Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
The fire at Rekosh’s core only intensified with each step away from Ahmya, with each cold drop of rain splashing upon his hide, with each thump of his hearts. He could not escape that heat, and it would not diminish.
His stem throbbed, trapped beneath the palm he’d clasped over it. The ache behind his parted slit was a deep-seated torment that made his mind hazy with need.
Growling, he staggered to a halt and pressed harder on his stem. A shudder swept through him, forcing his fine hairs up, and water sprayed as he let out a harsh exhalation. Every pain he’d collected yesterday was more pronounced now, but none of it could overcome the heat.
He’d never felt anything like this. He’d never been so consumed by desire, so driven by lust. And he’d never had his stem suddenly… force its way out.
Every instinct demanded he go back to Ahmya. Go back and claim her the only way that mattered—by binding her and thrusting into her wet, warm slit, by leaving his marks upon her, outside and in. His limbs thrummed and his hide itched with want to return .
The red haze at the edges of his vision spread, and his hearts quickened.
“No!” he snarled, shaking his head.
Though he’d never experienced it, he knew what this was. The mating frenzy. His instincts were trying to seize control, threatening to drive him to a bestial claiming of his mate. Rekosh finally understood.
But he would not let the frenzy overcome him. He would not relinquish control, not if it meant endangering his little flower.
Bad enough that she’d been twice injured under his protection. To even think that he might harm her himself?—
No. He could not do so. Would not.
His stem pulsated as though in disagreement. Rekosh curled his fingers around his shaft and squeezed, hissing through his fangs. That grip exacerbated the ache in his core. He shut his eyes, bowed his head, and breathed. The rain fell in an erratic rhythm all around, contrasting the steady but blistering pace of his hearts.
No female had ever affected him this way. The scents of female vrix could be maddening when they were swept up in lust, and Rekosh had felt the stirrings those pheromones had caused, but he’d never been swayed by them. He’d never been tempted to succumb.
One inhalation of Ahmya’s fragrance had nearly plunged him into a mating frenzy. One taste of her nectar and he’d nearly lost himself. Had she not shoved away from him, he undoubtedly would have.
Rekosh filled his lungs with jungle air. Rain and damp ground overpowered most other smells, but he still scented her on his hide, still tasted her.
And damn his tongue, but he yearned for more.
A growl rumbled in his chest as another shudder coursed through him. Her slit had been so hot, so wet, so…delicious. That one taste hadn’t been enough. It would never be enough.
Rekosh shook himself again, shedding water from his hide, and took another breath, then another, and another.
“I must be her shield,” he said. “Her protector. Her guide. Her safety comes before all else.”
Though he knew those words were right, they were not easily enacted. He wanted her with every thread of his being. Yet in this jungle, which already overflowed with danger, his want was another threat to her. A serious threat.
Finally, his stem eased. Slowly, it receded, pulsing with each heartbeat until it had retreated fully into his slit. He did not withdraw his hands immediately, keeping them in place as the ache blossomed, its petals forcing open a gaping hollow in his chest shaped just like his little flower.
Only Ahmya could fill that chasm.
She leapt away from me…
Yet Ahmya had not initially pulled away; she’d held him closer. Her fingers had been tangled in his hair, her voice had been breathy, and her scent had been laden with desire of her own. It had enveloped him, had seduced him, more potent than the pheromones any female vrix could have produced.
She’d wanted him.
Tentatively, he lifted his lower hands. His claspers drew snugly on either side of his slit, forcing it closed. His stem did not stir.
He clenched his fists as a ragged, relieved breath escaped him. He needed to focus. Needed to be not the axe hacking through the undergrowth in broad swaths, but the spear, pointed and direct. Not the hammer, but the needle. Precise, controlled, exact.
She was his. That would not change. She was his purpose, his meaning, his heartsthread. And standing out here alone was of no service to her .
Rekosh opened his eyes.
The rain persisted, leaving the air cool and misty, and the Tangle seemed peaceful. He knew that serenity was but a mask, a thin veil obscuring the danger and chaos beneath, but that did not stop him from appreciating the relative quiet.
Turning around, he set off toward the shelter. He swayed with each stride, his gait still disrupted by his injured foreleg. The bone was not broken; he knew that much, though he could not guess the depth of the damage otherwise. A healer like Diego would have the right words to describe the injury.
As long as he kept weight off the limb, it pained him far less than the many wounds he’d suffered from the kuzahks. His healing hide was tight and itchy, and it burned whenever stretched by his movements.
Pain is not new .
No, it was not. He’d endured no small amount of it as a broodling, and much more during Zurvashi’s war. But Ahmya… Ahmya was his joy. No pain inflicted upon him would ever change that.
He spied her through a gap in the greenery before she noticed him, and he couldn’t help but study her. She sat upon the soft vegetation on the shelter’s floor, still bare skinned, looking so small and slight. Yet he did not miss the way her eyes roved, sweeping back and forth across her surroundings. Nor did he miss the knife she held flat across her slender legs.
