Three Months Later… #3
“I won’t get pregnant,” she reminded him, even though he knew how her contraception worked—he attended nearly all her appointments.
She raised her knees and spread her legs, beckoning him.
“I miss what I feel when you give me everything.” With her other hand, she spread herself for him, letting out a soft sigh at the sound of her own slickness.
After a brief pause, Airik abruptly tossed the packet somewhere into the darkness of their room, then collapsed over her, catching himself just before crushing her beneath his weight.
“Everything,” he moaned against her throat, then nipped the sensitive skin over her pulse. “You want everything, my light.”
He thrust into her, splitting her wide, making her take him all.
“I do,” she admitted, scratching at his chiseled back to draw him closer.
“You want my child, demon eyes?”
“God help me, I do, Airik.”
He pumped into her, fucking her until she had no choice but to scream and beg for release. He pulled her chin-length hair tight—he loved it just as much, if not more, than before she’d lost her braid—and sank his fangs into her throat, determined to keep her marked for eternity.
“I want to give you a child, too, Nora.” He licked his bite, soothing it with the rasp of his tongue. “Every time I fuck you, I imagine it. Your belly heavy with what’s mine and what’s yours. What would they look like? I dream of their faces. Is it the same for you?”
“Yes,” she cried. His strong thighs slapped against hers as his rhythm grew frantic. “I want a little version of you—with white hair and tiny black nails.”
“Do you?” She felt him somehow grow larger, pushing her to the brink of what she could endure. “I want a little version of you. With dark hair and eyes. And skin that glows like the sun.”
A euphoric heat swept through her, radiating out from her core. Her muscles tightened, and she let out a cry.
Airik drove into her, breaking them both through their climax. As if they were running out of time and the sun would explode and burn them up if he didn’t quench the flames.
Her breath caught as they came down from their high. They kissed, then that quieted to whispers against each other’s lips, promises of love that would only deepen by morning.
“When you are stronger…” Airik resecured the protective band covering Nora’s port in her left arm, then pressed his forehead against it, like a pilgrim touching a sacred relic. “I will give you as many children as you want. It seems we will need at least two.”
Eventually, they peeled apart. He carried her to the bathroom, where they both washed up. Sitting together on a shower stool, she rested in his lap as he massaged her scalp and washed her hair. He used a sponge to wash her body, then rinsed her clean.
The effects of Airik’s come wore off, and the exhaustion from exertion caught up to her as they left the bathroom. She yawned and burrowed into their bed.
Airik was already tugging on his pants.
“Will you come back quickly…in case I wake up?” She shivered, and he pulled the sheets over her.
In the routine of their new lives, the brain could go back and catalog everything that had happened to them.
Even if there were billions of light-years between the memories and her, she’d still sometimes wake screaming.
Trapped in a bathroom with Xallix. Trapped in her uncle’s grip, forced to watch him throw a knife at an attacker who’d been just a kid.
Trapped against a tree on the dirt ground, about to be bitten in half by an alien beast. Trapped under the waves, drowning.
Airik would hold her, telling her she was all right. Reminding her to breathe. That when it was all over—and it would be soon—he would still have her. That everything that had hurt her was gone.
“Only a little while,” he said. “I will return soon.” His new scars also hurt to see—a fervent vigilance he couldn’t shut off.
At least in their bed, behind all his locks, with his arms wrapped around Nora, he could sleep for more than a few hours at a time. She supposed this was the cost of surviving, the privilege of gathering scars with the turn of each day—to have more time.
Wishing differently wasn’t an option. Nora wouldn’t even risk the thought of an alternate universe in her mind where Airik wasn’t hers.
“Okay,” she said, lying back down. “See you soon. Tell him I say hello.”
“I will. Good night, demon eyes.” He kissed her cheek, then disappeared.
AIRIK
Airik hurried down the hallway toward the special port built for the drozekar’s access at the north end of the compound.
Since it was late at night, only the night-shift humans were around.
To Airik’s great annoyance, most of them were friendly.
They smiled and expected him to return the favor, which he did.
Sometimes they wanted to talk. Ask questions. Learn more about him.
Airik didn’t want any of that, but because they were part of Nora’s world, he tolerated them. But sometimes they talked too much, and that was when he’d pretend not to have the words, feign a regretful shrug, and move on.
