24. Chapter 24
twenty-four
Hue
He made me pee on some damn flowers and then buried them in the corner of his tent like an absolute weirdo.
I scowl at the section of field Sor’en disappeared into zentics ago after insisting he carry me throughout the center and the entire ride back home.
Muttering something about speaking with the veil.
Which, to my understanding, he needs Melion for, which is why I am supposed to be inside.
Why this is the first time he has left me awake and unguarded.
Only because I might’ve cried and thrown a slight fit when he tried to take me to bed.
He’d settled on recalibrating whatever tech controls the exits of the home to remain locked. All but the skylight one.
He forgot that one. Suppose he thought I couldn’t get up there.
I could.
My hand lifts to my necklace, my palm clasping around both teeth there. Something I find myself doing more these past few solars than I have in kintics.
It had lost its grounding, sobering effect when my solars were so filled with Sor’en I had allowed myself to become blissfully lost.
That is not how I feel now.
I eye the dome overhead.
My heart pounds in my chest as I slip off the side of the house, landing roughly on my feet, making my ankles let out twin pangs of displeasure.
This time, I don’t curl my toes into the tall, soft grass.
I don’t look at the pretty colors swirling in the sky above me.
My hand slips to my stomach, itching the skin there, slathered in the new tincture.
Jin has been great, and although neither of us would admit it to one another, I’m pretty sure we’re friends.
As gruff and reserved as the older male is, sometimes, if you’re quiet, Jin will talk.
He told me about a time he went off planet many, many zentics ago.
Apparently, males would on occasion. Just for meetings to try to work out deals with other large governing races.
He went with the Balla’mar, their leader, whose name is actually just his title and not a name at all.
Each dome has a Balla’mar, and he essentially just acts as, in Jin’s words, an over-important mascot, as Xyrelith communities are largely self-governed.
I didn’t know what a mascot was; apparently, it's a human thing. We used to dress up in large creature costumes and dance for… some reason. We also used to be very obsessed with something called home runs, where the most elite humans would throw a ball very far and make the mascot dance. Again, I avoid Old Earth media, but I did find it pretty funny that it was apparently something of a guilty pleasure for an ancient death-touch male. He’d managed to trade for some while on port.
I laughed so hard he’d ordered me out of his tent.
I did not go.
Then he started talking again as he passed off a bowl of petals for me to grind into mush.
My laughter died quickly after that. He’d told me about how he’d never stepped foot outside the dome before that.
Admitted, a little sheepishly, he’d been too scared to.
That was, until the Balla’mar had taken him to a ship, and a world beyond the dome opened before him.
The Xyreliths had a ship.
My eyes track across the field, outside the dome.
I’d tried to buy one at first, many orbits ago. Thought maybe if I could get my hands on my own ship, learn to navigate it well enough, I could bypass being at the whim of many species that didn’t give a piss about me or my journey across the stars.
The dockmaster had laughed in my face.
Sure, I’d offered to become his indentured slave in return for a ship to use. Sure, I’d never planned to actually make good on my end of the deal and come back, but he had no way of knowing that for sure.
He’d decided to take me instead, to sell me off to an actual slaver for a high price.
Slavers love humans; we’re tiny enough to be decent workers in most fields.
Biologically compatible enough to be fun to fuck should they require it.
Tasty enough to be food for the right species.
I’d wiggled through the walls of his ship and out the first chance I got. Haven’t visited Balpemo Station since.
I’d learned to fly and navigate, though, before I realized the idea was a bust.
I still remember most of it, memorized the most critical buttons and what they mean.
Mostly.
If I have a ship, as a Xyrelith citizen, I can come back. No greater alliance can dispute my claim to the airspace.
I can come home. Regardless of the greeting that awaits me.
I can put Mom to rest and come back to him, to all of them.
Emotion clogs my throat as I take an unsteady step forward, the bag slung over my shoulder small and light.
Most ships are well-stocked, but the Xyreliths aren’t necessarily a space-faring species.
Who knows how well they’ve kept up the reportedly small vessel?
I have enough credits to buy passage. I can return the rest to Sor’en as an I’m sorry, I’m a horrible mate token when I get back.
I eye a group of females down the way, picking flowers, entirely lost within themselves. Good, don’t pay attention to the little human. It's rare they come out this far, but not so rare that it should stop me.
A glint of shiny, white speckled black jerks my attention to the side, my heart slamming into my throat. I stumble, losing my footing and crashing to my knees. It’s a… tail.
A familiar long one I spent the better half of my childhood running my small fingers through.
Mom?
I stand there, staring at the slinking tail only for it to appear further back, farther away from where I am and where I needed to go.
“Wait!” I call out, dropping my bag and rushing into the field.
My heart pounding as I’m driven by pure desperation and not much else.
Tears bud in my eyes because each time I get close, it gets further away.
“Mom!” I call out, my voice hoarse with emotion.
I’d know that fur anywhere.
I saw her, saw her shoot from the airlock, watched her body—
It’s not her, but I follow the trail anyway.
I’m led away, deeper into the field moments before a deafening boom shakes the ground, sending me careening toward it faster than I can react. Pain explodes on my chin, my ears ringing as I struggle to lift myself. I barely get to my knees when the smell of smoke interrupts the smell of flowers.
