Table of Contents

NOTICES

ALIEN CLAW

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

TRIGGER WARNINGS

CHAPTER ONE | Tok

CHAPTER TWO | Taylor

CHAPTER THREE | Taylor

CHAPTER FOUR | Tok

CHAPTER FIVE | Taylor

CHAPTER SIX | Tok

CHAPTER SEVEN | Taylor

CHAPTER EIGHT | Tok

CHAPTER NINE | Taylor

CHAPTER TEN | Tok

CHAPTER ELEVEN | Taylor

CHAPTER TWELVE | Tok

CHAPTER THIRTEEN | Taylor

CHAPTER FOURTEEN | Tok

CHAPTER FIFTEEN | Taylor

CHAPTER SIXTEEN | Tok

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN | Taylor

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN | Tok

CHAPTER NINETEEN | Taylor

CHAPTER TWENTY | Tok

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE | Taylor

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO | Tok

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE | Taylor

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR | Tok

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE | Taylor

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX | Tok

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN | Taylor

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT | Tok

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE | Taylor

CHAPTER THIRTY | Taylor

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE | The Stone Sky God

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO | Tok

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE | Taylor

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 Claw Copyright © 2022 Veronica Doran

ALIEN CLAW

Fated Mates of the Sea Sand Warlords

Book Ten

By Ursa Dax

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks, as always, to every reader, reviewer, and new friend on this journey. And to my husband, RSH, and my parents, who support everything I do.

TRIGGER WARNINGS

Contains consensual primal play/chasing. Alien/inhuman hero. Consensual biting, fang, venom play. Depictions of fighting and violence, including gun violence and non-lethal electrocution/being stunned by an electrical weapon. Mentions of deaths of family members.

CHAPTER ONE

Tok

“Not you too.”

Hakah Gog levelled his blue gaze at me under the star-pricked sky. We stood just beyond the edge of the settlement. Endless, waterless sand stretched behind him. The desert men called this place the Sea Sands. But it was nothing like the Bitter Sea of our homeland. Although, at night they seemed more alike than during the day. The silver-skinned night turned the sand into shifting shades of burnished indigo and black, similar in colour to the water I knew so well. But these Sea Sands lacked the movement and the liquid moon-gleam of Bitter Sea water.

“It is true, Hakah. I have a mate from among the new women.” I stated it flatly and plainly. I would not apologize for the waves of fate, though this news may have been paining my Hakah. Bitter Sea men having foreign mates had caused him immeasurable grief in the past – first, in losing his brother. And more recently, in dealing with the rogue warrior Grim.

The Hakah, my people’s king, growled low in his throat, throwing his great head to look behind me. I turned to look, too, seeing the craggy wall of the Cliffs of Uruzai there, the tents of the settlement like little stems of sea grass dotting the sand in front of it.

“She is here?” Hakah Gog asked.

My claws flexed involuntarily at my sides, my spikes tensing along my spine and tail.

“Yes.”

Oh, yes. She was here. Visions of her before I’d arrived here had plagued me. And now, slices of her in reality plagued me further. I was plagued, instead of buoyed up with potent joy, because of one stark and terrible fact:

The new women did not feel the mate bond.

“I suppose that is good, then. I will not lose my best warrior and my right claw for days the way we lost Grim.”

I grunted at that. Grim had been released from his chains only a few days ago. He was still being disciplined – he had strict orders about when and how he could leave the settlement and was under constant supervision when away from the cliffs. He had been chained, and was being supervised thus, because he had disappeared from his duties to find and protect his mate out on the sands. She was the human soldier we had been hunting, and instead of turning her over to our king for questioning, he’d fled with her.

Once again, my spikes prickled, this time at the thought of my own mate being hunted. Though I had been the one to beat and drag Grim back here for his betrayal of duty, I understood everything he’d done. And if I’d been in his position, I could not guarantee that I would have acted any differently, despite being the right claw to the king.

But I did not need to worry about such things. My mate was here and safe. And now that Grim’s mate Thaleria had given us more information – confirmed that as of now, there were no other human soldiers to hunt – I could finally find some time to speak with her.

Find some time to win her love to me.

Hopefully…

No. There was no hope. I’d never hoped for anything a day in my warrior’s life. I only planned and executed those plans and succeeded. Always. My position as right claw to the Hakah proved this, as did the dozens of grogar pearls pierced into my shaft, one for every victory against a great beast of the sea. So in this most worthy and precious of feats, I would not hope. I would win.

Would I not?

Something twisted in my guts.

Not only was I feeling hope for the first time but also…

Doubt.

I did not like it.

If Grim and Kor could win their mates, then so will I.

Grim, despite his recent foolishness in the eyes of our king, was a strong and courageous warrior, so it was not so surprising he’d won his mate to him. Kor, too, was brave and noble and was nephew to the king, though smaller and not as strong as one of the full-blooded Bitter Sea men. If a smaller, weaker warrior like him could win a new woman’s heart, then a huge and hardened warrior such as myself should have no trouble…

In theory.

But so much about the new women defied all experience, all philosophizing.

It would only be in action that I would find out.

“Now that our hunt for the enemy warriors has ended, I will pursue her. I will make her mine.” I said the words to my king, but even more as a vow to myself. It was not often I made such a command of my own destiny in front of the Hakah. But in this, I could not be swayed, nor would I be ordered otherwise. I would still undertake whatever duties were assigned to me, though I would no longer solely be pledged to my king.

But to her.

“I trust you to keep your head in this matter, Tok. But then again, I would have said the same for my brother. And look where that belief has led me.”

A note of dark pain lanced Hakah Gog’s words. His brother Kon had left our island many ages ago to claim his mate, a desert woman named Jara. They had lived together for some time and had their son, Kor, together. But Kon had never returned to our island, our waters. And he’d died before Hakah Gog ever got to see him again. When Grim had disappeared to find his own foreign mate, it had brought back all that old and bloodied grief.

“Fine, Tok,” he said. “Go. You have no other duties this night. Go attend to her. Just make sure you remain ready to be called upon whenever I may need you. Just because there are no other foreign soldiers to hunt now does not mean the threat facing us no longer looms.”

That threat, of course, was more of the foreign soldiers coming down upon us. I pounded my brow ridges with fierce fists. I would always be ready to fight any enemy. No one would threaten this world.

Especially not now that it had my mate in it.

Hakah Gog turned from me, casting his regal gaze out over the dunes. I took my leave from him, turning and swiftly heading for the settlement. My instinct was to fall to all fours and lope back as quickly as possible, but I refrained from doing so. All of the new women and desert people walked and ran on two legs. When my kind ran on all fours, it seemed to unnerve them for some reason. Well, I would give my tiny mate no reason to turn from me. I would approach her as she was used to – on two legs.

But I still moved as quickly as I could on those two legs.

Soon I was past the guards that lingered at the settlement’s edge, past the outer ring of unmated warriors’ tents. Before long, I was in the heart of the settlement.

Acrid smoke filled my nostrils, and I forced down a growl. The desert people cooked their meat with smoke and heat. I would have found it utterly repulsive if I had not noticed my own mate enjoying her meat this way. If she liked her meat that way, there had to be some value in it.

I still had not been able to bring myself to eat the meat so charred myself, though.

The evening fire in the centre of the settlement was dying down, mostly embers and little licks of flame here and there. I searched the faces of those seated at the fire hungrily, that hunger mixing with disappointment to see that my mate was not there.

There were desert people – mostly males, and a few females. The children were missing – put to bed for the night, perhaps. A few new women sat at the fire as well, my mate not among them. No Bitter Sea men sat there. They were either on guard or patrolling duties or in their cliff caves for the night. The smoke and fire had little appeal for our kind.

I turned from the fire, breathing deeply through my nostrils, trying to locate her scent. But the cursed smoke was making it too difficult. Scent or not, I knew where she likely was at this hour.

In the new women’s tent.

No unmated male warrior was allowed in there. I’d never even seen a glimpse inside – I’d never been around at the right moment to see its flap opened. As such, it took on a sacred, almost forbidden air, and I ground my fangs wondering what was happening in the tent’s dark structure. What was my mate doing at this moment? Something mysterious and unknown to me, some strange ritual or habit of the new women? Or was she asleep in there? Soft and defenceless, her brown hair strewn about her, her body naked and -

The tent flap flew to the side and a small figure stepped out.

Not just any figure, I realized with a low hiss.

Hers.

CHAPTER TWO

Taylor

Outside the tent, I took a deep breath. The cool air bit down my throat and against my skin after the stuffiness of the tent. Despite the heat on this planet during the day, the temperature dropped wildly at night. A shiver went through me, and I clutched my bundle of clothing closer to my chest. It wasn’t cold enough to say it was right bitter out here, but without my jacket, I was starting to feel a wee bit o’chill.

I wouldn’t be cold for long. A smile spread across my face as I thought of where I was going.

The hot springs.

It was one of the few things that made this planet liveable. And frankly fucking speaking, this planet seemed like it was trying to kill us every other bloody day. So a little bit liveable was saying a lot.

I wiggled my bare toes in the cold grainy sand, shivering again.

But this shiver felt… Different. Not just temperature-related. My skin prickled, and goose pimples erupted on my arms.

I glanced over at the remains of the evening fire, unable to shake the sudden sensation that someone was watching me. But no one over there seemed to be paying me any mind at the moment. A few warriors moved between tents, but none of them looked my way long enough to have caused such a weird, tingly, someone’s got their eyes on you lass feeling. I wiggled, transferring my weight from foot to foot, trying to dance the weird feeling right out of my bones. And when that didn’t work, I took a breath and ignored it, hurrying towards the cliff wall behind all the tents.

There were untold entrances into these cliffs. Hundreds of tunnels and caves and valleys. Our geographer/cartographer, Priya, had been working on a set of maps to keep it all straight. She and I spent a lot of time in the tent together – her working on the maps, me working on my catalogue of everything that had happened here so far.

What else was a history major who grew up writing endlessly in journals to escape the Scottish highland rain to do? Nobody had picked me (or been picked for me, I supposed) as a mate, so it wasn’t like I was spending my time doing anybody, either. So I spent my days writing – detailing the events of our time here, my reactions to it, everything. Everything that might be useful someday, to somebody, down the line.

Or if not useful, I hope it at least entertained. I mean, the story of a bunch of lasses getting dropped on an alien planet and all kinds of shenanigans unfolding as a result? Who wouldn’t find that entertaining?!

But I didn’t need my writings or Priya’s maps to know where I was going right now. All of us humans knew the path to the hot springs by heart. We’d shocked the water-hating Sea Sand people with our obsession, though the big Bitter Sea lizardmen seemed to understand why we liked it so much. Apparently, the water was a little hotter than the huge reptilian warriors liked it, but they still made use of the hot springs anyway.

Not at the same time as us humans, though. It wasn’t an official rule or anything, but there was this unspoken law that nobody had needed to speak aloud to understand and follow: No big alien lizards coming in to bathe when the human lasses were in there all rudey nudey.

If there were any lizard warriors in there right now, I’d just turn around and go back to the tent. More than likely they’d leave the water for me, but I didn’t want to kick anybody out of there. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that nobody is there.

I hurried through the settlement, past the evening fire, ignoring the growing feeling of eyes on my back. Even if someone was creeping on me, everybody here had treated us well. And despite the tensions in the various groups, we’d all grown into a pretty good team, united in the goal to protect this planet from whatever the human governments may have had in store for us. So if somebody was watching me hurry off to have a soak, it really didn’t matter all that much. These alien warriors, both the Sea Sand and Bitter Sea ones, were brutal and strong, but that strength had so far only been aimed at each other when tensions ran hot. Never at us human lasses.

The entrance into the cliffs that led to the pools was in a little nook area that Serena’s mate, Xyan, used as a weapons forge during the day. Now that it was night, the forge was empty – the fire kicked-over with sand and the stone table empty. I moved around the stone table towards the looming crack in the cliffs. Normally, that crack would have led into a pitch-dark tunnel. But we’d illuminated the way inside with small battery-powered lanterns retrieved from the ship’s cargo bay. There was one small lantern right at the entrance to the tunnel, and more inside, casting silvery light upon the stone walls. Like will-o-the-wisps, they glowed, leading me forward through the tunnel into a wide-open cave. This cave was large with high stone ceilings that arched up into a natural skylight. Stars and asteroids tossed their light down through the opening, adding to the glow of the lanterns here.

But this wasn’t the cave with the hot springs. That was further in.

Another lantern glowed on the sandy floor on the other side of the cave, marking the entrance to the next tunnel I needed to follow. I crossed the cave to it, then forged further into the tunnel, once again following the lanterns on the ground. I listened carefully as I got closer to the cave with the hot springs, trying to figure out ahead of time if there were any of the lizardmen lingering about. But I heard nothing, and when I emerged into the cave with the hot springs, I saw that they were unoccupied.

“Dead brilliant,” I said happily to myself, overjoyed to see I’d get to take my late-night bath after all. Now that I’d happened upon the empty space, I wasn’t too worried about a lizard warrior stumbling upon me in here. With their superhuman (super alien?) senses of smell and hearing, they’d know I was in here before they even cleared the tunnel.

I placed my clean clothing on the stone floor beside me, then shimmied out of what I was wearing. We’d set lanterns up around the perimeter of this cave. The light looked smokey and strange in the billowing steam, but it still allowed me to see what I was doing well enough.

This cave was smaller than the previous one I’d just come through, but it was large enough to house three hot springs. The largest heated pool was right in front of me, at ground level. Behind it, the stony ground naturally rose up into two platforms of sorts, each with its own smaller heated pool. I didn’t feel like scrambling up there right now, so I walked forward, stepping into the large pool directly ahead. I shivered as the water heated my skin. Sighing, I continued forward, revelling in the feeling of the hot water licking up my legs to my thighs, my hips, my waist. I didn’t go to the centre of the hot spring where the water was deepest. Instead, I waded around the side until I found one of the flat stones that created a natural sort of bench in the water. I settled myself on it, the water coming up just past my breasts. I breathed out, long and low, enjoying the stillness and the steam. Tipping my head back against the stone and closing my eyes, I listened to the silence.

Only…

It wasn’t silence.

My head snapped forward, my eyes flying open at the sound of murderous claws scraping against stone. Through the steam, a hulking figure emerged from the tunnel into the cave. I gasped tightly, hunching further down into the water, crossing my arms over my chest beneath the surface. Modesty around an alien may have seemed kind of silly, and I didn’t feel it around the Sea Sand women. But this was no Sea Sand woman.

This wasn’t even a Sea Sand man.

This was a behemoth.

Even in the murky light, with the lanterns washing his scales in shades of blinking silver, I recognized him immediately. His size alone gave him away – he was the biggest warrior in the ranks of the Bitter Sea men. The right-hand man to the Bitter Sea king. He was the one who’d beaten Valeria’s mate Grim to a bloody pulp – no easy feat considering the size and strength of that massive red alien.

Outside, during the daytime, he shone in shades of gold and rich brown. In this light, he looked like some brutish combination of grey marble and steel – metal and stone. Scales and teeth.

He remained still, standing at least ten feet tall on his two legs. Through the steam, I couldn’t quite see where his gaze had landed. But I didn’t need to see his eyes to feel that they were on me.

What the hell happened to the unspoken rules about no lizardmen crowding the nakey lasses?!

Heart pounding in my throat, my shock at the giant alien’s arrival was starting to fade, replaced by irritation. Was he just going to stand there, staring through the steam, forever? I’d come here to relax alone, for bloody hell’s sake!

I opened my mouth to say something to the looming giant, but he beat me to the punch.

His voice rolled through the steam, rocky and deep.

“May I join you?”

CHAPTER THREE

Taylor

For some reason, I hadn’t expected the alien giant before me to say anything at all, least of all that. I mean, for one thing, again with the unspoken rule about intruding on vulnerable naked humans! But even outside of that, this guy had a very… Strong and silent feel to him. Emphasis on the strong, because, och, that body was insane. The swirling humidity shuddered to a halt against his scales, turning to glistening rivulets that ran down his carved body. Everything between the knees and shoulders of the lizardmen was vaguely humanoid in shape – powerful thighs, sculpted abdominal muscles and pectorals, bulging arms with recognizable five-fingered hands. But their thick necks led up into a dragon-like snout and they had large eyes beneath heavy, scaly brow ridges. And of course, there were the spikes – some of them longer than knives and just as sharp, trailing down the back of the neck, the arms, and the thick, muscled tail.

His words echoed unanswered between us.

My instinct was to scoff at him. To tell him, no, he couldn’t join me. I’d come in here to relax and he could bloody well wait. But I stopped myself. It probably wasn’t prudent to offend a ten-foot-all alien. If I was going to tell him to wait, I’d have to do it at least a little more politely.

He didn’t move, waiting expectantly for my response.

I mean, I guess it is good he asked for permission first…

He hadn’t just barged in and plopped his big scaly body down next to me or anything. And now that my irritated shock at his surprise appearance had worn off a bit, I was starting to feel a little bad about hogging the whole place to myself just because I’d gotten here first. There was the problem of my being totally naked, of course. But then again, so was he. Other than Kor, all the lizard aliens walked around naked 24/7. So maybe it was a bit daft to feel so embarrassed about my own lack of clothing, especially partially hidden by the water and the steam as I was.

Before I could finish my thought process he spoke again, more gruffly this time.

“I have something I would speak to you about. I would prefer not to wait if it is agreeable to you.”

What the hell could the alien lizard king’s right-hand man have to talk to me about? I wasn’t a soldier like Valeria or Chapman, figuring out the future of our strategy here. And I wasn’t working on developing weapons and defence systems like Kat and Zoey. I felt my brows furrow in confusion.

Then it hit me.

Maybe he has a human mate. Maybe he needs advice…

I’d seen the same thing happen before – male warriors seeking out the advice of other human women in order to woo their own women. It was kind of adorable, really. Seeing these proud, gigantic warriors come to the human women, ready to take notes.

I grinned, suddenly feeling a hell of a lot more welcoming towards this big guy. I’d never fancied myself a matchmaker before, but it seemed like it could be a lot of fun.

“Alright. Fine,” I said with a quick nod.

The huge lizard warrior stiffened slightly, then pounded his fists against his forehead ridges the way the Bitter Sea people often did for their king. Not gonna lie, feels good to get the same amount of respect as a king!

But if I held information that could potentially help this guy connect with his human mate, then it made sense he’d want to be on my good side.

I held myself back from saying something goofy and not at all translatable like “Welcome, grasshopper.” I smiled more widely now, getting excited about the thought of helping this guy out. From what I’d seen, all the human lasses with alien mates were out of their minds happy with their partners, so I felt pretty comfortable assisting an alien in his endeavours. I was already wracking my brain wondering who could be meant for this big lug. Hopefully not someone too small, like Camille… She’d get broken in half.

The massive warrior moved forward with large steps, slipping into the water. Despite the heat of the water against my skin, a slight shiver went through me as I took in the sheer alien power of his body. He rolled his massive head on his shoulders as he sank into the water. I tensed a little, wondering if he’d get too close, and tightened my arms over my breasts, clenching my thighs together on my underwater stone bench. Maybe this was a bad idea…

But thankfully, he didn’t come too close. He found a place to sit on the other side of the pool. He settled himself on a stone bench similar to mine – at least I assumed he did – I couldn’t really see beneath the water, even with the glow of the lamps here and there. There were no lanterns or lighting beneath the water of the pool itself, so the water was inky and reflective. Which was good, considering all my private bits would be a little more hidden under there.

I stared at the alien as he got comfortable, feeling my eyebrows rise at his position. He was sitting in a position that seemed almost absurdly human. Because of his size, almost all of his torso was out of the water. He leaned back against the stone behind him, draping his arms back over the ledge. He looked like he should have had a fucking cigar hanging out of his toothy maw! I felt like I’d just walked into, like… His office, or something. Dark, confident masculinity rolled off of him in waves, undulating over the water, making my skin prickle and my breath catch.

This is fine. This is all fine.

He was way over there.

Except… It didn’t feel like he was. He was sitting all the way across the pool from me, but the pool wasn’t even that huge to begin with – about the size of an above-ground pool from Earth. His size made it seem like he was taking up all the freaking space. Not just his size, but also that intense power that seemed to radiate off of him like heat from the sun.

Am I… Into that?

I squirmed, feeling my nipples pebbling against the inside of my forearms as I considered that bizarre proposition. I didn’t think I had a type back on Earth – and if I had, it probably wouldn’t have included lizard aliens. My only serious relationship was during my undergraduate degree, and Lochlan was just about as different from one of these aliens as one could be. He was a good lad, but kind of gangly and nerdy, like me. There hadn’t been much sexual tension between us. We had been too similar, had gone from friends to lukewarm lovers before eventually breaking it off.

No, this alien in front of me was absolutely nothing like my skinny undergraduate boyfriend. If anything, he’d be a professor. Or the dean. I suddenly couldn’t get that image out of my head – a crisp suit stretched over his wide, brawny frame. Leaning back on a leather sofa the same way he was doing on the stone now…

“What’s your name?” I blurted, trying to distract myself from the whir of thoughts going through my brain.

“My name is Tok,” he said.

I swallowed hard, nodding quickly.

“I’m Taylor. Taylor Bruce,” I said.

The alien shifted, cocking his head slightly as he regarded me. As he did so, the lantern light caught on the reflective discs in the centre of his eyes, making them glint the way a cat’s eyes  did in the dark.

“I learned your name many days ago.”

“Oh. OK then,” I said, not sure how to respond to that. “Well, it’s nice to meet you.”

I wasn’t entirely sure if I meant that. This encounter wasn’t unpleasant – if anything Tok had been pretty polite. But he had me a little on edge. He was just so fucking huge and intense and I was so, so naked. I tried not to feel so weird about the nakedness thing – och, even co-ed nude spas were a thing back home! Not that I’d ever been to one, and certainly not one with alien men.

Just find out what he wants, I urged myself silently as my face heated.

“So, what did you want to talk to me about?” I croaked out, my voice sounding pathetically squeaky. Compared to the thick amber rumble of Tok’s voice answering me, I sounded like a squawking bird. And not a cool one, not like a hawk or something. If I were a bird, I’d be one with a name like “dickcissel” or “tit babbler.” Yeah, if my voice was that of a tit babbler, Tok’s was single malt scotch. The expensive kind, like the Oban or Talisker or Lagavulin that Uncle Bob used to serve in the pub back home. Golden and smoky and burning under my skin as he spoke.

“I came to ask your thoughts about the fated mate bond of this world.”

I sucked in a breath. It looked like my hunch was probably right – he was coming to learn about how to woo his mate. Well, damn. I was becoming more and more convinced that he didn’t need any help from me. I had a feeling that even with his unusual body, he could probably seduce any human lassie he set his eye on. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who failed.

At anything.

“Can you be a little more specific?” I probed. “What, exactly, do you want to know?” The faster I got to the bottom of what he wanted, the faster I could get him out of here so I could just let out a giant breath and try to relax. Because there was absolutely no relaxing happening right now. Every nerve was buzzing, finely attuned to his presence and every small, smooth move he made.

He made a low sound, deep in his chest, something akin to a human “hmm” sound. My eyes tracked down his thick throat to his chest, wondering briefly what it would feel like to have my hands splayed on his scaly, broad pectorals while he made that kind of sound.

“How do you feel about being mated to one of my kind?”

I froze. If he was coming here to ask about one of my friends, why would he need to know how I felt about being mated to a lizard alien?

Another possibility sprang to mind.

An alien wingman?

Maybe someone else in the lizard army was supposed to be my mate, and he was laying some groundwork for that warrior. My heart pounded, my jaw clenching at that thought. For some reason, I hadn’t anticipated getting a mate anytime soon. And if I did, I’d assumed it would be one of the slightly more humanoid Sea Sand men. There were a lot more of the Sea Sand men, so statistically that had made sense to me.

But what if I am meant for one of these hulking lizards?

“I don’t know,” I stammered in response. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

Truly, I hadn’t. Not for myself, anyway. I’d seen how close Valeria and Zoey were to their lizardmen mates, but for some reason the possibility of being in a partnership like that hadn’t crossed my mind.

I licked my lips, noticing the reflective coins of his large pupils pierce the steam, falling to my mouth as I did so.

“You should think about it now.”

Tok’s words felt somehow… Harder than before. Pointed, like his teeth. I didn’t like the way those words clawed at my spine.

I mentally tracked through the ranks of lizard warriors I’d seen, trying to think if any of them stood out as someone who would want me as a mate. But they’d all been so busy since their arrival, I’d barely seen them around camp. I certainly hadn’t noticed any of them making goo-goo eyes at me or anything, not the way that Grim and Kor did with their mates.

But you did feel someone watching you before you came here…

“How about you just tell me why you’re asking?” I said firmly. “Why are you asking me this? Did you come here as a messenger for someone? And if so, whom?”

I pursed my lips, my arms glued to my chest, my thighs shaking. Had that been rude? Had I offended him? Even on Earth, angering a strange man you didn’t know when naked and alone with him could be a very bad idea, depending on the man. Angering an alien who could end you with one crunch of his teeth was a whole other level.

Never figured you for a stupid lass, Taylor…

I flinched as Tok moved slightly. But luckily, even if I had offended him, he didn’t get any closer. His arms slipped from the stone behind him and he leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on the knees that were hidden just below the surface of the water. I breathed out softly in relief when I noticed that his spikes were still flat against his arms. That meant he wasn’t angered by my questions, or if he was, he had a tight leash on it. Those spikes only emerged when one of these guys was ready to fight.

“I am here on behalf of no other man but me,” he said, his voice lowering an octave. Five-year-old scotch became fifty-year-old scotch as his smoky voice swirled, mixing with the steam and burning down my throat.

“Taylor Bruce of the new women,” he began. “I, Tok of the Bitter Seas and right claw to the Hakah, am yours. Until the last wave hits the shore of my homeland. Until the sun stops rising from the water’s depths. Until the breath of this world is gone – and even beyond that – I am yours.”

His eyes were spheres of fire in the darkness.

“You’re mine… You’re my… My what?!” I stammered, though a part of me already knew.

He didn’t hesitate. Not even for a second.

“I am your mate. As you are mine.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Tok

Ifought to keep my breath even and controlled as I watched Taylor relentlessly. My elbows rested on my thighs, and beneath the surface of the water, I pressed my clasped hands against my groin, keeping my cock concealed in my slit. My instincts told me to let my cock spring free, to stand and let Taylor see the full force of its dark shape. For a woman of the Bitter Seas, even one who was not meant to be a man’s mate, it would be an arousing show of power almost impossible to resist. My cock was an impressive one. That was not pride speaking – it was just the truth. Like all of me, it was large, and apart from the Hakah, I had the more studs of grogar pearls in my shaft of any man in our army.

But I’d heard tell that the first time Thaleria had seen Grim’s cock, she’d almost destroyed it with her small but powerful human weapon. So revealing one’s cock to one’s mate did not seem to hold much sway over the new women.

These new women are very strong indeed to resist such temptations…

I stared at Taylor through the steam, straining to try to understand what she was saying. But if the sounds she was making were words, they were not words of any language of sea or sand that I had come to learn.

All in all, this did not seem to be going particularly well.

I tried to force down my surprise and disappointment. I had always been strong and fast and sharp. Things came more easily to me than they did to many other men. So, despite what I’d heard of the new women not feeling the mate bond, I’d still had some thoughts that I would be able to win my mate with relative ease.

Moment by moment, those thoughts were being torn asunder. Taylor did not seem very happy with my proclamation, and I tried not to let it wound me.

“You are unhappy,” I growled, my claws flexing against each other under the water.

Taylor stopped her string of strange sounds and shut her little mouth tightly. Then she opened it again to speak in words that I could finally understand.

“This is just a lot to take in, that’s all.”

“I understand,” I said. It had been a lot for me, too. Seeing such a strange and little face in the Kell’s vision fang. It had changed the whole course of my life, changed the force of my fate in an instant.

She had changed everything.

I wished now that I’d given her longer to answer my earlier question. I’d never gotten the full thrust of her thoughts about being mated to a Bitter Sea man. She’d only said she “hadn’t thought about it.”

On the one claw, that was good, as it meant I didn’t have to rip out one of my fellow men’s throats out for appearing in any fantasy of hers.

On the other claw, it was bad. Because it meant she had no desires for me, either.

Maybe I should just show her my cock anyway. She does not have a weapon like Thaleria did…

Her words kept me in place.

“When I said I hadn’t given the whole mates thing much thought, it was true. I hadn’t considered the possibility of a mate from this world, let alone…”

Her words shuddered to a stop, and she bit at her soft lower lip with her tiny top teeth. She did not need to finish her sentence. I knew what she’d meant to say.

“You expected to have a mate from among the Sea Sand men.”

She raised and lowered her shoulders in a gesture I did not understand. And I hated that. Not understanding her. My gaze trailed over those slim shoulders to her neck, and mating fluid filled my fangs. Such soft flesh. I would have to be so, so careful with her…

If she ever let me near her, that is.

“I am aware that I am very different from the men of your kind. And different, in turn, from the desert men.” That was an understatement, especially when talking about the men of her world. I’d seen one of them – the man killed by the red-eyed Gahn Fallo. Pathetic and tiny and pale with not a single claw or scale to be seen. If that was the kind of specimen Taylor was used to admiring, then it made sense the idea of me as a mate could be jarring to her.

But pride and determination rose in my chest, and in turn, I rose from the water. My cock was still restrained by my slit, and I kept it there as I strode through the water, coming to a stop before her. She stared up at me, her shining eyes wide, as I towered over her.

“You may not find me beautiful,” I rasped, my breath stirring the steam between us. Her eyes grew even larger in her small face. I took a deep breath, filling my chest and raising my arms out to my sides to that she could take me all in.

“But a male does not need to be beautiful to be powerful. Nor does he need to be beautiful to please his mate.”

We stared at each other for a long moment. I watched the steam drench her snoutless face, glimmering in the little hairs that ringed her strange eyes. The twin tips of my tongues lashed the insides of my fangs, aching to reach out and taste her skin. My cock strained, and with a soft grunt, I tightened my muscles, keeping it inside.

“Think on it, Taylor Bruce of the new women,” I finally murmured. “Think on me.”

With that, I turned, my tail cutting a powerful trail through the water behind me. I could feel Taylor’s eyes on the spikes at my back, and tension rolled through me, working its way down my spine and into my tail. I emerged from the water, and with one last glance at her astonished face, I left.

I did not go back to my cave for the night yet. She may not have accepted me, but I still had the dutiful instincts of a mate. No, I found a place to watch from the shadows of the settlement, making sure that she exited the cliffs and returned to the safety of the new women’s tent. As I watched her disappear into the tent’s darkness, a vicious vow crystallized inside me.

Her nights in that tent would be numbered.

Because soon, she would be sharing my cave.

As my mate.

CHAPTER FIVE

Taylor

Ihadn’t needed Tok to tell me to “think on him.” My own mad brain did that all on its own. Even after he’d left the cave, I hadn’t been able to shake the image of him, dripping and huge. And when I finally got back to the tent, I fucking dreamed of him, too. I tossed and turned, and between bouts of wakefulness, his voice boomed, and his claws reached for me.

Needless to say, when I woke in the morning, I was in a right foul mood.

“What happened to you?” my friend Camille Nagata asked as I groaned and sat up, scrubbing my face with merciless hands.

“Didn’t sleep well,” I grumbled.

“What was that? Your Scottish accent gets thicker when you’re grumpy,” she replied teasingly.

I cracked open my eyes to glare at her.

“You’re one to talk. Half the time I’m talking to you I feel like I’ve crossed the damn English Channel.”

“Ah, oui! Bonjour!” she said in perfect French. “Or should I try something else? Ohayou-guzaimasou!”

“You can say good morning in as many languages as you want. Still doesn’t mean it’s a good morning,” I moaned.

Camille’s pretty smile faltered and she fixed her dark eyes on me. She leaned forward in her seated position, tucking a sleek strand of her black shoulder-length bob behind her ear.

“Seriously, what is wrong with you today? Should I be worried?”

I pursed my lips, staring at her for a beat before blowing out a breath.

“No. Sorry. I’m just being… Ugh. I don’t know. Maybe I’m being over-dramatic.”

“About what?”

Something told me my friend wasn’t going to let this go easily. But I didn’t exactly feel ready to share my news from last night, either.

So I settled on asking her, “If one of the big lizard guys told you he was your mate, what would you do?” I asked it quietly, furtively, glancing around and hoping the other girls getting dressed for the day hadn’t heard.

Her brows shot upwards and then her expression turned thoughtful. She tapped on her lips with her index finger.

“Depends. Is he good in bed?”

“How should I know?!” I stammered. “Don’t you think I should figure out other things about him before that?”

She shrugged.

“Seems to be to be as good way as any to find out about your…” Her grin returned. “Compatibilité.” She scooted a little closer on the sand, her voice lowering. “Is this a hypothetical question, chère amie? Or something else?”

Ah, well. I’d have to tell somebody, sometime.

“It’s… Not hypothetical,” I whispered.

Her smile widened, and she threw her arms around me.

“Félicitations!” she exclaimed into my unruly curls.

“Doesn’t that mean congratulations? It seems a little early for that considering I basically just met this guy,” I said, extricating myself from her surprisingly strong arms.

“Yes, yes. But there’s something so romantic about this mate bond, n’est-ce pas? Having a strong warrior fall instantly in love with you, protecting you, doing anything for you. You asked me what I would do? Well, I would welcome him with open arms, chère amie. And open thighs for that forked tongue.”

“Even if he’s not human?” I asked, blushing fiercely at her reply.

She shrugged again.

“They are still men.”

She had that right. I’d thought the same last night when Tok’s intense masculine energy had steamrolled me in the hot spring.

“Aye,” I said weakly in return.

Still a man…

A ten-foot-tall one with scales and claws and a tail, that is…

“Well, I’m going to head out for the day. Jocelyn and I found some herbs I want to try using as seasoning.”

“Great,” I said, excited by that prospect. Camille’s parents, Aurélie and Hinata, had run a Japanese/French fusion restaurant in Paris before they’d died. Luckily for us, she seemed to have inherited their passion, and lately had been experimenting with ways to spice up our menu. Literally.

But as Camille left the tent, the idea of new spice rubs on our roasted meat wasn’t enough to keep me distracted from my current dilemma. Maybe dilemma was the wrong word. Tok hadn’t been a pest or anything. All he’d done was present himself to me, quite formally I might add, and asked me to “think on him.” But for someone who was never brilliant with the lads back home, the idea of essentially marrying a giant, brutal alien felt… Mad. Especially considering the only real thing I knew about him was that he beat up Valeria’s mate.

I blew a brown curl out of my face and wriggled out of my sleeping hides. The morning sun was already heating the walls of the tent, making the temperature rise in here. I sat hunched over in my underwear and tank top, vaguely aware of the other girls chatting as they got dressed and left the tent. Leaning to the side, I dug out my large, plain, spiral-bound notebook from where it had gotten buried under my hides. I’d snagged it from the ship’s cargo bay, along with an unholy number of pens. I grabbed one of those pens from its nearby box and drummed it against the notebook. This book was my record of everything that had happened here, and I’d distract myself from confusion about Tok by working on it.

Except… It was pretty much up to date. I’d been working on it every day. The only thing to really add to it right now was to write Tok’s name into the record about Grim’s capture. Right now I just had him labelled as the Hakah’s right claw. I flipped back to that page, re-reading the records I’d written about Grim’s absence and his return. My jaw clenched as I remembered that night – shock running through the camp as Tok dragged the huge, bleeding Bitter Sea warrior back here. It would have been unforgivably violent if I hadn’t heard Tok call for a healer immediately upon his return.

Worrying at my lower lip with my teeth, I took a deep breath and squeezed “Tok” into the record, naming him. Briefly, I wondered if I’d spelled it correctly.

You eejit. Pretty sure they don’t write with the Roman alphabet.

Do they write?

I wondered if the people of the Bitter Seas had historical records. From what I’d heard, there were murals and portraits of Sea Sand Gahns in tribal territory. Did the Bitter Sea men have something similar?

I could ask him…

Och, even the thought of asking him a simple, innocent question had my cheeks burning like a massive Guy Fawkes blaze. But maybe I could steel myself and use my historian’s curiosity to outweigh my awkwardness around him. It might be a good way to find some common ground.

I’ll do it…

My determination fizzled into heated embarrassment.

Tomorrow.

CHAPTER SIX

Tok

If I did not know my Hakah better, I would have thought that he was punishing me as well as Grim. I had to fight to keep my growl deep in my chest when he told me I would be the one supervising Grim and Thaleria on their trip outside the settlement today. It felt like a punishment for two reasons. One, because I’d only told Taylor last night about our matehood, and I’d hoped to speak with her more today. Things between us felt too wave-stricken – floating and unmoored. I wanted to solidify things between my mate and me as quickly as possible. I barely knew her yet, and I already missed her.

The other reason this assignment felt like punishment was because Grim and Thaleria clearly had not forgiven me for dragging Grim back to the settlement and chaining him up.

“No way,” Thaleria hissed at me as I approached the two of them at the edge of the settlement. “No way, you’re not coming with us.”

“These are Hakah Gog’s orders,” I told her simply. “I am to accompany you today.”

Thaleria let out a furious string of words in her native tongue while Grim remained quiet, watching me at her side. She pushed her black eye-shells up to the top of her head beneath her hood, fixing angry brown and white eyes on me.

“Chapman gave me back my weapons. So don’t you dare try anything.” She hitched up the hem of her cloak, revealing a casing of sorts, hooked onto her leg coverings. Inside that casing was one of the tiny yet bizarrely powerful human weapons. A gun.

“You are an ally here. It is your right to carry a weapon, as I do.” I gestured to the hok-scale spear I held in my right hand. Grim, too, held his own hok-scale spear, closed in his shining red fist.

The lack of confrontation in my reply seemed to take the wind out of Thaleria’s waves a bit, though she didn’t take her hard gaze off of me.

