Eot
Iwatch as Halley overtakes me. She has questions. Everyone always has questions when they first hear of an Arrok's pheromones. So why isn’t she asking any of them?
Because she’s not interested? I dismiss that possibility. She wouldn’t have reacted so strongly to my pheromones if she wasn’t already attracted to me—a thought that has my chest expanding and my shoulders straightening.
I’m invincible. A mighty male. I could hunt a hundred trikons with my bare hands and never need to draw a weapon.
I fix my gaze on Halley’s back, watching the way the ends of her braids dance lightly against her back with every step of her bimor. And I open my mouth to… I suddenly don’t know what to say.
Arroks don’t select their own mates. The Elders Coalition make all the choices, removing any need for us to know how to impress breeding females.
We could share.
I wince as my words of last night fill my head. I’d expected Keelo to be surprised, shocked even. I hadn’t expected him to be so violently against the idea.
What had surprised me was how upset I’d felt by his rejection.
We share everything—sleeping quarters, a spaceship, a youngling, a life, sometimes a body.
It’s ridiculous that before Halley neither of us realized we’d also share a single mate.
The inevitability of it is the only reason I’m not cuffing him across the back of the head for being so scuddingly stubborn and trying to deny the fact.
Of course he wants to taste Halley. Fuck Halley. Keep Halley.
We’re two halves of the same soul.
If only he was brave enough to do something about it.
That thought pleases me, for Keelo’s no coward. He’ll change his mind.
Buoyed, I call to Halley’s retreating back. “I know you have questions. You can ask me anything. I’ll not think poorly of you for being inquisitive.” Hurriedly, I nudge my bimor to continue walking, but now that Keelo is coming up beside us, she resists.
“I’m very knowledgeable. I’ll answer all your questions with the utmost care. I promise there isn’t any I haven’t already heard.” I lean sidewards, trying to encourage my bimor to veer slightly to the left and step around Keelo’s mount.
“I promise—akh!” My bimor stumbles under my urgent ministrations, and I’m thrown from the saddle.
I hit the ground, sand cushioning my fall.
Flinging out my arms, I attempt to catch myself, but before I can properly righten myself, the sand underneath me slides forward, pulling me down the dune with it, and I rush past Halley.
I eventually slow enough to dig my hands and feet in the ground, and to my surprise, I touch solid rock. It scratches my palms, but the soles of my boots do a much more efficient job of stopping my descent.
Fek.
Head spinning, I brush grit from my eyes, coughing and spitting to clear my mouth and throat.
Halley, Rin, and Keelo remain seated on their mounts about twenty yards away. They’ve stopped at the crest of the dune, near my own mount, who apparently managed to straighten herself once she’d tossed me from her back. There’s a deep gouge cut through the dune in the perfect shape of my ass.
“Are you alright?” Halley calls. She swings a leg over her bimor, clutching the saddle’s pommel with both hands. Then she seems to judge the distance between her foot and the ground and rethinks climbing down.
“Just…um…” I raise a hand, attempting nonchalance. I suspect the effect is ruined by all the blood rushing to my hot face. “Just checking something. Meant to do that. Obviously.”
“Sure you did,” she agrees, nudging her mount into a walk and descending toward me.
“It wasn’t my fault.” Struggling upright, I toe the sand with one booted foot. Sure enough, there’s rock underneath, when I’m sure before there hadn’t been—at least not so close to the surface.
Nothing about the seemingly endless dunes, stretching to the horizon in all directions, suggested the landscape was changing. Except, now, for the clip, clip, clip of Halley’s bimor coming down the slope, as its hoofed feet contact the rock under the sand.
I guess I should be grateful I didn’t hit my head harder, a thought which has me checking to make sure Rin is still wearing her helmet.
She blinks at me from under the brim of my padded hat, no doubt woken by my very masculine shout as I slid down the dune.
“I’m well,” I assure everyone, even though Halley was the only one to ask.
Keelo’s still scowling, as though wishing I’d had the courtesy to have broken my neck.