Chapter 16 Callie #2
That wouldn’t have worked either, honestly.
If I’d have gotten some random gift sent to my tent on Korsal from a strange admirer I’d have been weirded out.
Rathal would have had to explain his surveillance of me, though now that I was thinking about it, he probably would have and he’d have been just as smug about it.
I swear he thought it was a compliment that he’d seen me on camera and picked me.
I wasn’t sure what the right answer was.
I guess he would have had better luck had he waited until the end of the war to introduce himself properly, though I don’t know that that would have worked either.
After the war was over, I wanted to go back to Earth to convince my parents to come with me back to Ara’Ama and once there, I was planning on helping Jack and her people. I don’t think romance would’ve even been on my mind. Though kidnapping me certainly wasn’t the right way to go about it either.
“Did you know he killed the one who planned to harm you on the ship that brought you here? The blue one,” Rixa explained, her voice sly.
I glanced at her. “What?”
“The blue male that came into your cell with the red one you killed. Rathal killed him for neglecting you on the ship and for what he planned to do to harm you,” Hassa answered.
Rixa shook her head. “Yes. You were supposed to fly in comfort, after medical care. Stupid males. Can’t do anything right. Should have sent us.”
Hassa hummed thoughtfully and then shrugged her massive shoulders. “Couldn’t. No thumbs.”
“True. Good point.”
I know they meant it as a compliment that Rathal had killed for me, but man, that was still a weird as hell response.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
Aliens were weird. Though if I thought about it too hard, it did kind of make me feel better that he hadn’t meant to be a total ass.
Kidnapping was one thing, but if I’d have been treated well, he could have spun it that he was rescuing me and I might have gone along with it.
Maybe. I was loath to admit it, even to myself, but the crazy bastard was pretty charming when he wasn’t being such a smug dickhead.
“Listen, morsel, you are thinking too hard about this. Just let the male pleasure you, mate him, and then rule over him with strict affection. It will work out,” Hassa stated, her tone matter of fact, like this was a simple matter that I was making overly complicated.
Yeah, still didn’t like being called food and this was anything but simple.
“Your advice sucks, Hassa. I am not fucking him. I’ll never be rid of him if I do and wouldn’t that be letting him win? I mean, what kind of person would I be if I jumped into bed with the man who stole me from my friends, from my purpose?”
The twins halted just outside my bedroom door and rounded on me, their dark eyes hard and disapproving.
“He is not a man, Callisto Ramirez.”
“And he need not be your enemy forever.”
I held up my hands in mock surrender. “Alright, alright. I get it.”
Rixa snapped her terrifying jaws twice at the air, the sound like a gunshot as her teeth met each time had me swallowing hard. “Don’t try to escape again this Darking. We are tired of chasing you,” she grumbled, low and dangerous, her eyes burning holes through me.
I kept my hands raised and backed into my room. “Yep, got it. No escaping.”
The twins started to turn away but then stopped, their ears twitching as they glanced at each other in silent communication. They must have come to some sort of agreement because Rixa sighed long and heavy as if she’d lost an argument before twisting around to face me again.
“You are sad, yes? Come with us. We can take you somewhere… interesting. Somewhere where you can—how do you humans say? Blowing off heat?”
A weird sort of foreboding gathered around me. I didn’t like the giddy look in Hassa’s eyes.
“Blowing off steam. And I wouldn’t say I was sad—”
“Does not matter. Come. You will thank us later,” Hassa said as she darted around me, moving me with her big body out of my room and down the hall.
Oh dear sweet baby Jesus, I was going to regret this with every fiber of my being.
“Uh. Where are we going?”
“No questions. Only following.”
“Yeah sure, just follow the murderous babysitters into unknown shenanigans,” I grumbled to myself but followed along behind them anyways. What else was I supposed to do? Sit around in my room and think? Absolutely not.
They led me out of the palace and deeper into the glittering city.
I hadn’t seen the station during the Dark before and the Light truly did not do Erral any favors, but the Dark?
It made the slapped together criss cross chaos somehow beautiful.
