Chapter 21 #2
I had one breath to register the sound of boots coming up behind me before something large and warm collided with me at full speed.
My feet left the ground. The air left my lungs.
A laugh rolled through both of us, deep and unchecked, and I did not need to see his face to know him.
No one else on Valose had ever hit that hard and meant it as affection.
“Vallon,” I managed, somewhere between a greeting and a wheeze.
“Vennox.” He set me down as his silver scales flushed bright with emotion. “You didn’t say goodbye before you left with the rescue team.”
"Goodbye is too final, and I planned on returning to Valose.
" I clapped him on the shoulder. "I had hoped to bring home more of our lost warriors.
Nullar said the Lizordian vessel has not reached Valose.
We received word over the comm just before we changed course and crashed.
Twenty-two Valosians and twenty-nine human females. "
Vallon nodded grimly. "The Lizordian vessel has yet to arrive." His eyes briefly dropped to my shawra before returning to mine. "No distress signal. No communication. Only silence."
“Truxxet’s brother,” I cursed. “The Trisess warrior had joined us in hopes of finding him.”
"We have not stopped looking," Vallon said, his jaw set with quiet resolve.
“One of the remaining Lizordian brothers is searching for the vessel that vanished with the rescued captives, including his own brother. The third continued to the Orc home world in search of the warriors your team set out to rescue.”
Vallon’s eyes moved over me then. “Must have been a terrible crash landing.” Not a quick sweep but the slower look of someone cataloging damage, snagging on the thin white scars at my thigh, my shoulder, and the faint ridge that tracked across my chest.
Thanks to Quin, my wounds had nearly healed. My ancillary heart now beat with quiet purpose, pumping adrenaline through my veins, strengthening my body and accelerating its healing, so I would be ready to protect the female the Spirits had chosen for me.
"The crash," I confirmed. "And what came after."
"What kind of world was it?"
I looked out across the sprawling city for a moment, at the familiar blue light of the solaris orbs beginning to glow as the twin suns finished their descent and thought about how to explain a planet that had spent every rotation trying to kill us.
"The kind with creatures that would give the wetlocks pause," I said. "Three-headed. Burrowing. Things that rose from the ground without warning. Flora that consumed anything that wandered too close." I paused. "Two of the human females were lost before our arrival.”
“You are lucky to be alive.” Vallon clapped me across the shoulder hard enough to stagger me. “And your spirit mate. Which of the females is yours?”
The question hung between us. I could feel my ancillary heart drumming at the mere thought of her.
"No one," I said, rubbing the flat of my palm against my sternum where my spirit writhed in a restless, tremulous ache. The agony of a bond straining toward its complement and finding the way blocked, not by distance, but by choice.
Vallon’s brow furrowed. “No one? But the shawra—”
“It’s complicated.”
"Elise did not welcome our bond either," he said, the confusion creasing his brow smoothed into understanding.
"She loved me. I could feel it. But she believed I deserved a better future than she could give me.
She tried to protect me by keeping her distance.
" His smile softened, carrying the weight of memory.
"Eventually, she realized the Spirits were right in choosing her for me. "
The hope that bloomed in my chest was a small, dangerous thing that I did not dare nurture. I shoved it aside the way I was doing the echo of Quin’s disquiet I couldn’t quite extinguish.
"Vennox."
The voice came from behind Vallon, deep and measured, and the crowd parted. Sia Jakkar moved through the space with the gravity of a male who did not need to announce himself, the winged wetlock buckle at his kilt gleaming dully in the dome's light.
"Welcome home." He clasped my forearm in the warrior's grip, his hand firm and grounding. "Valose is stronger with you in it."
"Thank you, Sia." The formal response came automatically, muscle memory from a time when protocol had been simpler. "I regret that I did not return with any of our lost brothers. The anomaly took us before we reached the Orc home world."
Jakkar's grip on my forearm tightened briefly. "You are here. That is enough for now."
He held my gaze for a moment longer than necessary, his silver eyes reading something in my face I hadn’t meant to show, and then he nodded once and moved on.
Others came in his wake. Aggar was broad and steady, his forearm grip as solid as the male himself.
Sia Nekko and Alexxon spoke over each other with the chaos of males who had never learned to take turns.
Every greeting was the same. Welcome. Relief. And then the eyes dropped to my chest, lingering on the shawra, the unspoken question hovering in the air. Why was my spirit mate not by my side?
By the seventh or eighth clansman, the mark felt like it was burning through my scales.
I could feel that Quin was somewhere in the palace.
The distance between us was measured in steps I could count, and walls I could not breach, and every male who looked at my shawra and then at my empty hands was measuring that distance with their eyes.
Vallon must have seen it. The discomfort building in my posture, the way my shoulders had drawn inward despite my efforts to keep them square.
He stepped forward, inserting himself between the next approaching clansman and me with the smooth confidence of someone who had learned to redirect attention.
“You weren’t here long enough to see the Gretolic crafts we acquired,” he said, loud enough for the group to hear. “Tech you need to see to believe.” He grinned. “Come. I’ll show you.”