Table of Contents

NOTICES

ALIEN HEART

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

TRIGGER WARNINGS

CHAPTER ONE | Camille

CHAPTER TWO | Varrow

CHAPTER THREE | Camille

CHAPTER FOUR | Varrow

CHAPTER FIVE | Camille

CHAPTER SIX | Varrow

CHAPTER SEVEN | Camille

CHAPTER EIGHT | Varrow

CHAPTER NINE | Camille

CHAPTER TEN | Varrow

CHAPTER ELEVEN | Camille

CHAPTER TWELVE | Varrow

CHAPTER THIRTEEN | Camille

CHAPTER FOURTEEN | Varrow

CHAPTER FIFTEEN | Camille

CHAPTER SIXTEEN | Varrow

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN | Camille

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN | Varrow

CHAPTER NINETEEN | Camille

CHAPTER TWENTY | Varrow

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE | Camille

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO | Varrow

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE | Camille

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR | Varrow

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE | Camille

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX | Varrow

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN | Camille

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT | Varrow

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE | Camille

CHAPTER THIRTY | Varrow

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE | Camille

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO | Varrow

NOTICES

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, used, transmitted, or shared via any means without express authorization from the author, except for small passages and quotations used for review and marketing purposes.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and incidents in this novel are fictitious and not to be construed as reality or fact.

Alien Heart Copyright © 2022 Veronica Doran

ALIEN HEART

Fated Mates of the Sea Sand Warlords

Book Eleven

By Ursa Dax

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you, as always, to my parents and husband who have supported this series from the beginning. A very sincere thank you to Susan who gave some wonderful feedback in the early stages and helped decide the title of this book. Thank you to every reader and new friend on this journey!

TRIGGER WARNINGS

Death of an older (adult) sibling (off-page/backstory); survivor’s guilt related to loss of sibling; traumatic childhood injury and amputation (off-page/backstory); death of parents by causes of cancer and stroke (off-page/backstory); battle scenes, blood, and violence (on-page); near-death experience (on-page); watching a mate nearly die graphically (on-page); grief; graphic sexual scenes involving non-human/alien hero and human heroine.

CHAPTER ONE

Camille

Parfait.

Perfect.

I knelt beside my alien soybeans, smiling in satisfaction at how well they were growing. After Jocelyn and I had discovered them and realized how tasty they were, we’d transplanted some of them into the garden at the settlement. The garden was really taking shape, now – it had the soybean taste-a-likes, the minty-ginger grix plants that helped ease pregnancy nausea, and the fallink plants that acted as birth control, too. We’d also started cultivating a supply of valok plants here, their round, grey-ish green discs poking up out of the sand with their black barbs.

Happy with how my bean plants were doing, their dark stalks curling healthy and strong around the little babkit wood posts Jocelyn and I had erected, I moved to the edge of the garden. The garden was against a stretch of cliff wall near to the human tent, and in a shaded spot beside it was a carved bone trowel. I picked up the small shovel, moved to my knees once more, and started digging in a place marked with another piece of babkit wood. The sand was warm, but not too hot in the shady spot as I sifted it out of the way with the trowel. The deeper I got, the cooler it was, until my trowel hit stone. I tossed the trowel aside and reached down, pulling a stone jar from the ground. Similar to how the Lavrika’s blood was stored in jars beneath the sand, I was doing the same thing with my fermented bean concoctions. This was just one jar of several, all at different stages of the fermentation process. I loosened the lid, leaning forward and taking in a deep breath through my nose.

Merveilleux.

My throat tightened with unexpected tears as the deeply savoury scent washed over me. These alien beans weren’t a perfect soybean replica, of course, but the fermented paste I’d been working on was so similar in scent and flavour to soy sauce or miso paste. Instantly, I was transported back to my parents’ restaurant in Paris, stirring a pot of Papa’s miso soup to be served alongside Maman’s entrees. When I took a deep breath again, the alien familiarity of the scent sinking into all my senses, I could practically feel them beside me – mon Papa, Hinata, on my right, ma Maman, Aurélie, on my left. I’d loved that restaurant almost as much as I’d loved them. It had been home as much as they were before they’d died.

And a little bit of home on an alien planet broke my heart as much as mended it.

I sniffed hard, no longer able to smell the paste. More tears were coming now, and my nose was getting all stuffed up.

Merde.

I replaced the lid and buried my jar again just as I noticed a shadow approaching on the sand from behind me.

“Think they’ll be alright without you?”

I stood then turned, sniffing hard and smiling at Priya. She was gesturing towards the pot I’d just buried, no doubt referring to all my jars beneath the sand.

“Oui… Je pense… I think so,” I answered, nodding firmly. They’d be safe under the sand, and I knew the other girls would check on them every once in a while during my absence.

“That’s good,” she replied, smiling back, her sunglasses glinting under the harsh sun. I knew why she was asking. Both she and I would be leaving the settlement the day after tomorrow. We were going with a small group to check out what Valeria had seen on her scanners – a potential sixth tribe, way out there in the desert, beyond the Death Plains. Priya was going as our resident cartographer, to help map out the land between here and there. I was going because I’d studied anthropology back on Earth. We didn’t know if the sixth tribe spoke the same language as us, or if they had different customs. Since Cece, our linguist, was so down and out from her pregnancy, I was the next best thing to help communicate with a new tribe.

A small thrill ran through me at the thought, making my heart flutter and my hands squeeze into fists. It would be dangerous, bien sûr, but new places, new people…

New men.

It was exciting.

I couldn’t deny it. There was a little spark of hope, deep inside, that maybe I had a mate in this new tribe. No one around here had apparently been called by the Lavrika for me. I supposed I could have tried to start something up with any unmated male. With so few women, lots of them would probably have jumped at the chance. But, if I were being honest with myself, I was just too much of a romantic at heart. I didn’t want to get entangled with someone if destiny was going to drag me away from him. If I was going to fall in love with an alien, it had to be the right one.

I just hoped I’d find that right one soon. Unlike some of the other girls, I was more than ready and willing to meet my alien mate. I adored my human friends, but there was a restless sort of loneliness in me. Sometimes when I tried to sleep, I couldn’t. It ached too much.

Besides, these aliens were très beau. Even the Bitter Sea men, who towered like Godzilla monsters from a Hollywood film, were handsome to me. They all exuded power and strength and not a single one of them was bad to look at in my opinion.

“It’s going to be weird not saying goodbye to Taylor before we go,” Priya said, bringing me back to the moment at hand.

“I know,” I replied. Taylor had left the settlement a few days ago with her own alien mate, Tok. He was the biggest lizardman of all the Bitter Sea warriors – a golden giant who looked at Taylor like the entire world hinged upon her little human axis. I’d helped nudge Taylor along during her reticence when she’d first learned he was her mate. Personally, I felt no such reticence. I loved the idea of the mate bond, of having a besotted protector who was absolutely devoted to you. I grinned to myself as I imagined what Taylor was getting up to with her alien behemoth out there. Hopefully enjoying everything that forked tongue had to offer.

“Do you want a mate?” I asked Priya suddenly. I hadn’t spoken to her about this particular subject. But more and more these days, it seemed to be dominating my thoughts.

Her dark brows rose above the lenses of her sunglasses.

“Not really. It’s not on my radar. Just trying not to die every bloody day we’re out here,” she said.

“Oui, but doesn’t that make love all the more important?” I sighed. There was something so viciously romantic about finding your soulmate when in danger. And Priya wasn’t joking about trying not to die every day. This place was as hostile as any alien planet I could imagine. If I were going to die anytime soon, I wanted at least to be deeply, brutally, poetically in love by then.

I just had to wait for the Lavrika, for fate, to catch up with my own willingness. As much as I wanted to hurry things along, I didn’t see how I could.

But maybe the trip to the sixth tribe would change all that.

J’espère…

I hope.

CHAPTER TWO

Varrow

The new woman who was obsessed with beans was back at it again.

I watched her from across the settlement as dusk descended, darkness mingling with the smoke from the evening fire. She was seated at the far end of the fire with the Gahnala of my tribe, Gahn Razek’s mate, Jozelyn, and several other new women. I could not understand her fascination with the beans. Our people did not eat them, but she seemed to delight in them. She and Jozelyn were growing them at the settlement, now, and she checked on them every day, smiling at their curling stalks and their small, pebble-like bodies. She even went so far as to mash them up, turning them into some potion that she smeared into meat each evening. For what purpose, I could not fathom. The few Sea Sand men who’d been brave enough to bite into that meat had not appeared to enjoy it. I had found the smell off-putting and had not tasted it myself. Luckily, she did not contaminate all the meat with her beans mixture. Just a small portion consumed very happily by the new women.

Now that the sun was setting, the new women were shedding their cloaks and eye shells. The beans woman used her eye shells as a sort of hairband, pushing it up her head and tucking strands of shiny black hair behind her pale, low ears. Her hair was as dark as my own, but longer than mine, coming to a blunt stop at her tiny shoulders. Someone must have said something amusing because she stopped rubbing the beans mush into the meat and she threw her head back, laughing. Her small teeth glinted in the low light, her cheeks bunching prettily.

Something lurched in me, a stinging tentacle snapping in a limb long since disappeared. The sensation distracted me from the beans woman, and I rolled my shoulder viciously, grinding my fangs. I’d lost my right arm when I was a small child. I’d lived most of my life without it.

Yet somehow, it still ached. Pain in the ether. Pain I could not locate, latch onto, or dispel.

Even though I knew it would not help, I swiped at empty air with my remaining hand, trying to brush away the sensations.

Maddening.

A boisterous cheer had me turning. Further into the settlement, Gahn Buroudei stood with my Gahn, Razek, as well as Gahn Baldor. All of them were smiling, Gahns Razek and Baldor appearing to aim their expressions of mirth at Buroudei, who stood tall, shoulders broadened with what looked like… Pride.

No. Not just pride. Bliss.

I couldn’t help but be drawn towards such a show of joy. We’d felt so little of that in the Death Plains. So much of our lives had been sharpened by danger and hollowed out by a lack of women to find companionship with. Our tribe did not have a single unmated adult female, and we unmated warriors had lived hard lives made even harder by hopelessness.

My eyes slid, unbidden, back to the laughing woman with her beans. But my Gahn’s sudden approach turned my gaze forward once more.

“Is there news, Gahn?” I asked as he stopped before me. A few other Death Plains men gathered around, obviously as curious as I was about what the cause for joy had been among the Gahns. We raised our tails to our new leader, the victor of our tribe’s recent baklok.

“Gahn Buroudei’s mate, the Gahnala Zeezee, went to the big human ship today,” Gahn Razek said. “She had something called a… an ultra zound. The new women have technology that can see right through skin and bone. Gahn Buroudei glimpsed his cubs today.”

Wait…

“Cubs?” I asked, feeling my brows fall in confusion. Gahn Buroudei had only one mate and this was her first pregnancy from what I’d heard. He had no other cubs.

“Yes, cubs,” Gahn Razek confirmed, his pale purple sight stars pulsing. “She is carrying two cubs.”

I reared back, and hisses of shock went through the small group that had gathered.

“How is such a thing possible? Do the new women have more than one womb?” I asked, startled.

Once again, I found my gaze sliding over to the human females, settling on the dark-haired beans woman.

“I do not know all the details, but no, there is just one womb,” Gahn Razek replied.

“Two cubs in one womb…” My words petered out as I tried to comprehend such a thing. These new women were so tiny. Tiny, but apparently mighty, with bodies capable of miraculous feats. No woman of the Sea Sands had ever carried more than one cub at a time. It was completely unheard of.

“And not only that,” Gahn Razek continued. “The two cubs, twinz, as they are called, are female.”

This explained all the raucous joy. Even now, Gahn Buroudei was still beaming, all traces of his usual serious nobility gone and replaced with an expression of joy so painful it almost looked like grief. New babies were always a cause for celebration among our people, females especially so since there were so few. To have two daughters at once was a blessing beyond blessings. A hope beyond dreams.

As much as the obvious joy of the moment had attracted me before, I now found myself retreating, hunching inward and away from it. Hearing about the two young girl cubs made me think of my own brother. The one I lost the day I lost my arm.

It hurt.

So I turned away.

As I stalked from the group, heading for my tent out on the open sends beyond the sheltered part of the settlement, the sound of happy conversation and laughter followed me.

Along with the scent of roasted meat.

And beans.

CHAPTER THREE

Camille

Irifled through my pack for the third time that evening, anxious anticipation about leaving tomorrow making me triple-check everything I’d packed. An extra uniform, socks, and underwear. Sunscreen. First aid supplies…

“I’ve been doing the same thing all day,” Priya said, making me jump. Up until that moment, I’d been alone in the tent I shared with the other single human women. I turned, nodding at Priya in greeting as she stepped inside, letting the tent flap fall closed. The valok candle I’d lit sent its light dancing across her features, making her brown skin glow. Her thick, long hair was tied into a knot on the top of her head and her long-lashed eyes were luminous as they met mine.

“I just don’t want to forget anything,” I murmured, turning back to my belongings. It felt weird not to pack food, but there was little point. We’d be travelling for weeks, maybe even months. All the food would be hunted and foraged on the way. I wouldn’t even bother bringing any of the fermented beans mixtures I’d made – I doubted the thick pasty stuff would last out in the heat on the back of an irkdu as we rode.

“Me neither,” Priya said. “You should see how many pens I’ve packed. I’m petrified I’ll lose them all, or they’ll run out of ink or something and I’ll be useless without them.”

I smirked at her.

“Something tells me even if that happened, one of the men with us would be able to rustle something up for you.”

Priya shrugged. “Maybe. But I don’t want to have to rely on anyone else if I can help it.”

I studied her for a moment, but she didn’t say anything else, turning to check on her own packed items. When she stayed silent, I did the same. When I was satisfied that my pack was good to go, I stood, stretching.

“Oh, did you hear about Cece?” Priya asked, glancing over at me once more.

I inhaled sharply. “Yes. I did. Pregnant with twins! No wonder she’s so tired,” I said with a small laugh. Even with her tiredness, and her morning sickness, I couldn’t help but be envious of her. She’d been the first one to get a mate, and her mate was certainly a fine specimen of an alien man. He absolutely doted on her. And now they were expecting children… Two, right off the bat! As an only child, I’d always wanted siblings, and I’d vowed to have more than one child myself one day.

“And it’s not just her,” Priya continued.

“Oui, Theresa too,” I said with a nod.

But Priya shook her head, a conspiratorial glint entering her eyes.

“Not just her, either. Melanie, Serena, and Zoey too.”

My mouth fell open. I hadn’t heard about the others. Since the girls with mates shared tents with their men, we didn’t get much chance to girl talk in the human tent. Sometimes I got a chance to speak to them at the evening fire, but not always. Mon Dieu, five of my friends expecting babies! News of Zoey was pretty huge. It meant we could also have children with the Bitter Sea men. So no matter what kind of man destiny chose for a human, it was possible to have a family. My throat got thick and hot, and I blinked over and over at a sudden onset of swirling emotion. I was so thrilled for my friends, but there was a tight squeeze of want, too. I wanted what all of them had. Mates. Babies on the way.

I hope my turn is coming, too.

I turned my gaze to the tent’s entrance, envisioning leaving it tomorrow morning. The anticipation for the journey increased tenfold. The feeling that my fate was out there, that this journey would change everything, expanded inside me until I couldn’t stay still in the tent anymore.

“I’m going to go get ready for the evening meal,” I told Priya. She gave me a small wave before turning her attention back to her many, many pens.

When I exited the tent, I was surprised to see how late it had gotten. There was only the barest hint of dusk left, a glowing finger of light on the horizon. The asteroid ring rose, casting its broken moon-like light down on the settlement. The evening fire blazed merrily, the scent of roasting meat filtering through the air.

If I wanted to prepare the meat with some of the fermented rub I’d been using lately, I’d have to hurry.

I quickened my steps, regretting the fact I’d left my jacket back in the tent. I was too paranoid about forgetting it tomorrow, so it was already with my pack. But nights here got cold. I moved even quicker, trying to stay warm. The sooner I get to the garden and grab my things, the sooner I can get to the warm fire…

I found the spot where my jars were buried and grabbed the trowel, crouching down and digging quickly through the sand. Just as I seized a jar and started to pull, a low voice above me made me freeze.

“Are you going to put beans on the meat again tonight?”

It was the voice of an alien male I didn’t recognize. I tugged the jar out of the sand and then rose to turn and face him.

Even though I hadn’t recognized his voice, I recognized him.

He was a Death Plains warrior, one of the men who’d come back with Jocelyn and Razek from across the desert. The Death Plains men were easy to spot among the other Sea Sand tribes. Their sight stars were much paler in colour, and their faces seemed somehow harder. Starker. With more brutal plains of bone.

But even among the Death Plains men, this warrior stood out.

For one thing, he wore his hair shorter than most other men. Most warriors had their hair at least shoulder length, if not longer. Sometimes it was shaved on the sides or at the back, but the hair that remained was often long, either worn loose or braided. But this man’s hair was quite short, the bangs swept back from his brow in a messy fashion, as if he was continually running his fingers through it to keep it out of his face.

And the other reason he stood out?

He only had one arm.

His left arm was hard and strong, corded with muscle. His right arm was missing from the shoulder down.

Trying not to stare, I wrenched my gaze up to his face.

The man before me was making no attempt not to stare.

His sight stars pulsed, looking almost white in the asteroid light. They drew into points so tight and hard they looked like shards of opal in his dark eyes. Shadows pooled beneath those eyes and under his cheekbones. It wasn’t that his face was drawn, but he had the Death Plains look – lean. Brutal. Hungry.

Oh!

Hungry. That reminded me that he’d spoken, asking about the meat.

“I was planning on it, yes,” I said slowly, looking down at the jar in my hands in an attempt to break the intense eye contact. But I found my gaze searching out his face once more when he spoke again.

“Why do you do that? Mash up the beans and rub them on the meat?”

“Ah, well, us humans like it. We use lots of spices and herbs in our cooking.” I’d noticed this didn’t seem to be something we shared with the Sea Sand people. They used herbs in poultices, and in drinks like the grix drink. But they preferred their food prepared very simply – roasted meat with no seasoning besides smoke, and plain valok gel. I wasn’t judging. À chacun son goût – to each their own. But plain meat got old after a while, especially for the daughter of chefs who’d taught her to perfect the flavours of everything she encountered.

“It’s hard to believe you like it. It smells very off-putting,” he grumbled.

I felt my brows rise at his words. They lowered into a frown quickly afterwards as I tried to suss out just what this warrior wanted. I only used the seasonings on a small bit of meat for the humans who wanted it. I wasn’t forcing anyone to eat it!

I couldn’t help my irritation – my pride had been wounded. I’d always loved cooking and feeding people. It was in my veins. It was one of the things that had led me to study anthropology at university – wanting to understand the evolution of cuisines and cultures of different people.

It was that wounded pride that made me snap back at the warrior before me.

“Well, you don’t need to worry about it for much longer. I’m leaving to find the sixth tribe tomorrow, so you won’t have to smell it or even look at it.” I swallowed, clutching my little jar of fermented beans to my chest as if to protect it from his judgmental gaze.

But his gaze had… Changed. He looked stricken.

“You are? You are travelling beyond the Death Plains?” he asked, his voice stony.

“Yes,” I replied. Not that it’s any of your business…

Something flickered in his dark eyes, and the muscles in his jaw tightened for a moment. Without another word, he turned and stalked away. I stared after him, shocked by the encounter. I hadn’t spoken to many of the alien men, and yes, I knew they could be blunt, but I’d never had a conversation quite like this one.

Rude.

I couldn’t wait to get out of here, now. If I did have a mate out there in the sixth tribe, I was sure that whatever he had to offer had to be better than that.

CHAPTER FOUR

Varrow

“Iwill go with the party to find the sixth tribe.”

Gahn Razek jerked to look at me as I spoke. Evidently, I’d surprised him. He was just emerging from his tent and I’d come at him from the shadows. I’d come here straight from speaking to the tiny beans woman in the garden.

Remembering the courtesies owed to a Gahn, I raised my tail with a grunt and then let it fall. But even with the gesture of respect, I needed him to know that I was not asking him to join the party. I was telling him.

“Why?” Gahn Razek asked, cocking his head, sight stars swirling.

I paused, tail twitching, before saying, “You are travelling through the Death Plains. Having another man who knows the land will be a boon to the party.” Gahn Razek did not look convinced, and I hissed, “You know that I will not be a burden.”

Gahn Razek’s expression faltered.

“No. Of course not,” he said, his gaze shifting from my face to my shoulder and then back again. “I am convinced that a Death Plains man with one arm is still stronger than any other desert man with two.”

We let the unspoken truth hang between us in the air. The truth that, had I had two arms, I would not have been eliminated from the first round of the baklok and that I would have been a worthy challenger. Had things been different, it might have been me granting Razek permission right now, not the other way around. The first round of the baklok involved carrying a great boulder as far as possible. I had more than enough strength in my body to win that task. But the length of my one arm was not enough to hoist the rock up to carry it steadily. I’d dropped it within two steps.

Not that it mattered much. I had never hungered for power or titles. I’d never wanted to be Gahn.

But apparently, I now wanted to join the travelling party.

Gahn Razek did not repeat his question of “why,” and for that, I was silently grateful. But my gratitude evaporated when he spoke next.

“Before I entered my tent a few moments ago, I saw you speaking to that new woman in the garden. Cam-Eel. Did she tell you that she was coming on the journey?”

His question poked at things I didn’t want poked. The thought of that woman, with her soft fingers and her beloved little beans, travelling into the hostile Death Plains was… Not a good one.

“It seems foolish,” I ground out. I did not care if my words angered the Gahn. Those lands were deadly. We all knew it. Me perhaps best of all. Imagining Cam-Eel getting hurt out there, maybe even dying out there… It made my breath hitch painfully, like I’d been socked in the ribs.

“I know,” my Gahn said. “But she and the other new woman coming with us have skills we may need. And beyond that, they have a stubbornness you cannot imagine.”

I did not need to imagine it. I’d glimpsed it under the light of our many moons, just moments ago in the garden. The defiantly raised chin, the flashing eyes. Looking back on the conversation, I was now fairly certain I’d offended Cam-Eel somehow. Maybe she was bothered by the fact I’d never eaten the meat she prepared so strangely. Maybe she thought I was a weak warrior for avoiding it.

That would not do. After losing my brother and my arm, I’d done everything in my power to forge myself into something strong and hard and brutal. Someone who could fight off any enemy, protect himself and those around him at any cost. I had been weak once and had paid dearly for it. I was not weak now. And I did not fear.

I would eat her beans meat. Tonight.

Gahn Razek gave me a long look then thudded his tail behind him.

“We leave at dawn.”

I raised my tail. Gahn Razek turned and stepped back into his tent, where I heard him relaying the news about me joining the party to his Gahnala Jozelyn.

I turned from the tent and headed for the evening fire. The scent of smoke and meat was tinged with something… Off. The new women’s meat.

As I moved through the settlement, I located Cam-Eel immediately, my eyes drawn to her by some instant, invisible force. She was seated on the sand, the firelight flickering over her features, making her eyes turn to deep, shining wells. Evidently, she had finished rubbing her beans mixture into the meat, and she and some other new women were consuming the stuff now that it had been cooked. My stomach flipped at the smell, but I forged forward, coming to a stop before her.

I registered her surprise, then some unhappy emotion – perhaps irritation – as her eyes travelled from my feet up to my face. I tried to ignore the barbed and ugly feeling that reared its head inside me when her eyes snagged on the place my arm should have been.

I will show her that I am strong.

“I will eat it,” I said.

The new women beside Cam-Eel looked confused, their eyes travelling between my face and hers. But she remained steady.

“You’ll eat what?” she asked, tilting her delicate head.

“The meat you cooked. With the beans.”

Cam-Eel fixed me with a hard stare – harder than I would have thought possible in such a soft face. Then she said, “Where we come from, it’s polite to say please when you ask for food.”

Oh. I understood the word “please” – it was not some unknown concept of her language or culture. It occurred to me that my social skills were far more eroded than I’d realized. Once, as a boy, I’d been easy to converse with. I’d made friends effortlessly and smiles came quickly to my face. But after Ratev died, that easy, outgoing part of me had died, too. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a relaxed social interaction with someone even from among my own kind, let alone a foreign woman from another world.

“I will eat some of the meat you’ve prepared now. Please.”

Cam-Eel’s plush lips pressed inward against each other. I was about to give up on this entire foolish endeavour when her mouth curved into a slight smile and she said, “Here,” followed by words I did not recognize. Bone ah-paytee. She held out a bone plate with a slice of meat on it, and I crouched, taking it with my hand.

“Thank you,” I said, a little late, almost forgetting to say it at all. The words felt stiff and stony in my mouth. Like I had to force them out. I settled into a seated position, facing Cam-Eel. She watched me with what appeared to be an indifferent expression as I balanced the bone plate on my knee, taking the meat in my hand and biting it.

Sands of our fathers, it was awful. I hated it.

The desire to spit it out was fierce. But when Cam-Eel’s expression cracked, turning from careful expressionless to something like curious hope…

I found I didn’t have the heart to disappoint her.

I forced myself to swallow, clearing my throat as she watched me expectantly, clearly waiting for my thoughts.

“Perhaps I judged too hastily. It does not taste as terrible as it smells,” I said gruffly. I decided that what I’d said was not exactly a lie. When it came to which was worse – the smell or the taste – there was no clear winner. So claiming the taste was not as offensive as the smell was not too far from the truth.

Cam-Eel blinked her white and black eyes at me. Then, shocking me so badly it made my tail jerk, she threw her head back, bursting into laughter. I watched her, confused and slightly concerned, as she gasped and wrenched her head forward once more.

“High praise,” she said, still chuckling.

I grunted, looking down at the plate. I felt my expression sour as I realized how much was left to eat. Resigning myself, I took the entire piece and shoved it between my fangs, trying to get it over with quickly.

As I chewed, Cam-Eel spoke.

“So, where did you run off to earlier? You appeared in the garden and then left so abruptly.”

It took me a moment to realize she was addressing me and not one of the other new women. But the other new women were now engaged in their own conversation, leaving just Cam-Eel and me looking at each other. I wasn’t used to people asking me questions or specifically seeking me out for conversation. I was not sure if I liked it.

I forced the terribly salty, tangy meat down and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

“I am to leave with you tomorrow. I had things to take care of.”

Her slim brows rose.

“Ah, oui? I didn’t know that.”

“Neither did I until tonight,” I replied.

She cocked her head as she regarded me. The shift in her head’s position made the moonlight tumble down over her smooth brow, her little bony nose, her full lips. It glistened on her sleek hair, turning the strands fantastically glossy. I fought the urge to trace a finger down that shining hair, just to see what it would feel like.

“Well, you don’t need to worry. I’m not bringing any of the fermented meat rub with me on the journey. It will be the regular old meat you’re used to,” she said.

“That is good, little bean.”

We both froze.

“Did you just… Call me little bean?”

I hadn’t meant to. I knew her name now. But more and more, the moniker seemed to fit her.

“You are small like the beans,” I replied. “Your face is similar in colour to them, especially when you smear yourself with that white goop.”

“You mean sunscreen?”

That sounded right.

“Yes. Plus, you seem to be generally obsessed with beans. So I feel the name is apt.”

Her mouth fell open, and she shook her head from side to side in a gesture I didn’t recognize. It made her hair swing, sending her scent wafting towards me. I inhaled sharply. That was one way she differed from the beans.

She smelled much, much better.

“I’m not obsessed!” she finally cried. “I’m just trying to… You know what? Nevermind. I don’t need to explain this to you.”

She stood abruptly, as did I. For some reason I did not want to remain on the ground if she did not.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” she said, her voice sounding clipped. She turned and walked away, heading for the human tent.

A dark, unnameable urge told me to follow her, but I ignored it. It did not seem that she wanted my company. And she was heading for the new women’s tent, which all men knew was forbidden territory.

“Well, that went well.”

A familiar woman’s voice made me turn. Gahn Razek was standing behind me, accompanied by the Gahnala Jozelyn. Jozelyn’s arms were crossed over her chest, and her face was set in a scowl.

“What went well?” I asked, mightily confused. I’d had the impression that the new Death Plains Gahnala was a clever female, but perhaps I had made the wrong assessment. The encounter with Cam-Eel did not seem to have gone well to me. Though I was still not certain about why. But I knew I had not made her happy. And for some reason that bothered me.

“It’s called sarcasm,” Jozelyn drawled. “I meant the opposite. You totally blew that.”

Had I blown? I’d been so focused on swallowing the meat, I did not think my mouth had done anything else. I worried my fangs against the inside of my cheek, going over the interaction in my mind.

“I didn’t blow anything,” I said feeling more and more certain each moment. “I swallowed my meat and I spoke. That is all.”

Jozelyn groaned, and I thought I saw the Gahn’s lips twitch in a controlled smile before his face went blank.

“No, I mean, that went very poorly!”

Ah. Finally, the Gahnala spoke with some sense. Her riddles had been about to do my head in.

“Is she your mate?”

This time, the words came from my Gahn. I could not help but notice the slight tensing and leaning towards us of the new women seated nearby on the sand. But if they were shocked by Razek’s question, I was even more so.

“No,” I said, startled. “Why would you ask such a thing, Gahn?”

The idea that I could have a mate…

Even with the arrival of the new women, it seemed unlikely. Why would the Lavrika choose me when there were so many other warriors worthy and waiting? Other men who hadn’t let their beloved brother die before their eyes, unable to do anything to stop it?

“I ask because you seem very…” He paused, as if trying to choose his words carefully. “Focused on her.”

Jozelyn shook her head up and down, making her tightly-wound, shoulder-length curls bounce with the movement. “Razek said you wanted to come on the journey with us after you found out Camille was going. And now we come out here and find you harassing her at the fire.”

“Harassing?” I whirled instinctively, my eyes searching for Cam-Eel, scanning the darkness of the tents. I needed to catch sight of her back, to somehow confirm that what Jozelyn had just said was not true. But Cam-Eel was not there.

I spun back to the Gahnala, forcing my hackles down. “I was not harassing her.”

“You basically told her that her food was terrible! I heard you!”

“I did not,” I growled, losing my patience with this entire evening. “I told her it did not taste as terrible as it smelled.”

Jozelyn laughed, but it sounded bitter. It had none of the warmth Cam-Eel’s laugh had had a few moments before.

“I know there are a lot of cultural differences between us, but sometimes you guys are just way too thick.”

I looked down at myself. I was thicker than some men, it was true. I’d worked harder than most to build muscle after my injury, which left me bulkier than many other Death Plains warriors.

My head snapped up at the sound of Jozelyn stepping forwards.

She stopped directly before me, planting her hands on her hips. “Camille is kind and sweet and considering the circumstances, almost insanely happy. I won’t have anyone, alien or human, changing that. I mean it, Varrow. Live by the old Earth adage: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

That was… A stupid saying. Lots of things were necessary even if they were not nice.

But she was the Gahnala, and Gahn Razek’s sight stars were burning a hole in my head, so I held my tongues.

With a raise of my tail, I turned and stalked from the fire. I moved through the settlement, out onto the open sands. As an unmated warrior, I was one of the men whose tent was not sheltered by the cliffs. This did not bother me. The open sands were vicious. But the Death Plains were worse.

In fact, I’d put my tent further out on the sands than any other man, so that if any danger came I would be the first to meet it. The first line of protection. The first one to die, if needed. My tent was a spiked shadow, alone on the sands, beyond all others. Set far apart from the group.

Just as I was.

My social isolation, the way I did not converse easily with others, had never really bothered me. Until now.

Now, it made me feel weak and stupid. I did not know how to communicate with Cam-Eel. I did not know how to make her happy.

Why I was so suddenly intent upon making her happy was a mystery. As I’d told Gahn Razek, she was not my mate.

But moment by moment, it seemed I was growing as bizarrely obsessed with her as she was with her beans.

Fool.

I gripped the hide of my tent, my claws nearly shredding it as a hope with sharp fangs dragged itself through my body.

Jozelyn and Gahn Razek chose each other before the mate bond awoke…

No.

I would not allow myself to give into a madman’s hopes. Not long ago, I’d known I would never have a mate from among my tribe. I’d accepted that fate. Coming here and meeting the new women had not changed things. I knew how to be alone. I was good at it. And…

There are better men than me.

So when the sacred, silver glow suddenly appeared on the horizon to my left, signalling the arrival of the revered Lavrika, I immediately looked behind me, wondering which other man it sought.

But there was no other man out here.

No other man but me.

CHAPTER FIVE

Camille

Itried not to let the presence of the grumpy, short-haired Death Plains bastard ruin my excitement about the journey ahead. He may be blunt and obnoxious with eyes that seem to penetrate bone, but he’s not what’s important here. No, what was important was staying focused, helping the group…

And maybe meeting my mate.

A flutter in my stomach made me squeeze the straps of my pack as I settled it on my back. I could be meeting my destiny soon. Today was just the very first step.

“Ready?” Priya whispered. Like me, she was dressed, wearing all her gear except her sunglasses. It was dark inside the tent, and we wouldn’t need the sunglasses outside yet as the sun hadn’t fully risen. We’d both applied sunscreen, though, so that we didn’t have to do that later. I’d worked the thick cream vigorously into my skin, trying to make the white cast disappear as Varrow’s words had echoed annoyingly in my head.

I absolutely do not look like a bean.

I nodded in response to Priya’s question, and together we picked our way quietly through the tent. It felt strange to leave in the quiet dark like this, not saying goodbye to the sleeping girls bundled in their hides. But we’d said our goodbyes last night. Actually, I’d said au revoir. I’d avoided the Japanese phrase sayonara. Au revoir referenced a future meeting – until I see you again. Sayonara was a much more permanent goodbye, used when you didn’t expect to see the other person again. It made tears prick in my eyes to think of never coming back here.

No. I would come back here, healthy and happy and maybe even in love. Everything will go to plan.

But I couldn’t help but feel that things were already veering away from my perfect plan when I almost collided with a hard wall of alien chest as soon as I stepped out of the tent.

I flinched backwards, bumping Priya from behind, almost sending her tumbling. I wrenched back to steady her, but a dark arm shot past me, too fast for me to keep up with.

Just one arm.

Varrow.

Jocelyn had told me his name last night. She’d come to see Priya and me before bed, making sure that we were ready for the journey.

Once Priya was stable on her feet, Varrow released her elbow. I jutted my chin up at him, scowling.

“And just what, exactly, are you doing out here knocking ladies off their feet first thing in the morning?” I asked with a harsh sigh.

“I didn’t knock her off her feet. You did.”

This fucking guy…

I sucked in a breath, ready to come up with a barbed retort, but my words died in my throat when my eyes found Varrow’s face.

The sun was starting to rise, and this was the first time I’d seen him up close with any significant light source beyond fire or asteroids. If I’d thought his gaze was intense last night, it was a hundred times hungrier today.

I was used to the Sea Sand people’s sight stars pulsing and swirling. But Varrow’s seemed to move with a more harrowed sort of intensity. They practically throbbed, misting outwards then drawing in tight as he stared at me. I hadn’t realized it before, but his sight stars were actually pale blue, not white or grey or violet like Razek’s. It wasn’t a cold or icy blue, though. It was… Strangely warm. Almost smoky. A stray bit of his dark bangs had fallen forward, and I had the bizarre urge to brush the hair back away from those piercing eyes. It wasn’t just bits of his bangs, either – his whole body seemed to be leaning down toward me, muscles tight, thrumming with tension.

“I was waiting for you.”

His voice changed from his earlier statement about me knocking Priya off her feet. It had somehow both softened and gotten rougher. Harsh but lyrical.

A sudden onset of goosebumps made me shiver.

“Well, I’m here now. We’re ready,” I replied.

Varrow’s eyes lingered on me for a beat longer than was natural. His clawed fingers twitched, drawing my eye. They stretched towards me for the briefest of moments before curling into a rock-hard fist.

“Come,” he said brusquely, turning and beginning to stride away.

“We will come, but not because you told us to” I called after him. If he heard me, which I was sure he had, considering the slight twitch of his high, dark ears, he gave no other indication.

Glowering, I turned to find Priya snickering.

“This is better than the telly,” she said, smiling wider. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on with you and that bloke, but it’s massively entertaining.”

Trying to sort myself out, I raked my fingers through my hair, tucking the smooth strands neatly behind my ears. But that just made me think of the way Varrow’s bangs needed to be fixed. And it made my fingers itch in the most annoying way.

Pushing all of that aside, I took a breath and began to walk, following the beacon of Varrow’s muscled back lined with all its blades.

CHAPTER SIX

Varrow

The mate bond did nothing to ease things between Cam-Eel and me. If anything, it made everything worse. It stuck my tongues fast to my fangs. Made every word come out wrong.

So I stopped saying so many words.

Instead, I watched her. Like a creature in the shadows.

It was all I could do. As we began our journey, Cam-Eel rode on the back of another man’s irkdu. That made all my blood rush into my grip on my spear. I ached to hurl it and kill the man, named Dalk, for even deigning to help her into the saddle.

She should have been riding with me.

But there was no way I would have been able to convince her of such a thing. The fact that the human women did not feel the mate bond was abundantly clear. While I seethed with the kind of love that made a man feel like he was on the very brink, Cam-Eel seemed only to dislike me. And even outside of that, even on the unlikely chance that she had not hated me or that she had wanted to ride with me, I would not have allowed her to. With only one arm, I would not be able to both hold her steady and use a weapon adequately if we entered into danger. I would not let my blood-thick desire for her get in the way of good sense. I could not risk her safety to please my own heart.

So instead, I raged in murderous silence as she smiled and chatted with Dalk on his irkdu. Luckily, the attention she gave him did not seem unusual or special. She did not give him more smiles than she gave to others. If anything, she was more generous with her smiles than I would have thought possible, sending them to everyone who offered her a word or wayward glance.

Well, everyone except me.

I was not just love-sick. I was jealous. Jealous of Dalk who got to ride with her. Jealous of all the others who got her smiles.

I am beyond love-sick, I thought miserably. I am love-wounded. Love-killed.

I had survived so much before.

I was not entirely sure I would survive this.

I scraped my hair violently back from my brow, giving off a quiet, unintentional growl that had Cam-Eel turning her elegant head back to look at me from behind her shiny eye-shells.

She offered me no smile.

Of course she doesn’t give you a smile, you dolt. You stare at her, and instead of speaking, you growl. You’ve earned nothing from her. Not even the smile she gives to all the others.

I could tell I was doing things all wrong. “Blowing it,” as Jozelyn had said last night. I just didn’t know how to fix it.

Digging my fangs into my inner cheek, I pondered the issue for the entire day’s ride.

But by the time we stopped to make camp, I was no closer to a solution. The only thing I did know was that I could not reveal myself as Cam-Eel’s mate. Not yet, not like this. Not before I’d eased some of the dislike she clearly felt for me. If I were to tell her I was her mate now, it would seem terrible and desperate and would likely send her even further away from me. Gahn Razek’s words tumbled through my mind. These women have a stubbornness that you cannot imagine…

Gahn Razek’s voice tumbled in my ears, then. Not just my mind.

“Will you not dismount, Varrow?”

I realized that everyone else was standing on the sands while I remained above them, still seated upon my irkdu. Even my irkdu seemed to be judging me, casting its many eyes towards me, as if asking me what I was still doing upon its back. Clearing my throat, I leaped down to the sands to join the others.

We were not a large party. There was one warrior from each tribe: me; Oxriel; Vaxilkai; Bariok; Dalk (whose neck I currently wanted to wring for being near Cam-Eel all day); a Bitter Sea giant named Kohka who had scales in shades of brown, ash, and silver; and the only Gahn among the group, Razek. Then, of course, there were the new women. The Gahnala Jozelyn; the one who reduced landscapes and mountains to clever black lines, Priya; and…

Cam-Eel.

My mate.

She was making a show of not looking at me with just as much force as I stared at her.

The sun was setting. As Cam-Eel bent and then rose with hides to set up the tent she and Priya would share, the golden-red light caught on the edge of her cheek and the lashes I could just see peeking out from beyond the glistening curtain of her hair. That cheek was pulled upward into a smile. Because of course it was.

The perfection of her was a pain inside me. A pain I wanted, more than anything, to grasp by the root and rip out. Because if I let it get any further into me, I’d lose more than just another arm. I’d lose more than a brother.

I’d lose everything.

If life in this world had taught me anything, it was that that which we loved fiercest destroyed us most powerfully when it disappeared.

It would have been easier to have never been granted a mate at all.

Such a thought was unnatural. Blasphemy so foul no man should dare to think it. Most men clamoured for a mate, having been denied one for so long. Most men would have considered me lucky beyond what pale luck had ever afforded me before.

But I did not feel lucky now.

I felt… Undeserving. And out of place.

I felt once again like that small boy with the blade at his shoulder as healers severed the arm that had been left blackened and infected by the ablokoi’s grip. The boy who howled, not from the pain of the cutting, but with the force of the fact that he should have done more, should have done anything, even died, if his brother could have lived.

But then the light shifted, or maybe it was just Cam-Eel turning more towards it, and suddenly every curve and stretch of her face was lit by the full force of the shimmering sky. I was overcome, delirious, haunted by it. By her. And every thought of luck or worth or the pain of the past and the future vanished, replaced by my unrelenting need for her. A desire that drove so deep down into my bones I knew, I knew with a certainty so violent it almost cut me down, that I would never get it out.

