9. Chapter 9
nine
Sor’en
My mate is muted as we settle in the grass, listening to the rain patter on the outcropping roof above our heads.
She’s… breathtaking, undone, muddy, and flushed.
I am undone… unwell, unable to form words.
All too many zentics have passed since I entered this world.
I have lost and lain to the ground. I have grown fields that would make my predecessors weep.
I have maimed, killed, threatened, and been the source of so many nightmares.
I have done these things and carried on, with varying degrees of ease, but I do not know how to speak to the small human female sitting beside me.
I have wanted nothing as badly as I want her favor.
Thankfully, she takes the burden from my weary bones.
“Where did the shadow go?”
“Melion stays close, but he prefers the fields. He is closer to his kind there.”
“What is his kind?”
“Vena’lel…” I pause, wracking my brain for the closest universal equivalent, my eyes on my mate as she stares at the flowers. My flowers. My chest swells with pride. “I believe some could call him a spirit.”
Her pretty green eyes widen at that. Her head snapping toward me. “What, like a ghost?”
I smirk. “It is like that, but not entirely. He has lived before, but he holds no memories of that life.” My mate pales, but I continue.
“I am a botanist. I have been since the day I passed my sixth solar. Botanists are gifted Vena’lel by our twin goddesses, to help guide us as we work their ground.
Oftentimes, I am more closely aligned with those who have passed beyond the veil than I am with the living. ”
“Vannha-ail do what then?”
My mouth threatens to tug up into a smile at her butchery of the word. “Bridge the gap, so to speak. Melion is neither living nor dead. He simply exists in a space between the two, so that I may as well. Alone, a botanist would lose their way in such darkness.”
A shiver runs down her spine, making her give an adorable little jerk. “Seems like a lot of work to grow some flowers.”
I laugh, the feeling warm and foreign before I sober.
The reminder that I am undeserving of the female beside me and the warmth she injected into my chest, snuffing out those lighter feelings as quickly as they came on.
The goddesses have given my mate quite the task with such a troubled male.
“I do more than grow the flowers. Come, Hue.”
I don’t give her a chance to deny me, to slice me with her sharp tongue, before I lift her into my arms as I stand. Her gasp smooths over my inky flesh, sinking down deep as she clings to me. It pleases me deeply, despite knowing it is only out of her desire not to fall.
She’s quiet, her fluttering heart pressed into my side as I carry her a little way into my primary field. I don’t phase quickly but walk, savoring the strange creature. Knowing soon enough that this peace between us will end.
The space where I pull to a stop is no different from any other to the naked eye, but I know.
This is the place from which I grew the first flowers in this field.
A field I will grow for the next one hundred and seventy-five orbits, should the goddesses desire it.
“This is where I buried the botanist before me. From him I grew my first flowers.”
My hand finds her open, shocked mouth, gripping her small chin gently and guiding her attention down the path. “There, my mother and father rest. They, too, became a part of this field, and one day we will join them.”
I can feel her swallow hard beneath my palm, her pulse wild. “This is… a grave?”
My frown deepens; my mate does not like this. “I grow the flowers and impart the dead to the soil. It is an honored position within—"
“Put me down.”
My head snaps toward her, shocked by the sudden venom in her voice. “Draya’la…”
“I want out of here now,” she orders, her eyes empty and trained on her hands clenching my garment, even with her knuckles bleached of their color from the force of their grip doesn’t hide the way they shake.”
“You’re afraid,” I state.
“Nope, just ready to go back. I’m cold, and you…" She pauses, her breath quickening like she’s trying to think of a way to finish her sentence. “You stole my dress.”
What?
“You’re upset about your dress?”
“Yes, the one the agency gave me. It was mine and I can’t find it now. Either start walking or put me down so I can, Sor’en.”
My name on her lips is a treat. I savor it despite the unhappy tone, giving a soft dip of my head to the male beneath the dirt, the Xyreliths down the way. Indignation budding in my chest as I head back the other way. “I will replace it then.”
Females of my kind are honored to be mated to a botanist. Besides any elders who linger close to the veil in the limtics before they pass, I am the closet. Closest to our goddesses, the ones who have loved and left. I keep our fields, keep our dead. I am an honored male. Revered. Respected.
She dislikes it.
Dislikes me.
Everything about me in such a fundamental way that suddenly it's hard to breathe.
We reach the house, and she all but scrambles from my arms, barely waiting for me to guide her safely to the ground before she’s half running back into our home.
Females do not like you because you are unbalanced.
You are a monster.
Even the little human can see it.
Melion zips to my side, sensing my distress.
I cannot bring myself to greet him.
The awe I had watched grow in her eyes as she ran through my fields is gone.
She’d stared at the sky the entire way back instead of my flowers.
Only because I was the one who grew them?
I huff out an annoyed breath, darkness swirling in my chest. Melion flares larger, swirling too.
“It is still new,” I assure him and myself.
Already, I am dreading how she will react when I tell her she must be bonded to me by the ways of my people in the next few solars, that she will hate me even more should she see the alternative.
My hands fist, bonding toxin slicking my palms. It's meant to prepare my mate for our vigil, and I am running low. My body is desperate to make more. It doesn’t understand that it's no use.
The sole biological imperative is weakening its host uselessly.
Her denial is pointless, much like my cursed toxin.
She is my female, even if she hates my fields, my ways, my face.
I am a monster, yes? So, I should have no issue forcing the matter. She will attend our bonding vigil. She will cry and whimper as I place the petals from my flowers in her soft, warm mouth. She will take my seed, and those petals will keep her alive as she grows our young.
Or I will eviscerate everyone on this planet and the next.
Even with the fires of indignation and anger burning in my chest, my steps falter.
I do not aspire to be feared by her.
A snarl rips from my throat as I head for the fields away from the female in my home.