Page 13 of Bred By Sor'en

He has the right to.

How am I to explain how I’ve come to possess a star-faring human when I have never left the planet? The lies are endless. What’s a few more to keep the dome shimmering and my fate firmly locked in purgatory? To keep them blissful and unaware that our goddesses have chosen wrong. That I am, in fact, the monster the galaxy paints us to be.

six

Hue

“Stop!” I scream at the top of my lungs. Sofaxi’s slipping fur getting in my mouth, but I don’t let go. She isn’t warm anymore; she’ll never be warm again, and it feels like my heart is shattering in my chest. “We’re supposed to leave!”

“Come now, 74-B, release her. She’s gone.”

“No! Please! We have to take her to Lunareth! We have to get her there, please!” I sob, pleading with them to make them understand how important this is. “Sofaxi is a Nysharil! If they aren’t buried in their chosen place, their souls will be lost! Please, I’ll never see her again! We have to put her in her chosen place!”

Glamorith casts Ualate a pleading glance, her skin turning a deep, heavy blue showing her sadness, but Ualate doesn’t care. I can see it, the moment she forms thenoinside her ugly stone head. I glare up at her, tightening my grip on Sofaxi’s stiffeningbody, my throat raw from screaming. Outside the hatch, I can see the huddled forms of other children watching. I hate them too. I hate everyone and everything. I hate this pod. I hate Sofaxi. I hate Glamorith and Ualate. I hate space and the stars. We were supposed to leave. Leave and never have to see the horrible stars ever again.

“She promised me!” Sobs wrack my chest as Ualate’s rough stone fingers dig into my arms, pulling me away from Mom, from the woman that called me her little cub. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry I told them! Please don’t hate me! Please!”

Pain flares in my shoulder as she gives me a rough tug that rips a scream from my mouth, Glamorith’s color slamming from sad blue to heavy red. “Ualate manage yourself, she is a grieving child.”

“Please, the Nysharil was a cook, not even a carer. They never should have even had contact had you been watching!”

The group of children skidder away as I land in the middle of them in the hall, my knees hitting the metal floor hard enough to bruise. I pay it little attention; I’m back on my feet, bolting toward the hallway hatch that leads to the main deck of the ship.

I’ll make this right.

It got so messed up, but I swear I can fix this.

The dream leaves me roughly, gruelingly. My chest tight and my lungs vacuumed shut. This time there’s no gentle waking, no drowsy confusion, just stark dread and understanding. My hand flies to the fang on my neck and the scar underneath, both of them signaling the same failure. A promise I haven’t made right. I’m not even surprised when a swath of darkness fills the otherwise eerily white room. Sor’en breezes in, or blips in more like it.

“Go away,” I whisper, my eyes crusty from old tears.

“My people's hearing is not great, please repeat that.”

I don’t, making his brow furrow. He sits slowly on the bed, his palm coming up as if he means to comfort me, but I shove it away. “You were upset. Melion saw you thrashing while you rested.”

I have no clue who Melion is or why he was watching me sleep, but I’m too empty inside to ask. One upset at a time. I give him a silent once-over instead, wondering how I’d missed the true state of him. His heaving chest, the wild look in his eyes. He must’ve been far away; he must’ve ran all the way here.

He must’ve been worried about me.

Something odd blooms in my chest at the thought; it’s been… well, a long time since someone was worried about me. I clear my throat, rolling away from him to my side, the fang prodding my hand painfully. The bed shifts, but only barely, as if it’s been formulated to narrowly react to the large being who sleeps on it. I don’t hear him leave, but I know the next moment he’s gone.

I decide to hate him for that too. Then myself, because I wanted him to go, right?

It doesn’t matter he’s gone.

At least for now.

And so is she.

I failed her that day, my mom. The Nysharil are a proud spacefaring species. Their culture was mostly lost after the demise of their home planet, but some things stayed. Especially with the older generation, the ones that remember a past with dirt. There are a few taboos for Nysharil people. A main one being death; to them, it’s the ultimate weakness. To speak or plan about your death is something you only do with the ones you trust most, and only for a practical reason. To ensure they put your soul where it needs to be. Looking back, I now know Sofaxi was dying, for a long time, probably before I even met her. She knew we’d never make it off that ship; we’d never have the credits to get to Lunareth even if we did. Our long hours afterlights out sitting and talking in the habitat room modeled off the stunning, sunny planet, was nothing more than a dying woman’s attempt to inject hope into a cub that had never had it. Her cub she’d called me, despite me being a human. It never mattered to her that I was less than. That I had nothing in the universe to offer her. When I was younger and far stupider, I hadn’t realized she’d had nothing to offer me either. Aside from that horrible, devastating hope.

But it worked.

Too well.

I believed her.

When I found her that day, I lost more than a friend; I lost mymom, my hope. I was desperate, so I told them. She’d made me swear, explained to me so many times her culture and her desire to be laid to rest on Lunareth was sacred. I was never to dishonor her by repeating it. It was a wish shared between our souls, the closest thing they have to a promise.