“You’re staring,” came the drift of Gahnala Jozelyn’s voice from below my shoulder.

I let out a low breath then muttered, “I know. Is there a reason you are narrating this observation?”

“Is there a reason you’re staring?” she countered.

More reasons than I could ever hope to explain. So instead I settled, rather irritably, on saying, “Perhaps it is different where you come from. Perhaps you and your kind can easily look away from something beautiful.” Then, my voice lower, softer, more broken: “But I cannot.”

The Gahnala said nothing else, eventually moving away and leaving me alone with my staring and the endless, unfamiliar rhythm of a newly revived heart.

This love had not killed me after all. I felt more alive than ever – blood rushing, nerves singing, my body thrumming with ardent life whether I liked it or not.

No, I was not love-killed.

Just love-doomed.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Camille

Iwas starting to regret not bringing some of the fermented beans mixture on the journey. Un, because Priya, Jocelyn, and I were getting tired of plain old meat as the days went by. Et deux? Because Varrow was driving me so insane with his endless brooding looks that I wanted to smear the stuff he hated all over his dinner, just to spite him. I’d never had an urge like that before. My parents had always taken so much care with their cooking, both at the restaurant and at home, wanting to please whoever was eating. That same instinct ran through me – to take care of people through food. To please their palates. To give them something they loved.

Well, I felt none of that instinct towards Varrow.

Or maybe this is just a reaction to the fact that you can’t take care of him, can’t please him...

Ta gueule! Shut up! I told that icky little voice inside me.

I didn’t like to think that maybe the voice was right. That, after Varrow had so obviously rejected my cooking before and had gone on and on about my apparent obsession with beans, I now wanted to lash out at him. It was probably petty, but hey – could anyone blame me? The endless staring, as if telling me with his stormy eyes how incompetent I was, would drive anyone up the proverbial alien wall.

And it only got worse the closer to the Death Plains we got. If Varrow was excited about seeing his homeland, he certainly didn’t show it. If anything, his staring got more heated. More… Hateful. It seemed excessive for him to hate me just because I’d had the audacity to create a recipe he hadn’t liked, but I couldn’t figure out any other reason for the rage that simmered in his gaze whenever it landed on me.

So, I avoided him. I kept the distance between us nice and wide. But that, too, became more complicated. Because he just wouldn’t stay away. He barely spoke, but somehow, he was everywhere. Beside me at the evening fires. Waiting for me outside my tent in the morning. Around stony corners when I came back from peeing.

It was the night when we reached the outer edge of the Death Plains, after ten days of riding and feeling his stares, that I finally decided to tell him to fuck right off. I’d had enough of the obsessive hovering, the quiet fuming, the dagger-filled looks. If he hated me that much, he never should have come on this trip in the first place!

“What?!” I cried, jumping back as Varrow stood, once again, where I wasn’t expecting him to.

The edge of the Death Plains was marked by an intimidating stretch of toothy-looking mountains. Unlike the copper-gold deserts we’d travelled from, this stone, and from what I understood, the land beyond, was ghostly pale. The mountain range before us glinted like shards of broken bone under the glowing asteroids and stars. I’d just gone pee in a hidden spot, and I sighed, raising my chin to Varrow who apparently had been right there the whole time. He wouldn’t have been able to see me peeing, but still…

“What?” I asked again, fighting to keep my voice steady. It had been another long day of travelling, my ass was sore, and I was not interested in whatever Varrow was playing at. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting for you.”

He said it so flatly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world and I was stupid not to see it. It echoed what he’d said that first morning when I’d almost collided with him outside the tent before leaving the settlement. He’d said he’d been waiting for me then, too.

“Well… Why?” I asked harshly.

“To make sure you are safe.”

Really? Because based on the looks you’ve been giving me, it seems like you want me to fall down into some dark crevasse and never find my way back out again…

Something told me saying that out loud wouldn’t be a good idea. So instead I said, “I’m fine. I’m not stupid. I really doubt I’m going to die this close to the group.”

Even now, I could see the others only a few metres away, setting up camp under the natural shelter of a stony outcropping. And I wasn’t the type to wander off and put myself in a dangerous situation, either. All I’d done was go pee behind a rock!

Darkness flickered in Varrow’s eyes, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. “I did not say you were stupid. But you do not know these lands as I do.”

There was… Something there. Something bleeding at the edge of his words. Pain.

I swallowed, my eyes falling to his arm-less shoulder, before meeting his gaze once more. His words had deflated any pride, any anger I’d felt. He was right. I’d never been here, to the Death Plains. He had. And clearly, he’d suffered.

“What happened to your arm?”

The question was out of my mouth before I could stop it. I clamped my teeth against my lips, cursing myself. I may not have particularly liked Varrow, but I hadn’t meant to be that rude. I didn’t want to pry.

Varrow visibly tensed, and he took two great steps towards me, collapsing the distance between us. His sight stars buzzed, and his hair fell forward as he stared ominously down at me.

I took a shuddering breath, flinching when my breasts brushed his abdomen. But I didn’t step back, didn’t move away.

Dieu, he was huge. Long-limbed but bulky with strength, he gave off a dark, almost feline sense of graceful power. Like a panther. The lean Death Plains look of his face was regal in a savage sort of way. Feral yet elegant, the shadows deepened by his hardened expression.

“It is a harrowing tale,” he said, lips drawing back from his fangs, his eyes so deep and hungry I thought they’d swallow me whole.

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “You don’t need to-”

“No.” Varrow hissed, cutting me off. “You asked. And you will hear it.”

Merde. I had really pissed him off. And rightfully so. Who the hell walked around asking people why they were missing limbs? I’d told him a few moments ago that I wasn’t stupid, but I sure felt stupid now.

“As I said, it is a harrowing tale. You should prepare yourself.”

I nodded mutely. I was getting a bit scared of what he’d tell me. But like he’d said – I was the one who’d asked. I would listen to his story, however horrible it was. Besides, no matter how hard it was to hear, it was obviously nothing to him actually living through it.

His sight stars weren’t like smoke now, but like fire. I wondered, my throat thick, what kind of memories were playing out behind those eyes, right now, as he prepared to tell his story. Varrow took a deep breath, his abdomen brushing my front once again, making my nerves zing. I held my breath as curiosity mingled with dread in my lungs.

“As a child…” he began gravely, “my mother made me eat too many beans.”

“Wait… What?”

He ignored me, forging onward. “My mother made me eat them every day, with every meal. She made me eat so many that my arm fell off.”

My mouth opened into a soundless O and I blinked, over and over again, too shocked to formulate words. Had this moody bastard just made a fucking joke?

Something tightened, then softened, in his expression.

“Come, little bean. We should return to the others.”

I couldn’t even muster up the energy to get annoyed at being called “little bean” again. I was reeling. We’d encountered case after case of alien insanity on this planet – monsters and mate bonds and things that made absolutely no sense. But the most shocking thing of all was discovering that the abrupt, brooding Varrow apparently had a sense of humour under all those tense muscles and frowny expressions.

As we walked together, my gaze slid sideways towards him. I could feel myself trying to make sense of him. It wasn’t that I was suddenly seeing Varrow in a whole new light, or anything. But there was certainly a little more light shining on him now. Beating back some of the shadows. Helping him come into focus. Which was weird, considering I hadn’t actually learned what had really happened to his arm. But somehow, his joke told me more about him than maybe even the truth would have. So he’s not just some surly alien. Or at the very least, he’s a surly alien with a sense of humour.

Très intéressant.

No! Not interesting! You’re supposed to be focused on the journey ahead and finding your own mate! Not getting all interested in the grumpy brute beside you!

Varrow’s head stayed in place, facing forward, but his sight stars moved, staring at me from the side. Flushing, I wrenched my own gaze ahead as we reached the rest of the group.

The tent Priya and I shared had already been set up for the night, and I hustled for it, needing its security.

But the idea of our tent being a safe haven began to evaporate when I saw where Varrow was now setting up his own tent.

Right next to ours.

“You couldn’t find a better spot?” I asked, only partly teasing.

Varrow glanced at me before returning to the task at hand once more, grunting, “No.”

“Well… Alright then,” I said, stepping back to give him some space. It wasn’t like he was going in our private tent or anything. I didn’t have the right to tell him where to put his tent.

I watched him in the stark, asteroid-lit darkness. The white and grey stone of the Death Plains mountain range reflected a lot more light than the Cliffs of Uruzai, and night here felt brighter than it had back in the desert we now called home. The ghostly light drenched Varrow’s form as he worked. For a moment, I thought about asking if he needed any help setting up his tent. But I quickly decided against it. Such a question would probably just offend him, besides – it was becoming more and more clear he didn’t need any help. Having only one working arm didn’t hinder him at all. He worked with sharp, deft movements, his tail snapping up to help support a bone pole here or hold a piece of tent hide there whenever he needed more than one hand. His back was to me as he worked, and my eyes dragged down the bunching of hardened muscles under his shining skin, between his leather straps and blades. A warm sensation swirled, low in my abdomen, and I realized with a jolt it was desire.

I was attracted to Varrow.

I snapped my head away just as he finished readying his tent. Clearing my throat, I looked at Jocelyn, Razek, and Priya who were seated next to me on the ground. The other Sea Sand men were also readying their tents for the night, and the Bitter Sea warrior with us, Kohka, was standing facing the mountain range, observing the landscape with critical eyes.

“Well, shall we make a fire, then?” I asked, my voice cracking slightly.

“No!”

The reply didn’t come from the people I’d addressed. It came from directly behind me – or rather above me. I tensed, realizing Varrow was right behind me, speaking from over my head. I dared a look backwards to see his face set in a thunderous expression.

Oh, great, now what have I done to earn his ire?

“Varrow is right,” Razek said. “Firelight draws the ablokoi. We will light no fires in the Death Plains, at least not until we are well past these stones.

Oh, OK. So Varrow wasn’t mad at me about suggesting fire, it had to do with this ablokoi thing…

“What’s an ablokoi?” I asked. I stepped to the side so that I was no longer so acutely aware of the throbbing presence of Varrow’s massive frame so close to my back.

“Oh, they’re absolutely horrible,” Jocelyn answered, wrinkling her nose. “Almost got both me and Razek last time we were here. You know those weird, flat fish that lay on the bottom of the ocean and wait for another fish to swim by before they grab it? It kind of looks like that – but giant. And it has tentacles. Dozens of them.”

I grimaced at her description. I knew the general details of Jocelyn’s trip to the Death Plains back when she’d met Razek, but I hadn’t gotten such a visceral image of the ablokoi in my head before.

“It sounds like the hok of the sea,” Kohka said, his great head angling downward to look at us. In the bright whitish light of these lands, he looked like he’d been carved from glinting metal, all silvered scales and spikes.

“Oh, yeah, the hok has tentacles, too, right?” Priya asked. “Zoey’s talked about it before. Like a giant squid.”

“Yes. Many looping arms and much strength,” Kohka confirmed.

“Travelling with several warriors is prudent here,” Razek said. “Kohka, you, in particular, would be a good defence against an ablokoi. They are brutally strong and can easily subdue and crush a man with their many arms. But your spikes would probably cut an ablokoi badly enough to make it withdraw. And with many warriors to kill it, we would prevail over its tactics. But still, we would do well to avoid them. So, no fires. And no excessive noise, either, lest we call the zeelk down upon our heads.”

Ablokoi, zeelk, mountains that looked like broken bones and teeth… No wonder this place was called the Death Plains. I shivered and crossed my arms, rubbing my hands up and down the sleeves of my jacket.

“Are you cold?” came the shockingly quiet murmur of Varrow’s voice beside me.

“Yes,” I said, deciding it was easier to just say that than to say, Yes, I am cold, but I’m also freaked the fuck out by the idea of a desert squid grabbing me from the darkness.

Varrow’s voice hardened. “Promise me no matter how cold you feel, you will light no fires, little bean.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” I answered. “I got the message loud and clear. No fires. I told you I’m not stupid, remember?”

I glanced at him, noting the way his hand was balled in a fist at his side.

“I know you’re not,” he replied. “But you are so small. And I know you need heat. It gets colder here than back at the Cliffs of Uruzai.” He paused then, his sight stars pulsing, then rasped. “If you get too cold in the deep of the night, come to me. I will find a way to keep you warm. Just promise me – no fires.”

There was a furious hunger in his gaze now. It made my stomach muscles clench. He needed something from me. Needed this promise for some reason…

“I promise,” I said.

“She’s not an idiot. None of us are going to do anything stupid,” Jocelyn cut in.

I gasped, almost forgetting that there was anyone else around besides Varrow and his cavern-deep, all-consuming gaze.

His sight stars snapped to Jocelyn. He dragged his fingers through his hair, looking almost shockingly like a human man for a moment. Then he bent, retrieving his spear from the ground next to his tent.

“I will go hunt,” he said brusquely. He didn’t wait for anyone’s response, not even Gahn Razek’s, before he left our makeshift camp. All the other warriors left to hunt, too, until it was just the three of us human women and Gahn Razek.

“Why’s he being so hard on Camille about the fire thing? That guy’s getting on my last nerve,” Jocelyn said, frowning. I collapsed onto my bum, scooting forward to join their little seated group. Strangely, even though Varrow had also been getting my own last nerve up until now, I felt a sudden need to defend him.

Apparently, Razek felt the same way.

“I do not blame him for wanting to take extra caution when it comes to the ablokoi. An ablokoi killed his brother and ruined his arm when he was a boy.”

My breath caught. I stared at Razek as he continued.

“Varrow and his older brother were out hunting when they were accosted. They’d been careful – they had not lit fires. But still, they’d been caught. Varrow’s brother was named Ratev. I am similar to Varrow in age. When he and I were both small boys, Ratev was a fine young man. A warrior fit to be Gahn. If things had transpired differently, he may have been the one ruling this tribe now. Him, or maybe even Varrow.”

All three of us girls were silent. Even Jocelyn looked subdued after her previous annoyance with Varrow.

“Ratev told Varrow to run and sacrificed himself, fighting to save his brother,” Razek said. “Varrow wouldn’t leave him though, and his arm was crushed in the ablokoi’s grip, later requiring amputation. At that point, their father and some other hunters found them, killing the ablokoi. It was too late for Ratev, though. And too late for young Varrow’s arm.”

I reached up and touched my wet cheeks. When had I started crying?

“Ratev was the adult of the two, and he was stronger than most – a powerful warrior,” Razek went on. “Varrow was only a small boy at the time. He could not have saved his brother. And yet…” Razek paused, then gave a ragged sigh. “He carries that day with him. Always.”

A sob choked from my throat, and I slammed my hand over my mouth. I was such an idiot – there I had gone just asking him point-blank about what had happened to his arm when it had been something so much worse than I’d expected. Not only the loss of the limb, but the loss of a family member, too. And Varrow had had the decency not to make me feel bad about my blunder, instead cracking a joke about it all.

My chest pounded. My head spun. Everything I thought I knew about Varrow – about him being blunt and rude and abrupt – was being turned upside down. He was far more considerate than I’d given him credit for, even if his social skills were somewhat rough around the edges. And the fact he’d tried to save his brother even when he was so young, so small… It spoke to a strength of character and protective nature that broke my fucking heart.

That was all I could see, now. The boy inside the brooding man. The boy who’d lost so much. I wanted to reach right back into the past and scoop him up. To keep him out of harm’s way and tell him everything would be alright.

But obviously, everything hadn’t turned out all right. Varrow had lost his brother and been traumatically injured. Razek went on to tell us that both his parents were gone now, too. Well, that’s something we have in common, I thought sadly, swiping at my tears.

Jocelyn’s voice broke the silence after Razek finished.

“That lad needs therapy. Frankly, we all do.”

I could tell from the grim set of her mouth that she wasn’t kidding or trying to make light of the situation. Really, she was right. We’d all been through trauma. But then again, something told me Varrow and most of the other Sea Sand warriors wouldn’t be interested in talking about their feelings. I smiled wanly through my tears, imagining broaching the idea with quiet, irritable Varrow. I bet he’d rather chew on rocks than talk to someone about what he’s been through… That was probably a big part of why he’d joked earlier instead of telling me the truth. The truth was far, far too painful to dredge up.

I’m going to be nicer to him, starting right now, I vowed. It wasn’t out of pity. I wasn’t going to be nicer just because I felt sorry for him or anything. But rather because I felt like I understood him a little better now. And understanding him made it easier to like him, to see past the brashness and dark thunder surrounding him.

A small thought niggled at me. That it wasn’t just understanding his past that had helped me like him better. But it had also been the discovery of his sense of humour.

And the hard lines of his body under moonlight.

No. No no no. This was what I’d wanted to avoid the entire time I’d been on this planet. Becoming attracted or connected to someone who wasn’t meant to be mine forever. And, of all the men I could have started feeling things for, why did it have to be one of the grumpiest ones?!

No. I’m not developing feelings for him. It’s just a physical attraction, that’s it.

I ignored the fact that my chest heaved and my heart pounded. Ignored the fact that my throat was still tight with tears I’d cried for Varrow.

Because those things couldn’t be chalked up to attraction.

Those were feelings.

And I didn’t have feelings.

Not for Varrow.

Right?

Merde.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Varrow

Apparently, my announcement that I would go hunt had inspired an exodus from the settlement. I hadn’t meant for anyone else to join me. But I couldn’t stay at the camp and listen to talk of the ablokoi any longer. It made my missing arm twinge in the most irritating way. As I rode along the Death Plains cliffs and valleys on my irkdu, the sound of other irkdu coming up behind me made me turn. I did not want company. My instincts told me to go faster and lose the others. But I slowed. Gahn Razek was not among them, and I was the only one native to these lands in this hunting party. They might need my expertise in this landscape, even though some of them had been out here before on the trip with Gahnala Jozelyn.

“What is best to catch, Varrow?” asked Vaxilkai. He was one of Gahn Buroudei’s men and had lived in deserts closest to the Death Plains before relocating to the Cliffs of Uruzai. The moonlight turned his long braid into a gleaming tail as he drew level with me on his mount. Dalk, Oxriel, and Bariok soon joined us.

“When we were last out here, we ate many of those blue legless things. But there was no dakrival. And we will not have the fire to roast dakrival meat anyway,” he continued.

The blue legless things he spoke of were gorka. Scaly, slithering creatures.

“The gorka are good meat but they are small,” I told him. “Their eggs are good, too, if you can find them. There are rakdo in these lands – white, not reddish like out in your desert.”

Vaxilkai grunted in satisfaction with my answer.

“As long as we don’t have to eat any of that new women’s foul concoctions, I will be happy with any Death Plains meat,” Dalk said, sneering.

I could not blame him for his words. I, too, had hated the meat Cam-Eel had prepared.

But the tip of my spear found its way to Dalk’s throat anyway. He flinched at the unexpected contact, his sight stars vibrating with fury.

“Watch your tongues,” I said, voice dangerously low. “I only need one hand to rip them from your head.”

Dalk’s irkdu snuffled and growled, sensing its master was in danger. I did not budge, my gaze steady on Dalk’s. He bared his fangs, then moved to draw a blade from his back.

“Enough!”

The lightning-crack of the word made Dalk freeze. I still had not moved, my zeelk-spur spear hovering under his jaw. Gahn Razek came up swiftly behind me on his own irkdu.

“Put your spear down, Varrow. We are allies here. What has prompted this outburst?”

“Your warrior is mad,” Dalk spat. “All I did was speak the truth. That the new woman, Cam-Eel, does unholy things to the meat and I hope to never have it pass my lips again.”

My tail jerked, and I hissed. His tongues didn’t deserve to speak another word upon her. His tongues didn’t even deserve to taste her putrid meat. Even though I hated the stuff, I suddenly wanted to horde it all for myself. I’d eat it every day, all day, if it meant I had more of her.

Razek brought his own spear up then down in a powerful arch, knocking my weapon from Dalk’s unworthy neck.

“Varrow. Enough. Tell me and tell me true – what is going on? I asked you before we left the Cliffs of Uruzai if Cam-Eel was your mate, and you assured me she was not. Did you lie?”

“No,” I gritted out, fangs gnashing.

Razek’s eyes flashed, and I could tell he was working to contain his irritation.

“Then, has the truth changed since you last spoke it to me?”

I paused a beat, talons digging in my belly. Talons with names like shame and fear and loss. But I could not hide this from my Gahn.

“Yes,” I muttered, tossing my spear down across my lap. “The Lavrika came to me on the last night at the settlement. Cam-Eel is mine.”

The last word, mine, came out more forceful than the rest. It was a warning and a vow and a claim. Perhaps a useless one, as I’d not actually done anything to claim Cam-Eel. But even if I didn’t deserve her, even if she never wanted me, I had the sudden shattering need to make sure these men knew whose protection she was under. To make sure they knew who loved her.

Razek let out a breath, and the other men tensed, glancing at each other.

I tried to read the expressions on their faces – they did not look happy for me. I was not from any of their tribes, so perhaps that was to be expected. But I found myself angry. Losing patience.

“What? What is it?” I snarled, my tail whipping on my irkdu’s back. “Say it.”

Say that you do not think I deserve her. Say that you think there are better men for her. I’ll kill you the way I cannot kill those thoughts inside myself…

It was Oxriel who spoke then. He was Gahn Taliok’s man. I did not know him well, but so far he seemed quite similar to his Gahn – steady, quiet, and strong.

“What a blessing, Varrow. If our faces do not convey appropriate congratulations, it is only because we are thinking of our own chances at a mate. Chances that now stand one woman fewer.”

My anger dissipated. They were not looking at me with disdain. They were simply looking into their own futures with mounting unease. The arrival of the new women had been an unexpected boon – precious treasures we could not have hoped to earn. But even so, there were less than two dozen human women, ten of whom were already mated. Eleven, counting Cam-Eel. Nowhere near enough women for all the unmated men.

For every man who gains a mate, there are fewer for the others…

Once again, I wondered why I’d been chosen. Perhaps one of these other men would have been better for Cam-Eel. A man with easier smiles. A man who knew how to make her happy. A man who didn’t pulse with loss like it was a second poisoned heart.

No.

A wave of denial so hot it almost felt like hate rose up inside me.

I may not be among the best of men. But no one could ever love her like me.

I made no great claim to cleverness. But of that fact, I was certain.

More certain than I’d been about anything before. More certain than I was about the many moons rising. More certain than I was about my own hand, my own name.

I knew I’d love her more than any other man could even hope to fathom.

Even if it ruined me.

GAHN RAZEK AND I SPLIT off from the others after that. I no longer wished to entertain their looks, and Gahn Razek wished to speak with me.

As we turned our irkdu back towards the camp, my chest inflated with a sudden burning breath.

“If you are here, that means…”

The new women were unprotected.

Cam-Eel.

“No, Varrow. Do you think I’ve lost all my brains since becoming Gahn?”

My breath shuddered in and out of me as I stared tensely at him.

“The women are in their tents. Kohka returned to the camp before I left. He is guarding them. They are safe. We can see the tents from here.”

He was right. We could see beneath the overhang of stone that sheltered the tents. If a gaze was capable of tearing through hide, mine would have, as I searched for Cam-Eel.

“I assume you have not told Cam-Eel yet.” Gahn Razek paused, then, his voice falling, “Or if you have told her, it did not go well.”

My spine went ramrod straight. My Gahn could see what they could all see. My mate did not love me. Even worse than that, she seemed to like me even less than she liked everyone else. I knew it had to be my fault. I did not blame her in the slightest.

If I only had more to offer her…

I turned my gaze, with much difficulty, from the tents to look at Gahn Razek’s profile. A hard jaw and elegant nose. Piercing eyes and a strong frame. A confidence that had only thrived since becoming Gahn and finding his mate. He’d fully come into his power.

My heart twisted as I realized that he reminded me of my brother, Ratev. Of course, if Ratev had been alive now, he would have been much older than Razek. But both Razek and I were now about the age my brother had been when he’d died.

I wonder what he’d say if he were here…

But he wasn’t here. And my memories from that young age weren’t strong enough to conjure an adequate prediction of what he’d tell me right now.

So instead, I focused on what I did have. Right now, that was Gahn Razek. The only one in my tribe who’d successfully claimed a new woman as his mate.

“You will not be able to woo her with easy smiles, Varrow. That much is obvious,” Razek said.

“Is that bad?” I asked, hating how desperate I sounded. If Cam-Eel required it, I was sure I could learn to smile more. But that was the paradox, wasn’t it? The only thing moving enough to make me think of smiling was Cam-Eel’s love. And perhaps I’d never gain that love without smiling.

I imagined faking a smile for Cam-Eel and inwardly cringed. She’d probably be confused by the expression and ask me if I ate something bad.

“I’m not sure,” Razek said. “All the new women are different. And you have other things that can work in your favour that might appeal to a mate.”

I didn’t say, “Such as?” It felt too pathetic. But Razek must have sensed I wanted to know because he continued.

“You are strong, Varrow. Not just in body, but in mind. You were stronger in childhood than many men are in adulthood. You are loyal. You are a fierce protector.”

None of those things seemed particularly unique or extraordinary. Especially not where a female as glorious as Cam-Eel was concerned. But as Razek and I resumed our ride back to the tents, he glanced my way and said, “I am sure, Varrow, that soon enough Cam-Eel will think of you as her mate.”

CHAPTER NINE

Camille

“I’ve decided that we should be friends!”

“Friends?”

Varrow repeated the word strangely, as though he hadn’t heard me properly. The look he was giving me was strange, too. His dark brows drawn downward in an incredulous frown, his tail thwapping the ground behind him in some kind of exasperation.

“Yes,” I said cheerily, ignoring the way I was inclined to be offended by his reaction to the idea of being my friend.

Varrow’s cheek twitched, his smoky blue sight stars skimming over my face.

I’d resolved last night I was going to be nicer to the grumpy bastard before me, no matter how much he bugged me. And…

And I thought that being friends might help dampen my growing attraction to him.

I’d never been the type to fall for a friend. My past lovers had always been new acquaintances whom I’d entered into romantic relationships with quickly. I’d never dated, or been interested in, someone with whom I’d had an established platonic relationship.

I was hoping the same would prove true for Varrow.

So far…

It wasn’t working.

The sun drenched his smooth, bronze hide, making it look so soft and warm to the touch. There weren’t as many shadows pooling on his face in the morning light, and his bone structure looked less harsh and more refined. Refined in a rugged sort of way. Nothing about his face was delicate. But it wasn’t broad or brutish, either. His lips, I noticed for the first time, were quite full, even as they curved into a tight frown.

We were standing outside the tent I’d shared with Priya last night. As soon as I’d emerged for the morning, he’d been there, like he always seemed to be. Waiting. For me, presumably, though for what reason? Especially when he seemed so put out just by the idea of being my friend!

“I can be a very good friend you know,” I said, faltering slightly. “Unless… You don’t want to be friends with me.” Maybe I was being too pushy. He certainly hadn’t asked for my friendship. If anything, he seemed to want to push me away.

But then his tail jerked, his sight stars buzzing, shattered blue skies.

“I will take whatever you have to offer me, little bean.”

Oh.

Why did my stomach feel like it had just turned to melted fromage? Warm and gooey sinking lower into my pelvis, making my cheeks heat, my thighs squeeze…

“D’accord. OK. Good then,” I said, trying to recover somewhat. Dieu, his gaze was doing things to me. Things I didn’t want to think about. The smoke of those blue sight stars was practically a physical drag of heat against my face, my cheek, my lips…

He’s your friend now. Ton ami.

I told myself that over and over again, trying to drill it into my head. And my heart, apparently, because that ridiculous organ was now going utterly mad in my chest at Varrow’s proximity.

“Ah. Here,” he said gruffly, offering me something from his hand.

I looked down, wrinkling my nose slightly.

I suppose this is breakfast.

It appeared to be the raw meat of some sort of animal. It looked vaguely like fish, though I knew there was no water around here. I noticed then that the white flesh had been split down the middle, revealing shiny blue eggs, like fish roe.

My parents had always taught me to try new things and not to shy away from new culinary experiences. And perhaps this was some kind of peace offering from Varrow. Maybe we can be friends after all…

“Thank you,” I said, smiling sunnily as I gazed up at him.

But my smile disappeared quickly as my eyes narrowed.

That bastard. He literally flinched when I smiled at him!

Varrow’s expression had shifted from its usual tense surliness to one of… Shock? Pain? I couldn’t tell. His sight stars were going so crazy they turned his gaze into blue and black froth, swirling and shuddering. His chest heaved, and he swallowed hard, the movement visible even from where I stood before him. My mouth went dry as I watched the thick muscles of his neck and throat contract.

“You… Are welcome,” he choked out, dumping the food into my hands as if it were burning him to hold onto it any longer.

He turned from me, taking a step towards his tent which he then began to dismantle with furious force. Once again, I couldn’t stop my eyes from tracking down the thick bunching of muscles under his weapons and straps as he worked.

But the meat in my hand was starting to feel slimy, so I hurried over to where Priya and Jocelyn were sitting, planning to eat it before it got too spoiled from the heat.

“Ooh, score. You got some of the eggs,” Jocelyn said.

“Are they good?” I asked, gazing down at the meat and eggs.

“I’m not a big fan,” Jocelyn admitted. “I had to eat loads of this stuff when I was out here with Razek last time. But the Death Plains guys love them. Finding a gorka with eggs is a bit unusual. It’s considered a delicacy.”

“Really? Well, now I feel bad only I got some,” I said. “Do you want any?” I waved the meat and eggs under Priya and Jocelyn’s noses.

“Cor, no thanks,” Jocelyn replied. “Like I said. Not a fan.”

“I’ve already eaten and I want to get some stuff done before we leave,” Priya said, standing. She hurried off into the tent, no doubt to retrieve her papers and pens to get some sketches of this area done before we moved on, just as she’d been doing for the entire trip so far.

“I still feel a bit bad,” I said. I glanced around the camp. Gahn Razek was speaking to Kohka a little ways away, slightly out of earshot. Some of the other hunters were out on their irkdu, hunting or perhaps making sure the next journey of our leg was safe. But Dalk was nearby, strapping his tent to his mount.

“Dalk, would you like some of this?” Dalk had been decent enough to me so far. “It’s your reward for chaperoning the weak human,” I added with a grin, gesturing the food in a way I hoped was tantalizing. Dalk looked interested in what I offered, but then his gaze hitched on something behind me. His face went tight and he slashed his hand through the air, the Sea Sand gesture for “no.”

Then he turned, glowering, back to his task at hand.

“Huh. Guess I can’t even interest these guys in their own food, let alone my cooking,” I said, trying to laugh off his odd reaction.

“It has nothing to do with you,” Jocelyn snorted, “and everything to do with the guy who looks like he’s about to bite Dalk’s head off just for looking at you.”

I jerked around, seeing Varrow glaring at Dalk’s back, his hand curling into a hard fist at his side. Something lurched in me at the intensity of the set of his jaw, the strength of that fist. But I quickly buried it.

“Maybe Varrow’s mad he didn’t get any eggs,” I said. I wondered if Varrow had eaten any, or if he’d saved them all for me. “I’ll be right back,” I said, clambering upright and jogging back to Varrow.

“Coucou, Monsieur Grumpy Pants,” I said, trying to inject as much mirth into the atmosphere as I could.

“Grumpy… What?”

“Hmm. You don’t wear pants. Maybe I should call you Mister Grumpy Loincloth,” I said, gazing at his nearly naked form. I sucked in a quick breath and forced my eyes back up when I realized just how intently they were now examining that loincloth.

“I do not understand a single word you have just said. Apart from loincloth,” he grumbled, finally tearing his gaze from Dalk.

“Are you in a bad mood because you didn’t get any of these nice tasty eggs?” I lifted the food, swinging it back and forth under his mostly flat, vaguely cat-like nose.

“No,” he grunted.

I didn’t believe him.

“Let’s share! Have some with me!” I said, continuing to move my outstretched hand through the air, trying to waft the scent of it towards him.

His eyebrows quirked downward in his usual frown.

“Why? Have you done something… Odd to them?” He sniffed the air suspiciously.

I pouted dramatically, withdrawing my hand.

“If I had done something to them, it would have resulted in a culinary masterpiece. Not my fault if your alien sensibilities can’t see that,” I scoffed.

Varrow paused a beat, then made an unconvinced grumbling sound.

“Seriously, though. Will you have some? I didn’t know this was some special food. I don’t want to hog it all.” I proffered the food once more.

Then promptly froze as Varrow’s huge, rough hand closed over mine.

“I saved it all for you,” he said softly.

His hand lingered on mine, firm yet gentle and so fucking warm.

“There is much nutritional value in the eggs. You are tiny. You need it, little bean.”

“Hey!” I said, not sure that I liked his judgey tone. “I can’t help but seem tiny next to someone as big as you!” That wasn’t exactly true. I was only 5’1, so it wasn’t like I was especially large by Earth standards, either. But still.

Varrow withdrew his hand from mine and looked down at his own form.

“Does my size bother you?” he asked.

I felt my eyebrows rise. Why the hell is he asking me that? He doesn’t seem to care one way or another what bothers me.

I thought about making some quippy remark to jokingly insult him, but decided to just answer honestly.

“No. Not at all,” I said, shaking my head back and forth. I’d never had a specific type before, but height on a man had always been appealing. Especially when combined with a strength like Varrow’s. The idea that I could be caged in by that body. That I could be so easily lifted with only one hand…

It was more than just appealing.

It was mouth-watering.

I gave up on trying to get Varrow to have some of the food and plunked my bum down on the hard ground. I was sitting in the shadow of my tent, so I pulled back my hood and pushed my sunglasses up my face to the top of my head.

“You can sit down if you want,” I said to Varrow. He was looking around as if unsure what to do now.

Apparently deciding that my company was not that offensive, he sat gracefully down across from me. Where I was in the shadows, he was in the full sunlight, every golden beam gleaming on him. He was practically sculpted by it.

I decided to try the eggs first.

“Itadakimasu,” I murmured before popping one into my mouth.

It was a little chewier than I’d expected, but not bad. It reminded me a little bit of escargot.

Could use some garlic butter…

I kept going, not realizing how hungry I had been. Soon enough, I’d finished everything – the eggs and the meat. Varrow produced a valok plant seemingly from nowhere. He ran a deadly black claw along its side before wrenching it open and handing it to me.

“Thanks,” I said, swallowing the last bit of food. I slurped down the green gel, revelling in the way the slightly bitter substance slaked my thirst. That strong green tea flavour lingered on my tongue, reminding me of drinking afternoon tea in my parents’ restaurant.

Soon enough, the other warriors returned from their tasks. We dismantled the camp. Packs and tents were strapped to irkdu backs and sides, and we were ready to go. The saddle I’d been using was still strapped to Dalk’s irkdu, where it had been the whole time, and I approached Dalk while pulling up my hood and re-positioning my sunglasses.

“Cam-Eel,” came Gahn Razek’s authoritative voice. I stopped mid-step, turning to look at him. Gahn Razek was giving me an unreadable look, his sight stars flitting up over my head to land on Varrow, who, I realized, was right behind me.

“You should ride with Varrow today,” the Gahn said.  “Now that we are in Death Plains territory, it would be prudent to have as many new women riding with men who know these lands as possible. Priya, you should ride with Kohka now, for safety. We can reconfigure your saddle for his back.”

Priya nodded, collecting her paper and pens from where she’d been working on the ground. She trotted over to Kohka, and I turned to face Varrow. Just before I did so, I noticed Jocelyn giving Razek a curious look.

“Well, what do you think about that, mon ami? Riding buddies!”

Varrow didn’t look pleased by this turn of events. He looked…

Fucking panicked.

“The saddle will not fit my irkdu,” he stammered, his sight stars swinging between Razek and me.

I frowned, unsure of what he meant. The Death Plains irkdu were much narrower and longer than the other Sea Sand irkdu. From what I understood, that made it easier for the creatures to traverse the mountain range. But the saddles had myriad straps and could easily be adjusted, just as they were doing with Priya’s saddle now for Kohka’s back.

He really doesn’t want to be around me…

I had to admit, that hurt. I knew he hadn’t asked for my friendship or anything. But this was a bit much! Especially after that big show of saving me some choice morsels of alien eggs for breakfast!

“You can tell me the truth, Varrow,” I said, trying to sound tougher than I felt. “If you don’t want me to ride with you, just say that. You don’t have to make up excuses about the saddle.”

I hated how affected by this, by him, I had become. My insides should not have been churning, my heart hammering, as he stared down at me with his jaw working, his mouth twisting.

Finally, after a tense moment, the words tore from him, shattering like brittle stone.

“If there is danger, I cannot hold you steady against me with one hand and defend you with a blade in my other.”

Oh.

I probably should have felt a multitude of things at his words. Maybe I should have felt bad for putting him on the spot. Maybe someone else would have pitied him or felt sorry for him. But I didn’t. All I felt in that moment was a hot slam of desire at the idea of being held steady against him.

You’re supposed to be fighting your attraction to him, remember?

That’s what my brain said.

But my mouth said something else entirely.

“We’ll figure it out. Come on, let’s get the saddle.”

CHAPTER TEN

Varrow

Imoved as if my body belonged to someone else. It followed Cam-Eel’s bidding even as my instincts fought against it. As we walked to Dalk’s mount and I began to unlace the saddle’s straps, I voiced the complaints my body seemed not to hear.

“This is not a good idea,” I muttered. More than once.

But all Cam-Eel did was give me her heart-wrenchingly perfect smile, telling me that I just needed some of her human ingenuity.

I had experienced her human ingenuity in the realm of cooking, and so far I had not been impressed.

But even so, I was helpless against her encouragement as I took the saddle from Dalk’s irkdu. Together we headed for my mount, and I placed it upon my irkdu’s narrow purple-grey back, adjusting the straps to fit my creature better than the last one.

When the saddle was ready, Cam-Eel moved her head up and down.

“What does that mean? That gesture,” I asked, imitating the foreign movement. Cursed sands, it probably meant something like disapproval. For the mount.

For me.

“It means yes. Or, I’m satisfied. That will do nicely,” Cam-Eel said, moving her head up and down once more in a movement that pierced me as painfully as any blade could. How could she just stand there, unmoved and untouched, while a simple movement of her head sent me into a death spiral of feelings too big for my body?

Even now, I felt stretched to my limits. Ribs creaking, joints pulling. Heart swelling to make room for her.

Leaving all the more room for emptiness if I were to lose her.

I could not dwell on that dark thought, though, because Cam-Eel was speaking again, drawing my focus.

“I’ll need a boost up, please.”

My heart slammed. My tail jerked.

I’d already touched her once today – holding her small hand in mine. It had been a catastrophe inside me, sending everything tumbling. I would have to touch more of her now. Grip her waist, or her hip…

That thought made me want to fall to my knees and hiss with feral need. Cam-Eel stood watching me, blissfully unaware of the wars raging inside me.

You need to be strong, Varrow. You need to send her to the mount of another man where she’ll be safest.

No.

I stepped up to her, close, so brutally close. Her small mouth fell open, and I could see her eyes widen under her dark eye-shells. Even if she soon saw what I saw – that riding with me would not be safe – I could not pass up this opportunity to touch her.

My hand moved to her waist.

She tensed and made a soft little sound. I did not know what the sound meant. Dismay, perhaps. Maybe irritation. Up until today, she had clearly disliked me, and now I was touching her more intimately than ever before. But this morning, she smiled at you for the first time. And she said that she would be your friend…

And even though a friend was not a mate, I would take it. I would take anything she gave me. No matter how much it hurt.

Or how foul it tasted.

Though she was tiny, even compared to many of the other new women, my hand could not completely encircle her waist. I slid my hand downward to her hip, and sands of our fathers, she made another little sound, a sound that set my blood on fire.

I need to get this over with quickly.

Because the curve of her hip under my hand, her scent blooming in the air between us, those sounds…

She’d have me coming undone completely.

My tail snapped upwards to support her rump as my hand lifted her easily from the ground. Quickly, she was seated upon the saddle. I knew I should join her up there, and I would. But I had to take a moment to admire her upon my mount. She grinned, sitting up straighter as she settled herself, looking perfectly at ease. Looking at home.

My cock ached, and my fingers clenched into a fist as I stared at her. I was… Completely enamoured. Besotted. Beside myself with a desire more potent than the grief that seemed to nip constantly at its heels.

“Well, are you going to come up here with me or not?” asked my mate, casting down another one of her smiles at me. Not long ago, I had hungered to receive a smile like that. So easy. So free. And now I seemed to be receiving them without end.

I cannot remain this lucky, I thought uneasily. It must run out sometime…

But perhaps… Perhaps it would hold strong for just a little longer.

I grasped my spear, leaped up, and joined her on the mount.

As I settled behind her, my cock gave another insistent throb. I could feel my shaft, thick and pulsing, stretching the loincloth’s hide. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately for me) even if Cam-Eel were to lean back, she wouldn’t come into contact with my swollen organ. The back of her saddle came up a little higher than my groin. I shifted closer, gritting my fangs when my erection bumped the saddle.

“OK. This seems good to me. So what’s the problem?” Cam-Eel asked, wrenching around in the saddle to look at me. Perhaps it was the heat of my unfulfilled desire, or the fact I hated that I had to explain this again. Whatever it was, it made me answer more harshly than I intended.

