Chapter 36
Mating had one unexpected drawback that Therxian had not expected...
sleeping without his mate beside him was a trial that was nearly impossible to overcome.
Despite the comfort of the best cushions and pillow filling his bed, and the softest sahguin cloth draped over him, he could not get comfortable.
He thrashed restlessly until finally falling into an uneasy sleep.
He certainly had not achieved sufficient rest before he was awoken by his name being irritably hissed a short distance from his head.
“Therxian, get up. Cease ignoring me. I insist that we speak immediately,” she demanded.
Her tail whipped out, slapping the side of his exposed coils, drawing an irritated grunt from him. By Higthar, he was exhausted. He blearily cracked one eye open in response to the rude strike to his tail.
Jathella.
Of course. No one else would be so bold as to enter his nest. Because of their alliance, he accepted and tolerated much in the way of intrusion into his privacy. Now it seemed she was entering his nest without invitation.
Groaning, he rolled away, determined to ignore the female disturbing him.
If she was going to be as rude as to invite herself in, then he had no reason to be polite.
As it was, he was exhausted and heart-sick from the longing that filled him with his mate’s absence.
He was in no mood to deal with the lecture that was waiting on Jathella’s tongue.
“Miserable creature,” she muttered. “Did you think my warnings served no purpose? I do not know which is worse: a love-sick mated male, or your previous distracted state.”
“Jathella, I am in no mood for you,” Therxian grumbled, drawing the sleeping cloth over his head.
Laughter met his words from another direction, and he inwardly groaned. Just how many of the sisters had invaded his nest?
“Buosoa, it is not a laughing matter,” Kitanara interjected. “I like Alex, but I thought we agreed that it was necessary to focus on the task at hand. A human mate at this time will only work against our goals.”
Wonderful. They were all present.
“I disagree,” Buosoa returned calmly. “A mate will give Therxian more purpose in what he is fighting for. Slengral ran with his mate—and for good reason—but Therxian cannot be expected to fight for change while isolating himself and allowing the council to slowly destroy him.”
“I have nothing against the human. Though I have not spent as much time with her, I have appreciated what I have heard. Alex is certainly resourceful and clever and would be a welcome addition to the shinara if it was at a different time. But it is not. If he was going to violate the queen’s decree, he could have at least picked a Seshanamitesh female,” Jathella pointed out sourly.
“Zathexa would be more accepting, and her presence could be explained in a way that satisfied everyone rather than having a mate secretly hidden away. How does this support him efficiently?”
“Or you can let me make my own decision,” he gruffly countered as he pushed away the sleep cloth and slowly rose from the cushions.
Jathella cast him an exasperated look. “You agreed with me on these points when we discussed it.”
“I agreed that I would not flee back to the Vir,” he corrected.
“And yes, it is true that my original intention upon returning was to take a Seshanamitesh female for my mate, but the proximity-bonding and perhaps the hand of Shangla herself, changed everything. In the end, I could not deny my instinct to claim that which was mine.”
“It is not the male’s right to claim in the shinara,” Jathella muttered in weak protest, but her tone had lost some of its irritation, and she sighed heavily as she leaned on her velkat.
“But I see your point. This was a thing that we cannot deny our part in since we were swayed by compassion and asked you to hide the human. We should have foreseen the likelihood of a pheromone bond, but we had assumed that such bonds with humans were inferior and would not take hold in the shinara where multitudes of females dwell. However, I will not pretend for your sake that this does not complicate matters.”
Therxian inclined his head. “I would expect no less from you. I only ask that you continue to conceal my whereabouts when I am with my mate. In turn, I will be discreet and make sure that my presence is seen and noted within the palace daily.”
Jathella exchanged a glance with her sisters. Buosoa’s mouth hitched and Kitanara nodded, perhaps a bit more eagerly than Jathella would have liked because the elder female frowned impatiently.
“It should not be a problem,” she reluctantly admitted.
“As Zathexa has ordered that we see to it that we secure the residential area of the palace, and your nest especially, to prevent the noble families from going around her instructions, at least one of us will be stationed at the entrance to your nest and another at the entrance to the residential area. It will just be a matter of continuing to receive your sustenance.”
Therxian snapped his gavo. “You may eat anything that I am not personally present to consume. I will merely order extra portions of meat with my morning meal so that I may take it to share with my ashlava.”
Jathella grimaced at the term but inclined her head. “The extra food beyond our own palace rations will be appreciated, especially as some of us have an excessive appetite,” she added, casting a look toward Kitanara.
Buosoa grunted in agreement, and the youngest of the sisters merely grinned in response, clearly accustomed to such teasing from her siblings.
