Chapter 14 - Bea #3
Zyntarr catches my hand in his, drawing it closer to his mouth and pressing a barely-there kiss to the backs of my fingers.
“It was when I was a naive green-male. My brothers and I thought it would be fun to hunt a firemouth - a brutal, lizard-creature whose venom will make you feel like your blood is turned to flames. It was a stupid idea. Firemouths are not good eating, and their hides are too tough to make use of,” he pauses to shake his head at himself, moving the thigh I’m perched on to shift me closer as his hand curls around my hip.
“But I wanted to prove myself to my brothers. The risk didn’t seem real to me then.
My pride, my standing in the tribe, how everyone had told me my whole life that I would be a fierce and mighty Protector because I had always been the biggest, the strongest - those things were real to me.
Anyway, we tracked the beast, and it was decided that I would be the one to lead the attack.
” Zyntarr takes a long inhale, before he brings my hand back up to his patch, urging me to caress the thing again.
I do so, almost in a trance while Zyn tilts his head to the side ever so slightly, like a cat leaning into touch.
“We did kill the thing. But it put up a good fight for the right to live. Claws, teeth, and its thick, ugly tail all thrashed around during our very inexperienced attack. These-” he gestures to the long slashes gauged into his skin from forehead, over his bad eye and down to his chin, “are proof of how hard that firemouth fought that day. If its claws had been in closer range, they would have been enough to do damage to my eye, but-” Zyntarr continues with his insanely intense gaze with his beautiful, blue eye, and he reaches up and slowly removes his worn leather patch.
I suck in a small breath. What he reveals is another eye looking back, but the blue is barely there.
It’s like it has a milky film over the top of his pretty iris, making the whole thing look like a white marble resting in the socket.
He blinks those thick lashes at me and I come back to myself.
“Firemouths spit venom when they are threatened,” he explains, tapping his own cheek beneath his ghostly eye.
“It felt like someone had replaced my eye with a burning sun.”
“That’s awful. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
Zyntarr snorts and shakes his head. “It is no less than I deserved. We did not need to hunt that firemouth. The Goddesses saw fit to take something from me as I had needlessly taken a life from their forest. I learned to live with the shame that I lost the use of this eye while being a green-male idiot, and the other scars started mounting up because of my blind spot. It was a message from the Goddesses, and now I have heard it.”
He continues staring as I slide from his lap, standing between his strong, splayed thighs.
With Zyn sitting on the nest, and me standing, it is one of the few times I’m taller than he is, though the arches of his inky wings still loom at an even greater height above me, so I suppose it’s still not true.
The difference isn’t much, maybe even only an inch or two, but the way Zyntarr tilts his head back to look up at me makes me feel taller somehow.
With the air thick, and nothing but the sounds of the jungle bugs outside, I slowly raise my hand to trace across his facial scars.
Following the brow that frames his unseeing eye with the pads of my fingertips, I map a path around the newly uncovered feature.
Some might call it ugly, unsightly, scary.
But all I see is Zyntarr. He made a mistake, like we all do.
I certainly know the weight of my past choices.
“Other males could protect you better-”
He starts to circle back to those troubling thoughts again, and I can’t help it when I cut him off by bending the short way so that I press a feather-light kiss to the lid of his injured eye.
I can feel a flitting sensation on the thin skin of Zyntarr’s eyelid beneath my lips, and I didn’t miss the way he’d sucked in a breath as soon as he’d realized what I’d meant to do.
“I don’t care about other males, " I murmur between pressing my lips to his other scars - the claw marks slicing down his face, tracing them with my mouth. “You protect me best, Zyn. You protect me from here,” I say, pressing my hand to his heart. “That’s all I want.”
Zyntarr’s big, warm hand covers the one I have placed on his scarred chest. “Even without heart-stars that shine bright for you?”
Yes, of course, my heart wants to reply, but my mouth doesn’t cooperate. It… can’t.
My eyes drop to his chest, where both our palms press over his heart. It would be so much simpler if the stars shone bright so that we knew - knew for sure that I’m for him and he’s for me. This decision feels too big to make on my own. I don’t want to fuck it up and hurt us both.
But then I look up to Zyntarr’s eyes again, both stunning blue and ghostly white. How could I ever deny this man and how he makes me feel? That spark between us that he’s done nothing but nurture this whole time, even when I’ve tried to look the other way - how could I deny its existence?
I can’t.
It’s there.
And right now it shines brighter than those heart-stars hidden by scars.
Maybe that’s enough.
“Zyn-”
I’m about to say it. I’m about to let loose those scary words. I’m about to say that heart-stars or not, I will always be his Bea. No matter what.
But Zyntarr’s big hand had moved swiftly from mine at his chest to completely covering my mouth, smothering the words that the scared part of me didn’t want to let go of in the first place.
At first, I don’t understand it. He’d asked me the question.
He must want to know the answer. And so I stand here, practically half my face covered with Zyntarr’s huge, warm palm.
But then I notice the way the black feathers on the tips of his folded wings have prickled like hackles raised on a dog, or fur all puffed up on a cat.
His tail flicks behind him in the nest and his eyes find the roof above us.
Slowly, Zyntarr stands, only glancing away from the woven palm leaves above us to briefly issue me with a command of silence - a single finger pressed over his lips.
I nod my head and look up, too. What’s up there that’s got him so spooked?
I strain my ears to hear what it is he’s picked up on, but I hear nothing.
And that’s what makes goosebumps erupt on my skin.
I hear nothing. All the jungle bugs in the forests surrounding us have gone utterly silent.
That’s never good.
One of the wooden roof beams creaks ever so slightly, and it’s then that Zyntarr moves so fast it steals my breath.
Seemingly faster than I can blink, he’s reached for his spear, thrusting it directly up, through the leaf-woven roof of his hut, causing dried segments of palm fronds and dust to dislodge and drift down.
Someone chuckles above us.
Zyntarr jerks his spear out of his roof with an annoyed grunt and we both peer up into the hole he’d just created.
There’s nothing but the evening sky at first, but then a pair of dark eyes appear, staring right back at us. “Your aim is a little off, brother,” comes an amused voice.
“Tryk,” Zyntarr growls, the wooden shaft of his spear creaking with how his hands grip it so tightly.