Page 144 of Pets in Space 10

Fallin

We took off without looking back. The tyvarin would be fine without us for a while.

The wind met us immediately, sharp and clean, tugging at Hazel’s hair as we rose above the plateau.

I angled my wings west, towards a place I remembered from my patrols – a rocky outcrop overlooking a sheer drop into a forest of orange-leaved trees.

It was quiet there. High enough to give us warning of approaching drones, isolated enough to give us some privacy from the others.

Hazel leaned into me, her cheek against my collarbone, her hands clutched into the scales of my back. I loved feeling her curled around me like this. My cock was hard against her abdomen. Did she know? Was she feeling the effect she had on me?

I landed softly atop the ridge and set her down with care, my hands reluctant to let go.

She turned slowly, taking in the view – jagged peaks in the distance, birds and other animals chasing each other in the forest’s canopy below. “It’s beautiful,” she said finally.

“So are you,” I replied without thinking.

She gave me a look – half amusement, half affection – and sat down on a patch of moss that had soaked in enough sun to be warm. I folded my wings and sat beside her, our legs brushing.

For a moment, there was peace again. No masters. No collars. Just air and sky and her.

“I miss silence,” she said quietly. “Real silence. The kind that doesn’t mean something awful is lurking just out of sight.”

“I’m sorry I can’t give you that yet.”

“You give me more than enough.” She leaned her head on my shoulder. “I just needed this. You. Us. Here. Without anyone asking anything of us.”

My arm circled her waist. “You’ll always have me.”

She smiled at that.

Hazel didn’t speak for a long time. She simply leaned into me, her cheek pressed to my shoulder, her breath calm and steady.

The sun warmed our backs and the wind rolled past in slow, lazy gusts.

I could sense forest creatures in the branches above us and in the ground below, but they knew better than to disturb a tyvarin and his mate.

For a few precious clicks, I let myself forget everything.

The war. The masters. The sky full of drones.

Right now, there was only this. Her.

She turned her face up towards me and whispered, “I used to spend whole weekends curled up with tea and a book. Or a ball of yarn.”

I blinked. “Yarn?”

“Crocheting,” she said with a small smile.

“You use a hook to knot string into fabric. I started with coasters and a scarf, but then I went to craft groups and learned to make more difficult things. Soft things. Warm things. Things that don’t bite.

” She reached out and traced one of the scales on my arm, just above the elbow.

“You are… the opposite of soft. But you make me feel safe.”

A strange sound escaped me – not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. I rested my forehead against hers, inhaling the familiar scent of her skin, smoke and berries and something uniquely Hazel.

“I have no softness,” I murmured. “But I can learn to be warm. For you.”

Her hands found my jaw, cool against my flushed skin. “You already are.”

We kissed then – slow, easy, unhurried. Not desperate like before, not laced with adrenaline or fear.

Just lips on lips, the meeting of two beings who’d chosen this moment, this stillness.

Her tongue brushed mine and the spark that always lived between us flared quietly, more ember than flame, but it would burn all the same.

When we parted, she stayed close, her nose brushing mine.

“I don’t know what we’re walking into,” she whispered. “But I’m glad I’m not doing it alone.”

“You never will be.”

“What will happen to us?” she asked, her voice catching as if she didn’t want to hear the answer. “What are we?”

“I have barely dared to think the word,” I admitted. “But I think it is time you heard it. I don’t know if your people, your hoomahns, use it in the same way but-“

“Say it.”

I kissed her forehead once more. “You are my mate. My one and only mate, sent to me from across the stars. The one who freed me. The one who made me whole. The one who saved me, body and soul, wings and heart. Forever.” I took a deep breath, watching her flushed cheeks, her wide eyes, her parted lips, trying to see if she understood what I meant.

“Hazel… I want to be with you, now and forever.”

“Mate.” She tasted the word, slow and deliberate.

“Mates. I never thought I’d find someone I’d want to share my life with.

I was always so independent, so keen not to get attached to anyone.

To hurt from previous encounters. But now, with you…

” She smiled and it lit up her face like sunshine bursting through dark clouds.

“I can see us together, forty years from now, sitting on the top of a cliff, wrinkles and all, watching the sunrise. I only met you a few days ago, but I feel like I know you. Like I’ve always known you. ”

“I feel the same,” I admitted. “We may be from different species, but I know your heart, Hazel, my mate. And it beats in the same rhythm as my own.”

We kissed again, slower this time, as if to seal the bond we’d just formed.

“I want to claim you,” I said breathlessly when we broke apart. “In the way of my people.”

Her lips were swollen, her eyes sparkling. I could never get tired of admiring her. My mate.

It felt unreal still. I had felt it from the start, I’d come to realise, even as Tyvaron, chained and feral.

It was why I had captured her in the forest, taken her to my cave.

As the beast Tyvaron, I hadn’t known how to proceed.

She’d been so tiny compared to my massive tyvarin size.

It had been an impossibility. But from the moment I’d shifted to become me, Fallin, I’d known that she was mine.

My mate, now and forever, stars-given, earth-set.

“And what way is that?” she asked. Did she know how alluring her fluttering eyelashes were?

