Page 28 of Bred By Zyros (The Solar Breeding Agency #2)

twenty-five

Melody

Hiding contractions from an entirely obsessive, overbearing, and half insane with worry alien is some straight Chris Angel shit.

The Thryss start up another fuss around me as my fourth in three zentics slams through my lower back like a hot iron.

I level them with a glare that says I dare you .

They all stop in unison, warbling at me in a way that I can only imagine is the alien frog critter version of a teenager talking back.

One starts swaying dramatically as it makes a weird wailing chitter sound, and I’m pretty sure I am just told off.

They stick another round of barbs in the tail of my mate as he paces the cave, which is what he’s been doing for the past two days.

I fear he’s not going to make it. He barely flicks at them, which is an indicator that he’s totally losing his grip, considering he’d usually at least smash them a bit.

I risk a deep breath, and as soon as it leaves my lips, he's on me.

His severe brows furrow as he bends to my height, where I’m sitting on blankets piled by the spring. His teal hair hangs into his face as he stares at me. “Something is wrong,” he states.

“ Nothing is wrong.”

“You lie. You’ve taken six deep breaths in this zentic alone.”

I shrug. “Maybe you’re just annoying me.”

“Your core’s scent has changed; there was different fluid in your underthings—”

“I told you to stop studying my underwear! It’s weird!”

“I can scent—”

“Stop scenting!” I snap.

He hisses in my face, making me rear back. “Don’t you fucking hiss at me!”

His tongue darts out, testing the air, and the perturbed look of momentary horror that crosses his face when I snatch the tip between my fingers almost makes me laugh.

Almost. I kind of feel like I need to poop, but I’m scared to move.

Scared to poop. I thought I was doing that before, and a baby tried to come out, had the poor thing right there in the wasting room, much to his dam’s displeasure.

“Stop scenting me,” I warn as he jerks his tongue back, glaring at me.

“Do not grab my tongue, female ,” he hisses as he resumes his pacing.

“Do not scent me, female ,” I mock.

His scowl deepens, clearly affronted.

Another deep-seated pain builds in my lower back. Another round of is this a contraction or poop . About a zentic later, when I work myself to a stand, I can’t hide the next one, taking in a sudden sharp breath as I brace myself on the cave wall. Zyros is on me in a second. “Sssaryth?”

I breathe through it, squeezing my eyes shut. “Okay, okay. Oof . I need to tell you something, but you have to be cool about it. Okay?”

Unscrewing my eyes, I stare at the large male as he nods.

“I’m in labor. My contractions are speeding up, but we’ve still got a while to go, I think .”

I watch as his eyes widen almost comically, my heart melting as he immediately drops to my stomach, pressing a handful of sweet lip touches there, murmuring prayers I still don’t know the words to under his breath.

Zyros was, in fact, not cool about it.

I groan into my arm, curling my toes as I float in the spring. One of the little dudes is tucked close to me. The rest of them are now oddly silent. “No, I need to get out now.”

I let out a couple of puff breaths as Zyros helps me from the purple-tinged water, where I’ve been systematically getting in and out of randomly for the past few zentics.

Zyros has, for the most part, busied himself getting some crystal paints ready.

I’m too uncomfortable to ask or even care why at the moment, only as long as he stops looming over me, his scales paler than I’ve ever seen them.

For the first time since this started, a tendril of worry slips into my chest. Just a small seed of anxiety as another spine snapping contraction rips through me.

I double over onto my knees, groaning through it before I press my head to the cool cave floor, panting.

I’ve labored down for zentics now, my contractions going from close together to spread out again and again, but for the last span…

it’s been close . My rule of thumb has been it’s go time when I can’t talk through them anymore.

We’re there.

We’ve been fucking there.

As soon as I told him I was in labor, my mate has been a whirlwind of frenzied activity, readying my birthing pallet, outside under the moon. Whatever goddess phase, as he calls them, it’s in seems to please him, edging away a small bit of his worry, but only barely.

Since then, others have shown up, drawn to the panicked activity, to the sound of my groaning and sobbing.

I’m tired, more tired than I remember being any of the other times.

I try to reassure myself that’s just because this one is mine, that the setting and lack of medical supplies are what’s scaring me, but there’s an uneasy knot in my chest I can’t seem to work loose.

“Melody…” he hisses.

I nod. “We need to go; I need to go.”

No sooner than those words leave my mouth, I’m in his arms, my head spinning as I’m rushed outside.

Earlier, to keep myself busy, I repurposed my agency dress.

None of the other clothes I bought at the station are very good for what I’m about to do.

I had Zyros make it shorter, slit it up the middle so that the top of my belly shows, and that it can be parted easily.

Not the cutest thing, but at this point, I couldn’t give less of a fuck.

My now long curly hair is drenched in sweat and knotted high on my head as the humid air of the night meets us.

