47. Elara
47
ELARA
T he outside air tastes different—crisp, dry, laced with sand and dust—but real.
Untainted.
For the first time in what feels like forever, I breathe deep without fear of ash or collapse or death waiting in the shadows. I close my eyes and lift my face toward the suns. Their heat scorches across my skin, but I don’t shy away.
This is what survival feels like. This is home.
Ryatuv’s hand is cool around mine. Behind me, Z’leni’s breath warms the nape of my neck, steady and grounding. We haven’t spoken since emerging from the tunnels. There hasn’t been time. Not for this—this quiet, this peace.
We stand together in the glow of a day we didn’t think we’d live to see. And still, I can hardly believe we made it.
The crowd is thinning. People spread across the dunes in clusters. Some are building shelters, others are crying or praying or kissing like they never will again. I see Queen Rani speaking with Rosalind and the Al’fa. Their silhouettes outlined against the curve of a rising dune. She catches my eye and smiles then she gives a subtle nod. I smile, proud of all that we’ve accomplished.
“Come,” Ryatuv murmurs beside me. His voice is low, rough, but there’s a gentleness to it and a deep weariness that matches my own.
Z’leni brushes his fingers against my lower back, barely there, like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he touches me too hard. I lean into both of them and let myself be led.
They guide me away from the bustle, away from the work and the noise and the weight of everything that we’ve all been through. They find a small outcropping of stone, tucked against the side of a dune, and drop our gear beside it. No one follows us.
It’s not much, just a hollow in the rock with a floor of sand, but right now, it feels like a sanctuary.
Ryatuv lowers himself first, sitting and stretching his legs out, arms braced behind him. Z’leni remains standing, eyes scanning the horizon as if he doesn’t quite trust the silence. I crouch beside Ryatuv and reach for Z’leni’s hand.
“I know that look.” My voice is quiet. “You’re waiting for the ground to swallow us again.”
He doesn’t deny it.
“I’ve been waiting for it to swallow us whole for long enough,” he murmurs. “It somehow feels wrong that it hasn’t.”
“But it didn’t,” I say, squeezing his fingers. “We’re here. We’re alive.”
“And together,” Ryatuv adds, his voice low and steady.
Z’leni kneels at my side. He raises his hand and brushes a stray hair from my face, tucking an ash and soot-streaked curl behind my ear.
“You were the light in the tunnels, Elara. I followed, even when I wanted to give up.”
His words slice into my heart and take root. The walls I built in the darkness fall away now that there’s nothing left to fight but the ache in my chest.
“I only made it because you both never let go,” I whisper. “Even when I wanted to give up, you didn’t.”
Ryatuv shifts closer, and Z’leni leans in, and I’m surrounded. Not trapped, held. Safe.
For the first time since my secret mission unraveled, I’m not running. Not surviving, not proving, not searching for who I am. I know.
I’m theirs. And they’re mine.
I press my forehead to Ryatuv’s. Z’leni’s hand curves around the back of my neck. The heat of the twin suns blends with their warmth, sinking into my skin, into my bones, until I don’t know where one of us ends and the others begin. I smile through the burn in my throat.
“We don’t have a bed,” I say with a watery laugh. “Or a roof. Or clean clothes.”
Ryatuv kisses my cheek. “We have sand, sky and each other.”
Z’leni’s voice is thick with emotion. “We’ll build everything else.”
I believe him. I know these two will take care of me and I will do the same for them.
Their lips meet mine in turn. Soft and reverent, not rushed. The way you kiss someone you never thought you’d get to touch again. I open for them, let their love pour into me, and give mine back. We don’t speak. We don’t need to.
The three of us are together beneath the suns, beneath the red streaked sky of this wild and dangerous world. And for once, there is no battle left to fight.
Only this. Only love. Only this beginning.
Z’leni’s mouth finds mine first—soft, searching, a brush of restrained need. Then Ryatuv’s, hungrier, certain, claiming. His fingers tangle in my hair as Z’leni’s travel lower to the curve of my waist, the dip of my spine.
Their hands and lips ground me. Worship me. Love me.
We fall together onto the sand, tangled and breathless. I lie between them, hearts thudding beneath each of my hands—one Zmaj, one Urr’ki. I trace their scars, the soot-streaked lines of muscle and grit and sacrifice. These bodies have bled for me, burned for me, endured because of me.
And now they’re mine to cherish.
“I need to feel you,” I whisper, voice thick with longing.
Z’leni cups my face.
“You will. Every part of us,” he whispers in my ear.
Ryatuv leans in, pressing a line of kisses down my neck.
“We’ve waited long enough,” he says.
Z’leni’s hand finds the fastening at my waist, but he pauses. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation, turning into his touch. “I’ve never been more sure of anything. Are you? Both of you?”
He smiles and I swear the stars would fall to see it. He looks at Ryatuv and for the briefest of moments we hang in the balance. A razor’s edge between an us and it all falling apart. Ryatuv’s tail twitches, flinging sand. The tension rises but right as it’s about to cut through the intensity of the moment, Ryatuv nods.
Then they undress me—together.
Their fingers are reverent as they peel the grime and ash from my body. Every motion is slow, deliberate. My shirt comes away, followed by the rest, until the suns kiss my bare skin and I shiver beneath the heat and the weight of their gaze.
