Page 22 of Taken (After the End #6)

Chapter Thirteen

Lacchus

She wants something from me and it takes me too long to understand what. But eventually, she pulls the barbs from my skin and I return to my base form. I have a strong grip on her wrists, but when she pulls, I let her go.

She does not run, as I half expected she might—hoped she might, if for no other reason than to chase.

Instead, she holds out her hands. She has her palms up, like she’s trying to push me back, but there are several feet of space between us.

Her arms are also apart, stiff at the elbows, waving awkwardly, gesturing strangely.

The wind whips my face, picking up speed, and I grimace, knowing that my tribe needs me.

They will be able to fight off the dramini horde, of that I have no doubt.

After all, I was able to issue them a warning call that they responded to.

But we will not be able to take advantage of the winds today to move camp.

That means we will keep camp stationary for the night, a risk out in the Barrens.

I tick in the back of my throat, annoyed.

I want to get my prize back to Paradise.

We have caught more frex-frex than we need for the next months.

There is no reason for our continued travel and I’d like to remain in place to breed my prize properly, but first, get to know her.

To convince her to remain at my side and not do such foolish things as abandoning camp in the middle of the night.

I snatch at her again, but she jumps back away from me in her shoes with no laces.

I see she has strands of rope tied around her middle—likely the same rope I thought to truss her up with in the night—trying valiantly to hold up her grey suit and failing.

I frown. Did she not like the clothing I provided for her?

Why would she choose to adorn herself in these rags?

I rattle, unprovoked, simply angry at her but more at my long list of failures. She says something and then something again, and then she does something entirely unlike her. She lunges, arriving directly before me, and grabs my wrist. She pulls as hard as she can, trying to drag me towards her.

She wants to go somewhere…and she wants me to come with her.

My muscles ease, and I feel the soft brush of pleasure soothe the muscles down my back like the cool kiss of aloe.

That alone is enough to pry rage from my flesh and make space for curiosity. My worry for my tribe becomes secondary as I take a step…and then another step…and follow her across the Barrens.

She struggles to keep pace with me, and I walk slowly, frowning the entire time.

It’s the hottest part of the day, and she brought neither food nor water.

The only thing she did bring is the small contraption she wears on her right wrist that she hasn’t removed once since I took her.

She looks at it occasionally, speaks to it…

and even more strangely…it speaks back. I can’t understand what it says and I hate it because it seems to be guiding her and she should not be out here, exposed on the Barrens right now.

The winds pick up, driving sand against her skin through the holes in her hideous clothing.

I shift into my Mpo form, the tremors sliding through me a premonition of the transformation to come.

My back arches, my spine elongates and my vertebrae separate at the joints to make space for my new height.

The smooth, hardened scales peppering my shoulders unfurl down my back and then over the rest of my body.

My feet grow triple in size, my talons elongating, as do the yellow claws on my hands.

My scaled skin now shimmers blue-green when the light strikes me, my brown skin otherwise obscured by the harder substance.

I use my strength now to curl around my mate as she walks.

She looks up at me, surprise gleaming in her eyes as I scoop her up and hold her against my chest and then, unable to help myself, I press a kiss against the side of her face.

“We need to go back,” I tell her. “The sands are coming.” With my eyesight slightly heightened in this form, the plains of the Barrens before me crystalize in focus and come alive in color. I can see the storm on the horizon.

My hope is that the other Mpo among my tribe will annihilate the dramini horde and sense the sandstorm incoming with enough time between the two events for them to properly secure our supplies, our water in particular.

As the largest Mpo, the strongest, I feel a renewed guilt that I am not back with them.

But my duty is to my mate. I would rip out my scales before abandoning her.

And she is determined to go somewhere. I need her to want to come back.

With me.

I point back the way we came, mimicking the gestures she made when she convinced me to come with her, but she shakes her head—a gesture that, coupled with the downturn of her mouth and the bunching of her eyebrows, I take to mean no.

She points and then brings her fingers to my face, pinching them close together.

I do not understand and grunt my disproval, but when she attempts to scramble out of my arms, still soaked in dramini insides, I hold her tighter to me and plow forward.

She directs me where she likes and I do not know whether to feel proud, honored, or annoyed that she has such confidence to direct me like a wind sail on a rope.