Emotion clogs my throat at the sight before me.

My pallet is piled high with blankets, glowvine weaved and held above the ground by some kind of twisting knotted wood, like a gazebo, kind of, but without the roof.

Painted symbols of the goddesses line the curtained sides.

It’s a beautiful custom with a morbid outcome.

The moon meets my eyes next, a gasp leaving my lips. “Zyros, it's red .”

“It is Elaria’s moon, the goddess of art and creativity. The one who designed Nyssara, she carved it from bits of her flesh.”

“That’s not fucking comforting.” I breathe, pain wrecking my body until I shake. “She sounds violent.”

“She is strong, like my mate. Like our child.”

His sweet words are admittedly lost on me for now as I lower onto the blankets, rocking back and forth on my hands and knees.

While we were on the ship this last time, long enough to get a signal, I downloaded human birthing information for Zyros.

I’ve been dutifully reading it to him since—once a day at least. It would be more, but I refused, thinking it was feeding his worry more than helping it.

The eyes in the woods around us track me like ghosts.

“Zyros, I don’t want them here,” I groan.

“I cannot make them leave; I am sorry.”

“ Why ?”

“There are too many. We are safe. They wish to offer their prayers. This is how it was done before the machines. You’re going to have to trust me.” He echoes my words back to me.

I nod, because I do with anything. Everything. Always.

Zyros

My mate screams as she bows over, slamming her forehead into the blankets.

It has been like this for a long time…too long.

Her sobs find me next, and a sickness soul deep finds its way into the very core of me.

I help her lift herself, as her trembling hand finds its way between her legs, hope for the first time in zentics lighting her gaunt blue eyes. “Oh, I can feel it.”

They brighten for a moment, shining with tears, but her voice is quiet, barely a whisper.

On her next push, her scream is not alone.

The females have moved closer with each passing zentic.

They scream with my mate, their prayers and demands of the goddesses haunting and desperate. Her sob is ragged. “I’m tired .”

“I know, I know my sssaryth,” I assure her, the scent of her metallic blood filling the night.

There is much underneath her. My heart is pounding so loud it is as deafening as the prayers. Her painted belly is the same shade as the blood that coats her legs.

Something is wrong.

My heart is slamming as if it's desperate to escape my chest. Emotion chokes me as they scream again, her entire small frame shaking with violent shudders as she cups the bottom of the egg. I follow what her downloads taught me, but my mate is bleeding, the shell more red than white. Another horrified scream fills Nyssara’s sky, and when the egg is free, the world stands still.

Everything I had never dreamed would happen does .

The females rush forward and panic, genuine panic, unlike anything I have felt before, rings through me as the first movement comes from behind the soft shell.

Water blurs my vision as I go to grab our baby, but Melody falls limp, slamming into me, her shaky voice slitting my heart in two. “I did it. I helped you.”

“Yes, my mate, you saved me.”

She smiles, but it's wrong, weak, her eyes fluttering. “I can hear her, I think…the goddess.”

“No,” the word leaves me in a choked hiss as a pale-yellow set of arms darts underneath us, grabbing our baby and hauling it away from my mate. She cries out, struggling to get upright, begging for it back as more blood leaves her. My vision goes blank .

When it returns, my mate is lying in the moon nest, her sobs ragged but weakening, and my tail is wrapped around the neck of the female holding our baby. “Release it now ,” I hiss.

But my words are unheard. The females around us are sobbing along with my mate. We’re all waiting, an entire species, what’s left of us, gathered on bated breath in a small clearing in the middle of our poisoned planet.

The males who, until now, have stayed hidden in the jungle, warning hisses level in their throats.

My scales hackle, ready to fight until I see they aren’t for us .

The female holding our baby eyes go wide on the advancing males, her brow furrowed and desperate as her eyes return to the egg as the crack in the shell widens.

“Return my child to their mother or I remove your head from your body, and it is born amongst your blood,” I warn.

The moment of hesitation lasts solars, my worried glance falling to my Melody. She’s not crying anymore, her big blue eyes unfocused on the moon.

Please. Please do not take her from me.

Do not take either of them.

I have served you, my goddesses.

I have bled and suffered, and all I ask is to leave with them both.

“ Please .” It takes me a moment to realize that one was out loud, that the ragged hiss choked in agony was mine alone.

The moment the female passes our child back into my arms, my attention is back on my mate. I comfort her, but the words are heavy, choked between my own cries as I force her attention to me, her eyes fighting to stay open.

No.

Awe and wonder fill her blood-smeared, pale face as I pass our child into her arms just as the first piercing cry fills the night.

A baby’s cry.

It is the most beautiful sound, and she will live to hear more of it.

I lower my head to her legs, whispering out an apology before I force a scream from her throat.

I will heal you, my sssaryth. I swear it by the goddess, and then I will take the both of you far from this place.