“Fine,” she snapped after a long moment. “You can come with us. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

I decided not to argue that it was not up to her whether I accompanied them or not. But I did struggle to keep my irritation in check, biting out, “Believe me, Thaleria, there are things I would rather be doing than supervising your unruly mate today.”

Before Thaleria could take offence to my perhaps ill-thought-out response, Grim cut in, speaking to me for the first time that morning.

“Like spending time with your mate?”

I stiffened as my gaze found his scarlet sigh discs. Besides the Hakah, Grim was the only male I’d told about my tiny human mate. I’d felt obligated to do so. When he was chained, I’d told him I’d understood his actions. I’d understood why he’d left to protect his mate – I’d understood it because I had my own mate. And when I’d promised no harm would come to Thaleria because it would be too much like seeing my own precious one harmed, I’d meant it.

But now I regretted telling him. Because I had a feeling he was going to use it against me somehow now.

And I was right.

“Yes,” I said cautiously, wondering where he was going with his question.

“Has she accepted you yet?”

A pointed question. It wounded my pride to have to force out the word, “No.”

Grim’s brow ridges tightened with mirth. Yes, my instincts were certainly correct. He was enjoying this. Rubbing salt rocks between my scales. I had bested him in battle, but he had bested me in something far more important: he’d won his mate sooner than I had. He was saturated in the bliss of the mate bond, while I ached for it.

Let the young warrior have his fun with it. He did suffer at your hands after all.

“Revel in it, Grim,” I said with a sigh.

“Oh, I am,” he said, sounding downright jovial. “It eases the sting of the wounds you gave me, Tok, seeing you suffer now.”

“What sting? I thought you were completely healed?” Thaleria asked, whirling on her mate.

“I am, I am. I am only taunting Tok a little.”

“You were healed because of me, I’ll remind you,” I hissed between clenched fangs. I’d always been a composed and controlled warrior. But the unrequited mate bond had pulled my patience taut. Near to snapping. Dread sank low in my guts. Dread over the fact that the only way I’d have any peace now, my only salvation, rested in the small white hands of a female who so far had proven… A little skittish of me, to be honest.

“Getting him healed was the least you could do,” Thaleria cried, turning to me once more. “You nearly killed him!”

“It was the only way to bring him back here and fulfill my duties! I would not have had to take such measures if he were not so stubborn in defying our king!” My last words almost came out as a feral roar, but I managed to keep my voice steady. Mostly.

I was sure Thaleria would have an equally angry retort for me, but we both turned in shock at the sound of Grim’s growling laugh.

“This is all the recompense I need for what you’ve done, Tok,” he wheezed. “I have never seen you in such a state! You are in far worse shape right now, without your mate, than I was even on the brink of death.” He bent, nuzzling at the side of his mate’s hood with his snout in a movement that made me almost dizzy with jealousy. Oh, to touch Taylor that easily…

“Do not worry yourself over the past with Tok any longer, my mate,” he told her, wrapping his thick red arm around her shoulders and planting the butt of his spear in the sand in front of her. “I have forgiven him. And he is being suitably punished. His punishment is far worse than mine. In fact, today I do not consider having a chaperone a punishment at all. Today, it is a pleasure, because I get to see Tok’s scales so ruffled.”

If it were not for the steady, suspicious stare of his mate, I would have had to give him another beating for enjoying this so much, despite telling myself earlier that he’d deserved to have some fun with my situation as recompense.

Young warriors these days. Absolutely no respect.

“Let’s go,” I said gruffly before placing my spear’s bone handle between my fangs and falling to all fours.

Grim said no more, but I could still see his brow ridges tightened in that smirk of his. He placed his own spear in his mouth before moving downwards. Instantly, Thaleria clambered up onto his back, tightening her long legs around his waist and hooking her arms around his neck. I watched them carefully, trying to absorb every human/Bitter Sea interaction I could. I wouldn’t admit it to Grim, but I was trying to learn from him.

That rattled my brain. I, the strongest and most experienced warrior among our ranks, trying to learn from this young rogue warrior.

These are indeed strange times…

“Lead the way,” I growled, struggling somewhat to form the words around the handle of the spear. Thaleria looked at me from her mate’s back, then pulled her eye-shells back down onto her face.

“We’re going to my ship first,” she said.

I grunted in response. I knew the place she meant, even though her ship was invisible to my eyes. It was the place I’d found Grim before I’d brought him back to the settlement against his will.

“Stay close,” Thaleria added.

With a sharp sigh, I let my spear fall from my snout to remind her that those were my exact orders. But she shook her head in what I’d learned was a human gesture for “no.”

“Stay close so that you’re under the life sign inhibitor’s protection.” She held up a small silver object, and then pressed upon it with her thumb. “This scrambles our biological data before it can reach the orbiting ship’s scanners. It keeps us hidden.”

I did not need to know all the words she spoke to understand the gist of what she meant. I knew that her people were watching us, even now, from the sky. Somehow, the little thing she held would keep them from monitoring us too closely.

My fangs filled with hateful venom at the thought of enemies above, calculating and hidden.

“I wish they’d stop spying like cowards and come down here and fight,” I growled. The sooner the human forces launched their battle against us, the sooner we could kill them all. And the sooner I could focus on what was truly important: My mate.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Thaleria warned. My brow ridges fell downward in a frown. That was an odd phrase indeed. Why would a warrior wish for something he did not truly want?

I collected my spear from the sand, placing it between my fangs once more and signalling to the other two that I was ready.

Grim took off, loping past the last line of tents and the guards at the edge of the settlement. Ahead of us, the sand was a blanket of copper and gold, rippling in places, occasionally broken up by outcroppings of dark stone, but otherwise quite uniform. As I ran, my limbs pumping, beside Grim and his mate, I felt that I could almost pretend that the occasional dip and valley in the sand was a wave on the water of our home. But the grainy heat beneath my claws ruined that illusion. By the time we reached our destination, my throat burned and my scales itched with the dry, sandy heat. I would need a soak in the hot springs upon my return. Preferably with my mate there once again…

Before I could become too undone by fantasies of my mate’s wet nakedness, Thaleria dismounted from Grim, bringing me back to the present task.

Yes, this was the place I’d found Grim. There was an outcropping of large black boulders here, some of them as tall as me. They formed a loose, rough ring with emptiness at its centre.

“My ship is in there,” Thaleria said, jerking her pointed human chin between the boulders. I looked from her to the place she gestured towards, still in disbelief that something could be there yet be so unseen.

“You will be able to see the inside,” Grim told me as if sensing my disbelief.

I moved to two legs and took my spear from my snout, clasping it in my fist and watching closely as Thaleria moved towards… Nothing.

But a moment later, that nothingness opened up. Like a seashell being cracked, the air seemed to solidify and split, creating an opening that Thaleria stepped into. Grim dropped his spear on the sand and followed her on all fours, barely able to squeeze into that opening that hung like a dark stone in the sunlit air.

Cautiously, I moved toward the opening, unwilling to relinquish my hold on my own spear just yet. I leaned into the opening, gaze narrowed, taking everything in.

Thaleria’s ship was a tubular structure. Thaleria and Grim had moved towards the far left end, where the ship allowed us to see out onto the desert via some kind of transparent stone shelf. Grim could barely manoeuvre himself in the structure, and more than once his clumsy tail knocked aside and damaged the foreign objects that lined the shelves and surfaces of this strange place. Because of the lack of space in there, I opted to remain at the entrance, the majority of my body outside the structure. I kept my spear in one fist, and I rested my other hand on the outer wall of the ship to the left of the opening. I was both alarmed and fascinated to rest my hand upon a surface completely solid that I could not see.

I leaned inward, my head, neck, and the tops of my shoulders entering into the ship. Sunlight entered through the sheer stone wall at one end, and the rest of the space was lit with light similar to the ones the humans had placed at various points in the settlement and cliffs. My jaw clenched as I remembered the way that odd whitish light had licked down Taylor’s face and neck. The way it had turned every drop of dew upon her skin into a gem, a pearl…

Thaleria said something like “dah mitt,” and I looked towards them once more. Thaleria was seated, and Grim crouched behind her, peering over her shoulders as she stared at a glowing square.

“Still nothing,” she muttered.

“What do you mean, nothing? What did you come here to retrieve today?” I asked, leaning further forward and feeling the sides of my broad shoulders scrape against the edges of the entrance into the ship.

“My superiors asked me to get a hostage. Chapman and I agreed we needed more information on that directive, so I’ve asked for clarification. I asked them what they planned to do with the hostage once acquired. But it’s been radio silence since then.”

“‘Radio silence’ means no one has responded,” Grim added, twisting awkwardly to look at me from his cramped position.

“I figured that much out myself, Grim,” I replied flatly.

“It could just be some kind of comms error. Every once in a while the messages from up top get delayed longer than usual. But still…”

“You are worried,” I said, noticing the tense set of Thaleria’s shoulders and back. “Why?”

Now Thaleria was the one twisting to look at me.

“Because it could mean that they know I’ve been compromised somehow. They could be getting suspicious of me and my questions. Or it means that what they want to do with a hostage is so heinous that they don’t want me to know what it is.”

I said nothing else, ruminating on her words as she and Grim turned back to the glowing squares and rectangles.

“How is the sand storm today?” Grim asked.

“Shifted a little. It would still be in our way, though. We’ll need to see it move further out. Maybe a few more days until then.”

“Sand storm?” I asked. I hadn’t felt or heard a lick of wind. I was used to ocean tempests. Lashing rain and vengeful claws of light that burned the sky. But a sandstorm… I had yet to experience such a thing.

Frankly, it sounded awful.

“Yeah. Past the Death Plains there’s been this big storm swirling on the scanners and blocking out a lot of the data. But now that it’s moved slightly, we’ve found something. As soon as the storm moves further out, a small group will go investigate it.”

“What did you find?” I asked, leaning so far into the ship that my shoulders became firmly wedged. I managed to free them with only with a sharp jerk of my torso.

“We can’t be certain based on what we’ve seen but we think…” Thaleria planted the small but forceful pad of a finger on the glowing square. “We think it’s a sixth tribe of the Sea Sands. And we’re going to go find them.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Taylor

By the time evening came, I’d grown tired of my own cowardice. I didn’t want to stay hidden in the tent any longer. Well, that, plus the fact that I’d gotten sick of munching on the dried meat and valok gel we kept in the human tent as snacks. Remembering Camille’s mentions of new recipes made my stomach growl fiercely.

“I’m going to grab some nosh. You coming?” I asked Priya.

“No, just gonna finish this part,” she replied, hunched over her latest work. She’d been using the geographical data in files of the ship, plus her own observations on small excursions with bodyguards, to craft beautifully rendered and perfectly accurate maps of the surrounding areas. And when she got going, she really worked – she barely ate or looked up while she was in the midst of things.

I nodded without saying any more, not wanting to disturb her work too much.

I got to my feet, stretching, feeling several spots in my spine crack. I may have only been 24 years old, but staying sedentary and hunched over all day had a way of making a lass feel older than her years.

It will be good to walk around a bit. Get some fresh air…

I gulped, wondering what awaited me out there. Now that Tok had told me I was supposed to be his mate, what did that mean going forward? Was he going to be waiting for me right outside the tent, expecting me to… Do what, exactly?

Only one way to find out.

My stomach fluttered, electric heat churning through my body. I took a deep breath, tossing my long curls back and straightening my shoulders before wrenching the tent flap aside in a forceful movement.

Well, that’s a wee bit anticlimactic.

I’d prepared myself to have Tok’s giant form right in front of me. But he wasn’t there. I blinked a couple of times, almost as if waiting for him to appear.

But he didn’t.

Why the fuck do I feel disappointed by that?

No, I’m not disappointed that he’s not here. It’s just not what I was expecting, that’s all…

Whatever it was, something gnawed at me in an unkind way as I walked towards the evening fire at the centre of the settlement.

I pushed down the awkward clash of emotions inside me, deciding that the gnawing feeling was simply hunger. The scent of roasted meat made my mouth water, and I hurried my steps. The smoky scent was different tonight, with a slightly sharp, sweet tang in the air.

It was fairly early in the evening, and dusk was just brushing the air with shadows. Many of the male warriors were still out doing whatever their daily duties were, so there were only a few Sea Sand men seated at the fire. Sea Sand women and children were busy butchering freshly-hunted dakrival, assisted by Theresa. I smiled at the Southern bell’s fortitude. For a pregnant lass, she sure didn’t seem very squeamish.

Speaking of pregnant squeamish ladies…

I didn’t see Cece at the fire, nor did I see her mate, the massive Gahn Buroudei. She’d been pretty wiped out by her pregnancy and spent a lot of time resting in their tent these days.

I scanned the rest of the group at the fire, spotting Camille and Jocelyn. I hurried over to them, plopping myself down beside Camille.

“Och, smells nice,” I said with a grin. I sniffed the air with outlandish enthusiasm, like some kind of cartoon dog.

“Try this,” Camille said, shoving a small bone plate heaped with smoked meat towards me. I took it, having another sniff before digging in.

“That’s fantastic,” I moaned between mouthfuls of the stuff. The meat was roasted to perfection, and whatever seasoning Camille had applied had imparted a perfect burnt sweetness. For a moment, I was transported home, to my Uncle’s pub, chowing down on one of his famous Sunday roast dinners.

“Now try this,” Camille urged, handing me something else.

I took it, staring down at it in confusion.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s candied valok,” Camille replied. “Jocelyn found a plant nearby that has some similarities to soybeans and I’ve incorporated them into the coating.”

“Hey, don’t give me all the credit!” Jocelyn replied with a laugh, her high cheekbones bunching prettily in the firelight. “You’re the one who’s turned them into something remotely edible!”

“Alors, they’re not quite as versatile as soybeans. But I’ve been fermenting them, hoping to create something like soy sauce. I think I’ve gotten pretty close. As close as possible, anyway,” Camille replied.

“Down the hatch,” I muttered before tossing the sticky, stiff slice of valok into my mouth. Camille watched me with a carefully composed expression as I worked on the chewy substance. Even though it was a bit hard to chew, it was astoundingly good.

“What’s that word for when something has the best savoury flavours?” I asked, my mouth still full of the oddly tantalizing snack.

“Bloody brilliant?” Jocelyn asked with a wink. “I swear, I’m addicted to this stuff now.”

I swallowed, then shook my head.

“No. I mean yes, but no. Unagi?”

Camille laughed. “Unagi is eel,” she corrected me, still laughing. “Do you mean umami?”

I snapped my fingers and then pointed at her, grinning.

“That’s the one!”

She smiled softly, murmuring, “Merci,” as she passed me another piece. I popped it into my mouth, admiring the umami-ness of it. The slightly bitter green-tea flavour of the valok had been sweetened by Camille’s cooking method, and the fermented coating added a perfectly subtle, almost chestnut-like, saltiness.

As Camille and Jocelyn talked about more ways to make use of the beans they’d found, I started to tune them out. Not that I didn’t want to be a part of their conversation, but cooking was not at all my forté – that had been my uncle’s domain. And even though he’d run a pub when he’d been alive, he really only had a couple of dishes he could make with consistent quality. Beef, potatoes, and the annual Rabbie Burns-night haggis made up the majority of what I’d grown up eating, so there wasn’t much I could add to the alien soybeans subject.

Since I wasn’t talking to my friends, my mind was free to wander. And so were my eyes – wandering all over the damn settlement, looking for one very specific, very large alien warrior.

But I still didn’t see him.

The Bitter Sea lads didn’t seem to like the smoke from the fire, and they didn’t eat their meat cooked. So though I could see a few of them milling about the settlement, none of them came near. And none of them were Tok.

And for some daft reason, that was starting my grind my human gears. Was he playing hard to get or something? Was he the type to just drop the “you’re my mate” bomb on me and then disappear to try to pique my interest?

Or was he already ghosting me?

I stiffened, popping another salty-sweet valok candy into my mouth and chewing furiously. Even though I’d been more or less hiding from Tok all day, the idea that he might now be avoiding me sent chaotic anger through my chest. I breathed deeply, trying to get a hold of it. Before she’d died, my mum had always told me I should have been born with her red hair to match my temper. I’d inherited her curls, but not their fiery colour.

Well, fine. He can do whatever he wants.

“Thanks for the food,” I said to Camille and Jocelyn before abruptly standing. I walked away from the fire with my arms crossed, stomping into the tent and grabbing some fresh clothes.

All I wanted to do right now was go have a bath alone. And I was not going to let either Tok’s presence or absence make any more of my decisions.

I was not going to let this man get under my skin.

And I was absolutely not going to acknowledge the way said skin was now prickling with goose pimples at the thought of Tok showing up at the hot springs again tonight.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Tok

“Why do you look like you just lost your favourite spear?”

“I don’t look like that,” I grumbled at Grim. “Besides, I do not have a favourite spear. That is childish. I do have a best spear, however. It is the strongest and the biggest. And I have not lost it. It is right here, in my claws.” I raised it between us meaningfully before lowering it once more.

“You know what I mean,” Grim replied. “Why are you glaring at the sky like that? Like you want to punch it?”

I stared at Grim flatly. He was trying to rile me up and I knew it. He knew exactly why I was irritated. Because instead of heading back to the settlement after Thaleria’s work at her ship had ended, they had instead insisted on coming here, to this larger human ship. Which meant I was separated from Taylor for even longer.

I’d hoped to get back to her long before night fell. But even now the stars were hot and hungry above us.

“Why ask questions to which you already know the answers, Grim? Despite your recent follies, you’re not a stupid warrior.”

Grim’s brow ridges tightened in mirth, but he tried to hide his expression.

He’s laughing at me.

“Grim, you have drawn out your day’s duties far beyond an acceptable measure just to keep me from the settlement and my mate. You are punishing me for what I did to you and you know it,” I snapped.

“Ah, perhaps there is a small stone of truth in that,” Grim said, no longer trying to hide his smile. “I cannot help myself, Tok. You make it too entertaining by reacting with such glowering.”

“You know how strong I am. You know the bite of my spear. If I am glowering, that should be cause for fear, not laughter,” I hissed.

But Grim, the brash young warrior, did not seem perturbed by my threats.

He and I were standing out on the sand, some twenty paces away from the large human ship. Nearer to the ship, Thaleria stood with the Gahnala Kapman and her mate, Gahn Fallo. The three of them were deep in discussion about a possible excursion beyond the Death Plains to commune with the potential sixth tribe of the desert. I did not care much for their plans. Whether there were six desert tribes or sixty, it made no difference to me. All I cared about was getting back to my mate and keeping her safe myself.

After what seemed another small eternity, Thaleria left the other group and jogged to us.

“All right. We’re done here for the night,” she said.

“Are you sure, Thaleria? There are no other pressing tasks to be done?” Grim crooned.

I shot him a warning look. If these two kept me out here away from my mate one moment longer I would have to drag both of them back to the settlement myself.

But whether she was taking mercy on me or just ready to return to the settlement, Thaleria shook her head.

“No, that’s it. Let’s go back.”

This time, I took the lead. I ran almost to my limits. I would have left Grim and Thaleria behind if it were not for the fact that I was still responsible for them until we were within the confines of the settlement. I remained on all fours so that I could move as quickly as possible, only rising to two legs once I was past the first line of tents out on the sand. After making sure that Thaleria and Grim had also entered the settlement, I turned my thoughts from them.

And turned those thoughts to Taylor.

I stalked through the tents of the settlement, breathing deeply, trying to suss out her scent beneath the smoke and the sand and the scents of the others living here. I caught a whisper of it near the new women’s tent, but it did not seem strong enough to suggest she was inside. I scanned the settlement visually, raking my eyes down every wall of rock, combing every shadow.

She was not there.

Perhaps…

Perhaps she was once again slick and naked, waiting for me in the springs.

A territorial growl rose in my throat as I gripped my spear and prowled towards the darkness of the cliffs. Passing into the opening that led to the hot springs, I forged forward into a darkness that was studded every few paces by small human lights on the sandy ground.

I entered a large cave within the cliffs, catching a more recent whiff of her. Just that slight lick of her smell on the air had my cock straining. Mating fluid rushed into my fangs. She had definitely come this way, and recently.

I continued forward into the next tunnel, breathing in through my nose. I made sure to listen closely, too. I would not enter the hot springs if Taylor was not alone.

But hers was the only fresh scent I caught here.

And I heard no voices.

Which meant she was in the hot springs again. Alone. Probably naked, and primed with the knowledge that she now had a powerful mate coming for her.

Lust quickened my movements until I met the steam of the hot springs cave. The moisture in the air seemed to intensify Taylor’s scent, making it thick and luscious in my throat. My muscles contracted involuntarily, forcing me to swallow. If her scent alone was that delicious, what would she taste like upon my tongue? My knuckles cracked as I tightened my grip on the spear I only just realized I still held. I tossed it down on the stone, creating an echoing clatter that brought forth a soft sound of surprise from deeper within the cave. My whole body reacted to that sound – every muscle tightening, every nerve thrumming. The smallest sound, barely a breath of it, and already it had worked its way inside me.

That little sound of surprise was followed by more sounds – words.

“I wondered if you’d show up.”

I looked at the largest pool in front of me, where Taylor had bathed yesterday, surprised to see that she was not there. I tore apart the cave with my eyes until I located her. She was up on the upper level of the cave, in the highest, smallest heated pool. From here, I could only see her small face as she peered down over the stone ledge of her pool. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a precarious-looking knot that my claws itched to unwind.

“Of course,” I replied. “I came as soon as I could.”

Blasted Grim. He’d kept me away for too long. Even more unforgivable than that, he’d kept Taylor waiting.

“As soon as you could, eh? So just where were you all day?”

There was a note of emotion I couldn’t quite parse behind her words. I didn’t know the human women, and Taylor’s nature, well enough yet to understand the things she left unsaid. But whatever the emotion entwined with her words, it did not seem to be a happy one.

Wait a moment…

Maybe I should have been thanking Grim instead of threatening to throttle him. Perhaps he’d actually done me a favour by keeping me away all day. Perhaps my mate had worried about me. Pined for me…

“Did you miss me?”

A shocked spluttering sound, followed by a gasp and a splash, had me vaulting up the stone to reach her. I knew the pool was small. Shallow enough for her to find her footing at any point. But her little face had disappeared from my view. And that struck more fear into my heart than I’d ever known in all the ages of my life.

Taylor had already come back to the surface, coughing and wheezing by the time I reached her. But I plunged into her pool all the same, striding forcefully through the water to get to her. I had to make sure she was alright. She was so small, so delicate. And I did not know enough about what could harm her.

Could a coughing fit kill a human?

Oh, no. That was a terrifying thought.

I gripped Taylor’s shoulders, then moved one hand around to pat her back in panicked, barely-controlled quick movements. I could not see her face well enough to know if she was getting better or if I was only making things worse – her now-soaked knot of hair had slipped forward, hanging heavily over her eyes.

But at the very least, I could tell that she was breathing. And when her hand found its way to my chest and shoved, it was surprisingly firm for her small frame. Not enough to cause me to budge even half a claw’s width, but the movement did not feel too feeble.

I removed my hand from behind her back, keeping my other one steady upon her tiny shoulder. With the flick of a claw, I scooped the sodden ball of her hair away from her face, trying to balance it precariously on the top of her head as it once had been.

Taylor batted at my hand, and I withdrew it. Though I kept my other at her shoulder, just in case she should slip below the surface again.

I bent so that my face was level with hers, scanning her expression for any signs of poor health. Her cheeks looked darker in colour than usual in the light.

Was that some sign of approaching death in a human? I reached forward and dragged the pad of my finger down one of her cheeks, then the other, as if trying to divine some meaning from the touch.

“What does this mean, this colour in your cheeks?” I asked, concerned. How the other men mated to these tiny creatures did not go mad with worry every moment of every day was beyond me.

“It’s fine! I’m fine!” Taylor cried hoarsely, coughing between the words.

“But this colour -”

Taylor’s face hardened.

“Consider it a warning system. The way some poisonous creatures have brightly-coloured bodies.” She poked her fingers into her cheeks, creating dimples in the soft flesh. “This colour means you need to back off, or you’ll be sorry!”

Hmm. I had not heard of the human women having any hidden, deadly capabilities besides their foreign weapons.

But it mattered not.

“Be that as it may, I must make sure you are alright,” I replied. “I will prepare myself for whatever defence mechanisms your body will unleash upon me. My scales are strong. I am certain that I will survive it.”

Taylor’s slim, hair-lined brows contracted sharply, and she let out a harsh breath.

“Fine! You called my bluff. It’s not a warning sign or anything dangerous. It’s just from the heat and the…”

“And the what?” I asked, burning to know exactly what ailed her.

“And the fact that I’m naked and you’re hanging all over me!”

I froze. In my panic, I’d completely forgotten that she was naked. Now that I knew she was not about to die from slipping in this pool, that knowledge crashed through me. Carnal chaos roared in my blood, making my head pound and my cock throb. My fingers tightened involuntarily on her small shoulder. I stared at my hand on her bare, wet skin, my jaw tightening at the sight of my thumb with its long dark claw so close to the base of her pulsing throat.

Even though this pool was shallow, the water still came up fairly high on Taylor’s body. Between the mineralized dark water and the steam, I could see little beneath its surface. Apart from her shoulders, neck, and face, she was mostly obscured to me.

But obscured or not, she was right there. Soft and without a scrap of clothing upon her.

“You say your cheeks darken because you are naked before your mate.” My voice lowered, sounding husky and strange to my ears. “So it is a sign of arousal.”

“No, it’s a sign of anger!”

Oh.

This was… Not going well.

Reluctantly, I let Taylor’s shoulder go. I already regretted not savouring the feeling of her skin better in the brief time I’d touched her.

We stared at each other without speaking, only the sound of Taylor’s ragged breathing filling the cave. Her breath was beginning to slow, to return to its usual rhythm, but her expression remained as fierce as before. As I beheld that small, furious face, I realized something disheartening.

Never once, in all my storms and battles, not once in any stretch of sea, had I ever been lost.

But here, in this small pool with my own heart staring back at me, hating me, I realized that I no longer knew my way.

I knew my destination – that could only ever be her. She was the shining star at the end of my winding path.

But the path itself?

It was lost.

And thus, so was I.

CHAPTER NINE

Taylor

After the silence had gone on long enough, I pulled one of my hands from the water and flapped it at Tok.

“You go over there!”

I couldn’t fucking think with him this close to me. His bold question of “Did you miss me?” already made me almost drown in this blighted pool. Having the huge wall of him right in front of me, even though he was no longer touching me, was making me barmy.

Tok looked at me for so long that I thought I’d have to repeat myself. But just as I opened my mouth, he obeyed, striding easily through the water to the edge of the small pool before turning to face me once more. I moved shakily backwards until my back hit the stone wall of the pool. With my arms crossed, I hunched further down into the water.

God, I’d known he might have come here. A part of me that I couldn’t deny had been weirdly excited at the prospect. I should have been more prepared.

That excited part of me was still there, even now. Even through the embarrassment and the irritation and, to be perfectly honest, the fear I felt towards him, there was an undercurrent of anxious anticipation.

And it was that obnoxious, anxious excitement that answered for me when Tok finally asked, “Would you like me to leave?”

“No,” I said. The word left my treacherous mouth before my brain had half a chance to catch up.

If Tok was surprised by my reply, he didn’t show it. Or, maybe he did show it, and I just couldn’t tell on his alien features. Either way, he remained where he was.

“As you command,” he muttered, and fuck me, his voice was like a rough, warm claw dragging its way down my spine. The thought of “commanding” a creature that huge, that powerful, was appealing in the strangest way. Hell, I’d already commanded him. I’d told him to back up, and he did. I’d told him to stay, and he did.

But now that he was staying, staring at me with a ravenous intensity that ate right through the steam between us, I had no idea what to do. I knew I needed to do something. I couldn’t just keep hiding from him the way I’d done today, even though it seemed like he hadn’t been at the settlement most of the day anyway.

“So, where were you today?” I asked again, partly out of curiosity, and partly as a way to break the silence.

“Grim requires supervision after his behaviour. Today, Hakah Gog ordered that I should be that supervision. I accompanied Grim and Thaleria on their work outside the settlement. Work that perhaps took a little longer than it should have…”

A note of exasperation in his voice made me smile despite myself. These guys may have been alien, with different customs and cultures, but there were undeniably human aspects to them. Or at least, aspects we shared. The frustration of an older, more serious person keeping track of a younger more wayward one was entirely universal.

I also smiled at the way Tok pronounced Valeria’s name.

“Thaleria. I like the way you guys say that,” I said relaxing a wee bit and finding a comfortable spot to sit on a stone.

Tok watched me relentlessly as I moved. When I was seated, he went ahead and did the same. He sank lower into the water, appearing to sit on a stone shelf as well. He was so huge that the water only came up over his hips, leaving his entire torso out of the water. Like yesterday, he leaned back, letting his elbows rest on the stone behind him in a leisurely-looking position.

“I much prefer your name, Taylor,” Tok said. “Short and strong. And not so foreign in my mouth as some of the other names. I like that when I say it, I am saying it correctly.”

My heart thumped.

“Oh yeah?” I asked. Why was it so oddly alluring that he wanted to say my name correctly?

“Yes. I plan to get everything right when it comes to you. Though, so far, I do not seem to have achieved that goal.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. I kind of already knew what he meant, but I wanted to hear exactly what he thought of this whole situation.

“Thus far, I have not made you happy. You dislike me. And if I am not mistaken, maybe even fear me.”

Shit. Well, now I felt kind of bad.

“I wouldn’t say that,” I spluttered. “It’s not that I dislike you. I just don’t know you very well yet. This mates thing is serious business and I feel like I’ve just been tossed in the deep end!” I decided not to address the fear part of it yet. There was a primal edge of fear in what I felt for Tok – how could there not be? One flick of a claw could kill me. But more and more, that fear was being overpowered, or was maybe even mingling with, a pull towards the pure power that he exuded.

“The deep end of what? Water?” Tok growled. “You need never worry about the depths. I am the strongest swimmer in our army.”

“I didn’t mean that literally!” I cried. I shook my head and then let out a small laugh.

“So you do not dislike me. That is good.” The bright discs in Tok’s eyes took on an intense silvery sheen in the lantern light. “What about fearing me?”

So he wasn’t going to let that part slide, then.

I chewed on my lip, not wanting to offend him but not wanting to lie, either.

“There’s a little of that,” I admitted. “Just a little. The fear.”

I didn’t tell him how, even now, that fear wasn’t pounding in my chest but lower. Much lower, making me squeeze my thighs together.

He sighed, reaching up to rub his brow ridges with his forefinger and thumb, reminding me of a man pinching the bridge of his nose. I watched the bunching and pulling of the muscles in his scaly forearm as he did so. With those scales, you couldn’t see any veins. But if he hadn’t had the scales, I knew I wouldn’t have been able to tear my eyes away from the ligaments pulling, the veins looping over the fearsome muscle.

He let his hand fall away from his face before fixing his penetrating gaze on me once more.

“I would not have you fear me, Taylor. The sole purpose of my life is to love you and protect you. I do not want your fear. Unless…”

My mouth went suddenly dry as he cocked his head slightly.

“Unless what?” I croaked.

He paused a beat before replying, “Unless you like it.”

“Excuse me?!” I cried, my eyes widening and my mouth falling open in shock. I’d been worried about offending him, but now I was the one offended. “That seems awfully presumptuous!”

“The prey drive can do unusual things,” he drawled in that smokey, rough voice of his.

“Prey drive?! You think I’m your prey?” I exclaimed.

“No. I think you’re my mate. But you just admitted to me that you feel some fear towards me. Which means perhaps you think of yourself as prey.”

I stared at Tok in gobsmacked silence. Part of me wanted to stand up, wade through the water towards him, and wag a finger in his face shouting, “No way, ye big daft lizard. I am no one’s prey!”

But another part of me was worried that the fact I was so defensive about what he’d said was because he was maybe a wee, teensy, tiny bit right.

“Well, maybe I can’t help it! You do look like a predator!”

Tok let his elbows slip from the stone behind him as he leaned forward, his eyes never leaving my face.

“I can be whatever you want me to be, Taylor. I can be your predator. Which brings me back to the essential question. Would you like that?”

“I…” My words trailed off as my throat tightened. My heart was going totally batty in my chest. My breath came quick and ragged as my blood pounded through my body, the rhythmic pressure culminating in my pelvis. My fingernails dug into my biceps as I tightened my crossed arms across my chest, feeling my nipples pebble against my inner forearms.

Tok watched me, letting out a low hissing sound. And then, in an instant, he was up, the force of his movement sending waves of heated water towards me. He pushed his powerful legs through the water as if it weren’t even there – moving as quickly and powerfully as he could on dry land.

“What are you -” My words were cut off by my own sharp squeal of shock and fear. As Tok towered over me, he raised his arms out to the side and extended his deadly spikes. A vicious growl built in his chest and his jaws snapped, the lantern light catching on his wicked-sharp fangs. His eyes bored into me as he fell to his knees directly in front of me, each of his hands slamming to the stone on either side of my shoulders.

He didn’t touch me, just caged me in against the stone with the huge frame of his body. He leaned inward and slightly to the side so that he spoke his next words against my wet ear and neck. Still, he didn’t touch me, but I felt his breath on my sensitive skin as he spoke.

“If you tell me to go back to the other side of the pool again, I will do so. Without hesitation.”

His hands slid inward slightly on the stone at my back. His head dipped further until his snout brushed my ear so gently I wasn’t sure if it had actually happened or I’d imagined it. Without meaning to, I found my head tilting further to the side, giving him greater access to the side of my neck.

Which was totally fucking mad. But I still did it. The sensations coursing through me didn’t offer me any other choice. Something about being so cornered – trapped – by him, was leaving me sensitized and spellbound.

Tok must have noticed my shift in position, noticed me angling my head to bare more of my neck to him. He gave a short, gruff groan in response, the thick muscles in his chest and abdomen clenching.

“Tell me to go, Taylor. Tell me not to touch you.”

“Don’t,” I choked out. But what I was saying “don’t” to, I had no idea.

Don’t touch me.

Don’t go.

Don’t teach me things about myself that I don’t want to know.

Like the fact that apparently, I had a massive primal monster kink. Seriously, what the hell? Where had this come from, and why was it rearing its ugly, horny (heh) head now of all times? Just when I was trying to make sense of this whole mates thing with a clear mind? Because my mind was no longer clear. In fact, it felt like it wasn’t there at all. I could barely think.

“Don’t what?” Tok asked, his voice guttural. “Use your words.”

“I don’t know!” I finally cried. “You’re confusing me!”

“Then let me be perfectly clear,” Tok said, his voice like black waves crashing against moonlit rock. “Let there be no confusion here, Taylor. You are mine. To love. To protect. To mate. My treasure.”

“I’m not just a treasure, though,” I managed to choke out, trying to infuse my words with some anger, some strength. “I’m not an object. I’m a person! With feelings!” A lot of fucking intense feelings, it turned out.

“I know,” Tok murmured, his breath a cascading fire against my throat. “But still, I treasure you.”

I let out a soft moan before snapping my mouth shut. Since my breasts were pretty much covered by the dark water, I lifted one of my arms from their tightly-crossed position. I slammed my palm against the side of my neck. It created a barrier between Tok’s snout and my skin, but that wasn’t the main reason I put my hand there. The main reason was that if something didn’t touch my agonized neck soon, I was going to be fucking rubbing myself against Tok’s scales and fangs. Serving myself up on a human-sized platter. I pressed my other arm harder against my chest, electric pleasure zinging from my nipples down into my pussy.

“Such little fingers,” Tok said. His breath shuddered out of him, making the back of my hand erupt in tingling sparks. He didn’t add anything else to that sentence. He didn’t need to. My own mad brain was doing it for him.

Such little fingers – how will they fit around my big alien cock?

Oh, God. It was probably really bad that I was now picturing his cock, right? What did a lizard alien’s cock even look like? Unlike the Sea Sand men, they didn’t wear loincloths, and their genitalia was hidden in a muscled, scaly slit between their legs.

“How will it even fit? How does this even work?”

Did I really just say that out loud?

Yes. Yes, I did. But, fucking hell, if I was going to consider doing anything with this guy, I should learn just what exactly I was in for, right?

“It will fit, treasure,” Tok said firmly. “That’s what the mating fluid is for.”

“The… The what?!”

“Mating fluid. It collects in a male’s fangs. It helps ease the way for him,” he said, as if stating the most obvious fact in the world.

“So if it’s in your fangs, you have to…”

I was pretty sure I felt Tok’s snout dip incrementally closer, his fangs hovering a breath from the back of my hand.

“I’d bite you.”

Those words broke the spell hanging over me, over us. But not before a hot squeeze of arousal wracked my core at the image he’d just put in my head.

“This is crazy,” I said. “All this talk about biting me! You go back over there! Shoo!”

I cringed a little, realizing I’d just told a ten-foot-tall alien Godzilla to fucking shoo. That was the kind of thing you said to a wayward sheep that had found its way into your back garden, not what you said to someone who could literally crush you. But to Tok’s credit, he straightened and moved away from me immediately. He didn’t try to crowd me longer than I’d wanted, didn’t push things too far. And he didn’t seem to take offence to my orders. His earlier words came back to me unbidden, along with a wild little thrill: As you command.

He stalked through the water to the other side of the pool before turning to face me once more and seating himself on the stone again. I rubbed viciously at the side of my neck, trying to disperse the thrumming sensation that prickled just under my skin.

“How come Zoey’s never said anything about all this biting nonsense?” I snapped. I didn’t mean to sound so irritated or judgmental. But I just felt so woefully unprepared for this conversation. Every time I talked to this hulking alien, he dropped some new bomb on me. First, the whole “you’re my mate” thing, and now the whole “I bite my mate and inject her with magic pussy-loosening juice” bit. Really, what was an Earth lass supposed to do with information like that?!

“Zoey… That is Kor’s mate? I do not know. Kor is only half-Bitter Sea warrior. Perhaps he has different ways. Or different anatomy.”

