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“Anywhere,” I blurted. Though I immediately felt like an idiot. She couldn’t mark me through the feathers on my shoulders, neck, back, or upper chest. “My thighs might be a good candidate?”

“Hmmm,” she hummed out. “I don’t think so.”

I swallowed hard, holding myself in check, even though my instinct was to flop around desperately like a chicken with its head cut off.

She took my right palm in both of her smaller hands and lifted my wrist up between us, tipping my inner arm open. Her lips fluttered over my thudding pulse in my wrist and trailed soft kisses up to my elbow. “I’m thinking somewhere on your arm. So you can be inside me.”

Heat scorched through me as if the ISPD delivered a direct hit. I checked in with Kroktl, relieved to see he was still stroking her thigh, his eyes glowing but not threatening a challenge. He wasn’t opposed to her idea.

A deep chuckle rattled his chest. “What my mate wants, she receives. If she wants you inside her…” In a blur, he flipped her around on top of him as he lounged back onto the bed. “Then I suggest you get the fuck inside her as quickly as possible.”

She arched her back, lifting her buttocks. Showing me her wet, pink pussy. And I was on her as fast as he’d adjusted their position.

Her throaty moan of welcome drove me to slide inside her without hesitation.

Our bodies came together easily this time.

More familiar and natural, especially with the raw musk of Kroktl’s cum on the air.

He kneaded her buttock in one big palm and rubbed his thumb against her asshole, dribbling lubrication from his fingers.

Making it easier for my second dick—while also making sure we both smelled him.

She was the center of the squad’s universe, but Kroktl was the gravity that allowed us to all come together for mutual pleasure.

He allowed me to touch his mate. He even allowed me to come inside her, though he’d damned well make sure she smelled him first. I didn’t mind in the slightest. It primed me too, as much as the lush cream oozing from her body.

I pressed deeper, relishing the sounds she made.

Her hips swayed and jerked, working me deeper.

No hesitation. No fear. Just her pure desire burning between us.

Finally seated deeply against her buttocks, I lay down over her, touching as much of her body as possible.

I wrapped my left arm around her, bracing my forearm across Kroktl’s chest, making my wrist and soft underside of my arm available to her.

Likewise, she lifted her right arm enough to press her wrist against my mouth, though ideally, I’d bite somewhere less tender. As soon as her fingers brushed over my rictal bristles lining the underside of my beak and chin, I lost all deliberate thought.

I quivered with sensation, strummed and plucked like a bass guitar.

So of course she did it again. Even fisting the longer feathers in her palm.

My crest prickled, plumes rising down my spine.

Every quill stiffened, lengthening as surely as my cocks.

Desperate, I tried to hold the pteron at bay, terrified I’d seriously injure her.

I didn’t have an alpha’s self-control. Her wrist in my mouth.

Delicate. Frail. So many tiny little blood vessels. If I tore too many…

Her teeth sank into my forearm, and the sound that roared from my mouth wasn’t humanlike. A piercing, bone-chilling shriek rattled the windows, louder than when I’d tried to warn the squad of the returning humans. Louder even than my scream of rage at two attacking dyni squads.

A mating call not heard on this planet for millions of years.

Her blood on my tongue only increased my volume, dropping the frequency even more to infrasound.

We rippled together, driven by vibrations so intense I couldn’t hear anything else.

The constant cacophony of Earth’s networks and signals disappeared.

Noise from the orbiting satellites and the International Space Station obliterated.

Even radio chatter across the shipping lanes that I always heard like a dim, constant rumble in the back of my mind, wiped away in an instant.

Silence. Blissful peace I’d never known. I soared in infinite darkness not even marred by the distant roar of the Sun.

:Rizan.: Her voice, the sweetest melody ever created. A universal frequency written in my DNA. Though galaxies spun between us, I would always find her. Nothing would ever prevent me from hearing her call.

Fluttering eyelids slowly lifted. Her face filled my vision. The entire world. Her eyes shone brighter than Sirius itself. I tried to say her name, but it came out a croak.

I’d shifted. Full pteron. One massive wing sprawled across the mattress and floor, while the other bent up the wall and curved into the ceiling. On my back. Something tinkled faintly when I moved.

“Be still for a moment,” Snryx said.

Oh shit. I’d hurt her. Seriously. Bloody images filled my mind from the goriest horror movies ever created. Her lovely throat torn open from ear to ear. The soft, delicious curve of her stomach ripped open. Her lifeless arm hanging out of my beak…

“Rizan,” she repeated, shaking the dark spiraling terror away.

On her knees beside me, she leaned closer. Her throat wasn’t injured. Her face wasn’t bloody. She didn’t grimace in pain.

“Everything’s okay.” She cupped my cheek, her palm over my auriculares. “No one’s hurt. We just need to clean up some glass.”

“Glass?” I tried to say but it came out like another croak.

From somewhere underneath my remiges, Kroktl laughed. “While a pteron’s mating call is low frequency, you blasted out enough intensity to shatter every window in the house.”

“I suppose it’s a good thing we’re moving anyway,” Axxol grumbled. “Fucking glass everywhere.”

I never thought I’d see our high and mighty alpha pushing a broom.

Laughing—which sounded more like caws in this form—I carefully lifted my wings, shaking glass off onto the floor and not the bed. Then I folded them out of the way so Kroktl could sit up, spitting a feather out of his mouth.

Which only made me laugh harder.

Natalie leaned against me, curling up against my chest. Beaming, she lifted her arm up so I could see my mark.

My laughter cut off into shaken awe. I’d marked the full length of her forearm, top and bottom, with double rows of iridescent emerald triangles.

“I want to see my mark on you.”

Immediately, feathers melted, the pteron sinking beneath my skin once more. Lightly, she traced a trembling finger over the matching emerald half-moons in my forearm. At her touch, my eyes rolled back in my head. Spasms rocked my body, and I sank back down to the mattress.

This time with her on top of me.

Laughing, she leaned down over me. Her hair tumbled down onto my chest. Her eyes bright with a million stars. “Now I have you right where I want you.”

“I love you,” I whispered.

She kissed the triangular part of my beak and then my lips. “I know.”