CHAPTER ELEVEN | Fiona
“You OK? We thought we heard you fall in there,” Tilly asked as we headed out into the morning light.
“We would have come in to check on you,” Nasrin added, “but it looked like Dalk had it covered. The man stalked in there after you like he was prepared to dig you out of a mountain of rubble or something.”
“I’m fine,” I squeaked, my head still spinning over what had just happened between Dalk and me. At the sound of my voice, Dalk turned back, frowning at me from where he walked just ahead with Oxriel and Zoren. I was tempted to stick my tongue out at him again, but thought better of it. We’ve had way too much tongue stuff happening between us over the past twenty-four hours. No more tongues!
Seriously. Who the hell ignores actual wound treatment supplies, sees a scraped knee, and just goes ahead and fucking licks it?!
And perhaps the even more pointed question...
Who the hell gets so turned on by a man going after her leg like it’s an ice lolly that she hopes he’ll go even higher?
Would he have?
I stared at Dalk’s muscled back, his smooth bronze and black hide gleaming beneath his straps and blades in the hushed rosiness of Deep Sky dawn. He’d braided his hair today, I noticed. He often wore it loose, but not this morning. Maybe he thought it would get in the way for the vaklok. That thought sent his earlier words pinging back to me, words about how my human ears were so stupid that I should braid my hair just to help them out, and irritation snapped inside me like dry tinder between two hands.
Yeah. Right. The man who did nothing but glare and growl at me, who complained non-stop and never seemed to agree with me, was absolutely, positively, not about to go down on me in the cave this morning. The thought I’d even anticipated it, had wanted it in some breathless, not-really-acknowledging-it way, proved what a damn creep I really was. There Dalk was, just doing his alien thing, trying to help my sorry human ass out and deal with my scraped knee, meanwhile I was about two seconds away from yanking off my knickers and guiding him to my throbbing fucking clit.
I’m a pervert, I moaned internally as our group joined up with Gahn Thaleo and Warrek in the aguir circle outside the mountain. I’m a pervert and a sexual harasser.
But... Dalk really had gone higher than my knee during that weird grooming session of his...
And then I’d kicked him in the face.
I was cleaning your wound.
He had said it with such stiffly slicing finality. Maybe he thought I’d scratched myself higher up as well, or something. The Sea Sand guys didn’t typically lie or try to obfuscate the truth. They really did just say whatever was on their mind and damn the consequences because some of the time, at least where Dalk was concerned, it was something halfway (or all the way) offensive.
I could still feel the hot ghost of his tongues on my leg beneath my trousers. And could feel how hard my foot had connected with his face, poor guy. Luckily his alien bones were stronger than human ones and I hadn’t knocked any teeth lose. Although that hadn’t exactly helped his lower lip... I gripped the pile of paper in my hands tighter and hoped his injured mouth wouldn’t put him at any sort of disadvantage in the events of the vaklok. It probably wouldn’t. The only thing he”d likely need his mouth for today was talking, eating, grumbling complaints at me, and...
And licking my leg.
Shut up.
The more I replayed the memory from the cave, the hazier the details became. Had Dalk really worked his way as far up my thigh as I seemed to think he had? Or was that just my horny human mind playing tricks on me? I honestly could not be certain now. And his tongues were so freaking long. His head might have really just stayed down at my knee level and just the general movement of his tongues made it feel like he was moving upwards...
God. I can’t keep thinking about this.
Running over the memory wasn’t making things any clearer. In fact, it was only making things worse. The only thing that would clear anything up now would be talking to him, but that really wasn’t Dalk’s style, and I got the sense he’d done all the talking he meant to on the matter. He was cleaning my wound. End of discussion. I didn’t think it would be worth the agonizing humiliation of trying to open the conversation back up by saying, “But are you sure you weren’t actually going to lick my pussy this morning, Mr. Big Grumpy Alien?”
Yeah. I didn’t even want to imagine how that would go. And maybe I was a coward, because the worst part wouldn’t even be the embarrassment of broaching such a topic with him. No, the worst part, the part I couldn’t even bear to imagine, was the hurt I’d no doubt feel when he inevitably gawked at me, sight stars spinning with disbelief, and told me just how stupid I was for even thinking he’d want to... well... do me. He’d tell me I was certifiably insane, which wouldn’t be all that bad. No, the bad part would be just how sad I’d be after.
Goddamnit.
