Page 16 of Bred By Zyros (The Solar Breeding Agency #2)
fourteen
Melody
Without the threat of vomiting looming, thanks to the motion sickness tablets we bought at the station, my heart is free to thunder in my chest as we launch into hyperdrive, Zyros’ tail wrapped around me like an oversized seatbelt.
This morning in the pool seems like a distant memory, but it’s not.
And the facts of what I said haven’t changed, but my determination to give him…
his people the hope a baby would bring has only tripled.
At least, that’s what I tell myself, what I call it as I squirm in my seat, his cool scales pressing into my skin.
Even now, as space slows to its gradual glide around us, I’m still smiling like mad.
The happiest I’ve been in…God, I don’t know.
I’ve always prided myself on maintaining a sunny disposition, but it’s not real half the time.
The thing about being the sunny daughter, the sunny friend, or the sunny lover is that everyone expects you to take the weight of them.
You’re happy, you’ve got no issues, here bear some of mine.
It’s exactly why I do this, why I smile, emotions are heavy… choking.
I refuse to be heavy, refuse to be anything like mom.
I’ve watched her suffocating emotions choke dad until he has no identity, not a personality of his own, watched as a once involved, bright man wilted under her screaming and crying.
Her constant flittering to one crisis after another.
I made myself small, too. We both had to.
Mindful not to set her off, wondering every day what kind of day it would be.
I had to be everything she wasn’t. Dependable, helpful…stable.
Zyros’ tail flexes around me, pulling me from my thoughts.
Where I expect him to ease up, he tightens even more, pressing into my breasts until my breath hitches in my throat.
I rip my eyes away from the dark windows of space to look at the male beside me, unsurprised to find him already staring, watching every twitch and gasp.
My mind slips back to his lie earlier, to the Grux'et male, butterflies swarming my stomach.
My mouth, as usual, quickly gets the best of me. “I want to do this now, Zyros. I want to help your people,” I blurt out, the weirdest start to making a move ever.
His answer is instant and filled with venom. So much so, I don’t question it, only believe. “They do not deserve help.”
My brows pull together as he shifts his tail from around me slowly. The loss is immediate, another glaring warning signal blaring in my mind, but this time it’s got nothing to do with my stupid implant. “ You do, though. You deserve it.”
His eyes widen, something strange and heart-wrenching passing over his features.
My god, had that never occurred to him before?
It’s a child for him…not for the others.
This is about him . It’s been about him since he paid for me at Vortara.
I watch as his mind runs through God knows what, emotion flittering across his sharp face before I watch it all shut down with a singular blink of slitted eyes. “You do not want my touch.”
I huff, my heart beating so hard it feels like it might crash through my chest as I take the few steps to his chair.
He watches, his toned, scaled chest heaving as I navigate around the expanse of his tail, slipping to my knees in front of him.
My entire body explodes in sensation as it surrounds me.
Zyros doesn’t move when my forehead meets his lap, hiding my face because my cheeks are about to melt off.
“Of course I do, you rude male. I want it so badly it’s all I think about, but I-I can’t do that because I can’t stay with you. ”
“You want to stay with me.” It’s said on a breath, the one he’d been holding.
“It doesn’t matter what either of us wants. I’m here to give you a baby. Use me .”
His claws prick my scalp, making a whimper form on my lips as he tugs my head back gently by my blonde curls.
“When I take you, little human, it will be because you have needed nothing more. It will be after you beg me to breed your tiny human cunt. Then I will ruin you for any male who comes after. When they find your flesh, it will be the memory of how much better I felt between your thighs that will keep you soaked and needing. If you think to tell me that I cannot have you, Melody, I will ensure nobody else can. You will want me, just as badly and as hauntingly as I want you.”
My lips part as I’m jerked up from the floor, pressed into his chest with a force so strong it nearly knocks the breath from my lungs, or maybe that’s just him.
My mind is reeling, core throbbing, but before I can muster a response before he speaks again, his lethal raspy voice melts me from the inside out as I wrap myself around him despite everything.
“Do not say I cannot hold you, you are mine, Sssaryth. Your denials matter very little.”
Zyros
I glare down at the Thryss lounging inside my cave, my arms piled high with things I provided for my mate. The pressure in the air grows thicker with each day we grow closer to the stormy season.
“Hey, little dudes!” Melody chimes behind me, so I glare at her, too.
“You brought the Thryss home?” I grumble, setting down the piles of items.
“They brought themselves; your kiddie pool is dangerously unsecure,” she quips, raising her palms up to face me as if to surrender. The thought makes my cock pulse behind my seam.
“KED-die?” I mimic her words. “My spring is more than adequate for an adult or child.”
She stops where she knelt down to look over all her new goods, and pride swells in my chest to have done something right for her. Until she speaks and ruins the moment. “K-I-D-D-I-E. You weren’t even close, but of course you’d work a murder word in there somehow.”
I decide to ignore her strange rambling and gather supplies for her meals.
As I return from the cool chamber to prepare her burnt meat, she’s already got a handful of prey food to nibble on and has made a wild mess of her items. My scales prickle as a Thryss attempts to swallow one of the little charms she bought for her hair, hissing in warning as she scolds the annoying creatures.
They don’t seem to enjoy her tone, chittering and hissing about to each other before hopping straight through the messy piles she’s erected around herself.
They make no move to hurt her, and they're disturbingly difficult to kill, so I decide to ignore them, too.
My thoughts drift to the way she awed at the sky on our way back to the cave tonight. The moon is in its goddess-blessed phase tomorrow.
Tomorrow is the night that will change everything. Ruin it or salvage it. Possibly both.
Tomorrow night, I will force my mate onto the goddesses; I will demand their blessing, or I will rut her without it.
I have spent many solars doing my best to preserve our planet, to worship as I should, despite the cock behind my slit deeming me unworthy of the goddesses' communion, but still, they whisper to me.
I will listen, and they will too. My soul is a part of Nyssara, born from its moon.
But the better part, the part that makes my chest ache and tighten, belongs to the human female making a mess of our cave.
I will burn it to the ground if it would simply earn me a smile.
There is no deity nor machine, nor Vrircik to waver my devotion.
No line is too terrible to cross. She wrapped herself around me of her own will.
My mate likes my touch. The hole that she had gored in my chest this morning was all but blamed by her heated cheeks pressing into my scales as she mumbled against me.
You deserve it.
This maddening, soft, sweet, and vibrant creature wants me .
I do not know much about the world she comes from, but I am sure what I am to do next goes against what she will find acceptable.
The risk is just too great; there’s far too much to lose.
The mere idea of her slipping from between my coils makes such a heady, sickening feeling bloom between my ribs that taking in a lungful of air seems impossible. My mate hesitates, but she wants me.
She wants to stay.
So, I will make the decision for her.
In time, she will understand.
I am a bad male, a cruel male, but I am hers, and I am drowning in my devotion. The only thing I have ever felt so fully is hatred, but even that is quieter with her around. Memories of nasty thoughts and sickening touches washed away by her .
To lose that…to even know there is an option for her to choose another over me...
I bear my fangs, my venom swelling in my mouth.
My eyes turn toward her, watching her sunshine-spiraled hair bouncing as she laughs at the Thryss.
The sound comes so easily from her, despite when she grows quiet, her eyes sad, despite her having been soaked and needy on my lap just zentics ago.
It makes me feel like maybe I could laugh, too, someday, without it feeling like a betrayal to the hate in my chest or the faint scars on my scales.