Chapter 15
fifteen
EVEREST
Idon’t puke all over my shoes, which I think is the only win I have when I appear in Erethar. The room is spinning, and for a moment, I think I’m going to pass out.
The air seems different here—thicker, sweeter. I don’t really know what to make of it. All I know is that my brain and body are freaking out because they know I’m somewhere new.
Somewhere different.
Somewhere humans don’t belong.
As I glance around, I can tell immediately I’m in the minority. Everyone in the room is Vyastil, though there are a couple of humans. They have chains on them like I do, but most of them are also wearing collars attached to what look like decorative leashes made of thin chains.
There’s not a chance in hell the average human couldn’t snap it and run, but they don’t look like they want to. They all seem a bit dazed, like they’re high on monster herbs.
I wonder if that makes the transition from Earth to Erethar easier.
I don’t want to ask, though. I want to be in full control of my faculties while I’m here because I feel like I’m in a fishbowl.
Huge rainbow eyes are on me, the tension in the room almost like they’re waiting for me to do something.
Fuck, am I supposed to speak? Do a little dance? Offer cum?
Pretty sure not that last one, considering how protective Rathyn is over me.
“Do not even consider it, my Everest,” he says in my mind.
I shudder, his voice almost like a physical touch. I look to my right, and he’s several feet away, watching me just like everyone else.
“What do I do?”
“Nothing. Let them observe.”
I hold my breath and wait, and one by one, they begin to turn away from me. Conversation picks up, but nothing in English. It’s all that melodic song they share with throats and tongues, so unlike humans, we’ll never learn to speak it.
I breathe a little easier when Rathyn steps up close to me and lays a hand on my shoulder.
So, touch isn’t forbidden. It’s just the sweet and sexy stuff they shy away from.
“Can I…speak?” I murmur.
He eyes me. “Do you think you would be silenced here?”
“No, but…I have no idea how I’m supposed to act or what I’m supposed to do. How many of your people can understand me?”
“Nearly all of them. We absorb language the way the ground absorbs water. It is…simple. Even if we cannot speak it.”
He means Cielo, of course. And probably other monsters like him who can’t seem to get their long tongues to work around our blunt language.
“Are there reasons Vyastil can’t speak English?”
“Yes.”
That’s all he says, and I don’t feel like I can ask anything else. Not here. Not with this company.
“Come,” Rathyn says. He squeezes my shoulder, then walks ahead of me, and I can’t help but follow. I can feel Vyastil eyes on me, and for a moment, I wait for the humiliation to hit me, being almost completely naked in a room full of strangers.
But it doesn’t.
Not really.
When there’s hunger in their stares, I feel a tug in my mind from Rathyn, reminding me I’m his, and that is the strangest comfort. It’s one that wraps around me and follows me out of the room.
We enter a long hallway, the walls very white and very polished. I can’t tell where the light is coming from. At least, not at first. But a few feet into the corridor, I realize it’s the walls.
“They’re glowing.” I want to reach out and touch, but I’m a little afraid.
Rathyn looks over his shoulder, ears twitching. “Gl…owing?” he says slowly.
“The walls.” I lift my hand and hover it near the white stone. There’s slight heat coming from whatever they’re made of.
“Ah. Yes. We have no need for the electricity that humans use.” He threads his fingers through mine and pulls my hand back. “Come, my Everest.”
We start walking again, down a maze of hallways. If I tried to escape, I’d probably die before being able to find my way out again. I probably should panic. I don’t like feeling trapped, and I really don’t enjoy feeling lost.
But my heart’s beating steadily, and it’s not long before the hallway opens up to a massive atrium. There’s a tree in the center, but it looks nothing like the trees on Earth. The leaves are a myriad of colors, the trunk a rich pink, and it’s growing right from the stone floors.
My breath heaves in my chest at the strangeness of it all, but Rathyn doesn’t seem to notice. He tugs me further along until we pass through a set of doors, and it’s then that I realize we’re outside.
Their sun—is it even a sun if it’s in a different universe?—isn’t as powerful as the one on Earth. The light is softer, cooler, kinder. I can’t see where it’s coming from, but I’m way too afraid to look.
The last thing I need is radiation from another universe burning holes in my retinas. Instead, I fix my gaze on the sky ahead of me. It stretches into waves of pink and orange like a desert sunset, and there are clouds, so that probably means it also rains here on Erethar.