Apparently, my dumb human ass had developed a wee bit of a crush on the grumpiest Sea Sand male known to womankind. Unfortunately, this nonsense seemed to go beyond just physical attraction, because just being attracted to somebody didn’t make me feel like my heart was getting all squished up at the thought of Dalk staring balefully at me and saying, “Stupid, horny human, I was not going to lick your genitals.”
Oh God.
While I was casually having this silent mental breakdown, my feet kept on walking, carrying me along with the group as we followed Gahn Thaleo and Warrek out of the big open circle in front of the main mountain. We moved through a short valley, the blue stone of the mountains all around us turned to shades of copper and indigo by the orange light of the rising sun. Eventually, we exited this narrow valley into another more open area of aguir stone surrounded by mountains on all sides. The translucent turquoise rock was smooth beneath our feet and in the dawn light looked even more like silvery ice than usual.
It looked like the rest of Gahn Thaleo’s tribe was already here and waiting for us. The women, children, and mated men were all seated on stone benches raised in an ascending line against a bank of rock that made me blink and think for a second that I was looking at Earth bleachers. If bleachers were made of glittering blue stone and were built for aliens bigger than 99.9% of humans, anyway. The participants of the vaklok, now joined by Gahn Thaleo, Warrek, Dalk, Oxriel, and Zoren, were gathered in a loose knot on the stone, awaiting instruction.
Valeria and Grim went to scope out the stone bleachers, finding a spot at the top where Grim’s giganticness wouldn’t obscure anyone else’s view. Nasrin and Tilly gave the Sea Sand lads some words of encouragement, telling them “Good luck!”
I stared at Dalk’s back like a dope in silence until my friends pulled me away to the benches.
The three of us settled on the second row. There was no one sitting in the first row of benches, and it felt weirdly exposed there, like we might get hit by some stray projectile or something. Zaria, one of the Deep Sky women who’d befriended us, was in the second row alone, and she told us that her mate was currently out on a patrol. I scooted in beside her, followed by Tilly and Nasrin on her other side.
“What is all this?” Zaria asked, casting brilliant sight stars down at the papers I’d almost forgotten I was holding.
“Oh! Good. You brought them. I wasn’t paying attention,” Tilly said, noticing the papers in my hands for the first time.
“They’re posters. Like... Signs.” I wasn’t exactly sure how to explain something like a poster to a culture who didn’t seem to have anything of the sort. Instead, I just shuffled through the papers on top.
“Oh!” Zaria said, her sight stars misting like frost across her dark eyes before zooming back in to focused points. “These are the Sea Sand men!”
“I know! Aren’t they incredible?” Tilly asked, and Nasrin nodded enthusiastically while I blushed.
“They’re not that good,” I said with a laugh.
“Yes, they are,” Zaria said. “The likenesses are uncanny. I can tell which man is which by first glance.”
I’d always loved art and had spent a lot of time in my youth drawing in the hopes of becoming a tattoo artist someday. The posters, though, were definitely no great work of artistry. They were simple, cartoony renderings of Dalk, Oxriel, and Zoren on three separate sheets of paper. We would have just written their names, but realized that they might not be able to read them. Or, even if they could read them after receiving their Valentine’s Day cards, they might be too far away to actually see the letters.
So I’d suggested putting their faces smack dab in the middle of the posters, one face per sheet of paper, right above the name on each one. The result was that I currently held a big, grinning Oxriel face; a serious, pink-sight-starred Zoren face; and a fiercely frowning Dalk face.
Some of the children had noticed Zaria’s interest in the posters and came creeping closer, some from behind, and two bold young girls coming towards the first row of benches in front of us, sliding their blue bums along the stone until they were in front of us and could see the posters for themselves.
“Are these your mates?” asked one of the girls, the smaller one, seriously.
“No, Wanda,” said the other one with the stern authority only a slightly older child could muster towards a younger one, “If those were their mates, then they would not be participating in the vaklok. The vaklok is only for unmated men.”
“Oh.” Wanda looked chastened, casting her gaze down at the posters and avoiding eye contact.
“Is your name Wanda?” I asked her gently, bending forward towards her.
She twitched her tail, indicating yes, bright blue sight stars still aimed downwards.
“Did you know that Wanda is also a name where we come from?”
That had her whipping her gaze up to mine. Big round eyes, wide with surprise.
“Really?”
“Yup!” I said, unable to keep myself from smiling at her. I tried to figure out how old she was. It was always tricky with little Sea Sand or Deep Sky nuggets, because they were just so much bigger than human children, plus I had very little experience with kids in general. But if I had to guess, I’d probably place Wanda around a human five or six, the other girl probably closer to something like eight.
