11. Chapter 11
eleven
Hue
The next few solars pass like that. I cry here and there, panic some.
I tried to run once but didn’t make it too far.
There's nowhere to go anyway. When Sor’en isn’t around, I get closer to the fields, but I don’t go in.
Melion lingers in his odd way, sharing his warmth but doesn’t come close.
I remind Sor’en I can’t stay, and he looks upset and then does something kind, like make me food.
He bought me clothes, although I can’t be sure when he left to get them.
He spends all his time lording above me, crammed in the tent, telling me about the flowers or tending the flowers he told me about.
The clothes are stunning, prettier than anything I’ve ever had. He even said I can keep them.
They mold to my body like a second skin and keep me warm when it cools at night.
None of their houses use heating or cooling, which I found odd, but it makes sense considering their clothes handle that for them.
It's some kind of advanced nanotech I could definitely never afford under any other circumstance. All in all, the past few solars have not been terrible, some might even venture to call it fine. But as is always the case when things are fine where I'm involved, now something is wrong. Sor’en’s vibrant white hair is not as silky as it was days ago, and his eyes are drawn and tired.
I’m covered in the nice, warm oil he’s constantly wiping on me, but it isn’t as tingly as it was.
I frown, sitting outside of my tent on a rare occasion as Sor’en snarls at someone through the door.
I don’t miss the shocked look on the large male's face. His hair is a deep, almost purplish gray and so long it reaches his hips. Aliens growl, snarl, and hiss all the time at each other, but perhaps not here, judging by his reaction. The male takes a step back and nods, his eyes glued to me until Sor’en blocks his view, murmuring something in his language.
It’s pretty, tilting, breathy kind of speech.
They feel old, ancient even. I suppose that tracks with such a creepy species.
Not to be offensive, of course, but I always try to call a spade a spade. Whatever the hell a spade is.
When he steps back in, his large, graceful form hunched, I tell myself I don’t care. That if he’s sick, distracted, or whatever, he’s easier to escape from. I tell myself he deserves it for taking me.
My heart lets out a nasty pang at the thought. Damn, give a broke, homeless, sad girl a few tasty meals and some nice clothes, and now she feels responsible for you. “What’s wrong with you?” I ask, my tone a bit too stiff for the question.
“Nothing Draya’la. I must tend the fields. Would you like to join—"
“No.”
He sighs, no cunning, sultry words. No interesting facts about his job to entice me.
His job, which I now understand, makes him something akin to a royal priest to his people.
It’s cool, except for the whole death part.
Before he’s fully turned toward the door, he gestures at Melion, having him stand guard again.
That’s new, well, mostly new. It started yesterday when I woke up in the middle of the night to find the huge death-touch alien mumbling to himself like a crazy person.
When he saw I’d woken, he ordered Melion to “watch me” and left.
Melion and I stared at each other until he turned away to face the wall.
I think he’s mad at me.
I don’t care about that either.
“Hang on!” I call out, getting to my feet and racing out the door after him.
Thankfully, he hasn’t been doing his weird spatial movement thing lately.
Which also makes me suspicious. When I reach him, my hand snagging his wrist, he flinches, a soft groan escaping him as he secretes more of his oil.
I don’t want it anymore, though. It’s not very tingly, so I let go, wiping my hands on my structured black dress. “Who keeps coming to the house?”
“Head inside, little gift,” he orders listlessly. His giant frame looking more and more exhausted by the domtic.
I gasp as he stumbles. “Sor’en!”
He snarls, his head snapping toward me, his opaque eyes wild. “Go, human!”
I don’t even flinch.
Not even as he gathers himself to his full height, towering over me. My hands prop on my hips, one finger slamming out and into his chest. “You sick or something?”
“Do you care?”
I wince inwardly, okay, fair. Also, you did kidnap me. “I guess I do, a little.”
He stills at that, the anger leaving him, but with it the last bit of his strength.
He sways, making my heart leap in my chest because if this big asshole falls on me, I’m toast. I reach out anyway, knowing it's better to move.
The sound he makes can only be described as a hissing kind of pain.
Something hard and full, a lump the size of my fist, forms in my throat as he jerks away from me. “I am just tired.”
Has he felt like this every time I jerked away from him?
His eyes go toward his fields, a patch near the house just a little way down the path looks… wilted. I lean in and inhale him, pressing closer.
Why?
No clue.
But his floral scent urges me on, the spicy warmth of that oil, even though it hasn’t been like that in the last few solars.
Before I think better of it, I’m slipping my arms around his oddly long, tapered waist and…
clinging to him. Rubbing my face on his stomach, which is the only part of him I can reach.