“Because,” I growled, “if we come across an enemy or a predator, I’ll need to keep you steady. Like this.”

I tucked my spear into the straps holding my tent against my irkdu’s side. Once my hand was free, I looped it in front of her then pulled back until she was flush to my chest.

“I can already see your little body tumbling from the saddle. So I’d need to hold you against me. But this means I cannot grasp a weapon.” I was speaking against the side of her hood, my words growing rougher as her scent overwhelmed me. I suppressed a groan, dragging my nose, my lips, along the hood of her cloak, forward, until I was so close to tasting the skin at her jaw -

“Well, you have a tail don’t you?”

I reared back, realizing how close I’d almost come to doing something unbelievably stupid. I’d almost unleashed my tongues against her jaw, her ear, and the slim neck beneath her hood.

Swallowing, I told myself to remain steady, steady, as I answered her.

“Yes. Of course.”

“So just use that.”

“I cannot wield a weapon with my tail,” I scoffed. My tail was stronger than other men’s and could complete tasks other men’s tails couldn’t. Because I needed it to. I’d trained it to be a second hand of sorts. But even so, it could not hold a spear.

“No, not for that. You can use your tail to hold me if you need to.”

I froze, the image roaring through me. My tail hitched over Cam-Eel’s thighs, pulling snug against her hips. Tugging her hard to me, so thick and heavy in her lap. Feeling the heat of her -

“Let’s try it,” she said. A breathiness had entered Cam-Eel’s voice.

Taking a shuddering breath, I raised my tail. In order to drape it over her legs properly and not have it fall short, I had to move even closer to her. I dug my fangs into the inside of my cheek as my swollen cock was nudged harder against the saddle.

My tail settled across her lap like it belonged there. It fit perfectly.

“Now we test it,” Cam-Eel said.

Yes. This was all well and good in this moment. But it would be useless if I could not actually hold her properly.

Without warning, I hissed, digging my heels into the irkdu’s sides until it leapt and bucked. Cam-Eel cried out in shocked fear, the sound like an anthem in my head, my chest, my blood. Instinctively, the movement so natural it was as if I’d been doing it all my life, my tail clamped to Cam-Eel’s hips, drawing her slim back against my chest. At the same moment, I snatched up my spear, hefting it with ease as I held her steady.

She was right. It worked.

Pride surged inside me, and I had a new appreciation for this idea of human ingenuity Cam-Eel had spoken of.

But she was not speaking now.

Panic replaced the pride from before. Perhaps I’d shocked her too much with my irkdu’s movements. Perhaps, horror of horrors, I’d hurt her. I soothed my irkdu with a quiet command, urging it back into stillness.

“Cam-Eel,” I said urgently against the side of her hood. Then my throat closed up, not allowing the rest of my thoughts to become words.

Cam-Eel, look at me.

Cam-Eel, speak to me.

Cam-Eel, tell me everything’s alright.

Tell me that you love me.

As if she’d heard at least one of those thoughts, she twisted to look at me. She appeared a little surprised by how close my face was to hers, but she didn’t pull away.

“Varrow, that was awesome!” she cried. Her smile was so bright, and so close, that it practically blinded me. But instead of closing my eyes against it, I leaned even closer, soaking in all of her light.

Her smile softened, then faded altogether, her lips parting as I drew nearer. One slight move would have my mouth on hers. One beat of perfect motion would make us collide. Her sweet breath brushed my lips. My tail tensed against her. My cock grew wet at its tip.

Cam-Eel snatched herself away, facing forward as a question echoed.

It was Gahn Razek, calling to us from his irkdu, holding his own mate steady.

“Are you two ready?” he asked.

I found I could not answer. At least, not out loud.

I’m not ready. I’m so lost and so in love and so empty and so full. I’m so hard for her. I can’t think. I can’t -

Cam-Eel’s voice burst through the noise in my head. The hot burn of a star in my darkness.

“We’re ready.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Camille

My plan to get closer to Varrow as a friend, hoping that it would lessen my growing attraction to him, was backfiring spectacularly. There was nothing friendly about the iron bar of heat that was his tail across my lap. I mean, it was hot as hell on this planet to begin with. But this was a different sort of heat. A heat that simmered inside my own veins. A heat that had me breathing quickly, alarmed by the wetness I could feel growing between my legs spread so wide on the saddle.

And it wasn’t just the heavy drape of his tail, tugged tight against my pelvis. It was his chest behind me, too. Even though there was none of the danger that he seemed so worried about, he held me close – much closer than I would have expected. Every shaky inhale had my jacket crunching against the smooth expanse of his skin. I felt locked into him.

And I didn’t hate it.

Nope. I fucking liked it. And that was exactly the problem.

I need a distraction.

A question suddenly came to me, and not only did I find it amply distracting but also…

Disheartening.

“Varrow?” I croaked, my voice cracking before I cleared my throat. He and I, like the others in the party, were travelling perpendicular to the spiky mountain range at the edge of the Death Plains. From what I understood, it would be fastest to cut right through them at their narrowest point. But only the Death Plains irkdu, and maybe Kohka, could easily traverse the rockiest valleys. The larger, lumbering desert irkdu needed more clearance. So we were heading for a slightly easier path further down the rocks.

“What is it?” he asked.

I practically vibrated as his words made his chest bump my back. Without meaning to, I squeezed the first thing in reach – his tail. I heard the tight hiss of Varrow’s gasp, felt the tightening of his chest and abdomen muscles against me. I let go immediately.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to do that,” I murmured, glancing down at his tail to make sure I hadn’t injured him. I snorted at myself. No way. My weak human fingernails hadn’t even left the slightest indent, let alone an injury. His tail was smooth, with the same strong hide as the rest of him – the most beautiful gleaming bronze, fading into black at the tail’s tip. It was thick and muscled like a kangaroo’s, not thin or spindly like a cat’s. As odd as it may have sounded, I actually quite liked his tail. It complemented his form and his other alien features, creating an impressive package. And I’d noticed how agile it was when he was building his tent. I felt how strong it was against my hips.

I wonder what else he can do with that tail…

“Were you going to ask me something?” The quiet boom of Varrow’s voice over my head made me blush even more than the thought I’d just had.

“Yes! I was. Varrow… Do you have a mate?”

I’d been able to feel Varrow’s breathing against my back before.

It stopped.

So did my own. I was holding my breath in anticipation of what he’d say. Which was not a good sign. In that moment, I knew I wanted him to say, “No.” I wanted him to tell me he had no mate even more than I wanted him to say, “Yes.” If he said, “Yes,” I could put this attraction out of my mind.

If he said, “No…”

“Why do you ask?” Varrow asked, his chest shuddering to life once more.

“I just… I was curious if you’d left your mate behind.”

It was far more than that. The question had begun as a way to distract myself from the intensity of Varrow against my back and across my lap. But now it had become something else. Something ugly. Something that made me want to obsess. When he paused yet again before answering, I wanted to turn around, grab his shoulders, and scream until he answered.

“I have left no mate behind,” he finally said, rather stiltedly.

I exhaled, sagging back against his chest. The relief I felt at his words was palpable.

And it made me want more. To know more. Push more.

“So… What would you look for in a mate, Varrow?” I asked. I didn’t straighten up. I remained where I was, my back resting against his chest, putting the full force of my weight there, though I knew that weight was nothing to him.

He took so long to answer that I started to feel embarrassed. I was about to tell him not to worry about it when he spoke.

“There are no unmated adult women in my tribe. I never allowed myself to think such thoughts, to have such hopes before. I did not bother spending my days dreaming of a mate who would not come.”

Merde. Had I put my foot in my mouth again? I didn’t want to dredge up painful memories for him.

But he kept going, and I noticed his tail grow heavier, tighter around me. His voice became louder but also more muffled as he bent to speak against the side of my hood.

“I do not have many smiles. So she will need to provide them.”

I nodded, not speaking, not wanting to stop him now. I was gorging on his words, drinking them down. Even though it was absurd, even though he wasn’t my mate…

I wanted him to describe me.

You are crazy.

“She would have dark hair, like my people,” he continued, his voice gruff. His arm, which had been held out to the side, holding his spear aloft, lowered slightly. The inside of his bicep and elbow brushed my sleeve, sending sparks erupting down my arm.

“‘Like your people…’ So not a Sea Sand woman then. You’d want a human mate?” I asked, trying to clarify.

This time, his answer was instant. Not a breath of hesitation.

“Yes.”

Well that was… Très intéressant.

“What else?” I whispered.

Varrow made a thoughtful sort of sound, rumbling deep in his chest.

“She would have much of your… Human ingenuity. And she would not be afraid to make me try new things, no matter how much I may fight those efforts.”

I let out a chortle, remembering how Varrow had tried, and so obviously hated, the meat I’d prepared. Good luck to his mate, whoever she may be.

That is… If he gets a mate.

The math was obvious. Even with the addition of us human girls, there weren’t enough women for all the single men on this planet to have partners. I hadn’t thought about it too much before, but now…

But now, it fucking hurt. It hurt to think of Varrow not getting a mate. Not because I felt sorry for him. But because… He deserved one.

He was one moody brute of an alien, but he was also quietly considerate and funny and clearly battling some demons of his own. If anyone gets a mate, it should be him.

Even if that mate’s not you?

Before I could fully grapple with that question and all its implications, Varrow hurled my own question back at me.

“What about you, little bean? What would you look for in a mate?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” I said, relaxing somewhat. “Unlike you, I’ve fantasized about it a lot.”

“You have?” his voice grated, sounding strangely desperate.

“Mais oui. Yes, of course. I want a mate. More than most of the other girls here. I’ve never been apprehensive about it the way some others are.”

I wiggled, getting more comfortable against his chest, recalling all the fantasies and desires that I’d played out in my mind when I couldn’t sleep at the settlement.

“He would be devoted and loyal, of course. The romantic sort, definitely. My love language, at least when it comes to receiving love, is related to gifts, so he’d be a thoughtful gift-giver. He’d be a good provider and protector. A good father…”

I smiled, mulling over the image that had been stuck in my head since I’d learned that we’d be travelling to meet the sixth tribe. The image of a warrior, tall and strong, running to greet me as I approached him. Running to me because he was my mate, and he’d been looking for me, too. He’d sweep me up into his arms, smiling, and say, “I was waiting for you…”

But wait a second…

Hadn’t someone else just said that to me? Yes, I was certain of it. Someone else had recently said, “I was waiting for you.”

Varrow.

Suddenly, the man in my mind’s eye wasn’t smiling but rather brooding. Instead of the long hair I’d imagined, it was short, with messy bangs that fell into his smoky eyes as he looked down at me.

I was waiting for you…

“Well, perhaps these things don’t matter,” I said, laughing shakily. “The Lavrika doesn’t care for all our silly notions, I’m sure.”

Varrow said nothing else.

And neither did I.

WE CONTINUED ALONG the mountain range for most of the day, stopping only briefly to relieve our thirst, hunger, and bladders. As the sun was setting, we finally reached the entrance into the mountain range that Gahn Razek had been leading us to. Most of the stone formations we’d seen so far had narrow valleys to pass through in order to enter the maze of white, toothy rock. But this spot had a much wider, flatter valley between two plunging inclines of stone. I leaned forward in the saddle, peering down the valley.

It looked just as intimidating as the rest of the Death Plains stone formations we’d seen. That same ghastly white rock, turned a chalky grey in the dwindling light. Even the fact that there was more space to pass through was not reassuring. If anything, it almost felt more ominous – less stone cover to offer a feeling of protection.

We entered the valley, finding a flat place against the rock incline on the left to make camp. Everyone dismounted quickly, including Varrow. I swung my leg across the saddle, feeling stiff from the day’s ride but not too much worse for wear. The saddles really did make things a lot more comfortable, and being seated on an irkdu with a thinner body had been better for my legs, too.

Now that the sun was setting, I pulled down my hood and pushed my sunglasses up onto the top of my head. I eyed the ground, preparing to half jump, half slide to the dry grey ground. But before I could so do, Varrow stepped into my line of vision. He pressed inwards towards the irkdu, his shoulders between my parted knees. He extended his hand to me.

“It’s OK. I can make it.” I wasn’t overly clumsy, even for a human, and I had managed to get off of Dalk’s irkdu quite a few times on my own before.

Varrow didn’t budge.

“It would be amusing to see you try,” he said. “But if you think that I will let you put those wobbly human ankles in harm’s way by jumping down…” His eyes flashed. “Then you don’t know me very well.”

He was right. I didn’t know him well. But I was starting to. More and more, I was getting a sense of him. And at the forefront of his personality was an obvious protective streak he couldn’t push away. Even when it came to a human who so clearly annoyed him.

“So sweet of you to look out for me,” I crooned, grinning at him.

His jaw clenched.

“I just do not want to hear any complaining about an injury to your foot.”

I wasn’t entirely convinced by his brusque reply.

“I think my feet would be fine. I’d probably just land on my ass if anything.”

His fingers, still held out to me, twitched.

“I do not want to see that part of you injured either.”

There was a choked edge to his voice, like he was fighting some emotion. And maybe losing.

“Well then you’d better help me down after all,” I said, still grinning. His bluntness, his moodiness, didn’t offend me the way it had before. I was almost growing fond of it, now. As someone who was naturally optimistic and cheerful, I couldn’t help but want to poke at the alien sourpuss before me.

I took his hand.

Every nerve and muscle in my body went electric at the contact. Our eyes met. Varrow’s sight stars whipped up into a frenzy, then went completely, almost eerily, still as we stared at each other. Despite the cool air of early evening, I felt warm everywhere, but most potently where my hand held his.

And between my legs.

Varrow’s breath quickened, made obvious by the rapid rise and fall of his chest and the tight bunching of his abdominal muscles. The air between us turned viscous with tension. It dragged me until I was leaning forward, bent at the waist, my face level with Varrow’s.

His nostrils flared in reaction to my proximity, and his sight stars grew tighter, little blue fires in the dark sky of his eyes. His fingers closed over the back of my hand.

What are you doing?

I had no fucking idea. It was like when Varrow had gotten close to me earlier today, just before Gahn Razek had asked us if we were ready to go. It was almost like I…

Was about to kiss him.

No way!

I lifted my free hand, tucking a stray, messy clump of Varrow’s hair back, smoothing it away from his forehead. He didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t even appear to be breathing now. The only things that moved were his sight stars, tracking the movement of my hand at the side of his face.

“There,” I whispered. “That’s better.”

I liked when his hair fell forward into his eyes. But like this, with it all swept back from his face, he was undeniably striking.

“It is?” His question made my chest feel like it had split right open. There was a hurting, hopeful tone in his voice that made me want to wrap my arms around his neck and squeeze.

“Well, I like your hair any old way,” I said, suddenly overcome with the need to make him happy. To ease whatever ache was inside him. To make him feel good about himself. And I was telling the truth. I wasn’t giving him false flattery. “It’s cute when it falls forward, too. When it’s messier, makes you look a little… Ruffled. Not so serious.” I smiled again, smoothing the black strands back once more. I couldn’t seem to stop touching his hair now that I’d started. It was shockingly smooth and soft, and still warm from the sun beating down all day. “But all the same,” I continued, brushing my fingers over his hair one last time, “I really do like your hair like this. So I can see more of your face.”

A pained look crossed over Varrow’s features. Just before I withdrew my hand, his eyes squeezed shut. I froze, watching him as he dipped his head ever so slightly, leaning into my touch. At the same moment, his thumb drew an agonizingly slow circle across the back of my hand, slipping over my knuckles. My eyes widened, my heart pounding as goosebumps exploded up my arms. I shivered.

Varrow’s eyes snapped open.

“You are cold.”

Before I could react, he tugged me forward by the hand. His tail rose to help ease me down the side of the irkdu. I landed on my feet with a gentle thud, much more gracefully than I would have had I attempted such a thing myself.

Varrow released my hand. I blinked several times, feeling dazed. I stared down at my hand, brushing my own fingertips over my knuckles the way Varrow just had.

I yelped as my vision went suddenly black.

“Hold on,” came a gruff voice.

Whatever was blocking my vision receded.

I realized it was something soft – part of my bedding hides. Varrow had unpacked a dakrival hide blanket and plunked it, rather unceremoniously, upon my head.

He pulled the fabric snug at my shoulders before plopping a heavy hand onto the top of my head where the hide was acting as a hood.

“There,” he said, his eyes raking over me. “That’s better.”

“Thanks,” I said, noticing the way he’d echoed my words from just a moment before. That’s better.

Varrow helped me unpack my things, but he didn’t stay by my side for long. I should have been relieved that Gahn Razek assigned him to lead Oxriel and Vaxilkai on a hunting mission. But instead, I just felt vaguely anxious. It was weird to watch him prowl away from the camp as the shadows deepened. I watched him until he and the others disappeared.

While they were gone, the rest of us got busy setting up our tents. Just as Priya and I were unrolling our bedding hides inside our tent, sounds outside made us flinch, look at each other, then pull apart the tent flaps.

Dieu merci.

It was Varrow and the others. I wasn’t relieved about the lack of predator out there. I was relieved that Varrow was back. That he was safe.

Well, of course. He’s my friend. Right?

We all ate the hunters’ kills – more of the same white raw meat that I learned came from bright blue, snake-like creatures. The meal was quick and quiet. And, of course, dark, since we couldn’t have a fire. The lack of fire made the harsh landscape, the sharp jutting stone and grey ground, all the more cold and forbidding. By the time I’d finished eating, I was trembling from cold and exhaustion after the day’s travels.

“You should get inside your tent, little bean,” Varrow muttered from beside me. He’d placed himself at my side for the entire meal. Both of us had sat cross-legged while we’d eaten. I’d been deep in conversation with Priya during the meal while Varrow had been silent with his own mysterious thoughts. But the entire time, I was breathtakingly aware of how close his left knee had been to my right one.

“Right,” I said, standing. Gahn Razek and Jocelyn had already retired for the night, as had Vaxilkai and Oxriel. Kohka, Dalk, and Bariok were taking up sentry posts.

“Are you going to sleep now, too?” I asked Varrow. He moved to his feet in a liquid motion until he was towering over me.

“No,” he said.

“Really? But you must be tired after today’s ride,” I replied, surprised. I’d felt how tense his muscles had been for so much of the day. How he’d held me tightly with his tail even when he hadn’t needed to. He probably thinks I’m clumsy and weak enough to fall off the saddle at the drop of a hat, even when we’re not going that fast…

“Do not worry about me,” he said. He jerked his chin towards the tent that Priya was just now entering. “Join your friend where it is warm.”

“OK…” I pursed my lips, waiting to see if he’d say anything else. Hoping he’d say something else. But he didn’t.

“Well, goodnight Varrow,” I offered.

“Goodnight, little bean.”

I turned and walked away. The more space that opened up between Varrow and me, the colder I felt. Even getting into the tent didn’t help.

And when I woke up in the middle of the night, things had only gotten worse.

I gasped, shivering violently inside the tent.

I reached for my hides so I could pull them up over my shoulders.

They weren’t there.

I groaned quietly, glancing over at Priya in the darkness. Somehow, she’d managed to suck my bedding hides into the swirling vortex of her own bed. She was basically invisible except for the dark knot of her bun poking out of the blankets. Wrapped up the way she was in those hides, she looked like an overstuffed crepe.

This had happened a few times on the trip, and I’d teased her about it in the mornings, which had inspired both laughter and profuse apologies on her part. But this was the first time the blankets were so completely absorbed into her domain, like she’d exerted some kind of gravitational pull upon the fabric.

I sat up, rubbing my bare arms viciously, my nipples hardening under the thin fabric of my tank top. Fumbling in the darkness, I grasped my jacket from the ground beside me and shoved my freezing arms into the sleeves. It helped, but only a little. And there weren’t any more layers I could add now. I’d already been sleeping in my trousers and socks, so it wasn’t like I could put them on.

I frowned over at the crepe that was Priya, trying to decide if I should wake her. Soft snores from an unseen face told me she was sleeping deeply, and after the long day, I decided just to let her rest. At least for now. I was starting to feel pretty wide awake anyway and wasn’t so sure I’d be able to fall back to sleep anytime soon.

But I was still fucking freezing.

I knew I couldn’t, but the thought of lighting a fire gave me a physical reaction of deep need. My fingers curled into fists as I imagined heat and light licking over my goose-pimply skin.

Maybe I could just light a little candle in here…

As soon as the thought came to me, another replaced it, shredding the image of my warm little candle with dark claws. Varrow’s grumpy face loomed in my mind.

No fires, little bean.

I drew my knees up to my chest and placed my chin on them, sighing.

I tried to shove him out, but he was still there. Still in my mind.

Still talking.

If you get cold in the night, come to me. I’ll find a way to keep you warm…

I had a little bit of heat, now. Flooding into my cheeks.

He had said that, right? I hadn’t imagined it?

No, he’d definitely said that when he’d been pleading with me not to light a fire. He’d told me he’d find a way to keep me warm.

Knowing him, that probably means dropping more hide blankets on top of my head.

But even that was preferable to freezing my buns off without any blankets to speak of.

I paused for a moment, wondering if I really had to nerve to go to him in the middle of the night.

But when a particularly violent tremor wracked my muscles, I decided that yes, I did have the nerve. Or at least, the cold had whittled away enough of my pride to make to want to beg for his help.

Decision made, I moved to my hands and knees, crawling quietly to the tent’s entrance. Once out of the tent, I stood, my muscles stiff from sleeping on the hard ground and the effort of shivering.

Kohka was nearby, standing with his spear in his hand, taking a shift as guard for this portion of the evening. He glanced back at me, his acute hearing no doubt catching my loud human footsteps and breathing.

“All good,” I whisper-called to him. He made a grunting sound, then turned to survey the rock and valley around us once more. I had a look around too, wondering if any of the other men were awake and on guard duty. If they were, I couldn’t see them – perhaps stationed in other places.

A shiver wracked me again, making my teeth chatter. It had been cold in the tent. But it was even colder out here without the hide walls to contain heat. With quick movements, I walked to Varrow’s tent. It didn’t take too many steps, because, once again, he had set up his tent right next to the one I was sharing with Priya.

I came to a stop in front of the tent and wondered what to do now. I couldn’t exactly knock on a soft tent wall, could I?

Feeling a little silly, but too cold to turn back now, I hissed into the darkness.

“Varrow!”

I paused, leaning forward slightly to try to tell if there was any whisper of movement from inside the tent.

Nothing.

Maybe he’s a heavy sleeper.

Maybe he’s not there.

Or the worst thought of all…

Maybe he’s ignoring you.

I pushed back against the last thought, saying his name a little louder.

“Varrow!”

Still nothing.

Fine.

I’d have to wrestle some of my blankets away from Priya after all. Kohka, standing nearby, didn’t have any to offer me. He didn’t even sleep in a tent. He just stayed outside all night with nothing but a spear to keep him company.

I hated how much admitting defeat in this instance hurt. I was more than a little embarrassed for coming, begging, to Varrow’s tent. But the sharp stick of disappointment that he hadn’t answered me was even worse.

It’s probably better this way. If I came and woke him up, he’d probably be so grumpy about it that I’d be scurrying back to my own tent anyway.

Sighing and still shivering mightily, I spun.

The hard wall of an alien chest met my movement, sending me stumbling backwards. A single arm shot out to steady me, wrapping tightly around my back and drawing me forward.

Warm…

“What are you doing out here, little bean?”

The emotion in his voice was hard to read. But I could definitely sense a hint of admonishing there.

More than a hint.

“You said I should…” I stopped short, wiggling out of his grasp, once again feeling silly. And annoyed. Why did I even bother coming out here?

It was easier to get out of Varrow’s hold than I would have expected. He wasn’t actually holding on to me with his fingers. His arm had just clamped against my back like a bar. I soon saw why – his fist was curled tight, as if holding something small and precious.

“Where have you been?” I grumbled, rubbing my hands up and down the crinkly sleeves of my jacket, trying to get warm. Now who’s the grumpy one? There was no denying the barbed, irritated tone that had wheedled its way into my question. What did I expect? That Varrow would be waiting for me? That he’d welcome me with open arms and make me all snuggly and warm? The guy probably doesn’t even know what the word snuggly means…

Yeah, I couldn’t picture Varrow snuggling with anyone or anything. I could see him lying, stiff as a board, a sour look on his face in the darkness, though…

“I was foraging,” he said. He cleared his throat and straightened up. He reached up to smooth a few stray strands of hair away from his forehead. He got his hand all the way up to his face before he remembered that he had something in his fist and he couldn’t do it. The look of exasperation that passed over his face had me chuckling, my own bad mood fading.  Is he trying to fix his hair because I’m here? Because I said I liked it brushed back from his face?

“What were you foraging for?” I asked, surprised. These guys were hunters through and through. I couldn’t imagine what he’d be foraging for, especially in the middle of the night. We’d found plenty of valok plants during the day as we travelled. I knew Jocelyn planned to get some more fallink, the natural birth control plants, to take back to the settlement to help bolster our supplies while her garden took root. But she was the only one who knew how to identify the plants that were ready to be harvested.

Varrow cleared his throat again and held his fist between us. Carefully, as if afraid he would drop or lose something, he unfurled his long, clawed fingers.

I leaned forward, looking down into his huge open palm.

There were three round things nestled between callouses. Little pebbles, maybe. They appeared to be black in colour, but it was hard to say under the night-washed light of the asteroids and stars.

“Foraging for… Rocks?” I asked, looking from his hand to his face.

“They’re not rocks,” he said, frowning. “They’re beans.”

Beans…?

I felt my eyebrows shoot up in surprise. I looked down again at the hard, black things.

“What are they for?” I asked. I knew how much he hated the beans back at the settlement. But these beans looked substantially different from those ones. Maybe they were more appetizing to him.

Already, my mind was whirling, thinking of ways to prepare them for him in a way he might like. But there are only three of them… That’s hardly a meal. Not even a side dish, or enough for a condiment or marinade.

His words cut through my thoughts.

“They’re for you.”

I froze, staring at him.

For… Me?

Like, a gift?

His throat pulsed as he swallowed hard.

“If you do not want them, I can dispose of them,” he said, sounding like he was trying to balance a forced, false indifference with sudden uncertainty. “But they smell even worse than the ones at the Cliffs of Uruzai, so I figured that, naturally, you would love them.”

“I do,” I said instantly.

It had been hours since we’d gone to our tents for the night.

Which meant that Varrow had woken up in the middle of the night and had dragged himself out of his tent just to find these for me, or…

Or he’s been searching for them all this time, just so he could get them for me.

Varrow’s abdominal muscles crunched inward as he let out a tight breath.

“Good. Then take them,” he said.

I nodded wordlessly and then reached into the centre of his palm.

My fingertips brushed his rough skin as I scooped up the beans.

At the contact, a minuscule tremor ran through Varrow’s outstretched hand. He cursed under his breath and tensed, the muscles in his arm bulging as he forced the limb into marble stillness.

I closed my fingers around the three beans, clutching them in a protective fist. I didn’t care if this had just been some weird whim on Varrow’s part. I didn’t care if it meant nothing to him.

It meant something to me.

Before I withdrew my hand, I let the tight fist of it fall slightly until it was resting in Varrow’s palm.

“Thank you,” I whispered, staring at my tiny white fist in his giant outstretched hand. He still had his entire arm locked in merciless tightness. The ligaments of his wrist protruded with the force of it, veins looping along his inner forearm. I drew my fist upward slightly, brushing my knuckles along the inside of his wrist.

I’d heard from our biologist Serena that the Sea Sand people had heart rates significantly slower than our own. But maybe I’d heard her wrong, because that didn’t seem to hold true for Varrow. I could feel the drumming of his pulse against my knuckles – rapid, hard, and insistent.

“What are you doing out here?” Varrow rasped, repeating his question from before. “What did I say you should do?”

So he hadn’t forgotten the bit of reply I’d let slip before. There was no sense in trying to go back to my tent now.

I withdrew my hand and shoved the beans into the pocket of my jacket where they’d be safe. Varrow finally let his poor arm relax. When it fell to his side, he flexed and curled his fingers several times.

“You said I should come to you if I got cold in the night.”

I bit my lip as I met his unreadable gaze. He said nothing.

I’m really going to have to spell this out for him.

“Well, I’m cold!”

His jaw worked, and it appeared to take significant effort to relax it enough to speak.

“What happened to your bedding hides? I wrapped them around you earlier. Surely you did not misplace them.”

“I didn’t misplace them. I just… Don’t have access to them right now.”

Varrow’s dark brows furrowed in confusion and I flapped a cold hand at the tent I’d been sleeping in.

“Priya’s using them.”

Varrow’s brows fell further.

“They are yours. You need them. No one should be using them but you.”

“You want to go try to pry them from her hands?” I said with a quiet laugh.

Varrow didn’t hesitate to answer.

“I will go retrieve them if you wish it. Tell me what you want, and it is done.”

His reply had all hints of laughter dying in my throat. It was so serious, so blunt.

What do I want?

I absolutely did not want Varrow barging in on Priya to yank my blankets off of her. What an absurd notion. And I had to admit, if I’d wanted to, I could have just taken back the blankets myself, even if it had woken Priya up. She wouldn’t have minded if I’d done that.

But that’s not what you want, is it?

Before I lost my nerve, I answered him.

“I want to come inside your tent.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Varrow

Idid not know a man’s heart could beat so fast.

I’m probably about to die.

Talons of fear gripped me.

I had feared nothing, not even death, since that day with the ablokoi.

I feared now.

Fear of rejection. Fear of loss. Fear of the torture of being near to her. Fear of loving her, unloved, forever.

But even more, I feared what might happen if I never took this chance.

I stepped past her, lifting the flap that led into my tent.

I didn’t – couldn’t – speak.

But I did not need to. The physical gesture was enough. Cam-Eel brushed past me and stepped into the darkness.

Helpless to do anything else, I followed.

“Wow, it’s crazy how bright it is out there even at night. My eyes need to adjust now.”

I stood, barely inside the tent, watching her while knowing that she could not watch me. These new women could not see well in the dark. Not like I could. It made me feel… Strange. Like a predator staring from the darkness.

Right.

Don’t stand here gawking all night. Your mate is cold, you dolt.

I took a large step forward towards Cam-Eel. In the dark, she did not appear to notice that she was standing on the bedding hides.

I looped my arm around her waist, lifting her off of them and setting her down on the hard ground.

I was right. This is torture.

Having her soft form pressed against me in the thick darkness of my tent. Wrapping her in my own bedding hides, as I was doing, now. Desire and shame flamed through me in equal measure when I thought of how many times I’d fisted my cock in these bedding hides, thinking of her. I was doubly glad now that I’d never soiled the hides with my seed.

Though the idea of my seed on her skin was a dizzying, almost debilitating, one.

“Thank you,” Cam-Eel said, grasping the hides and drawing them tighter about her shoulders.

“You’re welcome,” I said, my eyes crawling over her face like twin hungry animals. Then, I added, “I’m glad you have come.”

She let out a small laugh.

“Yes. No fires. I kept my promise, didn’t I?”

“You did,” I agreed. She was so kind and good and clever and trustworthy.

For a moment I wanted to latch onto all that sweet goodness. To grasp her by the shoulders, lower my face to hers, and speak the words my heart thundered against her mouth.

You are mine.

But I didn’t. Because other words were growing louder and louder inside me.

What would she ever see in you?

“Wait, now I feel bad!” Cam-Eel cried, distracting me from my inner turmoil. “Now you have no bedding!”

I snorted, surprised and amused by that.

“I really do not care,” I said, meaning it. I was used to the harsh nights of the Death Plains. And having Cam-Eel in my tent was more than enough heat to sustain me. I burned with her incandescent presence.

“What do you care about?” she said, her tone suddenly more serious. “It’s so hard to get a read on you. You’re so… Mysterious.”

Mysterious? That was not a word I’d choose to describe myself.

“And just why do you care to learn what I care for?” I asked, drawn towards her little form instinctively. The mate bond was beating a fierce and bloody drum inside me. I could not keep my feet still in their place. Soon, I was directly before her.

“It’s so dark,” she whispered. “I can barely see you.” Her hand rose between us, her fingertips drawing blistering heat in soft strokes over my chest.

I am glad for the dark. I do not want you to see me.

And yet I want so badly to be seen…

“You did not answer my question,” I murmured gruffly. I tilted my hips back and away from her so that my pulsing erection would not brush against her and frighten her away. “Why do you care what I care for?”

“Because I’m curious,” she said, her hand flattening against my chest, a little amulet on my skin that I wanted to snatch and keep forever. “You’re so quiet and growly all the time. But you can also be kind and considerate too. I can’t help it – the more time I spend with you, the more I want to know about you.”

“There is not much to know. Not much that would interest you, I’m sure,” I muttered, my fingers twitching at my side. I longed to draw them through her hair, against her jaw, down the pulsing column of her throat.

She laughed again.

“Are you kidding? You’re easily one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met, alien or human!”

I was?

Her words turned my insides to valok gel. Squishy and oozing and not altogether unpleasant. Though I did not know what to do with the sensation. So I clenched my abdominal muscles, hoping to keep everything solid as it once had been.

I failed miserably. But treacherous sands, I tried.

But no, there was no holding the feelings back now. My whole body buzzed. My guts churned. My heart beat in a merciless gallop, trying to run right out of my chest. As if trying to escape the walls I’d put up. As if trying to reach for her, angered by the fact that my hand wouldn’t.

Stay inside those walls, cursed heart. You are mine and you will listen to me.

But it just hammered even harder.

No, it replied. I am hers.

The stupid blood-pumping organ was right. I suspected it had always been hers, even before the Lavrika had come to me. Even before the mate bond had awoken inside me, I’d watched her. I’d been baffled and confounded by her. Obsessive over her.

But I did not excel at talking about myself at the best of times. Certainly not with chaotic love turning my insides to mush. So instead of answering her previous questions, I just said, “You should try to get some rest.” Then, needing to restore some modicum of peace to my overturned life, even though I hated the words as they left my mouth, I added, “You should take those hides back to your tent.”

“Oh.”

Her reply was a soft, low puff.

It did not have her usual ring of cheer to it.

She must still feel bad about taking my bedding hides.

“Really, do not worry about the bedding hides. I do not need them.” Frankly, no man this inflamed by you could stand them against his body now.

“Alright then, I will. Thank you,” she said. The cheer had returned to her voice, accompanied by a slight warble I couldn’t quite parse. Before I could try to figure it out, she spun and exited the tent, leaving me alone.

Alone. Like always. Like I was used to.

Like I was growing to steadily despise.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Camille

Iam not about to cry because that big dense alien just kicked me out of his tent!

I’d forced a happy tone when I’d thanked Varrow, barely keeping the absurd sad wobble out of my voice. And it really was absurd. He hadn’t said or done anything especially rude. In fact, it had been very generous of him to share his bedding hides with me, and he was under no obligation to host me in his tent all night. So why, then, was I sniffing and blinking about eighty times a second as I hurried back to my tent, feeling like a kicked kitten?

Because I’m an idiot, that’s why.

I was falling for Varrow. Against my better instincts. Against everything I’d held fast to on this planet – the idea of a mate hand-picked for me by fate. Why am I developing feelings for someone now, especially him? I asked myself as I re-entered my tent. We’re getting so close. We just have to get through the Death Plains and a little further, and then we’ll hopefully find the sixth tribe. It was what I’d dreamed of. What I’d salivated over. The idea of finding my one true love, somewhere out there on the sands.

Merde. What if I’m, like, cheating on my mate? What if he’s out there, pining for me, looking for me, and I’m over here wrapped up in some grumpy sod’s bedding hides, crying about the fact I didn’t get to spend the night in his tent?

And I did want to spend the night. I couldn’t deny it. Not necessarily to do anything. But I just wanted to be around Varrow.

I plopped myself down beside Priya, who had somehow managed to wrap herself even more tightly in her bedding bundle. Lying down and then wiggling, annoyed, until I was somewhat comfortable, I tried to eject Varrow from my brain. I tried to sink into the fantasy I’d created, the one I’d been adding to for weeks.

But the image I’d built in my head of my future mate, an image I’d crafted with so much love and care and hope, was getting blurrier and blurrier. And Varrow’s face was getting clearer. Crisper. Taking up more space inside me.

So was his scent.

I inhaled deeply, pressing my nose to the bedding hides. They smelled fresh, like talka gel. Clearly, he’d been keeping them clean, even on this long journey. I liked that. I liked that he could take care of things – that he wasn’t some sloppy, lazy bachelor who needed a woman to keep his house, or tent, in order. But at the same time, there was a throb of desire in my chest. The desire to take care of him.

If he’d let me.

Which he probably wouldn’t.

I inhaled again. Beneath the herbal talka fragrance there was a richer, almost smoky scent. Smoky like the pale blue of Varrow’s eyes. It was… Warm. And comforting.

Which was insane, because Varrow was basically the exact opposite of someone I’d describe as comforting. Gruff and prickly, maybe. Fascinating and closed-off, certainly.

But comforting?

The rich spice of his scent moved through my chest.

Tension ebbed, and my breathing slowed.

I slept soundly and didn’t wake until Priya gently shook me the next morning.

“Camille! Sorry about the blankets. Where’d you get all this, though?”

I inhaled deeply through my nose as I became aware of my surroundings. The tent. Priya beside me. The hides wrapped snugly around me. Hides that smelled like…

“Varrow gave them to me. Or, lent them, I suppose,” I murmured groggily, last night’s events drifting through my sleepy brain. Now that I had some distance from last night, I knew I had been silly to have gotten so upset about Varrow sending me back to my tent. He obviously just wanted me to get some rest. And besides, he seems like the kind of guy who likes his space…

But even with the distance and the logic, there was still a little squishy spot of embarrassed hurt. I shook it off with a bright smile aimed at Priya.

“Varrow lent them to you,” she repeated slowly, staring at me incredulously. “You mean the guy with the short hair who seems to hate everyone?”

I let out a huff of a laugh.

“Yup. That’s the one.”

“Huh,” Priya said, tilting her head as she gazed at me. The bun she’d tied her hair up into had grown loose with sleep and slid over to one side.

“What?” I asked, growing slightly wary under her gaze. Dieu, she can totally see how pathetic I am, getting all upset that some guy who isn’t even my mate didn’t give me what I really wanted last night.

What I really wanted…

“Oh, nothing really. I’ve just noticed Varrow stares at you a lot. Like, intensely. And I was trying to figure out if it was because he hated you more than everyone else. But now…”

“Now what?” I asked, my hands curling around the bedding hides, suddenly anxious about what she’d say.

“Now I think it’s because you’re maybe the one person he doesn’t hate.”

“I have no idea. He’s a mystery to me,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. I sat up, rubbing at my eyes.

“I imagine so. He doesn’t seem like the put-your-cards-on-the-table sort,” Priya said, undoing her bun and letting her long dark hair tumble about her shoulders. She finger-combed it, then tied it into a long braid, tossing it behind her shoulders.

“You’ve got that right,” I snorted.

Priya and I got ready for the day – a quick scrub with some talka gel for both our bodies and our dirty clothes. We changed into fresh things, plastered on our sunscreen, then packed everything up. I tied my own bedding hides (after retrieving them from Priya’s side of the tent) into a bundle, then eyed Varrow’s.

I suppose I need to go give them back…

For some stupid reason, I hated that idea. I wanted to keep them. I wanted them to have been…

A gift.

Don’t be selfish. He needs his own bedding hides!

I chewed on my lip as I held the soft brown fabric in my hands. I didn’t care about having extra bedding hides. I cared that these were his.

But wait a second…

I shoved my hand into my jacket pocket, my heart speeding up when my fingers met the three hard items there. Varrow had given me a gift of sorts. The beans.

Why he had done it was anyone’s guess. But as I fondled the little beans, pressing them further down into the pocket where they’d be safe, I felt warm. Almost giddy.

I smooshed the hides into a messy bundle, shoved them under my arm, slapped on my sunglasses and headed outside.

Even with the sunglasses, I found myself squinting as I stepped into the harsh morning sunlight. The way it reflected off of all the white rock around us was blinding. Mercifully, a shadow fell over me. I blinked several times, staring up at the rock wall that had suddenly materialized before me.

It wasn’t a rock wall casting down that shadow. It was Varrow.

“Good morning!” I said to him, smiling.

Varrow grunted something noncommittal in response then shoved his hand towards me.

“Breakfast,” he said.

“Thank you. Here, let’s do a trade. Here are your bedding hides. Thanks again. That was a real lifesaver.”

Varrow flinched, his sight stars spinning.

“Lifesaver? They saved your life? How cold were you, that your life was in danger?”

His words were harsh-sounding, almost panicked, and he looked horrified.

He must think us humans are totally pathetic…

Now feeling more than a little embarrassed, I shook my head vigorously, the strands of my hair swishing about my face.

“I wasn’t going to die. Although, yes, humans can die from the cold, that’s true…”

Varrow made a furious, choking sound. He lurched forward, knocking the hides from my grip with his tail. He dumped the breakfast – more gorka meat and eggs – into my hands. Then he whipped his fingers up to the side of my face, probing my jaw, turning my head this way and that.

“What!? What are you doing?” I cried, half-laughing, half-annoyed. But soon, I wasn’t capable of saying any more words. Because I was growing increasingly aware of just how good the calloused, warm fingers felt on my cheek. His hand slid down, cupping the back of my head, his thumb brushing the now-frantic pulse beneath my jaw.

