Page 23 of Bred By Sor'en

I scream as I’m lifted off the ground by an oddly long, bony arm tucked under my hips. My breath is nearly knocked from my lungs as my back roughly meets his chest. Even more unsettling is the enraged Xyrelith, who is nuzzling my hair with a neck that is now as long as my arm.

twelve

Hue

It has been several ontics, and I am still dangling underneath him like a stubborn virusbot on the belly of a ship.

And we’re still outside.

I huff, glancing at Melion from underneath the snarling beast who keeps teetering on all fours. “Any help?”

My frown deepens as he dissipates.

Okay, so maybe this mating thing is pretty serious.

I’m his balance?

Fuck,I’mnot balanced. I’m like the least qualified person to balance another being. I’m pissy and selfish, mean and just overall pretty unpleasant. Not to mention the lying and theft.

I wiggle, earning me a heated snarl from Sor’en-not-Sor’en above me. My flesh breaks out in unwelcome and unhelpful goosebumps as his long, purplish colored tongue dips out to lapup my neck in a languid, slick trail. My core tightens, clenching in anticipation of… what?

Neither of us knows a single thing about shit down there, so she needs to knock it off.

But it… feels funny, and I think I can feel my pulse down by that bundle of nerves I always avoid touching. Sor’en keeps licking and growling, I keep dangling, and my body is being weird.

I slap at him, earning myself a deafening roar in my face. So forceful my hair shifts, and I have to squint my eyes at his dumb upside-down head-not-head.

“Don’t yell at me!” I scream back, now feverishly trying to wiggle free.

When he comes back in for another taste, I swat again, this time my swat is dodged before I’m promptly hauled out from underneath him and planted roughly on the ground in front of his massive body.

I gawk, my eyes so wide they might pop out of my head because like this… Sor’en looks sodifferent. I hadn’t really had a chance to appreciate how drastic the change was, although abstractly from underneath and behind him, I knew there was one. Where there once stood an eight-foot-tall sauvé and calculated bipedal humanoid alien, what stands over me now is… larger, and there’s nothing remotely humanoid about him. Nothing familiar in the giant quadruped now, his neck is longer, uncomfortably so. His white silken hair hangs to the ground, the white ends brushing the bitter teal grass. Sor’en’s arms have grown too, far longer than what rationally makes sense, and he is bisected into two front legs supporting his upper half, the same with the back. His once straight, graceful spine bowed impossibly and…forked? Both ends slightly protruding from the bottom of his back like wicked spikes. His clothes are nothingmore than tatters on his body, clinging by their hardened tech structures.

“Sor’en…” I choke.

His head tilts, listening to me as he sways again.

He’s still so exhausted, guilt swarms me, heady and choking. He’s been wiping that oil on me in hopes of bonding. What the hell does bonding even mean to his species? Mom used to talk about it a lot, different kinds of bondings. Some can change the very genetic makeup of a person. Others, nothing more than a spoken vow, honored until the end of time. I sigh, reaching out and tugging on his weird horns. “I need you to come back so you can help me understand what’s going to happen next,” I plead.

To my surprise, he lets me move him.

Okay, time for plan… like E or something by now.

Slamming my hands onto my hips, I glance beside me at the house, finding Melion there in the doorway, watching us, still offering no help either way. Very well then. I grip one of his horns before turning and shifting all of my weight forward. “Come on, let's at least go inside. I’m hungry.”

I glance over my shoulder, ensuring he’s still coming. He is. His mostly unchanged face regarding me carefully as that long purple tongue hangs lazily out of his mouth. All that goes smoothly enough until we get to the shimmering door and I realize he might not fit. A gentle tug forward, and yeah, no, not going to fit. “Well, shit. No chance you’re cooking tonight, huh?”

He doesn’t respond.

Not until I walk inside and leave him behind. Then he has a lot to say,erroar at the least. Only halfway to the kitchen, mumbling all sorts of curses under my breath, I snag a bowl just as Sor’en tries to force his wide upper half through the door. The veil tech covering it blinks and shudders, making me heave another sigh. “Stop that! You’re going to break it!”

Melion warbles beside me, and I have nothing to back this up, but I’m at least seventy percent certain that was a laugh. He zooms back out the door, simply goingthroughSor’en-not-Sor’en while I stand there now trapped on the other side with a bowl of fruit almost too heavy for my arms.

I grunt, heaving the heavy dish into one arm and shooing at him with the other. “Back up, I’m coming out.”

He lingers in the doorway, sticking out his purple tongue like he’s reaching for me.

Laughter bursts out of me abruptly, startling us both into a ceasefire.