Anatomy…

My eyes dipped down to the steaming surface of the water before snapping back up to Tok’s face again. As soon as we got the chance, Zoey and I would be having a long conversation about this stuff. The only other person mated to a lizard alien was Valeria, and she’d been really busy since she’d gotten to the settlement. I’d never actually spoken to the newly-arrived soldier. So I couldn’t exactly imagine myself trotting up to her and asking, “How ye daein? So, does your mate bite you during sex, too? Or is that just Tok?”

The conversations we have on this planet, I swear…

“Alright, well, thank you for the information. I will… Take this all under advisement. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to finish my bath alone.”

“Of course,” Tok said. There was a hissing tightness to his words that hadn’t been there before. A tension that made me think it was taking a lot of control for him to get out of the hot spring and move away from me.

But he still did it.

I watched him turn and hoist his massive body easily from the water. He stood on the stone, his back to me, as I stared. The water rolled down his glimmering scales, worshipping every hard bulge and curve of muscle so beautifully that I couldn’t help wanting to reach out and track each trail of water with my fingertips. His spikes were flattened now. My insides went squirmy as I’d remembered them extending only a few moments before. Springing outward with dark, cutting force as he’d come for me. I pressed my thighs together harder, trying to eliminate the throbbing there.

But I couldn’t get rid of it. And as I watched Tok’s muscled body shimmer and ripple in the lantern light as he descended the stone, it got even worse.

“Goodnight, Taylor,” he said, that same tension still there, crackling in his voice as he bent to retrieve his spear.

“Goodnight,” I squeaked, my eyes trained on his broad back, his spiked shoulders, his heavy tail as he strode away.

He was barely out of the cave before my hand slipped between my legs.

CHAPTER TEN

Tok

After waiting and watching to make sure that Taylor returned safely to the new women’s tent, I went back into the cliffs. I did not seek the hot springs, nor did I seek my own cave.

I sought Grim.

I found his cave quickly. I knew where he, and all the other warriors, slept. Though I approached it more quietly and more cautiously than I would an unmated warrior. Despite Thaleria’s (perhaps deserved) prickliness towards me, I did not want to surprise her or intrude upon her privacy.

As I drew close to the mouth of their shared cave, I paused and listened. I heard no conversation and no sounds of mating. Just steady breathing. And then, a moment later, the sound of claws on stone and a heavy tail dragging.

“What is it?” Grim asked, appearing in the gloomy mouth of his cave. There was an urgency to his voice – he likely thought I’d come here so late because of some sort of emergency.

Well, the fact that my mate did not seem to want me was an emergency, as far as I was concerned. And he was the only full-blooded Bitter Sea warrior who had any experience in this matter.

“I require your assistance,” I grunted, annoyed that I had to do this at all. The fact I had not unlocked the mysteries of my mate’s heart on my own was a claw in my scales. I felt I’d gotten close when I’d extended my spikes and cornered her. She’d bared her pretty neck to me, and her breathing had hitched.

But then she’d told me to go away. So perhaps I had no idea what I was talking about.

“Let us move away from here. I do not want to wake her,” Grim said in a hushed tone. “The human women need much more sleep than we do. And it is never pleasant when they do not get enough.”

I made careful note of that. Already, this conversation was proving fruitful.

Grim and I moved through the cliffs, back out into the settlement. We each walked on two legs along the cliff wall, away from the tents.

“So, Tok, have you come begging for help with your new woman? I can think of nothing else that would have you singling me out at this late hour for my assistance.”

“I will not beg, Grim,” Such a thing was unimaginable.

Although, if Taylor told me to beg…

Well, I might be able to imagine that.

Grim gave a bark of laughter before stopping in a quiet, shadowy place against the cliffs.

I stopped, too, and we faced each other.

“What do you want to know, Tok? As much as I enjoy your suffering in this matter, it does not do to trifle with fate. I will not be the warrior responsible for causing problems between you and your mate. So you can ask me your questions, and I will be truthful.”

I stared at him, my fingers tightening in irritation on my spear’s handle. Grim eyed it meaningfully, and I placed it on the sand as a gesture of goodwill. Considering not long ago I’d plunged this spear through his neck, it seemed fair enough that I lower the weapon now.

Grim waited in silence as my jaw worked, fangs grinding. Now that I had him here, I wasn’t even sure what to ask.

“How did you make her love you?” I finally said. It was a broad question, but it was the only one that came to the forefront of my addled mind.

“What do you mean, Tok? Look at me! I am a fine specimen of a warrior. I impressed her continuously with my strength and valour until she could not help but love me.”

“You know I have heard her version of events, correct?” I asked as Grim smirked at me. Grim had not won her heart that way, at least not at first. He’d abducted her and carried her off into the desert – almost getting his cock blown off in Thaleria’s rage. So far, I should have been on much stronger footing with my mate than he had been.

Or maybe I should carry Taylor away, too…

“Fine, fine. I will be serious. At first, Thaleria did not trust me at all. Unlike you and your mate, we had no shared words. She could not understand anything I said and clearly did not feel the mate bond as I did. No, in her it had to grow,” he said.

“But how did you make it grow?” I growled, claws flexing. When would he get to the point? All of this was completely baffling me.

I did not like being baffled.

“Truly, I do not exactly know. It took time and much effort. I learned as much of her language as I could, and she mine, so that we could speak to each other. She began to trust me. Perhaps it was the fact that we were so alone and isolated out in the desert. We had no one else to turn to and no distractions but each other.”

Hmm. So there was more and more merit to bringing Taylor somewhere else, then. Somewhere we could be alone…

“And how about the mating?” I asked bluntly. “She can take your fangs, your mating fluid?”

Taylor had seemed so shocked, affronted, by the idea of biting and mating fluid. As if such a thing were an impossibility.

“You must be very careful, Tok,” Grim replied. “Their skin is beyond delicate. You only need to graze with the very tips of your fangs. You cannot bite with full force as your body will urge you to do. Not like with one of our females and their strong scales.”

“I know this,” I grunted, irritated. I may not have actually mated my new woman yet, as he had. But I was not an idiot. If the invisible force of the sun could harm my female’s flesh, my fangs would do damage a hundred times worse.

“Fine, then. If you are gentle, the mating fluid works as it should. And the mating fluid does not just work in the bloodstream. It creates effects in other places, too,” he said cryptically.

“Which places? What do you mean?”

Grim stared at me for a moment before saying, “No, I will not tell you this, Tok. That is a secret of the new women’s bodies that you must discover for yourself.

My hands formed into involuntary fists, and I considered slugging him. But I controlled myself, trying to remember the disciplined warrior I once had been. Before my heart had been yanked out through my maw and squeezed in a tiny white hand.

“What else can you tell me, then?” I asked tightly.

Grim paused, looking thoughtful, before saying, “I am not sure there is much else to say to help you, Tok. Every new woman is different, just as every warrior is different. Your story will be unique from ours. You must swim into that future yourself.”

“It irks me to have such a young warrior speak like a wizened old man to me,” I admitted out loud.

Grim pushed off from the cliff, straightening to his full height.

“I am younger than you, yes. But in this, you must admit I am vastly more experienced. When it comes to a human mate, I am the wise one between us. But even so, I cannot think of any more advice for you now. Your circumstances are so different. You are both safe at the settlement, for one thing. And you can speak to each other. I would imagine that being able to communicate openly would only help, not hinder. Though, knowing the brash words coming from your snout lately, perhaps having her understand you will actually push her away from you…”

“Enough, warrior,” I hissed, my tail pounding the sand behind me. My spikes rose, but I forced them down. I took a steadying breath and made myself speak calmly and plainly. “I thank you for the information. If I have need of you again, I will call upon you.”

“Very good,” Grim said. With that, he turned and headed for the entrance into the cliffs that would lead him back to his cave and his mate. I tried to ignore the claw of jealousy curling in my guts, watching him go back to his woman.

I tried.

I failed.

But such jealousy only added to my determination to win my own mate. My blood was already heating, trying to undo Grim’s riddle about using the mating fluid in other places on Taylor’s sweet body. On her skin?

Her cunt?

I turned towards the cliffs, flattening my hand against my slit, groaning at the swelling of my cock. Treacherous waves, I needed her. I pressed my hand harder against my groin, going back over the conversation with Grim and trying to glean anything that would help me now.

The one thing that stood out was his comment about being alone. I needed to find a way to be alone with Taylor. Alone longer than a few moments in the steamy hot spring.

Perhaps I could ask Hakah Gog for a few days’ leave and take her somewhere…

Getting the Hakah to agree to let me go anywhere would be difficult. As I was his right claw, he would likely want me near, especially with things moving as quickly as they were now – talks of hostages, and of new tribes to ally with. But if there was any time to try to gain my mate’s love, it was now.

Besides, something told me that getting my stern king to agree to let me go would be the easier part.

The difficult part would be convincing Taylor.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Taylor

Ithought about remaining inside the human tent all day as a way to avoid Tok again. I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to let him, or my feelings towards him, dictate my actions. But that was before I’d made myself come thinking of his body, his claws, his teeth. His voice.

A bolt of hot shame made me sweat as I got dressed for the day. My mind whirled, going over and over the events of last night. Nothing had even really happened – we hadn’t hooked up or anything. But still, things felt like they were shifting quickly. And I had no idea how to react to any of it.

But as I laced up my boots, I decided that yes, I would go out there. If Tok was waiting for me outside the tent flap, I’d face him, my cheeks burning and all. And who knew, maybe he’d been sent on Grim babysitting duty again, giving me more time to prepare myself for our next encounter.

I slathered on some sunscreen – some of the stuff from the new batch that Melanie and Kat had concocted using minerals from the planet – then pulled on my jacket, tucking my curls into the hood. Trying to ignore the tightening of my chest at the thought of seeing Tok again, I stepped out into the harsh Zaphrinax sunlight.

Tok wasn’t waiting for me outside the tent flap. See? He had some other duties to attend to. You’re fine.

But just like yesterday, the relief was tinged with disappointment. And this time, the disappointment was much more prominent.

Which really pissed me off.

Seriously, what the hell? I barely knew this big gold alien, and I was already getting moody when he wasn’t around? For the first time, I was rather annoyed that I didn’t feel the alien mate bond. Because right now, I could only blame my weird mix of emotions on myself. There was no alien magic, no fated feeling of inevitable love making me feel this way. It was just… Me.

“And Tok,” I grumbled to myself. He was the one who’d made me all confused last night, with his spikes and his intensity and calling me his treasure.

Trying to push it all out of my mind, I walked to the centre of the settlement where a small morning fire was blazing and others were smoking meat for breakfast. Beyond the fire, I noticed all five of the Gahns together, along with Chapman, Valeria, and Grim, locked in a discussion. It must have been serious because Buroudei had torn himself from his poorly, pregnant mate’s side to participate. I hurried my steps when I saw a small group of human lasses at the fire. Jocelyn, Camille, Theresa, and Priya were seated together on the sand.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I reached them, feeling tension creep into my voice. There had been a lot of violence and, frankly, insanity on this planet so far. And we all knew there could be more on the horizon if the human forces came back. Had something been spotted on a scanner – another ship? My stomach dropped at the thought.

“Come on, sit down, honey!” Theresa said, smiling sweetly at me from beneath the shade of her jacket’s hood. Her already-pretty face had become even lovelier, round and glowing from her pregnancy. The zipper of her jacket strained around the firm swelling of her belly.

“You seem pretty relaxed – must be a good sign,” I said as I sat among the group.

“It’s not the humans comin’ for us, if that’s what you’re worried about. At least, not yet,” the blond Gahnala said.

“That’s right,” Jocelyn said. “I heard it from Razek last night. It looks like there’s a sixth tribe out there. The Gahns are getting organized to make contact.”

I nodded slowly, absorbing that information. Normally, such a development would have been huge news. It certainly was to everyone else at the settlement. But it barely seemed to make it all the way into my brain. Because apparently, all my brain could focus on was Tok.

“Do you think they’ll ask us to go?” Camille said to Priya.

“You mean to go find the other tribe?” Jocelyn clarified.

“Oui. My background in anthropology may help,” Camille answered. “And we may want maps made of the land between here and there.”

That made sense. This sixth tribe might have had different customs, different culture, that we would need to approach with some sensitivity. And with our linguist, Cece, so down and out with her difficult pregnancy, Camille would be a big asset to the group, especially if there were communication barriers. And the thing about the maps was good thinking, too. For now, we had the ship’s scanners to see our general vicinity, and Valeria’s smaller ship had access to current the geographical data transmitted by the orbiting research vessel. But who knew if we’d have access to that tech forever? Having another, separate, hard copy of all our maps could prove to be very useful.

Priya rubbed her chin thoughtfully, then slid her hand down the long black fish-tail of her plaited hair. “Sounds like a long journey from what I’ve heard,” she said. “But if they ask, I’ll go. I’ve pretty much done everything I can in the area around here.”

“If you’ll go, I’ll go,” Camille said, smiling.

“Deal,” Priya replied.

“Y’all have to promise me you’ll be careful,” Theresa said, her usually kind tone turning into something more firm.

I chuckled. “You already sound like a mum,” I told her. “In a good way,” I added, not wanting her to think I’d meant it as some kind of backhanded compliment. But her face melted into a dreamy smile.

“You think? I just can’t wait for this little one to show up.”

I felt my mind begin to wander after her comment. I couldn’t help it – all the talk of her being a mum was making me think of mates which, of course, brought my mind back to Tok. The others continued talking more about the sixth tribe and the journey there – apparently, there was a storm swirling between here and there, making travelling there impossible for the moment. My eyes fell to Theresa’s rounded belly and stayed there as I pondered my own mate and my own future.

Can he make me pregnant?

Lordy, there was a thought. It was obvious by now that the Sea Sand men could impregnate human women. But what about the less human Bitter Sea warriors? Thankfully, I had a birth control implant in my arm, and it still had about a year left before it expired. But what about after that?

That’s assuming I actually start fucking a ten-foot-tall lizard alien. Before now, that would have been an absolutely barmy thought. It would have made me laugh. Or grimace. Or both.

But after last night, it seemed less and less insane. I’d practically stuck my own neck between Tok’s massive jaws! And then I’d fingered myself like a mad woman, just remembering the feeling of his breath against my skin!

I pulled my hood tighter against my flushed cheeks, sure that the other girls would be able to sense the shame and arousal that simmered under my skin. Not that they would judge me, or anything. Nine other human women here already had alien mates, two of them huge lizards like Tok. These days, nobody batted an eye at human-alien couplings. But I still wasn’t ready to wave my own freaky, monster-fucking flag too proudly just yet.

No, for now I’d just try to focus on my own work. I’d figure things out with Tok as they came. Day by day.

THE NEWS OF THE SIXTH tribe gave me something worthwhile to add to my running history of our endeavours. I decided to work outside. That was an unusual choice for me – it was a lot more comfortable to work inside the shaded tent during the day. But even so, I planted my stubborn ass out in the hot air. I rotated positions around the tent as the sun moved, staying as much in the shade as I could as I updated the historical documents I was working on in my notebook.

And just why was I out there, sweating under the God-forsaken alien sun instead of being more comfortable inside the human tent?

Because whenever Tok returned to the settlement for the day, I was pretty sure that he’d see me and come right over.

Apparently, I’d done a complete 180 and had gone from hiding from him to waiting for him to appear.

Which was mildly fucking annoying, to say the least.

But it was the truth. It was how I felt. Even through the confusion and weirdness, I did want to see him again. And at least this way, I wasn’t naked and cornered in the darkness. Maybe I’d be able to keep half my wits about me. Or at least a quarter of them.

But when Tok did finally appear, about midway through the hot day, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep even a tenth of my wits about me. Because even out in the broad daylight with other people around, as I watched him stride purposefully through the settlement, it felt as if we were totally alone. Like we were the only ones here, gravity swirling intently inward, forcing us together. All I could do was stare at him, dumbfounded by his size and his power and his prowess as he stalked on two legs, the most silently vicious warrior I’d ever seen. His spear was in one hand, as it often was, its shimmering white tip nowhere near as lustrous as his golden scales. The sun poured over him like honey, turning him molten, making every scale and dark spike gleam with metallic beauty. I gulped, wondering what those sun-soaked scales would feel like under my palms, my fingertips.

My tongue.

Oh, what the fuck, you mad lass!

As predicted, as soon as Tok entered the settlement, he came my way. I only observed him unnoticed for a short moment. With the precise instinct of a brutal hunter, his eyes found me almost immediately. Even from across the distance between us, I registered his sharp intake of breath – the expansion of that huge chest. He sped up, moving towards me with a grim determination that made me want to flee into the tent.

And good bloody grief, I didn’t just want to flee.

I wanted him to follow.

I realized I was clutching my notebook so hard in my sweaty hand that I was rumpling the paper. My other hand was pressing the pen onto the page with so much nervous energy that there was now an indent in the book, saturated with black ink. I placed the pen and notebook on the sand, flexing my tense fingers. Then I got to my feet, trying to make myself feel bigger, more powerful, as Tok planted himself before me.

OK, so standing up didn’t do a whole lot in the “feeling big and powerful” department. Not when the man before me was ten feet tall. But still, it was better than sitting down at his clawed feet.

“Taylor,” he murmured.

“Tok,” I said brusquely, trying not to notice the way he’d said my name. Like my name was a command and prayer and a plea, all at once. “So, were you out with Grim again today?”

“No, today Hakah Gog sent me on an early morning patrol. I am finished now.”

“I see,” I said, my heart doing a whole Highland jig inside my chest. It ignored my silent orders to calm the hell down, and in fact increased its rhythm as I looked at Tok up close in the daylight.

He looked… Fucking god-like, if I was being honest. Like something from an old story, a myth, a legend. He looked like he should be lording over some hoard of treasure under a mountain.

But he already told you what his treasure is…

His own gaze was just as intent upon me as I looked at him. Bright, intelligent yellow discs expanded in the dark orbs of his eyes. Which was odd, considering that he wasn’t in the shade the way I was. So his round yellow pupils weren’t enlarging due to the light conditions.

They got bigger when they looked at me.

We will ponder that little biological fact at another moment in time.

“I hope you have occupied your morning in comfort,” Tok said, his words steady and quiet. The low volume of his voice made the conversation feel all the more intimate, and I shifted from foot to foot, my feet sweating in my boots.

“Aye,” I replied. “I’ve been working on my document.” I jerked my head over my shoulder, gesturing towards my notebook on the ground.

“What kind of work is this?” Tok asked, leaning to the side and looking at my notebook before straightening and meeting my gaze once more.

“Back home I was a historian. I studied things that happened in the past. And I’m keeping a record of everything that happens here.” My words flowed a little more smoothly, and more comfortably, the more I spoke to Tok. Especially when I noticed that he was listening with what appeared to be genuine interest. “Oh! That reminds me,” I said, suddenly remembering, “do your people do anything similar? Do you write?”

I bent to retrieve the notebook and pen from the sand, brandishing them between us.

“I use this pen to write,” I explained. “These markings are letters that make words.”

Tok lowered his snout, stepping closer to look at the page I held in the air between us. I swallowed a tight gasp at his nearness. A dark claw appeared on the page as he gently traced the words I’d written, being careful not to tear the paper.

“We do record our history, yes. But not like this.”

“Really? How do you do it?” My curiosity, my desire to learn more about how an alien culture recorded their history, overpowered any awkwardness I was feeling around the hulking giant. My words flowed quickly before my brain could process what I was saying. “I’d love to see that sometime. Can you show me? If you don’t write the way we do, what do you do? I know the Sea Sand men have illustrations of their Gahns in tribal territory, but I’ve never seen them. Is that what your people do?”

My words petered out as I realized just how close Tok and I had gotten. And, face burning, I realized it was because I had gotten closer to him in my exuberance, not the other way around. It was hard to read Tok’s scaly, alien face, but there was a tightening of his brow ridges that seemed to indicate… Mirth?

He likes talking to me. He likes my questions, I realized with a throb in my chest.

“When one of my people dies, before we lay them to rest at sea, we take some of their scales. We place the scales in certain patterns upon rock walls. This way, we keep our histories,” Tok rumbled. His voice was rich, but also somehow light. Happy. He doesn’t just like when I talk. He likes talking to me, too.

“Wow,” I breathed, trying to focus on what Tok was saying instead of just how nice it was to talk to him in the first place. “I would love to see that.”

Tok straightened suddenly, peering out over the settlement towards the cliffs.

“Perhaps I can arrange it,” he said quietly, still looking towards the cliffs.

“Really?” I asked, getting excited. How fucking cool would that be? Being the first human, at least the first one on this planet, to learn about an alien records-keeping system? My mind whirled with the possibilities. “That would be amazing. Where are these records?”

“They are back in my homeland. The Bitter Seas.”

I nodded quickly, doubly excited now at the prospect of seeing the ocean. I knew it might be dangerous, but this whole planet was dangerous – even the cliffs at the settlement had predators like the krixel. At least if I got to go on a trip, I’d learn more and see some of the natural beauty of this place. And I’ll also see more of where Tok grew up…

“Well, I’d love to go, if that’s possible,” I gushed, smiling broadly at Tok. Tok turned his gaze from the cliffs, locking it on my face. He must have registered my big goofy smile, because his expression seemed to soften.

“This will make you happy?” he asked, his yellow eyes practically burning a hole through my sunglasses.

“Yes,” I said after a moment’s hesitation, surprised by the bluntness of his question. “Again, if it’s possible anyway.”

“There is no question of if,” he replied firmly. “It will bring you happiness. Therefore, I will make it so.”

Before I could thank him, or ask him for any more details, he turned and began striding in the direction he’d been gazing a few seconds earlier – towards the cliffs.

“Well, alright then,” I said to myself as I watched his broad golden back retreat, his spiked tail dragging heavily through the sand behind him. Now that he was gone, I was feeling oddly deflated. Talking to him was becoming a rush that I was enjoying all too much. That rush grew stronger, roaring through my head as I remembered his last words to me.

It will bring you happiness. Therefore, I will make it so.

“He’s making it harder and harder to keep my distance,” I muttered to myself as he disappeared into the cliffs. But maybe I didn’t need to keep my distance. Not as much as before. I’d been holding back, certainly. Partly out of shock, and partly, I thought, to protect myself somehow. But the more I spoke to Tok, the less it seemed like I needed to be protected from him. Even with the claws and the spikes that made me weirdly weak in the knees. Because, despite his size and his beastly appearance, he listened to me. And he seemed to really want to make me happy.

Maybe I could ease up. Just a little…

A glorious, arousing thrill warmed my core as I wondered what getting closer to him would be like.

Stop that! I’m only going to try to get to know him a little better! I’m not going to immediately jump his bones!

But my body wasn’t listening, already swept up in waves of furious attraction for the massive alien who’d proclaimed himself my mate.

And those waves were becoming so huge, crashing so loudly, that I was starting to think the only way I’d survive them was with a naturally strong swimmer at my side. Someone huge and gold who could keep me afloat.

Unless he’s the one who pulls me under.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Tok

It took all my strength to turn and walk away from Taylor. A weaker warrior would have given in to the crush of love inside him. Would have stayed at her pretty side for as long as it took to get her to love him.

But there was hard strength coiled in my limbs, my claws, my tail.

All of this restraint will have been worth it when she finally wraps those slender arms around you. And when she opens her soft legs…

That image in my mind made me growl, made me waver. Made me snap my jaws with the need to go back to her, to go back to her now. But this was more important – I’d figured out how to get Taylor alone. I would take her back to the Bitter Seas to see the ancient cave with the scales. She wanted to go – she’d said so herself.

And she would go with me.

But first, I had to gain my Hakah’s permission. I’d told her I would make it so, and I would. I would get Hakah Gog to agree no matter what it took. I had been nothing but loyal and strong in his service. I had never once asked for leave before. This, I was owed.

As I reached the cliffs, I thought of Taylor’s smile at the prospect of seeing my homeland. Sand and seas, she had been so beautiful. Even covered head to toe, her eyes shielded with her dark shells, she was beyond beauty, beyond magnificence. Her smile had nearly knocked me to the sands when it had split her soft little face. I knew I wanted to see that expression again and again. As many times as she’d offer it to me. A deep, desperate need took hold of me. The need to please this small female in every endeavour. In every way. The only person I’d ever worried about pleasing before was the Hakah Gog, and that feeling was nothing like this one. My desire to fulfill the Hakah’s commands came from the expected loyalty of a soldier. My desire to please Taylor was something hungrier, something furtive and greedy. Something that nested with dark wings in my body, beating against my ribs, clawing at my guts. A blood-deep need to prove myself worthy of her.

I would prove myself worthy. I would please her.

And I would start by taking her to the Bitter Seas.

I entered the shadows of the Cliffs of Uruzai, moving through the tunnels and caves until I reached the cave that belonged to the Hakah. He heard me, or scented me, or both as I reached the entrance, because no sooner had I arrived than he was already calling me inside.

I placed my spear on the stone ground and then I moved through the entrance into the cave. It was the largest cave used as a Bitter Sea man’s sleeping quarters. This cave had no openings to let in sunlight and was instead lit in several places by the glowing human lights called lanterns. The Sea Sand men seemed to favour lighting their tents with candles, but we Bitter Sea men preferred the lanterns. With their even, silvery glow, they reminded us of the glowing blue slick that covered rocks and lit our caves back home.

Hakah Gog moved to the front of the cave to meet me, stopping before me. I pounded my brow ridges with my fists, a gesture of respect and a greeting for the king, before letting my hands fall down to my sides once more.

“I am glad you have come, Tok. I have things to discuss with you,” Hakah Gog said. The lantern light turned the king’s deep blue and black scales into shifting shades of silver. Though he was getting older, much older than myself, Hakah Gog still cut an impressive figure, his frame strong and his gaze steady.

“I have things to discuss with you as well,” I replied.

“You may go first,” Hakah Gog said, and I pounded my brow ridges once more in acknowledgement.

“I would like leave from my duties. I want to take my mate Taylor to see our homeland.” I saw the Hakah tense slightly as I spoke, as I had known he likely would.

“I have been a loyal warrior and a faithful right claw,” I added before he could reject my request. “This is something I must do, Hakah. And it is something I deserve.”

Hakah Gog regarded me silently for a long moment before heaving a deep, growling breath.

“It is not a question of what you deserve, Tok. But rather of what makes sense. I do not think letting my best warrior, my right claw, leave our ranks for days would be a wise decision.”

I was about to say more, to argue with my Hakah for the first time in my life, when he thrashed his tail behind him, a gesture that demanded silence.

“That being said,” he continued, “I do believe this is something you are owed. Because soon, I will have to send you into danger. And I would like to let you spend the days before that mission with your mate.”

“What is the mission?” I asked. “Will you send me to find this sixth tribe of the desert that Grim and Thaleria have seen from her ship?”

“No,” Hakah Gog replied, surprising me. “We are sending a party of desert and Bitter Sea men to investigate the potential sixth tribe, but you will not be among them. There is another mission for you. It is a mission for only one man. And as you are my strongest and most loyal warrior, you were the best option.”

“I understand,” I said. “What are my orders?”

Hakah Gog levelled his brilliant blue gaze on me.

“I will allow you leave from the ranks, Tok. Seven days. That should allow you enough time to journey to the Bitter Seas and back to the settlement if you travel at your quickest, even carrying your mate upon your back as I have seen Grim and Kor do.”

I remained tense and waiting. I was glad I would be allowed to take Taylor as I had wanted. But I did not allow myself to feel triumph at this. Because I knew that something else was coming to follow those words. Orders that might take me further from my mate than ever.

“And after my return?” I growled.

“Thaleria’s people demand a hostage. It could be an opportunity to learn more about our enemy and their plans, but it will be dangerous.” He paused a beat before his next words. Words he didn’t even need to say, because I’d already figured them out.

He said them anyway, speaking his commands into the air.

“When the time comes, Tok, that hostage will be you.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Taylor

Tok caught up with me again at the evening fire. I wanted to say he lumbered over, but lumbering implied something too laborious and slow. He was so huge he should have lumbered, but he moved with a precise, easy grace.

I swallowed the chunk of meat I’d been chewing, heat flooding my cheeks at the sight of him. Fuck me, that was a bad sign. Getting this hot and bothered just by him walking towards me…

I wasn’t the only one his presence affected. Camille, who was seated on the sand beside me, let out a small gasping sound when she caught sight of him. A quick sideways glance at her told me her mouth was hanging open, her eyes gigantic in her pretty face.

“Is that him?” she whispered. I nodded, not daring to speak the words out loud for some reason. Without looking at her, I could sense her shaking her head beside me.

“Mon Dieu… He’s huge…”

“This is what I was trying to tell you!” I hissed, thinking back to how easily she shrugged and said she’d open her legs to that “forked tongue.”

“But still, he is not so bad to look at, non?”

We fell silent as Tok closed the final distance, coming to stand in front of me. I stared at his long, three-clawed feet, letting my gaze move up his thick golden legs. My treacherous eyes lingered just a wee bit too long at his groin before I forced them up past his hard abdomen, his bulging pectorals, his wide neck to his face. I realized that already, I agreed effortlessly with Camille’s statement that he wasn’t bad to look at. In fact, it already went way past that. He didn’t have a conventionally human face or body, but there was a visceral appeal to his physicality that made my blood heat, my chest pound.

“Do not stop on my account,” he rumbled with that deep, stony voice of his. “But when you are finished, I would speak with you if you have the time.”

“She has time!” Camille piped up from beside me, beaming. I swung my head to glare at her. I was slightly annoyed that she’d taken it upon herself to be my wing woman. But even more than that, I was filled with furious dread at the flash of jealousy I’d felt when Camille had given Tok that stunningly lovely smile of hers.

Och, I’m an eejit. I’m literally getting jealous that my good friend smiled at this guy? What, am I worried he’ll think she’s prettier than me or something? That he’ll forget about me?

Why did that make my insides twist so sourly?

I’m toast.

Tok and Camille were both looking at me now, waiting for me to speak.

I shook my head.

“It’s OK. I’m done eating. We can talk now,” I said, standing and brushing the sand from the back of my pants. I was curious about what he wanted to talk about, and more and more I wanted to shut that jealous, squirmy part of myself up and get him alone. Which was fucking daft. But it was true.

I looked up at Tok, marvelling at his size. From down on the ground, while he’d stood, he’d looked gargantuan. But the effect was barely diminished by me standing up beside him. A spiked golden giant staring at me so hard it practically made the air between us vibrate.

“See you back at the tent. Peut-être,” Camille said with a smirk from down in her spot on the sand. I remembered enough of my high school French to know that “peut-être” meant “maybe.” If it weren’t so cool out here at night, I would have broken out in a nervous sweat at her insinuation – the insinuation that I might not come home tonight, so to speak. That I might spend the night with Tok.

As if to outrun her words, I started walking hurriedly away from the fire. Tok caught up with me easily. Or rather, he didn’t even need to catch up. His reflexes were so whip-quick that as soon as I made a move, he was already beside me. Like a hulking shadow trailing my every movement, down to the tiniest shift and stroke of form.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” I asked, needing to fill the silence.

“I spoke with Hakah Gog,” Tok said, his yellow sight discs sliding down and to the side to look at me as we walked. “He has granted me leave to take you to the Bitter Seas.”

I stopped walking when we reached the cliff wall behind all the tents and turned to face Tok.

“Really? That’s great!” I said, meaning it. Getting out of the settlement might be just the change of pace I needed to get my head on straight and figure my shit out. And my academically curious side was already itching to get a look at the Bitter Sea records system Tok had told me about. “When do we leave?”

“Hakah Gog has given me seven days’ leave from my duties. I would like to leave now – tonight. But I know that you will need time to prepare. I propose we leave at first light tomorrow. We will travel swiftly, and will have to spend some of each night travelling too, to have enough time at the coast before we must return.”

I frowned, scratching at my scalp under the messy bun piled on the top of my head.

“So, how does that work? Who else is coming? I can’t ride an irkdu on my own.” Frankly, the big dino-centipede-looking aliens that the Sea Sand people used as mounts freaked me right the hell out. And I definitely wasn’t skilled enough to command it or ride it without a Sea Sand rider.

“There will be no one but you and me. You will ride on my back,” Tok said. I stared at him in shock, blinking several times. He returned my gaze steadily.

He really means it.

“Um, no!” I cried, crossing my arms. Just the sheer thought of that was insane! I stared at Tok’s bulky torso, trying to imagine how wide my thighs would be spread to stay seated on him. I knew Zoey and Valeria rode on their mates’ backs, but for some reason the thought had never entered my mind to ride on Tok.

Great. Now I’m thinking about riding him in a whole other way…

“Why not?” Tok asked, his head tilting slightly to the side as he studied me with piercing eyes. “If comfort is a concern, you need not worry. I modelled something after the saddles your kind uses on the irkdu. It loops over my arms and creates a soft hide seat of sorts on my back.”

“So you’re going to carry me around in a fucking backpack?” This was getting more and more absurd by the second.

“I do not know what a thucking backpack is,” Tok said. “When you see the item yourself, you can confirm for me if it is like a thucking backpack.”

I snorted, some of my embarrassment and awkwardness dissolving into laughter. I couldn’t help it – there was just something so hilarious about how seriously he was answering me.

Hilarious, and oddly charming.

He’s doing his best to answer all my questions, to win me over…

And, goddammit, it was working.

My laughter died away, and Tok filled the resulting silence between us.

“I love that sound. Your laughter” he said.

I smiled unintentionally, blushing slightly. I shouldn’t like the fact that he loves my laugh so much!

My smile dropped instantly when Tok added, his voice suddenly harsh and gruff, “And I love the way your throat looks when you laugh. Like the sound is throbbing right out of you.”

His sight discs, reflective and hungry under the asteroid light, were pinned to the front of my neck. It took everything I had not to slam my hands over my own windpipe, as if I needed protection from his gaze alone. As if his gaze could clamp down on me, devour me, just as powerfully as his fangs could. I shivered as that hot lick of fear mixed with desire and moved through me once more, just like it had in the hot springs. I could feel my heart rate increase, and Tok must have been able to see the speeding flutter in my neck, because his jaw tensed at the back of his snout, his nostrils flaring slightly.

Tok stepped forward swiftly, sending me stumbling backwards against the jagged rock wall of the cliff. We were in a pretty dark and secluded spot, not within view of anyone still sitting at the evening fire.

I let him trap me. I led him away from everyone else. I led him straight here…

Well, wasn’t my subconscious fucking me over in the most delightful way. Tok hadn’t led us as we’d walked – I had. He’d stayed dutifully beside me while I’d brought him right here into this sheltered bit of darkness against the stone.

And he knew it.

Letting out a low sound that was half a sigh, half a hiss, his spikes extended, vicious black points glinting in the silvered light of the night. My breath caught as Tok planted two huge hands on the stone on either side of my head, bending so that his eyes were level with mine.

“You test my restraint, Taylor. I will pass this test, as I have passed all before, but it is the most difficult of my life,” Tok growled, his head dipping to speak against my ear. A shudder coursed through me as my skin pricked. “And it becomes twice as difficult when I see how much I affect you.”

“You don’t affect me!” I said, but there was no bite to the words. But still, I had to hold some kind of ground, here!

“Really?” Tok murmured, his snout dipping down to brush the pulse point at the side of my neck, making me gasp. “I am not so sure that I believe that, treasure. Not with your hot little heart beating so madly beneath your skin. I can see it, here in your throat. It’s going so hard and so fast that I can practically hear it.”

The sound I made at his words, and at the sensation of his heated breath fanning over my neck, should have made me downright ashamed. It was a high, whiny sound of needy complaint. A sound I’d never made before in my entire life.

What I was complaining about, I couldn’t quite figure out. It was some combination of not liking that Tok was right, that he could see right through me, and the fact that I was utterly and unforgivably aroused. So much so that my head fell back against the cliff wall, my back arching and my nipples hardening beneath my tank top. I plastered my palms against the rock at my back to keep myself from grabbing Tok’s snout and dragging him down harder against my neck. My clit throbbed, and I could already tell that my panties were growing wet beneath my trousers. A cracking, scraping sound let me know that Tok was battling just as hard not to touch me – his claws were digging into the stone itself.

“Why do you fight me so?” he asked, sounding more unsure than he ever had. Than I’d even thought him capable of. “I know you may not love me yet. But more and more, I am convinced that at least some small part of you wants me.”

Oh, it wasn’t just some small part. At that moment, it was all my fucking parts. My skin was electric, my breath was thick in my throat. My clit felt so sensitive and swollen that it seemed a single brush of sensation between my legs would make me come.

“I don’t know,” I stammered, scrunching my eyes shut. “Maybe I’m not ready to want this yet.” I’d only just officially met him the other day, and he wasn’t even human! With my ex, it had taken us weeks of dating to work up to anything remotely physical. But then again, the air between my ex and me had never crackled with dark fire the way the air between Tok and me did right now. My “hot little heart” had never really beaten madly for Lochlan.

And I’d never wanted him to crush me against the stone wall of a cliff under the blistering gaze of the stars and have his fucking way with me.

I moaned softly as my pussy clenched at that image.

Fuck fuck fuck…

“Taylor,” Tok said tensely, a note of warning deepening his voice. He didn’t need to say anything else – my frantic mind filled in the gaps of what was left unsaid. It was probably something along the lines of, goddammit, human, stop acting like such a needy little slut for my alien cock if you’re trying to convince me you don’t want this.

That thought – thoughts of Tok’s dick – had my eyes flying open, my head wrenching forward to look down at his body. His cock was still hidden behind his muscled slit, but there was a distinct bulge beneath the scales there that made my mouth go dry.

Tok drew back slightly, and seeing the direction of my gaze, he gave a short growl. He stared at my face as I stared between his legs. A beat passed.

And then he let it emerge.

Tok’s scales parted, and a dark organ bobbed forward, thick and erect, standing straight out from his pelvis.

A breath shuddered out of Tok, and I noticed the claws of his feet curl downward, digging into the sand as if trying to keep his legs and hips from thrusting forward.

Unable to think of anything else to say, like an eejit, I muttered, “So that’s your…?”

“My cock?” Tok rasped. “Yes. Though I can no longer claim it as my own. It is yours. As is the rest of me.”

