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S eeing Kerra with the females sends my rut soaring. I have a jealousy I can’t explain. I don’t want her to spend time with anyone else but me until I have claimed her, sunk my cock into her yielding body and my fangs into her fragrant skin.

A possibility which seems so unlikely as to have little chance of happening, despite the way she mated with my mouth in the healing pod.

I’m not sure if that is a proper mating. I took all the lessons when I came of age, about how to manage a female, to avoid being envenomated, but there was no mention of her using her mouth in any way other than to bite.

And Kerra didn’t bite. Instead she slipped her tongue beside mine.

I liked that very much. I want her to do it again, as well as potentially doing the same with my cock. Which is…disturbing in the least. I should be dancing for her, not wanting her mouth on my sensitive parts.

The appendage is achingly hard. I distract myself, barely, by returning to my quarters to put on some pants. It makes it worse because now the tip can emerge and brush against the stiff fabric.

It means I nearly snap the head off a warrior, my hand around his neck, who dares to approach me as I head to the main control room on the Silver Star , one of the five flagship vessels which now make up Vorostor Central and my command.

“The warlords have been on the comm, Lord Darax,” he says with a rasp as I release his neck and let him drop back to the floor.

“Which ones?”

“Dexx and Dalox.”

I huff a long breath filled with smoke. Doesn’t surprise me in the least they were the first to get in touch.

“Comm them all. Say there will be a meeting in three nova-hours to take place in the neutral sector.”

He bows his head, backing away from me far enough he can be sure to be out of reach, my reach.

“Make sure there is food sent in for the hoo-man females, but no warrior is to linger in there, on pain of death,” I snarl.

“Yes, Lord Darax.”

“And send in a garment replicator.”

“Yes, Lord Darax.”

“Anyone wants me, I’ll be in my aquium,” I growl. “I do not wish to be disturbed.”

I may as well see if it’s possible to shed, even partially, given I want to rip my skin off as yet more mating mix fills my veins. Both my accelerant sacs and my flight lungs are burning. It’s as if, all at once, I am hopelessly sick and yet could fight a spaceworm without even needing to shift.

I stomp to the aquium. The rest of the crew have communal bathing, but as the Lord, I get my own.

I’ve yet to decide if this is a good or a bad thing, given the number of comms I get whilst attempting my ablutions, regardless of my orders.

Warriors scatter as I walk through, my mood clearly announcing itself. But once I sink into the hot water, filled with shedding minerals, I try to relax.

It doesn’t work.

My mind goes to my little Kerra, to how she might look and feel if she was in the aquium with me. My mating gland pumps yet more mix into me, and instead of feeling better, I only feel worse.

The rut was never a good time for a Sarkarnii male and since the mutations we all experienced on transversing through the wormhole, potentially deadly. I am aware the mutations only affected those of us with the gene linking us to the High Bask, which means all the warlords.

Not all our mutations are the same and not all the warlords have admitted to theirs, but mine is, perhaps the most cruel.

If Kerra sent me into rut, what else could these hoo-man females do? The mere thought of Dante in rut chills my heated blood somewhat. If I am feral and the other warlords are unhinged, he is chaos personified.

Dante is the last Sarkarnii who should ever go into rut.

And I am the first who should not either.

Shed unassuaged, I heave myself out of the aquium and leave a trail of water in my wake.

“Lord Darax.” My science officer Dalat hovers near the exit.

“Unless you have the information I was seeking from the Bloar, I’m not interested, Dalat,” I growl.

“I’m afraid Lord Dante exploded the ship before we could pull the information from their data banks,” he says with not a little fear.

I drop my head back and groan. A nova-month’s work gone in a single nova-second. Nev Dante to the ancestors.

“Then work on who put the females in my sector without my knowledge,” I growl. “We’ll find other ships which can direct us to the wormholes.”

I shake my scales dry. The itch spreads like fire over my skin.

If I can’t shed, then I may as well indulge my new, and dangerous, passion. Spending time with the little female who could extinguish the fire in my veins.

Providing she wants to mate with more than my mouth.