Chapter 4
Stubborn human female.
Nitochi
My female was shaking like a leaf caught in the wind, her eyes bulging as she stared at my face. She was scared. I thought it was of the small man who had hit her, but she was not looking better now that he was dead. She feared me.
I slid my hand along her arm to her wrist, careful not to press too hard on the red lines the rope had made, and brought her hand to my collarbone. Her eyes followed the motion and widened when I closed her fingers on the natural handle made by the bone there.
“What—”
“Hold,” I said, squeezing her fingers before doing the same with her other hand.
A sob wracked her body and I froze, my fingers resting around hers. Shit. Maybe killing them all had not been the right thing to do. Maybe Baelor would have been the better option to fetch her. He would have managed to get her out of there without causing a bloodbath.
But they had hurt her. Our female. She bore the mark of their abuse on her face. They deserved to die.
I frowned, ignoring her tears and closed both my arms around her small body before taking off, my wings pumping in the air to get us over the treeline as fast as possible. Wendy screamed, her grip tightening and legs lifting to circle my waist.
“I will not drop you,” I said slowly, hoping she would somehow understand.
If she even heard me, she did not answer. Her face was buried in my neck, tears wetting my skin. Her shaking only eased when we stopped at the river near my childhood hive.
She let go of me the second my feet touched the ground. Her trembling body made her stumble backward, falling on the ground with a gasp. Our eyes met again. Her, a dark brown circled with white, wide and scared. Mine, bottomless black pools probably terrifying her even more.
She turned abruptly and started running, only stepping on the piece of string hanging around one of her ankles and falling face first in the grass.
“Shit!” she cried, pushing on her weakened arms to try and stand up.
She tried running again but my hand closed around her arm, forcing her back.
“Stop running.” I tried to keep my voice as flat as possible. Maybe she could not understand, but I hoped my good intentions could be felt…
“I-I don’t understand…Please let me go…”
It was a good thing all of the species in our system had this damn translator inserted when we were born.
I lifted my free hand without letting go of her before taking her picture out of my pocket again. She followed the motion, still looking like a terrified prey expecting to be eaten. I dangled the piece of paper with her face on it in front of her.
“Y-yes, that’s me, we went over this. What—what do you want from me?”
I groaned, dropping her picture to the floor to rub at my face. Looking back at her frightened and confused expression, I pointed at me with my free thumb, and then at the paper at my feet.
“You are our female,” I said. “We have been looking for you.”
She tugged on her arm and let out a guttural scream that sent my blood rushing down. “I. Don’t. Understand!”
I pulled her back until she stumbled and collided with my chest, a loud gasp escaping her.
“Wha—what are you doing, you savage!”
She was infuriating. Why was it so hard for her to understand what I meant?
I placed both of her hands flat on my chest and carefully grabbed her chin to lift her face.
My heart stalled in my chest again at the bruise on her soft skin.
At her fearful expression. I hated to see the fear in humans’ faces every time they looked at me.
Why did it make me feel differently when it was her?
Like it did not matter how she looked at me, I only cared that she did?
I bent down, just enough to pick up the paper that I dropped and showed it to her again. The words. Maybe everything that was written next to the image of her face would tell her what I was trying to explain.
“Read,” I said, sliding my fingers on the words.
Her gaze narrowed as she searched my face before she took it from me, bringing it close to her eyes. Shit, can she even see in the dark?
She seemed to struggle, but eventually, she read it out loud.
“Wendy Winsbur, twenty-seven years old,” she said slowly. “Human colony of Galleat. Gemini compatibility of one hundred percent.” She looked back at me. “I know all that. What does it—”
I groaned, urging her to read more. For some reason, she understood—even though she rolled her eyes before getting back to it.
Stubborn human female…
“Second woman to join the Zodiac Program,” she continued. “Will be married to Baelor and Nitochi on the first day of the second month. Wait—and? What does it mean ‘and’?”
There. I pointed at my chest with a smile. “Nitochi.”
Her eyes widened, understanding.
“Ni-Nitochi?” she asked.
“Yes. I am Nitochi.”