I swallowed, my throat suddenly parched, and watched as the motion drew Varrow’s sight stars.

“What are you doing?” I managed to whisper. I was immensely grateful for the food Varrow had dropped into my hands. Because if my hands had been empty, I wasn’t so sure I could have stopped myself from reaching for him. His proximity was exhilarating, coursing through me, making everything pound and clench.

“I am checking on you,” Varrow gritted out, his jaw tight.

“What are you checking for?” I asked, searching his face. My tongue darted out to wet my lips, and his sight stars snapped from my throat back to my face.

“I am checking that… That you are not going to die,” he hissed. His expression grew heavier. “But I do not even know how to check for that. You are too different from my kind. I do not even know what to look for.”

A tremulous smile tugged at my lips at his blunt, almost ferocious response. There were a lot of things on this planet that could kill me, but the cool night air was the least of my worries.

I was about to tell him that when his grip grew firmer on my neck. Just for a moment. Then his hand fell away.

“There is one thing I do know, though,” he said, his voice like iron. Hard as a blade and twice as dark.

“What?”

“From now on, you sleep in my tent.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Varrow

“Excuse me?!”

These humans really did not have good hearing.

“You will sleep in my -”

“No! I heard that part!”

Cam-Eel stared at me, her soft face set in a hard expression.

The thought of sharing a tent with me is that distasteful…

I tried to swallow down the hurt. It does not matter how we feel about the arrangement. It is to keep her safe and warm.

“I don’t need to share your tent, Varrow. I’m not some Victorian orphan from a novel who’s going to die from a chill!”

“I have no idea what any of that means,” I spat back, fighting to keep my irritation in check. Why, why was she so stubborn?

Something cracked in her expression.

“You didn’t seem to want me in your tent last night.”

Last night?

Last night I was trying to exert some poor semblance of control. Last night I was trying not to push myself beyond the edge of torture by being near her in the dark. Last night I was failing to reign in my mad, battered heart.

“Last night I did not know the cold could kill you,” I said after a short, tense silence.

You are ignorant. And your ignorance could be the death of her.

She sighed.

“If you’re that worried about it, you can lend me your bedding hides again.”

“No,” I said, my tail twitching.

“Why not?” Cam-Eel challenged. I frowned, my eyes flicking behind her to see the other new woman, Priya, emerging from their tent.

“Because I could give you a hundred hides and still not be convinced that it would be enough.” My gaze returned to my little angry mate. I did not want her to be angry. But I did want her to be warm. And that won out. “If you are in my tent, no one will steal the hides from you in sleep. And if you need, I can provide more body heat than another new woman can.”

“Provide… Body heat…” Cam-Eel repeated unsteadily. A hot crimson seeped under her skin, up her neck and into her cheeks.

Oh no. I was so worried about the cold, I forgot the heat could also kill her.

Fool.

With a flick of my hand, I yanked the hood of her cloak up, casting her lovely face into shadow. Hopefully that poisonous red recedes soon…

“We’ll talk about this later. Thank you for the food,” Cam-Eel said. She turned and headed into the darkness of her tent. To eat alone, I supposed.

Or to get away from you.

Well, whether she liked it or not, she could not get away from me. Not out here. Not while her life depended on the vigilance of a Death Plains warrior. She could hate me if she wanted. But her life was more important than how she felt about me.

“What was all that about?”

I raised my tail at the approach of Gahnala Jozelyn, closely followed by Gahn Razek. I noticed then that Cam-Eel and I had gained a small audience during our conversation. Oxriel and Vaxilkai stole subtle glances at me, while Dalk, Kohka, and Bariok studiously (a little too studiously) ignored me.

“I heard the last bit of it. He told Camille to share his tent to stay warm,” Priya said.

“You told her what?!” Jozelyn said, her mouth falling open before slamming shut again. She jabbed a finger towards me. “Look, Varrow. I know you’ve got this whole brooding, grumpy git thing happening, but you can’t just order around human women.”

“My Gahnala,” Razek, said, his voice quiet but firm. Jozelyn whirled on him, sparks flying from her eyes, visible even behind the shield of her eye shells.

“You better be backing me up on this, Razek,” she said, her voice venomous. “We can’t have unmated warriors dragging random humans into their tent.”

“I would not drag her,” I scoffed. “Though I would carry her if needed.” Cam-Eel was not strong enough to put up enough of a fight to need to be dragged. She was so small that scooping her into my arm would be no trouble at all.

“You are not helping your case,” Jozelyn snapped at me.

“Gahnala of my heart,” Razek said, trying once again to get a word in edgewise between his mate’s bouts of anger.

“What?!” she cried.

Razek’s sight stars slipped over to me, then back to his mate.

“Varrow is not unmated. And Cam-Eel is not just any woman to him.”

Jozelyn’s head wrenched back and forth, and I felt Priya’s gaze poking at my side.

“She’s his mate,” Jozelyn finally said.

My fist clenched, my insides hardening at the judgment in her tone. I should not have told anyone about this…

“Have you told her?” the Gahnala asked me.

“No,” I ground out.

“You should tell her soon, Varrow,” Razek said. “The sooner you tell her that destiny has deemed her yours, the sooner she will accept you. And the sooner you can be happy.”

“Maybe I do not wish to be happy.” The words came out vehemently. Wrathfully. I knew I should not speak in such tones to a Gahn. Men had had their tongues cut out for less. But, besides a pulse of his sight stars, Razek contained any rage he may have felt at my insolence.

“Well, you can be miserable if you want,” Jozelyn said with a sigh, some of the anger fading from her words. “But that doesn’t mean you can make Camille miserable in the process.”

My chest crunched painfully. Why did she think I was trying to keep some distance from Cam-Eel? Why did she think I was trying to bury the mate bond and let my beloved one be free of me?

“I won’t,” I growled.

“Fine,” Gahnala Jozelyn said. “But there will be no dragging anyone into your tent, and no carrying either. You can invite Camille to your tent. But that’s all. If she says no, that will be respected.”

Without another word, the Gahnala strode away. Priya hurried after her, leaving only the Gahn and me, plus the other warriors who were trying very hard to make it look like they were not listening.

“Varrow,” Razek began reproachfully.

“You can cut out my tongues for my lack of respect, Gahn,” I said stonily. Maybe then I would stop making a mess of things with Cam-Eel…

“No, Varrow. That is not what I was going to say.”

“What then?”

His violet sight stars shimmered, then tugged inward as he focused on me.

“Why do you not wish to be happy?”

I stared at my Gahn, shocked into silence. Of all his questions of admonishments, this was perhaps the least expected.

When I did not answer, his voice grew quieter.

“You cannot forever punish yourself for that day.”

I stiffened.

By that day, he no doubt meant the day Ratev had died.

“I am not punishing myself,” I said. “I am trying not to punish Cam-Eel.”

Razek looked surprised by my words.

“The new women do not feel the mate bond right away, it is true. But once they fall in love, they are happy with the bonds. It is no punishment. It is a shared joy.”

“I do not mean the mate bond is a punishment,” I said, the words festering. “I mean me.”

“I do not agree with this. And I think you know that,” Razek said sharply. He had told me that he thought me a worthy mate for Cam-Eel, after all.

Razek’s hand fell upon my shoulder and he squeezed.

“Have you considered that not telling Cam-Eel you are her mate is also a punishment to her? I have heard from my Gahnala that Cam-Eel is one of the new women who desires a mate deeply. You are denying her that chance. Denying her her destiny.”

I hated that thought. That I was already making Cam-Eel unhappy.

“I do not see what telling her will do at this point,” I huffed, raking anxious fingers through my hair. “Clearly, she does not care for me as a mate.”

“You have not given her the chance to care for you,” Razek shot back. He released my shoulder, saying, “Do not lose something this precious, Varrow.”

But that was the whole cursed point.

“I cannot lose something I do not have.”

But Razek slashed his hand in disagreement.

“Letting something slip away without reaching for it is just as bad as having it torn from your grasp. Loss is loss no matter how it comes. Pain is pain. But it is not inevitable.” His sight stars bored into me. “Do not lose your way now, Varrow. Do not lose her.”

“Do not lose my way, or her?” I tried to clarify.

Razek looked out over the camp, his gaze settling on his Gahnala. His expression turned fierce with violent adoration.

“They are one and the same.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Camille

I’d told Varrow that we’d talk about the conversation we’d had earlier. But apparently, there was no talking to be had. When I emerged from the tent after eating the breakfast he had given me, I found him at his irkdu. quiet and brooding like usual. He gave me a quick glance and then helped me up without a word. And all my own words remained in my throat.  But even in the silence, there was a pulsing electricity between us as we rode. Varrow’s chest was a wall of heat behind me, his tail a hard bar against my legs.

I’d been told it was going to take at least three days to travel through this section of the Death Plains mountains. The thought of travelling like this, in awkward silence for three days, was not a good one. But even so, I didn’t try to make conversation as we began our slow trek through the stone.

Varrow seemed even more tense than usual, and I couldn’t tell if it was because of our earlier conversation or something else. I could see how hard his fist was around his spear at his side, and several times throughout the day I had to pry his tail loose because of how hard he was gripping me. At points, my legs began to tingle with numbness because of how heavy his tail became upon me.  Whenever I twisted in the saddle to dare a glance back at him, I found his sight stars tearing up the landscape. Searching. Relentless. He’s looking for something, I realized. For danger?

Of course.

It was here, in these mountains, that he’d run into the ablokoi. It was here that he’d lost his brother. Of course he was going to be more on edge.

I wonder if there’s anything I can do.

Probably not.

So I remained quiet on the ride, my own eyes becoming more diligent, as if that would help him, skimming over every bit of stone and every shadow cast by the brutal sun. If any large predators were lurking, I didn’t see them.  But the lack of obvious predators didn’t seem to help Varrow feel any better. The further we got from the open sands we’d come from, the further into the stone we moved, the more strained he grew. I could feel the rigidness of his muscles against my back. A reminder of what had happened to him and an obvious sign of how he was feeling.

I didn’t share in his worry. With him at my side, and all the other warriors with us, I wasn’t too concerned about a predator coming for us. And even though I’d decided earlier that there was probably nothing I could do to help Varrow feel more at ease, late in the afternoon I started to speak.

“You know,” I began, “we’re going to be OK. We are all together. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

“Bad things happen every day,” Varrow said. Then, after a small sigh, he continued. “But no, nothing bad will happen to you. Not while I am here.” His weapon moved a little higher in the air beside us, his tail once again growing uncomfortably tight.

I twisted in the saddle once more to look at him, squinting behind my sunglasses as the harsh sun beat down. For the first time on the day’s silent journey, his gaze met mine. A brief moment of peace from his vigilance of staring out at the landscape. The irkdu continued along beneath us, lumbering, but I almost forgot it was there. I almost forgot everything else was there. The other girls, the warriors, the white and blinding stone around us. Varrow’s face and form blocked out the sky.  He was huge and bulky, like a statue staring down at me. But unlike a statute, he didn’t look at me with stony indifference. His expression changed every moment. It almost seemed to shudder. Tight and tense, then pained, then pleading.

I swallowed hard, then took a deep breath. “We will both be OK. All of us.” I infused my words with certainty, because I felt certain. I really did. Nothing bad will happen to us.

To him.

Varrow’s face softened – an uncharacteristic look for him.

“When you say things with such beautiful faith, it almost makes me believe you,” he said.

I smiled gently at him then turned back around in my seat to face forward. “You could use a little faith, too.” I poked at his tail with my index finger. “You could also let up a little bit here, Monsieur Grumpy Loincloth. You’re crushing my legs.”

Yes, my legs were once again going numb. But he wasn’t actually crushing them. Even so, he snapped his tail up and off me so fast it was like I’d burned him.

“I’ve hurt you,” he croaked miserably. He tossed his spear upwards, catching the handle between his fangs, leaving his hand free. That hand stroked up and down my left thigh, kneading the muscle gently, making my breath catch. His hand quickly moved to the other leg after that, repeating the motion and leaving me breathless and hot from a sudden explosion of tingly sensation that ran from where his fingers touched right to the sensitive crux of my pelvis. I bit down on my lower lip to keep myself from making a truly shameful sound when that huge hand flattened against the front of my pelvis, his fingertips pressing into one hipbone, then the other.

If his fingers only slipped just a little further down…

My clit throbbed with a need so sharp and sudden it almost hurt.

OK, I guess you did hurt me. But not the way you think…

My clit ached, my pussy clenching as Varrow continued to probe around my hips and thighs. Finally, he withdrew that torturous hand and grasped his spear again.

“Nothing’s broken,” he said stiffly. “I will keep my tail off of you unless I need to hold you steady.”

It would have been a welcome break. My legs were definitely feeling better without the extra weight. But…

“I feel like I could fall off the saddle. The rocky ground is so bumpy. Maybe you could keep your tail there? Just… Not so tight.”

Pourquoi? Pourquoi, pourquoi, pourquoi?

Why was I so desperate to have him keep touching me? Dieu, all I could think about was dragging his hand forward again, directing it to the swollen, needy flesh that was begging for him. But that would be absolutely insane.

So his tail was the next best thing.

“But you said I was crushing you. Your bones do not seem damaged, but there could be bruising. You are so…” He faltered, then whispered, “Terribly soft.”

“I’m stronger than I look,” I murmured. “Your tail is heavy. But it wasn’t hurting me. I like it. Put it back, please.”

I felt Varrow’s chest expand against my back as he took in a sharp breath.

A moment later, his tail returned.

OK. This was a bad idea.

The deft touches of Varrow’s hands a moment ago had left me hornier than I would have thought possible. His tail radiated firm heat into my groin, and the weight made the seam of my trousers bunch against my clit, stroking through my damp underwear.

Merde.

I tugged at the waistband of my trousers, adjusting the clothing to relieve some of that maddening pressure. It worked. Kind of.

But the pressure of Varrow, and of whatever pulsed between us, remained.

And it took everything I had just to keep my shit together for the rest of the day.

WE CONTINUED TRAVELLING through the valley until dusk made the air smudgy and dark. Even though we’d been riding and not walking, I was exhausted. The terrain here among the rock was much more difficult to traverse than the open sands had been. Even with the saddle, the bumpy ride had been hard on my body. Not to mention the heavy tail slammed against my thighs the entire time, making me all hot and bothered.

I helped Priya set up the tent, but the whole time my eyes were on Varrow as he set up his. Our conversation from the morning was playing in my head on an endless loop.

You will sleep in my tent.

Excuse me?!

You will sleep in my tent.

After everything was done – setting up the tents, and a quick and quiet evening meal – I stood awkwardly fiddling with the zipper on my jacket, wondering what I should do now. I was standing between Varrow’s tent and Priya’s, not sure which way to go. Yes, I hadn’t been too thrilled about Varrow suddenly commanding me to sleep in his tent. But it wasn’t because I didn’t want to be in his tent. I’d already established last night I did want to be there. Badly. No, it bothered me because of my pride. Because of the fact he was telling me to go into his tent for practical reasons. To keep me warm. Not because he actually wanted me there.

Varrow swept up to me, silent and dark like a ghost or a shadow.

But no, he was too solid to be either of those things. My chin jerked up as he planted his strong body before me.

Definitely not a shadow or a ghost. He was too… Warm for that. I could practically taste the heat radiating from his bronzed skin, could practically feel the burning life in each carved muscle.

In the night air, I was already feeling cold, and I had to fight the urge to drift forward and place my cheek against the smooth expanse of his chest.

Even though I was cold, that wasn’t why I shivered when his sight stars landed upon me.

But Varrow didn’t know that. Nor did he need to.

“Cold?” he asked.

I thought about arguing. I thought about pushing him away. Letting my pride win and telling him, “No, I’m not, and I’m not sleeping next to you all night, either.” But honestly, after the day of travel, I was too tired for that.

“Yes, I am.”

Varrow’s fingers twitched at his side, and my stomach clenched as I wondered breathlessly if he was about to throw me over his shoulder and force me into his tent.

Would I even fight him if he did?

But he didn’t grab me, and I didn’t know if it was relief or disappointment that made my limbs slacken with heaviness.

Instead, Varrow spoke.

“You will -” He stopped short, dragging his fingers through his dark hair, leaving the bangs charmingly spiky before smoothing them back. He cleared his throat, letting his hand fall back to his side.

“Will you…” he began again, looking like he was caught somewhere between irritated and sheepish. Like a boy who’d been rebuked for trying to steal a sweet. “Will you come to my tent?”

I stared at him in shock.

“Well, this is certainly a change from this morning! Earlier, you were pretty much ordering me into your tent!”

Varrow’s jaw moved. It looked like he was chewing on the inside of his cheek. Then his mouth opened to take a small breath before he spoke again.

“I have been made aware that, even if I know what is best for you, I cannot… Enforce such things upon you.”

“Oh really?” I asked, rather teasingly. “I wonder who told you that.”

Varrow made a grumpy humph sound, and I noticed someone watching us from across the camp.

It was Jocelyn. Her arms were crossed, her hazel eyes narrowed as she stared at Varrow with what could only be described as mama bear energy.

I snorted, imagining Jocelyn ordering Varrow about, trying to look out for me.

I have amazing friends.

Varrow didn’t seem to appreciate Jocelyn’s interference, though. When he noticed her staring, his tail jerked in irritation.

“Ridiculous,” he muttered under his breath.

“What is?” I asked. Varrow’s gaze widened. Clearly, he hadn’t anticipated me hearing him.

“My human hearing isn’t that bad,” I said with a shake of my head. “What’s ridiculous?”

I hoped I didn’t have to remind him that not only was Jocelyn an amazing friend and person, but she was also the Gahnala of his tribe – technically his queen. And it didn’t seem right that he was calling her ridiculous, especially if she was looking out for me.

“It’s ridiculous that I have to fight so hard to take care of you. Ridiculous that you fight what is good for you. That you fight what could make you -”

He stopped suddenly, clamping his mouth shut.

His words left me stunned. It wasn’t what I’d expected him to say at all. And it made me curious about what he had left unsaid.

“Could make me what?” I asked, stepping closer to him.

His lips thinned into a hard line as he regarded me warily. As if I were the gigantic warrior with multiple weapons strapped to my body instead of him.

Finally, with an exasperated expression, he snapped, “What could make you happy.”

“You think me sleeping in your tent would make me happy?” I asked. I was even more confused and curious now that he’d finished his sentence.

Varrow gave a mirthless smile.

“I may be many things, little bean. But I am not so arrogant as that.”

Oh no. Had I offended him? Or hurt his feelings?

But he kept going, not giving me a chance to find out.

“No, I simply mean that, when someone is cold, obviously getting warm would make them happy. Just like when someone is hungry, food brings them happiness. These are basic laws of comfort and feeling.” His eyes narrowed, his sight stars glittering in the slits of his gaze. “Unless you new women are different from us in this way, too. Perhaps you enjoy your discomforts. Even when they can kill you.”

He was looking at me almost suspiciously now, and it made me laugh.

“No, that’s definitely not me,” I said, still chuckling. “I am all about creature comforts, thank you very much!”

“Then I am correct. It is ridiculous. Ridiculous to deny what I offer.”

His words struck an odd chord inside me. I knew he was talking about the bedding hides in his tent and keeping me warm, nothing else. But I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “What exactly do you offer?”

My question appeared to sock him like a punch in the gut. His nostrils flared, his sight stars spinning wildly. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly several times. After a long, strange moment, he composed himself, passing his hand over his face and hair as if he could physically smooth over whatever emotion was so clearly causing chaos inside him.

“Tonight? Safety from the cold,” he said gruffly, stepping past me and lifting the flap of his tent. He held it open but remained facing away from me for a moment, as if steadying himself before he turned around.

Which he finally did.

“So, little bean – I invite you. Beseech you. Beg you, if it will make a difference.”

My breath caught as his sight stars consumed me.

“Will you come into my tent?”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Varrow

As soon as we were in my tent, Cam-Eel asked me for a talka stalk. I froze, watching as she turned to face me expectantly.

“Well?”

Was she planning to strip down and bathe herself right here in my tent? Was she planning to open a talka stack and run the smooth gel all over her bare skin?

If this is what she wants to do, I will have to vacate the premises immediately. Otherwise, I will be at risk of dying of blood loss from my brain. All the fluids in my body will go to my cock and I will be done for. My heart was a furious fist in my chest. I could not stop myself from imagining Cam-Eel bathing in front of me. I could not stop imagining the clear gel glistening on her skin. Making her hair damp. Touching every soft and secret place—

“For my teeth,” she clarified.

“Ah.”

As it happened, I did have talka stalks in my tent. I moved to the corner of the tent where some of my extra weapons were stored and grabbed one for her. I slit it with my claw and then handed it to her.

“Thank you,” she said taking it from me.

I grunted something unintelligible, my cock already a pulsing rod beneath my loincloth. Knowing that Cam-Eel would be here all night was making this much more difficult than I’d expected. I did not have the release of telling her to leave. It was up to me to keep her warm, keep her safe. Which meant keeping her by my side. All night.

Steady, warrior. Make your mind strong the way your body is strong.

Clearing my throat, I moved away from her, seating myself upon the bedding hides. But still, I watched her. I watched her as she unzipped her funny human cloak and carefully folded the garment on the ground. And I watched, my tongues lashing against my fangs, as she squeezed the talka stock, urging ooze from its insides. My shaft thickened further, throbbing, as my eyes tracked her little hand’s movements on the talka stock. It was shockingly erotic the way she squeezed the long tapered plant. Perhaps I will have to leave the vicinity after all, I thought.

But I could not do it now. I was too far gone. Watching the slow stroke of her hand urging out the ooze of that talka stalk, then using that to clean her face with her hands. Even in the darkness, I could see how she shone. Glistening, smooth, and silken beyond belief. I fisted my bedding hides with my hand, clutching at them to keep myself from clutching at her like a beast.

When she was finished cleaning her face, hair, and hands, she peeled a segment of the talka stalk away and used it to clean her teeth. I leaned forward slightly, fascinated by her little blunt teeth. So unlike my own fangs. As she scrubbed them meticulously, I wondered what those teeth would feel like upon my hide. They would not be sharp enough to cut me, of that I was certain. And yet I found myself wondering just how far they could go into my body. What would they feel like upon my wrist, at my throat, on my —

“Thanks again,” Cam-Eel said. She opened the tent flap and tossed the empty talka outside before returning. “So, where do you want me to sleep?”

Oh, what a dangerous question. What I wanted was an impossible matrix of convoluted desire that I could not hope to traverse.  I wanted her pressed to my side. I wanted her far, far from my reach. I wanted her safe, warm, and sleeping. I wanted her awake and stripped of her clothing, writhing on my cock.

“You may choose the place,” I managed to choke out.

“Well, there’s not really much room anyway. It’s a pretty small tent,” she said, looking around in the darkness.

“It is,” I agreed. I felt the need to prove myself to her – prove that I could be a provider. I needed to impress her. “But this is only because it is a travel tent. I am capable of making a much more comfortable abode in a more permanent place.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Cam-Eel said, shaking her head rapidly back and forth. “I didn’t mean that to sound bad or judgmental. All the tents are small while we’re travelling, of course. I just meant that there’s not much room for different sleeping configurations.” She gave a small laugh. The sound shot through me like a spear. It cut me. Left me bleeding and wanting.

She laughs. She must be happy.

Had I made her happy?

“But,” Cam-Eel said much more firmly now, “I refuse to take all your bedding hides this time. I don’t care what you say about being warm enough all night. There’s no way I’m stealing them all. So give me half and we’ll figure it out.”

“But there is no half,” I replied looking down at the bedding hides I sat upon. “My bedding hides are really just one large piece of fabric to roll up into a bundle. Then there is another piece to lay upon the ground. But that is all.”

“Well then give me the smaller one that’s on the ground. You’re bigger so you need the larger piece of hide anyway,” she said. She crouched down beside me, nudging the hides with her tiny finger.

“Certainly not,” I replied shocked by her suggestion “I will not give you the piece that acts as a mattress upon the ground. It is dirty. You may take the main bedding hide. This is fine. I assure you.”

“Varrow,” she said, sounding a little irritated now. “I don’t want to take all your bedding hides!”

Her eyes must have adjusted to the darkness by now, because she was staring at my face. She chewed on her soft lower lip, took a breath, then said. “Fine. We’ll just have to share.”

Oh no. Share? Share a bed? With my mate?

I will not survive this night. How do other men do this? How do other men survive around their mates like this?

You are a fool. The answer is obvious. They claim them.

I could not imagine that claiming my mate would ease the obsession inside me. It seemed that that would only deepen things. Make things worse. Make things harder – harder like the organ straining beneath my loincloth now.

Cam-Eel was unaware of my inner turmoil. On the ground beside me, she kicked off her foot shells, then slipped off her thin little foot coverings, tucking them into the foot shells. When she began to peel off the coverings she wore on her legs, I stiffened and then cast my gaze up to the top of the dark tent.

“What are you doing?” I gritted out through clenched fangs.

“I can already tell how much warmer it is in this tent with your body heat,” Cam-Eel said. “I don’t need to sleep fully dressed like I did in my other tent.”

Cursed sands. Cursed sands, cursed life, cursed cock.

She was undressing after all. I kept my gaze fastened to the tent’s ceiling. I fought hard to do it, fought hard not to stare. And I counted myself among the very best and strongest of men for being successful.

But the true tests of strength were yet to come. Because now, Cam-Eel was wriggling up to my side. Nestling her body in the bedding hides that I sat upon.

“Would you get off of there?” she said. “Come under the blankets with me.”

“I… I do not need to.” I stammered. I scooted backwards off of the hides and away from her. With my hand, I shoved the hides at her, building them up almost like a wall between us. No, not almost. It was a wall between us. A little mound of hides separating her from me.

If I were trying to get to her no wall would be enough. Especially not flimsy hides. Not even stone could keep me from her. The thoughts were dark and pulsing but I beat them down with some effort. I hunched over my knees, sitting in the corner of the tent, watching her as she got comfortable in my bed. My bed. My mate in my bed. Skies above, this is beautiful madness.

Cam-Eel rolled and wiggled in bizarre ways until, apparently, she was satisfied. I let out a shaking breath, thinking that maybe now I was safe. Maybe now she would sleep, and I could be alone with my weakness and desires. As soon as she sleeps, I can step outside the tent to stroke myself. That way, I know she will be warm and safe in my tent. And I may have some release.

But, alas, why should things ever be so easy? Cam-Eel was not sleeping, but rather flapping her little hand at me as if gesturing me forward. I remained rooted to the spot, but did lean further forward towards her, unable to stop myself.

“What is it, little bean?” I asked. “Do you need something?”

“I need you to stop being so stubborn and come lie down with me,” Cam-Eel replied. There was a sharpness to her voice that I rarely heard. Her voice was often cheery and trilling and soft. But not now. Now, it seemed as if she gave me an order. And the mate bond howled to obey.

“Just go to sleep,” I growled. Now that she had rearranged the bedding, there was no more wall between us. She was a warm bundle beside me. Nothing to stop me from reaching for her. And nothing to stop her from doing the same. Her slim fingers closed around my wrist and she tugged.

I did not move.

She tried again, giving a little grunt of effort this time. It was almost laughable, seeing her try so hard to make me move and it having no effect. At least, it would have been laughable if it did not speak to her utter vulnerability. So tiny. Strong in spirit, but so small in body. It made me sick to think of all the ways this world could hurt her. Of all the ways that I could lose her.

“Seriously, Varrow, I wasn’t kidding,” Cam-Eel groaned, pulling harder. “I don’t feel right about stealing your bed. You need rest just as much as I do after a long day of travelling. I swear, I won’t go to sleep until you do!”

“Then I shall sleep over here,” I snapped, the hot throbbing of my cock combined with her fingers on my skin making me dizzy. “I can sleep like this. Sitting up.”

“Fine. Then I will too.”

I felt my brows furrow in confusion as I watched Cam-Eel sit up. She clutched the bedding hides around her, then scooted towards me on her rump. After a clumsy, shuffling set of movements, she was seated at my side. She began to unwind all the bedding hides, throwing the fabric over my lap. On the one hand, this was good, because it further hid my erection in the darkness. On the other hand, it was bad. Because now her beautiful white legs were exposed.

And considering that I only had one hand, it was just bad.

I grasped the fabric and tossed it back at her.

“Lie back down, little bean,” I said, trying to infuse my voice with some authority. I liked to think I was successful. I thought I sounded commanding enough. But I should have known, I should have known, that I could never hope to command my pretty mate. She laughed so hard it became a snorting sound.

“Nope. I told you, you have to sleep, too. And I don’t believe for a second that you’ll get a good rest sitting up all stiff like that. Do you want to do this all night? Do you want to throw the bedding hides back and forth at each other for hours? Or do you want to just stop being stubborn, lie down with me, and get some much-needed rest?”

I was being stubborn?

She was the stubborn one.

I was just trying to keep some of my fragile sanity intact.

But she does not know. She does not know what she asks of you. She is only being kind and generous. She just wants you to rest. She does not know that lying beside her without touching her is an ache inside your bones. A tempest of parching winds.

I could tell her. I could tell her, right now, that I’m her mate. Tell her that by asking me to lie with her she asks for so much more. My ablik control.

Or the rutting of my cock.

I knew she was not asking for my rutting cock.

Control it is.

“Fine,” I grunted.

Cam-Eel moved her head up and down – I remembered this meant satisfaction of some kind.

Well, I am glad you are satisfied, I thought sourly. Meanwhile I am doomed not to sleep at all this night.

Cam-Eel re-oriented herself, lying down and arranging the hides once more. But instead of wrapping them tightly around herself, she held them open for me. An invitation.

I had invited her into my tent. Now she invited me into the bed.

My throat tightened. My cock ached. My insides burned.

I slid inside the bed.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Camille

Irefused to steal all of Varrow’s bedding again, no matter how much he declared he didn’t need it. And I definitely was not about to lie here all snuggly and cozy while he slept sitting up like some kind of grumpy gargoyle.

But now that he had slipped in beside me, I was beginning to wonder if I’d made a colossal mistake.

The exhaustion I’d felt earlier evaporated, replaced by an electric awareness of every part of Varrow’s form. He was being very careful not to get too close, I noticed. He was lying, stiff and motionless, at the very edge of the bed area, the hides only reaching halfway over his chest. My breath was quick and shallow, and I held the bedding tighter, lying on my back.

“Are you comfortable?” I squeaked out. I was starting to lose my nerve. My confidence. The authority with which I’d told Varrow to come lie down here with me. Now I was feeling shaky and weird and, sacré bleu, horny. Again.

You’ve made your bed. Literally. Now lie in it, Camille.

“I am fine,” Varrow muttered, his voice sounding even more tense than his body seemed. I couldn’t help but smile a bit at that. I had imagined what Varrow would be like lying in bed since he didn’t seem like the cuddly sort. And my imaginings were proving 100% accurate.

I rolled over onto my side, snuggling down into the hides and watching him.

He was on his back, his hand in a balled fist on his chest. He stared up at the ceiling of the tent. My eyes had mostly gotten used to the darkness, and I let them slide over his profile.

He’s gorgeous.

I clenched my teeth to keep myself from saying it out loud. The thought was so intense I worried it might leap right past my lips. Varrow really was handsome – that strong, stony jaw. The regal high cheekbones. The short hair that accentuated his features.

I let my gaze move further down, down his neck to his hard shoulder…

“No wonder you look so stiff lying there!” I cried, rising up on my elbow.

Varrow’s head whipped towards me. He grabbed some of the bedding and yanked it further over his body, bunching it up around his hips.

“What do you mean?” he said.

I ignored whatever the hell he was doing with the blankets around his pelvic region.

“You’re still wearing all your weapons! You’re lying on a bunch of blades!”

Varrow’s hand stopped its frantic rearranging of the bedding.

“Oh. No. That is fine. I always sleep like this.”

“You do?!” I couldn’t imagine anything less comfortable for sleeping. Not only were the straps pretty tight against his torso, but the numerous knives and longer blades had to be painfully hard against his back.

“Why don’t you take them off?” I asked, settling back down onto my side. “We’re inside the tent.”

“No.” The reply was clipped.

I sighed.

“Are you hellbent on rejecting every scrap of comfort or joy that comes your way, Varrow? You were just telling me not to reject comforts, like being warm! Why don’t you take them all off, just to sleep? They’ll be right next to you if you need them. I could even help you.”

I reached tentative fingers towards the handle of a knife jutting out behind his shoulder. Before I could touch it, or him, his strong grip closed around my wrist.

“No.” His voice had lowered, become dangerous. A warning.

“Sorry,” I whispered, feeling tears spring to my eyes. He wasn’t holding my wrist tightly – he wasn’t hurting me. But I hated the fact that I’d bothered him. That I’d pushed him too far. Maybe I should just leave him alone. Clearly, I’m annoying him…

I yanked my hand from his and burrowed further into the blankets to hide. Not because I was scared of Varrow. But because I was scared of…

Of making him dislike me.

Which was stupid. Because it seemed that he disliked pretty much everyone.

But I wanted him to like me.

Dieu. This was too pathetic. More tears were coming.

I sniffed, trying not to be too loud, and wiped at my eyes before squeezing them shut.

There was an awkward moment of silence punctuated only by my sniffling.

But then Varrow spoke again. And he didn’t sound angry.

He sounded panicked. His words tumbling, clumsy and urgent.

“What are you doing? What is happening?”

Once again, his hand was at my wrist, tugging frantically so that he could see my face. But that just made me even more embarrassed. I let him peel away that hand, but used my other to hide my eyes.

“Why is your hand wet?” Varrow demanded.

I gave a choked sob of surprise when he brought my palm to his nose and sniffed.

“Salt…” he said, sniffing again.

“Stop sniffing me!” I cried.

“I am only trying to find out what is wrong with you!” Varrow cried back. With a soft grunt, he sat up and dragged me with him. He still held my wrist in his hand, and his tail swept upward, nudging my other hand away from my face.

“I have heard of this. You are… You are crying,” he said slowly.

“Yes, and what of it?” I asked. I thought about pulling back my hands to cover my face again, but decided against it. Fine. He wants to see, he can see. He can see the annoying, weak human crying.

“Well… How do I make it stop?” Varrow moved to his knees, leaning forward, his face looming in front of mine.

“Oh, please, like you even care,” I snapped. It was probably rude, and petty, but at this point I didn’t care. I was tired of being pushed away. I was tired of everything.

Varrow’s breath hitched, and his grip grew suddenly more tender at my wrist. His thumb gave a slow stroke along my pulse point.

“Cam-Eel,” he said, sounding broken. “I care. More than you know. I care.”

I hiccupped, then stopped crying, shock overtaking me as Varrow slid his hand from my wrist, along my arm, up over my shoulder to cradle my jaw.

His fingers buried in my hair, his thumb tracing the wet tracks left by my tears.

“I fear I can do no right by you. I cannot converse well. I am ignorant of your tastes and feelings. And now I’ve made you cry.” His voice cracked. “Like the monstrous brute I am.”

“No,” I whispered. “That’s not fair. And it’s not true.”

Well, it was maybe a little true. He definitely didn’t have the best conversational skills I’d ever seen. And yes, he was quite ignorant of me and my human ways. But that wasn’t his fault. I was as alien to him as he was to me. And there were lots of things I was ignorant about when it came to him, too.

Like the fact he needed to sleep with his weapons to feel safe.

“I am sorry, little bean.”

I launched forward, throwing my arms around Varrow’s neck.

I hope this isn’t bothering him…

I just couldn’t stop myself from hugging him. This moment had gotten too weird and sad. And I just wanted to hold him.

“No, I’m sorry, Varrow,” I murmured against his chest. “I’m sorry I pushed you about the weapons thing. You should sleep however is comfortable for you. Just pretend like I’m not even here.”

OK. This is definitely bothering him…

Varrow was stiff and unmoving. When I’d come at him, his hand had fallen to his side. He wasn’t reciprocating the hug.

I wish he would.

It was a stupid thought. But I still thought it.

He was so warm, so strong and solid. It felt so good to put my arms around him. To relax, lean against him.

But if he doesn’t like it…

I sighed, then began to pull away.

Only to be slammed back against Varrow’s chest. His arm pressed into my back, clutching me to him. Another sob shook from me, but this time it was one of relief. I wasn’t bothering him. He doesn’t want to push me away…

“Cam-Eel,” Varrow groaned, lowering his face so that he spoke against my hair. “There are… There are things that have happened. Things I have lost. It makes me… It makes me need my weapons.” His chest hitched, and his head lowered further, his nose and mouth brushing my ear and making me gasp. “I have to be able to protect you. At all times. I have to.”

The words were so pained, so forceful. I had no doubt as to the origin of that pain. The loss of his brother and his arm.

“I know what happened to your brother. To Ratev,” I said. I had to tell him. It didn’t feel right that he didn’t know I knew. “Razek told us. I wasn’t trying to pry or anything,” I added quickly. I didn’t want him to think I was being nosy. Even if I was kind of nosy where he was concerned.

There was a too-long moment of silence that had me beginning to sweat, worried that he was angry after all. When he spoke again, he did sound angry. But I realized quickly that his anger wasn’t meant for me.

“I will never again be that defenceless,” Varrow hissed vehemently. “I will never again lose someone I love because of my own weakness.”

Dieu, those words. The vicious pain behind them. The pain of a boy that remained lodged like a hard stone in the heart of the man. It was making me cry all over again.

“Please, Cam-Eel,” Varrow begged. “Tell me what I’ve done to make you cry again. And, wretched sands, tell me how to make it stop.”

My shoulders shook as I breathed unsteadily, trying to get a hold of myself. Varrow’s arm moved up along my back until his fingers slipped into my hair, cradling my head to his chest.

“Do you…” his voice faltered, then grew hard. “Do you pity me?”

“I’m just sorry you’ve been through so much. Especially when you were just a child,” I said. I let my arms fall, wrapping them around his waist and squeezing.

“But what about now? Do you pity me now, as a man? Do you find me weaker than other warriors for what I’ve been through?”

He eased his hand from my hair, clasping my right shoulder and easing me backward so he could look at my face.

“No,” I said, surprised by his question. The fact he only had one arm had never once factored into my impression of him. I mean, I’d noticed it, obviously. It was hard not to notice. But I’d never once considered him less than because of it. “No, I don’t think you’re weak, Varrow. Not at all. I think you’re incredibly strong and resilient. I just wish you hadn’t been through so much pain, that’s all.”

“And why do you wish that?” His fingers were growing harder on my shoulder, his face only a breath from mine.

Why?

This went beyond simple compassion or empathy.

I cared for Varrow. More than I should have. So much so that if I got another mate, I knew I was going to be in for a world of hurt. But it didn’t seem like I could stop that, now. I’d tried. I’d tried to fight my growing attraction to him. The deepening of my feelings.

The only thing holding me back was the fact that Varrow hadn’t given me any indication that his feelings were growing as strongly as mine. I still couldn’t tell if he even liked me as a friend. There were some things – giving me the beans, for example. And returning my hug just now. But it wasn’t enough to convince me that any declarations I made now would be reciprocated.

So I shrank back, protecting myself.

“I care because… Because I’ve lost people, too. Both my parents,” I said.

A jolt of sincere pain wracked the muscles of Varrow’s face.

But his expression turned to one of thunder when I spoke next.

“So I know what it’s like to feel like you have no one.”

Varrow’s rough, warm hand drifted upwards, cupping my chin.

“You do not have no one,” he snarled.

“You’re right,” I said, giving a weak laugh and swiping at my cheeks. “I have really good friends. And maybe… Maybe I’ll get a mate soon. Maybe someone from the sixth tribe.” I needed to prepare myself for the fact that I could still have a mate out there somewhere. Unfortunately, the idea no longer held the appeal it once did. But I needed to try to muster some enthusiasm for the prospect.

Varrow withdrew his hand. The lack of contact made my breath catch, and not in a good way. I wanted to snatch his hand back again.

“From the sixth tribe?” Varrow asked. Something in his voice had changed, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

“Well, maybe,” I said, shrugging.

“Because no man here has caught your eye?”

Huh?

“I didn’t say that,” I said, squinting, trying to get a better sense of what he was feeling in the gloom. But his face was unreadable. “But it’s not up to me, is it? And if the Lavrika was going to pick someone from the settlement for me, why wouldn’t it have done so already? It’s not like I’m one of the unwilling ones. If I could have made the Lavrika choose someone for me already, I would have.”

“And what if you do not like whom the Lavrika chooses for you?”

“I…”

I honestly hadn’t considered that. From what I’d seen so far, the Lavrika was the equivalent of a psychic Cupid matchmaker. It never failed. Every human who had a mate adored their partner and seemed so, so happy. I’d assumed it would be the same for me.

Now that assumption was changing. Because now I knew that if I did have a mate, someone who wasn’t Varrow, it would be much harder to get with the program.

But there wasn’t anything I could do about that. So I sighed and said, “I’m sure it would work out. The Lavrika knows what it’s doing.”

Varrow made a grumbling sound, then ended the conversation by saying, “We should sleep. You need rest.”

“So do you,” I said softly. He was trying, in his gruff and awkward way, to take care of me. I just wished he’d direct some of that same care towards himself. Or let others care.

Others. Like me.

No.

