Chapter 4 #3
How had the humans' head shaking developed? He wanted to ask Holly. He wanted to know a great deal about her species. That wasn't an unusual desire. He was a scholar, after all. The pursuit of knowledge was deeply ingrained in him.
What was surprising, however, was the equally powerful desire to know about her specifically.
About Holly. Why was she nervous? What was that strange dance she did the other morning?
Why did she insist on covering her body if the other females did not?
What was it like seeing through only two eyes? What did she think of him?
On and on the questions ran through his mind. Things that had nothing to do with her planet of origin but that he dearly wished to know anyway.
Romival turned and called out to his Dominani, catching his attention before he could leave the chamber.
“May I adjust the females' combots so I can activate their trackers remotely?”
Atem looked surprised. “You want to track my sisters?”
“And your mate. Only with their permission and yours. To prevent another incident like that which took your mate from you.”
Atem's face darkened. “I do not intend to be so careless with her security again.”
“Exactly my point. I do not wish to track them at all marks of the day. I only want to enable them to be activated remotely by myself or you so that, if something does happen, they can be tracked immediately, and we can't be confused off their trail as we were before.”
Atem didn't look any happier, but he gestured his agreement with his hand. “Very well. Be sure you ask their permission as well.”
“Naturally, vi Dominani.”
***
That night, after finishing his duties, Romival returned to his private lab to begin creating a brand new combot.
Well, technically, he was making five of them – one for each human female.
It would be too obvious if he only made one for Holly, and since he wasn't entirely sure yet what was wrong with him, he didn't want to draw attention to his strange fixation.
But he had to be able to keep Holly safe. He couldn't be around her constantly. Not without justification and not without drawing attention. Even if every cell in his body was screaming with the need for it. To put that part of him at ease, he needed to be sure that she was safe instead.
The problem was that the humans were so delicate. Incredibly sexual, powerfully sensual, temptingly soft, and frighteningly fragile.
And yet, they were determined and clever and strong in different ways.
And that strength terrified him.
He had seen, on recordings, the lengths his Adassani would go to in order to fight back.
To protect herself and her pups – both the one in her belly and the one she got through Atem.
She fought even past the point where similar injuries would have brought down a domini.
Her skin ripped open so easily and she bled a violently bright red.
Still, she would fight with a fierce determination that stunned him.
And terrified him for the wrong reasons.
Human females had a war cry. He had heard Peony voice it while she attacked a ratchi easily three times her weight.
And it had been genuinely alarming. If he hadn't heard the beast that released the sound, he would have expected to come face-to-face with a monster of some kind.
Maybe not a big one, but certainly one with massive fangs and claws.
They had a determination to fight, to survive, that exceeded their tiny bodies. He knew now, having seen it in action, that the females would struggle when cornered. They would hurt themselves to protect themselves.
And he didn't want that to happen to Holly.
So, if he couldn't be near her, he would do the next best thing.
Romival built her a special combot. It included the tracking software that he could activate from afar in case of emergency as promised. It also included a few special surprises that Holly couldn't activate on accident but would activate automatically if she needed them.
He spent the rest of the night working on that combot.
He was able to retrofit military technology – some of which he had developed – into the tiny device.
It took him longer to key the device to her DNA.
It required him breaking into the healers' database to get her – and the other humans' – DNA profile.
And that only took time because he hadn't been the one to design the protections around the database.
It wasn't the first time Romival had forgone sleep to work. He didn't really notice how tired he was supposed to be. When it came to working on his projects, Romival could easily lose himself for many marks, to the detriment of his own health.
But especially when it was worthwhile, he didn't feel the fatigue in his eyes or the hunger in his belly or the dryness of his lips begging for a drink of water.
Just a bit longer.
That little lie had driven him through years of his life. He usually spoke it to others when they asked if he needed anything or told him to stop. Maybe that's why he continued to tell it to himself even when he knew that he was lying.
Come sunrise, he dragged himself away from his completed projects to the cot he kept in a corner of his office for this exact purpose.
He collapsed onto the basic, naked mattress, face down, groaning as his exhaustion weighed him down all at once.
Like his brain had just been waiting for him to let his guard down to attack him with everything he had ignored.
But it was worth it.
His last, bleary-eyed image before he fell into sleep was the five combots lined up on his work bench, shining brightly in the light. Holly's was on the far left, indistinguishable from any of the others, and he knew it as intimately as he knew his own claws.
And to his surprise, even as exhausted as he was, he still somehow had the energy to long for Holly, his cock hardening at the memory of her bent over before him.
Only this time, in his tired delirium, she was fully nude, and her surprised gasp was instead an inviting smile as she wiggled her round backside at him.
Wetness glistening on her cunt lips. He didn't know what the humans looked like below, but that hardly mattered as he fell asleep to dreams of nuzzling those glistening lips, licking them until she was too weak to maintain her position and she collapsed to her knees, and he claimed her with hard thrusts as she cried out his name.