Chapter 26 Turnabout
TWENTY-SIX
TURNABOUT
Darolus
I carry her down to our nest, hauling her new bag of items over my shoulder. I may be wounded and aching but the hurt in my body has been dulled by the return of her presence in my arms and the hope I have for the future.
“I should have never told you to leave.” It was my biggest mistake.
Who cares if she fears me, as long as she stays with me? I can work on changing the former. Except she told me herself, it is not fear of me that plagues her but fear that she will spend the rest of her life down here.
Tearing my eyes away from her, I look around at the dark, shadowy corridors of my nest and the cracks in the ceiling, realizing for the first time how dangerous the location is under a broken floor, and how devoid of comfort it truly is.
It is hard to light up the space during the evening and at night due to how much effort it is to salvage and carry burnable objects down here.
My pet—my Sabrina—needs light and warmth, far more than I can give her here.
Also, the water has been rising in the pool, as well as in many of the underground waterways. I have noticed it lately in my most recent scouting missions.
The forest is closing in faster than ever.
Humans have returned and the animals are changing their patterns. They are becoming more unpredictable.
And Melsya and the female nagas no longer need me…
Perhaps Sabrina’s fear of being left down here forever is coming to an end regardless.
It may be time for us to depart as well and search for a safer place to call our home.
I understand her fear, and understanding it, I understand her better.
Pressing my nose to her hair, I breathe her in, feeling my blood quicken.
She turns her head and meets my gaze when I fail to lay her down on the hides of my nest.
Without speaking, she wiggles out of my arms and settles on her feet, leaning down to take off her shoes. Another black set that is smaller than her boots. Kicking them away, she steps from between me and the nest and pushes me toward it. “Lie down, big guy. You need some rest.”
“Rest is the lasssst thing I need,” I growl, trailing my eyes over the slight curves of her body, taking in how soft and fluffy her hair appears.
“I need more than that.” I need to be inside her.
I need to remind her how much she means to me.
“You can never leave me again,” I warn, my chest constricting with thoughts of losing her.
I caught her trail quite quickly after leaving Melsya, but once I was above ground, it was obscured by the breeze. If Melsya hadn’t sent me after Sabrina when she did, I may have lost Sabrina’s tracks entirely.
“You’re bleeding, Darolus,” she murmurs, petting my flesh softly around my wound. “Even if it’s only spotting, you’re still bleeding.”
I cover her hand with mine. “The blood will return. You… I almost lost you forever.”
She smiles and it lights up her face. My gaze drops to her red-tinted lips and the pressure in my tail grows.
“I was on my way back to you.”
I tilt my head. “You were?”
“Yeah. I realized after getting aboard the ship that I didn’t want to be there anymore. I didn’t belong there and everything I had was… it was all junk. And none of that junk was you.”
I pet her cheek with the back of my finger. “I am glad to hear that. I am glad I do not scare you.”
“Truthfully?” She runs her hand down my arm. “You never really have. It’s not that easy to scare me if you’re not a large body of water. Now, lie back. If you really need to feel me, let me take care of you.”
Doing as she says, I slide onto my nest and lie back across it, leaning up against the curved side just enough not to disturb my wound.
I watch in awe and hunger as Sabrina pulls off her simple dark gray shirt and strips out of her pants.
In nothing except black undergarments, she crawls on top of me, the few chains around her neck dangling forward to slide across my skin.
She straddles my middle and presses her hand to my slit.
It opens for her, releasing my massive thrumming prick.
She chuckles. “I could see this from a mile away. No wonder Tata didn’t want me to leave with you. Jeez, with how much blood it probably takes this bad guy to erect, no wonder you’re healing slower than you usually do.”
I groan as she curls both her hands around my stem and runs them up and down.
“Let me take care of you,” she hums, leaning down and placing a soft kiss on my tip.
I drop back with another groan, overcome with headiness by her words. In the soft, wet silence that comes next as her mouth roams over me, she kisses me everywhere. My thoughts to all else fade away when she covers her mouth over the head of my prick and squeezes my knot with both of her hands.
Spilling quickly, some of the tension in my body dissipates.
She continues licking and suckling me, moving her mouth everywhere at once until I’m spilling freely, gushing seed.
She licks up my spill and covers me again with her lips, drinking down the liquid that continues to expel.
My muscles ease more with each release until I’m sprawled in defeat across the hides of my nest.
Forgetting all about my wound, I watch as she pulls off her undergarments, climbs on top of me, and grabs my appendage.
Lining it up with her smaller human hole, she slowly slides down over me, bit by bit.
I close my eyes with a groan, seeding her deeply with more of my spill, knowing she will be safe from it quickening.
Tight, hot, and wet, I have never felt more complete than when she is on me.
She works me, taking control and rides me until every nerve in my body is ringing with pleasure and I am overcome with her soft moans and hitching whimpers.
Feeling her come, wringing my cock with her tight sheath, she loses herself in me as well, working her hips to have my knot rub all the right spots deep inside of her.
Time blurs with her on me, milking my body with her smaller one writhing on top. For a time, it seems like I have left this world and have entered a dream.
“Sssssabrina,” I hiss her name long and roughly, closing my eyes and dropping my head back.
“Shhh.” She moans. “I’m working here.”
Much later on, I pet her hair as she rests in the crook of my arm, her leg draped over my middle. Craning my neck, I gaze behind me at the open tunnel, letting myself grow comfortable with leaving the only safe exit open for her.