The same thing I've woken up doing for nights now.
Rubbing against him like an animal in heat.
He whimpers, that strange buzzing starting up against my upper belly. But the sound he made, masculine and needy, makes the line from my navel to my core light.
I gasp. “Sor’en, you can’t protect me if you’re sick. What’s going on?”
“Noth—"
“He’s depleting himself, and since he fails to see reason, I have had to make the walk out here.”
The next few moments happen in an instant. The unfamiliar voice fills the field, my head going light as I’m ripped from my hold on Sor’en as he slams me behind him. My heart kicks up a new kind of thundering as I watch him… devolve.
The suave, proper, soft male from moments before hunches his entire lanky frame.
His hand trembles as an animalistic roar leaves him so loud it hurts my ears, the sound reverberating and echoey.
His palm is slick and outstretched toward the…
very old-looking Xyrelith standing before him.
I flinch as Sor’en roars again, the same roar as a warrior would cry, but his is all the more eerie for it.
Breathy, warbling, horrifying sound you’d hear in a deep forest at night. As if his voice is fractured in two.
I try to backtrack, but he turns on me, letting loose another horrifying sound of warning in my face.
I slap him out of sheer reaction, my own jaw popping open comically.
I shake my hand, trying to ward off the screaming pain from making contact with the bones on his face.
His answer?
His tongue.
I yelp as a long, purplish colored appendage leaves his throat, lapping up the side of my face. My eyes dart to the elderly male who seems almost amused by the whole spectacle.
He doesn’t meet my eyes when he speaks; his gaze, while calm, remains trained on the outstretched palm still aimed toward him like a loaded blaster.
My pulse thrums and core aches as I’m crushed against my Xyrelith’s body.
A body that has suddenly lost its toned form and devolved further in the moments my eyes were off it.
His bones are even more hunched and protruding.
Animalistic. God, I am fucking terrified.
Because whatever this is… I do not think it's Sor’en.
Melion slams by us, growing to insane heights as if to back up his friend.
The whole scene is chaos. Our bodies jolt as the elderly male opens his mouth to speak again, Sor’en swiping out with his slick palm.
The other male winces in tune with me as it nearly connects with him.
Nearly.
That’s when it dawns on me as Sor’en clutches me tighter, a rolling, warbled, eerie, “Mine,” filling the space that he’s defending me from this other male.
That his outstretched, welcomingly slick palm certainly does not contain the warm, sleepy oil I’ve grown to enjoy so much.
Just a single droplet of the toxin there would kill me.
“Young botanist, I am not interested in your star-faring female. Only in letting her know the importance of the bonding that the two of you are putting off.”
I stare at him. He stares at that outstretched hand like one would stare at a deadly snake. I should probably be doing that too. “What bonding and what the fuck is wrong with Sor’en?”
The older male doesn’t miss a beat. “When a Xyrelith is newly mated, he must bond his mate within a solar or—"
Another roar fills the space; we both ignore it.
“Or he can become… testy.”
I look up at the weirdly malformed version of Sor’en. Yeah, testy seems like an understatement.
“He did not tell you, did he?”
I glance back at the elderly male, guilt edging into my stomach. Well, new guilt, mixing with the typical guilt. That day in the flowers, he’d wanted to talk and I…
Rejected him.
Rejected everything he was.
He’s been odd since.
“I uh-well, how we do we fix this?”
Sor’en tucks me away now, bringing me between his large skeletal legs. Tucking me deeper under him, but Melion has returned to his normal size, apparently having decided for himself his master is just kind of losing his shit currently.
“Let him bond you. We will have a vigil at nightfall. Normally, you would be collected by females and prepared, but we shall see what our revered botanist can handle when he comes back to himself. Right now, he has depleted his bonding oil. He is weak and unbalanced. Darkness has taken hold of his form and he will not listen to reason. It is why our males are so feared when they are newly mated. He must bond to you, or his body will continue to deplete trying to encourage the bond. We will remedy this as soon as the moons hit the sky. Go with balance,” he suddenly says in departure.
I blanche. "Wait! You can't leave me here with him like this! What do I do? What does any of that even mean?”
The elderly man glances over his shoulder, his long gray hair coarse, what was certainly a colossal form scrunched in on itself. “You are his balance. He is your responsibility. I assume you will figure it out.”
And then he’s gone.
Fucking gone.
The weird animal version of Sor’en snarls as if to tell him off on his way out.
I scream as I’m lifted off the ground by an oddly long, bony arm tucked under my hips. My breath is nearly knocked from my lungs as my back roughly meets his chest. Even more unsettling is the enraged Xyrelith, who is nuzzling my hair with a neck that is now as long as my arm.