“And what’s your name?” Tilly asked the older girl with a kind smile.
“Vanda.”
“Wanda and Vanda. Love the rhyme scheme. Are you two sisters?” I asked.
The girls twitched their tails in unison.
“Here,” I said, shuffling the posters of the Sea Sand boys to the bottom of the pile and revealing blank pages. “Take these.” I gave them all the blank papers I had in my pile, along with a spare pen from my pocket. Nasrin and Tilly also rummaged around in their pockets, pulling out a pen each and passing them over.
“These are called pens. They’re like little paint brushes with the ink already inside.” I clicked on one of the pens, a bright red ball-point, and drew a small line in the corner of a white paper. Wanda audibly gasped at the red mark left behind. Vanda stayed quiet, as if pretending she knew all about human pens and wasn’t impressed in the least, but I could tell by the intensity of her young gaze that she was dying to try it for herself.
I clicked the pen on and off a couple more times to show them how that part worked, then passed all the pens and paper over to the girls.
“Take these to the other kids and make your own posters. That’s what these are. Posters,” I held up one of the posters, grimacing to see I’d grabbed Dalk’s snarling face from my pile. I put it back down hurriedly, just in time to acknowledge the squeaky “Thank you!” before Wanda and Vanda bounded away to join their friends who were waiting watchfully in the other rows. Vanda distributed the papers and pens, giving instructions like she’d been using human pens all her life.
I was glad the children were so into it. I didn’t want the only posters of support in the stands to be for our home team. But our Sea Sand guys were just so outnumbered here. And after what Oxriel and Dalk went through in these mountains before...
I just wanted them to know we were here for them.
Tilly and Nasrin grabbed Oxriel and Zoren’s posters from the pile, leaving me with Dalk’s face. Of course.
“These really are clever,” Zaria said from beside me, glancing down at Dalk’s grumpy image. “I admired my mate Arton before the Vrika ever came for him, you know. I would have liked to have let him know it in some small way.”
Before I could get all weirdly defensive and blurt out something about definitely not admiring Dalk, I switched gears.
“Did you guys, like, date?”
Zaria’s sight stars pulsed in confusion at my question.
“Courting, I guess? Is it common to have a relationship with someone before the Vrika establishes a mate bond?” I clarified.
She sliced her hand through the air. “No. It is not common. Young people will occasionally have casual physical encounters, telling themselves it is practice for when the Vrika bestows a mate upon them.”
“Ah. The good old friends-with-benefits situation,” I said, nodding sagely. “We have that at home, too.”
“But otherwise, no,” she said. “At least not in our tribe. We are counselled from our youth not to establish bonds too deep with anyone, lest those bonds be painfully severed when the Vrika calls and chooses another mate for us.”
“So you don’t abide by the whole, ‘it’s better to have loved and lost’ thing eh?”
At her blank stare I waved away my words.
“Never mind. It’s just a saying from where I come from.”
Zaria appeared to be mulling over my words as I turned my attention back to the men below. With what Zaria had just told me in mind, I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the single men down there would never get to have the whole ‘loved and lost’ deal?
And how many of them loved, but loved secretly, never for the other person to know, only for the Vrika to bond that person to someone else?
There were just so few women here. Some of the dudes down there had to have had feelings for someone who ended up with another man. There were several human/alien couples I could think of even now where the two people fell in love before the mate bond was established – Priya and Lerokan, for example, or Kat and Galok – so I knew those feelings were possible without the Vrika or Lavrika’s call.
I ran a sympathetic eye over the Deep Sky males, and my eye didn’t stop when it reached our Sea Sand boys. Zoren could probably identify with the Deep Sky men more than most. The Death Plains also had no more unmated women, and their tribe was even smaller than this one.
What we really need, I thought idly, not noticing or maybe not willing to acknowledge how my gaze seemed to have snagged on Dalk’s hulking form, is another ship with a bunch of human ladies on it to crash here...
I sat bolt upright, as if someone had pinched me and pinched me hard.
What the hell, Fiona?
None of us humans had chosen to come here, and frankly the whole ordeal had been more than a smidge traumatic. Drugged and taken from our homes? Watching the crew of the ship get slaughtered by alien crap-spider monsters? Then getting carted off by Fallo’s men who we weren’t sure would rape us or eat us or maybe try to keep us as pets? I shouldn’t have been wishing that on anyone else just so that some lonely alien lads might one day get some sweet human loving.