Well, it may have been mine now, by his declaration, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it. First and foremost, it was proportional to the rest of him. So, basically fucking huge. At its base, I could already tell I’d need two hands to get my fingers all the way around the girth of it. Luckily, it tapered towards the tip into a size that a lass could probably get inside her, but it didn’t exactly look smooth. Even in the shadows, I could see distinct hard bumps on his shaft, not to mention the bizarre ring of blackened spiky things at the base of his cock, looking like some insane, venomous anemone.

“Do I please you, treasure?” Tok growled, making me jump.

I truly did not know how to answer that one. Like the rest of his giant physique, his monster cock was certainly impressive in its weird alien way. But…

“I guess I won’t know if it pleases me until…”

Oh my fucking God. I really said that out loud, didn’t I? I managed to cut myself off before I said something colossally embarrassing, but Tok was too smart for that. He finished the sentence for me.

“You won’t know if I please you until I’m inside you.”

His cock visibly throbbed at that, and I made a soft “meep” sound in response to the visceral surge of arousal. I tried not to, but suddenly all I could think of was stretching myself out on that cock, seeing how far it would go, experiencing the little domed ridges of the shaft as they rolled inside me…

“What are… What are the bumps?” I asked breathlessly, squeezing my thighs together, my spine tingling.

Tok drew one hand from the cliff beside me, gripping his fat shaft in his fist and running his thumb over the bumps on the top of his shaft.

“These are grogar pearls. Signs of a warrior’s strength. We pierce the skin and press the pearls there every time we are victorious in a great battle, when we kill one of the monsters of the sea.”

Holy shit. So they were… Cock piercings?!

My eyes bugged as I stared downward. Tok released his shaft, letting me have a better view. Good God, there had to be dozens of the pearls beneath his skin, running up and down his thick length. They really were a sign of strength – for one thing, the fact he’d killed that many sea monsters. And for another – the sheer fact he’d lived through the pain of piercing his genitals that many times!

“You can touch them, treasure,” Tok murmured, his hand coming back to rest beside my head against the stone wall at my back.

Alarm bells started ringing in my head. This had to be crossing some sort of line. I was about to touch an alien man’s cock. I held my breath, wondering if I’d actually do it. My hands twitched, my fingertips tingling with the curious desire to reach out and stroke each dark little dome under his flesh. Pearls… My mind was filled with the sudden image of slick, shining pearls rolling down over my burning skin. Sliding over my nipples. Dragging smoothly, silkily, against my clit.

My insides clenched.

I reached down.

My fingertips connected with his skin before I could regain some sanity and stop myself. I gasped, feeling the incredible smoothness of his skin, coupled with the firm little bumps beneath.

Tok froze, growing still as stone, breathing heavily as I shakily traced my fingertips along the top side of his thick shaft. No scales at all here, thank goodness – just satin-smooth dark hide, stretched over his many piercings.

I stared at my hand on him, noting the differences between us. My hand was so small and pale against his thick dark organ. I was so tiny and human against his alienness. And yet somehow, that only added to the thrill. The way he was so huge, so powerful, so monstrous compared to me.

I skimmed my fingers down the shaft, stopping just before the tips of the dark spikes that surrounded the base of his cock. Sucking in a little breath, feeling emboldened by how far I’d already gone, I reached further down to stroke one.

The spike that I fingered cautiously, almost as if afraid it was sharp, was actually smooth and pliable. Where his cock was like a shaft of stone – so hard it almost didn’t seem like a living creature’s flesh – these spikes were more like cartilage, bending slightly under the press of my fingers. Tok’s tail jerked behind him on the sand, and I gulped as I watched the muscles in his chest and abdomen jump, clenching into carved hardness as he clearly fought to keep his powerful hips from surging forward against my touch.

And then, the reality of this whole mates thing came crashing down upon me. I stared down at my hand on his cock, realizing that he was dying to put that cock inside me. Right now, if I’d let him. And not just because of a physical attraction. From what I understood of this mate bond, and what Tok’s words seem to have confirmed so far, he was completely in love with me.

The alarm bells grew louder and louder. This wasn’t some innocent, academic exploration of an alien creature’s biology. This was a deeply sexual, potentially romantic, encounter, and there was no doubt that Tok wanted more.

My own body wanted more, too.

But I just… Wasn’t ready.

For him. For this.

And if I went any further now, I’d be smashing through every barrier between us, setting a precedent for what might happen when we were completely alone, out on our trip to the Bitter Sea.

That had me whipping my hand away, clenching my sweaty fist so hard I felt my fingernails dig into my palm.

“If we’re leaving at first light tomorrow I should go get some rest,” I stammered, my mouth dry. Tok hesitated for the briefest of moments, his breath so fucking hot on my neck that I almost changed my mind, almost started pumping his cock with fervour.

But he withdrew, his jaw tense, his eyes boring into me.

“Of course,” he said tensely.

I nodded quickly, over and over, relief flooding my limbs, my chest. But it wasn’t just relief. There was also…

Disappointment.

Tok turned from me briefly, his hand moving between his legs. When he faced me again, his cock had been tucked back inside, though the bulge there looked close to bursting.

“Is that uncomfortable?” I asked, feeling a little bad now. But no, I shouldn’t feel bad! A lass was always allowed to change her mind, no matter how far she’d gone with a lad. But all the same, I didn’t want him to be in pain. It looked like he was really straining to keep himself… Erm… Composed.

“It is,” Tok admitted. “But you need not concern yourself with my discomforts, treasure. Even I do not concern myself with such things. The only comfort I care to think of is your own.”

“Oh,” I squeaked. For fuck’s sake. When he said stuff like that, it made me want to rethink… Everything. Made me want to get closer, find out just how, exactly, he’d take care of me and my comfort.

But it really was getting late, now. Getting up at dawn and travelling would require rest. And I still had to pack up my supplies, too. Unlike Tok, I couldn’t just take off over the desert with nothing but my own skills and body to sustain me.

Already checking off the list of things to pack in my head, we started walking together back to the big tent the human lasses slept in. We walked side-by-side, and every time Tok’s big arm brushed against my shoulder, I found myself pressing just a little closer, trying to sustain the contact.

But that contact ended soon enough. Tok bid me a quick goodnight, telling me that he’d be back to collect me in the morning.

I watched him as he prowled away, wondering what he was going to do when he got back to his cave for the evening.

Did big alien lizardmen jerk off like human men did?

Och, that’s an image…

An image that had now lodged itself in my brain with a vengeance.

An image that told me that going off with Tok alone would probably be a very bad idea.

But fuck it, I was going to do it anyway.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Tok

Islept even less than usual that night. My kind did not sleep nearly as much as the Sea Sand people or the new women, but even so, I slept unusually little. And it was no wonder why. My body, my brain, were completely taken over by desire for Taylor.

I spilled seed twice upon returning to my cave, my fist firm and furious upon my shaft, so different to the intoxicating gentleness of her fingers on me there. But even that had not been enough, and I’d been roused from my uneasy sleep by memories of her. Her scent. Her hands. And I’d needed to spill seed all over again. By the waves, she had been so soft. Everything about her was soft.

Except the wall she’d put up between us.

Tonight had been a little crack in that wall, I could feel it. She’d touched me of her own volition – let me get closer to her than ever before. But then she’d done everything she could to reinforce the barrier, to patch it up, distance herself from me.

I’d alternated between throbbing primal desire and feral rage alone in my cave, haunted by her loveliness, haunted by the fact I did not yet have her. Not yet, not completely. Not the way she had me, bound so fervently to her little body. I remembered the hot flicker of her pulse at her throat and I seethed.

When I knew dawn was approaching, I left my cave, carrying only my spear and the hide saddle I had constructed for Taylor earlier. I’d gotten the idea from the saddles the new women used upon the Sea Sand mounts and had adjusted the design for my own body. Out on the sand, by the quiet cliffs, I regarded my work closely, wondering if it would suffice. My kind did not use hides this way. We did not sew like the Sea Sand people. I’d had to try several times to get it right because the strength of my fingers and claws had completely destroyed my work the first few times. In the end, I hadn’t been able to use the bone sewing needle at all, instead puncturing the hide with my own claws and threading everything through that way. I was not used to fine, delicate work like sewing. The people of the Bitter Seas sometimes bound sea plant fibres into twine if needed, but we had no use for soft fabric things like this.

But my mate had need of soft things.

Not everything she needs is soft, I thought darkly with a throb between my legs. Grunting, trying to regain some focus, I hefted my spear and carried the hide saddle through the quiet settlement. I was a little early, I realized. I’d told Taylor we’d leave at first light, and that light was barely breathing into life against the horizon. The stars and moons were still strong above, the sky drenched and dark. But I couldn’t wait in my cave anymore. I’d wait here for her, just outside her tent. Anticipation did not allow me to be far from her for one more moment.

My chest tightened as I noticed a lone, small figure standing outside the new women’s tent. I did not need to look closely, did not need to drag my gaze down the loose brown curls, the little face, to know it was Taylor.

A flame of hope flickered inside. Perhaps I was not the only one who could not wait for this day to begin…

I knew she wanted to go on the journey. I knew she wanted to see our records. But in that moment, I let myself believe that she was ready so early because she was excited to go with me.

And when she turned and caught sight of me, her pink mouth falling open and her cheeks flushing in the gloom, I knew that I was, at least partially, correct.

She was excited to see me too.

A frisson of arousal rolled through me. Cursed seas, I wanted to know more of that excitement. I wanted to taste it.

I clamped my fangs against each other, forked tongue lashing uselessly in my mouth, as I approached her.

At her feet was a pack, as well as what looked like a bundled-up tent for travelling.

“You’re early,” she said, her brows raised in surprise. She was not wearing her human cloak, and I watched, fascinated and jealous, as the moon and starlight kissed down her bare arms.

“I am,” I said simply. “As are you, it appears.”

“Aye, well…” She raised her shoulders in a funny little movement but did not say anything else. I studied those slim, bare shoulders, wondering what they were trying to tell me. But neither her shoulders nor her mouth told me anything else.

“If you are ready, we can leave now,” I said. “The sooner we leave, the sooner we arrive at our destination.”

The sooner I can feel your perfect body pressed against mine as we travel…

Taylor’s single wet tongue came out to poke at her lower lip. I tensed, watching it, fighting the urge to catch it between my claws, between my fangs, testing the plushness.

“Fine. Let’s go,” she said.

We walked together through the quiet settlement. I tried to carry both Taylor’s packed tent and her bag, but she would only let me take the tent, putting the bag onto her back. I was not sure why she would not let me take them both – perhaps some point of pride. I admired that about her, but I also wished she would let me do more for her. Let me give more to her. Let me be more for her. Oh, the things I could do, could be, for her…

Most people at this hour were either sleeping or out on patrol duties. We saw a few warriors within the tent settlement, but besides them, and the men stationed at the very edge of the settlement, we saw no one else stirring.

Since my travels with my mate had already been cleared with the Hakah, the guards at the edge of the settlement did not try to stop us on our way. As we reached the open sands, we paused. I tossed my spear down to the ground, then slipped my arms through the loops of the saddle I’d created.

“Oh! Is this it, then? The thing you made?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said as I grabbed the two straps dangling at each of my sides, tying them tightly against my abdomen like the belts the Sea Sand people wore.

Taylor watched me with interest. When I was finished, she walked slowly around me in a circle, as if appraising my handiwork. My chest filled, and my spine went tense and straight as I rose to my full height. I wondered what she saw, what she thought, as she walked around me, staring. My jaw tensed, my chin rising, as I silently vowed that I would do everything in my power to make sure she never found me wanting.

“It is like a backpack,” she said finally, coming to a stop before me, smiling slightly.

Our people did not smile like she did. And yet, I could not have adored that smile more. I was so distracted by the pretty expression that I almost did not register what she’d said.

“Backpack?” Right. She’d mentioned that last night, too.

She twirled sharply, turning her back to me and jutting her thumbs over her shoulders towards the bag she carried on her back.

“Like this,” she said, facing me once more.

“Ah.”

I understood now. Yes, the garment I’d made was somewhat similar in design, the way the straps looped over my shoulders. Taylor’s backpack did not have a belt built-in for extra stability, though. And though my saddle had holsters for her legs, there was no real “bag” element to it.

“Care to test it out?” I asked, watching her closely.

“Oh! Um… Yes, I suppose I could. I guess I’ll have to get in there eventually…”

Immediately, I turned my back and knelt. I realized I was probably still too tall this way, so I leaned back, sitting on my heels, my knees pressing into the cool sand. I placed my hands on my knees, squeezing, my claws clinking against the scales. I squeezed harder when I felt Taylor draw up close behind me.

“So, my legs go here?” she asked.

I was about to confirm that the long, sleeve-like holsters were for her legs when the words got choked down in my throat.

Because her little hands had settled on my shoulders.

And I felt… Utterly tamed. The barbarous power of my body thrumming, heeling, waiting for her command. Waiting for whatever those small hands would do next.

“I’ve never really felt your scales like this before,” she said quietly. I cursed that I was facing forward, not looking at her. I didn’t dare turn my head around for fear that it would spook her, make her move away.

“They’re lovely,” she said suddenly. I fought to keep my spikes still as sensation crashed inside me. Evidently, she’d been distracted from getting into the saddle on my back and was now focused on brushing her maddening fingertips down the scales of my neck. My knuckles were burning, my hands were squeezing my knees so tightly.

“I had never thought to use that word to describe them,” I grunted. Other words came to mind – strong. Useful. Hard. But lovely?

“Well, they are,” Taylor said.

My eyes fell closed and I sighed, leaning into the sensation of her warm hands upon me.

“Back where I come from,” Taylor continued, “people covet materials that look like your scales. Gold. They wear it like jewellery.”

“To what end?” I asked.

“Oh, for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes it’s meaningful, like an engagement ring. Sometimes people just wear it to feel beautiful.”

I gave a sharp snort, feeling Taylor’s fingers tighten against me in surprise at the sound.

“There is nothing that could make you more beautiful,” I said. Well, perhaps if she were naked…

Before I could propose such a thing to her, she cleared her throat, her hands sliding down to my shoulders once more.

“Well… Right then. Let me give this thing a shot.”

She came close, so cursedly close. I could feel her human heat radiating against my shoulders and back. Her grip tightened on my shoulders as she scrabbled up onto my back. I clenched my fangs as I felt her thighs part, spread wide over my breadth, her legs sinking easily into the holsters on either side. Her arms wrapped around my neck for support, her breath coming in little bursts against my scales

“This is actually pretty comfortable,” she said, shifting slightly. The barrier of the fabric between us was probably, no, definitely a good thing, as it created just a touch more distance between her sweet cunt and my back. But in that moment, I hated it. Hated the barriers, the walls, everything that kept me from taking her the way my body and my heart urged me to do.

“Although,” she added, “it’s still very weird to be carried around like this.”

“Well, it won’t quite be like this,” I said, tucking her tent into the saddle’s belt around my waist and putting my spear between my fangs.

“Oh? What will it be like, then?” she asked.

I responded with motion, not words. I launched forward onto all fours and took off. Even with my strong sense of hearing, I felt rather than heard Taylor’s sharp intake of breath at my back.

I hadn’t gone very far, and certainly not at top speed, but I slowed to a stop anyway, letting my spear drop to the sand as I asked, “Does that work for you?”

I twisted, craning my neck back to look at her.

Her eyes were wide and round, her long spirals of hair in fluffy disarray from the wind. Dawn was finally brightening the sky, the early morning light turning her skin rosy, her hair burnished to a shimmering copper instead of its usual brown.

Taylor’s eyes met mine, and her face split into a grin.

“Surprisingly, yes, it does,” she said.

I just stopped myself from growling and calling her my good little mate. But I couldn’t help but feel glad she was enjoying the ride, that she liked the power and the speed.

We paused for a moment so that Taylor could put on her cloak now that the sun was rising. There was no way I’d let her precious skin be burned.

And then, with the heart-throbbing sensation of my mate spread wide against my back, I took off.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Taylor

As much as I’d rebelled against the idea last night, it seemed I was, for better or worse, totally fine with being carried in a little alien backpack. Funny, considering the Sea Sand people looked so kangaroo-like, but it was the huge lizardman carrying me around in a pouch.

Well, it wasn’t exactly a pouch. More like a cushioned cape that Tok strapped to his waist and looped over his arms, with long sleeve-type things draped on either side of his wide back for my legs to stay stable and secure. Between that, and my arms looped around his thick neck, this was actually a pretty comfortable ride.

And fun. Together we sped over the desert. I felt like I was in a convertible, like in some Hollywood film, and I couldn’t help but grin as we pounded over the landscape.

Tok moved so freaking fast that I didn’t really have time to worry about the way my legs were spread across his back. It was purely practical. At least, that’s what I told myself…

We only slowed to a stop a few times to eat and once to let me pee – behind a very fortunately placed boulder, thankfully. Though the entire time I had my pants down around my ankles, I was blisteringly aware of Tok so nearby.

We began to slow our pace again as the sun dipped down to the horizon, the asteroid belt rising, puncturing the sky with its misshapen beads.

“How long will it take to get there?” I asked, my voice sounding cracked and rough from not being used in a few hours.

Tok took the spear from his mouth and rose from all fours to walk on two legs. “That depends on you,” Immediately, his arms slipped beneath my legs, one of his hands still holding his spear, keeping me in place – an alien piggyback ride. “It is perhaps three days of travel to the coast,” he continued. “Two days to reach Gahn Taliok’s mountains, then another day beyond that to reach the sea. But if you like, I can continue walking well into the night. You can rest on my back, and we will get there all the sooner.”

“Won’t you get tired?” I asked, frowning at the back of his neck.

Tok made a small, almost amused sort of sound, then simply said, “No.”

“Is that supposed to be some brag about your alien stamina?” I asked, cheeks flooding with heat. Now that we were moving more slowly, my spread legs were becoming much more of a distraction. His flattened spikes beneath the hide on his back pressed against my clit.

Tok made another amused sound, louder this time, a thick rumble.

“It had no other meaning,” he said. “But if you’re curious, we Bitter Sea men have excellent stamina… In all areas.”

Oh fuck. What was I thinking coming out here alone with the gigantic alien who was so intent on making me his?

And why had his words lit a fire deep in my groin?

“Might as well keep going,” I mumbled thickly against Tok’s scales, burying my face in embarrassed arousal.

“As you command,” Tok said. He moved to all fours again and sped back up.

If I’d thought racing across the desert during the daytime was thrilling, doing it at night was something else entirely. Something almost vicious in its beauty. It brought me back to my childhood, when I’d been so convinced that magic and fairies and other realms were real. When the darkness of night was something velvety and exotic and made you almost giddy with excitement. When all things seemed possible.

And maybe all things were possible. I had ended up on an alien planet after all, apparently destined to be mated to a massive man who looked more like a dragon than a human.

My curls were tangled but I didn’t care. I loved the feeling of the cool, inky air whipping it all back behind me. I loved the extraordinary spray of stars above us, so bright in a city-less world. I loved the way the glowing asteroids reflected their silvery light onto the undulating sand and crags of dark stone, creating a glittering landscape right out of a fantasy novel from my youth.

We kept going late into the night. So late that I started yawning on Tok’s back. As soon as he noticed the way I was fading so fast, he banked to the left, heading for a small outcropping of boulders and babkit trees.

“We will set up camp here,” he said, his words muffled by the spear in his mouth. We came to a stop inside the ring of tall, dark stones.

“Sounds good,” I said. I was so exhausted that I didn’t even think about what the sleeping arrangements might be. But as Tok helped me off his back, let his spear drop to the sands, and then pulled out the packed-up tent bundle from the strap at his waist, I froze.

Is he sleeping in the tent with me…?

Why the hell had I not considered that as a possibility?! Panic surged in my chest, along with a sharpened pang of something else. Something a lot like desire.

Tok held the tent in his claws, watching me with unreadable eyes. I licked my lips, feeling splayed open by the intensity of his gaze. My legs trembled from the journey, and the place between them grew warm.

“This tent is too small for the both of us,” he said suddenly.

Oh. Well… That solves that then. I just wished I didn’t feel so disappointed.

“But will you be OK, you know, out here?” I asked, suddenly feeling bad that the tent was too small. And not just because there was an irrational part that wanted him curled against my back inside. But because… Well… “Won’t you get lonely?”

Tok tossed the tent bundle to the ground, then undid the straps at his waist. I pursed my lips, watching, almost entranced by the oddly human look of the gesture. Like a man undoing his belt.

And when he slipped the straps off of his shoulders, it was like a man shrugging out of suspenders.

And somehow, that was more bizarrely erotic than the fact that he’d been naked pretty much every time I’d encountered him so far.

He set the saddle on the ground and then closed the space between us with one large step. I gasped and stepped back instinctively, my back hitting rock.

“I miss you every moment I’m not with you,” Tok said, his voice flat and serious. “I felt grief when my parents died, and I miss them. But even after they were gone, I never truly felt lonely. But now…”

A huge golden fist came up to pound at his chest.

“But I feel it, now. Whenever I’m not with you. Like a hole, right here.” His fist pounded again.

Oh. Oh oh oh. His words were… Doing things to me. Making the desire already spinning through me feel less physical and more emotional. And it scared me.

But just as quickly as he’d advanced towards me, he drew back, letting his fist fall to his side.

“But you are not responsible for such things, Taylor. I do not tell you these things to pressure you, nor to sway you. It is honest, and it is how I feel. But it is… Not your problem, so to speak.”

I stared at him as he turned and started fiddling with the tent bundle, undoing the straps and taking out the bone poles to set it up.

OK, why was everything he said just… Spot fucking on to make a lass fall for him?! First, he breaks my heart by telling me he feels lonely for the first time because of the hold I have on him, then in the same breath, he takes full responsibility for his feelings. He wasn’t pressuring me or manipulating me by what he’d said. He was just honestly telling me how he felt.

I shook myself as Tok made an irritated sound. I stepped up to his side.

“What’s wrong?”

He’d driven one of the bone tent-poles into the sand so hard that it had cracked. My eyebrows flew upward as a huge chunk of the bone pole fell to the sand.

Tok sighed, once again seeming almost starkly human, staring down at his claws, then back at the ruined pole.

“Weak desert bones,” he grumbled.

And I fucking died laughing. He whipped his head towards me in what looked like astonishment. I laughed so hard I had to place my hands down on my knees, my curls spilling upward over my head as I shook with the laughter.

“What is so funny?” Tok asked. “Did we travel too long? Have I addled your brains with the exhausting journey?”

He was so serious that his words only made me laugh harder.

Instantly he was at my side, his hands pulling me upright by the shoulders.

“I’m fine! I’m fine!” I said, taking several deep breaths. But then my eyes caught on the broken bone pole, and Tok’s grumpy expression, and I started laughing all over again. Tok studied me silently as my laughter faded into giggles, his hands heavy on my shoulders.

“Sorry,” I finally said, wiping tears from my eyes. “It’s just, you’re so big and so serious. Seeing you get all out of sorts over the pole breaking was really funny. It was like some old man getting mad about breaking something and getting all riled up about it. ‘Back in my day things were built to last!’ That kind of thing. Ha!”

Tok made a deep grumbling sound that had any remnants of laughter dying immediately. I was very quickly reminded that, though he definitely had a mature sort of air to him, this was no goofy old man. And the only reason the pole had broken was because his strength was so brutal.

“I will not pretend to understand a single thing you just said,” Tok said, cocking his head slightly. “But all the same, I am glad it brought you some amusement.”

He let go of my shoulders and returned to the tent. He whipped the broken pole out of the ground as easily as pulling a toothpick from a cotton ball, tossing it to the side. He replaced the broken pole with his own spear, pressing the long bone handle of it down into the sand.

“Want me to do the other?” I asked, gesturing to the other bone pole needed for the other side of the tent. But Tok jerked his tail in a movement that seemed to mean “no.”

“Now that I know how brittle and weak the desert bones are, I will not make the same mistake again,” he said.

He was right, and he made short work of setting up the rest of the tent. Normally I would have tried a little harder to get him to accept my offer to help, but now that we’d stopped, I was totally exhausted. When the tent was all set up, I was physically aching to go lie down in it.

“Thank you. Oh! But won’t you need your spear?” I asked, glancing at the makeshift tent pole he’d constructed. It was much thicker and longer than the pole on the other side, giving the tent a slightly asymmetrical appearance. The asteroid and starlight caught on the deadly scale tip that Tok had pierced through the tent hide to hold everything in place.

Once again, his answer was short and to the point.

“No,” he said. Then he added, “I am the worst thing that we could encounter in these deserts, even without a weapon.”

My breath caught as I realized he was right. Even the zeelk, the giant crab/spider alien monsters who’d killed our ship’s crew the first day we’d landed here, wouldn’t stand a chance against Tok.

I bit my lip as the strangest mix of fear and comfort washed over me. A tangy, hot pulse of fear at the reminder of just what Tok was – a predator. And a sense of safety at the fact that he was my predator.

“Sleep now, treasure,” he said softly, stepping forward and drawing a scratchy-yet-smooth knuckle across my cheekbone. “It will not be long before the sun rises once more.”

I nodded wordlessly, frozen in place at the feeling of his knuckle skimming so gently over my skin. The scales on his hands were much, much smaller than scales in other places on his body. It made the hide of his knuckles feel like scratched-up leather, rough yet oh so soft against my cheek.

“Goodnight, Tok,” I whispered, still not moving. Tok’s face tensed, a look of what seemed to be pained hunger passing through his eyes, before he pulled his hand away. As if sensing that I was still stuck in my spot, he leaned around me, opening the flap of the tent with one hand. His other hand moved behind my shoulders, flattening against my back and turning me slowly. Once I was facing forward, my back to him, he gave a soft nudge, ushering me inside the dark structure.

“Sleep,” he repeated, his tone quite firm this time, if I did say so myself. Like he was giving me an order. Normally such a thing would make me bristle and shoot back some remark. But I was just too tired, and my skin too warm and tingly from his touch, to bother.

I dumped my pack on the ground, took out my bedding hides, and crashed into them, sleeping immediately.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Tok

I’d had to physically move Taylor into her tent, practically commanding her to go. If I hadn’t done it, if I hadn’t forced myself… I might have lost my sea stone control.

When I’d touched her face, she’d seemed… Spellbound. Like my touch upon her skin was pinning her in place with some fated magic. If it had not been such a long day for my little human mate, if I did not know she was tired from the journey, I would have tightened my hold on her. I would have seen just how much my touch affected her in other places.

Did she freeze up, tense and tight, when she reached her peaks of pleasure? Or did she come undone, shaking and writhing and…

Stop. I was already looking hungrily towards her tent, dark need blooming in my belly. My mate needed rest, and she’d still not offered herself to me, anyway. As much as I wanted to crowd inside the tent, or drag her by the dainty ankle back out here, I could not do it.

A flash of movement nearby caught my eye, and with a hiss, I launched forward, catching a desert creature the Sea Sand men called a rakdo. I killed it quickly, urging all the unspent need of my body into my meal. My fangs gnashed, tearing flesh and snapping bone. Blood spilled down my snout to my neck. I normally did not eat with quite this ferocity. I must have looked like a terrible beast.

I wonder what Taylor would think if she saw me now?

A frisson ran through me as I swallowed the last bite, turning to stare intensely at her tent.

What would she do if I came to her, like this, right now, covered in the blood of my kill?

I already knew what she would do. She would quake.

Quake with fear. And with need.

I’d seen her do it before. I’d seen the way her prey drive thrashed and twisted inside her, turning to desire. I’d smelled it, I’d seen the frenzied throb of her heart at her throat.

My little mate wanted me. I was growing more and more certain every moment.

I just had to figure out how to get her to admit it.

Or, if she’d already admitted it to herself, I had to figure out how to get her to stop fighting it.

Fighting fate.

Fighting me.

Finished eating, I wiped the blood from my scales with a clean bit of the rakdo’s fur before burying the mess in the sand. I’d stripped all the meat from the bones, and the fur was too ruined with blood to bother keeping for any other use.

I did not worry about the fact I’d saved no meat for Taylor. I was a powerful hunter and I could kill dozens of desert creatures for her if she grew tired of the rations she had brought on our journey.

I settled myself next to Taylor’s small travel tent, curling up on the sand. I would have preferred to sleep in the shelter of a cave, as I was used to. But I would sleep anywhere near Taylor. She could ask me to sleep in a bed of hot embers, and I’d lay myself down without a second thought.

The hold this new woman has on me is dangerous…

Resting the bottom of my snout on my arm, my tail curling around my body, I stilled, listening to Taylor’s breath. It was soft and quick and shallow in her tiny lungs. I tried to picture her, wondering how she slept. Did she sleep curled into a ball, like I did? Or some other way?

Was she still dressed, or were those breaths pushing and pulling inside a bare, silken chest.

I tensed, forcing myself to relax. There was no sense in getting so worked up when I could do nothing about it. Besides, I’d spent a lot of energy today. I needed rest, too.

But rest did not come easily. Taylor’s quiet breaths became the crashing of waves inside my skull, pounding through my blood into my limbs, my groin. With a suppressed groan, I let my cock emerge, heavy with blood and seed. Shifting slightly, I worked my cock down into the cool sand, grinding into the ground the way I wanted to grind into Taylor’s cunt. The sand did not grip me in fevered wetness, did not give me what I wanted, what I needed. But the cool, grainy pressure of it did provide an oddly pleasurable sort of discomfort that soon had me snapping my hips harder against the ground.

I must be losing my mind, I thought miserably as my tail jerked behind me, my cock throbbing. For a warrior of the sea to be so out of control that he ruts the dry sands…

It was utter madness. Madness that had me straining against the grit of the ground, spilling seed into the dry depths, biting back a groan.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Taylor

After using some talka gel in the tent to clean myself off, I dressed and packed the next morning. Tok was ready for me when I emerged from the tent, and we broke down the tent unceremoniously, leaving behind the broken bone pole. After a quick bite to eat, we were off, continuing on our rapid journey. I knew Tok only had seven days’ leave from his duties at the settlement, so when he asked me if I wanted to keep going as darkness fell that night, I told him yes. It would be a huge disappointment if we didn’t even get time to explore the coast and to see the Bitter Sea records he’d told me about.

Because we moved so quickly and didn’t stop at sunset, we reached Gahn Taliok’s mountains that night. The desert sand became harder, more densely packed, and much darker red, like blackened blood in the darkness. The mountains were an astonishing formation. Even having lived at Fallo’s cliffs when we’d first arrived on this planet, and then the Cliffs of Uruzai, I was not prepared for the harsh, sharp beauty of the mountain range. The star and asteroid light spilled down the dark red peaks, turning each mountain into a glowing fang that pierced up into the sky.

We tracked around the edge of the mountain range, rather than going right through the middle. Even though we had permission to leave the settlement and to travel this way, Tok didn’t want to disturb the camp of the guard party Gahn Taliok had left behind. So instead of riding through the middle, we picked our way through a rocky valley nearer the edge, the largest of the peaks rising up on our left, smaller rock formations on our right.

Well, I say we picked through the valley, but in reality, it was all Tok. while I just held on tight. Despite his size and the fact that he didn’t hail from these mountains, he moved through the stone formation with graceful ease, shocking me. His claws traversed each boulder and valley like he’d come this way a hundred times before, even though I knew he’d only travelled through the Sea Sands once – to get to the settlement.

As the night dragged on, the stars and asteroids trekking across the sky just as we trekked through the mountains, we found a place to sleep. It was a smooth, low spot with lots of cover from a slab of rock that leaned against the larger wall of the mountain beside us, creating a sort of stone cave.

“You must like that,” I said as Tok knelt so I could slip out of the saddle. “It’s like a cave.”

Tok removed the saddle, once again reminding me of a man undressing, making my cheeks heat, as he surveyed the spot.

“I do like it,” he said. He turned to me, the discs of his eyes like liquid metal. “Do you like it?”

“Yeah, it looks good,” I answered. I liked the way the stone slab provided so much protection. It almost felt cozy.

“Oh! But can we set up a tent here? I don’t want to break all the other bone poles we brought.”

The floor of this area was solid rock – impossible to drive a bone pole down into the ground to hold up a tent here.

Tok undid the tent bundle, holding the hides in his hands and looking at the camp spot appraisingly. Shifting all the hides to his left hand, he rubbed at the bottom of his snout with his right, as if pondering what I’d said.

“Here,” he said, suddenly moving. He struck forward, tucking the edge of the tent hides into the crack where the slab of rock met the mountainside. After a few adjustments, he released his hold on the hides, letting them swish down into place. The hides created a perfect curtain across the opening into the sheltered space.

“It is not a tent,” Tok admitted. “But will this work for you?”

I glanced at the curtain, then back at him.

“Yes, I think so.”

Tok gave a satisfied sort of grunting sound, staring at me. Weirdly, even though it had been another long day, and it was really late, I suddenly didn’t feel tired at all. I felt… Abuzz. Energized. Almost giddy.

And it was because of Tok’s gaze on me.

My heart pounded in my chest, my throat. Its rapid rhythm increased when Tok’s hungry eyes fell to my neck.

“You know,” I said. I paused.

Tok cocked his head, waiting for me to continue.

I cleared my throat, flapping an awkward hand back at the shelter.

“You know, you could fit in there. With me.”

The words came out in a chaotic tumble. Because, once again, they were falling out of my mouth without the go-ahead of my brain. Meanwhile, my brain was just catching up and absolutely screaming bloody murder at me. Did you just invite the giant lizard alien who’s obsessed with you to sleep with you?!

“Sleep! Just sleep!” I said quickly, speaking more to my own mad brain than to Tok. If Tok was disappointed by that addition to the conversation, he didn’t show it. He strode forward, lifting the curtain he’d created and fixing his stark yellow eyes on me.

“After you.”

I stiffened, not able to make my feet go forward. God, I must have been crazy. Why was I inviting him in there! Now that I knew he’d be following me in there, it was impossible to make myself go inside.

Tok must have caught my hesitation, because he said, “I do not have to share this space with you. I will be plenty comfortable out -”

“No!” I said, the word coming out hard and almost angry. “No. I invited you in. So we’ll just… Go in!” I had started this and I would see it through. I softened, thinking of what Tok had said last night. I miss you every moment I’m not with you…

That made my chest pull tight, made me feel all gooey and weird where a second ago I’d felt… Well, tense and weird.

And yet I still couldn’t move my blasted feet.

“Do you need help?” Tok asked. I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or making fun of me. Maybe both. His voice was a smooth, smoky glide over my skin that gave nothing away.

Before I could answer, a scaly hand shot forward, gripping my elbow. His eyes glinted as he gave a gentle tug. I stumbled forward, colliding with the stone wall of his chest.

“Thanks,” I muttered, cheeks burning. “Might have been stuck out here all night.” I gave a shaky laugh, trying to make a joke. But the joke deflated immediately as Tok drew my arm upward, nuzzling his snout briefly against my palm. I stared at him in almost sick fascination, my pulse a frantic drumbeat in my clit, as his dark forked tongue flickered out to taste my skin. It was brief – so brief I could have pretended it hadn’t happened at all.

If it weren’t for the effect it had on me.

The hot, quick flicker of the twin tips of Tok’s forked tongue made my breath shudder, scraping, down my throat. My palm burned, tingles erupting in my wrist, concentrated on the spot where Tok’s rough thumb stroked my pulse.

“Salt,” Tok muttered against my skin. His eyes flashed to mine. “There’s some of my homeland inside you, Taylor.”

I knew what he meant – he was talking about the salty sea and the salt of the sweat on my skin being similar. But somehow, the words felt like they had another meaning. A secret meaning, one you had to dig for. It felt like he was saying so much more than that – that he was telling me about how precious I was, how core to his world I was.

And, I couldn’t help but focus on two of those words among all the others.

Inside you.

Whether Tok had meant that to be lascivious or not, I couldn’t tell. Maybe I was just a pervert, suddenly imagining not the Bitter Seas inside me, but one very large, very golden Bitter Sea male.

“It only seeks to confirm it,” Tok said, his breath an electric shiver against the sensitive skin of my wrist.

“Confirms what?” I asked, barely able to choke the words out.

His eyes dragged down my inner wrist, tracking my heartbeat, before flicking up to capture my gaze once more.

“That you are my homeland, now.”

“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think!” I cried, my hand curling into a fist in Tok’s grip.

But he held my wrist steady, his eyes never leaving mine.

“No. I don’t think so. I’m surprised you have not yet realized that I only ever say exactly what I mean to, Taylor. Never more, or less, than the absolute truth.”

My breath caught, my spine twanging with tension, my nipples hardening as Tok tugged me slightly closer.

“And the truth is, Taylor Bruce, that you are my homeland and my heart. The only future worth finding, worth fighting for. The love I have for the Bitter Seas, for my people and my past, is foam scattered on the waves compared to what I feel for you.”

I remained still and silent, absorbing what he’d said. Well, trying to, anyway. But it was a wee bit difficult because my brain was very quickly taking a backseat to my hammering heart. And my clenching pussy.

“Tell me to sleep outside,” Tok said, his voice suddenly low and urgent. “Command me to, Taylor. Tell me to stay away.”

And I did command him. Only it wasn’t what either of us probably expected.

“Tok. Come inside. Sleep with me tonight.”

And like the dutiful warrior he was, he obeyed.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Tok

My fangs drenched my tongues in mating fluid as soon as I followed Taylor into the shelter for the night. My ardent teeth had already been leaking the stuff, and now it was a full-on deluge. It was the heady combination of being in such a tiny enclosed space with her alongside the fact that she had invited me in. Though I relished the idea of chasing her, pinning her, claiming her, I was much more interested in her giving me permission to do such things. I wanted her to want me, more than anything.

And having her invite me to spend the night at her side was a strong first stride towards gaining her love. I was sure of it.

I had to stoop slightly beneath the stone ceiling created by the slab of rock meeting with the mountainside. There would be enough floor space for us to both lie down for the night – but not much. And I considered this very lucky indeed. I’d get to be near her because of the constraints of the space, and she would not be able to fault me for it.

In the pitchy dark, Taylor was a silhouette. I could see well in the darkness, and thus I could still make her out fairly easily. But I knew that the new women did not have such strong eyes in the darkness. I watched, tense and thrumming, tail twitching, as she bent and retrieved a valok candle from her pack, lighting it with an odd, sparking contraption.