As hard as it was, I had to start shaking this. We would be entering the territory potentially occupied by the sixth tribe soon.

I could be meeting my mate in a matter of days…

I needed to get my head on straight.

“You’re right. Goodnight,” I said, lying back down and getting into the bedding. This time, I didn’t demand that Varrow lie down with me. I’m just going to let Varrow do what Varrow’s going to do.

The exhaustion returned, and my eyelids, hot and swollen from crying, grew heavy. I let them fall closed.

The last thing I was aware of before I drifted away was Varrow moving.

Lying down at my side.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Varrow

Iwas in a foul mood for two reasons as dawn drifted over our camp. One, because I’d barely slept, too aroused and on edge with Cam-Eel breathing softly at my side.

And two?

Because I’d learned more about Cam-Eel and her thoughts about getting a mate. Now I knew that I was competing with the faceless fantasy of an unknown man from the sixth tribe.

I felt all the better about not telling her I was her mate. She was dreaming of a man made perfect by her own mind. Which made the reality of me as her mate all the more broken and harsh in comparison.

She deserves every fantasy made reality.

Cam-Eel, too, seemed out of sorts when she awoke, though I was not sure why. All I was sure of was that she kept a greater distance between us now. She was still polite, friendly, even. But she had reined in some of her exuberant warmth.

It… hurt.

But it also proved me right.

See? All the better to know now that she does not and cannot love you.

The words rang hollow. But I kept saying them anyway.

There was little conversation beyond the most basic of practicalities as we rode. For this, I was grateful. I only had her beauty and her scent to distract me from keeping my eyes poised for predators. And I did not allow myself to become distracted. The further into the stone we went, the greater the danger from the ablokoi became.

But we did not encounter one, nor any zeelk. We only encountered leaning fangs of white stone, punching up out of the landscape, lining the valleys we wound through. Gahn Razek and I knew our way through the seemingly endless labyrinth of mountains and valleys, and we led the way with our mates, Kohka and Priya behind us, the other warriors drawing up the rear. At times, we had to stop and wait for the others – in places that became too steep and rocky for the desert irkdu to easily traverse. But otherwise, we encountered few hindrances, and we made good time. By the time we stopped to make camp for the night, we were well past the halfway point. We would have one more day of travelling through the stone, and one night of camping at the edge.

I would be glad to be free of these mountains. The Death Plains had their own dangers – like the pockets of quicksand eager to swallow up unwary warriors. But generally, the plains were safer. It was why our people had made our tents there for so long.

We had a quick meal of gorka and two mountain rakdo that Oxriel caught.

I forced myself to eat, knowing I needed to keep up my strength so that I could protect Cam-Eel. But it was difficult. My guts were hardening into a boulder of anxiety that seemed to grow larger and heavier every moment. Every moment Cam-Eel sat beside me and did not speak to me or smile at me.

When I could no longer take the silence that had stretched between us for so much of the day, I spoke to her.

I said the first thing that came into my addled brain.

“Do not forget where you are sleeping tonight, little bean.”

Cam-Eel froze mid-chew, keeping her head turned forward.

She swallowed noisily, then finally glanced at me. She gave a tight smile.

“I won’t.”

When she said nothing else, I grunted and stood.

“Well… Good,” I said. “It is getting late. We should go.”

Cam-Eel stood, too.

“Yeah. I’m just going to get cleaned up in Priya’s tent. And I need to get some fallink.”

“You can clean up in my tent,” I said, my brows furrowing. I hoped this was not some ploy to spend the night in Priya’s tent instead of mine. I would not stand idly by while Cam-Eel tried to sleep, shivering and uncomfortable, because her bedding had been snagged by her friend in sleep.

Cam-Eel’s single pink tongue slipped over her lips, drawing my ravenous gaze.

“No, I need to… You know. Undress.”

I felt her words in my cock.

“Of course,” I said tightly. Then I remembered she’d mentioned something else. “Why do you need fallink?”

Fallink was a black fluffy plant that was native to the Death Plains. I knew the Gahnala Jozelyn loved to harvest it and was growing it at the settlement, but I did not actually know why.

“Oh. It’s a useful herb for us humans,” Cam-Eel replied. “It acts as birth control. It… It stops our cycles.”

“You wish to avoid pregnancy?” I asked, the words coming haltingly on my tongues.

“Well, not much chance of pregnancy without a mate,” she replied. “But it’s useful to not have a cycle, especially when travelling.” Her gaze grew thoughtful and far away. “But as soon as I get a mate, I’m going to stop using it. I want children.”

I’d felt her previous words in my cock.

I felt these ones in my chest.

They were echoed by the ones Razek had said to me earlier.

Denying her a mate is also a punishment.

She wanted cubs…

A painful knot built up inside me, so tangled I could barely unravel all the threads. Fear. Grief. But even more than that, desire.

“What about you, Varrow,” Cam-Eel said slowly, eyeing me cautiously. “Do you want kids? Cubs?”

Having assumed for most of my life that I’d never get a mate, I’d never considered it.

I considered it now.

Cam-Eel, filled with my seed and rounded with my cub. Cam-Eel holding a babe, smiling down at it, then up at me…

That image punched the breath from my lungs and left me reeling.

“Yes,” I said, the word savage. I had not meant to answer. I was barely aware I even had. Something else was answering for me. When I became aware of the manic pleading of my heart, I realized just what it was that had spoken so foolishly in my place.

Quiet, you.

Cam-Eel’s face softened and she smiled at me. It was a more genuine smile than she’d given me all day. But it was also sadder.

“I think you’d make a great father.”

I felt my sight stars explode as I stared at her, astounded by her words. She turned and strode quickly to Priya’s tent, disappearing inside.

She thinks I’d be a good father?

Not just good. Great.

She was probably just being kind. But even so, even so…

My heart soared.

I tried to catch it, tried to hold it down. To keep it safe.

So that, when it finally fell, crashing into a pulpy heap, there might not be so much pain.

But I failed.

And it flew anyway.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Camille

Itook my time bathing and cleaning my clothes in Priya’s tent. I was alone in there, as she’d elected to stay outside a while longer to work on her maps under the vibrant glow of the stars and asteroids.

My hands moved slowly as I rubbed the talka gel into my skin and finger-combed it through my hair. And I didn’t wash my clothing with any urgency, either.

I didn’t like to think of myself as a coward. But there was no denying it.

I was avoiding Varrow.

Hopefully, if I take long enough in here, he’ll already be asleep by the time I get to his tent…

I should have known that wouldn’t happen. Even though I took a solid hour, maybe even more, getting ready for bed in Priya’s tent, Varrow was still stationed outside his own, waiting for me like some kind of frozen sentry.

My heart leaped at the sight of him, and giddiness rose in my chest. Merde. Still no luck in shaking this crush. And his expression of pained hope when he’d said he wanted kids definitely had not helped things. That had only added a fan to the flames. Because now, as I walked towards Varrow, all I could picture was him holding a little half-human, half-Sea Sand infant in his arm.

I wonder what expression he’d make then…

“You didn’t have to wait out here for me,” I said as I reached him. I rubbed my hands up and down my cold arms, realizing too late I’d forgotten my jacket in Priya’s tent.

“Yes, I did,” Varrow said, his sight stars tracking the movements of my hands over my skin. “I did not trust you to return. I have learned by now that you seem oddly fond of being stubbornly cold when you could much more easily be warm.”

I laughed.

“You’re one to talk, Monsieur I’ll-Sleep-Sitting-Up-Instead-of-Sharing-the-Bedding!” It felt good to talk to Varrow. To laugh. If I were being honest with myself, it had taken a lot of energy to hold myself back from him today.

“Then let neither of us be stubborn. Let’s go inside.”

I hated the little thrill that ran through me at the thought of being alone with Varrow in his tent again. A thrill that only I felt.

When we were together in the confined space of the tent, the smell of talka gel was strong. And as I sniffed the air, I realized it wasn’t just coming from me.

“Did you clean up, too?” I asked. I turned, trying to locate him, but my eyes hadn’t adjusted yet. I ended up spinning right into him. His hand caught my elbow, steadying me, then letting go.

“I did,” he replied, a smoky, disembodied voice in the dense darkness of the tent. “You kept away so long, I began to worry my smell was part of the reason you did not return.”

I laughed again, much harder now. There was that dry Varrow sense of humour coming out. He was serious so much of the time that I rarely got to glimpse it. So when I did, it was always surprising. And lovely.

“Yeah, right,” I said, still laughing, fighting for breath. “I love the way you smell.”

I realized what I’d said only after the words had left my mouth. Heat flooded my neck and cheeks.

“I mean. You guys don’t really sweat, right? Not like us humans. Ha!” I tried to play off the awkwardness of the moment, but Varrow was not helping. He watched me (presumably, since I couldn’t see his sight stars yet) without speaking.

“Well, whatever! You do smell nice,” I finally huffed, feeling defensive. Why should I be getting all awkward and embarrassed? He did smell good! I was just stating a fact!

“You like my scent, little bean?”

Whoa. That voice was much closer now. I leaned forward incrementally, gasping as my nipples brushed Varrow’s abdomen. They puckered, and I reeled backwards away from him.

“Yes. It’s lovely. Bottle it and sell it on Earth and you’d overthrow the most prestigious perfumeries of Paris. Au revoir, Fragonard, bonjour Parfum de Varrow!”  Luckily, so many of my words were French that they’d just sound like nonsense to Varrow. And at least that way he wouldn’t know that I actually was babbling nonsense.

“Hmm. I would take that as a compliment,” came the rough rumble of Varrow’s voice. “But then again, I know how much you also love the putrid scent of beans. So perhaps instead I should be offended.”

For a split second, my heart sank. Then I noted the lightness in his tone. He’s joking again.

I collapsed into giggles, sitting down on the bedding and kicking off my boots.

I wish things could always be like this. I wish I could keep him this happy…

I knew I couldn’t take away the pain of his past or anything like that. But sometimes, when it was just us two, things felt so… Nice. Brighter. Happier. I felt safe.

I just hoped he felt safe, too.

It was that thought that kept me awake, long after Varrow laid down beside me, once again keeping to the very edge of the bed area.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” he finally asked.

“What do you mean?” I cried, not realizing that he’d been awake at all. Dieu, he’d been still as stone.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” I shot back. I rolled onto my side. He did the same, and we lied facing each other.

“I am not sleeping because you are not sleeping,” Varrow said gruffly. “Your breathing is all wild and uneven.”

“Well, sorry I’m breathing too loudly,” I grumbled. “I can’t help that you have super hearing.”

“I do not have super hearing. I have regular hearing. And one would not need super hearing to tell by the rushed cacophony of your breath that you are wide awake.”

“Fine. You got me. I can’t sleep,” I rolled onto my back, blowing a stray strand of hair out of my face.

“It has been a long day. Your body needs rest,” Varrow said sternly. “What is keeping you up? Or rather, what do you need to sleep?”

Honestly? I either need you to get way closer to me in this bed, or I need you far, far away to sleep.

I didn’t say any of that out loud.

“I don’t know why I can’t sleep,” I fibbed. “Do you want to just… Talk for a bit? Or something?”

“Will it help you sleep?” Varrow asked. Goosebumps slithered over my skin as his warm breath brushed the side of my face and neck.

“Maybe,” I said. Honestly, it probably wouldn’t help. Because now I was excited by the idea of staying up to talk to Varrow. But it sure beat just lying there in the silence, especially now that I knew that Varrow was listening to my every breath.

“What do you wish to talk about?” he asked.

“Huh,” I said, stumped. I hadn’t actually come up with a subject. And I didn’t exactly want to say, “Gee, tell me about your childhood, Varrow!” Because we all knew how that would go. But thinking of Varrow’s childhood did give me an idea.

“I could tell you about my old life. My family,” I said. I held my breath, feeling weirdly shy. As if he’d reject that idea. As if my life, my history, wasn’t interesting enough for him.

But instead, I felt him shift ever slightly closer to me.

“Tell me,” he growled.

I smiled. Like a fucking idiot.

As I spoke, I stayed on my back, looking up at the top of the tent. I was worried that if I rolled over to face him again, I’d lose all control and burrow into his chest.

“Well, you know our world is called Earth. I grew up in a city called Paris. My parents ran a restaurant there. A restaurant is somewhere where food is prepared. They cooked for other people.”

“Hmm. If only they had passed on some of their skills to you,” Varrow said, his tone dry but his words teasing.

“Hey!” I cried, laughing.

I rolled towards him, even though I’d been trying not to.

And I regretted it instantly. Because even in the darkness, I could tell that Varrow was smiling.

It was breathtaking, even though I could barely see it. His sight stars were a haze of glittering smoke as his full lips pulled into a slightly crooked grin.

I wanted to reach out and trace that grin with my fingertips.

Then I wanted to crush my mouth against it.

Merde. Merde merde merde.

I kept talking to distract myself.

“Well, whatever you say about my cooking, my parents were amazing at it. My mom was from an area in France called Provence. My dad was born in Japan, in Kyoto. They met in the restaurant scene in LA, and after they got married they moved to France to open their own restaurant. I basically grew up in that place. It was more home than our house was. At least… At least it was before they died.”

“What happened to them? Was there a battle? A predator?”

Despite the heavy subject matter, I found myself chuckling. Varrow was probably picturing les rues de Paris to be similar to his world – crawling with beasts and patrolled by men with blades.

“No. Nothing like that. My father died when I was eight years old. A stroke. My mother only passed away last year. Cancer. That’s a type of illness.”

“This was difficult,” Varrow said heavily. My eyes filled with tears at the simple, serious acknowledgement. He of all people knew what loss was, and I appreciated his brief, blunt words.

“It was,” I agreed thickly. I took a deep breath, then continued on, moving back to happier subjects. “But there were so many good times, too. Times with both my parents, in the restaurant. I’d be in the kitchen, conversations flying around me in French, Japanese, and English. Normally, Papa was the more serious one, and Maman was the more easy-going one. But it was totally the opposite during busy times at the restaurant. Maman barking orders, Papa keeping his cool.” I smiled at the memories as they poured through me – Maman’s wavy blonde hair getting frizzy and her cheeks getting red from the kitchen’s heat. Papa’s calm smile as he worked with practised precision, not frazzled in the slightest.

“After Papa’s death, things were really hard for a while. But Maman worked so hard to keep me connected to him. Every summer she took me to Kyoto. When my obaachan, my grandmother, was alive, we’d visit her. And even after she passed away we still went every year. We’d visit Shinto shrines. We’d attend the matsuri, the summer festivals, like the Gion Festival, where different neighbourhoods would build these giant floats that they’d pull through the streets. We’d eat senbei crackers and pickled vegetables and matcha sweets at the Nishiki Market. I always thought that, when I wanted to get married, I’d have a ceremony in France, but that I’d also have a Shinto ceremony in Papa’s hometown.” I paused. “Sorry, most of this probably means nothing to you,” I said, realizing how many specific Earth things I was mentioning.

“I do not understand many of those words,” Varrow admitted. “But they have meaning for you. So they mean something to me, too. No matter how foreign that meaning may be.”

I bit down on my lip to keep more tears from springing to my eyes.

“Thank you, Varrow.”

I was mostly holding it together, but I was still feeling choked up and not ready to say anything else.

“Do you feel like you can sleep now?” Varrow asked.

I let out a tremulous sigh.

“Honestly? No. Not really,” I replied. “But it’s OK. You should still try to.”

“I will not be able to sleep while you do not,” Varrow said.

“Oh yeah. Right. What was it? The cacophony of my breathing?” I smiled, snuggling closer to Varrow without realizing what I was doing. I stopped short of nuzzling against his chest. Trying to cover up the fact I’d gotten so close to him, I quickly tugged the bedding to make it look like I’d come over here to give him more bedding. For once, Varrow didn’t fight me as I draped the blanket over him.

Once that was done, I clasped my hands together against my chest, willing myself not to do anything stupid. Like grab the sides of Varrow’s face and drag his mouth to mine.

“Well, if you cannot sleep, but you do not wish to speak further, I suppose I must talk,” Varrow said.

“That would be nice,” I said, meaning it. Half the time it was like pulling teeth getting this guy to talk. I’d be happy to listen to whatever he had to say. I wiggled happily, loving the feeling of cozy intimacy. It didn’t have to be romantic or sexual. Just being close to someone and talking like this was lovely.

The fact that I was having all kinds of stupid romantic and sexual thoughts was… Beside the point.

“Like your parents, mine were very good,” Varrow said. “My mother was Aroba. My father was Barelt. My father was a strong warrior. A skilled hunter. My mother was a healer. And Ratev…”

I moved closer to him, not caring if he noticed now. In fact, I wanted him to notice. I wanted him to know that I was here for him. My fists were still clenched together, and my elbows and forearms pressed into Varrow’s chest. Warmth bloomed along my arms where his skin touched mine.

“Ratev was among the very best of men. Strong. Powerful. Good-natured. Though he could be arrogant at times.” Varrow smirked softly, and it dazzled me. “But perhaps such arrogance was earned. I do not doubt that, had he lived, he would have been our tribe’s next Gahn.”

“He sounds like he was wonderful,” I murmured. “I’m so happy you told me about him. And your parents.”

Varrow heaved a breath.

“It has been many ages since I spoke of them to anyone,” he admitted. “I cannot exactly say that it feels good. But… I am glad to tell you of my family.” His fingers moved between us, catching my hands and holding them against his chest. “And I am glad you told me of your family and homeland, too.”

I nodded without speaking. I unfurled my fists, placing my hands flat against the hard muscle and smooth hide of Varrow’s chest. Varrow didn’t move his hand, but rather placed it on top of my two, holding them there.

Maybe I don’t need anything more from Varrow. Maybe this is enough – talking, and holding hands like this.

I knew, even as I drifted into sleep, that it wasn’t enough.

Not even close.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Varrow

Islept more that night than I had the previous one. I had grown somewhat accustomed to Cam-Eel’s presence in my tent. And the accumulated exhaustion from lack of sleep and travelling made getting some rest inevitable, no matter how tempting the beauty in my bed.

But that didn’t mean that I didn’t wake with an erection fit for a beast.

I was lying on my back. Cam-Eel had gotten even closer to me in her sleep. One of her hands was still plastered to my chest, and her hips had arched forward. One leg was straight, pressed to the side of my thigh. The other was hitched up over my hips, her inner thigh resting on my abdomen. And against my hip, protected only the tiny, thin loincloth she wore in sleep?

Her cunt.

My throat bobbed in time with my cock as I tried to swallow. My shaft strained beneath my loincloth, its tip a mere maddening breath from bumping the bottom of her thigh. I realized that Cam-Eel was not the only one who had shifted, drawn closer in sleep. My arm was looped around her slim back, holding her firmly to my side. Even my tail had reached for her in sleep and was keeping her straight leg flush with mine.

Cam-Eel shifted slightly and made a soft mewling sound that bolted straight into my groin. Slowly, I turned my head to look at her.

Her face was resting upon my shoulder, her soft cheek smooshed so adorably it made me feel all wobbly and strange.

It is a good thing I am lying down. Otherwise, her beauty would knock me to my knees.

I stared at my mate, heartsick for her. I could tell that dawn would be here soon – a greyish gloom was poking its faded fingers into the tent. The pale light cascaded over Cam-Eel’s glossy dark hair, strewn about her face and my shoulder. Dawn painted her skin and dusted each fine hair around her closed eyes.

Her breathing was shallow and rhythmic, tickling my skin. As soon as I noticed her breaths upon me, I stifled a groan. Because now that I was aware of it, I couldn’t think of anything else. The barely-there sensation was doing my head in. I fought the urge to remove my loincloth, to grind my hips upward, dragging the slick tip of my cock along her thigh. The urge to wake her with my tongues against her mouth. The urge to yank that little slip of fabric aside, revealing her hot wet core…

I have to get out of here.

As much as I did not want to leave this embrace – the closest I’d ever been to Cam-Eel, especially in her state of undress, I would not survive here much longer.

My heart could not take it.

Nor could my cock.

Very carefully, I eased her head from my shoulder, cradling it until I could rest it upon the soft hide. Rather regretfully, I slipped my tail out from the smooth place at the back of her leg. Last of all, and hating to do it, I peeled her tiny, perfect hand from my chest, placing it down beside her. Before I let go, unable to help myself, I slid my rough thumb along the peaks of her knuckles. I was about to press my lips there – to those delicate mounds of bone – when she stirred.

Releasing her hand, I rolled away from her and stood, quickly exiting the tent.

Kohka was awake already. The Bitter Sea men barely slept. He bade me a quiet good morning. Oxriel was awake too, tying his long black hair into a braid as he stared down the valley. There were the beginnings of stirrings in the other tents, and I moved away from all of them.

No one would question where I was going. It would only appear that I was finding a private place to relieve myself.

And I would relieve myself. Just in a different way than expected.

I hurried away from the camp, climbing up a nearby incline of stone until I came to a very small, sheltered sort of cave. No one else would come up here to relieve their bladders, I was certain. Besides, even if anyone did come looking for me… Well… With how insistently my cock was straining, I could already tell that I would not be here very long.

Now that I was alone, my movements became frantic. I could not even wait to remove my loincloth – I merely wrenched it to the side, letting the hot shaft spring free. I gripped it, sucking in a hissed breath at the contact.

I gave a few slow strokes, my eyes falling closed. Behind the darkness of my eyelids, Cam-Eel’s sleeping face drifted. I could practically feel her bare, silken thigh still thrown across my midriff. I could still feel the hot press of her cunt against my hip. My breath hitched, my fist stroking faster. My cock spears twinged, my shaft pulsed. I could feel my testicles drawing tightly against my groin as pleasure coiled around the base of my spine, slinking all the way down my tail.

Her scent is still upon me…

I was drenched in it, I realized. My head rolled back on my shoulders, my hips pistoning forwards and back. My tail thrashed, smashing against the stone beneath my feet.

I should have stayed a little longer. Appreciated her nearness a little more, I moaned internally. I needed more of her. The sensations of her body on mine were already fading, far too fast. A moment ago, it had all been so clear. But now, I suddenly couldn’t remember if her cunt was merely heated…

Or if it was wet, too.

I wrenched my head forward, cursing, my eyes flying open as white-hot pleasure exploded through my pelvis. I stroked myself through the ecstatic cresting, urging the waves higher, harder, as rope after rope of seed spilled, coating the stone. I stopped moving my fist, but my hips took over, rutting into my hand until I shook with another roaring orgasm.

I panted, my chest and shoulders heaving, my cock thick and heavy in my hand. The stone wall ahead of me, and the stone at my feet, was slick with seed. I closed my eyes, trying to steady myself against the desire that still churned through me. This physical release had not helped as much as I had hoped. Even now, even after just spilling, my body urged me to return to Cam-Eel. To spill again, but this time, inside her.

“Curse me,” I muttered, tucking myself back into my loincloth.

I hadn’t had the foresight to bring a talka stalk with me up here – I’d been too single-minded in my need. Luckily, there was a small grouping of them sprouting from a crack in the stone nearby. I picked one, slitting it with my claw and cleaning my hands. As I did so, I noticed some fallink growing there, too, and made a note to tell the Gahnala Jozelyn about them so she could come harvest them.

I froze.

You want the Gahnala to come up here, where the stone is foul from your pleasure, to pick fallink plants? Fallink plants your mate has to chew?

There was truly something wrong with me. Because the thought of Cam-Eel chewing, licking, or swallowing something that was coated in my seed…

It was making me hard again.

But if I tarried much longer someone would have to come looking for me after all. I dumped the half-empty talka stalk on the stone, putting the fallink plants and Cam-Eel’s mouth out of my mind.

At least, I tried to. But that mouth spoke to me as soon as I rounded the stone and re-entered the camp.

“There you are!”

My sight stars snapped to her. It was impossible to stop them. Anywhere my mate was, my body, my gaze, my heart longed to be.

She jogged towards me, fully dressed in all of her protective human gear save her eye-shells.

Behind her, the others were dismantling their tents, and it looked like Dalk and Oxriel were butchering some meat for breakfast.

“What is it? Are you well?” I asked, worried about the way she had run to me.

She stopped before me, planting her hands on her hips.

“Why are you breathing so hard?” I asked suspiciously, noting with not a small amount of concern the way her chest heaved.

“Because I ran across the camp. There’s less oxygen here. Nevermind,” she said, trying to catch her breath.

“Yes, but why were you running?”

No one else at the camp seemed perturbed, so it was unlikely there was any danger. But still…

I did not like it.

I moved closer to her, examining our surroundings, my fingers tense and ready to reach for a blade.

“I just…” Cam-Eel said breathlessly, “I just… I woke up. And you were gone.”

“So?” I asked, confused.

Her face scrunched up, her lips jutting forward in a pout that made my balls ache.

“What do you mean, ‘so?’ I was worried! I missed you!”

“You… You what?” I stammered. But Cam-Eel was already turning from me.

“Come on,” she said, “there’s food. And we’re the last ones to break down our tent.

Our tent.

I missed you.

Cam-Eel marched forward, heading for the others.

I watched her as she walked away. The only star left in my life.

I was rooted to the spot. The distance between us grew.

Swallowing a growl, I broke into a jog, hurrying to close it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Camille

Today would be our last full day of travelling through the Death Plains mountains. Frankly, I wasn’t sad to see them go. I was looking forward to riding Varrow’s irkdu through less bumpy, rocky terrain. Maybe my bum will be less sore… The saddle made a world of difference, but there was only so much it could do.

“It’s a good thing you and Gahn Razek know where you’re going,” I murmured to Varrow late that afternoon. Everything looked the same to me – the spikes and valleys of stone all blending together into a blur of white and grey, shadow and sun. I glanced over at Priya on Kohka’s back, amazed to see that she had a scrap of paper pressed against the Bitter Sea man’s shoulder, inking dark lines into it as we moved.

Varrow gave a grunt in reply, and I leaned back against his chest, feigning being tired. OK, I was actually tired. But not tired enough to need to lean on him. I just wanted to.

Last night, talking with him had felt so special and intimate. Which made waking up without him all the more jarring this morning.

As we continued on towards the edge of the mountains, the peaks around us began to shrink, growing more stumpy, not as sharp and high. The stone peaks were still taller than us – some of them upwards of ten metres. But ultimately, I could tell the landscape was becoming less rocky.

More calm.

But as the sun began its descent, washing the white stone in shades of rusty red and fish roe orange, any sense of calm was decimated by a single word, called from Gahn Razek just ahead of us.

“Ablokoi!”

The first thing I was aware of was sudden, blinding pressure against my hips as Varrow’s tail tightened into a death grip on me.

Gasping, I turned my head this way and that, trying to figure out what was happening.

Gahn Razek had turned his mount around and was charging back towards us, hissing, his spear raised towards one side of the valley. Following his gaze, I saw it.

It was hard to tell what I was looking at. It seemed almost as if the stone had come to life. A pale sheet of it shifted, throwing up dust. My heart rammed up into my throat when the tentacles began to move, spiralling around its massive head, some of them appearing to be upwards of five metres long, if not longer.

We were less than five metres from it.

A spear zoomed – Varrow’s spear, I realized.

The weapon almost hit its target but was caught in a tentacle at the last moment.

The ablokoi can catch a spear going that fast?

Its tentacles unwound from its body, more and more of them – dozens. Some of them thicker than lampposts where they connected to the huge, flat head and body. One extra-long tentacle coiled inward…

Then exploded.

Straight at me.

I didn’t have time to react. I didn’t even have time to breathe.

Didn’t have time for anything except blind terror before I was ripped from the saddle.

Je suis finie. I’m done for.

But the grip around me wasn’t the strangling hold of a monster’s tentacle.

It was an arm, cradling me.

Then dumping me heavily into the arms of another.

“Take her, Oxriel!”

Varrow’s words were almost incomprehensible, they were hissed with such venom.

No. No!

Varrow’s face twisted in a feral mask of dark pain as he snatched a long, black blade from his back.

“No, Varrow!” I screamed, reaching for him as Oxriel pulled me sharply back.

But Varrow didn’t answer me. He just repeated what he’d already said, his sight stars chaotic, his fangs flashing.

“Take her Oxriel. Take her and run.”

Then he launched off of his irkdu, heading straight for the ablokoi.

I couldn’t see what happened next. Couldn’t see what happened to Varrow. Because Oxriel had already turned us and was commanding his irkdu at full speed down the valley.

I sobbed in his arms the entire way.

Je l’ai perdu.

I’ve lost him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Varrow

Atentacle sprang for me. I sliced through it with my blade. Bleeding, the pale limb recoiled, only to be replaced by two more. I hacked at them, hacked at all the tentacles that came my way. It wouldn’t be enough. I knew it wouldn’t be enough. One man could not defeat an ablokoi. I knew that first hand. From watching my brother try and fail.

A tentacle I hadn’t noticed found me and wrapped around the tip of my tail, yanking me back and hurling me to the ground with violent force.

Cursing, I writhed, getting my blade just far back enough to cut off the putrid pale limb holding me. But before I could do so, another tentacle shot forth, looping around my wrist.

I groaned, pulling against the tentacle at my wrist with all my brute force, my muscles hard, my veins bulging with the effort. But it was no use.

I will lose my other arm.

And then my life.

But it does not matter. Because I got Cam-Eel away from here.

Still rooted to the ground by the tentacles that held me, I forced my head up, craning to look back. Oxriel’s mount was gone – and my mate with it.

She’s safe.

A sense of calm washed over me.

She was gone. And she would live.

When I’d given her to Oxriel and told them to run, it had been an echo of something long-past – the ghost of my brother’s call to me, all those ages ago. Commanding me to run.

I hadn’t run then.

And I hadn’t run this time either.

But unlike last time, this time I’d saved the one I loved. I’d saved my mate.

So it didn’t matter that I was now about to die alone in the ablokoi’s arms.

Only…

I wasn’t alone.

A monstrous roar sounded from beside me, and a glittering brown and silver boulder smashed through the tentacle holding my wrist. Gasping in relief at the lack of pressure, I yanked my hand back.

It wasn’t a boulder that had freed me. It was Kohka’s fist.

I scrambled, grabbing my blade from where it had fallen. I sliced through the tentacle that held fast to my tail. Relief poured through me as I swung my blade at another tentacle writhing towards me – my wrist was not broken. My arm was not ruined. I would not suffer the same fate I had as a child.

Spears whistled past my ears – Dalk, Bariok, and Vaxilkai. The three of them were fighting from their mounts, hacking at the ablokoi’s limbs. Kohka had obviously deposited Priya somewhere safe as I had done with Cam-Eel. Now he waded, completely unfazed, through the writhing tentacles, as if they were no more bothersome than gentle water waves lapping at his scales. His immense, nearly impenetrable body crushed and slashed as he went.

“You have to get to the head!” That was Gahn Razek’s voice. He was sprinting towards us, his irkdu and his mate somewhere out of sight.

I had already thrown and lost my spear – I could see its bone shaft snapped in two on the ground. I ducked under a rogue tentacle and hurled my blade.

With so many of the creature’s tentacles occupied fighting five different warriors, my blade found its target this time. It sank into the wide, flat head of the ablokoi, pinning it in place to the stone. It shrieked, its tentacles spinning and writhing.

Taking advantage of its moment of weakness, I sprinted forward, weaving between the ablokoi’s many contracting and shuddering limbs. Just as I reached the centre – its head – a tentacle found me, wrapping around my throat.

My breath disappearing, my vision fading, I forced everything I had – every element of grief and hate and pure, cursed love – into reaching back for another blade. I gripped its bone handle, unable to gasp or curse or scream. I gripped it in dying silence. My fingers slipped, yet I held fast.

I held fast.

For Ratev.

For Cam-Eel.

My legs gave out.

But my arm did not.

I stabbed my blade downward, plunging it between the ablokoi’s many greyish eyes.

One more choking moment.

One more moment of thinking my time in this world was done.

One more moment…

Until release.

Breath.

Life.

Cam-Eel.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Camille

It was a good thing that Oxriel was so strong, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to hold me back from tearing off down the valley to get back to Varrow. Which, yes, I knew would have been colossally stupid. But that was all I could think about doing as I cried and pushed against his arms.

Priya was there, too, after being dropped off by Kohka. As Oxriel held me in place with sheer force, she tried to do so with logic.

“Camille, try to calm down. There’s no sense in running straight back to a predator. You’ll get yourself killed!”

She was right. I knew she was right.

But every time I tried to acknowledge her very sound arguments, images of Varrow’s face – hard and vicious and ready to fight, ready to die – appeared in my mind. And the need to get back to him was renewed all over again.

But I couldn’t keep fighting Oxriel’s thick, muscled arms. Eventually, my body gave out, and I collapsed in his grip, sobbing.

Oxriel deposited me gently on the ground where I shrank into myself, drawing my knees up to my chest. He crouched in front of me, eyeing me warily as if anticipating that I would jump back up to try to escape him.

Priya plopped down beside me, looping an arm around my shoulders.

“I’m worried too. That thing looked fucking insane. But there are five of them out there. They’ll be OK.” She paused, squeezing my shoulders, then whispered, “Varrow will be OK.”

I wanted to believe her.

He has to be OK. He has to…

As if satisfied that I wasn’t going anywhere, Oxriel rose and turned from us. He squinted, staring down the valley, his mouth set in a grim line.

The sky changed, seeming to match my own emotions, turning cold and dark. The stars blinked down with their merciless eyes. The asteroids rose, shining and indifferent.

Priya’s arm remained, solid and warm around my shoulders. Now that I’d stopped crying, I felt totally emptied out. Numb.

At least, I’d thought I was numb.

But I wasn’t.

Because when Oxriel tensed, then relaxed, my heart skidded chaotically. I jumped to my feet.

“What is it? What do you see?”

He angled his head back to look at me, then gestured down the valley with his spear.

“Look. They return.”

My ribs ached as my breath hitched. Unable to respond, I scrambled around his bulky frame, staring down the valley.

There they were.

All of them.

Varrow.

My face crumpled inwards and tears streamed down my cheeks as I broke into a run. I didn’t care if another ablokoi was about to reach out and grab me. I didn’t care if I passed the fuck out from lack of oxygen on this planet.

All I cared about was getting back to him. And making sure he was OK.

He saw me coming – he must have. Because he leaped from his irkdu and sprinted. I choked on my tears, grinning madly as he ran. He closed the distance so much faster than I could ever hope to.

He’s running. Which means he can’t be badly hurt…

We collided. Varrow’s arm crashed against my back, his fingers clutching at the fabric of my cloak. I threw my arms around his waist, holding him as tightly as my wobbly muscles would allow.

Neither of us spoke. I wept against his chest while he breathed heavily but steadily against the top of my head.

I had no idea how long we clung to each other like that. Eventually, though, we had to separate, at least a little. Gahn Razek was saying something to us.

“Come. We must make camp,” the Death Plains Gahn said.

His own arm was thrown protectively around Jocelyn’s shoulders, the other gripping a blade. Everybody’s shaken up by what just happened.

Varrow remained glued to my side as we walked a little ways down the valley. It made me nervous to head back towards where the ablokoi had ambushed us, but I heard, in bits and pieces, that it was dead now. Luckily, because there had been enough warriors to kill it fairly quickly, no one had gotten badly injured besides some bad bruising and scrapes. I learned all of this from the other men. Varrow was totally silent, his hand never leaving the small of my back as we walked.

We found a sheltered area, up on an incline of stone. The incline was broken into several different flat platforms of stone, each platform big enough for one or two tents. Varrow helped me climb up to the highest and smallest flat area of stone where he began to set up our tent.

“Let me help you,” I said softly. From what I’d heard from Kohka, Varrow was probably going to have some sore spots, including his wrist and tail. But he ignored me, deftly setting up the tent, his face set like stone.

I watched him as he worked. Now that I wasn’t half out of my mind with fear that he was about to die, anger was setting in. Anger at the fact that I seemed to be falling harder and harder for him. Anger that he’d come close to dying tonight just so he could save me.

If something had happened to him…

I gasped at the shocking pain of that thought.

The sound made Varrow whirl. He stalked to me in two steps.

“What’s wrong?” he growled. He sounded angry, too. But I had no idea why.

“Nothing. Let’s just go inside,” I said, rubbing my temples. He watched my fingers work, then knocked one of my hands away, dragging my hair away from my temple and inspecting it closely.

“What are you doing? Are you injured?” he asked, his sight stars two hard, pulsing points.

“No,” I said swatting at him. My feelings were reaching a boiling point. It hurt to have him close to me like this. We need to talk about things. We need to sort this out.

I couldn’t go on like this. Pining after him the way I was. It was starkly obvious now that I loved him. My hysterics at the thought of him getting hurt or dying were more than enough proof of that. But even before today, even before the ablokoi, I knew things were getting to this point.

Varrow withdrew with a quiet growl but kept me pinned in his sights as I went into the tent. He followed, letting the tent flap fall closed. The sudden elimination of the silvery star and asteroid light threw me into dense darkness. I turned to face him anyway, aware of him only by the quiet sound of his breathing and the heat radiating off of him.

“Are you OK, Varrow?” I asked the invisible warrior before me. “How’s your tail, your wrist?”

“They will mend,” he said. He said it almost blithely. Like it didn’t matter.

And it really pissed me off.

“You could have died today, you know!” I cried. He had been protecting me, and I was grateful to be alive. But I hated that he’d given me no choice. That he’d put his life in harm’s way for me. “You shouldn’t have pushed me away! Maybe I could have helped somehow!”

It probably sounded stupid when I said it, but I also knew that the only reason Gahn Razek had survived his run-in with the ablokoi last time was because Jocelyn had stuck around and helped him.

Why won’t you just let me help you?

Why won’t you just let me love you?

I didn’t get a chance to ask either of those questions out loud.

Because if I was angry, apparently Varrow was fucking furious.

He stormed up to me, shocking me as his hand gripped my shoulder.

“Do not… Do not ever say that,” he whispered. “Do not ever put yourself in danger for me.”

“But that’s what I’m saying to you!” I cried. “Why do you get to choose to trot off into danger to protect me, but I can’t do the same for you!”

“Because… Because I have to! I am meant to!” His fingers tightened and he bent to me. He rubbed his forehead back and forth against my shoulder as if shaking his head. His mouth moved hotly on my neck as he spoke. “Because you…”

He faltered. I realized my arms were tossed around his neck, drawing him closer. When did that happen? Goosebumps erupted, trailing over my skin. Heath pooled in my chest and my belly and my clit as he breathed against my sensitive neck. My eyes fell closed, and I slid my hands up, threading my fingers through Varrow’s short hair.

“Because I what?” I whispered.

Varrow’s hand slipped beneath my jacket, his hand fisting around the fabric of my tank top at my back.

His next words tore out of him.

As if he didn’t want to say them.

As if it fucking hurt to do it.

“Because you’re my mate.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Varrow

Isaid it.

I couldn’t hold it back. It had festered inside me too long, and now the poison of the secret was spewing. The fear of the day – the fear of losing Cam-Eel – had ruined the barriers. Cracks in the foundations of everything.

Her little fingers froze against my scalp.

With a wavering, disbelieving voice, she asked, “What did you say?”

“The Lavrika came to me the night before we left the settlement. I’m your mate.”

I knew she’d heard me the first time. She was asking me to repeat it because she did not believe it, or perhaps she did not want to believe it. But there was no taking it back now. No pretending it had not been said.

I felt no relief at telling her. Instead, I felt the hard drag of dread.

Dread which seemed wholly justified considering Cam-Eel’s next words.

“This… This is so unfair!”

I already knew what was unfair. I already knew what she was feeling, what she would say. It what was I’d hoped to avoid this entire time. Her disappointment. Her rejection. Maybe even her disgust. But there was no avoiding it now.

She hated the fact that I was her mate.

She does not want me.

Even though I already knew it, and despised the fact, I needed to twist the blade in my guts a little more.

“What is unfair, Cam-Eel? Say it.” My lips and fangs brushed her slender throat as I commanded her to tell me all the terrible things I’d already told myself.

“It’s unfair because… Because I’m the only one…” She paused, her throat contracting against my mouth as she swallowed. My cock strained, and I had to fight to keep my claws from rending the fabric of her clothing in my fist.

“The only one who what?” I hissed against her skin.

The only one destined to a warrior who could never hope to be worthy of her?

The only one mated to me.

“I’m the only one who got a mate who doesn’t love me!”

What?

Her words bludgeoned me, over and over again, echoing long after she’d stopped saying them.

I’m the only one who got a mate who doesn’t love me.

“What are you talking about?” I groaned, forcing my mouth from her neck so that I could look at her face. Her expression hammered me even more painfully than her words. Her hands fell to her sides as she stared back at me.

She looked… Shocked. Betrayed. Her plush lips wobbled, and she bit at them to keep them still. Silvery tears turned her eyes to glistening pools and slipped down her cheeks in shining trails.

“Cam-Eel, please,” I begged, my voice hoarse. “Please, do not cry. This is why I did not want to tell you. I did not want you to cry over this.”

Shame and regret clutched at me harder than the ablokoi’s tentacles had. I released my fist from the clothing at her back and nudged my hand against her jaw, brushing at the hot wetness on her cheek with my thumb. I am stupid and selfish and weak. I should have kept this from her. I should have never told her -

“I’m not crying because you’re my mate, you idiot!” Cam-Eel exclaimed.