“It would be very welcome indeed,” she added enthusiastically.
“We should make you work it off more,” Buosoa observed, her mouth curling into a smirk. “Perhaps escorting Therxian will even things out a bit.”
Escorting? He cast a questioning look at Jathella, and she snapped her gavo in affirmation.
“An extra precaution that Zathexa insisted on. She already did not trust the council, given her suspicions regarding the disappearance of her offspring, but she trusts them even less now following the incident. The families were already vying for power right under her nose but are now doing so blatantly.”
“I am glad that she is distancing herself from them and is finally taking precautions,” he murmured.
Jathella’s face softened. “Though she will not say so, I believe the incident around Slengral and Lori, and her willingness to concede to the council’s pressure and overlook their transgressions against her authority, has weighed heavily on her.
She takes responsibility for what happened to Lori, even though it was never her order. ”
“No, she just paved the way for their interference in his mating,” he bitterly retorted. “If this manner of protection had been arranged for Slengral and his mate, we would never have come to this.”
“I believe she has realized this,” Buosoa quietly interjected.
“She made an error in judgement in trying to choose a way that would not destabilize the entire shinara. Slengral’s hostility was already widely known—among females and males alike.
The hunters saw him as an example and abandoned us rather than mend the rift.
That you know. What you do not know is that it caused considerable unrest. Females began to look at the males with distrust, imagining that they needed to keep them under stricter control and confinement, which led to one particularly docile male poisoning his mate.
And several juvenile males within the haga attempted to assault a lone female while they were out attending their duties.
And this is the chaos that Queen Zathexa had to answer to every day. ”
“Slengral just wished to protect his mate and live in peace,” Therxian argued, but he knew it was a weak argument.
While it was true that this was his brother’s strongest desire, it was also true that his brother would have had no problem destroying the shinara completely—and not without reasons of his own. “Anyone would do the same.”
Jathella inclined her head, her gavo rising slowly before snapping firmly in agreement.
“Anyone would,” she agreed. “But Buosoa is right. His presence brought chaos to our door because what they saw in Slengral was a male who defiantly opposed the shinara in every way. And would do so violently if necessary. Furthermore, he was a male who broke free of the social system that regulated our mating habits for so long.”
“These habits are antiquated at best. In the Vehal—”
“You are not in the Vehal,” Jathella sharply reminded him. “Unlike you, he did not return because he wanted to heal the people but on the charge of assault on a noble female.”
“Who assaulted him!”
“Granted, but this case had not been determined. And rather than humbling himself in some manner so that the Queen could find an angle to support him and his choices against the wishes of the council, he aggressively opposed her wishes in public at every opportunity. In private, Zathexa never spoke ill of Lori. Only ceaseless worry that the council would find a way to kill her. When the maiden trial was suggested, it appeared to be the best solution to give Lori the benefit of proving herself— so that everyone would see that her presence was there to add to the strength of the shinara rather than destroy it.”
“That is not what Slengral said,” he muttered.
“Naturally. He blamed her and angered her—so she allowed him to believe the worst, because he would anyway. He would never believe that she did not discover what had been intended until afterward. She had hoped that by allowing him to make her the villain if it would rouse him from his grief and open himself to mating again, not only for the welfare of the shinara but also to distract him and fill his heart in some way.”
“I knew her approach would not work,” Kitanara sighed.
“Zathexa took a mate when she was young, before she became queen. Your father, Therxian,” she added.
“She never loved another male again after his death, and took care not to create a pheromone bond with those she welcomed into her bed in brief encounters to breed with. Slengral is too much like his mother to agree with that. Or perhaps she did know that, and it was why she forced the issue.”
“Has her temper too,” Buosoa huffed. “He thought that she had released Payeri and her mother, Shalyia. He was only partially right. For her transgression, Payeri was subjected to a slow, painful death with her own mother as witness. Shalyia was stripped of status and released before being exiled to a far corner of the shinara to grieve for her fallen mother-line and the loss of her daughter. Vekatha is fortunate that she is only suffering imprisonment.”
“Speaking of Vekatha,” Jathella murmured. “That brings us to why we are here.”
Therxian’s gavo lifted inquisitively. “You did not come simply to yell at me?”
“I came to congratulate you,” Buosoa purred. “I knew that the meat would push you to act.”
“Indeed,” Jathella murmured as she peered at her younger sister in annoyance. She huffed and redirected her attention back to Therxian. “But that was just an additional benefit. I came to inform you that I have arranged for you to meet Vekatha tomorrow in the early hours. Be ready.”
“I shall be ready,” Therxian rumbled, his tail coiling in anticipation.