Thousands of draped light strands wove over and under each other to create a spiderweb network of glittering colors over every road and walkway.
The lights reflected in the muddy brown of the patchwork metal buildings and made them glow bronze. It was beautiful.
Even the citizens were more interesting.
There were a lot of furred individuals of various species but cat-like aliens seemed to dominate the ratio.
They were the same species as the semi helpful cat lady who’d pointed me into the underground.
The air smelled richly of warm food and spices, with the undertone of roasting meat here and there as we passed food stalls with big open flame pits where attentive owners turned their wares over the fire.
The drippings falling off the meat sizzled into the flames and had my mouth watering but the twins didn’t even twitch an ear at any of the stalls, choosing instead to stalk their way through the crowd like twin daggers through fat.
The crowds parted around the twins like they were afraid of being bitten.
I passed the food stalls mournfully, my stomach grumbling loud enough to hear over the buzz of noise produced by this many people crammed on a narrow street.
A burst of laughter from a group of children watching a lizard with a dozen hands juggling glowing beetles that buzzed and chirped every time he tossed them into their air drew my attention, and I nearly lost the twins.
The crowd swallowed them up so fast I had to run to catch up, pushing and squeezing my way through until I spotted the iridescent flash of Hassa’s waving green tail as it caught the light of a low hanging lantern before disappearing around a corner.
“Shit. Hassa! Wait up. I got little legs,” I complained. I had to come to a sudden stop, risking falling on my ass when Rixa’s big head appeared out of nowhere right in front of me, her jaws open in a scolding laugh.
Holy hell her teeth were big.
“Your breath smells horrible. You should probably get that checked.”
Rixa snorted before blowing a gust of hot, foul air into my face.
She laughed when I gagged.
“Don’t get lost, Callie. The Dark is for the predators,” she warned before turning to follow her sister down a road lit on both sides by blazing purple torches.
I gagged again, waving at the air before jogging to fill the space between them.
A dense crowd pressed the twins in closer to me until their scaled sides were rubbing against the exposed skin of my arms. They smelled a little like wet stone but one that some idiot had sprayed with an expensive perfume.They were weirdly soft where I figured they’d be rough like maybe a crocodile, but their scales felt closer to snakeskin, though each overlapping piece on the twins were probably closer to palm sized.
This close I could see that each scale had blue and purple shimmering in the depths of dark green and the mane of black fur that covered their haunches, neck and chest was more like a purple so dark it only appeared black.
Under the purple flame of the torches, the twins nearly sparkled.
They were beautiful, well formed predators.
Though, the little tuft of fur on the tips of their ears were absolutely begging for bows.
It would probably kill their whole deadly vibe though.
The excited shift in energy from the crowd pulled me from my examination of my escorts and to the front where the street ended at a half domed building and huge steel double doors.
A great hulking beast of an alien stood silhouetted against the hazy orange glow obscuring what was beyond the open doorway.
He crossed his arms over his massive chest and glared at the crowd like a disapproving father.
A cacophony of noise burst from behind him, like a crowd cheering.
The twins pushed their way through to the front with me along for the ride in between them until they reached the male.
We stopped right in front of him. I craned my neck up to his impressive height and whistled.
He was so pretty. Like a four armed, overly muscled drag queen.
Nearly eight feet tall and naked from the waist up, with pepto pink skin that had raised darker pink textured swirls over every inch.
I couldn’t decide if they were natural or some kind of body modification.
He had wildly curly waist length white hair tied half up with an oversized black bow that matched the mini skirt showing off his impressive thighs.
Heavy neon green boots completed his outfit and complimented the pink hue of his skin.
I couldn’t help staring at the colorful array of makeup he wore on his face in what I could only describe as 80's roller derby. It highlighted the harsh lines of his brow and cheekbones. The deep blue eyeshadow made the black of his eyes look like shining oil orbs. He’d applied a glossy black lipstick that matched his eyes to his pouty mouth which was currently smirking at my gawking.
“Stare all you like, little human, but I am a happily mated male.”
He winked at Rixa.
She rolled her eyes, but her normal scowl was replaced by a warm, affectionate smile.