“Then… Then why?” I asked, almost stuttering in my panic. I couldn’t stand seeing her this upset, knowing I had caused it.

“Because you’ve been pushing me away! You kept this from me for so long! This whole time, I’ve been telling you about how I wanted a mate.  Meanwhile, I had one right in front of me!”

“You told me how much you wanted some perfect, imaginary man from the sixth tribe,” I reminded her.

She sighed angrily.

“Well, what was I supposed to do, Varrow? You never gave me any real indication of… Any of this! So I had to dream up someone perfect. It was the only way to get you out of my mind. And it didn’t even work!”

My jaw worked, my fangs digging into the inside of my cheek as I tried to process her words. But she spoke again before I could truly make sense of them.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Is it…” Her lips trembled harder, but she steadied herself with a deep breath. “Is it because you don’t feel the mate bond for me?”

I’m the only one who got a mate who doesn’t love me.

I may have kept things from her up until now. But I could not let that false belief stand. It went against every fibre of my being.

“You think I do not feel the mate bond?” I rasped. I grabbed her hand, pressing her palm against my chest and holding it there. “There is no Gahn, no order, no natural law left for me. There is only you. You’ve ruled my life since the moment I first laid eyes on you. Even before the mate bond awoke inside me.” Cam-Eel stared at me, confusion wracking her lovely features.

You are not explaining this well. Fool.

“Feel my heart? Feel how fast it is? How hard it pounds? How it begs?” It was not just my heart begging, now. But me. Begging her to see me. Understand me. Even if I’d prevented it before. Even if there was no coming back from what I’d done and what I’d kept from her. “It’s beating so fast and hard because of you. My heart has completely outrun its rhythm, trying to reach you.”

“So… You feel the mate bond for me? You actually love me?”

I groaned, lowering my forehead to hers.

“I love you like it will be my ruination. I love you like I’ve forgotten how to breathe.”

“So then why didn’t you tell me?!”

Her hands cupped the sides of my face.

My chest felt like someone was cracking each of my ribs. One by one.

“Because I didn’t want this fate for you. You deserve the perfect man from your fantasy, Cam-Eel. You deserve… Someone better than me.”

“Varrow.” Her voice was stern. “Do you know why I’m so upset about this? About the fact you didn’t tell me?”

“Because I kept something important from you.”

“No! Well, yes. But that’s only part of it. I’m upset because this hurt me, Varrow. You thought you were protecting me, but you were hurting me.”

Horror unfurled in my guts, turning them to ablik.

I reared back, my sight stars frantically scanning her face.

“How? What have I done to hurt you?”

“You hurt me because I have feelings for you! I’m falling in love with you! And all this time, I kept telling myself I needed to stop. I needed to not have these feelings. Because you gave me no indication of love or being mates or… Anything! And I was so fucking worried that I was going to just pathetically love you forever, even if I got a different mate. Even if you never loved me back.”

Those thoughts were absurd ones. The possibility of not loving her…

It was not a possibility at all.

But even more absurd, more unbelievable?

The fact she claimed she had feelings for me.

That realization was like the smash of a stone atop my head. It left me reeling, stunned, with half my brains practically spilling out of my ears. Cam-Eel clearly had no idea what kind of damage she’d just done because she kept talking.

“And, even worse than that? If you’d gotten hurt today, if you’d died… I would have had no idea! I would have had no idea that I’d just lost my mate!”

My mate.

She called me her mate.

Sands of our fathers, it felt good to hear her say it.

“Did you even think about that, Varrow?”

“I confess I did not,” I grated out. “But I must also confess I do not feel capable of much thought at all at this moment. Your declaration has addled my brains.”

“What? Which declaration?”

“That you… That you… Maybe… Love me.”

Cam-Eel blew out a harsh breath and let her hands slide down from my neck to my chest.

“I’m afraid there’s no ‘maybe’ about it at this point.” She tipped up her little chin, staring at me defiantly. “I love you. And you can’t blame it on the fact that we’re mates, because I didn’t even know about that. You made me fall in love with you all by yourself. So… There. Good work. Job well done.”

I did not understand.

“I do not understand.”

“I’m saying that… That you earned this, Varrow! You’ve earned love! You’re worthy and deserving and good. And even though you’re one of the grumpiest men I’ve ever met in my life, you are shockingly, miraculously, almost unbearably lovable! So just… Let me fucking love you!”

It didn’t just feel like my ribs were cracking, now. But my skull. My spine. My claws.

Everything I’d built up. Everything I’d hardened.

The whole lonely shape of the guarded life I’d carved.

All of it on the brink. The brink of shattering.

Crack.

Not broken by blades.

But by tiny hands and soft words in the dark.

Crack.

“Varrow… I mean it.”

Crack. Crack. Crack.

“I love you.”

It all came crashing down.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Camille

Varrow crashed into me so powerfully that he took my breath away. It seemed as if he had ten arms instead of one – his hand was everywhere. At my hip, my waist, running up my arm to my shoulder. His fingers settled, shaking, against the side of my face as he dragged his groaning mouth up my neck. His nose slid along my jaw, nudging at my earlobe.

Putain. He was so huge and warm and he loved me. We’d still have more to talk about – I wasn’t thrilled that he’d hid this from me for so long. We would have to keep building up the trust between us.

But right now? Right now, I didn’t want to stay angry with him. I couldn’t. Because I was as desperate for him as he was for me.

He loves me.

He’s my mate.

A bubble of giddy laughter escaped my throat as the truth settled in. He’s mine.

Varrow’s hand slid down a little, palming the side of my neck as his thumb explored the pulse point beneath my jaw.

“Even faster than mine,” he said huskily, no doubt referring my rapid heart rate.

“Make it faster,” I murmured. I plastered my hands to either side of his hard jaw, pulling his face to my own. We locked eyes in the darkness. My heart beat mercilessly against his calloused thumb and much lower, between my legs, sending spiralling heat everywhere. I arched, gasping, when the tip of his rock-hard cock nudged my abdomen, making the fabric of my jacket crinkle.

“You really do want me,” I said shakily, drawing one hand down his chest to hover above the engorged organ tenting his loincloth.

“Want?” Varrow choked out, drawing his thumb down to rest in the dip between my collarbones, his fingers wrapping possessively around the back of my neck. “This is not want. This isn’t even need… This is…”

“I know,” I whispered. The stark and unrelenting desire for him was pounding through my veins. And it wasn’t just some animal attraction. It was heartsick and chest-deep and aching and wonderful. I wanted to cry my eyes out and kiss him a thousand times as much as I wanted to push him to the ground and straddle him.

I brushed the tips of my fingers tentatively along the smooth, hard plane of his lower abdomen, drawing closer and closer to his groin.

“Can I…?” I asked, licking my lips, my eyes darting back up to his face.

“Can you?” he asked hoarsely. “Cam-Eel. I am certain I will die if you do not. But then again, I will likely die if you do touch me. So do it. Please. And give me a beautiful death.”

I suppressed a grin. So dramatic. But honestly, it was working for me. Everything about Varrow was working for me. The feral heaving of his chest as he fought to control his breath. The pained set of his jaw. The ravenous searching of his sight stars. The never-let-you-go way he held my neck.

The massive pulling beneath his loincloth.

My stomach erupting into fluttering chaos, I touched him.

Dieu, he was so hard. How could flesh even be that hard? I couldn’t tell if this was some quirk of alien anatomy, or because he wanted me so much.

Based on how he’s reacting to my touch, it’s probably the latter.

Varrow’s eyes fluttered closed and his hips jolted at my touch. He moaned softly as I traced the bulge of his tip through the buttery-soft fabric of his loincloth. With my other hand, I worked quickly to untie the garment. It fell with a whisper to the stone.

Mon Dieu…

My mate was over seven-feet-tall and built like a tank. Of course everything was proportional. But still, the sight of his erection was shocking. And it wasn’t like I was a virgin or anything.

Well. I suppose I am an alien sex virgin.

“I wish we could light a candle,” I said, still staring.

“Why?” Varrow huffed. His hand drifted to my front, tugging at the jacket’s zipper. “You should take this off,” he said gruffly, his eyebrows drawing downward into a frown as he tried and failed to undo the zipper. The look of fierce frustration on his face was nothing short of adorable.

“Here. Hold on,” I whispered, stepping back. Cheeks burning but not willing to back down now, I removed the jacket.

Then I removed everything else.

Varrow stared at me in slack-jawed silence, his hand drawn into a pulsing fist as I slipped out of my tank top and trousers.

Next came the bra, and Varrow made a choked sound of pain when that was removed and my breasts were bare. His huge fist moved to his groin, and he gripped himself, his fangs glinting as he seethed, staring at me.

The raw, carnal need in his gaze made my fingers tremble as I hooked them into the waistband of my panties.

Varrow’s nostril’s flared, and his breath turned ragged.

My own breath was held in fevered anticipation as I whisked my panties down. A quick fumble with boots and socks, and I was completely nude before him.

Just as he was before me. Apart from all his straps and weapons, of course.

We stared at each other. The longer the moment between us drew on, the more unbearable my arousal became. My thighs quivered, and I could feel heat and wetness building between them. My skin stung with the need to be touched.

“Now I understand the desire for a candle,” Varrow finally said tensely. His voice fell lower, his fist squeezing tighter on his cock as he groaned, “Perfect mate. How can I possibly hope to deserve you?”

Once again, I felt tears burning in my eyes. I blinked rapidly, trying not to cry. I wish he could see what I see. I wished that he could see himself as a gruffly kind, funny, protective, worthy man, a worthy mate, the way I did.

I have to show him.

I had to show him how just how worthy he was. Just how much he’d already earned my love.

“You already do deserve me,” I whispered, stepping up to him once more. I reached up, rising on my tiptoes to grasp the sides of his face. He tensed, then eagerly followed my movement as I pulled him down to me. I brushed his lips with mine, shivering at the surprisingly soft fullness of them. I moaned against his mouth as his hand released his cock and he grazed his hard knuckles up my stomach to my right breast. When his shaking fingers cautiously traced the taut peak of my nipple, I crushed my lips to his.

Any slow caution on Varrow’s part evaporated the second I opened my mouth for him. His hand became a needy vise on my breast as his tongues surged into my mouth.

Yup. Tongues.

I’d heard about these legendary tongues from the other mated girls. It was similar to a forked tongue, but it was more trident-like, forked into three different segments that could move independently of each other.

I couldn’t even respond with my own tongue, my mouth was so filled with him. I’d have to tell him to slow down, to push him back soon. But for now, I just wanted to feel him. Feel how badly he wanted me. Feel how brutally he filled me.

My fingers clutched at him, dragging over his skin, tugging at his hair as my clit thrummed with need. Varrow’s hips shuddered forward, his tip, now deliciously slick, rutting against my stomach and lower ribs.

Varrow’s tongues drew back, allowing my now-aching jaw some reprieve. His back must have been aching something fierce, too, the way he was hunching down to kiss me. He remedied this quickly, gripping my ass and hoisting me easily upwards. Gasping, I hugged his neck for stability, my thighs spreading for him, my ankles locking behind his back. Shivering sensations cascaded through me as my sensitive folds slicked over his abdomen. His abdominal muscles tightened with every one of his harsh breaths, the muscles grinding against my clit.

I kissed him again, taking advantage of the moment of surprise to gain the upper hand with my tongue. Varrow moaned into me, letting my tongue in, letting me explore. His three rose to meet mine, looping, imitating sucking my tongue.

Sucking…

I want to do more for him.

I drew back, panting, my lips wet and swollen.

“Put me down,” I murmured.

Varrow made some kind of strangled grunting sound in response before lowering me carefully to the ground. My inflamed pussy cried out at the sudden lack of his hard body crushed against it, but I ignored it for now. I wanted to focus on him.

I wanted to show him love.

“Sit down on the hides,” I said, gesturing at the ground.

Varrow eyed me, almost warily, but he did so.

He’s so suspicious. Like he has no idea what I’m going to do.

Then it hit me.

He’s a virgin.

Of course he was. There were no unmated adult women in his tribe. He’d told me that himself.

I was his first love and his first time. His mate. His everything.

All the more reason to make this incredible for him.

I paused as I took in the sight of my mate.

Even barely able to see him in the darkness, the sight was a viscerally erotic one.

He was so gorgeous. Like a carved-from-marble god.

A scarred one.

But a beautiful one all the same.

His thick thighs were spread, his cock jutting up between them – a shaft of pure, masculine need. His hand crushed the bedding in his fist, the muscles of his arm hard and rounded with tension. That same tension wracked the muscles all along his torso – his abs and pecs. His hair was mussed from my hands, falling forward into his dark gaze.

I fell to my knees, shifting forward on the hides until I was between his legs.

He watched me with the vicious focus of a hunter as I drew teasing fingertips along his inner thighs. The way his muscles jumped under my soft touch inflamed me and made my core clench.

I drew my hands slowly up and in until I was grazing his groin.

Varrow cursed under his breath when I found his cock spears.

I couldn’t see them well, but I could feel them. Pliable but firm spikes of flesh on either side of his shaft, mirroring the trident-like shape of his tongues. Curiously, I stroked and pressed them, testing their firmness as Varrow hissed with need.

OK. No more teasing.

I drew up on my knees, planting a gentle kiss on his mouth. Then I trailed my lips downward – down his throbbing neck, down his heaving chest, down, down, down… My kisses started out demure – little pecks at his neck. But they became hotter, wetter, hungrier as I moved lower. By the time I passed his belly button, my mouth was drawing a slick line down his body, suckling and nipping as I went.

When I finally made it back down between Varrow’s legs and sucked his fat tip into my mouth, he responded so forcefully that I wondered if he’d come right then and there.

His whole body seized up, his hand digging against the hides, his hips lifting off the stone floor. He threw his head back, the ligaments in his neck bulging. A clicking sound told me he was grinding his fangs.

He needs this so much. He needs me so much…

It made me want to take care of him. Even more than I’d already wanted to.

I swirled my tongue around his tip, moving lower, taking him experimentally deeper into my mouth. I wouldn’t be able to come close to getting all of him in my mouth. But I could make this good for him.

And judging by his reactions, this was already pretty fucking good for him.

I let my eyes roll upwards to look at him as I began to bob up and down, increasing the suction. His head was no longer tossed back but was thrust forward, his chin practically digging into his chest as he devoured me with his gaze. His lips twitching, he lowered his hips back down to the ground with what looked like a significant amount of effort.

I smirked around his cock. I’ll have him thrusting up off of the hides again soon.

I kneaded his inner thighs with my fingers before drawing them inwards to jerk the parts of his cock I couldn’t suck. Varrow moaned, then clamped his fangs together. His hips rocked in a barely-controlled, tight rhythm, matching the speed I sucked him. I let one of my hands drift down to cup his balls, a thrill running through me when I felt how heavy and velvety-smooth they were.

I stopped sucking and started exploring his shaft with my tongue, suckling its underside, licking down the heated rod of it, down to the silken skin of his balls. Then back up again, my tongue laving his hard flesh until I reached his tip. More moisture had beaded there, and I licked it from his satin-smooth tip. He tasted of salt and desert and things I didn’t even know I liked, things I didn’t even know I needed. I moaned, prodding the small slit with the tip of my tongue.

Varrow’s fingers threaded through my hair, gripping the back of my head, guiding me lower, urging me to suck him into my mouth again. I did so eagerly, and was rewarded with another one of his deep moans, his pelvis jutting up before he stiffened, halting the movement before he hit the back of my throat.

Dark sparks swirled in my core when Varrow’s touch slid between my thighs.

Dieu, yes.

I parted my thighs further, shifting my knees outward on the hides. I let my eyes fall closed, enjoying a particularly hot throb of Varrow’s cock in my mouth when he finally slipped his fingers against the crux of my need.

I arched, moaning around Varrow’s cock as he fondled me. The movements were blunt and rather clumsy, but then again, I couldn’t expect much more from a man who had no experience with one of his own women, let alone one from another species.

But… Wait a second…

Varrow’s hand was still behind my head, his fingers creating a possessive cage around the back of my skull.

What…?

I slipped my mouth off of his cock, jerking it in a firm fist as I twisted to see what was happening. My breath shuddered and my insides curled and clenched when I realized what was happening.

It was his tail.

The thick tail was draped over Varrow’s knee and was reaching back around me, stroking between my legs from behind. I cried out, rocking backwards instinctively as his tail pushed further between my legs and bumped my clit.

“You are… So wet,” Varrow breathed, his gaze feverish. “I can feel how wet you are.”

I moaned, arching, as his tail slicked back and forth over me.

“It’s because you made me wait so long,” I moaned. I didn’t just mean right now – I meant this whole time. All the time I’d been alone with him, I could have been experiencing this.

Why the fuck is his tail getting me so hot?

I was soaked, and Varrow’s tail was now slippery. So slippery that on one of his rhythmic passes, the tip nudged just inside my entrance.

He froze. I almost came when a tremor of tension moved through him, making his tail vibrate against me. Inside me.

“Don’t pull out,” I begged. Desperate, white-hot need building in my core, I sucked his shaft back into my mouth. As I sucked and jerked and played with his cock spears, Varrow grew bolder with his tail. He pushed further inside, further, until he was stretching me with the girth of it. Slowly, as if experimentally, he drew out, only to thrust it back in.

It was so much like a cock…. But different, too. It was more muscular. He had more control of it. Easing it in and out. Curving it to stimulate every secret place. Swirling the tip inside me. And every time his hips bucked or jerked, it created a domino effect of shuddering motion that vibrated inside me.

“You… You are squeezing me,” Varrow gritted out. “So tight. Hot and wet…” His cock throbbed, swelling further in my mouth. “I cannot stop watching my tail rutting you.”

The fact I was on my hands and knees facing towards him meant the view probably wasn’t all that good. Which gave me a tantalizing idea.

Easing my mouth off of his cock with a slick popping sound, I re-positioned myself, moving slowly so that I didn’t lose contact with that thick and thrusting tail. I stopped moving when my ass was towards him. I leaned forward, sinking down onto my elbows, turning my head and pressing my cheek to the soft hides. I arched my hips up and back, spreading myself for his gaze.

A shuffle of movement had me craning my neck back to see what he was doing.

Varrow had moved to his knees, closer to me. His massive clawed hand glided up and down his cock as he stared, his gaze murderously intent upon me.

His tapered tail pressed further, making my eyes roll back in my head.

“I can see how I’m stretching you,” he panted. I became aware of the erotic slapping sound of his fist, increasing in speed as he jerked off harder. Heat built inside me, teased into massive flames when Varrow’s tail began to twist while it thrusted. Unable to help myself, I reached between my legs, massaging my clit.

“I’ve dreamed of stretching you like this on my cock.”

The dark, commanding edge to those words, and the image they created, shocked me. My fingers dug desperately against my clit as I clenched around him.

“You’re getting tighter,” Varrow hissed.

I didn’t need him to tell me. I already knew.

I was coming. My whole body coming apart against him and around him. I mewled, my mouth hanging open in slackened pleasure as Varrow continued the motion that was so fucking perfect – that twisting thrust.

“J’arrive. I’m coming! Varrow…. Putain. Varrow. Je t’aime. I love you!”

At those last words, Varrow’s tail tightened, twanging with tension inside me. I could feel my core continuing to spasm, massaging around him, as ecstatic shivers rained down on me.

No, something was actually raining down on me…

Varrow’s hot come was spurting all over my lower back and ass.

Yes!

I rocked back against his tense tail, grinding on him. His orgasm renewed mine, making me quake as I stared back at him taking his pleasure. His fist slowed somewhat, drawing sensually along his still-spurting cock. His gaze was laser-focused on my spread pussy, on the place his tail was fucking me. His seed coated me, coated him, coated the place where we were joined.

Without thinking, I reached back, drawing some of his wetness onto my fingertips. I massaged it into his tail and slicked it over my stretched entrance.

Varrow growled, drawing his tail slightly out of me. He rained down more seed upon it, then thrusted inside once more.

Even more of him is inside me now, I thought giddily.

Dizzily, actually.

My muscles sagged, and I let out a soft “oof” when my body hit the ground.

“Cam-Eel? Cam-Eel!”

I moaned in complaint when Varrow slipped his tail out of me, leaving me empty and aching.

I rolled weakly onto my back as he scrambled over me, looming above me on his knees. He scraped my sweaty hair back from my forehead, his face coming so close that his nose bumped mine.

“What is wrong with you?” he demanded. If there weren’t a bite of panic to his words, I would have gotten offended.

So blunt. Classic Varrow.

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” I retorted. “I’m just weak from hunger and the most mind-blowing orgasm of my life.”

“Mind… Blowing… What did I do to your mind? Tell me it is still intact.”

“Barely,” I muttered, sighing as an aftershock of pleasure made my insides contract. My eyes slid closed.

I probably would have passed out right there if Varrow hadn’t made a terrified choking sound.

My eyes snapped open.

“Varrow, my mind is fine. It’s a human expression. It means, like, amazing. Incredible.”

“So you are saying that I’ve pleased you?” the fear faded from his voice, replaced by a rumbling, husky tone that made my nipples tighten.

“Yes. I am.” I smiled and planted a soft kiss on his mouth that hovered just above mine. Then, drawing back, I added “Now would you please, please, go get your mate some food?”

After all the kerfuffle with the ablokoi, we’d found a spot to set up the tent and hadn’t had a chance to eat. If I’m hungry, he must be absolutely starving. He had about 80 extra kilos of muscle to fuel, not to mention all the energy he’d burned actually fighting with the ablokoi.

I would have offered to go get him something to eat after everything that had happened today, but I knew I wouldn’t be much good at hunting or foraging something for us. Besides, Varrow was already rising and re-fastening his loincloth.

“You will be safe up here while I am gone. Do not leave the tent or this stone platform,” he said.

His words sobered me, bringing me down from the ecstatic high of a few moments ago. There were dangerous things out there…

What if he runs into trouble again?

“Varrow, wait!”

But he was already gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Varrow

Ihad to refocus myself several times while out of the tent. My normally disciplined focus had vanished. I barely saw the moonlit stone floor, nor the peaks of the Death Plains mountains. I saw instead Cam-Eel’s face, the exquisite peaks of her breasts, the world-shattering way she glistened and stretched herself over my tail.

As my tail bumped a rock, I winced. Between the ablokoi squeezing it and the rigorous, Zaphrinax-shattering tightness of Cam-Eel’s cunt, it had been through a lot today. It was worth it, though. Worth the extra sensitivity and bruising to feel every catastrophic clench of Cam-Eel’s pleasure.

I gave her pleasure…

Even more than that, she said she loved me. Me.

I still could not quite believe it. The wet, ready willingness of her mouth and her hands and her cunt had helped, though. Had helped pummel it into my stubborn brain.

She loved me.

It would probably take more convincing before I believed her other claims – her claims that I was worthy of that love. I was still half-convinced that I’d somehow tricked her into her affections, even though I had not meant to.

But for now, I eased off the dread and the anxiety surrounding Cam-Eel and her love and just let myself bask in the beauty of it all. I stopped for a moment, far from the tents, tilting my head up to gaze over the star-addled sky. The stars, the line of moons, they seemed brighter. The stone around me seemed ever-so-slightly less dominating, less dangerous. These lands had taken much from me. But now, I had a new, good memory to treasure, formed between these stone peaks. The first time I truly touched Cam-Eel. The first time my tongues tasted hers. The first time I started to believe that the world could be good again.

As I paused, I drew my tail up into my hand, absentmindedly rubbing at the painful parts. I realized with a swallowed groan that Cam-Eel’s scent was still upon me. I drew the tip of my tail up under my nose, breathing in deeply.

There was a resounding pang down my spine, thickening my cock once more.

Cursed sands, would I ever be sated in my need for her?

I doubted it.

Stop dawdling. She is hungry.

I shook myself back to my task, loosing a blade from my back and stalking through the stone with renewed purpose.

A short time later, I found a Death Plains rakdo. I quickly killed the fluffy white thing and hoisted it over my shoulder. I did not immediately return to the camp, though. I spent a little longer combing through the landscape, looking for a borrot plant. I remembered Razek once mentioning that he’d fed it to Jozelyn when they’d been here together last and that she’d seemed to enjoy it.

Ah, there!

A short, black, tubular thing, almost looking like the small trunk of a babkit tree, but branchless. Dumping down the rakdo, I squatted beside the borrot, hacking away long strips of its bark. I held them carefully as I re-positioned the rakdo on my shoulder. After picking a few valok plants as well, I was ready.

I did not tarry on my way back to camp now.

I had someone precious waiting for me.

Someone who loved me.

And I was not about to do anything that would jeopardize that love. Namely, making my hungry woman wait for her food.

My own stomach cramping with the need to eat, I took off, sprinting.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Camille

Varrow took so long to come back that, if I weren’t feeling so lightheaded, I would have ignored his orders and gone out there looking for him. I knew I wouldn’t get very far – whoever was on guard duty out there would have seen me and stopped me. But I could have rallied a search party for him, at least.

As the minutes ticked by, my dread only grew. I imagined him caught in the endless arms of an ablokoi, but alone and unable to fight it off this time. Or I imagined him cornered by Death Plains zeelk, getting hacked to death like I’d seen happen to the crew of our ship when we’d first landed on this planet. Even though I knew it was extremely unlikely for a warrior who knew these lands, I imagined him slipping and falling into some deep, dark crevasse, never to emerge again.

I’ve only just gotten him. If I lose him…

I was just preparing myself to go out there after all, ignoring the swimming of my vision and the roiling of my empty stomach, when the sound of soft grunting and claws on stone caught my ears. I froze, half-sitting up, still naked among the hides.

The tent flap whipped open, letting in a shocking bolt of silvered light.

And in that light, lit from behind and turned into a velvety silhouette of alien perfection?

Varrow.

I sat up all the way and then rapidly moved to my feet. Bad idea.

The tent whirled, and my knees buckled.

Varrow’s arm was lightning quick. He looped it around my back, slamming me to his chest. I sighed, melting into his solid warmth. He’s OK.

“You’re back,” I murmured, feeling absurdly like I was about to cry. Again.

“Of course I am,” came the rumble of his reply. He guided me back into a sitting position on the hides and crouched in front of me. His hand grazed my jaw, catching a stray strand of my hair and fingering it reverently. “I will always be at your side. Your shadow as you stand in the light.”

“Not my shadow,” I whispered, leaning my head heavily against his hand. “My mate.”

I didn’t like that he thought of himself as the darkness trailing behind me instead of what he was: the sudden centre of my world.

“If anything, you’re the sun in this analogy,” I huffed. “I feel like I’ve been circling endlessly around you, trying to get closer to you. Like you’re exerting some kind of gravitational pull on me.”

“What is a gravitational pull?”

My stomach somersaulted, and I swallowed nauseously.

“Let’s save our physics lessons for another time. Did you bring anything to eat?”

“Ah. Yes. I dropped it earlier, when I caught you.”

He moved from his crouch to a sitting position, twisting and grabbing things from nearby. Raw rakdo meat and valok gel.

“Thank you,” I moaned, digging into the food. I knew some of the other girls didn’t like undercooked meat, but it didn’t bother me at all. I’d eaten more than enough steak tartar and beef tataki to appreciate the food that Varrow had brought, even in its slightly bloody state. Luckily, he’d already done all the cleaning and butchering for me, so all I had to do was hoover everything up.

Varrow watched me for a long time, as if making sure I wasn’t about to keel over. After he was apparently satisfied, he ate, too. It made me all warm and gooey to see him eating. To know that he was getting his fill after a long and difficult day.

“How are you feeling?” I asked softly. “How… Oh, mon Dieu! Varrow, how is your tail?” In the overwhelming passion of the evening, I’d completely forgotten his tail had been injured. “I can’t believe you let me… You know! On your tail! Are you hurt?”

“I told you before that it will mend,” he said, his words nonchalant. The verbal form of a human shrug.

“But Varrow -”

“If anything,” he continued, interrupting me, “I’m sure your body will prove to have been a healing balm for it.”

“A healing balm?”  I repeated flatly. If a healing balm was the equivalent of my needy pussy wringing the absolute life out of his poor bruised tail, then sure.

“No more tail stuff until you are healed,” I said sternly. Now that I’d eaten, I felt more strength and energy. More than enough to tell Varrow what was what.

Varrow grumbled, and I wondered if I was going to have to further argue this point with him, when he said, “Then I will simply have to find another way to fill you.”

“Fill… Me…” Heat bloomed along my neck, down into my belly. He’d just made me come, and apparently I was ready for more.

“Yes,” he murmured, leaning closer. “My cock is not injured. Nor are my tongues.”

“Oh,” I squeaked, nodding rapidly into the darkness. “Well, yes, I suppose either of those things would be acceptable. Considering they aren’t injured and all…” I was already drooling over the idea of Varrow’s head buried between my thighs. Three tongues… Sacré blue...

“But not tonight,” Varrow said. This time, it was his turn to sound stern. “You need rest.”

I wanted to whine. I wanted to climb into his lap and drag my tongue across the seam of his firmly-set lips. I wanted to seduce him.

But I wanted, even more than all of that, for him to get some sleep and a chance to heal.

“So do you,” I agreed.

Varrow gave a snort. “Me? No, little bean. I do not require rest. Not for this. Not for you. I could take you ten times this night and still be ready to fight to the death tomorrow. No, we are not stopping for my benefit. But for yours.”

“What!” I cried. “I’m not that weak!” I tried to prove it to him by wiggling forward onto my knees, planting my hand against his chest, and pushing with all my might.

Of course, he didn’t move. Barely looked like he even felt it.

He grasped my hand, drawing it up to his mouth and brushing his lips along my knuckles.

“Sleep,” he murmured against my skin.

“I don’t need to,” I said. I doubted I was very convincing, though, as a sudden yawn shuddered through me, making my mouth stretch and my eyes water.

I could feel Varrow’s knowing look, and I rolled my eyes.

“Alright. Fine. But I’m going to have a bit more food first.”

“Oh. Here. Try this,” he said, pressing something rough and crumbly into my hands. I turned around, my back to him, scooting back on my knees until I could plop myself down into his lap. His muscles hardened as the contact, then his whole torso sagged forward to embrace me. His arm wrapped around my waist, pulling my back against his chest. A prickle of pure, ticklish joy erupted along my neck when he settled his chin on my shoulder.

“What is it?” I asked about the stuff in my hands. It wasn’t meat, that was for sure. It had a bark-like texture.

“It is called borrot. The Gahnala Jozelyn enjoyed it last time she tried it. So I brought some here for you.” There was a rough modesty in his words, giving me the sense that he was trying to downplay that he’d wanted to do something special for me. I smiled, thinking about that night when he’d dumped three little beans unceremoniously into my palm after searching them out for me. I’d been so confused by the action at the time – it had seemed to mean nothing to him. At least, it didn’t seem to mean as much as it had to me.

“Hey, why did you go forage those beans for me before? I know you hate them,” I asked, settling happily against the warmth of his chest and sniffing curiously at the strips of borrot in my hand. Mmm. It smelled pleasantly bitter, like cacao powder.

Varrow paused, then gruffly answered.

“Because when you rode atop my irkdu that day and told me all about the sort of man you wanted, you told me that receiving gifts was important to you.”

I pursed my lips to hold back the high-pitched sound of my heart shattering into a gazillion pieces. This entire time, I’d thought I was the only one with feelings. Meanwhile, Varrow was even more lovesick than I was.

“So, when exactly did you find out I was your mate?” I asked, taking a tentative bite of the borrot. It turned powdery in my mouth, but the scent of cacao had been spot-on. It had a lovely dark chocolate flavour that coated my tongue and throat. After swallowing, I elaborated a little more on my question. “You said that you felt something for me even before the mate bond. What does that mean?”

Now that I knew Varrow loved me, I was insatiable in my need for more information. Almost like I still needed to prove to myself that this was all real.

“I was always drawn to you,” he said. “Some of it was confusion about your odd cooking habits.

I chortled, remembering the scowl on his face when we’d first spoken in the garden all those nights ago.

Are you going to put beans on the meat again tonight?

“So eventually, you found out I was your mate. Ah, that makes sense. That’s why you got added to this party at the last minute, right?”

Varrow hadn’t originally been one of the warriors who was supposed to travel out here with us. But if his mate was going, it made sense he’d want to come along too.

But he replied, surprising me with his answer.

“No. I did not know you were my mate then. I only knew that I could not let this tiny, odd beans woman travel into such hostile territory without me.”

I absorbed that while munching on the borrot.

I remembered how stunned he’d looked when I’d told him I was going on this journey into the Death Plains. How he’d immediately spun on his heel and left me in the garden after the conversation.

“So when you left me in the garden after I told you I was leaving, you were…”

“I was tracking down Gahn Razek to inform him I would accompany you.”

Inform. Not ask.

I nodded, the back of my head bumping up and down against him.

“It was not long after this that the Lavrika came to me.”

I laughed at that. The interactions we’d had up until that point, and afterwards, had been so awkward and tense.

“What did you think when you realized I was your mate?” I asked, smirking. “Were you thinking, ‘Oh, no! It’s the annoying human who ruins the meat!’?”

I was half-joking. But there was an undercurrent of vulnerable truth in my question. I’d thought Varrow disliked me for so, so long… It was hard to shake the insecurity that had come from it.

Varrow’s arm grew tighter around me. His words were harsh, but his breath was warm on my neck.

“I was terrified. Terrified of my own unworthiness in the face of your perfection. Terrified that…”

“That what?” I urged, spinning in his lap so I could take his face into my hands. It was hard to imagine my big, strong Varrow terrified of anything. Even when the ablokoi had appeared today, such a traumatic reminder of his past, he’d gone right for it, weapons ready, not hesitating in the slightest.

He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to mine.

“I was terrified that if I ever dared to try to claim you… That I’d never be able to keep you.”

Varrow…

I melted into him, wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing him. Varrow responded immediately, parting his lips, his tongues meeting mine. This kiss wasn’t as harrowed and demanding as the earlier one. This one was tender and telling. Telling me about all the hurt and fear and loneliness he’d endured while he’d tried to protect both himself and me.

As I moaned softly into his mouth, everything started falling into place. Everything about why Varrow had kept this from me for so long. He’d felt unworthy, but maybe even more than that, he was afraid of being happy.

I drew back, panting slightly, staring into the glittering sparks of his sight stars.

“Are you still terrified?” I cupped his jaw on either side, grazing the pads of my thumbs along his smooth cheeks.

He answered instantly. “Yes.”

“Why?”  I asked, startled.

“Only a man with something to lose has something to fear. And I had nothing left to lose. Until you.”

Were these the kinds of thoughts that had been running through his head the entire time? No wonder he always looked so brooding.

“Well, I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.”

Varrow still didn’t seem convinced. I brushed my lips over his, love heating me from the inside out. I’d tell him as many times as it took to make him believe it.

“Seriously. I’m your shadow now, too. I’ll always be at your side. I know you’ll always protect me. And I’ll do whatever I can to protect you, too. We’re a team, now. You and me. Whatever comes our way, we’ll face it together.”

Varrow’s fingertips skimmed up and down my spine, making me sigh.

“You and me,” he repeated.

“Yup.” We kissed again, but before it could deepen, I felt the energy I’d gained from eating start to ooze out of me. My muscles went slack, and I sagged into Varrow’s chest.

“Sleep,” Varrow said, pulling away from the kiss, as if he’d just remembered. “You need sleep.”

I nodded wordlessly. Varrow eased me out of his lap and settled me on the hides. I snuggled down, getting comfortable. But even my sleepy exhaustion couldn’t dampen the excitement that I was about to cuddle up next to my mate.

He’d better not lie at the edge, all weird and stiff like he has been up until now…

Of course, that made sense now, too. He’d been all tense and far away the previous nights because he was trying to maintain some distance and control. As frustrated as I was about not knowing he was my mate that whole time, there was something almost endearing about the way he’d been metaphorically sweating so hard, battling his desires for me.

“Oh!” I said, suddenly remembering I had to chew some of the birth control plant, fallink, before sleeping. I could feel Varrow’s gaze on me as I sat up and reached out of the bedding, grabbing my bag and pulling out a fallink leaf. I held the rough, dark leaf between my forefinger and my thumb, remembering what I’d told Varrow not long ago. That as soon as I got a mate, I’d stop taking it.

A shimmering cloud of butterflies exploded in my belly at the thought of being pregnant with Varrow’s child. Of starting a family with him. I hadn’t lied when I’d said I thought he’d be a great father. And knowing I would be the one beside him…

“I could stop taking it,” I said, still holding the leaf. “We could…”

I let my words trail off. Goosebumps prickled my skin as Varrow moved closer behind me, brushing the ends of my hair away from my shoulders and running his thumb down the back of my neck.

“It’s too dangerous out here,” he said. “While travelling… No. When you decide you want to be with cub, I want you comfortable and taken care of.”

“True,” I said, laughing to cover up a small twinge of disappointment. But he was right – it would be safer this way. I doubted I’d want to be riding an irkdu all day while potentially battling morning sickness. “I like the sound of being comfortable and taken care of. So you’ll take care of me while I’m all cranky and swollen and complaining about the heat?”

Varrow growled, his fingers coming to rest on the back of my neck.

“Taking care of you is my only true desire and purpose.” His voice grew rougher. “Taking care of you makes my cock hard.”

“What!” I cried, half-shocked, half-laughing even harder. What an insane thing to say. But Varrow was deadly serious.

“Well, good thing I know how to take care of you, too,” I murmured. I was burning to take care of him in that way again, but we really did need to sleep. I popped the fallink leaf into my mouth and started chewing, getting all snuggly in the bedding hides once more.

I didn’t have to tell Varrow to come in here with me this time. He did it all on his own, and I had to keep myself from wiggling ecstatically when he spooned me from behind, looping his arm over my torso and his tail over my thighs. It felt like I’d been feeding some wild animal for weeks, a big one with fangs and claws who was viciously protecting its wound. And it was like the animal had finally come to me and fed directly from my palm. Had finally let me touch it. Had finally let me in.

I grasped Varrow’s hand in both of my own, clutching it tightly, unwilling to let him go, even in sleep.

Just as I was on the edge of drifting off, softly spoken words warmed my scalp.

“I am sorry, Cam-Eel. For not telling you. For making you wait.”

I squeezed his hand.

“I forgive you,” I whispered. “And I love you.”

I fell asleep to Varrow’s groaned reply.

“I love you. I love you. I love you…”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Varrow

Iwoke with the panicked grief that accompanies the fading of a perfect dream. My heart pounded, my stomach lurched, my hand -

My hand was held fast in two small warm ones.

It had all been real. No dream. Last night was not a fevered fantasy. Cam-Eel loved me.

I wonder how long it will take before that fact does not completely undo me.

Probably a very long time.

I fought to steady my breathing and my heart, burying my nose in Cam-Eel’s silky locks. She was still sleeping deeply – good. My little bean needed rest.

I, however, was now wide awake. Cam-Eel was curled against my chest, and my cock strained, its tip searching for her. When it bumped against her backside, I forced myself away from her.

I carefully eased my hand from her surprisingly fearsome grip and then rolled out of the hides. Cam-Eel made a sleepy mewling sound that made my balls tighten.

I need a distraction.

I slid a claw between the tent flaps, parting them slightly. Outside, dawn was a mere breath on the horizon. From up on this platform, I could see all the stone below. I could see to the edge of the mountains where we would travel today. I could see the flat grey Death Plains we would traverse.

There was still some time before I’d need to rouse Cam-Eel for the day.

Casting one longing look back at her sleepy form, and marvelling with a heartsick throb at how tiny she was among the hides, I left the tent. I’d get her breakfast now so that it was ready before she woke.

It did not take me long to scale down the stone and find a gorka for her. It was a good one, too – heavy with eggs. We still had borrot and valok from last night, so I didn’t need to get anything else right now.

On the return to the tents, I saw Kohka, Oxriel, and Gahn Razek outside the tents.

“Happy greetings, Varrow,” Gahn Razek said, a smile tugging at his lips.

“Oh?” I said, not wanting to acknowledge the gleam in his eye. The gleam that meant he, and likely the others, had heard Cam-Eel’s cries of pleasure last night. I shoved that thought away. If I thought about it too hard, I’d be tearing the ears from the heads of every warrior here. And I doubted Cam-Eel would like that.

Nor would the warriors.

Oxriel was smiling, too.

“Congratulations on your coupling, Varrow. It is good she has accepted you.”

I grunted my thanks, uncomfortable with all the attention. My sight stars flicked up to the stone platform that housed my tent.

“Go to her. The other new women are still sleeping, too. You are not needed down here now,” Gahn Razek said.

I raised my tail to him then hurried back up the incline to the platform. Back to my mate.

It felt remarkably, achingly good to have somewhere, someone, to return to.

Cam-Eel was still asleep when I entered the tent. I ate some of the food, saving the best bits for her, then split open a talka stalk. I cleansed my body with quick strokes while she slumbered, pleased to see that my tail and wrist still seemed to be merely bruised, and no other injuries had become apparent overnight.

I scrubbed my loincloth, too, reaching out of the tent and laying the garment flat on a rock just outside so it could dry in the dawn air of the desert.

A sleepy voice made me turn back to the tent’s interior.

“Can I have some of that?”

I crouched before Cam-Eel.

“The food? Or the talka?”

“Oh! I meant the talka. I didn’t realize there was food yet.”

“Of course there is. I promised to take care of you,” I reminded her.

