Chapter 5 #2
By Ain’s mid-point in the sky, I am sitting alone on the wide stone ledge high above the alcove the females are currently using to tend to their sick. There are bone weapons lying in front of me. I have not touched them.
I am completely watching her.
She is teaching the small, quiet female called Loo-see how to properly repack the filtration weave. She is not gentle about it. She points sharply at a lethal mistake, fixes it herself with her small hands, then steps back and commands Loo-see to do it again.
She does not coddle the other females. She fiercely protects them by forcing them to learn how to survive.
A thick, dark curl escapes the untidy knot on top of her head.
She shoves it back angrily without looking, smudging grey dust across her pale cheek.
Her human anatomy is severely fragile. She possesses no thick protective muscle, no brow sheltering her fierce, dark eyes, and the delicate joints of her bare wrists look incredibly easy to snap.
But she refuses to act like prey. Her small jaw tightens fiercely before she issues another hard instruction. She leans over the work, the collar of her tunic slipping sideways, exposing a long, vulnerable strip of soft, pale skin at the back of her neck.
My dra-kir instantly surges.
A bruising ache spikes directly through my bloodstream. I stare down at her vulnerable skin, my fangs dropping over my lip.
She must have thick furs. I will empty my private stores for her immediately.
She must have completely fresh meat. Not the hard roasted flesh we consume here in the clan cave, but something soft, something that would make her exhausted face look different when she eats it.
I must line the hard stone of her sleeping mat so she never feels the cold.
I must know the exact temperature she requires to sleep, so I can press my body against her and maintain that precise heat through the coldest cycles.
I will wrap her in my scent until there is no piece of her left unclaimed.
I stop the thought, staring blindly down at the bone tools before me.
I have been the undefeated dra-dam of this clan for many revolutions.
I have survived the freezing dark of Xiraxis alone without shelter.
I have fought Lucek’s males claw to claw deep in a ravine with zero reinforcements and I slaughtered them all.
I possess absolute control.
But the glow along my forearms flushes completely, fiercely bright. The searing gold light reflects off the stone walls of the ledge. I cross my arms tightly over my chest, burying the blinding light.
On the cavern floor directly below, Ah-mee-lee-ah approaches the central fire pit. She holds an empty gourd bowl.
Haroth is nearby. He is not watching the fire pit. He is sitting against the stone wall where he has a perfectly clear line of sight to the sick bay entrance, his arms folded across his chest. He has been sitting there completely still for most of the sol.
He thinks no one has noticed his obsession. I have.
Ah-mee-lee-ah walks directly up to him and holds the bowl out. She mimes scooping from the empty bottom, then lifting the invisible contents to her soft mouth. She requires a dipping shell.
Haroth studies her delicate gesture. He looks deeply at the bowl. He looks at her scooping motion. He tilts his head in affirmation once, stands up, and disappears directly into the storage alcove.
He returns almost instantly with a broad bone basin the exact size of her entire torso. He sets it down in front of her with great care.
Ah-mee-lee-ah stares silently at the basin. She looks down at her tiny gourd bowl. She looks back at the basin. A strange, unique sound comes out of her. High and sharp and constantly repeated. Her small shoulders shake violently.
She is making the human sound. The joyful happy sound.
Eh-ree-kah puts down her weave, wipes her small hands on her stained bottom coverings, and walks over to intervene.
Haroth looks squarely up at me on the ledge, projecting a panicked impulse loudly into the mindspace. ”What did I do wrong?”
I do not know. I am completely watching Eh-ree-kah.
“Kah,” she says firmly to Haroth. No.
She points directly at the small bowl. I see her soft mouth working silently as she tries to string the ancient Drakav sounds together. She requires the words s’kahn-tul. Water tool.
She opens her mouth.
“S’kahn-kol.”
My entire body instantly, violently stiffens.
The cavern is plunged into absolute silence. No sudden scraping of bone against rock. No shifting of limbs. All my warriors cease breathing at the exact same moment. The sudden quiet presses painfully, incredibly heavy against my skin.
She did not say water tool.
She aggressively, loudly said Kol’s water.
In the ancient language of the dust, there is no more complete claim one can make. It is a vow of absolute belonging that the deep dust has not heard in a thousand seasons.
My dra-kir slams violently against my ribs. Once. Twice. The impact physically bruises the bone.
Sarven’s thought arrives first. It carries a crystal-clear image of my form, sitting rigidly and unmoving on the upper ledge for the last three solmarks, obsessed with watching her. Deep, resonant amusement ripples powerfully through the mindspace.
”Your small leader female calls to you, dra-dam.”
A bruising wave of totally unfamiliar possessive heat hits my bloodstream so fast my vision actually blurs.
My fangs ache and a low, completely uncontrolled, ragged noise tears out of my throat before I can bite it down. The searing glow illuminating my entire chest flares out of control.
I turn my back on the open cavern and shove both of my hands straight into the solid stone wall of the ledge.
My sharp claws sink completely in to the hilt, and the solid rock loudly cracks under the extreme pressure.
I must bury my claws into the rock to stop my own legs from moving.
To stop myself from vaulting off this upper ledge, crossing the cavern floor, throwing her small body over my shoulder, and dragging her into the deepest, unmapped dark of the tunnels to press my burning skin against hers until this terrifying fever breaks.