I knew all that. Told it to myself very, very sternly. But still kinda thought about it, just at the back of my mind, as I watched the restless males below. There were some really, really good men here. Men who might never get to love someone, or at least have that person love them back and start a family with them. Though I felt nothing romantic towards him, I was pretty sure I would throw a fucking fit if sweetie pie Oxriel didn’t end up with someone! Or Zoren, with his thoughtful, serious nature. Or any of the other decent guys in the Deep Sky tribes or the ones that I’d gotten to know at the Sea Sand settlement.
Or Dalk...
No. Not Dalk. That grumpy, knee-licking man could just be alone forever and see if I cared.
I was pretty sure I would care, actually, and that just made everything worse.
Even now, as only one of approximately twenty men in the clearing, Dalk was the only one my eye was drawn to again and again.
And again.
It looked like something was happening now, though, which distracted me from my weird, brooding thoughts about Dalk’s future romantic prospects. The men were spreading out a bit, and Gahn Thaleo had separated himself from the group, now facing the stands where we all sat watching and waiting.
“Welcome to the vaklok,” he said. He seemed to make no real effort to speak loudly, but his quietly thunderous voice carried in the dawn-steeped air. “The vaklok is a Deep Sky tradition wherein the unmated males of our tribe may participate in feats of strength and skill. We are honoured to not only have our mated tribe members and their children here to watch, but also the new women.”
Kind of rich how he’s talking about being honoured by the presence of the new women, plural, when he’s only looking at Nasrin...
“The first round of the vaklok will be an archery competition.”
Ah, shit.
Our home team sure wasn’t going to do well in the first round, that was for damn sure. Not a single one of them had ever touched a bow before, unless they’d done some secret training in Gahn Errok’s territory that I didn’t know about. The announcement didn’t seem to faze any of our Sea Sand boys, though, which made me think they’d already been told what the first event would be. While he didn’t look surprised, Dalk did look especially pissed-off, and I empathized with that. I couldn’t help but wonder if archery was always the first round of events in the vaklok, or if Gahn Thaleo had put it first on purpose to give his men the upper hand. Not that actually winning any rounds in these games would mean anything, but it would make his men look better than ours.
That bothered me. Clutching my frowny Dalk poster, I vowed to cheer for our Sea Sand boys as much as I could.
“The second round,” Gahn Thaleo continued, “will be a braxilk-riding race.”
Double shit.
Guess I’m gonna be cheering really, really loud.
“The third round, after we break for a ceremonial morning meal, will be hand-to-hand combat.”
Was it just me, or did Dalk perk up a bit there? He seemed to be standing a little straighter, his frown more determined than angry now.
At least in a regular, feet-on-the-ground sort of competition, the Sea Sand guys should be evenly matched against their opponents.
“Warrek,” Gahn Thaleo called, “you may set up the targets for the first round of events.”
Gahn Thaleo’s right-hand-man Warrek got to work hanging five snare-drum-looking circles on a high ledge of stone clear across this part of the valley. The circles with their taut surfaces of stretched hide had dark splotches in the centre, much like a human target. But unlike the red and white targets I was used to thinking about on Earth, these ones had no outer rings. Just the small circle in the centre. Which, I supposed, meant it only counted if you hit dead-on. No half points for hitting somewhere else on the target.
As Warrek got that sorted out, and the competitors took their positions a solid twenty metres away from the targets, Gahn Thaleo turned back towards the stands.
And then he sat down. Right next to Nasrin.
“I thought all unmated males participated in the vaklok,” Nasrin said. Her tone was very smooth and even mildly curious, and not betraying any other sort of emotion. If she was annoyed by Gahn Thaleo’s choice of seat, she didn’t show it at all.
“Not the Gahn,” he clarified, his voice a low rumble. “It is already established that the Gahn should be the strongest, that he excels physically over the men in his tribe. It is unnecessary to compete, even if unmated, just to prove what is already known.”
It was almost weird how there was absolutely no ego in what he said. He wasn’t bragging about being the strongest in his tribe, it was like he was just stating a simple fact. I actually thought it showed a little bit of humility to not compete if he already knew he’d blow through all the events and leave his fellow tribesmen in the dust.
I also couldn’t help but wonder if Gahn Errok’s tribe held vakloks. If they did, I’d bet Gahn Errok competed, just to remind everybody how baller he was, at least in his own mind. I was suddenly reminded of him up high on the cliffs back at the settlement, doing his weighted Olympic squats to try to show Stephanie what a catch he was. Poor sod was so, so misguided with all that macho crap. Guess he figured it out, though, because the two of them were so damn sweet in love it almost made my teeth hurt.