They pause.
Looking at me as if I’m a miracle.
And I feel like one.
Z’leni undresses next, his emerald green skin glinting. He has tattoos that I’ve not seen. They aren’t black, like I’d expect, but silvery markings that glint in the daylight, like veins of light through polished stone.
Ryatuv follows, his dusky gold scales catching the sunlight, a fierce, wild contrast to the Urr’ki’s elegance. They are so different—warrior and sentinel, flame and shadow—but in this moment they are united in purpose.
Me.
They pause, eyes locked—and my stomach knots.
Z’leni glances at Ryatuv’s exposed cock and he makes a dismissive grunt. Ryatuv’s cock is thinner than Z’leni, but he has the wavy ridges that all Zmaj have, layering back towards his pelvis.
Z’leni is thicker, prominent veins along both sides. A beautiful rich emerald color, a deeper shade than the rest of him. As the tension builds anew I do the only thing I can think of.
I reach for them.
Grabbing their cocks, I pull their attention back where it belongs. To me.
Z’leni lowers himself, stretching beside me, his hand slipping between my thighs with exquisite gentleness. His fingers stroke, explore, tease. I gasp, curling into him as warmth spreads and pools, as need curls through my core.
Ryatuv comes behind, cradling my back to his chest, one large hand splayed over my heart, enclosing my breast. His other hand moves in tandem with Z’leni’s, echoing his touch, learning me with the same reverence.
I arch between them, every nerve alight. Every inch of me known.
“You’re trembling,” Ryatuv murmurs into my ear.
“I’m overwhelmed,” I whisper, shuddering as another shock wave of pleasure races across my body.
“Good,” Z’leni says. “Let us overwhelm you.”
He shifts lower, lips trailing down my stomach, down further still until his mouth replaces his hand. My thighs fall open. I cry out, unable to stop myself, as his tongue lavishes my pussy and Ryatuv holds me tighter.
Their hands roam, working together, never rushing. Z’leni feasts like he’s starving, and I feel Ryatuv hard and eager behind me. The rumble of his pleasure vibrates through his chest.
When I teeter on the edge, Z’leni slows. Ryatuv kisses my temple.
“We’re not done,” Ryatuv says softly.
Z’leni rises to his knees. His eyes are molten, burning with desire and his breathing is shallow. “We want to take you together.”
The words send a shiver down my spine.
“Please,” I whisper, ready and oh so willing.
Ryatuv positions me carefully, reverently, pulling me into his lap. I straddle him, knees sinking into the sand. His hands grip my hips as Z’leni kneels behind me, brushing hair from my neck, pressing a kiss to the nape.
He pauses, only for a moment, and retrieves a small bottle from our packs. Opening it, an aromatic perfume touches my senses. He pours a bit of the bottles contents into the palm of his hand then strokes it along his cock, making it gleam brightly in the suns.
“Tell us if anything hurts,” he murmurs, voice like velvet drawn over steel. “We’ll stop. Always.”
“I don’t want you to stop,” I breathe. “I want all of you.”
Ryatuv guides himself into me first—slow, steadily, filling me in a way that makes my eyes flutter shut. I moan against his shoulder, hands clutching his arms. When the first ridge reaches my entrance he pauses, letting my body adjust.
I breathe through, then he presses and it feels as if it pops in, expanding me, hitting nerves that have never been awakened before now. I gasp in pleasure.
He’s thick and warm and so familiar it breaks something in me. My body accepts him like it’s always belonged to him.
Z’leni moves behind, coaxing me to relax against him. He presses soft kisses down my spine, whispering in Urr’ki, words I can’t understand, but feel in my bones. His fingers find slickness and stretch, gentle and careful. I gasp, but it’s not pain—it’s intensity. A deeper fullness, a pleasure mounting like a rising tide. There’s pressure. Closeness.
And then they’re both inside me.
I cry out, the sound half sob, half gasp. They go still.
“Elara,” Ryatuv groans. “Is this?—?”
“Don’t stop,” I breathe. “Please don’t stop.”
They move—slow at first, bodies finding rhythm, balance, and harmony. Ryatuv thrusts upward as Z’leni rolls forward, their hands on my waist, my breasts, my thighs. I ride the waves of them, taken from both sides, surrounded, consumed. I am utterly theirs.
The rhythm builds—faster, deeper. I shatter once, then again, each climax like a sunburst through my body. I scream their names and they hold me through every tremble.
Z’leni presses his forehead to my back as he groans my name, spilling into me.
Ryatuv follows a breath later, growling as he surges up into my heat, his whole body taut with release.
When we collapse into the sand, it isn’t ruin that finds us?—
It’s rebirth.
We are a knot of limbs, slick with sweat and dust and love. Ryatuv’s hand cups my face, his eyes soft. Z’leni’s lips press to my shoulder, then my neck.
“You are everything,” Z’leni whispers.
“My treasure,” Ryatuv murmurs. “Ours. Always.”
I smile, tears slipping free, and kiss them both.
The suns blaze above. The wind whispers across the dunes. Tajss stretches out before us.
And for the first time since I woke up on this world, I feel like I’ve come home.