Page 26

T he rut has set in hard since Kerra has been out of my sight. I wanted to get the answers she seeks, but I don’t know them.

And if I did, they would go to the heart of everything I want to know too. These hoo-mans didn’t just appear in the galaxy. They had to have been brought here.

The only way in is via a two hundred nova-year trip from the nearest wormhole or an unstable wormhole directly in this galaxy as we discovered to our cost.

The wormhole which is supposed to have closed behind us, leaving dying females and High Bask males like me and the other warlords irrevocably changed.

Including my rut. The rut which drew me back to her, despite my intentions otherwise. The rut which sensed something wrong before I knew what was happening and which found her in a distressed state surrounded by the other hoo-mans.

If I was surrounded by other Sarkarnii, there would be a fight.

No one, nothing hurts my Kerra.

When we surface, she gasps, splutters, and slams her hand into my chest.

“What are you doing?” she says, rubbing at her face.

“Saving you.”

“Saving? Me? From what?”

“From the females attacking you.”

“They were not attacking me and you nearly drowned me!” Kerra coughs.

I feel the chances of my cock being sheathed in her ebbing away. My mating gland redoubles its efforts, pumping the mix into my veins, and now it has nowhere to go.

She pushes away and splashes to the side of the aquium, her back to me as she clings on, breathing heavily before finally looking around.

“What is this place?” she asks.

“My personal aquium.”

“They’re all connected?”

“Yes, but I am the only Sarkarnii allowed in this particular one. It is mine, just like you are mine.”

“You’re going to have to stop saying that.” Kerra still isn’t looking at me. It makes my skin itch like crazy.

“That you are mine? How can I stop when it is true? I rut for you, Kerra. You are my salvation.”

She whips around, still holding the side, her eyes blazing.

“How can you say that? You’ve variously captured me, chained me, and half killed me. How can I be anything to you save for a belonging you parade for the benefit of your fellow warlords?” she spits, swiping her long, wet hair out of her face. “I am nothing to you.”

I want to tell her. I want to tell her everything in this moment. How the rut has become the end of sanity for a warlord through the mutations we endure, how having her, in my den, filled with my young, bitten and claimed, means I live a life free of such a change.

But I cannot. Kerra has to come to me because the fated mate bond has joined us, not out of fear or of duty.

I cannot tell her what fate has in store if she does not allow me to make the claiming bite freely. Of what I might become.

Of what Deus became. My younger brother. The one I wanted to find the wormhole for. As if sending him back might deal with the insanity which destroyed him. To rut and not claim results in madness. It is our clan mutation and one my brother succumbed to.

“You are mine, Kerra. And that is all I can tell you.” I move through the water until I am directly in front of her. “I do not know anything about your species, but you took my cock, you mated my mouth, and you didn’t envenomate me.”

Her shoulders hunch, and she looks down below the surface.

“I want to be safe. I want the others to be safe, and so far, nothing, nothing I have seen suggests we’re any safer than when we were on the Bloar ship.”

She glares up at me. I can see it in her eyes, the fear.

No mate of any Sarkarnii should fear anything.

No mate of mine should ever fear anything .

“Because I have laid my claim on you, you will always be protected,” I rasp. “You have my word as a Sarkarnii warlord.”

“And my friends?”

“Your friends are my friends. They have the same protection.”

“Even from the other warlords?”

“Even from them,” I reply. “They will have guards night and day, anything they want. You will have anything you want too.”

Kerra continues to hold my gaze. I feel it is not enough.

“My empire stretches the length and breadth of this galaxy. I can give you all the assurances. Here, on Vorostor, you are safe.”

“Because you rule it? It’s hardly an assurance of safety if a king can be toppled.”

I slam my mouth over hers, mating it with all my might. For a brief instant, she resists before her lips soften and let me in.

“No one can best me, little snack, least of all a tiny scrap like you.”