Chapter 9
I DO NOT KNOW WHAT A 'VENN DIAGRAM' IS, BUT I SUSPECT I AM IN IT
SARVEN
Iam awake.
And I am in trouble.
My arms are wrapped around something small, soft, and warm. At some point in the dark, Mih-kay-lah turned in her sleep. Her back is no longer against my chest; she lies sideways now, face tucked near my throat, legs draped over my thigh.
And her hip is grinding directly against the part of me that is currently trying to escape its sheath.
I am throbbing. Painfully so. The heat pooling in my groin is not just my glow; it is something else entirely.
I stare at the cave ceiling.
If my brothers were here, Haroth would make a sound like swallowing stones wrong. Zan would pretend this does not interest him. Kelvan would just stare until I combusted from shame.
But they are not here. It is just me, the rock, and the small female using my throbbing pouch as a place to rest.
I take one deep, strangled breath.
I have never been with a female. Before the humans appeared in the dust, I had never even seen one. My member has always been… dormant. Locked away except for the rare occasions when I need to use the goldweep.
Now the lock seems broken, and my member is out of control.
It is terrifying.
Is it supposed to hurt this much? My pouch feels too tight to contain me. Every time she breathes, her ribs expand against my chest, and the friction sends a shockwave straight to my loins that makes my claws extend.
She shifts in her sleep, murmuring a soft sound, and her knee slides up. It presses right against the most sensitive part of me, hidden beneath the sealed, smooth skin of the pouch.
I squeeze my eyes shut and pray to Ain for mercy.
In the mindspace, far off, I feel a brush of presence. Haroth.
“Alive?” he sends.
I answer with a sharp, warning pulse: “Busy. Go away.”
I feel his interest pique. He senses my distress, perhaps even the spike in my dra-kir. So, I slam up a wall between us. I build it out of panic and stone so he cannot see.
This is not for him.
This suffering is mine alone.
Mih-kay-lah shifts again. She rubs her face against my chest, her nose pressing into my sternum as she makes another thick sound in her throat.
I freeze.
Her hand tightens on my forearm.
“Morning,” she croaks finally, voice rough with sleep. “You’re still…here.” She shapes the words slowly, like her throat is as unused as mine.
I rumble a greeting deep in my chest.
A mistake.
Because she goes very still.
For one breath. Two. She does not move at all.
Neither do I.
If I do, I fear my member will burst from its confines and do things I cannot even imagine. So, I remain frozen.
For a moment, Mih-kay-lah does nothing. Then one hand reaches blindly, feeling along the arm banded around her. Then the wall behind her. Then the harness at my hip.
“Oh God,” she gasps, jerking up so fast she nearly cracks her head on the stone. She scrubs an arm across her mouth. “Was I… was I drooling on you?”
The movement drags her soft thigh directly over my aching ridge.
I have to bite my tongue to keep from letting my glow flare bright.
She is staring at me with big, wide eyes. Then her gaze drops to our tangled legs. She scrambles backward, kicking out until she is pressed against the far wall of the alcove, knees pulled to her chest.
“Oh, shit.” She runs her hands over her face. “I’m so sorry. I forgot.” Her free hand makes a vague orbiting gesture past my chest. “It’s just that you’re so…warm.”
I know that last word. Wh-arm. It goes with hee-ter.
“Yes,” I answer. “Wh-arm.” I tap my sternum, then jerk my chin toward her, trying to make the meaning clear. “You…wh-arm. Safe.”
She blinks at me, her throat moving. “Your English is getting pretty good.”
I do not know what that means, so I choose to ignore it. The only good thing is that my body is slowly cooling down now that she is not wriggling on me.
I close my eyes, trying to focus on the feeling of not having her in my arms. Maybe that will make my member behave. But this only makes me think of how she did feel in my arms, and my member starts to pulse again.
My eyes snap open.
Mih-kay-lah is watching me.
She is huddled against the far wall, arms wrapped around her knees, but the fear has drained from her posture. She is just…looking. Her gaze traces the line of my shoulders, the clan markings on my arms and chest, and finally rests on my face.
There is something different in the way she is looking at me. The hard, defensive shell she wears in the main cavern is…gone.
“You know,” she says softly, voice barely carrying, “you don’t seem so ‘Stabby’ right now.”
My ears tilt forward. I know that sound.
“Stah-bee,” I repeat. The title she gave me.
Heat floods her cheeks. It is fascinating. The dark skin over her cheekbones warms even though she has no glow. She looks down at her hands, fidgeting with a scale on her tunic.
“Yeah,” she murmurs. “That’s… that’s what I call you. In my head. And out loud sometimes.”
She looks up again, and this time her eyes hold something I have never seen in them before. Something soft. Something that makes every instinct in me go even more alert.
“It was the knife.” The words spill out fast in a long, rushing stream of Een-gleesh.