Nasrin nodded, not saying anything else. I couldn’t be sure from this angle, especially with Zaria and Tilly between us on the bench, but it kind of looked like Gahn Thaleo was staring stonily down at the poster in Nasrin’s hands. She had the poster with Zoren’s face on it, and something told me Gahn Thaleo really didn’t like that. And something else told me that it wasn’t just because she was supporting someone outside of his tribe, either. I had a feeling he wouldn’t like to see her cheering on even one of his own men.
Man. That dude seemed like he was in real fucking deep. He obviously hadn’t been called by the Vrika to be mated with Nasrin or else he would have already tried to use that to his advantage by now. There was no way he’d allow his mate to sleep in Gahn Errok’s mountain, same way Gahn Errok hadn’t allowed such a thing with Stephanie. But, despite the almost complete lack of emotions this Deep Sky Gahn showed on his scarred face, I and anyone else with two working eyes in their head could see he was down bad for our pretty, green-eyed friend.
Though I was maybe a little too nosy about the whole Nasrin/Thaleo seating situation over there, I really couldn’t see much else now that Zaria and Tilly were sitting leaning towards the arena excitedly. I turned my eyes forwards once more to see the first set of five men stepping up with their bows, ready to fire their arrows across the valley.
The first five men to shoot were Deep Sky men. Three of them hit dead-on in the centre of the targets, the other to just a hair outside the centre mark. Once those five were finished shooting, Warrek took down the targets and stretched new hide over the frames, as they’d been blown out by the previous arrows. Once they were fixed-up, he repositioned them in the same places as before, up on the stony ledge.
The next group of five consisted of four Deep Sky men and Zoren. All four Deep Sky men hit the centre of the target this time. Zoren was the slowest to unloose his arrow, and Nasrin called out a cheer to him, waving her poster like a flag in the air. He didn’t look over, totally absorbed in what he was doing, his pink sight stars pulled in so tight with focus they almost looked like human pupils, if pupils could be pink.
Zoren actually did pretty well, all things considered. His arrow didn’t really come close to hitting his target, but it did sail nice and high and fast, whizzing through the air in what seemed to be a decent arc to my untrained eye. Warrek only had to fix up four targets that time, since Zoren’s hadn’t been damaged, and then it was on to the next group. This group was once again four Deep Sky males, including Warrek, and the fifth was Oxriel.
“Woo! Go Ox!” I called, cupping one of my hands around my mouth. Tilly raised her poster over her head. Oxriel glanced over at us, offering us a grateful yet self-effacing sort of grin, as if to say, well, here goes nothing.
Dalk glanced at us, too. Well, no. Not really. He didn’t glance. He glared.
And he didn’t glare at us. Just me.
I ignored him, focusing on the five men up to bat, so to speak. Oxriel drew his arm back along with the other four, then let his arrow go.
I gasped, then jumped up without even noticing I’d done it. Oxriel’s arrow hadn’t hit the centre – it hadn’t even hit the target well enough to tear the hide at all – but it had skimmed the very top edge.
All three of us humans in the second row, plus Valeria somewhere behind, went absolutely bananas. Oxriel turned that boyish grin our way once more, though there was an edge of cockiness to it now that made me chuckle and shake my head at him. As Oxriel moved away from his place, he handed his bow to Dalk. I couldn’t hear it from here, but it looked like Oxriel said something. Whatever it was, Dalk didn’t seem to enjoy the comment. He hissed at Oxriel, snatching the bow like he planned to bop Oxriel over the head with it.
He didn’t, though it looked like he really, really wanted to. Dalk took a short, heaving sort of breath, then stepped into place in the final group of archers.
Dalk was up against four Deep Sky men, and I felt oddly nervous for him. He didn’t have Zoren’s nearly zen, steady sort of focus. Nor did he have Oxriel’s jaunty optimism. No, he had anger and muscles and a whole bunch of blades. So many blades, in fact, that he could not hold and draw back the bow properly. As the other four men got into position and prepared to nock their arrows, Dalk had to pause and begin stripping out of his many straps and belt, leaving the leather and the black glint of his weapons in a pile by his clawed feet.
My breath caught when he straightened, completely bare except for his loincloth. Had I ever seen him without weapons criss-crossed over his back and chest? I was fairly certain I hadn’t. Because I would have remembered a view like this. The view of the rippling, broad expanse of his back, the hard taper down to his waist, the muscles casting shadows of their own in the rising morning light.
