Chapter 5
I SAT DOWN. THIS CHANGES NOTHING.
KOL
My dra-kir has not stopped hammering since last sol.
Forty orbits of Ain. Not once has it lost its rhythm. Not in a brutal dust storm. Not in the fiercest battle. Not when the southern dunes collapsed and buried half my warriors alive.
I am burning up from the inside out.
The golden heat radiating off my chest is completely out of control. I stand alone in the high western alcove, forcing my body directly into the freezing drafts of the upper vents just to strip the terrifying temperature from my skin.
The thin air up here smells of ancient, settled dust, but I ignore it. My senses are helplessly locked onto the sharp, sweet scent of Eh-ree-kah’s exhaustion drifting straight up from the cavern floor.
I crush my spine hard against the unyielding stone wall. I force my overheated muscles to stay pressed tightly against the severe, biting cold.
She stood in front of my inner circle. She pointed a fragile digit directly at my chest. Her beautiful, watery eyes leaked, and she fiercely commanded me to lower my body to the stone.
So I sat.
I yielded to her. Her human will bent my knees the exact moment the mindspace registered her desperate command.
I am the dra-dam. I lead this clan. I take orders from no one. But when this fierce, tiny female yelled at me, my only screaming instinct was to drop instantly to my knees and demand to know how I could serve her.
The mindspace has not been silent since.
I keep my frequency pulled brutally tight, projecting a suffocating wall of silence that usually forces my warriors to lower their heads. But right now, the high-ranking males push against it, their disbelief and amusement bleeding through my absolute defenses anyway.
A sharp, incredibly smug frequency slides directly against my mental wall. Tharn.
”The human female commanded you to lower yourself,” Tharn projects. ”The Hall of Knowing shows the ancient Daughters of Ain commanding us to bow. It is a powerful sign. She is claiming you, dra-dam.”
I do not move my spine from the freezing stone wall. Instead, I shape a blunt block of absolute rejection and shove it back against his frequency. ”She was upset. I calmed her.”
There is silence. I think he is finished. But then Tharn’s frequency returns immediately, completely unbothered by my violence.
”Rok lowered himself for Jus-teen. Sarven for Mih-kay-lah. I surrendered the moment I saw Jah-kee. You folded your body to the floor for Eh-ree-kah. The claiming pattern is clear.”
The thick muscles in my neck strain painfully against my own skin. ”She does not want my claim.”
”The pattern,” Tharn insists, ”is very clear. You should begin weaving her a thick new sleeping mat, dra-dam.”
I slam the mindspace shut, severing his connection.
The sudden internal silence is deafening, leaving me alone with the bruised rhythm of my dra-kir hammering painfully against my ribs.
When I push off the stone wall, the golden glow burning along my forearms is running too hot. I need the harsh, scouring wind of the outer wastes. I need immediate physical distance from her sweet, stormy scent.
The brutal wind should have scoured her scent out of my lungs by now. It has not.
I have been stalking the outer perimeter since I left the cavern.
Ain is at her highest, blinding central peak and the wind is brutal, grinding coarse sand deeply into the ridges of my status markings.
I dragged Haroth along because I demanded another set of eyes on the unprotected border, but I have not been watching the border.
I have been desperately trying to stop my body from smelling her.
Haroth is not helping.
I keep feeling his consciousness brush against mine.
He is doing an intensely poor job of shielding his frequency.
Every few strides, a fragment of his projection slips through.
The clear, vivid image of my body folding to the stone floor.
The image of the small female pointing her shaking digit at my bare chest.
I stop walking.
”Check the outer markers,” I project, my frequency deadly flat. ”South dunes to the plains. Check all of them.”
Haroth’s frequency goes carefully neutral. ”That is a full sol’s walk, dra-dam.”
”Then you should start walking immediately.”
Haroth dips his head into the wind and immediately turns south. As he goes, a single, crystal-clear image drifts back through the mindspace. Me again. Sitting on the floor. Staring up at the tiny female.
He leaves the projection unshielded so I receive the insult perfectly.
I bare my fangs down into the dust.
I stand alone on the high ridge. The roaring silence is better. The harsh wind strips layers of heat off my shoulders and I close my eyes and drag air into my chest. Sand. Crushed stone. Dry, bitter air. Nothing sweet. Nothing stormy. Nothing that smells like her.