She does not understand the language, I tell my own mind, my chest heaving as I drag hot, searing air into my burning lungs. She does not know what she just claimed.
My dra-kir does not care.
I rip my claws free and immediately leave through the tight, dark access tunnel at the back of the upper vents. If I stay in the exact same cavern as her for one more second, the fragile control I have will completely shatter.
Zan tracks my escape to the cold, narrow confines of the lower armory.
He does not announce his presence, but I can feel the rigid tension of him bleeding into the dark space.
I do not look up. I am furiously sweeping a rough grinding stone across a bone spear I do not intend to use. The friction of stone against bone is the only physical outlet keeping my claws from tearing the armory walls apart. The blinding heat of her spoken claim is still roaring in my veins.
Zan ducks through the low archway. He stops a respectful distance away, his amber eyes locked on the aggressive, mechanical strike of my hands.
His posture is wrong. The thick muscles in his arms are locked. It is a deeply defensive stance.
He stands there for so long in complete silence I begin to wonder if the dust has ruined his brain.
His projection finally hits the mindspace. It is not amusement. It is stark terror.
”They do not know our ways,” Zan projects.
The thought is sharp enough that my thick brow furrows.
”They argue with you. They blindly interrupt the council.
The females butcher our most sacred vows in front of the entire clan, and we simply submit to the amusement of it.
The females do not understand what they are destroying. ”
I slowly ease the movement of the grinding stone. ”She is learning. The human translation is imperfect.”
”It is not the translation,” Zan shoots back. ”Rok yields to his human. Sarven yields. Tharn yields. If these tiny females reshape our warriors, what becomes of our survival?”
I completely stop grinding the stone and look up.
Zan looks at these sweet-smelling, fragile females and clearly sees a weakness that will get the entire clan slaughtered by Lucek. He is terrified the matings will dull our sharp claws, and the shifting dust will simply bury us all.
”Reshaping is not the same as breaking,” I project, my frequency deadly calm.
Zan stares at me, his amber eyes narrowing sharply in the dark.
”And if this fearless female reshapes you?” Zan asks. The rebellious thought loudly rings between us in the cold stone space. ”If the undefeated dra-dam yields completely to a tiny human who does not even understand the ancient vows she speaks? What then for the safety of the clan?”
I hold his gaze, maintaining absolute physical stillness. I do not answer his sharp question.
I do not answer him because the terrifying truth belongs only to the dark.
He is afraid she will reshape me.
My darkest fear is that she will not. I crave to be reshaped by her.
I fiercely want the vicious, soft little female to break me down and build my strength back up to serve her.
I am the deadliest warlord on this brutal planet, and my only screaming instinct right now is to wrap my body around hers, bury my face in her sweet-smelling neck, and belong to her.
Zan waits rigidly for a response. When none comes, he bows his head stiffly, turns, and leaves the armory.
I go back to violently sharpening the spear.
I grind the stone against the bone until the edge could split a grain of sand.
Then I pick up another. The armory grows pitch dark as Ain drops below the high ridge.
The stone cools against my broad back. The rhythmic grinding sound fills the tight space, and for a while, it drowns out the scent of her soft neck.
For a while.
The cavern is dark. The deep dark cycle has settled over the sleeping clan.
I walk my outer patrol in silence. I am carrying the thickest, furred hide from my own private stores.
I pass the quiet water channels. I pass the sleeping healing alcoves. I walk the absolute perimeter line near the females’ sleeping partition and rigidly stop at her space.
Eh-ree-kah is fast asleep on a single, rough hide blanket.
She is curled into a tight, miserable ball, her soft, delicate knees pulled high up toward her chest, shivering.
The harsh, biting chill of the dark cave presses down on her.
Her breathing is shallow. Her delicate, fragile body constantly fights Xiraxis, fights the severe lack of water, fights the exhaustion of keeping the other Daughters alive.
She is so tiny. So breakable. She should not be suffering alone on a freezing cold stone ledge. She should be wrapped directly against my chest, warm and protected by my heat.
I stand completely still in the deepest dark before stepping silently to the edge of the stone mat.
My towering shadow swallows her completely. I carefully drape the thick fur over her shivering form and she instantly burrows deep into the warmth of it, letting out a soft, completely unconscious whimper of sheer relief.
My dra-kir seizes and my glow flares.
I slowly, helplessly reach my sharp claw out.
My rough palm completely hovers exactly one tiny inch above her sweet brow.
The soft heat radiating off her skin is completely intoxicating.
The sweet, sharp scent of her, like a storm-wind tearing across the open dunes, fills my lungs until there is no room left for air.
My dra-kir swells, screaming at me to drag her against my chest and carry her deep into my own private alcove.
If I touch her, I will not pull away. If I touch the soft skin of her jaw, I will never let another breathing warrior smell the exact same air as her again.
My claws tremble as I rip my arm back from the severe temptation. I strangle the glow down until I am nothing but a dark watcher standing in the void.
The silence of the dark roars in my ears.
She does not know what she said in the cavern, my logic argues as I retreat into the deeper tunnels where neither the light nor the mindspace can possibly reach me.
But my empty hand burns from the ghost of her heat in the freezing dark. The scent of her skin clings to my lungs, and I know the terrifying fire in my blood is never going to break.