“It’s called a lighter,” she said putting the small object away and stashing the candle at the far end of the small space. The candlelight licked up the walls, flickering and casting its hazy warmth over everything.

Including my astronomically beautiful mate.

My heart clenched like a fist beneath my ribs as I took in the sight of her. There was lust in my gaze, of course. There always was for her. But even more than that there was pure awe. Awe for her wave-breaking loveliness. Her round cheeks glowed slightly pink in the light, her eyes, a greenish sort of brown in the sunlight, looked deep and warm and almost as gold as my scales. Her curly hair was a tangled mane behind her head, cascading down onto her shoulders to the middle of her back. My claws flexed as I fought the urge to take one of those windswept curls between my finger and my thumb, stroking the strands.

Taylor was looking at me, too, I realized. Her gaze tracked up my chest and neck, over my snout, to my eyes. Like I had wondered when she’d circled me when I’d put on the saddle, I wondered again what she saw. There was nothing like a mate who stubbornly refused to love you to make you feel unsure of yourself.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked, unable to help myself. “What do you see?”

Taylor’s slim brown brows shot upward, apparently surprised by my question.

“I was just thinking about how big you are. You take up a lot of space in here.”

It was… Not exactly what I’d hoped to hear. What had you hoped to hear, idiotic warrior? That she has grown so lustful while looking at you that she’s ready to accept you as her mate? That your visage makes her want to part her pretty thighs?

I had never been one for foolish hopes before.

I felt a fool now. A fool in love with a fierce little creature who may very well be the death of me.

“Do you wish for me to go back outside?” I ground out, the words fighting me. I desperately hoped that she would not send me back out again. That she had not changed her mind. I’d already asked her – begged her – to command me to remain outside if that was what she wanted. Because otherwise, there would be nothing that could keep me away.

And if she changed her mind now, and did command me thus, it would take everything I had left to follow her orders and leave her in here alone.

Thank the murderous stars, it seemed she wanted me to stay. She shook her head in that human gesture for “no.” I breathed out in a tight hiss as she said, “No. I don’t want you to go back outside.”

“Good,” I said, my voice more gruff than I’d intended. Her cheeks darkened, and I had to choke down the growl that responded to the sight.

Taylor turned away from me, rummaging among her things and spreading her bedding hides on the stone floor. I kicked my spear and the remaining bone pole for her tent to the side, giving her more room. I could not stop the hot drag of my gaze over her pert backside as she bent away from me, smoothing her bedding down.

Once her bedding was as she wished it to be, she sat down making a huffing sort of sound.

“Och, I’m puggled,” she said, the words odd and lilting and without meaning. When she caught my questioning look, she shifted back into the language of the Sea Sands. “I’m so tired!”

“I am sorry. We should have stopped sooner this evening. Given you more time to rest.”

I moved to my knees, then to a seated position beside her, being careful not to dirty her bedding with the claws of my feet. I crossed my legs at the ankles, placing my forearms on my knees and leaning forward, looking at her intently, making sure she was alright. One never knew with these new women – they were so delicate and so mysterious. Something that seemed so innocuous to me could be deadly to her.

“I’m fine,” she said, flapping her hand at me dismissively. Unconvinced, I continued watching her as she pulled off her foot-shells and the thin garments she wore between the foot-shells and her feet.

My gaze caught on her absurdly tiny feet. Truly, how she remained upright on such precarious little things seemed to defy nature itself. Before I realized what I was doing, I’d dragged the back of my claw up the bottom of one foot, causing her many toes to splay.

“That tickles!” she gasped, suddenly laughing. She moved to yank her foot from my reach, but a sudden and visceral possessiveness overtook me. Mine.

“Let go of my damn tootsie!” she howled as I held fast to her ankle, continuing to prod at the bottom of her foot.

“No, I do not think I will let go of your tootsie yet.” My gaze heating, I stared at the many soft and clawless toes, the miniature bones, growling, “It’s my tootsie now.”

Taylor’s mouth clamped shut, her eyes going huge before she erupted into laughter.

“I can’t believe a ten-foot-tall alien just said the word tootsie!” she choked out between giggles.

I felt my brow furrow.

“I do not have ten feet,” I said, wondering if she were truly alright after today’s travels. “I only have two feet. Two tootsies.”

“Those are absolutely not tootsies,” she cried, shaking her head so ferociously that her curls flew.

“They’re not?”

Mystifying, her human customs and language. It would require close and careful study. I would work very hard, as hard as possible, until I knew everything about her. Until I knew the difference between a foot and a tootsie as easily as I knew the difference between koba shells and pirka rocks.

I stared at her tiny foot, her ankle still in my grasp. I decided I needed both tootsies to study, so I grabbed her other ankle as well. That other tootsie had wiggled up towards Taylor’s rump as if trying to escape.

But my wiggly mate, and all her wayward limbs, would soon learn that there could be no escape from me.

Taylor breathed in deeply, nostrils flaring, watching me. Her hands were flat on the hides below her, just behind her rump, as her ankles rested in my hands. Like this, I was reminded of just how tiny she really was. Her joints, her bones, so breakable. In need of protection.

A wave of protectiveness broke over me, making me tense as I held her tiny feet. Carefully, being wary of my claws, I dragged the pads of my thumbs down the sole of each foot. Taylor squeaked, and her feet jerked in reaction, her clawless toes curling downward. I felt the muscles in her calves quiver and tighten as I did it again.

“You’re not laughing anymore,” I observed out loud.

“I guess it’s not as tickly now,” she replied, drawing in a sharp breath as I dragged a third stroke of my thumbs down her feet. I prodded the smooth heels before letting her feet gently drop into my lap. I ran my fingers over the elegant top of her feet, where the curving bones met her ankles.

“Don’t tell me you have a foot fetish,” she suddenly said.

“I do not know what it is, so I cannot answer,” I said.

“It’s like… It’s like when you really like or enjoy something. Sexually.”

My cock throbbed behind my slit at the mention of mating practices. Jaw tight, I gripped her feet a little harder, massaging, watching her intently as I did so.

“I like every part of you,” I growled. “I have a Taylor fetish.”

“That’s! That’s… No. That is not the correct use of that word,” she stammered, her little mouth falling open.

“Are you sure? Because based on the definition you have given me, I think it is apt.”

She didn’t say anything else, her mouth closing, her cheeks glowing.

Finally, after a long, silent moment of staring at each other, she said, “Oh! I have to work on my thing before bed.”

“Your thing?” I asked, reluctantly letting go as she jerked her tootsies from my grip.

“Yeah,” she answered. “My records.”

She yanked out some items from the bag – items I recognized. The rectangular white thing with its fluttering leaves and the black tube that she wrote upon it with.

She settled into a cross-legged position that mirrored my own, hunching over her work. I shifted position so that I was closer to her, trying to ignore the obsessive way my blood, my body, responded to her scent in the small space. Placing a hand on the ground behind her, I leaned, looking over her shoulder as she worked. I remembered now that the black tube was called a pen.

“What is this called – you press upon it with your pen,” I asked when she paused in her writing.

“It’s a notebook. Or you can just call it a book, I guess.”

“And what do you write in your book today?”

“I’m updating it with details about our journey so far – cataloguing the landscape, the things we’ve seen. That sort of thing.” She held up the book in front of my snout, pointing at a symbol with the tip of her pen. “See? There’s you! That’s your name.”

I narrowed my gaze, wondering just how, exactly, the dark squiggles were my name.

Taylor lowered the notebook, looking at it thoughtfully.

“But then again, I don’t actually know how to spell it. I’ve just been writing it phonetically, but there are a lot of ways I could spell it.” She glanced up at me, smiling so softly it made my teeth ache. “Want to help me with that?

“You never need to ask me such a thing,” I said quietly. “My entire life is devoted to your service.”

“Right. Well… OK then. Here.”

She wiggled and scooted until she was seated directly in front of me, with her back to me. She twisted, angling herself to put her notebook against my thigh. Cursed waves, it was torturous. I stilled, fortifying myself against her soft touches, her nearness, trying to focus on what she was saying and doing.

She rustled the leaves of her notebook, turning to one that was blank apart from faint stripes moving horizontally across its surface.

“I’ve been spelling your name like this,” she said, etching the same symbol she’d shown me before into the white surface. TOK. “But you should have a say in how you want your name written.” She drew several more symbols: TALK. TOCK. TAWK.

My snout lowered to watch her work. There was, of course, the endless undercurrent of physical tension snapping between us, making my groin swollen and hot. But even more than that, there was a simple sort of comfort. I imagined spending many nights like this, watching Taylor do her work. I imagined a whole lifetime of it.

What a glorious life that would be.

“So, which one do you prefer?” she asked, turning up to look at me. If she was surprised by the nearness of my snout, she didn’t show it. And hope throttled me when she didn’t pull away.

I glanced at the notebook again, already knowing my answer.

“I prefer the first one. The one your instincts chose,” I said, gesturing towards the symbol TOK.

“You don’t have to choose the one I was using. It’s your name, and it’s how it will be recorded in our histories,” she said, shaking her head.

But I was adamant. I wanted only the symbol she’d been using all along. Knowing that her hand had already shaped that symbol, thinking of me and my name, was significant to me.

“My choice remains the same,” I said. “And even if you hadn’t already been using that symbol, I would have chosen it anyway. It is the shortest one – strong and to the point. I like that.” Unable to help myself, I smoothed a stray spiral of hair away from her forehead with a careful claw. “In this matter, you and I think the same way. We have the same instincts.”

A thought came to me as Taylor looked back down at her work, twiddling her pen in her hands.

“How do you write your name?” I asked her.

“Oh! Like this.” Her pen flew with astonishing, impressive quickness, scrawling the symbol of my love, my life. TAYLOR.

I bent closer – so close that the tip of my snout almost grazed the page.

“This part is the same,” I said, pointing to the left side of the symbol: T.

“Yes. Same first letter. That’s what those little shapes are called. Letters. Taylor and Tok both start with letter tee,” she explained.

Taylor and I were so different. We’d come from different worlds, had led vastly different lives. Different bodies, different customs. Different feelings towards the mate bond. And yet there, stark and undeniable in black ink so dark it looked like blood, was one way that we were the same. My chest thrummed, feeling warm, as I traced the common letter tee with my eyes over and over again.

“I am glad we share this letter,” I said.

Taylor stiffened, and I worried I’d somehow made her unhappy.

But then, in a tiny little voice, she said, “Me too.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Taylor

OK, why had this moment turned so soft and squishy and… Cute?

So many interactions between Tok and me had been pulsing and tense and viscerally sexual in nature. But this was the first time I’d felt us really growing a connection beyond that. Beyond the mandated attraction he felt from the mate bond and the primal attraction I felt for him.

This moment was downright fucking cozy.

And I decided I like it. I liked feeling close and cozy with Tok.

I smiled goofily down at the paper. Goddamnit, I was happy, too happy, about how much Tok seemed to like that we both had the letter T at the start of our names. And to be honest, I liked it, too. It was almost like when you discovered that someone in your school form had the same name as you, and you’d instantly become friends, bonded over that coincidence.

But I was pretty sure that what Tok wanted from me wasn’t just friendship. And I had to face the facts that it was becoming the same for me, too. Most lasses didn’t wonder what it would be like for their friends to chase them down and pin with black claws. Most lasses didn’t touch their friends’ heavy pierced cocks under the cover of shadowy night.

Yup. Fuck it all to hell, I was starting to fall for Tok. It was no longer an anxious, skittering physical attraction I felt. I was starting to enjoy being close to him, learning about him. Just being with him.

“Hey, want to learn how to write your name?” I asked, looking for any way to draw out this lovely moment between us. Like this, away from the settlement, I could almost forget about the danger and the strife and the complications of our lives. Like this, it almost felt… Normal. Like two regular people trying to get to know each other.

“Yes,” Tok answered immediately. My innards got all melty at his enthusiasm, realizing that he, too, didn’t want this moment to end.

“Here,” I said, taking his right hand in mine. My two hands together weren’t even as big as his one hand. The candlelight glimmered on each gorgeous golden scale, streaking down the deadly-sharp claws. “Oh, wait,” I said, wondering if he had a dominant hand. “Do you have one hand you use more than the other? Like, one hand that’s more natural to use for, I don’t know, throwing spears or something?”

Tok shifted until he was completely behind my back. He uncrossed his legs, letting them stretch out on either side of me, the notebook slipping from its place on his thigh to the hides beneath us. My spine snapped to tingling attention, my skin burning as I felt his solid chest settle in behind my back. His snout lowered until it was just beside my head, and he raised his left hand to hover next to the right one I held.

“No,” he answered. I felt the rumble of his answer in my back. “I use both hands equally.”

“We call that ambidextrous,” I said. A little erotic thrill ran through me at that fact – the fact that Tok could use both his huge hands with equal mastery. “Well, I’m right-handed. So let’s use your right. Here.” I pressed the pen into his right hand.

I chuckled at the sight. It was absolutely absurd. Like he was holding a fucking toothpick. But he held it so seriously, almost gravely, fighting to find a natural position for his giant fingers against its length.

“Like this?” he asked. My chuckles turned into guffaws as I looked at the pen position he’d settled on. He was holding it between the pads of his forefinger and his thumb, almost like he was getting ready to throw a very tiny dart.

“That’ll work,” I said, smiling. With the pen’s size, I didn’t think he’d be able to hold it the way I held it to write.

A slight tremor ran through Tok’s hand.

“Is that uncomfortable?” I asked, surprised to see the way his hand shook.

“No. But it is so small. I am trying not to crush it.” He let out a huffing, determined sort of breath. “I refuse to break it the way I broke the bone pole. This is your pen. And I will keep it safe in my claws.”

Oh, lordy. He was getting cuter by the second. I loved seeing this side of him, beneath all the spikes and the snarls and the primal confidence that ran through him like blood. Seeing him like this – focused, attentive, working so hard to protect my shitty little ballpoint pen, made me…

Made me want to fucking cry, to be honest. Since losing my parents and my uncle, and breaking up with my ex, I hadn’t had someone really get close enough to care about me like this. I had some casual friends, sure, but I’d already established that this thing with Tok was something way beyond friendship.

Tok’s tense grip slipped, the claw of his thumb clacking against the body of the pen.

“Cursed waves,” he muttered under his breath, readjusting.

I fought back my slightly teary smile and cleared my throat. I closed my hands over his hammer-like fist, guiding the tip of the pen down to the paper.

Tok was so tense I was certain he was actually holding his breath as I led his hand over the paper, writing his name.

“See, there you go,” I murmured encouragingly as we wrote it together again. “You got it.”

Tok made a garbled sound, as if too focused to respond.

Once we’d written his name together four times, I withdrew my hands from his.

“Now you try,” I urged him. I watched as he started to write it on his own. He cursed again as the T came out a little shaky. He abandoned writing the rest of his name, writing T over and over again until it each line of the letter was precise and straight.

“You don’t need it to be perfect,” I said. “Even if it’s messy, it’ll still be legible.”

“No,” Tok growled beside me. “This is the letter that begins your name, Taylor. It deserves endless attention. I will make it perfect, as you and your name deserve.”

I stared down at his work, dumbfounded by his words and not knowing what else to say. Tok had a habit of dropping heart-shattering declarations upon me with very little ceremony – as if he were talking about the weather. Words that came from him naturally, without pretense, cracked me right open.

Tok had apparently completely forgotten about practising his own name. Now he was littering the paper with the letter A, over and over again, the pen strokes getting sharper and surer each time. He did the same thing with each letter of my name, occasionally glancing up to reference the place I’d written my name at the top of the paper. Affection throbbed in my chest when I realized he was copying the quirks of my own imperfect writing, the letters slanting slightly the way mine did.

After writing each letter of my name at least a dozen times, Tok moved to the last empty stretch of paper, writing, TAYLOR. When the last brush of the R got a little smudged, Tok snapped his jaws and moved to turn to a fresh page, presumably to write my name again, more flawlessly this time.

Before he could do so, I settled my hand on his. He froze instantly.

“It’s OK. If you keep going I’m scared you’re going to pop a blood vessel or something,” I said, twisting to look back at him. His expression was one of fearsome, twitching tension. His chest puffed outward with a huge breath, brushing my back, before he exhaled and relinquished the pen from his demanding grasp.

I realized I was still holding Tok’s hand. His other hand rose to the ridges above his eyes, rubbing them.

“I am not used to such finely focused work,” he admitted, passing his hand roughly down the back of his neck as he rotated his head on his shoulders, stretching. “It makes my skull ache.”

“So aliens get headaches too, eh?” Almost mindlessly, I turned the hand I held palm-up. Tok stretched his fingers, no doubt trying to ease the tension that had gathered in the muscles and joints from how carefully he’d gripped the pen. I watched the flexing of his thick yet somehow elegant fingers, fascination turning to arousal, deep in my pelvis. That arousal, coupled with the affection that had built up during our time together tonight, had me settling my hand in his, intertwining our fingers. His hand jerked before his fingers closed in gently over mine.

“You should lie down if you’re getting a headache,” I murmured, entranced by the sight of my hand in his. The small scales on his hand really did feel marvellous against my skin – warm and softly scratchy in a comforting sort of way.

“You need rest more than I do,” Tok replied.

“We’ll both lie down then,” I said quickly, before I could change my mind. I mean, I’d already invited him in here for the night. It was inevitable that we’d end up lying down together. But still, to acknowledge it out loud… It made it all more real.

I slipped my hand out of Tok’s before blowing out the candle and plunging our shelter into darkness. Even though I was starting to feel closer to Tok, I wasn’t quite ready to undress in front of him. Yes, he’d already been around me naked in the hot springs. But somehow, that felt less intimate than this, right here and now.

Even in the darkness, I was aware of the looming statue of Tok’s body, seated on the ground, taking up so much space. I shimmied out of my clothing, electing to keep my panties and bra on. A wicked part of me wanted to strip completely nude, just to see what Tok would do. But the sensible, slightly shy part won out, and I elected to keep the underthings on. The jacket, trousers, and tank top were all shed, though, and I tossed them to the dark corner of the shelter, feeling the blistering penetration of Tok’s gaze in my back the whole time. Before lying down, I tried finger combing my messed-up curls, but to no avail.

“What is it?” Tok asked, no doubt in response to the small sound of irritation I’d made trying to deal with my hair.

“My hair. I should have put it in a bun or something. It’s a disaster,” I complained.

“May I?”

“You want to try to fix my hair? With what?” I asked. It’s not like I had a comb in my pack I could have given him.

“With my fingers.”

I swallowed, goosebumps erupting over my skin. The thought of Tok’s fingers at my scalp, my neck…

“But your claws are so sharp – won’t you just cut the hair?” I asked. Although, at this point, maybe a haircut wasn’t such a bad idea…

But Tok said, “No,” forcefully. “No, I would do no damage to it or any part of you. I will be very careful of my claws.”

I paused, holding my breath, wondering what to do. If I’d thought the moment was intimate before, it was only going to intensify, now. But at the same time, if I were honest about what I really wanted, I’d admit that I did want him to help me. I wanted to relax against him, and have him sort out my hair for me.

“Alright,” I whispered.

In an instant, Tok got closer, shifting so that once again his long legs were splayed with me between them. As his hands rose, gently stroking and tugging at my hair, assessing the situation, I gasped. My spine tightened, my abs clenching as the sensation of him beginning to mess about with my hair shot straight down into my pelvis. My nipples pricked, hardening beneath my bra, and I couldn’t pretend it was just from the cool air.

Tok moved methodically but slowly. It would be much faster to slice through the tangles with his claws, but he’d already said why he wouldn’t do that. So piece by piece, tangle by tangle, he worked the strands apart. When a slight tug at my scalp made me gasp, Tok tensed and growled.

“Does it hurt?” he asked. “I do not want it to hurt.”

“It’s OK,” I answered. His slow and careful technique was already way less painful than my own impatient hair combing. And Tok was a quick learner – soon enough he’d instinctively started finger-combing from the ends up, and he gripped the hair below my scalp so that it didn’t pull whenever he encountered an especially nasty snag.

An amused snorting sound from behind me made me turn slightly.

“What?” I asked, quirking a brow at him.

“Did you know you had a piece of peet grass in your hair?” Tok asked, holding up a thin piece of the plant matter between his claws for me to see.

“You’re kidding me!” I cried, embarrassment flooding my face with heat.

“I do not kid,” Tok said, suddenly serious as death. “Not when it comes to you.”

Oh.

I turned forward again, falling silent, focusing on the sensations of Tok combing so carefully through my hair. His brutal hands were more tender than I could have imagined they were capable of. His touch was…

Loving.

“So you really love me, then?” I blurted. Something about the darkness made me feel bolder.

Tok’s hands stilled.

“Have I not made that clear to you, treasure? If I have not, then I have failed miserably as your mate.”

“No, you haven’t failed,” I said in a rush. “I just… It’s all so hard to process. Hard to believe.”

Tok resumed his careful combing, and I sighed, leaning back until I was resting against his chest. I released my hands from where they’d been folded in my lap, placing them on Tok’s thighs at my side, like his quads were the arms of the biggest, scaliest armchair in existence.

“I’ll tell you every day, every moment, until you believe it, Taylor,” he rumbled. My fingers squeezed at his thighs before beginning to stroke up and down his scales, shocked at how hard the muscle was beneath the golden hide.

Tok fisted my hair, pulling it to one side and placing it forwards over my shoulder. His snout dipped to the side of my now-exposed neck, and I stifled a moan. His words flickered directly against my ear.

“I love you. I adore you. I worship you and obsess over you.”

His words made my back arch, my grip tightening on him.

I felt Tok’s chest shudder with a ragged breath. His huge hands fell to my hips, sliding upwards until they completely encircled my waist.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

We were going further than ever before.

And I didn’t fucking want it to stop.

“Tok,” I breathed, letting my head roll back against his chest.

“Taylor,” he ground out against my neck, his hands frozen on my waist. “If you want to just lie down and sleep, you need to tell me now.”

There was a dark urgency to that last word – now – that made my blood sing. He loved me. He was on the edge of losing control because of me.

It was intoxicating.

“You don’t have to stop,” I said, surprising both Tok and myself. After all the fighting, all the walls I’d put up, I was done. I didn’t know if I was ready to be Tok’s forever fated mate, but I couldn’t hold back against the tsunami of attraction I felt for him. Attraction that had only come to an explosive head after getting so close in the candlelight tonight.

But there was no candlelight, now. Only breathy darkness as Tok lifted me and then deposited me on my back in the hides.

I could barely process what was happening before his claws were sliding beneath my bra.

“Wait! Don’t rip it!” I cried. I only had one bra on this planet and I didn’t want to lose it in a moment of passion.

Tok made a harsh sound.

“If you do not want it destroyed, take it off. Same goes for this,” he growled, his thumb brushing beneath my panties against my hip bone.

Oh, God. Demanding, desperate, barely controlled Tok was… Fucking working for me. I stared up at him, at the huge, hulking shadow of him over top of me, overwhelming me. His snout twitched, exposing his fangs. His eyes were lasers, dragging down my body, branding me. I felt the liquid heat of that gaze.

No, I felt… Actual liquid. Dripping on me.

“What is that?” I asked, scrunching my chin forward to look at my chest. My fingertips moved up to touch the wetness that pooled between my breasts. I gave a quiet cry as the liquid spread over my fingertips, electric against my nerves.

“It’s the mating fluid,” Tok said.

Oh yeah. The pussy-loosening juice that came out of his fangs.

Is he going to bite me right now?!

I wasn’t sure I was ready for things to get that crazy during our first real hookup.

“Taylor,” Tok hissed, lowering his snout to catch the bra strap at my shoulder in his leaking fangs. “What did I tell you about taking this off?”

More of the mating fluid flowed onto my skin, making me moan. Everywhere it touched became ecstatically sensitive. I wriggled quickly out of my bra, suddenly desperate to smear the fucking stuff everywhere.

Tok inhaled deeply through his nose, dragging the tip of his snout between my breasts. After yanking my panties down and kicking them off, my hands settled on the sides of Tok’s snout, pulling him down harder against my skin.

“Beautiful, wanton mate,” he groaned. His forked tongue emerged, lapping viciously between my breasts.

“Here,” I said, gently tugging his snout to the right side, closer to my nipple. Tok’s breath, followed by a river of mating fluid pouring over my breast, made my fingers scrabble against his scales, my spine arching so hard it was almost painful.

“Oh my God, what the fuck?” I whimpered in English as the mating fluid made my nipples pucker and harden. Tok dragged his forked tongue along my collarbone, swirling it over the swell of my breast, before bringing the twin tips to tease at the sides of my erect nipple.

I’d always had sensitive nipples and breasts, but the mating fluid ratcheted everything up to level eleven. I writhed, gripping Tok’s snout desperately as his tongue tips flickered and circled over my nipple. He brought his fingers up to his mouth briefly, coating his fingertips while catching my gaze with a fevered look. Then, he skimmed his soaking fingers over to my other nipple, stroking it while he licked.

I threw my head back, unable to do anything else. The sensations were too powerful, too heated. Making my whole being burst into flame. But I needed more. My pussy was clenching, my clit literally pounding in time to my heartbeat.

One of my hands fell between my legs, rubbing madly. But Tok caught my wrist, halting my movement. I mewled in complaint, and he lifted his head from my breast.

“Let me take care of you, treasure,” he said, his voice thick with equal parts lust and command.

He licked his way down my body, drenching me in mating fluid all the way, making every nerve, every inch of skin, scream. His hands clamped onto my hips, his thumbs pressing into the place where my inner thighs met my groin, forcing my legs apart.

There was no time to feel embarrassed or self-conscious or to worry about whether he’d think pubic hair was weird. Because in less than a second, Tok had adjusted his grip, his arms hooking under me, his biceps against my thighs, his forearms stretching up the sides of my torso to grip my breasts. One hand slipped off of my breast, moving inwards to splay firmly against my chest, the rough pad of a rough finger pressing against the pulse point between my collarbones.

Tok groaned, grinding the tip of his snout against my clit, making me cry out and squirm. The scales on his snout were similar to those on his hands – smaller and more flexible than some of his other scales, creating a scratched-up leather texture that was perfect agony against my needy clit. As he did so, more mating fluid gushed, coating my hair, my clit, my folds. I shuddered at the exquisite tingling burn and stopped breathing entirely when Tok’s forked tongue probed my clit.

“Right there,” I moaned, gripping the back of his neck, careful to avoid the spikes in case they unfolded. But he seemed to be keeping them under very careful control. For now.

Tok’s hands turned to iron on my body as his tongue slipped and swirled. I was already at that sharp edge, already ready to tumble headfirst over.

And I did, clenching and screaming, when his tongues plunged lower, thrusting inside.

The mating fluid was inside me. Scalding me from the inside out as I came, clamping down on Tok’s tongue. He slipped his tongue out of me just long enough to mutter, “So cursedly tight,” before he thrusted the forked appendage back inside.

My eyes were wide open, but I saw nothing. And it wasn’t just because of the darkness. It was because of the orgasm. A double orgasm, it turned out. The twin peaks of Tok’s tongue moved independently of each other, swiping and swirling and prodding every secret point of pleasure. At this angle, the tip of his snout was also pressed firmly into my clit. How the hell was a lass not going to come twice in a row like that?

After the second orgasm ripped through me, leaving me sensitized and shaking, I started pushing against Tok’s head. I couldn’t take any more – not right now, anyway. Pushing against him, of course, was futile in a physical sense. It was like trying to dislodge a boulder from where it had been happily situated for centuries. But the physical nature of my strength, or lack thereof, didn’t matter. Because Tok pulled back, sensing that I needed him to.

There was a second – just the breath of a moment – where Tok paused, his snout still between my legs. He turned his head slightly, opening his jaws against my thigh, the fangs hovering tantalizingly close.

My heart raced, my fingers frozen on his head.

This is it. This is when he bites me. So that he can fuck me.

The thought was equally thrilling and terrifying.

But then, Tok pulled back with a vicious snarling sound. He threw himself down on his side beside me, grabbing me and spinning me until my back was pressed against his abdomen. One massive hand splayed itself against the front of my pelvis, the other heaving on my hip, pressing my thighs together.

His cock nudged, then pressed forward. But not into my pussy. He grunted, urging his hips forward until his cock was clamped between the tops of my thighs. I stared down my body in the darkness, my mouth going dry at the sight of his fat tip poking so far forward between my legs.

He’s so fucking huge…

I kept staring downward, practically hypnotized by the sight of Tok’s clawed hand splayed across my entire pelvis and his dark cock emerging from between my thighs. As he started to thrust, my eyes fell closed, and I moaned. Instinctively, I angled my hips back slightly, so that his cock rubbed against my clit with every move he made.

And holy shit, with those pearls pierced beneath his hide… It was unreal. Ultra-smooth hide pebbled with perfect pressure points. That, combined with the mating fluid still coating me down there, was almost too much to bear. I squeezed my thighs together harder, and Tok’s breath hitched behind me.

“Just like that, treasure,” he groaned against my neck, his tongue tips stroking over my earlobe. “Take me just like that. Feel how good I am to you, for you. Feel how good my cock is right here.”

His pace increased, the smooth-yet-textured shaft of his cock grinding over my folds, my clit. I found myself nodding wordlessly, breathlessly, unable to do anything but agree with him. Because, he was right – his cock was so fucking good.

“Feel how good it is,” he said again, his voice so dark, so husky, that he sounded more like a predator than ever. “Feel how good it is so that when I finally give you my cock, it’s because you begged for it.”

Me, begging?! My eyes flew open, offended by his words. But the third orgasm that slammed through me kept me from arguing with him, kept me from defending myself.

And really, how could I have defended myself, anyway?

Every word he said was fucking true.

Because this feeling, this intensity, this man?

This cock?

Yeah… As much as I hated to admit it…

I could see myself begging.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Tok

Iclutched Taylor to me like she was a lifeline. And truly, she was. Everything I breathed for.

Her smooth, slick thighs clamped down on me as she crested her pleasure once again, her small form arching and shuddering against me. My own pleasure was building, my cock urgent in its thrusts between her legs.

At the last moment, I had the foresight to wrench the hides out of the way. It was just in time –  I exploded, seed spurting as I growled and pumped my hips. I was glad I had not soaked the hides Taylor needed to use for her bedding, but a feral, ferocious part of me wanted her to sleep in fabric coated with my seed. I wanted her covered, surrounded by it.

We stayed there together, quiet apart from the harsh panting of our breaths. I nuzzled down against her neck and her hair which had once again become tangled. Taylor’s breathing slowed, turned steady and deep, and I realized with a jolt that she had already fallen asleep.

My chest lurched painfully. Asleep so quickly, almost like a child. She needed so much protection, so much care, my little treasure…

I drew the hides up over her form, keeping myself as close as possible in the process. I would not give up this chance – this chance to hold her throughout the night. It was good I needed little sleep. I wanted to be awake, aware, for as much of this time as possible.

Although, shockingly, I was not able to remain in one position next to Taylor the entire time. Bizarrely, she moved about in her sleep, rolling from one side to the other. At one point, she ended up on her stomach with her knees tucked beneath her chest, her rump up in the air, her cheek smushed into the floor, and I’d had to avert my gaze from that for fear that I’d grow hard again. Her backside curving so prettily was far too tempting. And she didn’t just change position – she sometimes threw her limbs about, punching into the air before settling into stillness once again. I’d watched her strange nighttime dance half with fascination, half with concern. Perhaps that is why she needs to sleep so long. The time she spends sleeping is not actually spent resting, but fighting off invisible enemies…

I did get a small bit of rest myself, enough to see me through the next leg of the journey. As dawn brushed its soft tongue against the horizon, I left the shelter to hunt for food. I quickly saw and killed a nearby rakdo, making short work of the meal.

By the time I had finished eating, I heard stirring from within the shelter. And then, so soft, so questioning, so searching that my tail snapped behind me in a surge of lethal affection, came the call of my name.

“Tok?”

I wrenched aside the curtain I’d created with the tent hides. Taylor was sitting up in the bed and she flinched, her face crumpling inward as the light flooded the space. I stepped inside, letting the curtain fall so that it was shadowy again. I cannot let myself forget her vulnerabilities. She is vulnerable even against the sun.

“Good morning, treasure,” I drawled, enjoying the way Taylor’s cheeks flushed dark pink at the sight of me.

What I did not enjoy was the way she pulled the hides up to cover her nakedness.

But perhaps that was for the best. We needed to continue our journey. It would not do to waste time with the distraction of carnal pleasures. Of course, I would be happy for such a distraction. But we only had seven days. And I knew seeing the Bitter Sea records was important to Taylor.

And thus, it was important to me.

“We should reach our destination today if we move quickly,” I said, seating myself beside her on the stone.

The sleepy, scrunched-up expression on her face melted away as she perked up at my words.

“Och, really? That’s great,” she said, smiling eagerly. I brushed away a few curls from her face before letting the pad of my thumb draw a line down her cheek to her lower lip.

Perhaps we could spare some time for a few distractions…

But Taylor was made of stronger stuff than me. With another smile, she pulled back from my touch.

“I need to get organized,” she said, already looking around the place, anticipating packing her things. As she did so, I watched her, taking all of her in. The snoutless face that I’d grown to love beyond anything else, with those greenish-brown eyes and little pink mouth. The mane of brown hair tumbling to her back.

“Do you want me to help with your hair again?” I asked, my fingers itching to bury themselves in the warm strands. But my mate shook her head.

“No, that’s OK. I’ll deal with it tonight.” She grabbed something from her pack next to her – a small loop of stretchy-looking hide. Then she twisted her hair on top of her head, tying it tightly until the knot of hair looked like a small bird perched on a stone.

“Very well,” I said, a little sad to see her hair tied away. Taylor looked around once more, then her gaze fell on me, her cheeks turning even redder.

“Do you mind going outside for a few minutes so I can get ready?”

So she did not want me around her while she dressed, then. I kept myself from showing my disappointment. As I’d told her before, my hopes, my feelings, were not her responsibility. I’d shoulder them myself, working and working until there was no more disappointment to be had. Because she’d accepted me.

“I will fetch you some valok,” I said, rising and moving to the shelter’s curtain. I pulled it aside more slowly this time, not wanting to shock her with the bright thrust of morning light. I did allow myself a small peek backwards, to see if I could catch a glimpse of her nakedness in the daylight. But she had anticipated me, fixing me with a hard look, one of her brows quirking upwards.

“Out you go now,” she said, flapping her hand at me. “Shoo.” She’d said that word to me before. It was a word I was coming to loathe because it was a dismissal.

But every command my mate gave would be followed. Setting my shoulders in determination, I turned from her beauty and headed back outside.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Taylor

It was bloody hard to get ready. My muscles were as jiggly as a tipsy laird trifle after last night. As I quickly cleaned myself with the talka I’d brought, I remembered last night – the intensity of everything that had happened. And not just the physical stuff, either. But the other stuff, too. My eyes caught on the notebook, open to the page where Tok had painstakingly written the letters of my name over and over again.

A throb went through my chest and throat when I thought of everything that had happened between Tok and me. That throb moved lower when I cleaned myself between my legs, remnants of the mating fluid twanging against my nerve endings.

I dressed in a clean uniform with clean underwear and socks, sudsing up my dirty clothing with talka gel to clean it. After shrugging into my jacket and popping on my sunglasses, I packed up the bag, rolled up the bedding hides, and stepped out into the bright sunlight with everything in my arms.

Tok was waiting for me, and my stomach muscles clenched, my heart rate increasing at the sight of him. The effect he was having on me hadn’t eased since we’d given in to the sexual tension between us last night. If anything, it was getting stronger.

At Tok’s feet were numerous valok plants, far more than I could slurp up.

“I won’t be able to use all that, and they’re a bit too big to try to take them all in my bag,” I told him, dumping the bag and bedding hides down. I laid my freshly-cleaned clothing on a nearby rock, knowing the desert air and sunlight would have it all dry in no time.

“I know,” Tok said, turning from me to take down the curtain he’d created with the tent hides. I watched his back as he worked, chewing my lip as his muscles bunched beneath his golden scales. “But I always want you to have more than you need, Taylor.”

He turned to face me as he rolled the tent hides into a tight, neat bundle in his claws.

God, he was gorgeous. His eyes were piercing and yellow in this light, and the heavy brow ridges and even the snout had a regal sort of shape to them. Those eyes never left me as I looked him over, taking in every impressive inch. My gaze snagged on his groin, and I whipped around, pretending to check to see if my clothes were dry so that I didn’t throw our entire day off track with the sudden urge to rub up against him.

Tok would probably indulge that urge, or any other I had. But I really wanted to get to the coast, and I certainly didn’t want him to get in trouble with his fearsome king for being late upon his return.

After some valok, and once my clothes were well and truly dry, we finished packing everything away. Tok retrieved the saddle, bone pole, and spear from the shelter, and soon enough we were ready to go.

We moved fast, maybe even faster than the pace we’d set the last few days. The closer we got to the Bitter Sea, the more powerfully Tok’s limbs churned over the landscape, as if drawn homeward by a physical force.

I couldn’t blame him – I was no less excited myself. The land was stark and beautiful beyond Gahn Taliok’s mountains – stretching red plains marked here and there by rock and large, flat-branched babkit trees. And beyond that? Becoming more and more visible with every step, a ribbon of reflective light on the horizon? The Bitter Sea.

We reached the coast by late afternoon. We ran along the beach, following the water, until we found an area shaded by babkit trees. These trees were huge, bigger than the ones I was used to seeing in the desert. They had monstrous trunks, some of them probably 5 or even 8 metres tall. Unlike Earth trees, they didn’t have leaves or thin branches. Their branches were wide and flat, like paddles, the same brown colour as their trunks. Tok slowed and then stopped under the shade of the trees.

I raced behind a tree to pee quickly, then ran back around, dying to check out the beach. I came to stand next to Tok, shaking my head and smiling widely.

