Chapter 45
GILLIAN
“Nev!” Dyanii grabs hold of my arm and pulls me close against her.
Dyris and Dyoti are on high alert, and I’m looking everywhere for the danger, when another Sarkarnii female bursts through the vegetation in front of us.
“Get a nevving move on,” she growls. “Dyana wants to know where you are with the female…creature. She has the males and she’s getting impatient.”
Males?
“We’re coming,” Dyris says. “The mechanism got stuck.”
The warrior huffs out some smoke at us all and then ducks back into the jungle, her tail waving for an instant before she’s gone completely.
“Nev,” Dyris says. “I thought the males would get further away.”
“Like her mate is going to abandon her.” Dyoti glares at Dyris.
“I didn’t want them to get away. I wanted them not to be Dyana’s captives,” Dyris grumbles back at Dyoti.
“You helped them get away?”
“This continent is full of interesting features and plants,” Dyris says. “At least one of them is an antidote to Sarkarnii female venom.”
“It is?” Dyanii asks.
“Seems to have worked on the males.”
“Which males are we talking about here?” I query. “I came with Dalox, no other.”
“Deus has been here for a while. On his return, it was clear he wasn’t entirely…present. Dyna chased him away and he has been evading her ever since, much to her annoyance. She’d have preferred to have made him her project,” Dyris says. “But having two males will make her plan much easier.”
“Dyana has a plan?”
I don’t much like the way no one speaks.
“She wants a continuation of our clan,” Dyris says. “We are not able to fertilize ourselves. She says we all have to breed and for that we need a male.”
I’m still attempting to get over the fertilize ourselves when it hits me what she means.
“She wants Dalox to…”
“Yes,” Dyoti says with a sour turn down of her mouth. “I do not want Dalox to…”
“Me neither,” Dyanii chimes in. “Not only is he your mate, but he’s…well…”
“Not your type?” My heart is pounding in my chest, flip flopping all over the place both with the knowledge of what Dyana wants and what my new friends are telling me.
“Not my male,” Dyoti says. “I do not want him. I do not want his cock. I do not want his sarkarnling.”
“But it’s what Dyana wants,” Dyris says.
“If you don’t mind me saying”—I heave in a breath so I don’t fall over from lack of oxygen—“it’s an absolute batshit idea. If you came back with Dalox and me, we could introduce you to more males than you can imagine, and there’s a distinct possibility you might find your male.”
“There are more males?” Dyanii says. “Dyana said they’d all perished, that there were only the warlords and a handful left on the first continent.”
“Believe me, I’ve seen them, and there are far more than a handful.” I choke a laugh.
“Nev,” Dyris says. “Dyana has also been perfecting a way of envenomating males by way of an aerosol, rather than a bite.” She stares at me, and her gaze moves to the others. “I thought it was just one of her projects, but what if it was something else?”
“Like what?”
“Like a way of subduing a lot of males at once?” Dyris says quietly. “Dyana always said she wanted the Sarkarnii reborn. Perhaps this is what she meant. Enslave the males, and the females produce the sarkarnlings she can control.”
I’m not entirely sure, but I think this plan has moved even deeper into insanity territory than the concept of forcing all her females to mate with two males to somehow continue their existence here.
“Why do you follow Dyana again?” I blurt out. “Because it seems to me nothing she is doing benefits you at all.”
“She was the strongest,” Dyris says, dipping her gaze from mine. “She made sure we all got out, she found this place, and she tended to us until we were strong enough ourselves.”
“She lost her daughter to the sickness,” Dyoti says quietly. “She suffered and yet she was still here for us all.”
I swallow down the lump rising in my throat. I want to feel for Dyana, except what she’s doing is wrong on every single level. I can understand why she might want what she wants. I can see why she might place blame because I wanted more than anything to blame someone for my mum’s cancer and death.
But blame would have made me bitter, and the last thing I wanted for my mum’s memory was bitterness. I wanted it to be filled with joy, with positivity, with a future for others.
It could not be in vain.
“You’ve all suffered, and none of you want to enslave Sarkarnii males,” I point out. “Her choices, her plan, won’t end in anything other than bloodshed. Is that what you want? Or do you want the Sarkarnii to be whole again?”
“They want what I want,” Dyana growls, stepping alongside Dyris.
She clutches the shoulder of the female, who freezes in her grip.
“They have all always wanted what I want. Total control of Vorostor and total control of those who left us behind to die.” She smiles, but it is a mere baring of teeth. “You and the male you call your mate are the first step in the rise of the Nostenii,” she snarls. “And it’s time for it to begin.”