Page 18 of Bred By Sor'en

My cheeks flush.

“I’d like to go back to the house now,” I whisper before remembering what he said earlier about his hearing.

I repeat it louder, watching the strong column of his neck jump with his feverish pulse.

“Of course, my mate.”

He doesn’t sit me down to walk, nor does he tell me what he called me out here for.

He doesn’t answer my question about the strange shadow that now seems to have left us.

But he tells me about the flowers.

That he grew them.

And I don’t ask to be put down.

How odd.

nine

Sor’en

My mate is muted as we settle in the grass, listening to the rain patter on the outcropping roof above our heads. She’s… breathtaking, undone, muddy, and flushed. I am undone… unwell, unable to form words. All too many zentics have passed since I entered this world. I have lost and lain to the ground. I have grown fields that would make my predecessors weep. I have maimed, killed, threatened, and been the source of so many nightmares. I have done these things and carried on, with varying degrees of ease, but I do not know how to speak to the small human female sitting beside me. I have wanted nothing as badly as I want her favor.

Thankfully, she takes the burden from my weary bones.

“Where did the shadow go?”

“Melion stays close, but he prefers the fields. He is closer to his kind there.”

“What is his kind?”

“Vena’lel…” I pause, wracking my brain for the closest universal equivalent, my eyes on my mate as she stares at the flowers. My flowers. My chest swells with pride. “I believe some could call him a spirit.”

Her pretty green eyes widen at that. Her head snapping toward me. “What, like aghost?”

I smirk. “It is like that, but not entirely. He has lived before, but he holds no memories of that life.” My mate pales, but I continue. “I am a botanist. I have been since the day I passed my sixth solar. Botanists are gifted Vena’lel by our twin goddesses, to help guide us as we work their ground. Oftentimes, I am more closely aligned with those who have passed beyond the veil than I am with the living.”

“Vannha-aildo what then?”

My mouth threatens to tug up into a smile at her butchery of the word. “Bridge the gap, so to speak. Melion is neither living nor dead. He simply exists in a space between the two, so that I may as well. Alone, a botanist would lose their way in such darkness.”

A shiver runs down her spine, making her give an adorable little jerk. “Seems like a lot of work to grow some flowers.”

I laugh, the feeling warm and foreign before I sober. The reminder that I am undeserving of the female beside me and the warmth she injected into my chest, snuffing out those lighter feelings as quickly as they came on. The goddesses have given my mate quite the task with such a troubled male. “I do more than grow the flowers. Come, Hue.”

I don’t give her a chance to deny me, to slice me with her sharp tongue, before I lift her into my arms as I stand. Her gasp smooths over my inky flesh, sinking down deep as she clings to me. It pleases me deeply, despite knowing it is only out of her desire not to fall.

She’s quiet, her fluttering heart pressed into my side as I carry her a little way into my primary field. I don’t phase quickly but walk, savoring the strange creature. Knowing soon enough that this peace between us will end.

The space where I pull to a stop is no different from any other to the naked eye, but I know. This is the place from which I grew the first flowers in this field. A field I will grow for the next one hundred and seventy-five orbits, should the goddesses desire it. “This is where I buried the botanist before me. From him I grew my first flowers.”

My hand finds her open, shocked mouth, gripping her small chin gently and guiding her attention down the path. “There, my mother and father rest. They, too, became a part of this field, and one day we will join them.”

I can feel her swallow hard beneath my palm, her pulse wild. “This is… a grave?”

My frown deepens; my mate does not like this. “I grow the flowers and impart the dead to the soil. It is an honored position within—"