“What do you think of the Bitter Seas?” Tok asked. I could feel his gaze boring into the side of my hood, a hood I quickly slipped back, considering we were under the shade of the thick babkit branches. I pushed my sunglasses up on top of my head, like a hairband keeping stray frizzy curls in place.

“It’s gorgeous,” I said, meaning it. Already, this had been worth the long trip.

The flat reddish ground of the plains broke up into rocks of varying sizes that led into the water. There was a small inlet under the shade of the trees that was sandy instead of rocky, the sand the same glinting copper-gold of the desert we’d come from. The inlet was ringed with rocks and sheltered by the babkit trees. It looked like a postcard. There were lots of savagely beautiful places on this planet, but this was the first spot that actually looked somewhat enticing.

Grinning, I ran to the water’s edge in the sandy area, kicking off my boots, balling up my socks, and dumping my pack. I took a step into the water, expecting it to be frigid the way the water often was at the beaches back home. But I gasped with pleasure to find the shallow water here just barely cool. Lovely against my skin in the heat, but not shockingly cold.

I was aware of Tok, who’d followed me, looming. Watching.

I turned to look at him. My insides turned to ooze at the sight of him. Huge and handsome in his reptilian alien way, his eyes relentless upon me.

A flash of this morning’s modesty returned. I was dying to strip down and swim a little, but even in the shade, I’d still be getting naked in broad daylight! And the harsh light on this planet left nothing to the imagination, even under the trees like I was. But as the water lapped invitingly at my ankles, a boldness overtook the modesty from before. Holding Tok’s gaze steady, I unzipped my jacket, removing it and tossing it to the sand. I wasn’t wearing my bra – it had been packed away after I’d cleaned it, and Tok visibly tensed, his potent yellow eyes tracking down to where my nipples puckered under the thin fabric of my tank top. My nipples weren’t reacting because of the cold – far from it. Even with the cool water on my feet, I was still hot out here. I was reacting because of Tok – his nearness. His gaze.

Swallowing, heart pounding, I shimmied out of my trousers, tossing them to shore along with my jacket. I was now in my tank top and underwear. I definitely could have kept them on and swam like that. But I didn’t know how long we’d be staying in this spot, and I didn’t really want to deal with wet clothes, no matter how quickly they might dry in the heat.

I crossed my arms over my body, grasping the hem of my tank top. Tok’s nostrils flared, his spikes twitching as he watched me. I paused for a rapid beat of my heart, holding my breath.

Then I yanked my tank top off.

After that, it was a quick movement to get my underwear off, too. Skin burning, and not from the sun, I stood bare and naked before Tok.

A distinct bulge throbbed at his groin, but he appeared to ignore it, all his attention on me.

“What are you doing, little mate?” he asked, his voice a low hiss.

“I’m going swimming,” I replied with mock innocence. My smile turned slightly wicked. “I bet you can’t catch me.”

It was a ridiculous assertion. Of course he could catch me – on land or in water.

And I wanted him to.

Tok growled, exposing his fangs. His spikes unfurled, vicious and black, contrasting with the warm sheen of his scales. My breath caught, my heart hammering so hard it resounded between my legs.

Almost giddy with panic, I turned and started running through the shallows. When the water reached my thighs I was forced to move more slowly, the water dragging against me. My brain babbled at me, half-believing I was truly being hunted. My instincts told me I had to go faster, faster. Escape the monster coming for me.

But when I turned around to see how close Tok had gotten, it wasn’t fear that gripped me. At least, it wasn’t only fear. It was primal lust.

He stalked through the water, spikes out, eyes like points of fire. His arms were heaved out to his sides, his fingers flexed, claws glinting.

Excitement and the need to run choked in my throat. I splashed backwards, my feet slow on the water-logged sand. When Tok sped up, his tail thrashing in the water behind him, I gasped and spun, diving messily forward into the water.

Laughing and shrieking, I swam, my breaststroke made messy by the adrenaline coursing through me. A quick turn of my head let me know that Tok was almost on me, now. He didn’t need to dive and swim – the water wasn’t too deep for him yet, and he could walk through it as easily as walking on land.

Even though there was no chance for me to win this game, even though I knew he’d catch me, I kept swimming, floundering in my frenzy. My feet kicked madly, my arms made terrific splashes, the spray glittering in the sun-dappled shade of the inlet. Behind me, the hissing and growling grew louder, the swishing of his legs faster.

But the monster who came for me then wasn’t behind me. But in front.

I gasped, reeling, choking on water as real fear replaced the more playful feeling from before. Something dark and ugly with a lot of legs emerged from the water ahead of me. Its blue and white armoured body was oddly familiar as it crashed through the water towards me, and as I took horrified note of its barbed, scorpion-like tail, I realized why it felt so familiar.

It was like the zeelk of the desert. But of the water.

I didn’t even have time to scream before a strong arm hooked around my torso, hefting me backwards. Tok tossed me behind him, as gently as he could in his haste, and I landed on my butt in the shallows, sputtering and blinking salt water from my eyes. In a second, I was on my feet, trying to figure out what the hell was happening.

The water zeelk thing had stopped its advance now that Tok was standing between it and its juicy Earth lass dinner. But it didn’t retreat, either. And clearly, Tok had no intention of leaving the creature alive now.

Tok unhinged his jaws and let out an honest-to-goodness animal roar. The sound ripped me open, made tears spring to my eyes and goose pimples skitter over my flesh.

He was once again stalking forward, much more quickly this time, making me realize he’d only been languorously tracking me through the water before. There was no idle leisure to his movements now – only brutal, bitter force.

The water zeelk made a horrible screeching sound, setting my teeth on edge. I clutched my hands together in fists in front of me, the fear getting deeper, more barbed and angry. This wasn’t fear for myself, but for Tok.

Tok didn’t seem to feel any fear, though. He roared again, his tail lashing the water so powerfully he made a mini tidal wave that crashed over my shins.

“Get out of the water!” he bellowed at me before turning his attention to the zeelk once more.

“But what about you!” I cried, more tears springing to my eyes. If he gets hurt, if he dies…

“Do it!” he thundered.

And then he lunged.

I couldn’t tell what was happening now – everything was flying blue and white and golden limbs, obscured by the froth of the water.

“Tok!” I screamed, feeling helpless. No, I didn’t just feel helpless. I was helpless. I was so weak – there was no way to help Tok in this situation.

But I wouldn’t stay helpless, stay vulnerable.

Like he’d told me to do, I stumbled out of the water. But only so that I could grab the spear Tok had left on the sand.

Fuck me, it was heavy. Gritting my teeth, I dragged it back to the water’s edge. I knew I couldn’t charge into the water and save Tok or anything, but at least now I wasn’t totally defenceless.

Besides, Tok didn’t look like he needed any saving.

By the time I’d gotten back to the water’s edge, he’d clearly gained the upper hand. It was still difficult to see what was happening, but it looked like he had the water zeelk pinned beneath the water, his huge knee on the creature’s armoured back. He gripped the zeelk’s wicked-looking tail in both hands, pulling upward with a straining cry. A horrific crackling sound split the air, and the zeelk’s tail was yanked right out of its shell.

I stared, mouth hanging open, as Tok did the same thing with one of the zeelk’s scrabbling legs. Holding the ripped appendages up, one in each fist, he brought them, barbs angled downward, onto the zeelk’s back, cracking right through its shell.

The zeelk gave a few more weak jerks before it stopped moving. My chest heaved, my knuckles white on the bone handle of Tok’s spear. I couldn’t relax yet – not until I knew Tok was alright.

“Tok!” I cried out, my voice high and pinched from terror.

He gnashed his fangs, giving one final push of the tail and leg into the zeelk’s back. Then he rose to his full height, his eyes searching until they found me.

I stared at him, frozen as he ran through the water towards me. He was all wet from the water, but it didn’t look like he was bleeding anywhere. Thank goodness…

“Tok! Are you al-” The last word of my question was cut off, crushed out of me as Tok hoisted me up into his arms, clutching me to his chest. Instinctively, I wrapped my legs around his waist to steady myself, dropping the spear and hooking my arms around his neck. Luckily, he anticipated me, and he flattened the spikes there before I could slice my arms open. That would be the last thing we needed – me getting seriously injured after a water zeelk had almost eaten me.

I buried my face in the scales at Tok’s shoulders, shaking, tears streaming freely now.

“Beloved treasure…” Tok’s words halted as if he wasn’t capable of saying anything more. I understood – I was just as overwhelmed by what had just happened. The horror of it. The anticipatory grief of potentially losing him…

We remained like that for a shaky, silent moment. Finally, Tok took a tight breath.

“No more swimming,” he gritted out against the top of my head, his arms tightening on me. He was holding me like he was afraid I’d disappear. And it kind of broke my heart. I nodded, my forehead scraping against his scales as I shakily answered him.

“Deal.”

He started striding away from the shore, casting a quick glance back to make sure no more nasty creatures were following us out of the water. Luckily, there didn’t seem to be any more water zeelk.

“Wait! Let me down to get my stuff!” I said, sniffing and wrenching in his grip, looking down at my bag and clothes on the sand.

“No,” Tok growled.

“Excuse me? We can’t just leave it all here!” I cried.

“We won’t.”

Holding me fast in one arm, Tok bent and gathered everything up into his other arm. It was pretty fucking impressive, considering how much crap there was. But then again, considering the size of his arm, it kind of made sense.

Once everything was clamped against my back with his arm, he grabbed his spear, the last thing on the sand.

“I liked seeing you holding my spear before,” he said, a little softer now.

I let out a teary laugh, wondering just what he meant by that.

“Is that supposed to mean something else? Something… Phallic?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Tok grumbled. “I just liked it.”

I was pretty sure he knew exactly what I meant. The word phallic existed in the Sea Sand language, so there was no language barrier muddying what I’d said. I smiled, snuggling closer to his chest. I’d loved the rumble of his words against my body, my face, when he’d spoken

“Can you keep talking? Please?” I asked. It made it seem more real that he was OK after the fight with the zeelk. Plus, I just liked the deep, growly sound of it. It was comforting.

Never thought the deep voice of a ten-foot-tall alien would be comforting, but here we are…

“What would you like me to say?” Tok asked, his snout nudging at my wet bun on the top of my head.

“Anything. I don’t know… Why don’t you tell me where you’re going now?”

We’d reached the edge of the babkit tree grove at the little inlet. As we stepped out into the harsh sun, Tok rearranged some of the things in his arms, covering my exposed skin with my bedding hides so I didn’t get burned. He drew the edge of the hide up over the back of my head like a hood, tightening it beneath my chin and forcing my face back. I felt my eyes widen at his expression.

His face looked… Thunderously pained.

“Where I am going?” he asked, almost harshly. “I go everywhere you are, treasure. Even if I’m always following.” His expression darkened further. “Even if I have to hunt you down.”

His words were intensely thrilling. The near-death experience we’d just had, and the sickness I’d felt at losing him, left me shaken and sensitized and… Needy. Needy for the solid beating of Tok’s body. Needy for the steady certainty of his words. His love.

Before I could reroute my hands to drag his snout down against my mouth to try to kiss him for the first time, he looked up and over my head.

“But in a more immediate sense, I am walking us towards a set of seaside caves beyond those babkit trees down the coast.”

I twisted in his grip, looking down the coast, following his gaze. Just as he’d said, there was another babkit grove maybe one hundred metres away. The trees grew too thick to see the caves he was talking about, but I trusted that they were there. Because Tok had told me there were. I eyed the water suspiciously.

“Do you think there will be more of those water zeelk things?” I asked, shivering despite how warm it had gotten under the hides. I felt every muscle in Tok’s chest and arms tense.

“I do not know. We do not have those predators on my island and I was a fool for letting you go into the water here so easily. But you will be safe in the caves. No creature would dare come for you with me as your protector there.”

I sighed into his chest, feeling his words wrap around me like a blanket even more real to me than the hides against my skin. He would do anything to protect me – he’d just proven it.

He could have died. Really, seriously. He could have died.

My whole body rebelled against that idea as Tok quickly covered the distance to the other grove of trees. And it wasn’t the fact that I’d be left alone out here that made the thought of him dying so horrific. It was the thought of losing him. I pressed my fingers against his scales, breathing in deeply. He’s OK. He’s OK.

But am I OK?

OK or not, it was becoming more and more clear to me every moment.

I was falling in fucking love.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Tok

Ifelt I was doing an admirable job keeping my terror tamped down. This was such an unfamiliar sensation that it was difficult for me to tame it. But I needed to stay calm, to show only strength, for Taylor.

Cursed waves, when it had come for her… When there was nothing between the water zeelk and her defenceless little body…

Yes, that had been terror. Sheer, urgent, and ugly. Worse than anything I’d ever felt. A tremor wracked my muscles at the memory and the imaginings of what could have been. I drew my tiny mate tighter against my body. My body – my scales and spikes and claws – would keep her safe. I would make sure of it. I moved even quicker, legs driving over the sand. The safest place out here would be at the caves ahead. There was only a narrow mouth to enter the cave we sought, so no predator would be able to get past me to reach her in there. And when we’d discovered these caves on the journey inland to the desert, we’d found them uninhabited.

But not empty. They had Bitter Sea records. Ancient ones. Ones we hadn’t even known existed before we’d crossed the water.

I entered the grove of babkit trees, glad for the shade of their wide branches. Not for me, but for Taylor. On the other side of the trees, the ground rose up in a rocky incline. I carried Taylor and our belongings up the hill. It grew steep on the other side, but I descended it with relative ease, hopping down to the ground, making sure not to jostle Taylor. I walked a little ways around the hill, towards the water, to the caves.

There were two caves. One shallow and wide open – more like a stone roof over the ground than an enclosed cave. The other cave was the one we sought. It had a narrow entrance, just wide enough for me to pass through comfortably. That entrance remained narrow on the inside of the cave, too, so it would be easy for me to guard.

I pressed into the darkness with Taylor, breathing in deeply through my nose and priming my ears for any sound. I was certain that no large creature would nest in here, but it was better to be prepared all the same.

But as I reached the main space of the cave, I found no other creatures.

After the brightness of the sun, it was very dark in here. I could still see relatively well, but I knew my mate could not.

“Let us retrieve a candle,” I said.

“Good idea,” Taylor replied. I dropped the items I was holding and then gingerly set Taylor upon her tootsies. When I was certain she was stable, I turned to rummage through her pack, being careful not to destroy anything with my claws.

I found the candle, and the little tube Taylor used to miraculously produce fire. Not knowing the secrets to the fire-wielding thing, the lighter, I handed it to her. With a mastery that made me growl with pride, she brought flame into existence with nothing but the flick of her thumb. She wielded the flame well, showing no fear, bringing it down to the candle and lighting it before letting the first flame die.

She is so small, and yet so powerful. Clever little mistress of the flame, I thought silently to myself, affection making my ribs ache.

“So… There’s no one else here. None of your people, the Bitter Sea women and children. So this isn’t your home, then, is it?” Taylor asked, turning to me. She held the bedding hides clutched around her shoulders with one hand, holding the candle in the other. The orange light danced over her features, seeming to change them every moment.

“I wish I could take you to my island,” I said, meaning it. What I wouldn’t give to see her perfect face illuminated by the glowing blue stones of my old bed chamber cave, instead of the candlelight in this cave. “But it is not safe. Beyond the shallows, there are much worse things than the water zeelk.” I did not wish to scare her with tales of monsters like the hok. I liked what a little frisson of fear did to my mate, but only when it was directed at me, and mingled with arousal. Her fear, her attention, her gaze, her affection…

I wanted it all on me.

“But will we still get to see the records?” she asked, her face falling somewhat. Seeing her expression change to one of disappointment, even sadness… Treacherous seas, it did things to me. Made me want to hold her. To howl. To remake everything in this world until things were just as she desired. I wanted to give her things. Anything.

Everything.

“Of course, treasure,” I murmured, stepping towards her and sweeping my hands up to the sides of her face. “I did not bring you all the way here just to disappoint you.” I paused, drinking in the sight of her skin, her eyes, before growling, unable to help myself, “I would never disappoint you.”

Her eyes widened slightly and she pressed her lips together under the force of her blunt teeth. Then she cocked her head, smiling slightly.

“I’m starting to realize that,” she said.

“Good,” I said, tail jerking with pleasure. I hoped she would realize it a little faster. See my worthiness just a little quicker. Accept me sooner.

But if my mate had proven anything so far, it was that she was of a strong and stubborn sort. Luckily, I was of the patient, determined sort.

At least, I had been. Before her. I was still determined. More determined than ever.

But far less patient.

“So then where are the records, if not on your island?” Taylor asked.

“Oh, there are records on my island. The ones I grew up with are there. But there are others, too. Ones we’ve only just discovered.” I slipped my hands down to grip her shoulders, spinning her towards the back wall. My snout lowered to her soft shell ear. “They’re right here, treasure.”

Taylor gasped, lifting her candle higher. The light caught on the hundreds, thousands, of scales on the back cave wall. They were slightly dimmer in colour and sheen than the newer records that I was used to on my island, and they were certainly not as bright as the scales on a living warrior, but they still glinted and shone. A few had fallen to the cave’s stone floor, but largely, the sea clay used to hold them to the rock wall had stuck fast. The records were quite readable, despite how old they were.

Taylor stepped out of my grip wordlessly, drawn to the scales. I watched her as she went. She looked so small in the bundle of hides around her body. But the light she cast was forceful. Luminescent. She reached the wall and stopped, tilting her head back to take in the massive mural of records.

The scales stretched up as high as a Bitter Sea warrior stretching his arms over his head. So the highest scales on the wall were more than twice as high as Taylor’s height. And the scales expanded horizontally, too, swirling outward in a vaguely circular pattern on the wall, tinted in shades of scarlet, dusty grey, deep violet, bottom-of-the-sea black. There were even gold scales, like mine, one of the rarest Bitter Sea shades. Every colour I’d ever seen on my people was represented here.

“Beautiful,” Taylor murmured, swinging her candle carefully from side to side, examining the wall. Then she turned back to me. “How do you read it?”

I stepped up close behind her back. Just close enough to brush her back with my front and to feel her intake of breath at the contact. I gestured over her head with my arm.

“From what I’ve seen of your work, you read and write left to right, top to bottom. But our writings start in the centre and spiral outward. It’s why this is all generally shaped like a circle with connected rings within.”

“Amazing,” Taylor said.

I felt myself puff with pride at that. The fact that Taylor saw so much beauty in the ways of the Bitter Sea people made me happy.

“So the stuff in the centre is the chronological beginning of the records then?” Taylor asked.

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“That makes sense. The beginning is the centre, then everything expands outward from there as a consequence of what came before. I like that.”

“I’m glad you like it,” I murmured, placing my hands on her shoulders once again. “There is more to the reading than just the direction of the spiral, though. The angle and placement of each scale in combination dictate the words recorded. And the colours and sizes of the scales chosen can alter the meaning of the words, too.”

“Wow…” Taylor breathed, leaning against my chest, tilting her head back once more to see the top of the records. “So, you said you only just discovered these records, then? You didn’t know they were here?”

“No,” I replied. “We did not even know there were people beyond the waves before Kor came to our shores. We found this when we left our island to journey to the deserts only recently.”

“Can you read some of it to me? I’d love to know more about the history here.”

“I can,” I began. “But there is a disclaimer to give regarding these records.” Taylor turned around in my grasp, looking up at me questioningly, her candle held between us.

“What do you mean?”

“We stopped only briefly to examine these records when we found them – we were hurrying to meet your people at the settlement. But even in that short time, we found them somewhat odd.”

Taylor’s brows went inward, wrinkling in confusion. I shared the feeling. Parts of these records were no less confusing to me. But I attempted to make sense of it all for her.

“Perhaps these Bitter Sea people had different customs when it came to keeping records,” I said. “Some of the things written here seem more like myth than true history. Where I come from, on the island, our records tell the history of our people exactly as it unfolded. Even the haughtiest warrior would not want the record of his life embellished or stretched beyond the truth. But these records… Well, for example, this part here, the last entry in the records, does not make sense.”

“What does it say?” Taylor asked, turning forward once again to look at the wall.

I stared at the scales, wondering if I was somehow interpreting them wrong. But no, I didn’t think so. These records were old, but they followed the same writing patterns as the ones I’d grown up reading. I was reading them correctly, I was sure of it.

“At the end, it speaks of a day the sky turned to stone,” I said, the words sounding even more unbelievable as I uttered them. “Then, it says the stone of the sky cracked open with a terrific boom. And out of that crack came a strange being. A man without scales, but with massive beating wings.”

“And then what happened?” Taylor asked, her eyes narrowing as she stared at the scales as if she could pull the answers out herself.

“The next part of the record has been lost to history,” I answered, scraping my claw against the empty stretch of stone beyond that cluster of scales. “There may have been more records beyond this event, but the answers you seek would lie somewhere in the scales fallen at our feet. There is nothing beyond that, and there is no other earlier mention of this winged man or a stone sky in the records that remain intact. And, as I said before, I am not so sure it actually happened.”

“It does sound a bit unbelievable. Like some legend or myth. You’re right,” Taylor said.

“But then again,” I replied slowly. “Your people’s arrival is no less incredible than this tale of the winged man. You are like a myth. And yet here you stand.”

So perhaps there truly had been some winged man who’d cracked the sky like stone. Was that any less believable than tiny, tail-less women flying through the stars in a silver shell? But even if it had really happened, it had been many, many generations ago. And the winged man obviously was no longer here, nor were the people who had left these records. So I endeavoured to put the strangeness of it out of my mind for now.

We spent the remainder of the day examining the entire length of the wall. I explained everything I saw for Taylor, and after some time, she retrieved her notebook, scribbling madly, recording what I was saying at a ferocious pace. Unfortunately, she’d decided to get dressed before she began writing, and I did not get to enjoy the sight of her working so intently while nude. But perhaps that was for the best – fewer distractions.

Towards the evening, Taylor plopped down on the stone floor, crossing her legs and dropping her notebook and pen in her lap.

“So, how much of everything have you read to me at this point? I’ve filled like twenty pages!”

“About half,” I said, coming to sit beside her.

“Och, really? There must be hundreds of years of history recorded here!”

“I am not sure what a year is, but yes, there is much here,” I agreed.

“Oh, a year is three hundred and sixty-five days. A human way of measuring time,” Taylor answered. I jerked my tail on the stone behind me. Yes, there were certainly hundreds of her years recorded here.

Taylor left her things in her lap, leaning back and placing her palms on the stone floor and gazing at the wall.

“So, do you think these people were your ancestors, then? If they travelled to the island, they obviously wouldn’t have left a record of it here because they’d be gone.”

“I do not know,” I said. “The records on our island do not speak of crossing the water from another land. They begin in their earliest places recording life on our island as if we’d always been there. But even the oldest record on the island is newer than these ones.”

“Well, whoever left these records obviously moved on from this place,” Taylor said, rolling her head from side to side on her shoulders. “And if this winged man was real, he obviously didn’t kill them all off, because they recorded his arrival.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “But if they were the ancestors of my people, and they came to the island, why would they not record that, as well? Why would they not put that at the beginning of the records on the island?” It seemed a gross oversight, to have journeyed to a new land and not spoken of the one they’d come from. I’d grown up always thinking the island was the only place that had people. There was nothing in our histories to indicate we’d come from somewhere else.

“But what if they were hiding something?” Taylor said, turning her head to pin me with her gaze.

“Hiding what? Why would they hide where they’d come from?” I asked.

“You said your people don’t embellish the records. But could they leave something out? If they thought it could protect their people?” She suddenly sat upright, speaking faster, narrating her theories so quickly I almost couldn’t keep up. “What if this winged man scared them, or threatened them? Maybe even hurt them? And that part of the records here has been degraded so we just don’t know it? Maybe they went exploring and found the island as a sort of safe haven?”

“But then why not indicate that in their records on the island?” I asked her.

She pursed her lips.

“Maybe they didn’t want anyone to come back here. If no one knows there’s life beyond the water, no one knows that’s where you came from, then why would you bother crossing the water when you have everything you need on the island? From what I understand, Kor’s father was the first one to come to the desert that anyone knows of, and it was only after he saw the vision of his mate, right?” Taylor grabbed her notebook again, scanning the words.

“Here!” she said, smacking the leaf of the notebook with her pen. “Even if the records on your island omit where the people came from, the names are still recorded, right? For example, the latest mention of a Hakah here is Hakah Drak. Are there any mentions of a Hakah Drak in your records on your island? Or the children or grand-children of a Hakah Drak maybe?”

My brow ridges furrowed in concentration. I did not know every name in our people’s history. There were far too many to keep track of. But now that she mentioned it…

“Yes. I do believe there is mention of the descendants of Hakah Drak on our island in the older records.” She looked excited by this, but I raised a hand. “But, this does not mean they are one and the same. There could have been different Hakah Draks in different tribes.”

She moved her head up and down slowly, chewing on the end of her pen.

“Yeah, that’s fair,” she said. “I mean, look at how many King Georges there were.”

I didn’t know what a King George was, but I did not dwell on it. My mind was too caught up in the theories she’d proposed. Could our people really have come from here, from these lands, so long ago? And if so, why had they not left a record of where they were going?

But if it is as Taylor proposes, and they were seeking safer lands, retreating from a fearsome enemy, they would not want to lead anyone to them. And they would not want to give their own people reason to come back here by leaving records of this exodus on the island…

I leaned forward, studying the wall once more, focusing on the last entry in the records. There was no mention of needing to flee this winged man from a stone sky. No mention of battle or enemies. But, that part of the record did look degraded. It did cut off rather unnaturally, the scales having fallen from the wall. And there was nothing more recent past that point. Like Taylor had said, these people had certainly moved on.

“Do you think they could be the sixth tribe we have just discovered?” I said, the thought coming to me suddenly. But Taylor shook her head in the human “no” gesture.

“I doubt it. From what I understand, that tribe is deep in the desert. No water around. Say you were Hakah Drak all those years ago, and your people were travelling to a new home. Would you choose to venture into the desert that feels so unnatural to your kind? Or would you stay near here and explore water that your people loved?”

I grunted. She was right. If I had to lead my people somewhere, I would have struck out into the water. Besides, the records in this cave indicated that these people answered the call of the Kell as we did. They would not want to leave that sacred cave behind. And they likely would have already known about the island, as the Kell’s caves were so close to it. If they had ventured near the island while my ancestors were living there, there would have been battles or alliances that would have been recorded either in this cave or on the island. But there were no records of that kind at all. Which meant that, if they’d gone to the caves of the Kell and never encountered other Bitter Sea people near the island… The island must have been uninhabited back then.

More and more, what Taylor had proposed seemed logical. It was strange and surprising and made my brain spin in my skull, but the more I thought about it, the more I came to think that these records here in the cave had been left by my people’s direct ancestors, not by some other tribe who had disappeared.

The only thing that made little sense was why they had retreated. Why they had left these lands. My kind did not back down from a fight easily. Even now, we were ready and willing to face the weapons of Taylor’s people. If they were searching for a new home after the arrival of this winged man, and trying to keep their people from ever coming back here, he must have been a terrible foe. And if he had the powers the records said, the power to turn the very sky to stone, he was not just a man.

But a god.

A stone sky god…

Thinking of gods made me think of the Kell.

Perhaps they were not only retreating to protect their own people, but to guard the Kell, too. The Kell’s caves were closer to the island than to this coast. Of course they would want to be near it and to stand guard over its waters if an unknown enemy had made an appearance.

I wrapped a protective arm around Taylor, my senses heightening. These records were many generations old. The winged enemy, who seemed to be more and more real by the moment, had to have died or disappeared by now. No one had ever heard of or seen a creature like him in my lifetime. But still, it felt… Ominous.

My dark mood lifted somewhat when Taylor leaned into my side.

And my mood lifted further, turning to amusement when she spoke next.

“I’m hungry!”

History could wait. I had to care for my mate, right here and now.

And here, now, with her, was the only time, the only place I wanted to be.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Taylor

Tok left the cave to get something for his dinner and to bring back some valok plants, while I munched on the smoked meat in my pack. I wasn’t worried about being alone, even after the thing with the water zeelk. The entrance to this cave was pretty small, and I knew Tok was right outside, getting some alien fish or crabs or something for his meal. Nothing would get past him into the cave.

If something tried to get in… Well, good luck to any alien creature that was stupid enough to attempt that with Tok out there. I shivered, remembering Tok stalking me through the water, sleek and resolute, and then turning his terrifying hunter’s gaze onto the zeelk, literally tearing it limb from limb.

You do not have time to get horny over Tok’s hunter mode, I told myself sternly. We didn’t have long here. We were only granted seven days’ leave from the settlement, and it had taken almost three full days just to get here. So I needed to focus. There was no guarantee I’d get to come back here again.

Chomping on another chunk of meat, I stood, walking over to observe the Bitter Sea records more closely once more. It seemed impossible that this gorgeous pattern was words. It looked more like some stained glass art installation or a mandala, everything blooming outward from the centre in swirling colours and shapes. Centuries of history preserved in this glittering array.

And not only had I gotten to study it up close, but we’d also potentially uncovered something totally new. The origin of Tok’s people. If we were right, they came from these very coasts. Who the winged guy they talked about was, I had no idea. It didn’t seem like he was around anymore, and we had more pressing things to worry about, anyway.

Tok returned a few minutes later, smelling of ocean air and sand and salt. He put some valok plants on the floor, then stood next to me, his arm brushing my shoulder. Without even thinking about it, I leaned my head against the steady breadth of his arm. Touching him was becoming more and more natural.

“Have you uncovered any new secrets, treasure?” he asked.

“No way. It would take me years to learn how to read this,” I scoffed. “I’m glad you brought me here, though. I’ve learned so much already.”

“You cannot read it without me, yet still you study it? What does such a thing teach you?”

“I suppose I’m more… Admiring it,” I said. I wanted to reach out and brush my fingertips over the scales, to trace the patterns, memorize them with my body. But I didn’t want to risk damaging anything.

“Ah. That’s right. You said your people covet materials like my scales. Do they also covet the other colours?”

“Oh, definitely. People wear metals and gems of all different colours.” I thought about telling him that I’d never cared much for gemstones. That I’d always preferred the look of simple, solid gold jewellery, exactly the same shade as his scales. But I decided against it. I didn’t want him to think I was shallow, or anything, or that I was thinking of part of his body like an object.

“And you told me wearing these metals and gems sometimes means something. You mentioned something called an engagement ring. What is that?”

I froze. There was no hinting or manipulation in Tok’s question. He wasn’t trying to get anything out of me about our future or commitment or being mates. He had absolutely no context about what an engagement ring was.

I felt blood rush to my face as I quickly replied, “You give it to your partner… Your mate… When you agree to be mates. At least, some people do. Not everyone. Often it’s a man giving it to his… Mate. But again, not always. Some people skip it. Or sometimes both partners get rings. You wear it on your finger.”

“Sometimes, but not always…” Tok repeated slowly. “And what about you, Taylor?”

“What about me?” I squeaked, tensing.

“Would you want an engagement ring?”

Why was this conversation so… Awkward? Tok didn’t seem embarrassed at all, and not for the first time, I felt a stab of jealousy at the unflappable nature of this towering male. I gritted my teeth, deciding to just be honest.

“I mean, I imagined that I’d probably have one. One day. If I… Found someone.”

Tok made a thoughtful rumbling sound but said no more.

Time for a subject change.

“It’s too bad we’ll have to leave so soon. I’d love to record everything here to take it back, but I’m not even sure that will be possible. Did the Hakah say why you only got seven days? Does he want you to go with the party to find the sixth tribe or something?”

Since Tok was Hakah Gog’s right-hand man, his “right claw,” it made sense the Bitter Sea king would want Tok to go on such an important mission. But already, I hated the idea of that. Of him leaving me, maybe even being in danger.

“No, I am not going to the sixth tribe.”

I sagged against his arm, relieved.

But what Tok said next made the idea of him journeying to the sixth tribe seem like a bloody cakewalk.

“Your people demand a hostage. Hakah Gog has chosen me for the task.”

My breath slammed out of me and I whirled on him, eyes wide.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“They seek a hostage. I-”

“No! I heard that part!” I said, cutting him off. I didn’t need or want him to say the horrible words again. I realized my hands were shaking. No. My whole body was shaking. “But… Why! Why do you have to go! Why do we have to send anyone!”

“Hakah Gog believes we can learn more about our enemy this way. They have been waiting for a hostage for some time after giving those orders to Thaleria. This way, we are controlling the situation somewhat – sending someone in instead of having them captured.”

My heart pounded, my jaw working as Tok’s words settled like concrete in my chest. This was way worse than facing zeelk or an unknown tribe. He’d be getting taken by human forces who’d proven themselves to be nasty to the core. Human forces with weapons that could hurt or even kill someone as strong as Tok, even if Valeria was with him.

“No,” I whispered, my voice tremulous. But my voice got stronger, louder as I continued, until I was shouting. “No. No! You can’t go. I won’t let you. Screw the records – we’ll leave right now. We’ll go straight home so I can talk to Hakah Gog myself. Because you are not going.”

I hadn’t felt this angry since my uncle had died – my last remaining relative on Earth. And even though Tok was still alive, the feelings were even worse than when Uncle Bob had died. I’d loved my uncle, and the parents I’d lost before him. But I hadn’t been this explosively connected to them. I hadn’t wanted to share my life with them. I…

I loved Tok. I wasn’t just falling for him. I’d already fallen. Somewhere, between hot springs and small caves and seas, I’d fallen for him so hard it took my breath away.

So hard that it made this moment terrible.

Tok watched me rage silently.

“Say something,” I cried hoarsely. “Say you’re going to do something. Say you’re going to fight this!”

“I will not say that, Taylor. I cannot. I will not go against my orders.”

It felt like the walls of the cave were closing in.

“You want to make me happy, right?” I said, latching onto the words desperately “Well, keeping you out of this situation would make me pretty fucking happy!” I knew that wasn’t fair, but it felt like all I had. Tok’s fingers curled into fists at my words.

“I thought that, more than anything, I wanted to make you happy.” His eyes searched my face. “But there is one thing I want more than that.”

“What?” I practically spat, tears streaming down my cheeks.

“To keep you safe.”

“How is this supposed to keep me safe? Don’t you see that you’ll be leaving me all alone?” I was babbling. I knew I sounded pathetic. I felt pathetic. Pathetic and panicked. I didn’t want to be like this – to be this weak. He was making me weak. And it seemed like there was nothing I could do about it. Any of it. The bastard was as resolute as ever. He was going to do this. He was going to leave me and put himself in grave danger.

I might never see him again.

Seven days isn’t fucking enough.

I wished he’d told me this at the beginning of the trip. I didn’t know for sure if it would have changed anything, if I would have acted differently. But I couldn’t help but now think that I’d wasted so much time.

I slammed my palms to my face, breaking down into sobs.

Tok was at my side in an instant, gathering me, shaking, into his arms.

“Don’t hug me! I’m mad at you!” I wailed. This was pathetic, too. A last-ditch attempt to push him away so that his future absence wouldn’t hurt so much. But Tok saw right through it. He didn’t budge a fraction of a centimetre. His hands stroked up and down my back, his snout lowering to my neck to speak directly against my ear.

“Do not cry your human tears for me, treasure. It hurts me more than you could possibly know.”

“If you want me to stop crying, say you’re not going,” I countered, sniffing hard, trying to get myself under control. Fighting him like this was pointless – I knew he wouldn’t change his mind. But I couldn’t stop myself.

“This must be done, Taylor. Your people’s forces have been waiting for this hostage for some time. I am the strongest Bitter Sea warrior, therefore I am the strongest warrior at the settlement. It has to be me. And if I can help in the fight against our enemy this way, then I will be keeping you safe, even if you don’t see it.”

“Why do you have to be so fucking noble,” I muttered against his chest. Why couldn’t he be a coward? The type to cut and run, dragging me away into the desert to avoid this fate? Even as I thought it, I knew I didn’t really want that. I didn’t want to abandon our purpose, my friends, and flee. But I didn’t want Tok in danger, either.

“I do not consider it especially noble to fight for one’s mate,” Tok replied. “It is… Inevitable. It is instinct.”

Tok’s hands moved up my neck, his thumbs catching on either side of my jaw and tilting my face back to look at him. I probably looked like a disaster – all teary and snotty. And he looked… Perfect. Strong and stoic.

Well, not entirely stoic. There was something there, in the intensity of his eyes, the heavy set of his brow ridges. Longing. So fierce it pierced me like a claw.

“You must know, treasure, that nothing could keep me from you,” he said, his voice sounding shattered. One of his thumbs slid upward to halt a tear in its downward track. “You must know that neither man nor beast nor god could separate us for long. I will do this thing, and I will be victorious. And I will come back to you a worthy mate.”

“You’re worthy now,” I whispered. My heart lurched up into my throat. I had to say it – say it now. Even if it didn’t make any difference at all.

“I love you, Tok. I love you, and I’m really mad that I love you right now! Because it’s making this too hard!”

I’d probably ruined the declaration with all my anger, but there was no way to hold it back. It roared inside me just as loudly as the love did.

Tok groaned, his thumbs twitching at my jaw.

“Do not speak falsely to me, Taylor. Do not tell me things untrue just because you think that I might die. I want only your deep and honest core. Nothing else.”

“It’s true, and don’t you dare doubt me!” I said fiercely. “It may have taken me a while to figure out, but I do love you! I want to be your mate. And yes, I definitely don’t want you to die!”

“Then I shall not die,” Tok growled. “Not until my precious mate permits it.”

“I will never permit it,” I seethed.

“Then I will find a way to live forever.”

A fresh onslaught of tears threatened to spill. But I didn’t want to keep crying. I wanted to channel these feelings – the love, the pain, the fear, the rage – into something else.

I grabbed at Tok’s snout, pulling down as hard as I could. The tip of his snout bumped my mouth, and I gasped, parting my lips immediately, my sensitive skin dragging over the scratchy-leather-feeling scales. Tok stiffened, as if unsure what I was doing, but when my tongue prodded desperately at his snout, he seemed to figure it out. Tentatively at first, his forked tongue prodded mine, slipping and tasting.