“Your, uh, what is that Drakavian word again? Your vral? You were always sitting in that dark corner, staring at me with those red eyes, sharpening that terrifying blade. Scritch, scritch, scritch. Just sharpening it for hours. I honestly thought you were planning to peel me like a fruit. I thought you were a monster.”
I tilt my head, trying to catch the meanings in the flood of sound. I catch vral. I catch ai-ees. I catch mohn-ster—and that is a word Jus-teen was forced to teach us after we heard it many times.
It is not a good word.
It means Mih-kay-lah is afraid of me. That she thinks I am something that should be feared.
The thought stings, and I shrink back a little.
But then she lets out a long breath, and her shoulders drop.
“But you aren’t,” she says, voice softer now. “A monster wouldn’t have caught me. A monster wouldn’t have turned himself into a shield against the rock. I… I guess I judged you too fast.”
She offers me a small, crooked flash of her teeth, and I blink a few times, unsure what this all means.
“You’re actually… gentle. For a giant, terrifying alien.”
I do not understand all her words, but I know the tone of her voice. It is soft. And for the first time since she woke, she does not look ready to flee.
My chest expands. The ache in my groin fades, replaced by a different kind of heat. One that sits in my dra-kir and makes me feel ten feet tall.
“Stah-bee,” I say, tapping my chest. I search for the word I used earlier. The important one. “Safe.”
Her flash of teeth widens, just a fraction. “Yeah. You kept me safe.”
“Good Stah-bee,” I state firmly.
She laughs then. It is a rusty, surprised sound that bounces off the cave walls. “Sure. Let’s go with that. Good Stabby.”
Silence settles again. But Xiraxis does not stop for us. The water is still bad. The others are still waiting. And we need to move. The rock above us is holding, but it has already shown it can lie.
“Move…soon,” I force my throat to form the Drakavian. “Stone…still angry.”
Her lips twitch. “Yeah,” she says, glancing toward the open drop and very deliberately not looking down.
I watch her for a moment.
Her woven strands are messy with stone dust. There is a smudge high on her cheekbone.
And yet, my breath stalls in my chest.
I have looked at the other human females. Jah-kee, Jus-teen, the loud one called Eh-ree-kah. They are soft. They are… acceptable. But looking at them is like looking at stone. They are just there.
Mih-kay-lah is the only thing on Xiraxis that is in focus. She is rare. She is vital. She is the most beautiful thing to ever walk the dust.
“Mih-kay-lah.” Her name rumbles through my throat, and when she looks at me, I forget what I even intended to say. “You…me.” I tap my chest. “Teeem.”
Her lips twitch again. “Yeah,” she murmurs. “Team.”
I want more than that little syllable. I want to mark this plainly, in both our languages.
I search for the word Haroth discovered and drilled into us. Not mate. I have not glowed yet. Another word.
“Fuh-rend,” I say carefully, feeling the human shape of it. Someone you choose who is not blood or mate but still important.
Her eyes widen a little.
For a few beats of my dra-kir, she just blinks at me. Then her shoulders ease.
“Friend,” she repeats, nodding, her lips curving into a soft smile. She is looking at me strangely again, and I reach out in the mindspace like a fool, trying to brush her thoughts. “Yeah,” she adds, teeth flashing again, “friend.”
Fuh-rend.
Something deep in my chest, where the older instincts live, hears fuh-rend and translates it wrong on purpose.
Future-mate, it decides.
“Fuh-rend,” I say again, softer. This time, I pair it with one of our words. “Tor-vakh.”
Her brows draw together. “Tor—” She mangles it. “Tor…what? The translator didn’t translate that at all.”
“Tor-vakh.” I tap my own shoulder, then reach forward and tap hers. She does not move away. “Stone…back. Back to back.”
“Oh,” she breathes. “Like… watching each other’s backs.” She is looking at me in that strange way again, the one I cannot read. “Yeah,” she says finally. “That. I like that better than ‘friend,’ honestly.”
She seems to come to a decision.
She leans closer. Her hand lifts, then presses to my chest, directly over my dra-kir.
My dra-kir stutters.
Does she know? Does she know this is how we Drakav mark a vow? An oath?
“Tor-vakh,” she says. “Team. Friend.” She makes a small, helpless sound in her throat. “Whatever the cross-lingual Venn diagram is, that’s you.”
I do not know half those words, but my glow kicks traitor-bright under her palm anyway. I force it down.
“Okay,” she says quickly, pulling her hand back. “We can do the feelings circle later. We have sick people and poisoned water to deal with.”
My skin already misses her touch, the way a bruise misses pressure.
“Ready?” she asks, looking up at me, her Een-gleesh words carrying a question.
I bare my teeth in something I hope communicates joy.
But then a scent hits me again.
Faint, but there.
The scent I smelled before.
Fresh lifeblood.
It is not coming from Mih-kay-lah. And it is not coming from me.
It is not from Kelvan, who was wounded.
It is coming from ahead. From the dark where the water flows.
And it is not the scent of clan.