Chapter 2
Please, do not go all ruthless killer.
Nitochi
My blood boiled in my veins as I gazed over the dark forest below, legs dangling from the side of our elevated cave, ignoring the grunts of disapproval coming from Ulughan living in the cavern under ours. Baelor was pacing behind me, restless since he came back from the station just an hour ago.
“I did not see or hear any human flying box crashing,” I said. “Did not see anything amiss on my flights the last few days.”
Baelor stopped and the sound of his wings rustling echoed in the unfamiliar home we had moved into in preparation of our human bride’s arrival.
I had spent the week hunting and gathering materials to build our new, bigger nest. It was ready.
The moss bed was thicker and more padded than any I had ever built for myself or Baelor in the past. The few humans I had seen before being banished from their station had thin skin, and I was worried our female would not feel comfortable if the fluffy moss collapsed with use.
The new hive we moved into also had running water flowing from the top, just a few levels above and created hundreds of little pools for our people living inside to use; a luxury we did not care about before, happy to just fly to the nearest rivers and springs.
I had filled our ice columns with the meat of freshly hunted beasts and made covers with their hide.
We were ready. Our new home was ready.
And our bride was not here, lost somewhere on our planet.
“The coordinates say that it did not crash too far from our childhood hive,” Baelor said, reading the human words on the thin white square—paper, he had called it. “I just—I cannot really pinpoint it.”
I gritted my teeth, eyes narrowing as I scanned the forest for unusual signs again. “I thought you learned how to read the human language.”
“I did,” he snapped. “Coordinates are just…another, more complicated thing. From the map they gave me, I could only narrow it down to an area. Not a precise—”
“Then what are we waiting for?” I asked, turning around to stare at my brother. The other half of my soul, the one that spoke instead of acting. He froze, eyes darting away. “She could be in danger. She could be dead.”
“I know that! But I—You know my senses are dulled at night. I cannot go now, I will only slow us down and…” He stopped and released a charged breath.
“And you do not trust me to go alone,” I finished for him.
At least, he looked sorry about it. “You do not have the best track records with humans,” Baelor muttered.
“It is different, and you know it.”
“How is it different?” he challenged.
My jaw clenched. Hard. “She is our female. I am not going to hurt her.”
“What if she looks at you like all the other humans we have met so far? What if she rejects us because she finds us terrifying? Will you accept it and let her change her mind?”
“I am not a monster.”
His pure white eyes met my bottomless black ones. None of us wavered, too stubborn in our own respective ways.
“You were the one who agreed and wanted this,” I pointed out. “If she rejects us, I think I will be able to survive and bring her back to the human base for her to return where she came from safely.”
Would I, though? Baelor wanted this when I did not, and yet I was the one who insisted we moved to a bigger cave in a better hive. The one who did not rest until our new home was as comfortable as it could possibly be.
“I know that,” he said, looking around. “But you took it upon yourself to build our nest. I know you, habanshi. You will feel hurt if she does not want us. You do not handle these feelings well.”
“I will learn to,” I said through my teeth as I stood from the ground.
I took the couple of steps separating us and pulled the papers out of his hands.
On the first one, a map of the area where the flying box crashed and a large circle Baelor had drawn with black writing oil.
A dense forest, a close flight from the hive our parents still lived in, but a couple of hours from where we were now.
Maybe just one if I flew quick enough…The trees were high there, and I would have to fly low or use the branches to scout the area.
On the second paper, words I could not read without the translating glass in Baelor’s tight grasp so I turned it with a groan.
And my heart stalled. Something that had never happened and made me wonder if maybe I was ill, or dying.
“What is this?” I asked, clutching my chest with my free hand.
Baelor arched a brow, a small mocking smile curling his lips. “Humans call this a picture. Her name is Wendy.”
So that was what human females looked like…
She was…beautiful. Really beautiful.
Her hair, as black and shiny as my own and my eyes, her skin, smooth and dark beige. Monolid eyes a dark brown, and lips full and red.
“This is…our female?”
“Yes,” Baelor said. “If she is even alive.”
She better be.
“I am going to get her.”
“Nitochi—”
“We cannot wait for dawn, she has already been out there on her own for too long.”
“Dawn is only six hours away, we can—”
“No,” I interrupted him again, my voice firm.
“I am a better tracker and fighter than you. If she is in trouble, I have more chances to fight off whatever got to her first. If we wait until the sun rises, I will be the one with impaired eyesight and abilities and it will make you the one who has to do the heavy work.”
Baelor stared at me, silent, weighing my words. He knew I was right. That I was the better option and safer bet if we hoped to find her alive and bring her back here, where she belonged now.
“Fine,” he conceded. “But please, do not go all ruthless killer. And fly her here right away, she did not have her translator inserted and if she does have one already, the humans said they needed to update it with our language.”
I turned around and stopped at the edge of the cave, my wings spreading behind me as I looked at the map one last time.
If she did not understand me, I could not reassure her that I was safe. That she was ours.
I could only hope that we would find a way to understand each other…