Lenora is gone to the world, her pretty chest flushed with color. Something I’m still not sure the meaning of. It happens both when she’s angry, happy, coming, and seemingly anytime in between. In all forms, my little human is stunning. She took me better than I could have hoped, but even now the tinge of her blood salts the air. I let my body collapse heavily beside her, my chest heaving. The residuals of pleasure making my mating cock jerk between us as I gently tug her into my chest. It is… unseemly to hold her this way, but she’s so small, so soft. She feels like nirvana there, safe and mine. I am not meant to be a soft nor loving male.
I could see myself being both for my little Valkyra. Her namesake does her more than justice. The large elk like creatures are as majestic and elusive as they are stubborn. It seemed only fair that I brought her back as many as I could, as a token, a pledge to provide. She deserves nothing less. My hand swallows the expanse of her soft stomach, imagining it round and swollen. The skin lined with paler pigmented stripes the documents suggested were expected with human gestation. Battle scars, stunning ones at that. I’d like to imagine my female would have many, so that she always wears the proof of me, the proof of our child long after she’s—
Red swarms my vision violently at the thought, my berserker making a wild shove for my mind. Panic claws up my throat. There’s some threat, something wrong. I can feel it as surely as I can feel the sweat drying on my cooling skin. Where my hand had been soft and adoring on her stomach before it now grips, making her cry out as I shove her deeper into me. A nasty, savage sound ripping into the content silence of the room. Her panicked hazel eyes pop open, the worry in them dimming the second she sees me hovering over her like a rabid animal. Baffling how the insane female is entirely unbothered.
My eyes dart to the forgotten blaster, wondering if the threat is real this time.
Wondering if there’s any danger at all.
My long ears twitch, listening for anything… a warning snarl from Valoryx, a shuffle of hooves.
There is nothing.
Again, my mind’s sickness sucks the beauty from life, polluting it. Shame fills my chest as ripe and certain as the dawn. I woke her.
I could’ve hurt—
Soft hands find my cheeks, my gaze finally leaving the blaster. My shallow breathing slowing as Lenora steers my attention back to her. The smile she offers me is soft, but not the pitying kind. The way you look at someone you love when they’re acting silly. It is a shame our offspring will not know her. She would make a lovely dam. Although I doubt she would accept the hands-off approach our people take. Perhaps that is why she would be so lovely. Perhaps she would hug our child and look at them like this when they act up.
“I could use a shower,” she offers.
I open my mouth to apologize as she pulls back her palm, poking me on the nose. The action confuses me, I growl in response, but something on her hand catches my attention. My heart thunders harder than before as I snatch it, gripping her wrist. She keeps it balled up, refusing to show me. She doesn’t know—
It can’t—
I press my thumb into the heel of her hand, applying pressure until she winces and releases. “It’s nothing, really. Just a tiny burn. I’m okay. It doesn’t hurt at all, just warm.”
Her small, delicate palm is lined with rings, slightly raised ridges, ones I recognize well. All of my people have one’s unique to them, no pair of horn ridges like another. Like a fingerprint. These are mine.
This female is mine.
My mate.
A ripe, beautiful kind of pain lances through my chest, deeper than any wound I’ve ever endured. I press her burned palm to my chest, and for the first time in my life, I am terrified. Not by threat or war, by beasts or weapons made to evaporate flesh. The Xyreliths who can cause death or madness with a single touch. I am terrified of a tiny human female, sated, coated in my seed. I knew it; I had known. Time and time again my hands tested my horns, finding them cold, but I knew deep down. Lenora was mine. Valhyr and his mate Sylvara, after hundreds of years, have found a warrior fit to receive their thanks. A mate of my own, to keep me in balance, the way Sylvara was born to balance him. Grief wells inside me as the last of the red seeps from my eyes. They sent their gift years too late, long after the war madness had taken root in my mind.
Her eyes are wide and on me now, finally having the good sense to look apprehensive as she pushes against my chest, trying to get me to let her up. I do, after a while. When I try to help her to the shower, she politely declines, too politely. Wincing and hissing with each step she takes until she shuts the wasting room door behind her. Leaving me there more filled than ever, with a gaping hole in my chest. Absently, I reach up, finding my horns hot. My jaw clenches, resisting the urge to rage and bellow at the gods.
No crueler trick has ever been played.
Lenora
My mind raced through my shower, running here and there. So many questions, concerns battering my mind.
The way he looked at me…
Oh god, the way stoney, unmovable, grumpy Fafnir looked at me. His brown eyes wider than I’d ever seen them. Clearer than perhaps I’d ever seen them. Their true shade, nearly golden instead of muddy brown. Fafnir looked at me like he’d just found everything he’d been looking for. Then he looked at me as if I’d taken it away from him. The visceral hate… anguish I’d seen in those golden eyes had robbed the air from my lungs. I all but jerked my palm from the brand on his chest, like he’d truly burned me this time. I’d darted, well hobbled, as fast as I could into the bathroom. Slamming the shower on to cover the sudden sobs that wracked my chest. It felt… ugly, like a rejection. Even though there is nothing there to reject, this is a job.
But save for that very first day, it hasn’t felt like one.
I’d stayed in the shower for longer than was necessary. When I emerged, I felt better having gotten whatever temporary lapse in sanity under control. My feelings were hurt, but not so horribly anymore. I’m bringing a child into the world for this male, living with him, eating with him, and still trying to figure out if I can smuggle his lion lizard off planet when I leave. What we’re doing… it’s a lot. There’s bound to be confused feelings, growing pains. I feel better until I come back into the bedroom to find the bed remade with clean sheets and five pieces of lukewarm pizza piled on a plate.
And no Fafnir.
For once in my life, I don’t want pizza.