But that tentativeness didn’t last. Within about two seconds, Tok was groaning into my mouth, his hands falling to my ass, wrenching me upward until my legs were wrapped around his waist. My explosive emotions seemed to heighten my body’s responses to everything. Desire sparked in me so hard that my hips ground against Tok’s front as my fingers clutched at the sides of his face, his neck, his shoulders. The tips of Tok’s tongues invaded my mouth, huge and searching, slicking and thrusting. I throbbed and whimpered when I felt his massive cock press ardently against my ass from beneath.

I pulled back, panting, “Let me get my clothes off.” There was no more time for modesty or throwing up walls. No more time for running or hiding. No more time.

Tok let me down to my wobbly feet, pulling his hands away just long enough for me to whip my tank top over my head. I wasn’t wearing my bra, and Tok pressed back in against me immediately, his tongues searching at my mouth, his hands clutching my waist as my nipples puckered, sliding against his scales. His snout dragged roughly to one side, and he laved my earlobe with his tongues, the fangs brushing the soft flesh.

Fuck. Tonight, he was definitely going to bite me and give me his cock. I needed him to.

I remembered what he’d said last time.

“Are you going to make me beg?” I whispered thickly, my words melting into a moan as he flicked the tips of his tongues down the pulse in my neck.

“No, not tonight, treasure,” he said gruffly. He moved his hands a little further up my waist, his rough thumbs brushing my nipples. That, combined with the sudden gush of electrifying mating fluid on my neck, made me arch against him, my mouth falling open in wordless arousal.

“I thought you were removing your clothes,” he muttered against my throat.

“Right…”

As he continued to stroke his tongue tips up and down my neck, the tips splitting apart to encircle my throat. I tipped my head back, baring more of my throat to him, wanting his tongue wrapped around me harder.

Tok made a harsh sound, then I felt his claws at the waistband of my trousers. I guessed I was going a little too slowly for him in the undressing department, because suddenly a ripping sound filled the air. I jerked, realizing he’d torn my trousers and my underwear in two, ripping them apart with each of his clawed hands.

“You destroyed my clothes!” I gasped. When Tok answered, the rumble of his words at my throat made heat and wetness congregate between my legs.

“You have more. They got in my way. They doomed themselves to be destroyed.”

My beast. My destroyer. My mate. Breaking down every barrier between us.

Even when that barrier was just some poor, innocent Earth clothing.

Oh well. Like he said, I have more…

Another hot gush of mating fluid at my neck, so copious that it spilled down my chest, over my breasts, had my eyes rolling back in my head. Feeling crazed, I reached up, swiping at the stuff with my hand before pressing that hand between my legs. Tok drew back from my neck, watching what I was doing with fevered fascination.

“How does it feel, treasure? To have my mating fluid inside you?”

God, those words. They were filthy. They should have made me stammer and blush. But I was too far gone for that now.

“So good. Like heat. Electricity.”

Tok let out a long, rasping breath.

“It will feel even better when it’s coursing through your veins.”

I froze, my slick, burning fingers pressed into my clit.

Before I could stop myself, talk sense into myself, I whispered, “Show me.”

I bit my lip, seeing Tok’s dark cock visibly throb in response to my words. Soon, that thick shaft would be nudging inside me, the pearls rippling over every nerve ending…

“Please,” I said, louder now, already forgetting that Tok had told me I didn’t have to beg tonight. But I was asking for more than just his bite, his cock with that one word. I was asking for his safety, his love, a chance at a life together. I was asking for it all.

Tok’s erection pulsed again, and his hips snapped forward, his tip thrusting against my abdomen before he tensed, controlling the movement.

“Please,” I said again. I decided I liked the way Tok reacted to me asking, begging for this. Once, I’d been offended by the idea. But now… It made me feel powerful. His cock jerked against my skin, wetness coating me. He needs this, he needs me so much...

I reached one hand down to stroke the slick tip of his cock, my other hand rising to caress his snout.

“Please,” I said again.

Asking for a third time broke something in my mate.

A breath shuddered out of him, and suddenly I was airborne, lifted right off my feet. Tok carried me with urgent steps, backing me up against a smooth stretch of stone wall. He held me aloft, my back pressed to the wall with one of his arms at my hip, his other hand gathering my ankles together and forcing my knees up to my chest. My shins scraped against the scales on his chest, a prickling thrill under my skin. He fixed me with a furious, focused stare, then gritted out, “Tell me if it hurts too much.”

I already had a feeling I’d do no such thing. The pleasure, the desire, was building to a crescendo already. A little pain was nothing compared to this need.

Tok dragged his fangs, tense and careful, down the front of my throat. He wrenched my knees towards the left side of my torso, moving his fangs further down, down, until his tongues met my right nipple. More mating fluid surged, and I writhed in his grip. His jaws opened further, his fangs encircling my right breast.

And then he bit down.

He moaned gutturally as he did it, his whole body wracked with tension as he seemed to fight the urge not to bite down harder. My eyes flew open as the mating fluid hit my bloodstream, sent pulsing with scalding quickness by my hammering heart. Tok’s breath hitched, then he released his jaws, pulling back his fangs and swiping his tongue along the shallow wounds.

The hot pricking of pain from the bite disappeared almost immediately, replaced by exquisite burning. Not just in the place he’d bitten, but everywhere. Every nerve in my body sang, screamed, and my pussy gave a long, needy clench before everything down there started to ease.

“I think it’s working,” I mumbled, my head rolling forward to rub my face desperately against the top of Tok’s snout. “I feel like… Oh my God! I feel like I’m… melting.”

I couldn’t think of a more eloquent way to describe the totally foreign sensation taking over my body. My entire pelvis felt loosened, eased open, soft and wet and needing to be filled. It was like my taut, clenching flesh was now made of something sweet and oozing – molasses or honey or ice cream left in the hot summer sun.

It was immensely pleasurable in and of itself.

But it wasn’t anywhere near enough.

“Tok,” I whimpered. He raised his head from where he’d been desperately slicking his tongue at my breast. I became aware of where his hands were – one holding me up against the wall at my waist, the other behind the knees he was pinning together in his grip against the left side of my chest. His hands felt so brutally hard compared to my flesh, my whole body softened by the mating fluid. His hands felt even harder than the stone at my back.

Tok’s gaze met my hazy one. And good fucking God, what a sight he was to behold.

The valok candle had burned down over the course of the afternoon. Its dim light licked up from the stone floor, turning Tok’s scales to shades of copper, bronze and black. Every thick muscle was bulging beneath his scales, and his chest heaved with ragged breaths.

And, God, his face. His yellow eyes were a deep and burnished gold in the light, boring into me. Devouring me. His brow ridges were heavy and low over his ravenous gaze, and his snout twitched with tension over his leaking fangs. The need I saw there, the love… It almost looked like pain.

I didn’t want to see any pain there. My throat tightened, and I traced the hard ridges over his eyes. He leaned into the touch.

“You told me once that you knew I didn’t find you beautiful,” I whispered. “But that’s not true. You need to know that that’s not true.”

He was beautiful. Everything about him. Even his most alien features. Because of his alien features. My glittering, golden behemoth.

“You are so beautiful it tears me apart,” Tok choked out, adjusting his cock.

“Yes, yes,” I breathed, wiggling my hips. My knees were still pressed up against my chest as Tok held me against the wall, my sopping pussy ripe for the taking. I mewled in complaint when Tok didn’t plunge immediately inside me, though. Like he had last night, he pressed himself between the top of my thighs, rutting against my wetness.

The pearls on the underside of his shaft dragged over my folds, my clit, his shining black tip urging up past my belly button with every movement of his hips. The little spears of pliable flesh that sprang outward around the base of his cock brushed me, and two of them pressed inside my entrance.

If there was any question about if those spears were sensitive, it was immediately answered by the shudder of Tok’s hips and the hot throb of his cock against my clit when the two spears entered me. The firm but flexible appendages continued to help the mating fluid in its purpose – stretching me. Opening me. Swirling in my core and making me cry out.

Tok rocked against me, his breath hissing out between clenched fangs.

“Please,” I cried, not even sure if I was forming the word correctly. My lips and tongue felt as loosened as my pussy. “More of you inside me. Please.”

Tok froze, then gritted out, “I know I told you to last time, but…” His hips bucked forward in an involuntary movement, his tail snapping behind him. He fixed me with a thunderous look. “Stop begging. I cannot afford to lose control.”

Oh, how I wanted him to lose control. To sink into me, rut me the way he was desperate to. But even with how wet and needy I was, even with the mating fluid in my veins easing the way, he was just too big and too strong. We had to be careful.

“OK, OK,” I babbled, rubbing myself up and down his length while he remained frozen. The glide of the cock spears inside me, combined with the sensuous roll of the pearls over my clit, had me close to coming. I knew he didn’t want me to beg any more with words. But I couldn’t stop myself from begging with my eyes, my body. My mouth was open and wanting, my eyes glazed as they met his burning gaze. I rocked my hips again and again, slicking my wetness along his stone-hard cock.

“Cursed waves,” Tok snapped. Then, in a quick movement, he adjusted his hips. His cock spears slipped out of me, leaving me feeling painfully empty. But not for long. He rubbed his fat, smooth tip along my pussy, his breath catching when he found my aching entrance.

“There,” I moaned, moving my hips, swirling my pussy against his tip. Inviting him inside.

“Tell me if it hurts,” he said again, his voice like shattered steel. But this time, it felt less like a command. This time, it felt like he was the one who was begging.

I nodded, a wordless promise. Tok held my gaze for a beat.

Then he sank into me.

Not all the way, of course. It was little more than the tip.

“Cursed waves,” he swore again. “Treasure… You are perfect.” He nudged further inside, groaning, “Perfect and mine.”

He was the one who was perfect. Filling me so completely. Giving me exactly what I craved. The grogar pearls beneath his smooth hide felt even better than I could have imagined inside me. Every single place was stimulated. Even my clit. As Tok pressed slowly but steadily forward, his cock spears brushed my sensitive nub. I writhed when I realized that some other cock spears were probing backward, brushing tantalizingly against my exposed ass.

This position was insane – held aloft so easily, pinned to the wall, my legs forced upwards and so tightly held together in Tok’s strong grip.

Tok Pulled back slightly before stroking back in with a broken-sounding breath. His tail slammed down against the stone floor as he drew back and thrusted forward once more, going even deeper this time.

He was stretching me, but there was no pain. Only a languid feeling of fullness as my muscles eased to accept him further, deeper. His cock spears were pressing against my clit, my ass, more firmly now that he was deeper, not just brushing the tips on my sensitive flesh.

With a grunt, Tok widened his stance slightly, beginning to roll his hips in a sensuous movement.

“Yes,” I breathed, my head rolling back against the stone. Tok’s hands suddenly moved, and I whipped my head forward again when I realized he was changing my positioning. He released the knees that had been pinned to my chest, and I immediately spread my legs for him, my inner thighs clamping against his sides. Now I could see everything – see him urging his fat cock inside me, a little further with every thrust. I could see the cock spears slipping against my clit. I could see the slick sheen on the smooth hide of his shaft, could see the ridges of the grogar pearls before they disappeared from view, rolling through my insides.

Tok’s hips moved fast, but with restrained control. I reached a hand down between us, clumsily stroking at the part of his shaft not inside me. I wanted to guide it further, pull more of him inside me.

“A little more,” I moaned. I knew I wouldn’t be able to have him fully seated, but I wanted to take as much as possible. Needed to feel him everywhere.

Tok’s eyes flashed, his snout twitching as a river of dark mating fluid gushed from his jaws in response to my words. It looked like blood rushing from his jaws, staining his golden scales with darkness. And, fucking hell, the sight of him like that, looking like he’d just slaughtered something, sent every nerve spiralling into ecstasy. My mouth fell open but I made no sound as I came, everything exploding inside me.

Tok snapped his jaws then heaved forward, dragging his fangs long my arm, coming to a stop at my shoulder.

“Yes, do it,” I moaned, grinding against him in my orgasm. I was practically shoving my own shoulder further into his snout. I cried out when he bit down, just a little, and more mating fluid lit up my veins.

Between the second rush of mating fluid and the orgasm, I was able to take him deeper, as if my whole body was reshaping itself to fit him.

“Tight little treasure, opening for me so well,” Tok growled against my shoulder, rutting just a little harder now. His tongue tips dragged over the teeth marks at my shoulder as his fingers kneaded my hips, my ass. One of his huge thumbs came forward and inward against my pelvis, nudging two of his cock spears into a position where they were firmly clamped against either side of my clit. And with every rock of his hips, my clit ground against them. A quick shift of his other hand at my ass sent the tip of a cock spear nudging ever so gently into my untouched back entrance.

It seemed like the mating fluid had loosened things up back there, too. There was little resistance for the slim, tapered cock spear to enter me. The surrounding cock spears brushed my shivering skin back there, touching even more nerves. I mewled, my hands grappling at Tok’s shoulders, trying to pull him closer, deeper. I wanted him in me everywhere. If he’d had a cock spear long enough to reach up to my mouth, I would have taken him in there, too, sucking while he rutted me.

God, I’ve gone crazy.

But who fucking cared. This kind of pleasure was worth losing my mind over.

As the second orgasm built, I said goodbye to everything else – my past, my future, my mind. Everything that wasn’t right here, right now, filling me to bursting.

Everything that wasn’t Tok.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Tok

Iwas not an inexperienced warrior. I had lain with my own kind before. But this… This…

It was enough to almost have me losing control, like a virginal warrior barely past boyhood. So much of my strength was used to hold my body in check against her. So much. And it would have been so easy to falter, so easy to clamp down on her with my jaws, to rut her with full force, as her wet, inviting body was urging me to do.

A hot frisson of pleasure ran through me, from skull to spine, making my tail jerk and my cock pulse inside her. I gritted my fangs, watching the union – watching her flushed and gasping face, watching the bouncing of her breasts each time I thrusted, watching the way she took so much of me inside – more than I’d thought she’d be able to, milking me so perfectly. I drew back, almost pulling out of her entirely, swirling my tip at her slick entrance, watching with pleasure as the muscles in her thighs jumped, trembling at the sensations.

“More,” she moaned, her chest rising quickly with shallow, needy breaths.

I could not leave her wanting for long. She’d start begging again, saying “please, please, please,” and I would totally lose myself. My fingers tight on her backside and hips, I stared downward as I sank steadily back into her. The sight of my cock disappearing into her tight little body, combined with the clamping heat of her cunt, had me groaning. Even with the mating fluid, she was still small, the pressure of her body forcing the grogar pearls inward against the swollen flesh of my cock, creating a massaging sensation that was beyond comprehension.

This was it. The whole purpose of my life. To be inside my mate, just like this. Paradise.

I adjusted my thumb against her, putting my two cock spears back into place on either side of the sensitive nub of flesh that peaked out, so beautiful and wet and pink, at the top of her folds. My tongue tips lashed my fangs, dying to taste her there again. I wanted all of her at once. My tongues at her cunt. In her mouth. On her skin. All while I rutted her.

I rolled my hips faster, my cock going deeper than ever before, sensation shuddering through my entire groin as my cock spear acted as a cock unto itself, rutting her from the back.

“I’m going to…” Taylor’s words cut off, replaced by a long cry.

Heat flared in my belly.

“Good, treasure,” I choked out. “I want you to shatter again on your mate’s cock.”

My little mate seemed to like my words almost as much as my body. Tension rippled through her core, squeezing me further, making my hips arch forward, my abdominal muscles clenching. She looped her arms around my neck, leaning forward,  coming off of the wall. Like she needed even more contact with me as she came. I held her steady, one hand still gripping the perfect curve of her hip, my other arm like a solid bar up her back, my fingers wrapping around the back of her neck. Her plush breasts pressed into my chest. Her hot breath got between the scales at my shoulder as she panted, and my breath caught, my cock pulsing when her tongue probed my scales, suckling and nipping.

“I’m going to fill you,” I said, my voice unfamiliar to my own ears. It was the voice of a feral beast. My hips snapped, my cock thrusting upward into her cunt as Taylor sagged against me, totally undone by our union.

“Do it,” she said, the words slurred by pleasure.

My pelvis bucked, my spine flaming with desire at her words. My little mate wanted me to fill her. Wanted me to soak her insides with my seed.

I wanted to keep clutching her hard against me. But I also wanted to see her face as I did it. And the need to see her won out. Using my grip on the back of her neck, I gently pried her backwards away from me. Her fingertips skimmed down the front of my neck before splaying on my chest as I held her on an angle against me, her cunt pressed down against my pelvis, her back supported by my arm.

The sight of her entire body jerking with each of my thrusts was erotic beyond measure. The knot on the top of her head was coming loose, damp spirals of hair framing her round, reddened face.

“Take me treasure, take it all, take everything your mate has to give,” I hissed, my gaze glued to her pulsing throat. My hand was cradling her head from behind, and my thumb and pinkie finger were wrapped around the front of her neck, just beneath her jaw. The rhythm of her heart was a hot madness in my blood. My speed increased, my hips pistoning. Taylor’s entire body seemed to vibrate with the motion, her muscles trembling, breasts shaking. When tension rippled through her core once more, and she milked me harder in the third peak of her pleasure, I exploded. Mating fluid gushed in my mouth, just as seed spurted, over and over, in my mate’s cunt.

“Tok,” Taylor, whimpered, her hands curling into fists against my chest. And that sent yet more seed spilling into her wet heat. She says my name as she comes, as she takes my seed. Says my name as she writhes on my cock. Mine. She is mine.

In that moment, I knew, I knew, that I would survive whatever this hostage situation would throw at me. There was no way my destiny would be to die so soon after meeting my mate. I would get through anything, survive anything, conquer anything, to be there for her for the rest of our lives.

Because she was mine.

And I took care of what was mine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Taylor

Ispent the rest of the night wrapped in Tok’s body, my back curled against his broad chest. I slept so hard it was like a black fucking hole. But then again, I doubted black holes would be that warm. Feel that safe.

I awoke in the morning to a pleasant, gentle tugging sensation, realizing that Tok was carefully, dutifully, untangling my furiously tangled curls.

“I did not mean to wake you,” he said, the words vibrating through his chest and into my back. I wriggled in his embrace, turning to face him.

“It’s OK. I don’t want to waste too much time sleeping.” Pain tightened in my throat as I said the words – I didn’t have much more time alone with Tok out here. And besides that, I still wanted to record some more of the Bitter Sea records today before we had to leave.

We ate and I got dressed quickly, despite a hiss of complaint from Tok when I covered up, and we got back to work. We spent hours upon hours continuing to comb through and record the history in my notebook. I didn’t want to leave anything out – it was Tok’s people’s history. And it was important to me.

Plus, I imagined the Hakah, the Gahns, and the other human women would be interested in everything we were recording, too. Wonder what they’ll think of the mysterious winged man and his stone sky…

We stopped only briefly to eat at dusk and kept working long past nightfall in order to get it all written down. I had to shorten a lot of things – turn longer sagas into bullet-point lists, just to get it all in time. But, late into the night, we were finally done. My hand was cramping so badly all I wanted to do was drop my pen and never pick it back up again, but I held out to write one more thing.

Let it be known that the human writer of these records, Taylor Bruce, has also taken a mate from among the Bitter Sea people – Tok, the right claw to Hakah Gog.

The words in black ink, officially added into the historical document outlining everything that had happened to us on the planet so far, made everything more real. It was my present, but it was also part of history, now. Tok asked me what I had written, and, blushing but holding my voice steady, I read it out loud to him, translating the English words into Sea Sand language.

“Good,” Tok said. We were seated across from each other, and he lifted me into his lap. I sat in the diamond of his crossed legs, my thighs spread, my feet on the stone behind him.

“Let all who read these records, now and for generations to come, know that you are mine,” Tok said.

What a proud, possessive mate I have. I smiled, reaching up for his snout to pull him into a kiss, but he jerked back suddenly.

“What is it?” I asked, more than a little alarmed.

“Nothing. It is just… I meant to do this earlier. Surprise you with it. But time got away from me, and I do not wish to wait any longer.”

I was about to ask him what he was talking about when my mouth fell open in horror.

“What are you going?!” I cried, staring as he gripped a long, shining scale on his chest between his claws and yanked. With a crunchy popping sound, the scale came loose, pulled free from his chest and leaving a tiny open spot, wet with black blood.

“What are ye daein, ye daft lizard?!” I muttered in my own language, wrenching around in his lap to grab my nearby pack. I had a few first aid supplies in there, and I quickly located and pulled out a soft white square of gauze.

I whipped back around to face Tok, ready to dab at his fresh wound, only to find him holding something up between us, held carefully between two lethal black claws. My eyes almost bugged out of my head when I realized what it was.

A gold ring.

“Your engagement ring,” Tok said, the timbre of his voice falling low.

I never thought I’d be the kind of lass to cry when someone proposed to me. And Tok hadn’t even technically proposed – he’d just given me a ring. And yet, there I was, blubbering like a wee bairn at the sight of this stoic alien warrior who’d just made me a ring from his own fucking body. When I realized the scale he’d chosen was from above his heart, the tears came even faster, making my throat hurt.

“You are upset?” Tok said. “Is it not to your liking? I will find a better scale and make another…” His snout scrunched down towards his chest, his gaze focused as he looked for another scale.

“No!” I cried. “No way. Don’t pull out another scale ye mad thing!” Sniffing hard, I glanced down at the ring still in his hand. “Let me see it. Please.”

Silently, Tok handed me the ring. I could feel him studying me closely as I took it into my hand.

It was pretty incredible how fast he’d fashioned the thing while I’d had my back turned, especially given how hard the material of the scale was. He’d taken the long scale and had twisted it lengthwise before curving it into a ring shape, creating a beautiful, almost twined illusion. The valok candlelight caught on each twisted and curved surface of the scale, making it shimmer.

“Thank you,” I whispered. I slipped it onto my ring finger, then snorted through my tears. “It’s way too big,” I chuckled, swiping at my wet cheeks with the back of my sleeve.

“Give it here,” Tok rumbled. I already didn’t want to take it off – didn’t want to give it back. But I also didn’t want to lose it if it fell off because it was too big. I handed it back to him, my chest all warm and gooey as I watched him adjust the ring with such quiet focus.

His gaze flashed up to meet mine, and he raised his head.

“Here. Try it now,” he said.

I did. It fit perfectly.

And it looked bonnie on my finger. I loved the twisting line of gold, exactly the colour of Tok’s body, a forever reminder of him right there on my hand. I loved the slight weight of it, circling my finger. I loved that it was a symbol of the culture I’d come from, something from home, to anchor me as I moved into the future with Tok.

“I wish I had something to give you,” I sighed, still unable to tear my eyes away from the way the light caught on the ring. Maybe he’d take a lock of my hair or something… Is that weird?

“Treasure,” Tok said, sounding almost affronted. “You have already given me everything.” His fingers swept up my neck to the sides of my jaw, tilting my face up to look at him. His gaze slid slightly to one side as he stroked a stray curl between his finger and thumb. OK, something tells me he wouldn’t find the gift of a lock of hair weird at all… He’d probably glue it to his body as a good luck charm or something.

“Oh!” I said, suddenly remembering the gauze in my hand. I dabbed gently at the small spot the scale had been pulled from, the gauze turning black from his inky blood. But luckily, there wasn’t much of it. It was a very small wound. Tok stroked his fingers over my hair as I continued gently patting the wound. Eventually, I grabbed the tiny roll of medical tape from my pack, sticking the square of gauze in place with a messy tape X. I smoothed my fingers over it, nodding, satisfied.

“There,” I said. I looked up to meet Tok’s gaze once more. His own gaze had never left my face. He stared at me so tenderly, the expression almost looked like warm and blooming pain. I knew a similar expression was mirrored on my own face – I could feel my brows drawing inward, my lips trembling as the intensity of the love I felt for him overtook me. It crashed inside me so hard it almost felt like grief.

And maybe there was grief. Grief for things that hadn’t even happened yet. Grief for when I’d lose him.

No. Don’t think about that. Right now, he’s here with you.

Maybe there is something I can give him after all…

Because in that moment, all I wanted was to give him things. Do things for him.

I drew my legs back from where they’d been splayed over his lap, moving to my knees.

“Can you uncross your legs?” I asked him, needing a wee bit more space. Wordlessly, he obeyed immediately, his legs stretching out long and strong over the stone with me kneeling between them.

I licked my lips, my gaze roving from his face, down his golden body, to the scaly slit between his legs. Arousal flickering in my core, I placed my palms on his inner thighs and leaned forward, dragging my tongue up the slit.

There was an immediate throb behind the scales and Tok breathed in sharply. Encouraged and massively turned on, I kept going, running my tongue slowly up and down that slit, kissing along the scales, wetting them with my saliva. When my tongue prodded inside the slit, seeking Tok’s hardness, the slit opened, his cock unfurling, thick and swollen.

Tok’s hips jerked, and he made a deep noise of surprise when I grasped his shaft and sucked the head into my mouth. I breathed in sharply through my nose, trying to get used to how much he stretched my mouth.

“Taylor, what…” he groaned, his hips arching forward as I increased the suction.

I popped off of his cock just long enough to say, “It’s a blow job. Never had one before?”

“No,” he said, the word a harsh, shuddering exhale. “My people’s mouths cannot achieve… This.”

That made sense. Long snouts with fangs weren’t exactly ideal for sucking dick. But my human mouth was, and I relished that fact. The fact that even if he’d been with other women of his own kind before, only I could do this for him. He seemed to be enjoying the novelty of it just as much as I was, because he buried his hands in my hair and he murmured, “You astonish in every way.”

If there was one thing that made a lass want to give a phenomenal blow job, it was seeing the lad on the receiving end enjoying it so much. I increased my pace and suction with enthusiasm, one of my hands sliding up and down his pebbled shaft, the other playing with the cock spears. Tok’s cock jerked and pulsed in my mouth and his fingers twitched at my scalp as he appeared to physically restrain himself from fucking my mouth. That thought was a shot of lust straight between my legs. Imagining Tok losing control from just my mouth was intoxicating, and I groaned against his shaft. As the groan vibrated into him, he twitched and tensed. I kept sucking, my tongue swirling over the impossible smoothness of the hide there, contrasted so perfectly with the hard pearls. The memory of those pearls inside me, igniting pressure points of heat in dozens of places, had me squeezing my thighs together.

“Treasure,” Tok suddenly uttered gruffly. “Do you want to drink my seed?”

“What?!” The question was so sudden and obscene that it made me stare up at him in shock. He stared back, his yellow and black eyes narrowed to glittering slits.

“If you do not stop soon that is exactly what will happen,” he rasped. As he spoke, his cock throbbed in my hand, and a gush of mating fluid escaped his mouth, rolling down either side of his jaw to his neck.

The thought of sucking him until he came in my mouth made my pussy clench and my mouth go dry. But as I stroked his cock and watched more mating fluid leak from his mouth, I knew I wanted something else.

“I want you inside me.”

Tok’s nostrils flared, and he watched me with heated eyes as I quickly stood and undressed. When I was nude, even the brush of my own hair falling over my shoulders was almost too much to bear – and I didn’t even have any of the mating fluid on me yet. I knelt between Tok’s thick thighs once more and slid my hands along the sides of his snout, soaking my skin with the spilled mating fluid. A deep growl built in Tok’s chest as I smeared the mating fluid onto my breasts, swirling my fingertips over my nipples until I was moaning from the overwhelming electric heat under my skin. I kept going, smearing the mating fluid over the bite marks from yesterday. Tok had explained that the mating fluid had some mild healing properties, and the wounds had already closed over, but there was still an ecstatic cascade of sensation when the mating fluid touched the teeth marks.

Tok’s eyes were fucking glued to where my hands massaged my breasts. I could tell I was sopping wet already. And Tok only contributed to that urgent wet need when he doused his own fingers with mating fluid then dragged those fingertips along the seam of my pussy. The mating fluid mixed with my own wetness, some of it getting absorbed inside me. I gasped, lungs burning, pussy burning. Everything burning. I clutched at my breasts, pinching my nipples, trying to outrun the intensity of the arousal with pain. But it didn’t help. Nothing would help except Tok inside me.

I wrenched my hands off of my chest and grasped Tok’s shoulders, straddling his hips until his cock was between us. Frantic and needing relief, I rubbed my clit and slick folds viciously against the underside of Tok’s shaft. A cock spear slipped inside me, and I started to grind, riding it with desperate, bucking motions.

“Where do you want my bite, treasure?” Tok purred above me. He grasped one of my hands, peeling it from his shoulder and dragging his fangs gently along my inner wrist. “Here?” He continued holding my wrist, dipping his snout to my throat. “Here?”

“Yes!” I moaned, my hips bucking. The cock spear inside me was curved perfectly to stimulate my G-spot, and Tok’s cock with its luscious pearls was putting glorious pressure on my clit. If he didn’t bite me and get inside me right now I was going to go insane.

Tok was too good to me to let me go insane. Because a second later, he’d opened his jaws, taking the base of my throat at the top of my shoulder between his fangs. I desperately tilted my head to the other side, exposing more of my neck to him. His fangs made slight contact.

Then sank in.

“Yes,” I said again. Tok moved to release his shallow bite, but I slammed my hands to his snout, holding him there. “A little more,” I moaned.

I felt the next pulse of mating fluid into my bloodstream – felt Tok’s fangs throb with it, felt its tremulous darkness reaching into every part of my being. And still, I held him to me, not ready to give up this penetration yet. More mating fluid, more fangs, more fire. More, more, more…

After a few more heartbeats locked tensely like that, Tok wrenched himself off of me, breathing heavily.

“I can’t stay still like that any longer. I can’t hold off my body’s instincts. I’ll crush your shoulder,” he hissed, a deadly note of warning in his voice. “Normally during mating, my bite has to pierce hard scales. But you…” His voice softened, and his tongue lapped at the wounds he’d created, flushing the blood with the blinding heat of the mating fluid. “No part of you is hard. I cannot lose control even for an instant.”

Some people may have called me hard-headed, but he was right. Compared to him, I was like a lass-shaped marshmallow.

“It’s fine,” I moaned. “The only hard thing I need is here.”

I shifted up onto my knees shakily, my muscles and joints gone loose from the mating fluid. Tok gripped my waist to support me as I set each knee on either side of his hips. I manoeuvred, somewhat clumsily, onto his tip. I dipped down, just the slightest bit, my whole body shuddering as his tip nudged at my soft wet entrance.

Thank God I was on top and in control this time. I didn’t have to rely on him going so slow for fear of hurting me. Holding my breath, my hands on Tok’s chest, I plunged downward.

My head flew back, my mouth pulled open in soundless ecstasy as Tok filled me, stretching me to my limits. Past my limits, maybe, as I forced myself further down onto him. But even the slightest hints of pain melted away immediately, replaced by the sweet softening and stretching of my pussy as Tok’s size and the mating fluid worked to open me.

“Yes, treasure. Just like that. Take my cock like the perfect little mate you are,” Tok groaned, his gaze heavy-lidded, his snout soaked with mating fluid that just kept on gushing. As I began to work myself even further onto his cock, I swiped at the mating fluid on his neck and chest greedily, soaking more of it into my hands.

I got accustomed to his girth quicker than yesterday, and I started to ride him, my hips undulating in a harsh, rhythm-less movement. His cock spears stroked my clit and my ass, his pearl piercings prodding so exquisitely from inside me. It felt like I was stuffed to the brim with pearls, and that any moment, they’d start spilling from my pussy, my mouth, opalescent and bright, clattering to the stone floor.

“Pearls,” I whimpered, almost nonsensically.

“I am glad I won so many of them for you, treasure. I’m glad they please you. You take them all so well,” Tok murmured. His breaths were becoming more ragged. “Your tightness turns the pearls into pleasure for me, too. They… Press.”

He didn’t need to finish his sentence – I’d gotten the gist. And the gist was so fucking erotic. The idea that by fucking me, his piercings were becoming like some kind of ribbed fleshlight inside his own shaft was almost alarmingly arousing.

Knowing he was getting so much pleasure from this threw me over the edge. When I came, the muscles in my legs gave out. Luckily, Tok’s grip was firm on my waist, so I didn’t break myself in fucking half by plunging downward onto his cock with all my weight.

Tok yanked me forward while simultaneously leaning back until he was lying on his back on the stone. He held me steady against his chest, beginning to rut, driving upward into me, grinding through my orgasm.

Even all that mating fluid in my bloodstream loosening everything up wasn’t enough to keep me from clenching like a vise around Tok as I continued coming. I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. My head was turned to the side, my cheek pressed into Tok’s scaly chest. My nipples bumped up and down his textured hide with every thrust of his hips. My clit was forced against his cock spears, his pearls stroking my G-spot, prolonging the high peak of my pleasure.

Just when I thought I wouldn’t be able to take any more, that I’d have to beg him to stop, his grip tightened on my ass. Tok snapped his jaws then arched, his chest pressing hard against mine as his cock pulsed inside me, over and over again. He remained still, every nerve and muscle in his body thrumming was frantic tension, before he let out a long, harsh moan and started rocking his hips, more slowly and gently. I closed my eyes, focusing just on the sensations of Tok thrusting through his orgasm while he spurted and spilled. Everything down there for me felt tingly and swollen and so fucking sensitive, but the gentle, slow stroking of his cock, in time with each spurt of seed, had need rising in me once again.

“Keep going. Just like that,” I whispered. Tok kneaded my ass and the backs of my thighs as he obliged me, rocking gently. This post-orgasm rocking seemed to be just as nice for him as it was for me – he remained stiff inside me, throbbing, and starting to move ever so slightly faster. But not too fast. Smooth and slow, gliding in and out.

When I clenched, coming again, a long keening sound wailing out of my mouth, Tok tensed. One, two, three more thrusts and he groaned, spurting, again.

We laid still and panting for a long moment. Tok slid his hands up from my ass and hips, crossing them over my back in a heavy-limbed, tender embrace.

I already felt sleep’s gravity. After another few minutes of still silence, Tok angled his hips back, pulling out of me. I went absolutely limp, then, as if his cock had been the only solid thing left in my body.

I was vaguely aware of a soft, warm hide blanket being tossed over my back as my eyes fluttered closed.

The last thing I saw was the glint of candlelight on my engagement ring.

A ring the exact same shade of gold as the alien, the man, the mate I loved.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Tok

The trip back to the settlement felt much faster than our trip to the coast. I knew it wasn’t true – I was carrying Taylor at the same speed, and we were travelling the same exact route back. But time always seemed to flow that way. Its waves beating faster and harder just when you wanted them to slow down.

I would have given anything for time to have slowed down. To have had more of it alone with her.

And I knew Taylor was feeling the same way. She got quieter the more land we covered. And during our nightly mating, she clawed at me, clinging to me tighter. Unwilling to let me go.

I should have loved that – being clutched by her so fiercely. But I knew it was because she was unhappy. And that took the sweetness out of being needed. Her unhappiness was a spear between my ribs. Making it hard to breathe.

It just means I have to defeat my enemies and come back to her all the sooner, I told myself on the third day – the last – of our travels back.

By the afternoon of the last day of travels, the Cliffs of Uruzai emerged on the horizon, growing larger with every breath. In the distance, the silver shell of the new women’s ship was a hazy dome, the sun glaring off its sand-battered sides.

I moved towards the cliffs, seeking the shade of its walls for my mate. Once in the shadows, I slowed, enjoying the feeling of my mate’s weight on my back. I unfurled my whole existence into that moment – trying to focus on every detail. Remembering everything about it, about her. After the days we’d spent together. I inhaled in the scents of sand and her skin and her hair, enjoying the quiet sound of her breath behind me.

But suddenly, it wasn’t so quiet anymore. It was a whirring drone, getting louder and louder.

My heart crashed, dark energy spiking into my limbs. Something was flying overhead.

Something not of this world.

I stared upward, snatching my spear from my jaws. Hissing, I backed up so that Taylor was between me and the stone wall of the cliff.

“What is it?” she asked urgently from my back. I could feel her head swinging back and forth as she scanned for a threat.

“It’s above us. But I cannot see it,” I answered quietly, my gaze narrowed at the sky. I did not like an enemy I could not see.

I have to get Taylor to safety.

Biting down on my spear once more, I took off, loping over the sand, pushing myself to my limits. Not far ahead of us was an opening into the cliffs I knew well – it led to the caves of the Lavrika. Taylor would have been safer at the settlement, surrounded by many warriors, but it would take longer to get there. And every moment, the droning whir of the invisible thing in the sky got louder. Closer.

At least she will not be alone. I could see the Lavrikala now, the female guardian of the Lavrika’s caves. My chest heaved, my legs and arms burning as I churned over the shifting sands, skidding to a halt before the guardian. She had no doubt heard the sound as I had – it was impossible not to. She glared at the sky, her spear held ready in front of her.

“What is coming, warrior?” she asked me, her silvery sight stars buzzing as they landed on me before flicking back to the sky.

I let my spear drop from my mouth as I stepped into the shadows of the tunnel. “An enemy,” I said tensely. I reached back, grasping Taylor’s arms under her shoulders and hoisting her easily forward over my head to set her onto the ground in the shadows.

“I will deal with it,” I said, turning back to face the sunlit sands.

“Tok, no!” Taylor cried. She grabbed at the straps of the saddle on my back as if to restrain me. But I simply shrugged out of the garment, letting everything fall to the ground. The whirring was drawing lower, its beating sound seeming slower. Something’s landing.

I whirled back to Taylor, pressing my spear into her hands. Cursed waves, her hands looked so soft and small on its bone shaft. But she curled her fingers into fierce fists, holding it tightly, all the same.

“I will keep you safe, treasure,” I growled. “Stay here.”

She’d taken off her eye-shells, and her gaze was wide and glistening.

“Don’t you dare do it, Tok! Don’t go out there! Just stay here!”

“I cannot, Taylor. You know I cannot.” The words hung, grim and heavy in the air. I would never hide away from danger that threatened my mate. Besides, I had always been the one meant to be taken hostage. It seemed the plan had just been accelerated. Even though I could not see this enemy, I knew it could be no one else but Taylor’s people. They were invisible the same way Thaleria’s ship was.