My dra-kir finally slows. One punishing beat. Two. The rhythm steadies.
Good.
I am turning my back toward the cavern when I hear it. Heavy footfalls. Fast. Too fast for a standard border patrol.
Haroth is running.
He barely left. He should be out of sight, well on his way to the south dunes by now.
He crests the high ridge at a full, desperate sprint, kicking up a wall of dust. He skids to a complete stop directly in front of me and quickly holds out the fresh carcass of a rock jumper.
The coarse, dust-colored plumage is still slick with its own lifeblood. Its long, slender neck has been roughly snapped. A completely fresh kill. The dust hasn’t even begun to settle naturally on the cooling body.
I look at the broken meat.
But the dominant scent in the air is not the prey.
It is sour. Scented of dried lifeblood and rotting firebloom roots.
Lucek’s clan.
”Just past the first incline,” Haroth projects rapidly, his frequency sharp and urgent. ”Not at the outer markers. Right here. They are already deep inside our territory.”
The air leaves my lungs in a violent rush. My dra-kir simply stops.
Eh-ree-kah.
I am already moving.
Haroth projects something else into the wind. I ignore it.
I run, tearing down the steep ridge, across the deep dunes, toward the outer tunnels.
I cover the vast distance in a fraction of the time it took to walk it.
My claws tear straight into the stone as I round the final bend, and the warriors guarding the outer cavern throw their bodies sideways as I barrel immediately past them.
I do not register any of them. Not their faces, not the central fire pit, not the dark alcoves of the sick bay. The instant I clear the tunnel, my golden eyes sweep the cavern and immediately lock.
She is sitting on the floor sorting dried fiber rations. Her dark mane is falling down, stuck to the sweat on her soft forehead, and she is furiously muttering to herself. She does not notice me stalking toward her. She is too busy arguing with a basket.
I walk directly into her space.
“Hey, watch—” She turns her head, and instantly stops.
I grab her soft shoulders. She is so small my claws go almost around her joints.
The roaring heat in my bloodstream severs my logic. I do not consciously command my own muscles to move. I simply blink, and I have already yanked her flush against my chest, abruptly turning to put my wide back between her fragile frame and the rest of the open cavern.
She makes a sound. A small, completely cut-off sound, high in her delicate throat and my dra-kir instantly slams against my ribs in response.
I roughly tilt her small head to the side and crush my face directly into the soft joint of her thin neck and jaw and drag a deep breath into my lungs.
She smells completely fine. She smells of filtered water and dust and violent storms. No sour lifeblood. No rotting roots. No trace of another male. She is here. She is completely whole. She is unbothered.
She is completely fine.
The roaring silence in my ears finally breaks. The cavern immediately coalesces around us, and I go very, very still. My face is still completely buried into the softest part of her skin.
I have to physically force my own body to pull back.
She is staring straight up at me, her dark eyes enormous. She has a desperate death grip on the basket she is still holding against her chest.
“Are you—” She swallows, her pulse jumping frantically against the thin skin of her throat. “Are you sniffing me?”
Her dra-kir is completely erratic. I smell the sharp spike of her startlement.
The focused frequencies of the clan press against the back of my skull.
Every warrior in the cavern has stopped moving.
They are standing dead silent in the shadows, watching my claws cage her small body directly against my glowing chest.
The need to bury my face back into her throat and simply absorb her scent until my dra-kir regulates is overwhelmingly powerful.
“Neh-ck,” I force out, my vocal cords grinding against the unfamiliar human sounds.
She blinks up at me. “My neck?”
I am unable to form any other words. The possessive fire roaring through my veins drowns out my logic. I stare down at the frantic pulse hammering in her throat and force a single, guttural sound up my chest.
“Gooood.”
The word does nothing to explain the violence rolling under my skin, but it is the absolute truth. Her scent is perfect. She is perfect.
I slowly drop my claws from her fragile shoulders and force my feet to take exactly one agonizing step backward.
She stares at me. “Good.”
I do not trust myself to talk again. If I open my mouth, I will simply roar. I turn my back on her, my muscles completely rigid with tension, and force myself to stalk away toward the upper ledges.
I can feel the amused consciousness of the gathered warriors pressing against the back of my skull like a dust storm against a sealed vent. I ignore them.