No, not confidence in herself. Confidence in me, that I will follow.

Has she broken me already? But even I know the answer to that.

She broke me the moment I saw her running across the Barrens like she’d lost her mind.

And then her watch speaks, and she releases a squeal of delight.

She wriggles and when that only serves to make me clutch her tighter to my body, she huffs, says something in that strange, high-pitched garble she speaks, and then places each of her hands on either side of my face. She forces me to look at her.

Her eyes are brilliant. Brown and green.

One color that is everywhere and a second color that only exists in Paradise.

She has small dots of darker brown sprinkled across her nose and cheeks.

Her hair is the brown of the mountain cliffs and the red of twilight, so vibrant and pretty.

She is covered in dramini gunk and dust, filth unbecoming of this small token of perfection.

But she is smiling at me, and the guilt I ought to feel for the bedraggled way my mate appears is nothing against that.

And then she tips my face down with her hands.

My gaze, curious, lowers to the sandy ground and snags on the darker smear just peeking up through the upper crust of the earth.

I realize instantly what should have occurred to me the moment she gestured for me to come with her away from my tribe. She is attempting to return to hers.

I frown and snarl, “You are mine.” But she is speaking rapidly now and with so much excitement, I can’t rip it from her…just as I can’t rip her from whatever strange life she led before and lock her into mine. Instead, if I truly care for this creature—and I do—I must…let her go.

I set her down, the feeling of my chest tearing apart worse than any time I’ve lost scales in battles with frex-frex or dramini or whatever other violent delights the Barrens throw at us.

Like the time we confronted a new tribe, the Pikosa.

They had no Mpo, but they had size and numbers, and I lost two scales to their warlord that took several painful months to grow back.

Compared to this, that was nothing. Nothing at all.

I take a step back, away from her, and then another.

She has turned her back on me already, fussing as she is with the lid to the strange tunnel she crawled out of.

It’s ajar, and she’s attempting to lift it.

I may not intend to tear her away from it, but I am not such a masochist that I offer to help her.

Instead, I attempt to memorize her scent.

A strange mix of flowers, the few that I’ve ever smelled, and salt.

A sweetness with enough bite to undercut it.

She is nirvana. Paradise cannot compare to what she offers.

And I hesitate. I have bred her many times.

It is possible that she carries my kit. And yet that doesn’t seem to matter to her.

She’s trying to leave me. As she gets the lid of her tunnel open and releases a wild whoop, I disintegrate like a blade of grass in a sandstorm.

A tower of sand in the wind. And she is the desert flower that continues to bloom through all of it.

I take another step back as she lifts a leg over the edge of the tunnel, prepared to disappear forever, but before she lowers herself inside of the space entirely, she looks up, gaze finding mine.

I wait in hate and horror for her give some foreign salutation of departure before leaving me for good, but instead she frowns.

Her head tips to the side, as if confused, and she steps out of the tunnel back onto the desert floor.

A harsh breeze slams a wall of sand against her and I growl, pointing towards the tunnel.

She needs to return to it before the sandstorm tears through her.

She lifts her arm to brace against the assault and I quickly place my body between her and the approaching storm.

She blinks up at me, rubbing sand from her eyes.

Her hair is a swirl of knots around her face.

I might have laughed at the wild sight of her had I the heart.

But my heart is gone already, lost with her in her cave.

But then she surprises me when she grabs my wrist and pulls me toward that eerie tunnel entrance.

I make the gesture for no with my three fingers downturned.

I cannot abandon my tribe. I remain firm and do not let her pull me now.

She groans. “Pulayez,” she says the word slowly once, and then again three more times. “Lacchus…” She says my name and the stanchion that I am weakens. She comes to me, circles both of her arms around my waist, and tries to pull.

I laugh. She is so tiny it’s like an ant trying to move a mountain.

She cannot do it alone. I will need to help her, but…

to choose her over my tribe? I glance at the mouth of her tunnel, the unnatural shape and eerie darkness not at all beckoning me forward.

And then I glance down at her face. I comb my claws back through her hair, snagging on tangled, sand-drenched curls, and sigh.

I tip my chin down and right, toward her tunnel, and she smiles, takes my hand and guides me to the darkness.