She smiled, nodding.

“I remember.”

Evidently, she remembered the other thing I’d said about taking care of her. Both our gazes fell to my bare, swelling cock.

“Eat,” I said, clearing my throat. I thrust food at her, ignoring the pounding growing between my legs. I watched her as she ate, my body’s need growing stronger as I watched her little mouth and jaw work over the food. Only last night that sweet mouth had sucked me. And I’d glimpsed paradise.

My jaw grew tight, my fingers twitching to reach for her. The bedding was bunched up around her waist and torso, covering her breasts and the hot wet place between her legs. My gaze licked hungrily over her neck, her bare shoulders, her curved calves. Her hair was mussed from sleep in an adorable fashion. Thinking about her hair had me running my fingers over my own, making sure it was pushed back just the way my mate liked it.

As she finished her meal, I grabbed some talka for her, splitting the stalk and offering it to her.

“Thank you,” she said. In the greyish morning light, I could see a darkness blooming in her cheeks. My cock jerked.

Keeping my gaze locked with hers, Cam-Eel pushed the hides from her body.

Sands alive.

I could see well at night, but having her naked in the dawn was a thousand times more potent. The throbbing of my cock was echoed everywhere – my entire body beat with it, the drum of relentless need.

Cam-Eel squeezed talka gel from the long stalk and then combed it through her tangled hair. She let her eyes flutter closed as she wiped at her face. My gaze was nailed to her white hands as they made her neck, shoulders, and arms glisten with the slick gel. Her eyes opened, her gaze heavy-lidded, as she massaged talka gel into her breasts. Her slender fingers traced her nipples, making them pucker and harden. My tongues thrashed in my mouth, dying to follow those fingers. To take the nipples into my mouth and suck, just as she’d done to my cock.

But her hands were already moving on – over her flat feet with her many tiny toes, up her legs. Between her legs.

I thrummed, my cock as taut as an arm primed to throw a spear, as Cam-Eel spread her slim thighs. She worked talka gel into the dark thatch of hair above her sex, her breath growing more erratic as her fingers probed downward, sliding over the folds.

The perfume of her need mixed with the tang of the talka, creating a heady mixture I could no longer hold myself back from.

With one sharp movement, I hurtled forward, burying my head between her perfect thighs.

Cam-Eel gasped.

“Wait! The talka -”

“It’s fine,” I ground out, dragging my nose reverently through her damp curls. While talka wasn’t something we consumed for sustenance, it was not poisonous.

I pressed my nose lower, soaking it in the wetness of the talka and her core, breathing in deeply, as if only her scent could keep me alive.

It felt that way. Like I would collapse without her. Her body was a lifeline. Her heart a tether for my own.

With a groan, I unleashed my tongues.

Cam-Eel sucked in a breath then muttered something I could not understand. My sight stars raked up the front of her bare body, lingering on her pulsing throat, then taking in the slack expression of pleasure on her face.

The taste of the talka soon gave way to hers. The sweetness sifted over my tongues, permeating my nose and throat, until I could feel my cock dripping in response. I fought to keep my fingers still at her hip, denying myself the urge to hold her as tightly as my body screamed to. I did not want to bruise her.

Cursed sands, I could crush her.

I slicked my three tongues up and down, exploring with reverent curiosity. Every time one of my tongues met a swollen nub above her cunt, her thighs quivered and her hips bucked.

“There,” she moaned as I prodded it.

Inflamed by her pleasure, I executed her commands with gusto. I suckled the swollen nub, being careful of my fangs, before drawing back slightly. I kept my outer two tongues focused on that sensitive spot, my large centre tongue moving down, down, down. Down to her clenching core.

I nudged at the entrance, and when she buried her fingers in my hair, wordlessly begging me to rut her, I plunged inside.

Never in my most magnificent of fantasies could I ever have imagined the reality of my mate writhing on my tongues. I watched the flushing of her face, the glazing of her eyes, the puckering of her nipples and worked my tongues even harder.

They were strong. They could take it.

Cam-Eel ground against me, moaning, and I dove deeper, swirling my centre tongue inside her while circling her nub with the other two. My hand grew greedy, moving upward to palm her breast.

There was another hot drip from my cock when I felt the rough pebble of her nipple under my hand.

One of Cam-Eel’s hands shot up to hold my own in place. To make my touch even harder upon her skin.

She wanted me. She wanted my hand. My tongues.

I’d never felt so powerful. So strong.

She wants me.

And I am worthy.

“Varrow… I’m close,” she whispered, her eyes closing, her mouth falling open.

I was about to ask, close to what? when I felt a renewed shaking of her thighs and a growing tightness in her cunt.

I groaned, my eyes falling closed. I focused only on feel and taste and smell. Giving myself wholly to this perfect place between her thighs.

And she welcomed me.

Her hips drove off of the hides, a keening sound tearing from her throat as she clamped down around my tongue.

This, I thought, driving my tongue into her over and over as she rode through her pleasure. This is why I’m alive. This is why I’m here.

“I can’t,” Cam-Eel whimpered. She was no longer pulling my head closer but pushing me back. It was only that movement, coupled with the fact that she now seemed to be nearing discomfort, that convinced me to leave the place I’d otherwise happily leave my head forever.

Cam-Eel kept on pushing – pushing my shoulders until I was seated on the hides.

She crawled forward, moving her knees to either side of my hips, straddling me.

My heart hammered, then seemed to stop altogether when I realized what she was doing.

I moaned, long and low, as my cock throbbed, close to bursting. She squeezed my shoulders, sending sparks down my body.

Her soft mouth found my jaw as my fingers gripped one side of her rump. She moved yet closer, her nipples grazing my chest. I felt the hot intake of her breath against my skin as she nudged her slick entrance against my tip.

My fangs snapped against each other painfully as I fought the urge to pound her little body down upon me. Instead, I remained, taut and pained, right on the edge, right about to spill -

“Varrow!”

Gahn Razek’s call halted Cam-Eel’s movements. She hovered, her perfect cunt quivering against my tip.

“We must leave soon,” came my Gahn’s next words. Irritation surged through me. At least he is calling me from below and has the decency not to speak right outside the tent at this moment.

“No,” Cam-Eel moaned against my neck, letting her forehead drop to my shoulder. She worked her wetness over my tip, rhythmically rocking her hips.

“There’s no time,” I choked out. Not that I would take much time to fill her. No, I was sure that the spear of arousal in my groin would make my pleasure quick inside her.

But I did not want to be rushed for this.

I held Cam-Eel’s hip in a vise-like grip, keeping her from sliding further onto my cock.

Quite possibly the hardest thing I’d ever had to do.

As she whimpered in complaint, I released her hip and started jerking my shaft in quick, demanding strokes. Even though she was no longer trying to hurry the penetration, her legs wobbled, and it seemed almost as if her tightness sucked my tip inside.

I held my hips still with a near-broken warrior’s will, jerking my cock as Cam-Eel’s core massaged my tip with rhythmic pulsing. I realized one of her hands had fallen between her legs, stroking her sensitive spot, urging the clenching around my tip to grow stronger. Soon, her back was arching, sounds of cresting pleasure shuddering out of her throat.

My balls drew tight. My hand quickened.

I exploded, coating her insides and her entrance with seed.

It was perfect.

And it was nowhere near enough.

Next time I will fill her completely. Next time I will stretch her so there’s no room for anything else inside her body but me.

That brutal vow made yet more seed pump, hot waves crashing through my pelvis. Even just taking my tip was a more glorious pleasure than I’d ever experienced. My body howled to thrust upward, to bury more of myself inside her. I knew that it would only take mere moments of her clenching heat to bring me to full hardness once more. Even now, I could feel the spent organ throbbing, filling again, preparing to mate her properly.

With more strength than I even knew I possessed, I pressed against my shaft, easing its tip out of her. The pang in my blood echoed the noise of complaint Cam-Eel made.

“Later,” she murmured directly against my lips. I captured her mouth in an agonized kiss, wishing that later was right now.

But right now, the others were waiting.

And we had work to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Camille

Last night had been my first night with my mate. At least, the first night knowing he was my mate.

And this was my first day.

Even though the day was yet another one of long and gruelling travel, it was perfect.

Perfect, because the entire time, Varrow’s chest was a steady warm wall at my back. His tail a protective bar across my lap.

The entire party was eager to be free of the mountains after our run-in with the ablokoi, and we pushed the irkdu to their limits over the rocky terrain. We made good time, and by midday, the stone peaks gave way completely to the vast, daunting Death Plains.

We stopped once we were clear of the Death Plains stones, the irkdu snuffling and tossing their snouts. The plains stretched ahead like a frozen sea of grey, reflecting the harsh sun.

Gahn Razek turned his irkdu to face the rest of us, speaking from above Jocelyn’s head.

“You must follow the path Varrow and I set exactly. There are places on these plains that will swallow a man whole.”

A shiver ran through me, and Varrow’s tail tightened on my hips.

Quicksand. Lovely. What other horrors was this planet going to throw at us?

But I’m safe. Because I’m with Varrow.

I leaned back against him, beaming, beyond proud to have him as my mate. He knew the way through these lands. He’d help his Gahn lead us and keep us all safe.

But even so, even knowing we’d be able to safely cross, the idea was daunting.

“We have to go all the way across that?” I asked. It was mostly a rhetorical question. But Priya piped up from beside me on Kohka’s back.

“Actually, it’s almost more like we’re going around. We’re not crossing here.”

“She is right,” Varrow agreed. The vibration of his chest as he spoke made my spine feel all melty.

“The land we seek is beyond the ablik fields. Beyond the border of our territory,” Gahn Razek added. He gestured with his spear, and I squinted, trying to see what he was pointing at.

To our right, so far off in the distance I couldn’t tell if it was actually there or a trick of the light, was a dark band.

“Ablik fields,” I said slowly. Ablik was the black natural material that the men used to forge their weapons. There were small stores of it throughout the Sea Sands, and larger concentrations in Gahn Taliok’s mountains. But I hadn’t heard about an entire field of it.

“We must reach it and cross it,” Gahn Razek said. “I reiterate how you all must follow closely. It is easier to avoid the swallowing sand on foot, but it will be faster on our mounts. Keep your wits and stay close.”

I squeezed Varrow’s tail, anxiety shivering through me.

Varrow lowered his head, crinkling the side of my hood as he murmured, “Do not worry, little bean. I know the way.”

His words made me feel better. I trusted him to keep me safe.

And so we began our journey into the Death Plains.

Like Priya had said, we weren’t cutting across the wide expanse of the endless grey land. We skirted around much of it, at times following the line of the mountains we’d come through.

Gahn Razek rode ahead of us, then Kohka and Priya were directly behind. The other warriors brought up the rear, everyone taking care to follow the safe, unseen path.

Even keeping to our tight route, we moved quickly. The dark line of the ablik fields had seemed days away, but that had just been a trick of the light and the distance. As dusk gathered its deep golden wings around us, turning the plains red, we reached them.

Priya and Jocelyn both made shocked noises of appreciation as our group stopped. My breath caught in my throat as I saw the ablik fields up close.

I was reminded of visiting le galerie de Minéralogie et de Géologie in Paris when I was a kid. At that museum, I’d seen extraordinary gems and stones. Crystals that exploded from their cores like some kind of glittering fungus.

That was what the ablik fields reminded me of. Like those crystals. Only it wasn’t contained to small exhibits. It was an expanse of glossy, glittering spires of black stone.

“We will have to leave our mounts here,” Gahn Razek said.

I didn’t like the sound of that, but he was right – there would be no way for the big lumbering creatures, even the narrower Death Plains irkdu, to traverse this treacherous landscape. Unlike the white peaks we’d just passed through, there weren’t any flat, stony valleys to allow somewhat easier passage here. Just blooming onyx-like spikes, some tiny, clusters of them smaller than my fingers, others jutting up into the sky like cylindrical towers, piercing the sky with sharp points.

There were no broad, mountainous stones here. Only jutting columns that were nearly as narrow at their peaks as they were at their bases. In places where many of the tall spires stood, I was reminded of a dense city – skyscrapers of black crystal.

The setting sun set the ablik ablaze, the golden-red light flaming along every glassy black surface, sparkling with blinding splendour atop each spike of stone.

The evening sky drenched everything in light just as powerfully as it created its inky shadows. Shadows that almost obscured plant life I was only now just noticing. Glorious, lily-like flowers bloomed between black crystalline spikes, their buttery petals contrasting with the stone in shades of shocking satsuma orange, pistachio macaron green, and sakura mochi pink.

Compared to the white rock and grey plains we’d been travelling through the past days, the sight before us was a buffet of ultra-saturated, devastating beauty.

“We will stop briefly for food and rest,” Gahn Razek said. “But we will continue our travels soon after. It will be easier to pass through the ablik at night when the sun is not heating it.”

“Good point,” Priya muttered as she slid off of Kohka’s back. I was inclined to agree. The Zaphrinax men might have been alright walking through the black stone during the day, but us human girls were likely to get cooked faster than an egg dropped into a pot of hot bowl of broth. Even now, as the sun was near disappearing, taking its warmth with it, I could feel residual heat radiating from the ablik ahead of us in thick waves.

Varrow leaped down, helping me slide to my feet on the ground.

I turned back and patted his irkdu appreciatively.

“Merci, mon ami,” I murmured. I definitely couldn’t call Varrow’s mount, or any of the other irkdu, cute. Their massive bodies; reptilian snouts; many eyes; and many, many centipede-like legs; were rather creepy. But they were loyal animals, and they’d worked hard to bring us out here. Hopefully, this guy will have a nice rest for the next few days while we continue on.

While Varrow, Oxriel, Dalk, and Bariok went off to hunt something for our supper, Jocelyn, Priya, and I paced at the edge of the ablik fields, admiring the glittering black stone and the luscious flowers.

“Rindla flowers,” Jocelyn said, crouching down to finger the petals of an especially stunning pink flower. “Slightly different than the ones Melanie described from Taliok’s mountains, and a bit different from the ones I saw in Fallo’s territory.” Priya and I listened to our resident botanist with interest. Admiring the landscape, and learning about it, was helping me keep busy while Varrow was gone from my side. I really didn’t like being away from him.

I’d never been clingy in relationships before.

But Varrow was a whole new experience.

And frankly, I felt clingy as fuck when it came to him.

As the sun’s light completely vanished, replaced by the glow of the asteroids and stars, the ablik fields and flowers took on a whole different sort of beauty. What had been rich and warm was now metallic and cool. The stone spikes no longer reflected blinding gold but rather striking silver, their surfaces like mirrors. The rindla flowers were bleached of their vibrancy, their petals turning into quivering ghosts of their daytime selves.

The three of us continued to explore the edge of the ablik field, the sharp eyes of Gahn Razek, Kohka, and Vaxilkai on us the whole time.

“We won’t be able to get far enough away from those blokes to have a truly private conversation, but at least we can try to keep our voices down,” Jocelyn said quietly. She stepped into the shadow of an ablik spire easily six metres high and waved us closer. Priya and I gathered around her.

Jocelyn fixed her glimmering hazel eyes on me.

“So, you and Varrow?”

I could feel Priya side-eyeing me. Heat rushed to my cheeks, and I nodded.

“Oui. He’s my mate. I only just found out.”

Jocelyn snorted.

“These Death Plains knobs, I swear. Razek only spilled the beans about Varrow to me recently, too. So bloody secretive. Although honestly, I should have clued in before. No way Razek would have let any unmated bloke shack up with one of the humans and share a tent. Well… No one besides him, that is, considering that’s exactly what we did before the mate bond settled.”

“What do you think? Are you happy with him?” Priya asked from beside me.

Jocelyn eyed me keenly, waiting for my response.

“Honestly? I couldn’t be happier,” I said, unable to keep the sincere smile off of my face. “I’ve had feelings for Varrow for some time now. I’m just glad they were for the one meant to be my mate.”

“That’s good. I remember you talking about wanting a mate soon, even way back at the settlement,” Priya replied.

“I’m glad you’re happy,” Jocelyn said, grinning and brushing a stray kinky curl from her face. “I was worried for a while there – that bloke seemed utterly, madly obsessed with you, and I was worried it wasn’t in a good way. But if he was pining away with the mate bond making him go all batty, I guess his weird attitude makes some sense.”

I was glad to have my friends’ support and approval, especially considering how much Varrow had seemed to get on Jocelyn’s nerves before. But that was only because she’d been looking out for me, making sure he didn’t have any ill will towards me, and I appreciated it more than I could say.

Our little group was broken up by the return of the hunters.

When I saw Varrow leading the others back, a rakdo slung over his shoulder, I thought my heart would beat right up out of my throat. It felt so, so good to see him coming back. Coming back to me.

I picked my way through the ablik spikes, breaking into a run to meet him. He dropped the rakdo, picking up speed, his long legs flying, his arm pumping.

He swept me up until my legs were hooked around his waist.

“You were barely even gone and I missed you,” I whispered against his lips.

He growled in response before promptly shoving his tongues down my throat. I opened eagerly to him, my core heating, my pussy feeling swollen against his abdomen.

A wolf whistle made me pull away with a shocked jerk. I twisted in Varrow’s grip, my hands still plastered to the sides of his face.

Jocelyn was wiggling her eyebrows at me, and Priya was smirking from behind a hand raised demurely over her mouth. Oh well. I’d never been a prude. I leaned into Varrow, giving him one more long, messy kiss, before shimmying down to the ground. Varrow gawked at me like he was absolutely star-struck. Heavens-struck.

Love-struck.

I realized that this was the first time I’d acknowledged him as my mate in front of the others. I hadn’t tried to hide it. I wasn’t ashamed. I was proud of him, of us. Clearly, that had both surprised him and had made him happy. I slipped my fingers between his, squeezing.

“I love you,” I said. And I made sure I said it loud enough for the others to hear it too. That sent Varrow’s sight stars spinning in a dizzying display that made me giggle.

I gave his hand another squeeze. “Come on. Let’s have some food.”

Luckily, now that we were far from the mountain ablokoi, we could have a small fire. Apparently, the men often had fires here, the heat needed to forge their ablik weapons. That made sense to me, as I’d seen Serena’s mate Xyan working a fiery forge back at the settlement.

While I had no issues with the raw stuff, having cooked food after all this time was bliss. I moaned, closing my eyes as I chewed the cooked rakdo meat. At the sound I’d made, Varrow’s body went taut as a snare drum beside me, his hand frozen in mid-air bringing food to his own mouth. His sight stars slid to me, then he cleared his throat, finally managing to pop his meat into his mouth. Putain. The effect I had on him was intoxicating. I shifted closer, stroking my knee against his in evocative circles as I ate.

The next bite Varrow took was a vicious one, pummelling the meat with his fangs.

When we were finished eating, Razek banked the fire and told us to have a short rest before we set off again. Priya got comfortable, using her saddle as a pillow for a nap, and Jocelyn laid her head in Razek’s lap. Vaxilkai and Dalk sat down, leaning against spikes of ablik, while Kohka, Oxriel, and Bariok stood, the first shift of sentries guarding the group.

I didn’t feel like sitting still or sleeping right now.

I felt like getting my hot and bothered mate all alone.

I stood and reached my hand for Varrow.

“Want to come explore with me a little bit?”

Varrow glowered at me, his sight stars narrowed to glittering slits.

“You are supposed to be resting,” he said.

“I got plenty of rest last night,” I quipped merrily. “You made sure of that. Come on, we won’t go far.”

Varrow glanced at Gahn Razek, who was currently stroking Jocelyn’s curls with more tenderness than I ever could have imagined him capable of.

Razek grunted his approval, echoing my own words to his warrior.

“Do not go far.”

Varrow stood and took my hand.

Together we walked away from our little band of travellers. We entered the ablik fields. Unsurprisingly, Varrow was able to pick through the spikes of rock much more easily than I could. But he never hurried me. Just held my hand firmly in his.

“Can we go over there?” I pointed with my free hand to one of the areas that reminded me of a dense city block, with many tall ablik spires piercing upwards like buildings. Varrow looked at the spot, then glanced back towards the others.

“Yes,” he finally said. “It is not too far.”

We made our way over there. I had to be careful where I stepped. Even with my boots, I was worried about slicing my human feet open on the smaller, pointier stones underfoot.

When we entered the area of towering spikes, I tipped my head back, growing dizzy at the black spires rising up all around us. It was less like a city of buildings and more like…

A maze.

“Let’s stop here,” I said. We’d only just entered this sheltered area of tall stone spikes, but I was wary of going any further and losing my way. Of course, with Varrow, that was unlikely to happen. A wicked-good sense of direction seemed baked right into these guys’ bones. But still. I wanted to play it safe in this strange territory.

“Are you satisfied with your exploring, little bean?” Varrow asked, tilting his head as he looked down at me. A sudden wave of admiration for him made my chest ache. So tall and strong and beautiful and gruff and good. He looked so much like he had that very first night we’d spoken in the garden. The darkness lovingly painting the hollows of his face, the starlight skimming over his hair, his brows, his cheekbones.

Things have certainly changed since then…

I remembered being totally offended by him then. I remembered thinking that whatever my mate offered would be a hundred times better than him. Now, I literally couldn’t imagine someone better than him.

“Almost. There’s just one more thing I want,” I said, answering his question.

He looked at me questioningly. But the confusion faded from his features when I pulled his face down to mine.

“Ah,” he said before crushing his lips to mine.

The kiss started slow but didn’t stay that way for long. My arousal had been building since I’d kissed him upon his return from hunting, and clearly, it was the same for him. He massaged my ass, groaning into my mouth and backing me up against a smooth pillar of ablik. I gasped when my back hit the hard stone, and bit back a moan when Varrow fell to his knees in front of me, tugging at the waistband of my trousers. The feral look on his face told me he was about to destroy my clothing, so I helped him, saving the fabric from ruin. I wrestled my trousers and panties down, kicking them off my right foot so they pooled around my left ankle. Varrow’s throat contracted, his sight stars drawing into murderous points as he slipped his fingers through my curls.

Being careful of his claws, he nudged the rough pads of his fingers along my clit, growling in satisfaction when my hips jolted. He pressed further back, pained arousal flickering over his features when he grazed my needy entrance.

“Wet already,” he panted, his sight stars ripping up my body to meet my gaze.

“For you,” I panted. I pressed my lips together, my eyes shuddering closed as he pressed my clit firmly with his thumb and dragged his fingertips back and forth over my pussy.

My hips rocked forward needily against nothing when he withdrew his hand. But he didn’t leave me wanting. His hand on my hip harder than the ablik stone at my back, he dove inward to taste me.

I eased my feet apart, spreading my legs for him, desperate to give him more access. He took every inch I gave him, devouring me. He dragged his fangs through my curls before sucking fervently on my clit, making me shout with the ecstatic sensation. The suction built sweetly in my core until I was gripping the back of his head and grinding my hips with abandon. He didn’t let up and started swirling two of his tongues on my swollen clit, the largest one nudging backwards, then entering me with a bold thrust. When his tongue curled forward and started thrusting, fucking me right against my G-spot, I saw stars – brighter than the ones dancing overhead. Blazing heat coursed through my veins, culminating in my pussy. I could feel myself tightening on his tongue, could feel everything getting tingly and hot around my clit. Throwing my head back and mewling, I convulsed, coming hard on his tongues. The wave of the orgasm left me breathless, nearly senseless. Only Varrow’s hand on my hip and the ablik pillar at my back kept me from collapsing under the weight of that explosive pulsing.

Obviously, Varrow became aware of just how floppy my limbs had become. He withdrew his tongues, making me whimper, and rose to his feet immediately, caging me in against the ablik.

His expression was aching thunder. Darkness and reflective wetness.

“Are you alright?” he demanded, steadying my head with his huge hand.

“Yes. Just… It’s hard to stand. Pick me up.”

Gripping my waist and pressing his tail under my ass, he hoisted me up until my legs were wrapped around his waist. My core clenched against nothing, not yet sated. When I felt the ardent ridge of his erection pressing up against my ass. I reached under myself, stroking him clumsily through his loincloth.

Varrow hissed, his sight stars pulsing, the muscles working overtime in his strong jaw. He pressed further inward, pinning me to the stone, then took his hand out from beneath my ass. He gripped the zipper of my jacket between his claws and made a sound of grateful relief when the zipper moved downward for him. He whipped the sides of my jacket apart and yanked my tank top up to my neck so hard I couldn’t believe he didn’t tear the fabric. His gaze roamed over my bared body – my taut nipples and breasts, my abdomen, my spread thighs, my pussy pressed against his flesh. He returned his hand to support my ass, stepped backward so that my torso was on a slight angle against the stone, then hunched forward. With a fevered-sounding moan, he unleashed his tongues against my right breast.

I arched, my breath catching as his tongues slicked over my sensitive nipple. Not satisfied with just one side, he dragged his ravenous mouth over to the other.

I felt his cock jump desperately against my ass when he took my left breast into his mouth. The vibration of his muffled moan reverberated through my flesh, making me breathlessly grind my clit against the muscles of his abdomen.

The day’s heat was evaporating out of the stone at my back, leaving it cool and smooth behind me in contrast with Varrow’s forge-like furnace of a body in front of me. His mouth was a whirlpool of demanding wet heat on my breast, his fingers like molten iron on my skin. When his fang grazed my nipple, I cried out, already feeling another orgasm building like an ecstatic drumbeat in my blood.

“Varrow. I want you inside me,” I moaned, my nails digging into the rippling muscles of his shoulders. “S’il te plait, I can’t…”

Varrow released my breast.

“Cursed sands,” he swore against my damp skin. He tugged my nipple into a harder peak with another strong, greedy suck, making my belly somersault with need.

“Varrow, please,” I begged, rocking against him so hard I was basically riding his stomach, drenching his skin with my arousal. We’d gotten so close to it last time in the tent – his tip just barely pressing into me. So fucking good, but nowhere near enough. I needed more. More of that. More of him. “Give me your cock. Claim me, mate.”

If Varrow were trying to exert any kind of control, begging for his cock while calling him my mate snapped it like an overwrought rubber band.

He dragged his mouth from my breast, trailing carnivorous kisses up my chest. His fangs nipped at my collarbone, sending a painful pang down my spine. Then his possessive mouth found the pulse of my neck, sucking hard.

I’m definitely going to have a hickey, I thought giddily. I hadn’t had a hickey in years. But I wanted Varrow to mark me. Dig in his fangs and brand me.

I was his. And I wanted the world to know it.

“I can’t wait for you to claim me,” I whimpered, barely aware of what I was saying. “I want you to stretch me out on your cock the way you said you would.”

Varrow’s tongues found my ear. Shivers erupted when he groaned wetly against the soft lobe.

“If I’d known my little bean was such a needy thing I would not have kept her waiting this long.”

Fuck! I liked bold, filthy Varrow. I liked every version of him. Grumpy and closed-off. Lovesick and awkward. And just like this, with his demanding mouth and hand, adjusting his hips so that his fat cock nudged at my pussy’s opening.

He drew back just a little so that we could lock our glassy gazes. I nodded, pawing at his shoulders.

His face darkened and he breathed tightly between clenched fangs as his hips notched forward, pushing inside.

Dieu. It was a tight fit. And I could tell I barely had half of him inside me.

Varrow’s lips twitched.

“You’re so small. I don’t want to -”

“You can hurt me,” I breathed, wiggling, working myself further into his rock-hard dick. I wasn’t into pain, but in that moment I didn’t give a damn. I needed whatever he had to give me.

“Cam-Eel,” he murmured, a dark edge of warning to his voice. “Do not say things you do not mean.” His expression softened slightly, and his fingers stroked gently over my ass. “I only want goodness for you.”

“Then give me the goodness of your cock,” I ordered, rocking against his hugeness, trying to take more inside. “I want it.”

His tail jerked on the ablik ground and a tremor ran through his muscles, making his cock shudder deliciously inside me.

“Slowly,” he said sternly.

I almost wanted to laugh. Usually, you’d expect things to be the other way around. The virgin guy to be ramming into you with no idea what he was doing, going as fast as his instincts directed him to. And I could tell that Varrow wanted to. That his body was begging him to pound into me with abandon. But he cared about me and my experience. He truly only wanted goodness for me.

And so he drew back and stroked back in with maddening slowness.

It was probably good that at least one of us was taking it slow. Because he really was fucking huge. My pussy burned, stretching to accommodate him, as he worked in and out with controlled, meticulous efforts.

I couldn’t stop watching him as he gradually fucked me. And he couldn’t seem to stop staring at the place his dick disappeared inside me. His sight stars were pinned savagely to the vision of his cock sliding in and out of my pussy.

Soon, he was deep enough for his cock spears to tickle my flesh, sending tantalizing ripples throughout my groin. I reached down between us, clutching at the nimble spears of flesh, pressing them upward until they were crushed against my clit. They slid up and down with each of his measured thrusts, turning my clit into an engorged point of incandescent pleasure.

I could feel myself opening for him, loosening. Letting him in.

He must have felt it too, because he cursed under his breath and started snapping his hips quicker, driving into me deeper.

“Yes, Varrow,” I moaned, throwing my head back against the ablik pillar. “It’s so good. You’re so good. So, so good. My good boy.” I only realized after I’d said it that it probably sounded kind of goofy. But I didn’t need to worry about whether it had bothered Varrow. He groaned, then hitched closer, stepping up to me and forcing my thighs wider apart, crushing his chest against mine.

His sight stars searched my eyes, penetrating me more deeply than his thick cock.

“Say it again,” he rasped.

I drew my hands up the sides of his neck to his cheeks. I pressed one of my thumbs into his mouth and he sucked it greedily.

“You’re my good boy. So good. My good mate… The best mate… Ah!”

Varrow thrusted deeper than he ever had before. His hips pistoned powerfully against mine, his shaft hammering into me, his cock spears grinding on my clit until I was clenching around him, ecstatic and undone. My nipples pricked against his hard chest, and my thumb throbbed in his mouth as a tsunami crashed through me. The tsunami was him and me clenching around him and the stone at my back and the heat of our breath. The cold air and biting stars. The push and pull. The stretch and fill.

I clamped down on him so hard as I came I thought he’d never be able to pull out.

And that made me deliriously happy.

I was barely able to focus myself enough to say the next words as I gasped and convulsed. But somehow, I rallied a hidden vestige of hardened will, training my weakened gaze on his face while I cried my little human heart out.

“I’m never going to fucking let you go.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Varrow

Cam-Eel claimed she would never let me go, and it seemed her body was following through on it. She gripped me, milking me with her cunt until I could no longer hold back. I snarled, my tail tingling, my balls drawing tight, my shaft urging just a little deeper inside her. I rammed forward, and she took all I had to give, her cries of pleasure punctuating each of my unspooling movements. All sense of control was gone now. There was the only pent-up need from days upon days of yearning for this perfect creature.

The perfect creature who loved me.

I dragged my nose along her oddly bony one, my mouth finding hers in a tumultuous kiss as my hips lost their rhythm. My tongues met hers, breaching her, penetrating her just as my cock did. Her wet swollen flesh against my cock spears sent zings of pleasure shooting to my shaft’s base.

“Then do not let me go,” I breathed, my mouth still hot against hers. “Tie me. Leash me. Tame me. I am forever yours.”

She squeezed me again, her eyes screwing shut, and I exploded.

It was more than merely seed I drove into her over and over again.

It was a physical vow to bind the words I’d just said.

She will never need to leash you, I realized as my pelvis quaked, grinding through my orgasm. And she has already tamed you.

I caught her lips with my own again, sucking the bottom one between my fangs and groaning when that made her shiver. She quivered around my cock, drawing another spurt into her depths.

Eventually, she eased from the kiss, breathing heavily, her head leaning back against the ablik pillar. She watched me through glazed eyes. The moonlight bathed her devotedly, as if exalting in her beauty. Shimmering on her wet lips, painting her curved cheeks, tasting her nipples.

My throat tightening, I hunched down again, sucking her right breast into my mouth. So plush, with that hard little peak… It made my cock twitch, already ready to start thrusting into full hardness once more.

“Varrow… We can’t stay long,” my mate moaned, writhing against me.

I wanted to tell her to forget that – to forget everything and everyone else.

But I knew she would not do it. She was too good, and she cared too much for the others.

We could not stay here, among the spires of silent ablik, forever.

Clutching her backside, I eased her off of the ablik pillar she’d been propped against.

My cock throbbed in complaint at what I was about to do, but I dutifully ignored it, supporting her with my tail and easing her up and off of my stiff shaft, then down to her dainty feet.

“My panties are going to be soaked,” she said with a weak laugh, pulling her clothing back into place.

“Good,” I muttered, watching her hungrily as I replaced my loincloth. I wanted her to remember how wet with need she’d been.

And how much seed I’d given her.

The possessiveness I felt for her had not eased with claiming her. It only grew larger, thornier, poking at my ribs and making it harder to breathe. It made my next words annoying in the extreme.

“Come. We must rejoin the others.”

ONCE WE HAD MET BACK up with our party, we did not wait long to depart. I carried Cam-Eel upon my back, re-arranging my weapons so that they were strapped to my chest instead of my back. Gahn Razek did the same with his mate, and Kohka continued to carry Priya in her saddle. This slick, sharp area of stone was not so easy to walk over, especially if one wanted to cross it quickly. And we did, considering we needed to get beyond it by daybreak. So it was faster to carry the new women.

And… I just wanted her touching me. Leaning on me. Holding me and relying on me. It wasn’t Dalk or Oxriel or any other man helping her now.

It was me.

Her mate.

We passed through the ablik fields in silence. I tried to ignore the heat of Cam-Eel’s cunt against my back, holding fast to her left thigh with my hand and supporting her right with my tail. Other than the sound of claws on ablik, things were quiet. Almost eerily so.

The ground began to slope downwards, making the way more treacherous, slowing our progress. Razek and I both grew tenser, acknowledging without words that this was farther than we’d ever come before. The ablik fields marked the edge of our territory. We had never needed to go beyond. We retrieved our ablik from the edge of the fields that ran alongside the Death Plains. If anything, we only ever needed to travel further in the opposite direction, into the Sea Sands, when summoned by the Lavrika.

We were entering unknown territory.

The territory of, perhaps, a sixth tribe.

From what I understood, the signs of the sixth tribe seen on the human scanners were still a long way off. But now that a sandstorm that had been brutalizing their territory had finally shifted, so too might have those warriors.

They could be much closer to us, even now…

I was barely aware of time passing as I trained all my senses on the landscape around us. At some point, Cam-Eel fell asleep, her arms going slack around my neck, her cheek squished into the back of my shoulder. Having her sleeping, so comfortable and safe on my back, made my innards softer than the cheek now crushed against me. I had to remind myself to focus on my surroundings. But even so, I could not fight what I was sure was an idiotic grin on my face.

But as unaware of it as I was, time was passing all the same, as was the land beneath our feet. The ground continued in its downward slope, leading us into a wide, smooth basin of ablik. We had made it quite far down, and when I turned to see where we’d come from, the ablik rose up in an impressive, steep formation. Not quite a mountain – the incline was a little too gradual. But it was a hulking, sloped wall behind us. Impossible to see the Death Plains now.

“I did not realize we had come so far already,” I said quietly to Gahn Razek as our group moved through the basin. After the uneven spikes of the fields and slope we’d come from, this smooth ablik flooring felt unnaturally slippery. My claws clacked against it as I maintained my footing, trying not to jostle Cam-Eel in her sleep.

“Nor did I,” Razek agreed. “But look. Dawn approaches. We have walked nearly all night.”

He was right. The sky was lightening, turning pale in contrast with the pure black of the material underfoot.

Without having to say it, we all increased our pace, knowing that we needed to be out of this black bowl before the sun got too high and heated the air beyond what the new women could handle. My increased pace forced Cam-Eel into wakefulness. She yawned, her arms growing tight around my neck once more.

“Good morning,” she murmured against my neck.

“It will be when we are clear of the ablik,” I growled in response, urging my legs into a jog. The others did the same.

The ablik basin ended in a sheer drop-off. We hurried to the edge, looking out at the new land beyond.

“Whoa,” Cam-Eel said.

The land spread before us was hard and cracked, like the Death Plains we’d come from. But unlike those plains, the ground was not pale, dusty grey, but rather a shocking azure blue, deeper and more brilliant than the sky at midday. The blue plains were not empty, but dotted with large, silver-skinned succulent plants that looked to be taller than a man, narrow at their bases then bulbous at their heads.

“Those look like gigantic mushrooms,” Cam-Eel said, presumably referring to the huge plants casting shadows down from their wide, curving tops.

More rindla flowers grew in the cracks of the plains below, their petals shivering in shades of pale purple and dusk-indigo. I was relieved to see valok plants, too. We’d brought extras in our packs for this portion of the journey, but it was good to see they grew here and that we would not run out.

Far off in the distance, a foggy jagged line appeared to indicate mountains beyond the plains below us.

“It’s too bad Melanie isn’t here,” the Gahnala Jozelyn said from Razek’s back. “She’d be able to tell us what mineral makes the ground that crazy colour.”

I didn’t care a whit about minerals. I cared about what danger these unknown lands might pose to my mate. I sniffed, trying to scent any natural predators that may have been lurking.

Or warriors.

But my nose, and my eyes, did not pick up on any unusual danger.

The sun drew higher above us. Cam-Eel loosed one of her arms from my neck to pull up her hood.

“Dalk, Oxriel, Bariok, and Vaxilkai,” Gahn Razek said, turning to the other men. “You go first and make sure the way is safe for the new women.”

They raised their tails in acquiescence and then leaped from the ablik edge, their bodies pummelling down to the ground like spears. It was a sheer drop, but not much taller than a man’s full height. There would be no injuries from a jump like that, and we’d be able to pull ourselves back up if needed.

Kohka, Gahn Razek, and I leaned over the edge, watching the four warriors below. The women on our backs watched too. I spied Priya working feverishly on a white square held flat against Kohka’s shoulder. Her hand flew, dragging a tiny black tube, as she stamped the shape of the landscape into the white square.

“There does not seem to be any imminent danger, Gahn,” called Oxriel from below. “And the ground seems uniformly stable, unlike the Death Plains.”

That was good. It would be possible to traverse quicksand-laden terrain safely without knowing the route, but it would take much more time to test the ground ahead before every step. The other four were doing that now, spreading out, tapping and testing the cracked blue plains with their spears and finding it solid.

“Then we shall descend,” Gahn Razek said. Already, I could feel the ablik absorbing the morning’s light, heating the bottoms of my feet.

“Hold on tight, little bean,” I said.

“I will,” she replied fiercely, clenching her arms harder around my neck.

A bend of my legs. A leap, a landing.

And we were down.

Gahn Razek landed gracefully beside me a moment later.

Kohka landed on my other side, less gracefully and much more heavily, wobbling to one side before catching his balance. His shining silver sight discs slid over to Razek and me, staring at our legs.

“I was not built for jumping,” he said simply.

It was true. He was made for swimming and running on all fours and pounding ablokoi with nothing but the metal hammer of his fists. But he had made it, and Priya looked rattled, but generally alright upon his broad back.

“Strange,” I said, feeling all the more unnerved by the foreign landscape now that I was in it.

Cam-Eel giggled.

“Now you know how I felt when I first got to the Sea Sands! Well, I didn’t have much time to think about it because the zeelk made short work of tearing apart our ship.”

“We should remain quiet and try not to disturb the land too much. There could also be zeelk here, or other predators,” Gahn Razek said.

I felt Cam-Eel tense, and I squeezed her thighs with my hand and tail, trying to comfort her.

“I trust you,” she breathed. And those three soft words hardened every muscle and nerve in my body. Despite the long travels and the lack of rest, I was primed and ready to defend my woman no matter what may have come our way.

We began our trek into the blue plains. Dalk and Oxriel remained slightly ahead, leading the way with their spears and blades ready. Bariok and Vaxilkai drew up the rear, encasing the new women we carried in a protected bubble.

The huge silver succulents bloomed around us, taller than they’d seemed from above. Some of them were taller than two men put together, and they cast down far-reaching shadows. We trekked through the discs of shade those odd plants created, keeping the new women as sheltered from the sun as possible as it rose higher. The plains beneath my feet did not feel as dry and dusty as the Death Plains. The blue stuff seemed finely ground and almost soft. At one point, I paused and lifted a foot, only to see that the sole of it was coated in a powdery layer of astonishing blue pigment.

We stopped in the shade of one of the massive silver plants to drink valok. Oxriel and Dalk caught a few creatures that looked similar to rakdo but with longer, wobblier legs and shorter ears. And instead of white or reddish fur, their fur was primed for this landscape, glossy and blue.

After the short rest and meal, we continued on our way. As the ablik fields, and the territory we knew, receded further and further into the distance behind us, the higher my hackles rose. If this sixth tribe was anything like ours, there could be hunting and patrolling parties scouring all corners of their territory.

But we came across no other men as the day drew to a close. At the horizon, the peaks of dark, foreign mountains loomed a little higher and clearer, but still far from us.

We stopped to make camp under a cluster of the large silver things, their broad trunks and overhangs giving a sense of shelter in this strange land. We decided not to make a fire and ate our evening meal raw.

As I set up our tent, I watched Cam-Eel and her human friends admire one of the largest silver plants in this cluster. Cam-Eel’s slender finger stabbed forward, poking the skin of the trunk.