“In the air. Naked, free, together. Will you allow me to claim you, mate?”

“Mate. I love it so much when you say it. Do it again.”

“Mate,” I repeated with a smile. “Mate. Mate. Is that enough for now?”

“For the moment.”

“And will you let me claim you?”

She laughed. “Obviously. But please promise to not let me fall.”

“Never.”

Hazel stood, her body lit by golden sun and soft wind, and began to untie her makeshift blanket-dress. Her fingers trembled only a little. I watched, stunned, as she peeled it away and laid it across a dry patch of moss, then looked up at me with mischief burning in her gaze.

“Well?” she asked, a challenge in her tone. “You said ‘naked, free, together.’ Get to it.”

I didn’t need telling twice.

My fingers went to the leather belt around my waist – a poor excuse for clothing, really – and let it fall. She was already watching me with open curiosity, no shyness in her gaze now. I saw the flush on her cheeks, the way her breath caught when she looked at me fully.

She stepped towards me, fingertips brushing down my chest, over the faint shimmer of scales, the ridged muscle beneath. Her touch was reverent. “You’re beautiful,” she whispered.

I wasn’t used to being described that way. Powerful, monstrous, deadly – yes. But beautiful?

I bent low to kiss her, slower this time, deeper. Then scooped her up in my arms with ease, one arm under her knees, the other supporting her back. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

I stepped to the edge of the outcrop. The world dropped away beneath us – forest, cliffs, the sky itself unfolding into a canvas of gold and flame.

And then I leapt.

She gasped once, then clutched tighter, but I felt no fear in her body. Only exhilaration. Trust.

The wind caught my wings. I beat them hard once, twice, and we soared.

Not high – not into the clouds – but in wide, sweeping arcs above the trees, over the river that glittered like molten glass, across the broken ridges where the land itself seemed to be scarred.

She was laughing. Real laughter, not the brittle kind that came from stress or exhaustion. It wrapped around me like starlight. And I laughed too.

“This is claiming?” she shouted over the wind.

“This is the start of it!” I called back.

I found a current and rose sharply, wings burning, heart thundering. I tipped us sideways and she squealed, legs tightening around my waist, her hands burying themselves in my hair.

And then – at the highest point of our arc – I slowed, hovered.

Kissed her again.

It was clumsy, wind-whipped, breathless – but it was ours.

She pulled back, lips shining, eyes alight with joy. “I never thought I’d fall for someone with scales.”

I grinned, heart soaring. “I never thought I’d fall for anyone at all.”

I’d never done a sky claiming before – it was reserved only for mates – but my ancestral memory guided me.

I adjusted my wings to catch the updraft, keeping us stable in the air.

Then I wrapped my tail around her waist as an anchor, to give her a sense of safety.

I would never let her fall, but I knew she wasn’t used to flying. Not yet.

I gently rotated her until she was facing me. She instinctively wrapped her legs around my waist while her arms snaked around my neck. I held her hips, steadying her.

My cock was hard and ready, pushing against her belly.

I tried to make my wings beat as smoothly as possible, keeping us in place without moving with the wind.

Her body shifted against mine, a slow grind that made stars burst behind my eyes. My cock slid against her, hot and aching. The sensation was maddening – friction, heat, closeness, but not yet enough.

Her breath caught. “You’re… big.”

I froze, only just.

She laughed softly, breathless. “I didn’t say stop. I said big.”

I met her gaze. “Are you sure?”

Hazel’s lips brushed my jaw. “More than sure. I want all of you, Fallin. Everything.”

I angled my hips carefully. Slowly. Gently. She shifted to welcome me, arms wrapped tight around my shoulders, eyes locked on mine.

And then I was inside her.

She gasped – and so did I. The world narrowed to the place where our bodies joined, where heat and trust and love fused into something holy.

Her nails dug into my back. I felt her legs tighten, heels digging into my lower back as she pulled me closer, deeper.

The sky spun.

I moved in her slowly at first, testing what the wind would allow, how best to balance us without disrupting the rhythm.

But Hazel… Hazel was glorious. She moved with me, met every thrust with her own, her breath coming in soft gasps against my neck.

Her full breasts rubbed against my chest, her nipples as hard as my cock.

We didn’t speak – there were no words for this. For flying and fucking and falling in love all at once.

Her mouth found mine again and again, clumsy and perfect kisses, devouring my restraint.

She was close. I could feel it – the way her thighs trembled around me, the way her hands clenched at my shoulders.

“I’m here,” I rasped. “I’ve got you. Don’t hold back.”

She came with a cry muffled against my throat, her entire body trembling in my arms. And I held her through it, wings wide and steady, heart threatening to break with how much I loved her.

The release hit me like a lightning strike, hot and brutal and bright.

I groaned her name into her mouth as I came, pouring my release into her waiting folds. She whispered to me, words blown away by the wind, stroked my head, curled her fingers around my horns, until the last waves ebbed away and I could breathe again.

We hovered in the air, our bodies bare, pressed together above a world that had tried to kill us both.

She was my mate.

And I was hers.

And for that single, perfect moment – nothing else existed.