Her body stirs and my fingers slow down upon her hair to see if she is awake.
Partially hooded eyes look back at me as her mouth opens wide into a yawn. With the red coloring on her lips having been wiped off, her dark-rimmed eyes peer at me with contentment. I hiss softly down at her, coiling my tailtip over her and caressing her flesh.
For a time, we lie there. And I, afraid to disturb her rest or send her fleeing, stare down at her lovely pale form lying next to mine.
“There’s something I’ve been wondering,” she says after a while. “If you wouldn’t mind telling me…?”
“What?” I sweep my fingers over her silky black hair, luxuriating in the feel of it. “Ask me anything and I will tell you what I know.”
“How did you end up here, guarding the females like this? When it seems like avoiding males is so important to them, why did they make an exception for you? I mean, I think I know. You’re… nice. Like a big stuffed animal.” She hums and snuggles deeper against me. “I’m curious.”
Lying my head back, wondering what a stuffed animal is, I think back to that time, long ago when I first decided to leave the forest.
“I know you’ve mentioned some things, but not how you and Melsya and the others found each other. I assume it was a coincidence,” she says when I don’t immediately answer.
“It was not.”
“It wasn’t?”
“During that time, all those years ago. Some of it is hazy, though I do recall that. I recall the day I was… born, or awakened, as well, unlike most nagas I have known. Many have forgotten or came after.”
“You… didn’t arrive on a ship?”
“A ship?” I try to imagine being on a ship and shudder. “No.”
She turns her head upward to look at me. “How the hell did you get to Earth then? I assumed you all came here from some ship many years ago.”
“I came from the ground, from the wet glass vats.”
“I… Okay…” She resettles against me. “You woke up from some cryostasis thing or something, I think I understand. Maybe you’re an experiment.”
Though I do not know what cryostasis is or if it is what I woke up from, it is true, I do not remember everything before I ‘woke,’ so I continue answering her first question.
“I followed the females out of the forest, like many others back then had. Some of the females left in groups, which were easier to track, while others went alone, but for the most part they all met outside the borders of the forest despite coming from many different clans across the land. It did not matter. As long as they were female, they were accepted into the larger group. They formed outside the boundaries of the forest and on the only land left that wasn’t viciously defended as a clan’s territory.
Back then, there were many more of us and the forest was much smaller.
There were few safe, if any, safe places to go. ”
“But they were dying because of the males.”
I shift her closer to me. “Yessss. This is why they needed each other for this to work, and only each other. A male, from any clan, could not be allowed, even if they were deemed trustworthy. Despite the females being from many different ones, their trust only extended to their female counterparts, not the males. It was the only way. The only way for all of them to agree.”
“Agree to what?”
“To take the risk and leave.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“Because I was one of the males deemed trustworthy. I had no clan, no territory. Back then, I did not even have a nest to call my own. I was forced out of the forest because if I stayed, I would have had to defend myself daily from attack. I was aware where the females who’d already left were gathering. It is how we found each other.”
“But they trusted you?”
“I killed every male that approached, claiming, for the first time, the land outside the forest’s borders as my own.
Eventually, enough males had died searching for them that I was avoided, avoided by all except the female nagas.
Though most would not approach me, they knew what I was doing without ever speaking to them. ”
“You guarded them.”
“Only while they waited for the rest to arrive. In that time I took it upon myself to divert all other male attention away while the few other malessss—because I was not the only trustworthy one—spread the word to the other females across the land to leave.”
“And when they left, you left with them?”
I run my hand through her hair. “The forest expanded, and with it, the males spread out and claimed new territories. The females had to leave the forest’s borders entirely if they wanted continued peace.
At some point many of them began to leave, disbanding into smaller clans and heading deeper into the wastes.
Until, eventually, they were all gone and I was alone again.
“With the forest claiming my territory, and being hunted again by the nagas also wanting different territory, I chose to head out into the wastes too. I came to this place and by chance, reunited with some of the females. Vowing to leave them alone and to guard them like I once had, they chose to remain here and so I made a nest and claimed part of the city as mine.”
“That’s it?”
“Yessss. That is it.”
“You never wanted to mate with one of them even knowing…?”
“I have seen what happens to them. I have never wanted to take one as a mate because of that. How could I? Like them, I wanted some place to live where I could be…”
“Free?” she says, smiling. “I understand that.”
I slide my hand over her back, needing to feel more of her presence against me and tangling my fingers into her hair. “Yessss, peace and freedom.”
“Peace and freedom. I like that.”
I hiss, shifting on my side and grabbing the edge of a hide to slide it over us, having watched the evening fade into total darkness during our conversation. She sinks deeper against me, easing ever more with the soft press of a wolf fur around her shoulders.
Losing her dark hair and pale face to the nighttime’s shadows, I lie back down in my nest, filling my lungs with her scent and the smell of our sex.
“Peace and freedom,” I say, my voice no louder than a whisper, sensing sleep tugging at me from deep within. Tired, sated, and relaxed, my own calmness takes over knowing, at least for tonight, my female is safe in my arms.
Peace and freedom.
That’s what we can be for each other.
That’s what we are…
With my female—my mate—sleeping in my arms, I drift into my own slumber, knowing I have my whole world here with me and, from all the years I have been protecting the peace of others, also knowing mine has finally been granted.
Inhaling her scent into me, I drift off, excited for tomorrow.