Tears coursed over Taylor’s red cheeks, but she looked more angry than sad.

“If you die, I will never forgive you for leaving me,” she said, her voice breaking.

My chest ached at the sight of her, so upset for me.

“I know, treasure. And I love you for it.”

I did. I loved that fierce stubbornness, that clawing anger. Anger that would try to fight death for me. But I did not want her to fight for me. I wanted her to be safe.

Her face crumpled, her anger giving way to something else. Something split-open and painful.

“I love you, Tok.” She let the spear drop, throwing her arms around my neck. My breath shuddered out of me as I held her tightly – desperately. But I pulled back quickly. The whirring had completely stopped. I was sure our enemies were on the ground now.

I pulled out of Taylor’s surprisingly strong embrace and spoke to the Sea Sand woman with us.

“Keep her safe, Lavrikala.”

The Lavrikala’s sight stars pulsed.

“I am a guardian of this sacred place. As long as I am living, no enemy will enter here.” She drew herself to her full height. Even though she was smaller than me, and older, with a long white braid, her body was chiselled and strong. She showed no fear, only grave determination.

“Goodbye, Taylor,” I said to my tiny mate as she cried silently, biting her lips, her shoulders shaking. “I will find my way back to you,” I added. I did not say the next part out loud. I knew it would upset her too much.

I will find my way back to you.

If not in this life, then the next.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Taylor

Iwas pretty sure the only thing that kept me from collapsing to my knees, bereft, was the spear I’d picked back up off of the ground. Its bone handle was strong and steady – just like Tok. It held me up as I watched him stalk out over the sand. An area ahead of him was slightly clouded with settling sand and dust. A cloaked ship had definitely landed there.

I gritted my teeth, seething in rage as two male soldiers suddenly seemed to appear from thin air. They were dressed in full combat gear, including helmets, sunglasses, and protective vests. And massive guns. Having grown up in Scotland, I hadn’t been exposed much to gun culture, so I had no idea exactly what kind of heat these two were packing. But their weapons looked deadly. Like the kind of weapon that could fire round after round after round in rapid succession, taking out their target with ease.

Both of the men hoisted their guns up now, shouting at Tok, telling him to stop, to put his hands on the ground. Of course, they were shouting in English, so Tok wouldn’t be able to understand them. Fucking eejits. Coming in here assuming everybody is going to speak English.

Even if Tok could understand, I wasn’t sure he would comply. I mean, I knew the idea was for him to go as a hostage at some point. But not like this. This wasn’t the plan! And I couldn’t see Tok just lying on the sand face down like a good little alien the way they were shouting at him to.

“Fuck, Tok, be careful,” I whispered, my knuckles hurting from my panicked grip on the spear’s handle. Tok keep moving towards the soldiers, even as they got louder and angrier, telling him to stand down.

They’re going to fucking shoot him.

“Tok!” I cried, my voice ragged, unable to help it. The Lavrikala’s gaze slid to me before returning to the scene playing out on the sands.

“I know that is your mate,” she said. “I know you fear for him. But do not bring more enemies here. We cannot afford to draw their eyes.”

She was right. I knew she was right. And I hated it. My heart pounded so hard I felt it in my burning eyes. Like my own heartbeat was forcing more tears out.

A rat-a-tat-tat of horrific shots rang out, and Tok stopped in his tracks. He fell to his knees.

I dropped the spear, slamming my hands over my mouth so that I didn’t scream. But I was screaming in my head. My skull was nearly split with the force.

“He rises, new woman,” the Lavrikala said, her tail twitching with tension. “Look.”

I lowered my hands, letting out a strangled sob as Tok rose, slowly, but with strength, from the sands.

“Motherfucker’s scales are too thick!” cried one soldier.

“That still had to sting though,” said the other. “Slowed him down. Let’s try the shocker.”

Shocker?

My eyes widened in horror as the soldier on the right shifted his gun up and over his shoulder, rotating it on its strap so that it was on his back. From another place on his back, he pulled out what looked like a metre-long black baton with a two-pronged end. Bright blueish-white sparks surged between those prongs. Like a cattle prod on fucking steroids.

“No,” I breathed, horrified. “They’re going to shock him!”

No fucking way. I would not stand for this. I’d go, I’d be the hostage. I spoke English, I could understand their commands. They didn’t have to hurt Tok – I’d volunteer myself.

Grinding my teeth, sweating and raging, I snatched the spear off the ground.

But the Lavrikala must have sensed I was about to do something dumb, because, like lightning, her spear lowered in front of me, like the bar at the exit to a paid parking lot.

“Let me by,” I snapped, trying to knock her spear out of the way with my own. Which was kind of a pathetic move, to be honest. The Lavrikala was way stronger than me, and she actually knew how to use her spear. But still, I had to try.

“I will not,” she said simply. “If you leave now and put yourself in danger, all his protections and efforts and injuries will have been in vain. His sacrifices will have been for nought. I know he would not want such a thing.”

She was right.

And besides, it was already too fucking late.

One of the soldiers distracted Tok at his front, raining bullets upon him. Tok knelt in a protective position, his spikes rising, his strong forearm covering his eyes.

But he wasn’t safe like that. The other soldier was behind him, now. Tok probably heard him, or sensed him, because his tail snapped, a lethal weapon unto itself. It knocked the soldier to the ground, and a well of giddy joy opened up in me.

Yes, Tok! Take them down!

But that fucking soldier on the ground had retained enough of his faculties to slam his electric weapon into Tok’s tail. Its long, thin prongs bit between and under his scales.

Tok jerked, his back arching, his jaws opening in a soundless roar.

Then he collapsed.

The Lavrikala slammed her hand over my mouth before I could scream. My mouth was open behind her large hand, more tears running hot down my cheeks like blood.

“You alright?” the soldier at the front asked the one who’d been knocked down.

“Don’t think nothing’s broken,” said the one who held the electric thing. I clamped my mouth shut as the Lavrikala lowered her hand, fixing him with a stare so hateful it should have dropped him to his fucking knees.

And maybe he felt that stare, because he turned around, appearing to look in our direction. The Lavrikala growled, her tail whipping as she hefted her spear.

“What about the other life sign we saw out here? The signal’s muddied in the cliffs, but I bet we could track the bastard down who was with this guy,” the soldier with the gun called to the one by Tok.

“They know we’re here,” I said to the Lavrikala, my words tumbling in panic. “We have to do something. They’ve got Tok, now they’re going to come for us!”

Both the soldiers were staring at the cliffs, now. I looked at them only for a few seconds before my eyes fell on Tok’s motionless form on the sand.

He’s no use to them dead, I told myself, over and over again. But what if the weapon was turned up too high for Tok’s alien biology? What if it had some unintended effect? And he was dying out there, alone and without me?

“We have to do something,” I hissed, grabbing the Lavrikala’s arm. I stared up into her dark eyes. “Please! I’m begging you!”

I wasn’t sure if it was my begging, or the fact that one of the soldiers – the one with the electric thing – now seemed to be striding towards us. Whatever it was, the Lavrikala hefted her spear, lifting it from where it had held me back as a barrier. She bared her fangs menacingly, but her gaze was hard and steady. She cocked her arm and threw.

The soldier walking towards us went down quick, the spear having gone right through his chest.

“Yes!” I whooped, grasping her in a quick one-armed hug.

“Give me your spear. I will try to hit the oth-”

Before I could even process what she’d said, I was tackled to the ground. The sound of more gunfire split the air. I couldn’t breathe – I had no idea if that was because of shock, or because of how heavily the Lavrikala had slammed me to the ground.

“Do not move,” she hissed in my ear from beside me on the ground, her strong arm and tail holding me in place, iron bars across my body.

Even I wasn’t dumb enough to jump up in a rain of gunfire. But even so, I had to tamp down that urge. The urge to run straight to Tok, no matter the danger.

The gunfire stopped, but the Lavrikala growled in warning, holding me steady a little longer. She only let me up when the ship’s whirring sound crackled in the air, letting me know that they were taking off.

By the time I got out of the guardian’s grip and ran to the sand, the dust kicked up by the ship’s departure was already settling.

And Tok was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Tok

The first thing I became aware of was how much it hurt to breathe. My breaths were shallow, my ribs and chest feeling utterly battered. Why I felt this way, I did not know. My skull felt like it was filled with sand – shifting from side to side in a sickening rhythm.

I wrenched my eyes open, hissing at the bright light overhead. It was not sunlight, golden and warm. It was harsh, cold, and so white it was almost blue. The ground beneath me was cold, too, leeching the heat from my scales.

I was lying on my back, and I attempted to move, but could not. My muscles were weakened beyond imagining. All I could do was tilt my snout downward, trying to understand the pain in my chest.

The scales on my chest and abdomen were dented and broken in many places. One scale was missing, and blood trickled from that place, but luckily there did not seem to be a deep wound there.

Memories began to come back to me, hazy and slow. I stared at the missing scale, knowing that it meant something.

Taylor.

I’d pulled out that scale for her.

But certainly I had not damaged all these other scales in the process?

I let my head roll back against the cold ground. What was I lying on – stone? It was so strangely smooth under me, completely uniform. Pain began to pound in my head and along my forearms, too. I was bruised beneath my scales in many places. I suspected some ribs may have been broken.

How that had happened?

I had no idea.

It didn’t matter anyway. All that mattered was the fact that my mate was not with me now. When was the last time I’d seen her? Was she safe?

I turned my head slowly to the side, trying to understand where I was. Dark stripes criss-crossed against my vision, a grid-like wall beside me. Three other perfectly straight walls meeting at sharp angles, grey in colour, closed me in. They seemed solid, but that grid wall looked weaker. It had holes… Openings… Maybe I could get my claws between those thin stripes and pull them apart. Break them.

A sound caught my ear, and I turned my attention beyond the criss-cross wall. An odd figure emerged from an opening in a wall beyond the grid-like one. He wore eye-shells similar to my mate, and clothing similar to Thaleria and Chapman. In his hand ,he held a long black object. The end of the object sparked and glowed.

That spark was an explosion in my brain, breaking down whatever barriers held my memories back.

I remembered the sand, the soldiers. I remembered Taylor in the tunnel with the Lavrikala, the torture of leaving her. And I remembered the weapons raining down upon me as I cocked my head back just long enough to see an enemy plunge that sparking thing into my tail.

That was all I recalled. Clearly, the long weapon in the enemy’s hand was a ferocious one if it could bring me down so easily. I realized, shaking my head slightly as if trying to make myself think faster, think clearer, that this was not the man who’d used the weapon on me out on the sands. That had been the other man. Where has he gone? I’ll tear his throat out with my teeth…

The enemy warrior stood on the other side of the grid wall. He was speaking to me in what sounded like Taylor’s language, though his mouth shaped the words differently. He gestured to the criss-crossing bars between us, then hefted his weapon again.

Grunting, I focused every bit of my energy into moving. I planned to hook my claws into the criss-cross wall and hoist myself up. I refused to look up at my enemy from the ground like this. But when I finally channelled enough energy into my arm to press my claws through the bars, an explosion rang through my skull at the contact. My brain ricocheted back and forth, buzzing horrifically. It felt as though insects were whirring beneath my scales, crawling down my spine. My muscles tensed, then turned soft and useless. I collapsed, my claws slipping from the criss-cross bars and thudding to the floor beside me.

My chest felt like it had been split open. Pain lanced me everywhere.

And even when my vision blackened into nothing, the pain followed me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Taylor

After the ship took off, the Lavrikala had no interest in restraining me any longer. I knew I couldn’t follow the ship – I had no idea where it had gone. Plus, what would that accomplish, with just me all on my own? No, I had to get back to the settlement.

I left everything, even Tok’s spear, with the Lavrikala. She’d used hers to take down that soldier, and besides, it was way too heavy and unwieldy for me to drag back. It would slow me down too much.

So I left it all and ran. Ran past the spot I’d seen my mate fall, past the spot where the soldier laid lifeless, his body abandoned.

I wasn’t crying anymore. I was so angry, so filled with raging grief, and I channelled the pain of those emotions into trying to run faster, harder, along the cliffs towards the settlement.

I couldn’t sprint the whole way – the reduced oxygen in Zaphrinax’ atmosphere made me weak and dizzy more than once. At one point, black spots appeared in my vision, and I stopped, my hands on my knees, trying not to pass out or throw up.

But I had to keep moving. I had to let the others know what had happened. Had to convince them to come with me to rescue Tok, even if he was supposed to be taken as a hostage.

I squeezed my knees, wheezing, swallowing against nausea. When my head was slightly clearer, I straightened. The tents bending outward from the cliff were in sight now.

But something else caught my eye, moving out on the sand. I squinted, swiping at sweat under my sunglasses, taking in the glint of red scales.

It was Grim.

On his back was Valeria, I realized as they got closer. They were nearer to me than the tents of the settlement, so I started jogging towards them, waving my hands over my head frantically.

Grim banked, racing towards me immediately. Within seconds he’d reached me.

“What is it? Why are you alone out here? Where’s Tok?” Valeria asked, jumping off Grim’s back as he knelt.

In a stammering jumble, I told the story of what had happened. Valeria’s expression grew darker with every word I said.

“Shit!” she cried, slamming her hands onto her hips. “Well, now we know it wasn’t a glitch.”

“What wasn’t a glitch?” I asked.

Her mouth thinned into a hard line.

“My ship was cut off from all communication with the orbiting research vessel this morning. I can’t access their scanners, can’t connect with them at all. I was hoping it was a glitch but…” She sighed harshly before continuing. “But it seems like they’ve decided I’m definitely compromised. So instead of relying on me to bring in a hostage, they sent in other forces to do it.”

“We have to go get him,” I said, fixing her with a hard stare. “We have to. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.”

Valeria swore again.

“Come on,” she said. “Get on Grim’s back. You look really pale. He’ll carry you back to the tents and we’ll figure out what the next move is.”

Grim got into position, and I scrabbled onto his back. As much as I wanted to keep walking with my own power, this would be faster, and I’d depleted a lot of energy by running already. When I settled in, looping my arms around his neck, it tore me open. Because it should have been Tok.

He should be here with me…

No more tears, I chastised myself as we started heading towards the settlement. Grim moved at a good clip, Valeria jogging beside him. Unlike me, she and Chapman had actually trained for the conditions and could run with a lot more stamina on this planet than any of the other human women.

When we got to the settlement, we found a crowd gathered. Humans and aliens intermingled, everyone looking some combination of angry, nervous, or downright terrified.

“We heard something – a ship,” Chapman said, pushing through the crowd to meet us. “Did you see anything?” She pushed her sunglasses up onto the top of her head beneath her hood, asking the same question Valeria had: “Where’s Tok?”

Valeria and I filled her in as the rest of the crowd listened.

“We have to go get him,” I repeated, just as I had to Valeria and Grim earlier.

A deep voice from the crowd caught my attention. Hakah Gog, the giant blue lizard king, came to stand next to Chapman.

“Tok was always meant to satisfy the enemy’s need for a hostage. This was what we planned,” he said.

“No it wasn’t!” I exploded, chest heaving. The Hakah looked startled, then irritated, to have me yelling at him, but I didn’t care.

“She’s right,” Chapman said, shaking her head and turning to Hakah Gog. “The plan was for Valeria to take him in as her hostage. That way he’d have an ally, and someone in the party would speak English and actually be able to learn and give us more information afterwards. This way, not only is Tok in more danger without an ally acting as his guard, but he doesn’t speak the language. So he won’t be able to glean as much information as we’d wanted anyway.”

“Plus,” Valeria added, “we can’t afford to leave that other ship in one piece. It was the only other shuttle besides mine with the power to travel planet-side from the research vessel’s ship bay. But unlike mine, it can go back up to meet the research vessel in orbit. And it has weapons.”

“How do we find it?” I asked. “It was invisible.” And that was even if it was still on the planet. They could have already taken Tok off-world!

Chapman frowned, rubbing her chin, but Valeria answered.

“We take my ship. Even if it isn’t powerful enough to enter orbit, it can fly in this atmosphere. I won’t be able to access the research vessel’s scanners anymore, but I can still use the scanners and cameras on my own ship. Some of them have the ability to penetrate the cloaking tech.”

“Can we risk it, or will that draw too much attention?” Chapman asked Valeria. I wanted to scream at her that of course we should risk it. If it was her mate trapped, something told me she’d be the first one charging in, guns blazing.

“Yes, we can risk it,” Valeria said. “The research vessel has firearms and things but it doesn’t have weapons it can aim planet-side. It’s not a warship, so they can’t shoot me down or anything. The most powerful weapons on the research vessel were in the ship that came down here and took Tok. Even my own ship doesn’t have weapons other than personal firearms and things like that – it’s too small, and was just meant to be a transport down here, nothing else. If they’ve already decided I’m an enemy, I might as well use everything I have at my disposal now.”

“Speaking of everything at our disposal,” Chapman replied, “if your ship doesn’t have weapons…”

“That’s where I come in!”

Another voice joining the conversation made me jerk my head towards the sound. Kat was grinning, her lanky mate Galok a looming shadow behind her.

“You think it’s ready?” Chapman asked.

“No better way to find out,” Kat replied

“Is what ready?” I asked impatiently, keenly aware of every second ticking by that Tok was in danger.

Kat turned her attention to me, her grin getting wider as she spoke.

“It’s time to test my bomb.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Taylor

At first, the others tried to convince me to stay at the settlement. I’d been through a lot they’d said. Stay behind.

Fuck that.

The fact that I was the only one besides the Lavrikala who’d seen everything go down meant I had useful information. That, combined with me telling them they’d have to physically restrain me to keep me behind, eventually meant I was cleared to go.

In the end, it was Valeria, Grim, Kat, Galok, and me. I rode on Galok’s irkdu with Kat as Grim loped beside us, carrying Valeria on his back.

We made a quick stop at the huge ship out on the sands so that Kat could get her supplies. She was practically vibrating with giddy tension about what was to come. Half of me was relieved and beyond grateful that she was using her mad scientist powers to help Tok. The other half was a little bit scared that she’d end up blowing us all to pieces.

Once Kat had what she needed – a small metal object with a glass vial of glowing Lavrika’s blood attached to the side, wrapped in wires – we continued on our way to Valeria’s ship.

Like the other soldiers’ ship, it was invisible to the naked eye as we approached it. But Valeria and Grim obviously knew the location well, nestled in a ring of tall black boulders.

Valeria opened the door, almost like she was opening a door into another dimension. The sight was bizarre, hard for my brain to comprehend – the entrance into a shuttle that shimmered in what looked like thin air.

But there was no time to stand around and gawk. Galok leaped down, helping Kat and me off the irkdu.  The five of us clambered inside, and the door sealed shut behind us.

“Kat and Taylor – there are fold-down seats back there. Strap in,” Valeria barked, her voice quick with efficient, militant authority. Kat and I quickly located the seats, snapping them down into position before climbing into them and pulling the straps across our laps and torsos.

“Galok, you’re with me in the cockpit! Grim’s too big for this seat,” Valeria called as she moved to the front of the ship. At the front, the cockpit, there was a large viewscreen that showed the boulders and desert, with myriad glowing screens and buttons and keypads below and around it. Galok joined her, and the two of them sat in the cockpit seats, strapping in. Grim sat on the floor beside Kat’s seat, leaning back against the wall and gripping the edge of a small bed built into the wall.

As Valeria started madly flicking switches and pushing buttons, I took note of my surroundings. This had been Valeria’s home base when she’d first gotten here, complete with supplies, beds, and at the far end of the shuttle, a small bathroom and shower area.

As I looked around, my gaze fell to the bomb in Kat’s hands.

“That’s not going to go off anytime soon, right?” I asked her, thinking of American films where the slightest wrong move would set off an explosive.

“No,” she answered, shaking her shaved head, her many piercings glinting. “The Lavrika’s blood is hella stable. If it gets left out in the heat, it loses potency, but otherwise, it’s chill. But when you send an electric shock along this wire?” She held up the wire in question, then a separate object that I realized was a kind of battery pack with a clamp and a switch. “It all goes kaboom.”

“But we need to make sure we don’t hurt Tok,” I said, worried. “He’s probably trapped.”

“I know the layout of that ship,” Valeria said, twisting in her seat. “There’s a prison cell at the back of the ship and that’s likely where they’re holding Tok. We’ll target the front, where the engine, cockpit, and weapons systems are.”

I nodded tightly, still worried about the potential fallout from this. But I couldn’t see any other way to help Tok now. We had to act fast. And we had to go big.

“OK, time for lift-off!” Valeria announced.

I took in a sharp breath, my stomach tightening as we ascended. I’d never been in a helicopter or an airplane, but I imagined this was probably what it was like. Engines roaring, walls shaking. The sensation of lifting.

I got used to the feeling of flying surprisingly quickly. Once we were in the air, everything was pretty smooth.

Valeria piloted the craft with geometric efficiency, searching in a grid pattern, her ship’s cameras scanning the ground below us for the cloaked ship.

As night fell, I started to get scared. Really fucking scared. Scared that we’d missed our shot, that Tok had already been taken off the planet where I’d never be able to reach him.

But then came the call, cracking open my ribs.

“There it is!”

I leaned forward as far as I could in my seat’s restraints, trying to see out the viewscreen. The landscape was unfamiliar, especially drenched in darkness. My fists clenched at the thought of Tok being this close.

“Where are we?” Kat said.

“We are in Gahn Taliok’s territory,” Galok responded.

“Yup – the biggest mountains are a little further out from here. The ship’s parked down there between some smaller peaks.”

“OK, what’s the plan?” I asked, my heart in my throat. “I assume they’ll see us coming?”

“They probably already know we’re here,” Valeria answered. “But their ship’s weapons are meant for aiming downward during flight. We’ll have to prepare for regular gunfire when we land, and hopefully there’s only one soldier on board since the other one’s dead. Grim and I will run out there and we’ll place the bomb. Galok will stand guard. You and Kat will stay here in the ship. Kat will get ready to blow it all to hell on my mark. Then, Taylor, you be ready to help Kat and Galok find Tok in the aftermath while we keep the soldier busy if he survives the blast.”

I nodded, memorizing everything she said. It seemed a straightforward enough plan. I just fucking hoped it worked. It has to work.

A slight popping made my ears ache and my stomach lurched as Valeria descended quickly.

Before I knew it, dust was settling around us, the engines powering down. I unstrapped myself, hands shaking, then got out of my seat, wiping my sweaty palms on my trousers. Fuck. Here we go.

For some reason, I’d half-forgotten the other ship was still cloaked. When Valeria opened the door, I leaned around her, trying to see it. Our ship was parked in a flat, cracked area. Before us rose two huge stone formations, not quite mountains, but imposing nonetheless. Valeria had said the other ship was between those peaks, but I couldn’t see it.

Kat handed Valeria the bomb, holding on to her battery pack and one end of the bomb’s wiring so that Valeria could unfurl it as she ran. Then, Valeria disappeared before my eyes, making me jump.

“Light-scatter tech,” Kat said, glancing at me. “Fucking cool, right?”

It hadn’t seemed so cool when it had cloaked the ship coming for Tok, but I was glad it was offering Valeria some extra protection. Even though the other soldier probably had the same tech she did to see through her cloaking, it still made me feel a little better.

Grim moved to the door and jumped out, presumably joined by Valeria. The only indication of Valeria’s movement now was the wire jostling in Kat’s hands as Valeria unrolled the spool of it attached to the bomb she carried. Galok moved to the door of the ship, spear in one hand, blade in the other, scanning the darkness, preparing to fight.

“Stay behind me,” he said, his usually jovial demeanour deadly serious.

Kat and I couldn’t help but try to peek out from behind his limbs. Grim ran nearer to the stone peaks than the wire in the air that showed Valeria’s position. He was acting as her shield against gunfire.

Hopefully it won’t come to that…

The wire jerked downward as Valeria placed the bomb on the ground. I couldn’t see the ship, so I had no idea how close the explosive was to its target. Please, please let it be far away from Tok…

Grim was running back on two legs, his arms flung out to the sides to make himself as large as possible to absorb any bullets that came Valeria’s way. Galok hissed, then pushed Kat and me further into the ship as gunfire suddenly split the air.

“Get up, Grim!” Galok shouted, and my heart sank. But hope burst inside me when a few seconds later, Galok stepped back to let Grim inside. Valeria turned off her light-scatter tech, appearing before us.

“Are you alright?” she asked Grim. She moved around to his back. I did, too, wanting to see for myself what kind of damage a gun would do to a Bitter Sea warrior.

The scales and spikes on Grim’s back looked dented and broken in places, but I couldn’t see any blood.

“I am badly bruised, but that is all,” he said. I almost collapsed into a puddle of relief right then and there, knowing the same was probably true for Tok. As long as he made it through the electric weapon thing, there was a good chance he was OK in there.

That’s assuming he survives the next part…

I swallowed hard, then turned to Kat, seething as gunfire continued to ring out, pelting against the sides of our ship.

“Blow it all to hell.”

Valeria nodded, and Kat whooped.

“Get ready motherfuckers!” she cackled. She opened the clamp attached to the battery pack, snapping it closed against the wire. “You might wanna close the door,” she said to Valeria. Her point was punctuated by a stray bullet shooting into the shuttle, bursting open the mattress of one of the beds. Valeria ran to do it.

Right before the door completely closed, cutting off the wire, Kat slammed her thumb down on the button.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The Stone Sky God

Iawoke.

A great boom from above had roused me from my slumber. I lied still in the stone-surrounded darkness. How long I had been sleeping, I did not know. Such things were of little matter for an immortal.

But even immortals could be killed. And I could tell that I was still weak. My recovery was not yet complete, though I had survived. This foreign world had served me well as my shelter. It had not become my tomb.

My eyelids grew heavy, sliding closed.

I had to stay here a little longer. A little longer to regain my true strength.

I would not emerge yet.

But soon… Soon…

Soon.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Tok

Ihad just regained use of my limbs when I was thrown against the wall. The very air seemed to explode with light and sound. My ears rang, my chest heaved, as I moved to all fours. I stared at the silvery stone floor I’d been lying on, watching the orange light flicker over its surface.

But the light in this place had been stark white, not orange…

Fire.

I got to my feet, hating the way my muscles spasmed and shook. But still, I was growing stronger the more time that went on. After I’d come back to consciousness, I hadn’t made the mistake of touching the criss-cross bars again.

I wrenched my head back and forth, skull pounding, trying to figure out how there was fire here.

Then I saw it – a spot in the wall beyond the criss-cross grid that now had a large hole in it. Beyond that hole, flames danced. Acrid smoke and unnatural odours filled my lungs.

The sight of the flames was suddenly blocked out by a shadow. It was a figure, I realized. My spikes extended, and a hiss built in my burning throat as the enemy soldier crawled through the hole towards me.

I reared back, hissing again.

It wasn’t an enemy soldier.

Have I gone mad?

“Tok!”

My mate’s voice was a balm on my bones, soothing me and giving me new life.

But that feeling was quickly replaced with mortal dread.

“Why are you here, treasure?” I croaked. She ignored my question, running to me.

“Wait!” I barked. “Do not touch the grid!”

She stopped, breathing hard, before the criss-cross bars.

“They will hurt you,” I said, remembering the way those bars had sent sparking pain into the deepest reaches of my body.

“Fucking brutes. An electrified cage?” She shook her head, her unrestrained curls flying back and forth. “Doesn’t matter. The power’s out on the ship. The bomb took care of that.”

“Bomb?” I asked. My brain still felt sluggish from all I’d been through.

“That explosion,” Taylor said. “That was us. We blew the front half of the ship off.”

Scuffling sounds erupted behind Taylor. My guts twisted, worrying that now the enemy soldier had come and I was helpless to protect her behind these bars. But these, too, were familiar figures. A Sea Sand man I knew as Galok, and his tiny hairless mate.

“Yes! You found him!” the other new woman said.

Taylor turned back to me.

“The bars won’t hurt you now. There’s no more power. Do you think you can wrench them apart?”

Under normal circumstances, I did not doubt that I’d be able to do it. But I was weakened.

Even so, I did it. Or I tried to. I curled my claws through the bars, relieved to see that Taylor was right – this time, they had no bite.

Grunting, I strained, managing to warp the bars somewhat. But it wasn’t to enough to break them. I couldn’t get out.

“Galok, get in there!” the hairless woman said. Galok jogged forward.

“Greetings, friend! Glad to see you’re alive!” the dark-haired warrior said.

“I’ll be glad when I’m free of these bars,” I growled. It wasn’t the fact that I was trapped that I hated. It was that my mate was on the other side. So close, but so cursedly far.

Galok pierced his spear downward between the criss-crossing bars, then leaned his full weight on the staff of it, creating a forceful lever against the bars. I joined him in his efforts, the two of us bearing our fangs with the effort it took. By the time the bars started to weaken, my head was spinning from the exertion.

A clang rang out as some of the bars came loose, creating an opening. Too small for me to pass through, but it had weakened the entire structure. Galok and I kept going, bending and breaking the bars, until the opening was large enough for me to squeeze through.

I wanted to clutch Taylor to my chest immediately. But there was no time. My first priority was getting her to safety.

“Let’s go!” I said, my voice sounding hoarse. Taylor grabbed my hand, and a sweet tremor ran up my arm. Galok and the other woman went back out the hole they’d come from, and Taylor and I followed.

The scene beyond that broken wall was chaos.

Flames danced all around us, heating metal and stone. Whatever had been beyond that wall, whatever part of the ship had been here, was gone now, completely dismembered. I could not imagine how my mate and her friends had accomplished such a thing. Such formidable power…Chunks of what I assumed were the ship littered the ground.

I tensed, drawing Taylor behind me when a familiar, repetitive sound rang out. The sound of the weapons the soldiers had shot at me out on the sands.

But another sound, even louder, made the weapons halt.

The screech of zeelk.

“Move it! Time to go!” Thaleria called out from nearby. She was aiming a weapon like the one that had been aimed at me earlier. I followed the aim of her weapon. It was trained on the enemy warrior, a lone figure among the wreckage.

Hate blackened my vision at the edges. I was going to sink my claws so deep into the back of his head that their bloodied tips came out of his eye sockets…

But a zeelk got to him first, tackling him to the ground, shrieking madly as its barbs went right through him.

I would have liked to have stayed to watch it, but more zeelk were scuttling towards us, roused by the sound of the explosion. I was weakened, and I might not be able to fight them all off in my current state. I grasped Taylor, hoisting her up against my chest, and backing quickly away from the oncoming zeelk. If I couldn’t fight them off, I’d have to outrun them.

Galok launched his spear, felling one zeelk, but more followed.

I turned to run, facing the desert.

“No! To the ship!” Taylor cried from my arms. I whirled, seeing not much left of the ship now. What did she want me to do with the blown-apart vessel?

“This way, Tok!” Thaleria called. My eyes focused on Kat and Galok running for Thaleria. They disappeared into the air.

I followed them, realizing as I pounded forward what Taylor had meant. This was Thaleria’s ship, hidden from sight.

Grim roared from nearby, pouncing on the nearest zeelk before it could scuttle up to his mate. I caught sight of the entrance into Thaleria’s ship, dumping Taylor inside before turning to help Grim.

“Now’s not the time to show off, boys!” Thaleria shouted, waving her weapon in the air. “Grim! Retreat!”

Grim snapped to attention at his mate’s commands. She leapt into the ship’s entrance. I remained, making sure Grim was safe. I only entered the ship, barely fitting through the entrance, when he was right on my heels.

A zeelk leaped just as the entrance to Thaleria’s ship closed off behind us.

“Everybody grab onto something,” Thaleria said, racing to the far end of her ship where all the glowing squares were. “No time to strap in!”

I spun in the space. There was only one thing I was interested in holding.

My eyes fell upon her.

I crushed Taylor to my chest, dragging her down to the ground. She threw her arms around my neck, sobbing against my injured scales. Holding her this tightly and having her burrow even closer hurt my chest, but I didn’t care. I held her with my weakened limbs, my battered body curling around her as everything shuddered.

I did not know when we entered the sky or even when we landed.

All I was aware of was her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Taylor

Three weeks later

“Tell Hakah Gog he can have you back in a few more days. You need more time to recover,” I said to Tok. He’d just told me that Hakah Gog was ready to reinstate him into his normal duties. And I was not happy about it.

“I am fully recovered, treasure. My strength is renewed tenfold from your ministrations.” His gaze heated, and I flushed, realizing he wasn’t just talking about how I’d been bringing him food and Lavrika’s blood and stuff. I thought back to last night when I’d ridden his cock, doing all the work so my patient could get better.

We were in Tok’s – now our – cave. When we’d gotten back to the settlement, he’d asked me if I’d wanted to join him to live in the cave, or if I’d wanted us to share a tent. But after all the insanity that had happened lately, a cave had sounded really nice. Safe, sheltered. And plus, it reminded me so much of our first romantic encounters in the caves during our journey to the Bitter Sea coast.

“Besides,” Tok continued, “I do not want to stay idle any longer.”

“Idle?!” I scoffed. “I wouldn’t call everything we’d been doing idle!”

“Well, no, not that part, treasure. I mean the rest of it. Remaining here, at the settlement while you complete your other chores and work. A Bitter Sea warrior needs to swim, and if he cannot swim, he needs to run.” His brow ridges tightened in his version of a smile, and he drew the pad of a finger across my forehead and down my cheek. The candlelight turned his glorious gold scales to molten metal. Some of them still looked a little bent out of shape after all the bullets he’d taken, but the bruising beneath had healed. Even the cracked ribs were better, according to him. Even though the Lavrika’s blood couldn’t heal an injury like a broken bone, it seemed the Bitter Sea warriors just naturally healed faster. But still, I was wary of letting him get back to work so soon.

“Fine,” I said, leaning into his touch before sharply drawing away. “If you need to run so badly, why don’t you prove that you’re all better?”

He cocked his head at me, his heavy tail swishing back and forth.

“How do I prove it?” he asked, his spikes twitching. My breath caught, heat flooding my core.

“You catch me.”

His nostrils flared, and I spun, sprinting from the cave. I knew the way out of this set of tunnels by heart now, and my feet flew, my arms pumping. My heart surged in my chest from the exertion. The low oxygen levels and the sound of Tok pounding behind me made me giddy with panic. I half-laughed, half-shrieked as my boots slipped in the dust. I righted myself quickly, muscles quaking as I kept going. Overhead, the sound of Valeria’s ship flying distracted me for a moment. Now that she wasn’t pretending to be in her military role anymore, she was using her ship more and more to travel around here. We didn’t end up using it to travel to the sixth tribe – that group, including Camille and Priya, had left a few days before Tok had been abducted, and there had been too many of them to fit into the small ship anyway. They weren’t expected back for a while.

Focus!

Heart on fire, I sprinted down a stone incline that led into a small, unclaimed cave with a sunny natural skylight.

Just as I entered the shelter of that other cave, just when I thought I might be safe, my monster caught me. Claws snatched at my hips, and I was dragged to the ground. My throat went dry with fearful lust, the adrenaline swallowing my moan. I arched, pressing my ass upwards against the hard cock that ground against me there.

“See, treasure?” Tok growled right next to my ear. Goose pimples erupted over my entire body. “I have caught you.”

“Yes,” I said, only now capable of making sounds.

Rough hands gripped me, flipping me. Tok loomed over me, a golden beast with burning yellow eyes. He showed his fangs, and mating fluid splattered onto my chest, sliding over my skin and soaking my tank top.

“Yes,” I moaned again as the mating fluid’s fire took me. I’d need that inside me, soon. As soon as fucking possible.

Tok lowered his head, dragging his fangs tantalizingly across my collarbone. He captured the straps of my tank top and bra between his claws, muttering against my skin.

“I should tear this all off of you as punishment for teasing me. Make you walk naked all the way back to our cave.”

I writhed as his heated breath stroked down the side of my neck.

“But then again, if another man saw you nude, I’d have to crush his skull. So I suppose you are safe for now.”

I licked my lips, my gaze growing hazy with desire.

“But not safe from you,” I choked out, the thrill of being hunted, being caught, still coursing through my veins.

Tok growled, lowering his chest to mine, dragging his scales over me until my nipples puckered.

“No, treasure. Never safe from me.”

He accentuated his words by unhinging his massive jaws and bringing them down against the base of my throat, biting. My rapid heart rate increased the speed of the mating fluid working through my body. Instantly, my skin was burning, my pelvis growing warm and soft, my pussy getting ready to take him.

I wriggled out of my clothes as best I could, Tok helping with impatient hands when I went too slowly. Then he flipped me once more so that I was on my hands and my knees.

He spread my ass with his strong hands, groaning as he stared at me totally bared before him.

“I have caught you,” he said again, his voice dark and guttural. “And now I claim you.”

I sucked in a needy breath as he dragged his tip up and down my sopping wet folds. I was vaguely aware of his finger brushing me down there, too, touching my clit, my pussy through my legs, before sliding upwards to brush against my ass. I realized he’d coated his fingers in mating fluid, and I arched, tossing my head back as the burn intensified between my legs. I pushed back, trying to slip his tip inside me. He made a harsh, choking sound, then finally obliged me.

He rocked into me, working me open faster and faster until he was rutting, his cock spears crushed into my clit and entering my ass. His hands roamed all over my body until they settled – one on the curve of my waist, one burying in my curls, gripping the back of my neck.

A broken sound tore out of me when I came. Tok kept going, the pearls driving me past the point of madness as they massaged me through my orgasm. His hands were hot stone on my skin, his words an anthem that beat in my blood.

“Take me, Taylor. Take me just like that. Take all of me – my cock, my seed. My heart. Take it all.”

I moaned as his fingers clenched. His cock pulsed, the cock spears vibrating with the force of his explosive orgasm.

He didn’t need to tell me to take him. It was all I wanted – he was all I wanted.

He was everything.

Thank you so much for reading Tok and Taylor’s story! I had so much fun with these two (I think I say that for every book!). Book 11, Alien Heart, is now LIVE in KU! If you want to stay up-to-date with all my new releases, make sure to sign up for my newsletter at www.ursadaxwriting.com/contact

ALIEN HEART

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.

Read Alien Heart in KU Now!

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…”