The night guard was already pacing at the entryway.
A man named Tony with rich brown skin. Like some of the other human men, Tony had short dark hair on his face.
A beard, they called it. When he saw Airik, he smiled widely and then quickly unlocked the door in front of the access port.
“I was starting to get nervous. I think I might even hear her humming.” Tony laughed, referring to the drozekar, sounding a bit embarrassed to admit it.
The drozekar did not hum, but Airik had learned humans made up realities to fill the darkness of what they couldn’t see or understand.
Airik handed his badge to Tony for scanning—as if anyone else could be mistaken for him. But humans liked small rituals like this, and he found comfort in them, too. “I will cool it down. Don’t worry.” He winced inwardly at the lie, but it was necessary to keep Nora and Torren safe.
He had told Davis and the sector leaders that his ship required nightly maintenance, or the gravity engine would detonate, reducing Valhalla to ash.
Davis had wanted to keep him away from his ship, but the humans had no choice but to believe him.
Under pressure from the others, Davis had been forced to give him access, though not before saying, I know you’re a fucking liar, but I also know you’re insane.
She had stepped close to him, her eyes fierce with a fire that could’ve been a morazir’s.
I can’t risk these families if you’re telling the truth.
She’d thrust the identification badge against his chest, a special one that would allow him to access all parts of the base.
I’ve got eyes everywhere, Lover Boy. You’re nothing more than a key and an instruction manual—but I don’t need you to play with your toys. Don’t forget I’ve got your buddy, too.
Tony nodded, reaching up to pat Airik’s shoulder. “I know you will, big guy,” he said, then sat in his chair and began to flip through a shiny-paged book. Airik preferred all the words humans called him that weren’t his name—he only liked Airik when Nora said it.
Once on board, Airik cleared his throat, preparing to speak in the common tongue.
“Your power status.”
“I’m so glad to see you again, Wild Prince. I was starting to get bored—”
“Drozekar,” Airik warned. Each passing night, the ship had grown more despondent, eager to be useful. It, too, had trouble with simply waiting.
“A third recovered. The sun here is too weak. It will be at two more human lunar cycles before I can sustain flight and search for Earth.”
Airik sighed. The broken portal had drained nearly all of the drozekar’s energy stores when they’d arrived on Mars.
The only way to reach Earth was to fly. It broke his heart to watch Nora’s smile fade with each failed call to her family, not knowing their fate.
He had to fix it. All of the humans deserved to know—especially since he’d broken the HyperGate.
The tingle in the back of his neck returned.
“What about increasing gravity, just on base?”
The drozekar’s lights flickered as it calculated. “I think…I have enough energy stores to correct for it within the next few days. To make it match Earth’s, based on the humans’ mass calculations. Oh, Prince, the humans are so kind. They always praise me—”
Unwilling to let the ship grow too attached to the few humans he’d allowed on board, Airik interrupted.
“What’s the status of the human’s tracer signal?
The one I had you scan on Ed’un?” They were too far away to pinpoint the human woman’s exact location, but the drozekar could tell whether the signal was still active.
Which would mean that Iver had not fulfilled his end of the bargain.
Yesterday, to Airik’s frustration, it had still been active.
The ship beeped in annoyance. “When will Osian come back? He’s more friendly than you. He talks to me like I’m a person.”
Airik frowned toward the ceiling. “You’re not a person.” The drozekar’s personality had shifted since landing, as if it could sense the Veynari’s pressure no longer stifling it.
“Then bring back the humans. They think I’m ehn-cred-eh-bell.”
“Not right now,” Airik said. “And you’d better behave—my patience for a lonely ship is already low.”
The drozekar made a sad whine, to which Airik—only wanting the sound to stop and in no way feeling pity for the machine—said, “But Osian will come satisfy your delusions soon.” His stomach turned, hoping this particular promise would not become one of his many lies. “Tell me if the tracer is active.”
“I’m searching—don’t rush me, Tragic Prince.” The drozekar paused, presumably checking data from all directions. “I…cannot detect the signal.”
Airik made a small, thankful smile. He did not want to hunt a vruukar through the cosmos.
“What’s the status of the searching signal?”