Star Side

Chapter 46

"Come with?" He said tentively, but with such a strong upsurge of desire that it made him breathless.

"I—I don't think that's possible. Your planet's atmosphere—it's air—it isn't like here. There's this heavy gas called argon that settles in all the valleys and deep places and once we breathe it into our lungs we can't get it out and we suffocate."

Prickles of alarm stiffened him. He'd heard mentions of this 'gas' among them, but he hadn't known it had such an effect on the divine beings.

Even as his heart trembled with both horror and despair, his mind raced, remembering how he had felt suffocated in the pod, how his body had changed, then to the traditional raising of their young. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the nurseries of expecting mothers and their freshly born young were in the highest caves. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the low valleys were said to be poison to newborns.

Then...if she were to come to his planet...would she have to live the life of a perpetual youngling? Never to explore the depths of jewels and the rainbow array of moss colonies?

Then again, he didn't know how his own changed body would take to the depths, enlarged, stiffened, and winged as he'd become. His own mother never took to the small tunnels and had all the beautiful things brought to her.

Jo started to speak, but his mind was racing, picking out everything he knew about the poison air to younglings and the surface. The surface wasn't a bad place. But because the younglings needed the high air, his kind took to mountains, and since the higher you went the colder it got, they naturally became a tunneling people. The earth kept their homes from the terrible cold while allowing the pure air for their young, and the depths brought them treasures, metals, hot springs and more. Only adults and those nearing adulthood ventured the forests for meat, and some never returned from the forests, finding the green and open skies preferable to the tunnels. But they also could never stay if they hoped to have a family.

"You could live," he started, only realizing a moment later he had cut her off.

But kind, benevolent Jo only asked him to clarify.

He went to explain, as best he could, about the care of his kind's young, the high air, the poison air, the forests, and his blood raced hot when he noticed how attentively she listened.

"It's still dangerous..." she said, slowly. "I don't even know if I can eat the food there."

"Your food good for me," he said. "We eat like."

"But I couldn't come back..."

Ah, no argument for that.

"At least, not until December or January when we get more people." She rolled her full bottom lip beneath her teeth, something he hated because he always feared she might pierce through that delicate skin on accident, even with her duller teeth (oh, if she ever put those teeth on him though—no, stop, don't go there).

But then she stopped and gave him a soft smile.

"Maybe."

He perked.

"It would definitely be an opportunity to study," she said. "Just... there are so many variables." Her mind waves suddenly spiked with anxiety, riling his already raw instincts. "But...Josh was killed by your kind. What if they kill me?"

"No!" he all but roared, pulling her into himself till he had every bit of himself wrapped about her in a protective shell and touching her. He went to tell her, to explain, that even if any male weren't completely won over by her beauty and kindness he'd slay any being that should dare touch her, but it came out in clicks, chirps, and whistles.

He forced himself to stop, to breathe. He couldn't let his instincts take over again. He couldn't.

Rather than be upset or frightened by his sudden relapse, his beloved cooed and shushed him, radiating a desire to soothe.

Oh, he was without words. How could anyone be so...

He brushed his mouth up the bare skin of her arm. His fangs lengthed. He caressed her stomach, longing to touch her chest, her thighs, her back, every bit of her.

She shivered.

"Gilrack..."

And there was the discomfort. He'd gone too far. She still didn't know, didn't remember—but he couldn't help himself treating her for what she was: his mate. His love.

"Kurrlongi," he breathed.

"What?"

He hesitated. For him, the moment burned, pained, and filled him with ecstasy at once.

"Love," he said. "Mine. Love." He hesitated again, and said, softer with fear. "Spouse."

"I'm not your spouse," she said. "I haven't agreed to anything—can you let me go? Gilrack, stop."

It was the hardest thing in the world to let her go, but he had to.

Because she didn't know.

Then he felt her flinch. Every part of him stiffened, readying to launch.

"Hurt?" he asked.

"Just a little," she rubbed at her stomach.

All his hard-earned attempts to release her from his touch failed as he curled his tail reflexively around her and his wings came down to shelter her.

Soon. Very soon now.

He closed his eyes to hide his fear.

He should tell her. Now would be the time. But how would he explain? What if she attacked her stomach in an attempt to smash the eggs? What if she smashed them when they came out? What if—

Too late. As always when he thought too long on the future, his mind went blank and his instincts took over. Jolene gave a shout as he dragged her back to his nest and curled back around her, rumbling like the earth full of fire with all the turmoil of his apprehension.

To her credit, Jolene only sighed.

"We've got to get you home, buddy."