“Whoa! It’s so smooth. Feel it! It feels like a doll-fin’s skin or something,” she squealed. The other two immediately began poking and prodding the plant too, clearly excited by its novel texture. Jozelyn started chattering away about what it could mean, saying that she’d have to get a sample. She had some kind of obsession with plants that I did not understand.

But then again, there were many things I did not understand about my little mate’s people.

As the moons and stars turned the land from blue to purplish-black, our camp was ready for the night.

Gahn Razek assigned the guard duties, but I barely heard him. I was fixated on Cam-Eel’s smiling face as she talked with her friends. Obsessed with the fact that I’d soon have her alone in my tent again.

I knew I needed rest after not sleeping at all last night and walking all day.

But I needed her first.

Eventually, she caught me staring, and her smile faltered, her cheeks darkening. She said a quick word to Priya and Jozelyn and then left their group, walking towards me as if drawn by a powerful, invisible force.

That same force propelled me into motion. I crossed the distance between us until I could catch her slender neck under the dark pinions of my fingers. My thumb brushed the quick, delicate pulse-point between her collarbones.

I lowered my mouth to hers-

- then froze, hovering a claw tip’s width from her lips.

“What is it?” she whispered, her breath fanning against my face.

I straightened, turning to glare between the trunks of the silver plants that Cam-Eel had called mushrooms.

I could not tell Cam-Eel what was wrong. I could only feel the sudden plummet of dread in my chest, the skittering over my skin that made me bare my fangs.

The other warriors felt it, too, lifting their noses and sniffing, ears twitching. Kohka rose from the place he’d been curled, and a moment later Gahn Razek emerged from his tent, his expression thunderous.

“What’s out there?” he snarled, snatching a long blade from his back.

“Into the tent,” I snapped at Cam-Eel, spinning and pushing her towards it.

“Wait, why? What’s wrong?” she asked again, her face fearful.

“I do not -”

My words were cut off by a sky-tearing screech.

It reminded me of something. Not exactly the same, but similar enough.

The cry of a krixel.

Not just a krixel. The cries of more than one.

Cursing, I whirled, drawing a blade and hurtling out of the shelter of the camp. The other men followed, and we turned our gazes to the sky.

Above us, black silhouettes snapped great wings, blocking out portions of the star-stricken sky. The creatures screeched again – three of them, and bigger than any krixel I had ever seen.

My fangs gnashed, a hiss building in my chest as I realized it was not only the cries of winged beasts on the air.

But also the cries of the men who rode them.

“There are warriors!” Gahn Razek bellowed, hoisting his weapons higher.

I’d lost my spear to the ablokoi’s tentacles so I had no easy projectile. But when one huge winged creature drew near, I hurled my blade. The riding warrior, his hair pulled back in a tight braid, knocked it aside, calling a war cry to the others.

My limbs lurched as weapons rained down at us, one after the other. So quick it seemed impossible that they were spears.

I yanked my left foot out of the way just in time to avoid getting sliced by one. I ripped it from the ground and held it up to my face. It was spear-like but very small. About the length of my arm, with a smooth, perfectly straight bone body and a flat triangular blade at its tip. Another of the odd spears thudded near me, making me snatch my tail out of the way, snarling.

The three winged creatures circled and screeched. They were not krixel. That was clear now. They were much larger, with wider wingspans. They had long faces with hard beaks and feathered bodies and wings. They also had many legs, much like an irkdu.

But irkdu could not fly and help their masters rain blades down upon their enemies.

And enemies we clearly were to them.

“We are here to speak to your Gahn in peace!” Razek shouted, knocking away one of the odd, small spears. My sight stars seized on the man who’d thrown that spear. No, not thrown. The warriors were launching the spears from twanging contraptions.

If the warriors heard and understood Gahn Razek, they ignored him, howling their war cries and sending down yet more of their spears. One clanged off of Kohka’s scales, and he let loose a terrific cry of rage that made the winged beasts scatter.

But their riders urged them back. And so they flew and dove, coming for us.

There were only three of them and six of us, but they had the advantage of fighting us from their flying mounts.

That did not matter, I decided, roaring and hurling another blade, narrowly missing the wing of a nearby beast.

It did not matter if they had one advantage or one thousand.

I was a warrior with something to lose.

And I absolutely would not lose her.

I glanced back, ever-so-briefly, pained to see that Cam-Eel had not listened to my instructions. She had not remained in the tent. None of the new women had. They peered out from between the trunks of the silver succulents, watching the scene with wide eyes and tight mouths. When her eyes met mine, they grew even wider.

“Varrow! Be careful!”

One of the enemy warriors caught sight of the camp.

My vision went black with rage when he banked his mount towards the tents.

Towards my mate.

The three women stumbled backwards into the shadows when he landed his mount. The warrior leaped down, stalking into the camp.

I sprinted, venomous hatred pounding through my veins. Replacing every stroke of love Cam-Eel had fostered there.

No. The venom was born from that love.

Born so that I could protect her.

The warrior did not make it two paces into the camp before I was upon him, cleaving down against his neck and shoulder with a fresh blade.

We fell to the ground together, writhing and wrestling.

He had two hands to my one, but it did not matter.

Because I had something precious to protect.

I pierced my weapon further into him before ripping it out of the deep wound I had created. I plunged it into his guts.

A human scream somewhere above me sounded like it was far-off in the distance. I could barely register it. I was so focused on killing this man. The warrior who had dared come near my mate with his weapons drawn.

He looked like a man of the Sea Sands, at least from what I could tell in the darkness. His sight stars spun, chaotic in his dying blood lust. Hot black blood pulsed from his wounds, coating my hand. His claws grappled at my wrist, my chest, my neck. The scratches were a far-away burn. A mere echo of a feeling.

Life filtered out of him, and he went limp.

Cam-Eel.

My head snapped up to find my mate staring, half-hiding behind the stalk of one of the silver plants. I rose, heart hitching, chest aching, needing to be near her.

Needing to make sure she was alright.

“Varrow!” her scream rattled my bones and set my fangs on edge.

I raced to her, drawing her to my chest, grasping her softness tightly. I would have to go rejoin the fray any moment. But I needed this. This one small pulse of peace.

Cam-Eel sobbed against my chest as I dragged my bloody hand up her back, clutching at her hair.

Her ragged breath filled the air, her heartbeat calling in time with my own as I held her.

Safe. Perfect.

Mine.

But…

No.

Not safe.

The prick of my ears. A whizzing through the air.

The slam of my hand on Cam-Eel’s chest, shoving her away from me just as the spear hit its mark.

I watched Cam-Eel’s face grow white and terrible. Watched her mouth open into a scream I could not hear.

Watched the hard tip of the spear emerge from the front of my chest, its shaft running right through my heart from the back.

My throat convulsed. My fingers clutched at nothing, falling through the air.

I already knew I had very little time.

I could have said, “I love you.”

I could have said, “Goodbye.”

Blood spewed up my throat. I swallowed it down to speak, hoping against hope that my mate would hear me. That this time she would listen.

I fell to my knees, pinioning her with my gaze as I rasped the word.

“Hide!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Camille

The entire world had ended. Shattered right in front of me. Varrow was on his knees, a despicable arrow sticking out of his chest like some kind of horrific movie prop.

But this wasn’t a movie.

This was my real fucking life.

And that was my mate. Who’d just used one of his last breaths to tell me to hide.

Fuck that.

My boots slid as I launched into motion, running for him.

But a hard arm locked around my waist, pulling me back.

“No!” I screamed.

I have to get to him.

I kicked and bit and fought, not caring if it was a man I knew or an enemy who’d grabbed me.

“Please, Cam-Eel! I must get you somewhere safe!”

I recognized Oxriel’s voice, but that didn’t make me feel any better.

If he was keeping me from Varrow, then he was my enemy now, too.

“Let me go, Oxriel! Let me down! I have to get to him. I have to.”

My words died when I watched Varrow collapse forward, his fingers digging into the blue dirt. Blood splattered out of his mouth, turning the ground into mud.

And I fucking lost it.

I reached back and scrabbled for any hold I could find, pulling on Oxriel’s long hair, his ears.

But it did nothing to deter him. He kept me fastened with his right arm, his left arm brandishing a sword as he backed us up towards the tents.

“I am sorry,” Oxriel grunted.

Sorry?

It reminded me of what people said to me after my parents died.

It felt paltry then.

It felt absolutely pathetic now.

Varrow sank further to the ground, leaning heavily back onto his heels, his knees digging into the ground, his forehead pressed against his forearm on the ground.

He’s dying.

He’s dying and I’m not even there.

I wept, trying to keep my words coherent among the tears.

“Oxriel, please, please,” I begged. “I have to go to him, I have to be with him. He’s going to…” I couldn’t say it. If I said it, it could make it real.

Maybe none of this is real.

But Oxriel’s solid arm at my front and his chest at my back certainly felt real. So did the sounds of battle – the yipping cries, the bellowing barks, the clashing blades.

The sight of Varrow on the ground.

Oxriel didn’t have time to answer me. Because another winged thing landed just outside the grove of giant silver mushrooms. I couldn’t even feel the terror when the enemy advanced. My whole body, my heart, was back with Varrow. My mate. Bleeding out alone on the ground.

Oxriel shoved me behind him, baring his fangs and slashing his blade. The other warrior advanced rapidly, and soon the two of them were locked in heavy combat. Oxriel let go of me, needing both his hands to fight the other man off. I was vaguely aware of the glimmer of Kohka’s scales as he fought with one of the nasty winged creatures nearby.

But I didn’t care about any of that. I didn’t even care if I died right now.

All I cared about was Varrow.

His name caught like a stone in my throat as I sprinted to him, my vision blurred with tears.

I fell to my knees beside him and grasped his shoulders.

His skin felt cool.

I wracked my brain.

In all the time I’d known him, had his skin ever felt cool to the touch?

I knew the answer deep in my churning guts before it hit my brain.

No. He’s always been warm.

Relief exploded in my chest when he made a gurgling sound in response to my touch. He heaved himself to the side and then rolled onto his back so he could see me. My panicky, shaking fingers skimmed down his neck to his chest. Right to the putrid arrow sticking out of him, jutting between his straps.

There was no way I was strong enough to pull it out. And besides, what would that accomplish? Speed up his bleeding, that’s what. We had some first aid stuff in the tents, but no Lavrika’s blood nearby. Nothing that could fix this.

Nothing that would do my mate any good.

“You’re going to be OK,” I said stoically, willing myself to stop crying. “I’m going to fix this and you’re going to be fine.”

“Cam-Eel.”

Dieu, I hated the way he sounded. His voice was awful and wet and reedy. Black blood coated his chin and cheeks, more of it dribbling out every time he opened his mouth. His breath crackled horribly as it sucked in and out of his chest.

“Don’t talk,” I ordered him. His smoky sight stars were unspooling across his eyes in a misting haze. Can he even see me?

Whether he could see me or not, I didn’t know. And I wasn’t even sure now if he could hear me, because he’d ignored my command not to speak.

His hand rose weakly, clutching at the side of my neck.

He fixed his hazy sight stars on me

“Cam-Eel… My dream…” he whispered, coughing on his blood.

“Varrow, stop!” I cried. I couldn’t hold back the tears now. My stoicism, my strength, was shot to hell.

Varrow was the strong one.

He always had been.

“My dream…” he repeated. His hand slid heavily down my arm. I caught it in my own, drawing it up to my cheek and rubbing his knuckles furiously against my skin.

“I was… Afraid. Too afraid to even dream you.”

I squeezed his hand as hard as I could.

“You’re the bravest person I know, Varrow. You will get through this. Listen to me. Varrow!”

But he wasn’t listening.

I’m losing him.

Varrow slid his hand from mine. The pain that was etched into his face faded, replaced by sombre acceptance. He gasped weakly. “This…” He touched his wound, slipping his fingers through the blood, then gestured towards me. “Always meant to be.”

“What? What are you talking about?” I sobbed, grabbing his hand once more. Was he gesturing at the two of us, saying we were meant to be?

Or that this moment – him dying to protect me – was how things were always meant to end?

I refuse.

I refused all of it. His words, this night. Destiny that had made itself so beautiful before collapsing into darkness.

I released his limp hand, pressing both my palms to his wound, steadying the shaft of the arrow and trying to slow the bleeding.

“Fuck,” I whispered, taking my hands off of him just long enough to remove my jacket. I wrapped my jacket around the arrow, pressing it downward into his wound like a crappy bandage.

His wet, sucking breath grew slower. The blood pulsed with less and less force.

I drew up on my knees, biting into my lip so hard I drew blood. I pressed my jacket down against his wound so forcefully that I might have cracked the ribs of a human man.

But it wasn’t enough.

I’m not enough.

No matter how much I love him…

I can’t save him.

Now I was the one with the arrow through my heart, filling my lungs with poison and turning my guts to lead.

The fact that I was about to lose him should have been enough to kill me.

It felt like it would.

I sank down, releasing my grip on the jacket. I pressed my forehead to his cold one, my hands leaving bloody trails everywhere I touched him. I gripped his hard jaw – the same jaw I’d stroked and kissed and admired and glared at – and I wept. I babbled nonsense in Japanese and French and English and the language of the Sea Sands. Cobbled-together words of love and fate and harrowing grief.

My fingernails dug into his cheeks as I repeated what I’d told him when he’d claimed me.

The truest words of my life.

“I’ll never let you go. I’m never going to fucking let you go!”

My words enveloped us in a cotton-like web. They seemed to make the air glow.

Wait…

I wrenched my head upwards, squinting through the haze of tears.

The air was literally glowing.

A massive creature, moonlight made living, descended on silent wings. Unlike the bulky winged creatures who’d attacked us, this one was long and lithe. Serpentine, with a massive, dragon-like head. It had no arms or legs – just serene, beating wings.

I stared, dumbfounded, as the gigantic creature landed in our camp. It barely fit between the big silver mushroom cacti, and it wound its tail around its body. It fixed me with a deep, all-knowing stare. The kind of stare that makes you feel like you’ve just been confronted with the entire scope of the obliterating universe.

The Lavrika?

It certainly matched the descriptions I’d heard.

But no, the Lavrika doesn’t have wings… Does it?

It was hoisting one of those wings upward now. I gasped, entranced by the translucent wing’s tissue held between glittering fragments of constellation-like bones. Its wings were like a star-scape – vast and eternal.

I bit back a cry of shock when the glowing dragon-creature brought its fangs – three rows of them – down upon its own wing, tearing the tissue.

Iridescent milky fluid poured from the wound.

Lavrika’s blood?

I held fast to Varrow’s jaw as the creature lowered its great head towards him.

It was huge, and I was terrified, but I didn’t let go of my mate.

I promised him. I promised him I’d never let him go…

The creature didn’t seem to want anything to do with me. It grasped the gruesome head of the arrow in its fangs, and with a flick of its strong neck, drew the entire weapon from Varrow’s chest with a sickening pop before dropping it on the ground.

Before I could scramble to try to cover up Varrow’s now-open wound, the creature enveloped his chest with its bleeding wing. I held Varrow’s jaw, the only thing I could do, easing his head into my lap as the translucent giant before me remained motionless, its knowing eyes now closed. More glowing fluid dribbled from its wounded wing onto Varrow’s chest.

I narrowed my gaze, trying to stare through its wing to Varrow’s chest beneath. To see how much he was bleeding. To find out what was happening.

But it was too hard to tell through the glow of the creature’s skin.

So instead, I focused on Varrow’s face.

I caressed his cheeks lovingly, brushing his messy bangs away from his forehead. I traced his pointed ears, his dark brows, the flat bridge of his nose, his full lips.

Then I bent over him, retracing the path that my fingers had taken with my mouth. Kissing along every beloved line of my mate’s face. When I got to his lips I stopped, hovering over him.

I wanted to kiss him so badly.

But I was afraid.

Afraid he wouldn’t, couldn’t, kiss me back.

But Varrow had always been brave.

I could be brave too.

I pressed my mouth to his, shaking with sorrow-laced fear.

There was… Nothing.

No shock of sudden life. No warmth.

The force of my movement pressed his lips limply back against his fangs.

I shook harder, drawing my mouth away from his, unable to remain there feeling how he didn’t move.

“You can’t, Varrow,” I whispered thickly. “You can’t. You can’t.”

My words dissolved as silent sobs wracked my body.

I’d already screamed. I’d already cried.

This was something beyond any of that.

Beyond pain. Beyond grief.

Beyond anything I could survive.

It left me reeling, the breath crushed right out of me. It felt as if my breath was outside my body instead of in it.

Brushing the surface of my lips instead of moving past them.

Quoi…?

My eyes snapped open just as the huge dragon creature withdrew its bleeding wing. Varrow’s chest, which had moments ago been destroyed with a penetrating wound, was solid and whole again, shiny new skin stretching where the arrow had been.

I dragged my unbelieving eyes from his chest to his face.

His face that now felt slightly warm under my hands.

His mouth was parted, breathing shallowly but steadily.

“Varrow!” I yelped, gently moving his head from my lap to the ground. I scrambled to his side, running my hands up and down his smooth chest, making sure that his wound had really closed.

It had.

And I could feel his heart beating beneath.

I clamped my hands to my mouth, shock halting my sobbing from before. I tore them from my face, clasping at Varrow’s jaw once more.

He’s unconscious.

But he’s alive.

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” I whispered to the dragon or Lavrika or whatever it was. I didn’t know how I could ever express my gratitude for this miracle. “Thank you,” wasn’t enough. But it was all I had.

The creature didn’t seem to hear or acknowledge my words. It unwound its tail from its curled body, then lifted its great head, spreading its wings. A few beats of those wings sent more droplets of its shining blood to the ground. It lifted into the air, beating its wings harder, flying higher. It uncoiled completely, stretching in the freedom of the sky. As I watched it, I realized that, though it had no legs, it had what looked to be feathery fins jutting out horizontally all along its tail. Helping to keep its body airborne as the large wings carried it up and up.

“It’s following him! You four, track it as best you can. Go! Do it now!”

My head spun, searching wildly for the source of the voice speaking now.

It was Gahn Razek. One of his arms crushed Jocelyn against his side, the other brandished a weapon wildly. Vaxilkai, Oxriel, Dalk, and Bariok raised their tails and sprinted away.

“Wait, what’s happening? Are you sending them to follow that dragon? We need to retreat! We need to get Varrow out of here!” I shouted, my voice cracking. Why was Razek sending four warriors further into hostile territory to track down a benevolent creature who’d just helped us?

As I became more aware of my surroundings now that I wasn’t sobbing against Varrow’s dying body, I realized that the sounds of battle had ceased.

All three of the winged beasts appeared to be dead on the ground, alongside the bodies of their riders, outside of the camp area.

“If the battle is over, we should run!” I cried.

“I agree,” Gahn Razek said. “We will retreat. I need to get you and Jozelyn back to the settlement as soon as possible. And I need to speak with the other Gahns.”

“So then why did you send the others to -”

My words were cut off by Jocelyn’s furious voice.

“Because he took Priya!”

My fingers tightened against Varrow’s face. A cold, cruel dread gripped my spine. My stomach dropped.

“What?” I asked quietly.

“There was a fourth rider,” Kohka said. “I saw him. He did not come with the other three. He flew in from another direction. He arrived after the battle was underway. He took Priya, then flew that way.” Kohka’s heavy arm rose, pointing out of the camp and further into this foreign territory.

“The other four warriors will track them,” Gahn Razek explained. “Luckily, this flying Lavrika seemed to be following the warrior who took Priya. Its light will help guide them.”

“But they’ll still be too slow,” Jocelyn said, shaking her head violently. “The guy who took Priya is flying and they’re just on foot.”

“It is all we can do right now. That is why we must return to the settlement. Return to the full array of our resources to decide the next steps,” Gahn Razek said. He cupped Jocelyn’s cheek, pinning her in a fierce gaze. “We will get her back, my Gahnala. I swear it.”

“We’d better,” she replied darkly.

The two of them turned their full attention to us on the ground. Jocelyn’s eyes grew huge.

“Fuck, Varrow! What happened?”

She ran over and fell to her knees on the other side of my unconscious mate.

Gahn Razek ordered Kohka to stand guard and then he joined us on the ground.

“He was shot by an arrow,” I said, the words wavering. “It went right through his chest. He almost… I thought he…”

“It’s OK,” Jocelyn said, reaching across Varrow and squeezing my shoulder. “Just tell us as best you can.”

“That flying creature. The Lavrika? I don’t know. But it came down here. It healed him.”

I still couldn’t quite believe it.

And neither could Gahn Razek.

“This is not done,” he said slowly, his sight stars glued to the newly-healed place on Varrow’s chest. “The Lavrika awakens the mate bonds. And Lavrika’s blood can heal. But it does not otherwise involve itself in our affairs. Why now, and why Varrow? It did not heal any of those other men. The men native to this territory.”

He scrubbed at his chin thoughtfully. Jocelyn rolled her eyes.

“What do you mean, ‘why now?’ First of all, this isn’t the Lavrika you’re used to, right? It’s some other one, just like the Bitter Sea men have their Kell. So maybe it has different priorities. Secondly, none of those other men had their mates next to them, crying their eyes out and praying for help, did they?”

“But the Lavrika does not answer prayers,” Gahn Razek insisted.

“Well, I’m not saying Camille summoned this Lavrika from its hidey-hole just by crying, but…” Now she was also rubbing her chin, their thoughtful poses mirroring each other. “But what if this Lavrika was already out here for some other purpose? It looked like it was following that fourth warrior, right? Maybe it was out here to summon that guy. It was following him, and it just happened to see Camille down here with her mate Varrow. The whole purpose of the Lavrika is the mate bond, right? So if it had the chance to protect that bond in two people right under its nose, why wouldn’t it do something to help?”

“This is strange,” Gahn Razek finally said, shaking his head. Jocelyn laughed weakly.

“You think a sacred creature with healing blood stopping to heal a man with said blood is strange?”

“I am just saying it has not ever been done,” Gahn Razek re-iterated.

“Yeah, well. This is the first time human women have been on this planet, too. Things are changing,” his mate shot back.

I was losing track of their conversation, shifting my focus back to Varrow. I could theorize about this new Lavrika and its motivations later. It had healed my mate. And that was enough for now.

“I believe he will be alright,” Gahn Razek said, softening his tone as he spoke to me. “Healing that comes fresh from the Lavrika’s pools is more potent than usual healing. I imagine blood fresh from its body would be the same. But, still, he will need rest. His heart will need time to recover.”

I’ll give him all the time in the world. I’ll sit beside him for the rest of my life as long as there’s a hope he’ll be alright by the end of it all…

Gahn Razek stood, making quick plans with even quicker words.

He and Jocelyn would return to the settlement immediately, while Varrow and I would remain in the Death Plains for my mate’s recovery. We’d stay where their tribe used to have their tents, back before they’d relocated to the settlement. Kohka would stay in the Death Plains with us to help keep me safe and hunt for food while Varrow healed.

Once it was decided, there was no use in staying. Who knew if more enemy warriors could be coming this way? And now that we’d sent the other four men to track Priya down, we had fewer forces to fight with.

I moved out of the way so that Kohka could lift Varrow into his arms.

“Careful!” I cried, unable to help myself. When Kohka side-eyed me with his silver sight discs, I remembered that I’d just demanded something from a ten-foot-tall lizard monster.

Thankfully he was a good-natured ten-foot-tall lizard monster.

“I will be,” he said solemnly.

Gahn Razek quickly broke down two of the tents, leaving behind the others. It hurt to see Priya’s tent, and those of the other warriors, left behind. But it would be too much for us to carry now.

I reached up. Considerate Kohka leaned down, letting me brush Varrow’s hair away from his face before he straightened once more.

“Come,” Razek said, his sight stars shifting warily out to the plains. “We must go.”

We hurried away from the camp. As we walked, I cast one last glance over my shoulder, searching the sky that the Lavrika had disappeared into.

Hold on Priya. They’re coming for you.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Varrow

Ten days later

“Tonight, certainly,” I said, frowning. “I am strong enough, now. I can feel it.”

Well, what I could actually feel was that my chest no longer squeezed like a large boulder had been dropped upon it. Now it was more like… A smaller boulder. But I was not as woozy as I once had been upon standing. At least, not when I did it slowly.

Every day in this tent I’d regained, tooth and fighting claw, my previous strength. I could tell I was not yet as powerful as before.

But I was strong enough to mate her.

Something Cam-Eel had denied me these past torturous days of healing in the Death Plains.

“Not yet,” she said stubbornly, handing me a valok plant. “Drink up. And eat your breakfast.”

I eyed the rakdo meat distastefully. It had taken some time for my appetite to return after the battle. But I forced myself to eat, even when I did not feel like it, knowing it would help me get better faster.

Cam-Eel settled herself on her perfect rump beside the bedding hides that I was seated upon. I made a show of viciously chewing my meat and forcefully slurping my valok gel as if to convince her of my renewed vitality.

My heart may have had a spear, or an arrow, as Cam-Eel called it, shot straight through it.

But even shredded to a million pieces, it would still be strong enough to pump blood into my cock for her.

As my fangs worked through the food, that cock was stirring now. She was so near. Her neck invited my mouth downward. Her hair was so fragrant and pretty that I practically wanted to eat it.

“See? The meal has given me even more strength,” I said, swallowing my food and gesturing to the swelling beneath my loincloth.

Cam-Eel’s breath hitched, her cheeks turning a shade of pink that went straight to my shaft. She bit her lip, leaning forward slightly. She’s wavering. She’s going to…

A sudden bout of dizziness overtook me, making me hunch forward and groan.

“Lie down,” Cam-Eel commanded me, her voice stern as it often was these days. Go to sleep. Get some rest. Roll over there and stop fondling me – you’re my patient!

She’s lucky I love her so cursedly much, I thought nauseously to myself as I heeded her orders and lied down. No one else could hope to command me so, not even my own Gahn.

But really, I knew it was I who was lucky. Lucky to have her. Lucky to live another day to bathe in the glory of her. Lucky the strange winged Lavrika of the blue plains had taken pity on me for some unknown reason.

I’d never been able to stomach pity before.

But since it meant I was able to awaken and see my mate’s perfect face once more, I more than tolerated it. I was grateful for it.

“Close your eyes,” came the next order. This one I took a little longer to obey. I was not ready to let her out of my sights just yet. My fevered gaze glided from her darkly shining eyes to her plush mouth, down to her slim neck, then further to her supple breasts. The nipples were mouth-watering pebbles, begging for my touch beneath the thin fabric of her sleeveless top garment.

“They’re still not closed,” Cam-Eel said, crossing her arms over her breasts.

Giving a disappointed grunt, I closed them.

But it wasn’t until I felt her soft hand nestle into mine, and heard her promise not to let me go, that I was able to sleep.

WE CONTINUED ON IN this fashion for several more days. The tent was set up on the flat stony bank, surrounded by white boulders, that my people had used to occupy. It was a relatively safe spot, yet I was still glad for the extra layer of Kohka’s protection outside our tent. Having another male, especially one not from my own tribe, protect me, would normally have been a zeelk-spur between my ribs. But I knew I was not yet able to hunt and keep Cam-Eel safe on my own.

But each day, I got closer to that.

By the fifteenth day of rest, the dizzy spells had largely disappeared. My chest often felt tight, and my head pounded, but each symptom grew milder and milder. I knew that I would not have healed this quickly if the winged Lavrika had not offered me blood fresh from its own body, as I’d heard it had. That kind of healing was faster, deeper, more potent than what our tribal healers could normally achieve with their jars and poultices at the settlement.

Even with the help of the wisest healer, it was unlikely I would have survived what had happened to me. They could have stitched up my skin. They could not have healed the heart beneath.

But I had survived. And the sole purpose of my life, the one thread binding me to this world, was shaking her little head at me, telling me I still was not ready.

“How do you know?” I asked sourly, my tail twitching with the need to slip under her clothing. “You are not a healer. All you have to go on is what I tell you. And I am telling you that I am strong enough to mate you.”

“You had an arrow through your heart! You basically died in my arms! I’m not going to put your recovery at risk just to get our rocks off!” she cried, poking me rather violently in the forehead, halting my mouth’s descent to hers.

“I do not know what rocks have to do with anything, but the Lavrika healed me. So it is fine. I am fine.” I insisted. I tried to duck under her pointy finger, but the finger became an entire hand against my forehead, pushing me back.

“Unless…” My newly healed heart nearly stopped. “Unless you do not want me.”

Of course. Why had I not realized it before?

She had seen me fall. She’d seen me broken and beaten. She’d seen me weak.

Of course she did not want me now.

The hand that had created such a surprisingly strong barrier against my forehead fell away. Cam-Eel stared at me with wide, sorrowful eyes and a shocked, open mouth.

“Varrow… How could you say that?”

She placed her hands on my shoulders, easing me back into the bedding hides. I lied down, and she did too, wiggling against my side. I turned over so that we were facing each other, trying not to wince when my ribs ached.

“I love you more than I can even explain, Varrow,” Cam-Eel said, palming my chest with her soft hands. “My feelings for you haven’t changed at all. In fact, I’m suffering just as much as you right now. Trust me.”

“I seriously doubt that,” I growled. If she were in as deep a state of need as I was, there was no way she would be able to refuse me.

But her face hardened.

“I am. I want you so much.” Colour deepened along her cheekbones, seeping downward, making her neck and chest flush.

My cock swelled.

“You didn’t have to feel the life bleed out of your mate when there was nothing you could do,” she said, her voice cracking, her eyes growing wet with her odd human tears. “But I did. You’ve been through a lot in your life, Varrow. But you’ve never been through that. So let me deal with it how I need to. Right now, that means waiting a little longer. Please.”

I could see the panic carved into her normally sunny features. I caught a stray tear with my thumb, bringing its salt to my mouth as I thought about her words.

I had been more than happy to die for her in that moment.

But I could not imagine if things had been reversed. If I had been the one, kneeling and destroyed, watching her disappear.

That image killed any desire in my blood.

I wrapped my arm around her back, crushing her to my chest. I pressed my face to the top of her head, breathing deeply. Her scent was a balm, and slowly I started to relax.

“Just a few more days,” she murmured against my chest.

But something happened the next morning that shortened that promise of “just a few more days.”

At first, it was an alarming event.

A deep vibration battered the air, just before dawn, on the sixteenth day of healing.

“Stay here,” I hissed, forcing Cam-Eel back down into the bed as she tried to sit up, disturbed from sleep. My head swam, and I blinked rapidly, focusing my gaze as I stood and moved to the tent flap.

Kohka’s snout was snapping back and forth, staring overhead, his spear cocked in one of his huge hands.

“What is it?” I asked him, scanning the skies. The sound was getting louder. I wrenched a blade from my back when it sounded like the thing was directly overhead.

“I do not know,” he replied in a low growl.

But Cam-Eel did.

“It sounds like a ship!” she said, peeking out between the tent flaps.

My knuckles cracked as my hand tightened on my weapon. Was this the attack we’d been waiting for? I was not as strong as before, but I could fight. I would fight. For her.

But we saw and heard nothing else. The whirring sound continued on overhead, passing us. There seemed to be no other ships. No weapons raining down. No explosions.

Cam-Eel’s whole head was poking out of the tent now. I was about to admonish her when a wide smile split her face.

“I think it might be Valeria’s ship! We can’t see it because of the cloaking tech. But the timeline makes sense. Gahn Razek and Jocelyn are probably back at the settlement now. They’ve got the ship looking for Priya!”

Given the lack of battle offensive taking place, I was inclined to think that her judgment was correct. The Gahn and the Gahnala would likely have gotten back to the settlement very recently if they’d encountered no major obstacles. And if they’d announced what had happened, that a new woman had been lost, it made sense that a faster, more powerful search party would be mobilized to find her.

Cam-Eel was still smiling, now standing at my side, having emerged from the tent.

For the first time since I’d awoken after the battle on the blue plains, she looked truly happy. Relaxed. Even though my recovery had been mostly smooth, I could still see lines of worry and sadness between her brows when she thought I was not looking. And I knew that those feelings were for Priya.

But now, hearing the ship, she seemed to be coming back to her usual, optimistic self.

“This is great,” she said to Kohka and me. “That ship can cross huge distances in no time at all. And it has scanners. It can look for life signs. They’re going to find her! And Oxriel and all the others, too!”

I loved seeing her so happy.

Who needed Lavrika’s blood?

A smile like that could mend any man’s heart.

Unable to stop myself, I caught her jaw in the cage of my fingers and leaned down, swallowing that smile into a kiss. She tensed, making a squeaking sound in her throat. But that tension soon melted. Her arms looped around my waist and she opened her sweet mouth.

My blood coursed harder, my cock instantly at attention. The organ thrummed with need, shunting against her abdomen as my hips jerked involuntarily. There was no dizziness. There was some stiffness in my chest, but no deep pain.

“I will go hunt,” Kohka said quietly. I barely registered his massive form leaving the bank of stone. All I was aware of was the goodness of Cam-Eel’s mouth on mine, the first time in far too long that I’d felt her so wet and hungry.

“Come on,” she whispered huskily, drawing back from the kiss. “You should lie down.”

“No,” I growled, my hand sliding down to grip her ass possessively.

“I mean… Lie down. And let me do the work,” she replied, licking her swollen lips.

Oh.

I followed her, helpless in love and harrowing lust, as she led me back into the tent.

As she’d asked, I lied down on my back, my sight stars devouring the sight of her.

“Just stay there like that,” she said, her cheeks glowing, her voice breathy.

Curse me, it was a difficult thing to stay there not touching her as she undressed. She did it quickly, but it still felt like an agonizing eternity as the fabric licked over her skin the way my tongues longed to. She jumped into fire-touched clarity when she bent and lit a valok candle in the corner of the tent.

Nude, she drew downwards to her knees, kneeling at my side. Her nipples hardened, her breath catching in her throat as she started to untie my loincloth.

This is taking too long.

With an impatient snap of my jaws, I reached down, yanked the garment off, and tossed it aside.

Cam-Eel made a tiny sound of arousal that made my cock strain painfully. My heart was beating hard and fast, but it was holding steady. For once, it was not disobeying me.

Or maybe it did not want to disobey its true owner. The one who knelt beside me.

Cam-Eel skimmed teasing fingertips over my cock spears, sending hot pleasure shooting through my pelvis. When she grasped my shaft and bent to drag her wet tongue along my tip, I almost grasped the back of her head and started rutting into her mouth. I held my hips horribly tense, but ultimately still.

“Do not take it slow,” I rasped. “It has been so long. I can’t -”

Her dark eyes on mine, she sucked me deep into her mouth.

My tail thrashed on the ground beside me before I got control of it enough to slide it over her ass and between her thighs. She moaned, the sound vibrating down my cock and making my balls twitch, when my tail started stroking her silken wetness.

She popped her mouth off of my cock just long enough to ask if my tail was alright. But I silenced her question by strumming its tip along her sensitive nub and making her cry out.

“It’s fine. More than fine. This is an essential part of its recovery,” I panted, dragging my tail back and forth over her cunt until I found her heated entrance. She spread her thighs wider, raising her ass by arching her back, and I nudged inside. In truth, the bruising to my tail had healed days ago. But the idea that her very tightness could heal me was an alluring one.

A sudden bout of dizziness alarmed me. But this dizziness felt familiar. It was the usual reaction to having part of my body inside my mate. Not due to my injuries.

Cam-Eel’s eyes closed, and she sucked me with messy abandon. I fisted her hair, staring at my cock gliding so perfectly into her stretched mouth, before flicking my sight stars back to see my tail penetrating her from behind.

The sight almost undid me right there.

But I didn’t want to spill seed like this. Maybe next time I’d let her suck me into oblivion. But the first time I had her after nearly dying? No. I needed to be there.

I twisted my tail as I thrusted it in and out the way I knew she liked, my cock jerking when I felt a responsive loosening and new gush of aroused wetness from her. She’s almost ready for me. She wasn’t exaggerating before – she needed this just as badly as I did.

I pushed further in, my breath ragged, her moans making her mouth lose tension on my cock. Which was probably a good thing. Because I was already on that quaking edge.

“Inside you,” I growled, stretching her further on my tail. “I need you.”

Cam-Eel nodded, the motion sending her soft cheek bumping against my agonized tip. My eyes fell closed as I focused all my strength on not exploding right then and there.

Thankfully, my strength came through.

I really am recovering well.

Good for me.

Cam-Eel moved up, shifting her knees to try to straddle me.

Cursing, I pulled my tail from her heat so that I could bunch up the bedding hides on either side of my hips. Otherwise, her legs would have been too short.

But with the hides bunched just so, her knees were propped up high enough. She planted her hands on my chest, palming my nipples. I groaned at the electric sparks cascading under my skin and took one of her breasts into my hand’s hungry possession.

Cam-Eel angled her hips slightly and rocked, dragging her sopping folds over my swollen head. As she did so, she leaned forward, kissing the centre of my chest. Kissing the place the wound had been.

The place where my heart was.

“My perfect one,” I murmured, brushing glossy hair away from her face. She rose from my chest, capturing my gaze with hers as she eased onto my tip.

“My good boy.”

I didn’t know what it was about hearing those words from her lips, but they were a spear right to my cock. A cry tore from my throat as my shaft throbbed violently. My hips ground upward instinctively, needing more of her clenching heat.

And generous being that she was, far too generous for the likes of me, she obliged, sliding her tail-loosened cunt onto my heaving organ.

For a brief moment, I wondered if I had actually died out there on the plains. Because the sight before me was too starkly beautiful for this world. Cam-Eel supported herself by her palms on my chest, forcing her breasts together. Heat and desire stained her skin as she worked herself further on to me. And her face…

Her brows furrowed, her mouth slack, her gaze loose but still trained on my own as she rode me.

I massaged the gorgeous curve of her hip, then slid my fingers down, remembering what she’d done with my cock spears last time. With nimble fingers, I pressed them up until they brushed her sensitive nub with every shaking pass of her hips.

That only created more sensations. The impossible tightness of her cunt milking my shaft while her wetness soaked my cock spears was my undoing. As Cam-Eel drove faster upon me, her pleasure making her draw tight all around me, I pulsed and, with a roar, spurted deep into her core.

The stiffness returned to my chest, but with every hot expulsion of seed, it eased. She was not only milking me of seed but also sucking the weakness and the pain right out of me.

Extraordinary creature.

“I love you. I love you!” Cam-Eel said it over and over again, in time with the frantic jerking of her perfect hips. The words, even more than her exquisite motions, drew more pleasure from deep inside me, wringing the orgasm out as I pumped her full of everything I had to give.

Finally, her legs gave out, mating having weakened her little muscles where it had only strengthened mine. She collapsed forward onto my chest, breathing heavily. I drew my knuckles up and down the gentle column of her spine, my cock still half-stiff inside her, not yet ready to pull out. If she’d let me, I’d stay like this for all time.

The question of her letting me made me voice a question.

“I thought you wanted to wait a few more days,” I asked. “Not that I am complaining.”

Far from it. I was exalting in fate and destiny and Cam-Eel for bestowing so much goodness upon me.

“I just…” I felt her sigh softly. She nuzzled even closer, her wiggling making my cock jump inside her. She gasped, her body responding with a quick squeeze to my shaft. Another steadying breath, and she continued. “When the ship went by, and I realized what was happening… I just… I felt like things were finally back on the right track. For the first time since the battle, I felt the possibility that things could be good again. And I felt like I didn’t have to worry quite so much.”

“Things will be good again,” I said fiercely, my hand settling on her lower back. My palm flattened against her, pinning her to me. “I promise.”

Things would be good. I would make every facet of this life good for her, to her.

The way that life could not help but be good to me.

Because she was in it.

Thank you so much for reading Camille and Varrow’s story. This couple is very special to me, and I hope you loved reading about them as much as I loved writing them. Book 12 (which perhaps you may have guessed) is Priya’s story. We’ll follow her into this new territory and find out just what happened between her and the man who scooped her up out of the battle. If you want to know as soon as book 12 goes live in KU, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter at ursadaxwriting.com/contact

Until the next Sea Sand love story,

Ursa

FATED MATES OF THE SEA SAND WARLORDS

BOOK 1 ALIEN TYRANT

“If you should flee, no matter where you run, I will always follow.”

Book 2 ALIEN ENEMY

“They call me the Mad Gahn. But I never felt truly mad until I saw her face…”

Book 3 ALIEN ORPHAN

“I have trained, battled, and fought my whole life. But winning my mate’s love is the greatest challenge I have ever faced…”

Book 4 ALIEN REJECT

“She is a difficult creature, my tiny Kat. But I have never met with a creature I could not tame…”

Book 5 ALIEN EXILE

“Beneath all that makes me strange to you, my heart recognizes yours…”

Book 6 ALIEN HUNTER

“Now that I have found her, I refuse to lose her…”

Book 7 ALIEN VICTOR

“I found her, I saved her, and once I am Gahn, I will claim her. There will be no other tribe left for her but me…”

Book 8 ALIEN SHIELD

“I have always been a patient warrior. But now that I have her in my sights, I cannot wait to claim her…”

Book 9 ALIEN KEEPER

“I will be her keeper, her guardian, her guide. And I will keep her safe no matter the cost…”

Book 10 ALIEN CLAW

“I will go wherever you are. Even if I have to follow you forever. Even if I have to hunt you down…”

Book 11 ALIEN HEART

“I had nothing left to lose. Until her.”