His mate was competent and capable, much more so than she believed.
That emptiness within him filled with something bright and warm—pride and admiration.
As he neared the shelter, he made sure to brush his legs against a plant, rustling its leaves.
Her face snapped toward him, eyes rounding as she raised the knife in a trembling fist. When Ahmya saw him, her tension faded, and she lowered her arm, setting down the weapon .
Rekosh lifted his mandibles and crossed the last few segments separating them. Just outside the overhang, he pressed his forearms together and offered a low bow.
“Please forgive me, vi’keishi . My threads were...coming undone.”
Her brow furrowed. “Are you okay?”
Straightening, Rekosh nodded. With her before his eyes again, those desires stirred anew, but they’d lost their ferocity and overwhelming urgency. At least for now. “Are you?”
“I am. I was just worried about you.” She beckoned him with a hand. “Come out of the rain, Rekosh.”
He hunched down and entered the shelter, moving through the runoff falling from overhead. Shaking his head, he brushed the excess water from his hide with all four hands.
His hearts stuttered as he beheld the items laid out within the space—the contents of his bag. Had she seen it? Had she discovered his mating gift? Heat swelled within him again, wholly different from the heat of earlier, skittering under his hide and speeding his pulse.
Rekosh’s gaze fell upon the leather bundle, still exactly as he’d bound it.
No. She has not seen.
Every time he’d been about to present his gift, to declare himself to her, fate had intervened. And now, when they were alone, when he finally had Ahmya to himself, he could not do it.
It would’ve been so easy to speak the words, to give her the dress. To at last see her clad in his silk.
But he knew that doing so would be to surrender whatever control he’d managed to wrest from himself. Seeing his silk caressing her lithe little body would shatter his tenuous restraint on the instincts he’d only just quieted, and he would succumb to them. He would mate her. There would be no resistance, no denial. Some part of him longed for that .
Yet he could not, would not, submit. He wouldn’t risk harming his Ahmya.
He would wait just a little longer.
The heat fled him in a slow, barely controlled breath.
“I took everything out of your bag so it can dry,” Ahmya said as she stepped around him from behind. “I…hope that’s okay?”
Rekosh turned his face toward her. She stood beside him with her long black hair hanging over her shoulders, covering her small breasts, and her hands fidgeting against her belly. Even her tiny toes, so strange and yet so delightful, wiggled on the ground.
Perhaps he should’ve felt shame for failing to tend to his belongings, but he could only feel pride in her.
His mandibles twitched up into a smile. “Yes. It is good, Ahmya. You did what I should have done.”
“You were exhausted and injured.” Frowning, she gestured toward his left foreleg. “You’re still injured.”
“Small hurt,” he said with a chitter. “Could have been more bad.”
“But you can’t walk on it, Rekosh.”
Ahmya bent down and picked up one of her silk coverings, but not before Rekosh noticed the subtle quivering of her bottom lip and the tears gathering in her eyes. She stepped closer, maneuvering between his left legs, and draped the damp silk over the top of his hindquarters, wiping the water from his hide.
A soft trill rose from his throat. He’d never been tended to like this by anyone, not since he was a broodling, but to have Ahmya doing this for him…
It was what mates would do for one another. A simple, intimate way for them to serve each other. To show their care.
“You’re hurt because of me,” she said, voice quiet and spiritless. “Those beasts attacked because of me.”
Rekosh twisted toward her, catching her chin in one hand and forcing her to look at him. Her eyes glimmered, and the tears that had been welling in them had spilled down her cheeks. He did not care to see her cry. It made everything in him feel tight and unsettled, made the whole world feel wrong.
He emitted a distressed buzz.
“Not because of you, Ahmya. Because they were hungry. Because we were alone. Because I did not see good.” He slid the back of a knuckle up her cheek, wiping away one of those escaped tears. “And we fell because of me.”
Ahmya shook her head as she clutched the silk to her chest. Releasing it with one hand, she circled her fingers around his wrist, drawing his hand down. “You were protecting me.” She touched his forearm, below the silk-packed bite marks. “All of your wounds came from protecting me.”
He leaned his head closer to hers. Her scent filled his nose holes, and the echoes of her taste lingered on his tongue, but he did not allow himself to submit to either. “And I will carry the scars with joy. Wear them like the best silk.”
He looked down and lightly brushed a finger from his lower hand over one of the pink scars on her belly, making her skin quiver. “Because my scars mean you will not have more.”
“Rekosh…” Ahmya took his upper hand in hers and raised it, pressing her face against his palm. Nuzzling it, she released a shaky breath. “I don’t want to be the cause of you getting hurt all the time.”