Two of the Deep Sky men took their shots, one hitting the centre and the other hitting very close. The third Deep Sky man and Dalk nocked their arrows at the same time. For someone who didn’t actually know much about archery, Dalk cut one hell of a fine form standing there with his arm drawn back like that.
“Go Dalk!”
I said it kind of quietly, almost furtively, like I was embarrassed or something. Which made me feel a little guilty, considering how loud I’d cheered for Oxriel a moment ago.
But I was pretty sure that Dalk heard me. A new tension entered the place between his shoulder blades, his muscles bunching as he pulled the arrow back with one fearsome sweep...
And promptly snapped the bow string.
The Deep Sky man beside him let his arrow go. It hit its target dead-on while Dalk’s fell useless to the stone directly in front of his feet.
Dalk was very quiet and very still. He looked down at his bow like it had betrayed him in some deeply unforgiveable way. Then, he wrapped a hard fist around each end of the wooden curve of the weapon. His biceps and forearm muscles bunched beneath his hide as he brought the bow down at the precise moment he yanked his knee up. Flesh and bone connected with wood, and a snapping sound rang out as the massive bow was broken like it had been nothing more than a dry twig.
“Oh, Dalk,” I sighed, resting the poster of him in my lap. I doubted he would have been allowed another turn – I was pretty sure that tearing the bow string and dropping the arrow counted the same way taking an actual shot did – but he didn’t have to go and break the bow afterwards, did he?
I leaned back on the bench, sending what I hoped was a subtle glance Gahn Thaleo’s way behind the backs of Tilly, Zaria, and Nasrin. Since he was so damn big, I could see him this way, at least in profile. He didn’t look angry, which I supposed was a good thing, though you could never quite tell what a good thing was with Thaleo. He didn’t look surprised either. He watched impassively and then without warning ordered Warrek to collect the targets and then bring out the braxilk for the next round of the vaklok.
While Warrek took down the targets, climbing the stone incline to reach them one by one, Dalk was busy doing... something. I watched him with my eyebrows pinched in confusion as he shoved the broken pieces of his bow together and bound them with the snapped string. Then, he hoisted the thing up in one fist, cocked his arm, and hurled it as hard as he could.
I yelped, my stomach lurching almost painfully as I saw the broken bow, now almost spear-like, slice through the air.
It hit the target in the very centre of the centre.
And it almost took poor Warrek’s hand off in the process. He’d just reached Dalk’s target after taking down the others, and only just snatched his indigo-coloured hand away in time to keep it from getting skewered.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Now that I was certain I wasn’t about to see some poor, innocent man get an amputation he definitely hadn’t asked for, I let out a shaky breath and swivelled my gaze back to Dalk. He was already looking at me, as if wanting to check that I’d seen what he’d just done. I tried to give him a severe look, though I had to admit I was actually pretty impressed he’d hit the target merely by throwing his makeshift projectile. Hurling something one-armed like that didn’t have nearly the same force as using the tension in a well-made bow. And he hadn’t even thrown something properly balanced and aerodynamic! It was all curved and lumpy and broken, strung hastily – and furiously – together with very little thought or planning. If anything, he should have picked up the arrow and thrown that instead of the lopsided bow he’d snapped and then reconstructed in a fit of rage.
And yet, he’d still hit the target. Dead fucking centre.
Dalk’s ears and tail twitched in unison, and I realized that, like an idiot, I was smiling. I swallowed hard and clamped my lips between my teeth. It probably wasn’t the best idea to encourage Dalk in his various destructive tendencies, even if it did give me an odd thrill, low in my belly, to see him pick up the pieces of the thing he’d broken and force them by sheer fucking will into some semblance of a victory.
Not that the victory actually counted. It wasn’t a spear-throwing match, and I knew he’d failed in the eyes of the Deep Sky people.
But he hadn’t really failed to me.
I kept my face serious, but even so, I raised the poster with his likeness on it off of my lap, giving it a little, papery rattle between my hands.
His ears and tail stayed still this time. But his sight stars spasmed like I’d physically touched him. After a strangely long and tense moment, he finally broke eye contact with what looked like quite a bit of effort, bending to retrieve his weapons and straps from the ground where he’d deposited them earlier.
Warrek was finished taking down the targets now. He cast Dalk a narrow-eyed glance as he carried the targets somewhere out of sight. A few minutes later, he returned, leading five braxilk behind him.