Chapter Four
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RLXEAADNE (aka Alexander)
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So this is the little human female who will take our seed and give us our tusks—our mate.
She is not what we expected. Our first impression of her involved her renaming us. I am now Alexander. NTRSTIA is Tristian, and SRMUIAQ is Marquis.
NTRSTIA—I suppose I shall have to get accustomed to calling him Tristian now—was unhappy about the arrangement before, and now, after meeting her, he is even less pleased.
I can feel his annoyance through the bristles of his hair as if it's my own.
As the eldest of the three of us, Tristian bears a greater burden than Marquis and I do. He should have approved the choice of our mate, yet she was written into our history as an unchangeable event. We were given no choice in the matter.
From the first sight of her, both Marquis and I sensed Tristian's complete disapproval of the female. She is slight—too slight. Her delicate bones suggest her body may not be able to accommodate all three of us.
Even if she is stretched, how will she possibly take us all? A valid concern, I must agree, but we will have to find a way to ensure we can pump our seed into the deepest parts of her. We cannot change our destiny. The future of Kraukug depends on her.
Despite her size, with hair the color of raven, pink cheeks, and supple lips, she is an extraordinary creature.
Slight but extraordinary. We shall have to tread carefully with her lest we break her into three parts.
The writings on the monoliths of Kraukug assured us of the maiden's eagerness to lie beneath us, her longing for our arrival to claim her.
Her nature is described as coquettish and supplicant, her body ours for the taking.
The only true part of the monoliths is her beauty.
She surpasses that without question but fails miserably in every other regard.
She called us demons, performed some arbitrary ritual, and when that failed, named us aliens.
Tristian will not easily recover from the insult.
His patience runs thin, and while it is Marquis's nature to be amused by the situation, the responsibility to claim her, return with her to Kraukug, and mate with our fated mate rests equally on our shoulders.
I glance at the men who are like me. We share a kinship that surpasses the bond of blood.
Instead, we have shed life-giving source together on the battlefield and emerged victorious.
Until a warlock cast a spell on Kraukug, flattening it to scree, leaving us barren, our hordes killed, and our bloodlords encased in eggshells, our tusks destroyed, weak like helpless chicks.
But the warlock did not know what was fated in our monoliths. He is fortunate to have died by his own hand; otherwise, we would kill him a thousand times over. Now is the time to regrow Kraukug to its former glory. And this is the female tasked with that burden.
I hear Tristian's voice in my head. "We are doomed," he keeps repeating, looking at the slight girl who tried to banish us with olaughh, what humans call lavender.
"Jasmine," I say, her name sounding foreign on our lips. It comes from a place deeper than our larynx; we seem to speak it from within our veins. We have never encountered a name like hers before.
"Twenty-three red moons ago, an elder of Kraukug received a vision of impending doom," I begin.
"I'm sure it was devastating and all, and I'm sorry, but—" she interrupts.
"The race of Kraukug was to be wiped clean in the coming time," I continue as if she hadn't spoken. "For twenty-three red moons, the elder tried to stop the carnage, and when he realized he would fail to prevent it, he prepared for its inevitability instead.
"He manufactured a plan and a spell, then stepped through the portal from Kraukug to Erthry. He visited a sick bay, where bred females had birthed their fresh offspring.
"He looked through many seedlings until he came across you, Jasmine of Erthry. You were the one. He placed his hand on your chest, and from his palm, through your garb, the ring appeared.
"Umm, no. That sounds really cool, but no. I was born with it. It's very common to be born with a birthmark," she says, as if convincing herself of her own words.
"It is a ring of your heartfire. The elder cast a spell on us to rouse us from our incubation one full red luna later.
"Before the white moon in our skies closes, before our midnight, we had to find you and take you to Kraukug as our mate, or your heartfire will make a full circle."
"Okay, genius, how did you find me? How did you know I would be here?"
"We followed your scent."
She laughs, the sound tickling the underside of my skin and momentarily throwing me off balance. I notice the same reaction in Tristian and Marquis.
"Right, of course you did. So what's going to happen to me when that stupid thing on my chest reaches full circle? Am I going to go up in flames, or just sizzle to death like a sausage in a medium-hot pan, huh? Is that what's going to happen?"
"Well, you know what? This is all so insane. You don't exist—well, in books you do, but not in real life. You three are certifiable, and if you think I'm going to stand here—"
"Enough," Tristian bellows. "We did not choose you. We would rather breed a female of our kind, someone whose body is suited to receive us as we are. Not you, a mere human girl.
"But we had no say in the matter. Now you will come with us, right now, without a further sound from your mouth."
He stalks toward her, intending to throw her over his shoulder and carry her out. We are running out of time. A shadow already creeps over the tip of the white moon.
"Okay, okay," she says, holding up her hands. "Just so you know, this is not a picnic for me either. Can I change my clothes at least, please? I won't be a minute."
It's the least we can grant her. I hope she has more proper attire than the slips of fabric she is currently wearing.
"Okay," she says again, backing out of the room.
Then we hear another door open, and from the pane of glass where we stand, we see her running through the night in the same attire as before.
Tristian growls expletives in our native language. A smile cracks the corners of my mouth, and Marquis takes it upon himself to catch the little human.