Her skin was soft, warm, and smooth, and Rekosh reveled in its feel. He yearned to run his hands over more of it, to feel her muscles flex and relax, to learn every bit of her body by touch.
“You are not,” he said. “I am friends with Ketahn, Urkot, and Telok. Most of my hurt is because of them. And needles.”
A laugh burst from her. Rekosh had always been intrigued by the sounds humans made, but the sound of Ahmya’s laughter? It flowed straight to his heartsthread, dancing along it with warmth and pleasure that permeated his soul .
“I’m sure you prick your fingers with needles often.” She turned her face and pressed her lips to the pad of his thumb.
Everything inside Rekosh stilled.
A kiss.
It was not the sort of kiss he’d seen Ivy and Ketahn share, but he knew what the press of a human’s lips meant. Knew it was a simple but powerful gesture—as intimate as vrix touching headcrests, if not more so.
And it was like a breeze over the embers in his core, rousing them back into flames.
Ahmya’s eyes flared, and her cheeks pinkened. Releasing him, she brought the silk cloth up to his shoulder and resumed drying him. “I just don’t like seeing you hurt and hate that I can’t do anything to stop it.”
A storm swirled inside Rekosh as the effects of that kiss clashed with the guilt and vulnerability in her voice. His claspers pressed tighter around his slit, and his mandibles ticked down. “You did help, Ahmya. One kuzahk died because of you. It would have made much more hurt.”
More tears gathered in her eyes. She clamped her lips together before stepping in front of him and running the silk down his chest. Though she did not reply, he knew what she was thinking. Words she’d previously spoken sounded from his memory.
And all I’ve ever been is a burden.
His chest ached for her, and that ache rippled along his heartsthread.
“Ah, kir’ani vi’keishi .” He cupped the back of her head with an upper hand and flattened a lower hand over hers, locking it in place against his chest.
She tipped her face up, and her dark brown eyes met his.
He knew the rawness in her gaze. Understood the emotions in its depths, the doubt. “When I was a broodling, I was small,” he said. “More small than my brothers and sisters. Other vrix were not kind. They said I was…a stick, weak and easy to break. And they hurt me. With words, with hands and claws and legs.”
“Oh Rekosh…”
“I know, Ahmya. Know how it feels.” Rekosh squeezed her hand over his hearts. “I was small and weak, and they made me feel useless. I followed my father, to hide from other vrix, to flee. But I found…purpose there. Found my use, my skill. Found weaving. Found the first whispers. And as I learned, I knew the others were wrong. I was not like them, but I was not useless. They were more big, more strong, so I made other ways to be better.
“You are not a warrior in body”—he placed one of his hands between her soft breasts, over where her heart beat strong and steady—“but in spirit.”
Ahmya’s lips parted, and her heart quickened as she leaned into his touch. Her fingers curled, scratching his hide with her blunt nails, and she settled her other hand over his, clutching it to her chest. A content rumble rolled through him.
“But what can I provide to the tribe?” she asked. “What use am I?”
“When I met Urkot and Ketahn and his siblings, I learned something more. We are only threads. Alone, easily cut. Easily broken.” He shifted the fingers of both his hands, interlocking them with Ahmya’s. “But as a tribe, our threads weave together. Each thread makes the others more strong. A word alone may hold no power, but woven into a story or a bond, it can move vrix to do what cannot be done. A vrix alone—a human alone—may struggle to survive, but in a tribe, they can do anything.”
Rekosh moved his hand from the back of her head to her cheek, brushing aside stray strands of her hair and tucking them behind her small, rounded ear. “Each danger you face, each trial you defeat, another thread is added to your weave. You are more strong, and the tribe becomes more strong. ”
Her lower lip trembled. “I understand your words.”
Then her face crumpled. A sob burst from her as she threw herself against Rekosh, wrapping her arms around him, her body heaving with her cries.
Rekosh’s chest constricted as he embraced her with all four arms. Her tears wet his hide, undoing the work she’d done to dry him, but they were warm in contrast to the rain. Her soft skin was warm too, and impossible to ignore.
Just as impossible to ignore as her sweet scent.
He clenched his jaw and, still holding her, eased down onto the shelter floor. This closeness made no difference. The feel of her body against his would not pry his focus from what was important. Now was a time to offer her comfort while she was vulnerable, not to succumb to desire and instinct.
He lifted Ahmya and cradled her in his arms. She trembled and cried, and he held her, gently combing his claws through her hair and softly crooning.
Something had hurt his Ahmya. Someone had hurt her. Deep, deep down. Even if he did not know how those invisible scars had been inflicted, he recognized their effects.
Gradually, her cries quieted, and the tremors wracking her faded. Her ragged breaths grew deeper, smoother, calmer.
“You are okay, kir’ani vi’keishi ,” he said. “I am with you. Always.”
Ahmya rubbed her cheek against his chest. “Thank you. Thank you for making me feel like I matter.”