I want to ask. I have a thousand questions, but I can’t seem to form words.
Rathyn notices that my steps have slowed, and he turns, his face softening and his ears flicking back as he approaches. There’s a street ahead of us and plenty of Vyastil walking around in either sheer robes or nothing at all, but none of them pay us any mind.
He sets his hands on my shoulders, then takes my chin between his fingers, claws pricking at my skin, and tilts my head back.
My gaze fixes on the teal sky, and that’s when I see them—all four moons.
They’re faint in the daylight, but massive compared to what Earth has. Something in me wells up, emotion trapped in my throat.
“I think I want to cry.”
He huffs softly. “Most humans are overwhelmed the first time they set foot here. It gets easier.”
“Was Earth like this for you?”
He’s quiet for a long moment, then he says, “Not until I saw the water.”
“The…water?”
“The sea. The…” He hesitates, and then I realize he’s talking about the Great Lakes. “We do not have that here. No seas above land. No oceans. All of our water is beneath the ground. When I first saw it, it was vast and strange.”
I want to pull him against me, but I know I can’t. We might be able to break social protocol on Earth, but here, he’s a commander. He’s important. I won’t do that to him.
“Where are we going?” I ask as he urges me to follow along.
“My home. It isn’t far.” He points up a hilly, cobbled street.
“Do you have cars, or are we walking?”
Making a humming noise of amusement in the back of his throat, he shakes his head. “Little human. You have no problem running in your world. You would not run in mine?”
“I…” I don’t want to tell him my knees are still wobbling.
He points to a set of two posts close together that seem to have very little purpose at all, but when he pulls me toward them and places his hand on the right one, it shimmers.
“Another portal?”
“It is convenient.”
Fan-fucking-tastic, I think as he steps through, and I don’t get more than a second to breathe before I’m tumbling after him.
I don’t feel the urge to throw up this time, so that’s a plus. And I’m not sure what I expected out of Rathyn’s house, but the way he was so fucking fussy about his living quarters at The Foundry, I expected a damn palace.
His place is large—made from the same stone that emits light and heat—but it’s sparsely furnished. There’s a massive…thing that might be called a couch in the center of the room with a dozen blankets that might be made of some kind of monster animal fur.
There are shelves lined with books and plants I couldn’t possibly name in ceramic pots, and one wall is entirely made of windows, showing off vast, rolling hills and tall mountains that cascade past cities to what looks like small villages.
I can’t help but press my face against it. It’s cool and thick and oddly textured, and I rub my fingers over it as I stare across the horizon.
“Can we go there?” I press my finger to the glass over the spot where the farthest mountain is.
He steps up behind me, wrapping his tail around my leg, his arms around my waist, and he breathes in my scent. “We cannot.”
“Forbidden?”
“Unsafe.” His lips trail a touch over my neck, and I shudder. Fuck, I love that he loves kissing. “While we have won the war, there are still factions of angry Tarek hidden in the hills. I will not put you in harm’s way.”
I didn’t know about the war, but I know better than to prod for information. He feeds it to me in small bursts, and I consume them the way his people seem to consume language.
“Do you only speak English? Like, on Earth?”
He huffs a soft, rumbling laugh. “No. I am also fluent in Italian, French, Mandarin, Arabic, and Urdu.”
“Weird mix,” I say.
“Arabic and Urdu were easiest to wrap my tongue around.” He spins me, pressing my back to the glass, and my cock perks up in the wrapped adornment.
The jewel in my slit feels like it’s going a little deeper, and I hold back a gasp as his tongue flicks out and he dips his head to taste my nipple.
“But I would like to wrap my tongue around something else, my Everest.”
“Time for a suck?”
He looks at me, hunger in his eyes as his hand trails down my chest. “You would allow it?”
Part of me wants to say no just to see him pout, but today has also been a lot, and I think letting him have one of his orgasms might help take the edge off.
“No ruenox,” I tell him. “No fifteen times in a row.”
He huffs, rumbling a purr against me, but he nods. “I will partake in the rest at home so as not to offend anyone here.”
I stiffen. How would we offend anyone? Is someone watching? The way he tilts my head and kisses me says no, but I’m nervous, so it’s easy to agree.
“I want you,” I murmur against his ear. It flicks lightly against me, and his tail moves up, grazing over the metal wrapping around my cock. “Undress me,” I almost beg.
He hums his assent and gets to work.