A siren sounds overhead as I lift my gaze toward the sky.
The dome that covers the city is fractured, buzzing, and wavering as the nose of a ship jams through the opening. The illusion tech holding, making it look like the needle nose of the vessel is hovering mid-air, perfect, unmarred sky surrounding it.
My eyes widen in horror seconds before I’m overrun by a cracking shadow. Melion swathes me as I shuffle to my feet, the warmth of my blood trickling down my neck from my busted chin. “Where is Sor’en!?”
Nothing, he can’t answer me.
Fear, unlike anything I’ve ever felt before, boils in my chest. “Melion, help Sor’en. He’s out there!”
The tornado swirls and I get the sense I’m moving. I didn’t even know he could do that. Hot air brushes me from all sides as I’m hauled, no doubt, back to the house. “Stop! There are females out there! We have to get them inside!”
A horrible sound reaches me through the darkness.
It is much like the roars of my mate, but in the hundreds. A chill runs down my spine.
They’re fighting.
Suddenly, blinding white takes over the darkness as I fall roughly onto the ground in the middle of the sunken living room of our home. “Melion, there are females in the field!”
He vibrates with rage as he stands guard in front of me.
But my eyes are glued to the windows, the frenzy of Xyrelith males there.
Their strange shimmering weapons, glimmering like starfall swords as their crafts take them to the sky, to the top of the dome.
I scream as the ship fires, destroying a large patch of field, nearly half of the smaller vessel inside now. “Melion, please!”
His white, glowing orbs suddenly go unfocused as I round him, his orbs unseeing, not tracking me in the way they typically do. “Melion?”
Another loud boom echoes through the dome. A lithe, feminine scream rips through the night. This one is distinctly Xyrelith. My heart caves as I turn, watching as the nose of the craft opens, deploying several smaller pods filled with a large species.
Poachers.
I wave my bloody palm in front of Melion’s eyes.
When there’s no reaction, I’m running, scrambling up the kitchen storage cabinets and back out of the skylight before he gets back from wherever he went.
I drop from the roof of our home with a poorly executed roll, my shoulder jarring hard with the ground.
But I don’t let it slow me down. I’m on my feet and running for the far field, toward tuffs of white blowing hair huddled together.
Sor’en, be okay.
Please be okay.
My lungs ache as I push myself to run harder, run faster, refusing to take my eyes off the females.
Refusing to watch the skies for my mate.
It sounds like war above me, like the dome opened up and Armageddon entered.
Worse yet? It's getting closer to the ground. I’m almost to their huddle, their tops pulled down, exposing their backs as they hold each other like a tiny little dome of their own.
My hand flies forward to tug them with me, to bring them back to the house, when a weight hits me like a runaway port cart, slamming me into the ground.
I scream, waiting for the pain of the blow, but it never comes.
My eyes are wrenched open as my chin is jerked up, Sor’en’s enraged face inches from mine as he roars. “Do not touch them! Never fucking touch them when they’re scared! Melion, take her!”
“Wait, no!”
I’m dropped as Melion reaches my side, swirling with rage as I watch my blood splattered mate, leaping higher than I’ve ever seen as an unmanned craft wizzes by, his palms catch the bottom-most lip as he swings himself up, unsheathing twin shimmering blades from his back.
A sob, a pain unlike anything I’ve ever felt, rips from me as I lose sight of him in the fray.
I’m crying, sobbing as I scramble back toward the group of females still huddled in their protective dome. It’s only then that I see it… the toxins coating their backs, wet and dripping in deadly rivets. Realization of how close I just came to death quiets my panicked sobbing.
“Come on, we have to get to the house!” I call out to them, staying a safe distance away.
One pokes her head from the huddle, quickly gathering the others.
They’re careful not to touch me as we run back to my home.
Melion creates something of a swirling border on all sides.
I know they could phase there in an instant, but they stick with me instead.
Tears fall even harder down all our faces seconds before a craft slams into the ground in front of us, a species I can’t place bolting from it toward our group without hesitation.
Half of his pod isn’t buried in the ground.
I don’t even get a scream out before Melion swallows him up.
I spread my arms in front of the other females like a fucking idiot, despite them being far more capable of protecting me than me protecting them.
It's a brainless reflex that I almost stop myself from keeping up, but my mind blanks as bits of flesh and sinew spew from Melion’s swirl, covering them and me, but mostly me, thanks to the stance.
When he dissipates, there is nothing left of the creature that was within him.
When everyone moves again, my mind can’t seem to keep up, my feet rooted to the ground, staring at the splatter of whatever creature was there moments ago.
“Human, we must go!” one of the females pleads.
My mouth is open, my mind blank.
Melion gets tired of waiting, and soon I’m in his swirl again and heaved back into the house, my knees meeting the white flooring roughly.
I don’t know how long we sit there, or how long the sounds of battle wage outside.
Only that daylight has broken through the sky when Sor’en strides inside, letting the females know it is safe.
I know that in that moment, I breathe for the first time in zentics, taking their blessings and vows of friendship blankly.
When I’m heaved into my mate's arms, I cling to him harder than I ever have before.