Page 21 of 20% Blood 80%
Before I knew it, I’d harvested the last ripe sala leaf and stacked the new crates in a dim corner with the others. I pulled off my gloves and pressed my knuckles into my tired eyes.
Head hanging, Silver trudged back toward me. “Listen, maybe you can wait a day or two before you go out again.” Silver rubbed his eyebrowbefore his apologetic gaze darted to mine, then away again. “Just till you get some rest.”
His concern teased my wanting heart, and the lingering frustration from his fiery temper fell away. I wanted to bounce on my tiptoes, but kept my feet planted flat on the ground. If I’d learned anything about Silver this rotation, it was that an exuberant show of emotion would drive him away.
“With all this to work with…” I waved at the rows upon rows of climbing and creeping vegetables. “We can manage without meat for a few more days.”
Delaying my hunt for a few days to rest turned into three weeks in the blink of an eye.
Each morning, I secretly nursed the Earther dome back to life, while Silver spent the day running around completing whatever maintenance and repairs C threw at him. In between daydreaming about Silver warming up to me, I worried about our rescue. Surely, my brother must have sent a search party by now.
Inevitably, Silver would find some task that had to be completed in the early afternoon wherever I happened to be. He’d gone from popping in to grab something and rushing out again to gradually working alongside me, helping, for longer and longer.
As much as I loved breaking through Silver’s thick shell and getting to know him, the new moon was coming, and it had been nearly a month since I’d tasted his blood. Jerky hadn’t been cutting it for a long time.
Silver leaned against the black volcanic rock the biodomes were built into, a tool belt angled over one slim hip. My mouth watered at the sight. I forced my tongue back from the fang it had been playing with while I ogled the tuft of hair peeking out from the top of his jumpsuit. The zipper was lower than usual.
“Well, do you?”
Silver had a way of standing where he spread his legs and crossed his arms over his wide chest that sent goose bumps prickling over my skin. This rotation, my heightened need for blood meant it distracted me even more. I had no idea what he’d asked, but when he looked at me like that the answer would always be yes. “Yes…?”
He pushed off the wall, tools clinking as they rattled, drawing my eyes to the base of the zipper I wanted to lower. “So, I’ll see you in three suns?”
“Sounds good.” I stood, brushing my hands free of the seeds I’d been opening, and forced myself not to step between his powerful legs and dip my fangs into the pulsing vein at his neck, my willpower fading by the moment. Tonight, I’d tell him I couldn’t postpone the hunt any longer. Though I had my doubts that fresh meat would stave off the craving at this point.
“Ah…where will I see you?”
He laughed, the low, liquid rumble shooting sparks to the base of my spine. “I knew you weren’t listening.” His throaty voice did things to my insides. “I asked you if you wanted to eat in my pod again? I’ll set up the viewscreen with something out of C’s info package for us to watch.”
His stride loose and long, Silver sauntered to the biodome’s door and swiped his palm over the panel. My eyes tracked every step, and when he paused at the scanner, chin dipped and ears flushing red, it took every ounce of my willpower not to rush over and erase his doubts.
With all that flushing skin, the memory of the rich flavor of his blood played over my tongue. “Blant…” I dug my nails into my palms to sharpen my senses and shake off the bloodlust. He’d been standing there waiting for my response. “Of course I want to come.”
He turned to face me, and the smile he aimed at me made my head spin. Handsome didn’t come close to describing this beautiful male. “You think you can bring that pie that tastes like apples?”
“Yes. One hanyan pie coming up.” I nodded, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from saying, ‘I’ll make you anything you ask for.’
He left with a shy smile that kept me floating as I cleaned up my gardening equipment and collected the fruit for dessert, placing it in a basket alongside the starchy beans I’d been shucking and the container of graneth seed. They’d make a hearty porridge when combined with the mantu jerky. But the pie would be better with eggs. At the last moment, I grabbed a d’ew. Silver loved the sweet melon, and I had a salad in mind.
“C?” I walked toward the hovertube.
“Yes, D’alton of Clan Lasting.” C’s cheery voice filled the chamber as it rose from level thirty-one.
“Do you think any of the floors might have dehydrated eggs?”
“Let’s see…” She hummed while searching. “Flory, the Tig who occupied room seventy-six, had a standing order for eggs from Tern’s capital region. You could try there.”
“Thanks, C.”
Tapping level seven into the panel, I mentally prepared for what I might find there. Over the last few weeks, C had been guiding me to likely sources for ingredients, and every floor had been a nightmare of decomposing bodies.
As I stepped into level seven’s dim corridor, I swallowed the lump in my throat and mentally thanked Silver for fixing the air recyclers throughout the Thermal Station. Without the fresh air, the scent of decay would’ve knocked me off my feet, though another odor competed with the fetid rot this time. One that smelled disturbingly like shit.
Shrugging it off as my senses playing tricks on me as the new moon approached, I wrapped a scarf around my mouth, tugged on gloves and carried on.
As I’d done on each new floor I’d encountered, I selected a room and dragged all the bodies from the corridor and common areas into it. I didn’t want Silver to have to deal with them. He had known these people. Many of their name tags began with D, marking them as Boola, and I couldn’t help the tears that tracked my cheeks by the time I was done.
The first time I’d cleared a floor, the guilt over sending these victims to their gods without a ceremony had been so heavy I couldn’t carry on. But C and Silver had explained that even if my brother hadn’t totally blown the delivery date and the replacement part had arrived on time, a new containment unit wouldn’t have been enough to stop the spore from spreading the way it had.
