds.”
“So, you drugged him?”
“He consented…sort of.” Pryax pulls the tube from Maxym’s arm.
I watch as the light comes back into my big Gryn’s eyes. He blinks a few times, half smiles, and then releases a growl, which is quickly cut off as I shove my hands into his feathers.
“See, you do it too,” Pryax snaps as he walks away, tail lashing.
“Do what?” Maxym asks, his voice soft.
“Look after you.” I smile at him. “Like you look after me.”
“You got hurt.” The confusion on his face indicates he hasn’t rid himself of the drug as quickly as I thought. “I failed. You are my mate. You should not get hurt while I can wield a sword.”
“You plan for a Bogarok invasion regularly then?”
“No.” His brow furrows.
“Well then.” I work my fingers deeper, luxuriating in the feel of his silky down under my touch.
“You are my mate, . I want to sheathe my cocks in your heat, make you come on my tongue. I want to feel your belly riding me as you grow round with young,” he says happily. “I want to fill your fertile womb over and over again with younglings,” he continues, eyes closed. “You are mine.”
It looks like I have the unabridged version of Maxym today—fewer growls and more truth.
“Is that so?” I lean my head against his chest.
“Never leave me again,” he says, his voice filled with sorrow. “I cannot survive without you, little .”
“You can’t get rid of me that easily, Maxym,” I respond. “Who’s going to supply you with weapons?”
I feel the laugh rumbling in his chest before he sighs deeply. When I look up at his face, he’s clearly asleep, his strong jaw slack and his breathing even.
With some difficultly, I extract myself from his embrace, even if he is warm and comfortable. My muscles scream at me as Maxym shifts but doesn’t wake.
I find the Cirmos in a side alcove which appears to be a makeshift food prep area.
“Your mate is fine. He needs rest. All gladiators need rest,” he says without looking up at me.
“Maxym doesn’t strike me as the sort of male who rests.” I fold my arms over my chest.
“Which is why he should take it when he can.” Pryax replies.
“He was drugged enough in the dome. He’s free now.”
“And how do you figure that?” Pryax fixes his dark green gaze on me, his pupils slits.
“Because everything’s gone to shit and…” I hesitate as information I don’t recall receiving comes to the forefront of my brain. “He doesn’t have his tracker.”
“You have a thoughtbond with this Gryn?” Pryax is suddenly in front of me, looking me up and down as if he can see something different about me.
“What the hell is a thoughtbond?” I say, moving away from the Cirmos and instead pouring myself a cup of what looks like joh.
I need the alien equivalent of caffeine right now.
“It’s a mind link between fated mates.” Maxym’s sinful deep voice rumbles from behind me. “It’s the reason you knew about the tracker being removed without witnessing it.”
I turn and hand him the cup of joh, figuring he could use it more than I could, although potentially more stimulants might not necessarily be a good thing depending on what the Cirmos has given him.
He downs it in one and grimaces. “Cold.”
“I’ll put on a fresh pot.” Pryax makes a move, but Maxym already has him by the scruff of his neck.
“Why am I not free?”
Pryax shakes himself loose with a grunt and a grumble, pressing his thumb on a vid screen hung on the wall.
It fires into life, and there is a head of one of the horrible Bogarok large in the frame.
“All fighters are to give themselves up. All warriors and all gladiators.” The words drop into my head like a length of chain. “Anyone found harboring a gladiator, especially a Gryn, will be put to death.”
Pryax turns the screen off.
“So, no one is free, Maxym. Least of all you.”