Page 43 of Bred By Sor'en

“Melion, what is wrong?”

“….more than paid my fucking price.”

I gasp at the growl in Sor’en’s rising voice.

“Melion, something is wrong.” I don’t know how I know it, but it settles in my gut like a rock. The sound far different from Sor’en’s usual growling.

He doesn’t budge.

“You offered me—" Sor’en snarls before another male cuts him off. His voice rough and grating to my mate's lithe, eerie tone.

“I offered you a chance to stay out of a Kalzait death chamber. You will do as I say or I will hand you back to them. It is as simple as it always has been.”

“I am out. Or it will be you and yours that will meet my touch next.”

I shove myselfthroughthe Vena’lel, which he greatly dislikes but also greatly had coming.

The doors part almost violently. The holo projector fully displayed in the otherwise unremarkable living room. My eyes connect with the vibrant electric red of a Riarthian male… dressed in the stuffy dress garb of the Intergalactic Military. Which isn’t too surprising in and of itself. The Riarthians are known for their aerial fighting skills. Hence why they make upmost of the Intergalactic Military. What is shocking is seeing one of them…here. Talking to Sor’en.

His eyes widen seconds before Sor’en all but roars, cutting the feed, but not before I catch the violent smirk that lights the male's face, sending a chill down my spine.

“Sor’en…” I whisper, staring at him with shocked, wide eyes of my own.

“Leave it, Hue.”

I scoff. “Leave it? What did he mean about the—"

“Draya’la,please.”

I stand there dumbly for a few very pregnant feeling domtics, my chest and stomach tied together and twisted into an unholy knot as he blips out of the sunken seating area to appear in front of me. “You have nothing to worry about.”

“That was the Alliance military!” I seethe. “What do you mean—"

Melion envelops me, knocking me off kilter and sending me halfway to the ground before a burst of hot wind rights me. This time in his tornado swirl, there are dozens of tiny tendrils, offerings. I skirt away from them, fear and anxiety worming into my chest like a thousand tiny maggots. “Stop!”

He doesn’t.

“Sor’en!” I call out.

I don’t hear what passes between them, rarely do, but Melion stops swirling around me, leaving me dizzy and off balance. Glaring at the male in front of me, his counterpart still offering his tendrils.

“He wants to bond,” Sor’en offers, like I didn’t just walk into him being threatened by a decorated Alliance military officer.

I open my mouth to scream at him, to yell or something, but he cuts me off with a kiss. “I’m late to the fields. Don’t worry yourself, soulveil, all is well. Jin’rayal has offered to show you some new tinctures.”

And like that, he’s gone.

My chest is heaving as I scratch at my itchy skin, turning my glare on Melion.

He gives a little warble that’s a mixture of things I can’t begin to decode before he dissipates, leaving me to glare at the white walls.

I am asleep before Sor’en comes to bed that night, despite my best efforts to keep my eyes open, but a belly full of warm food and the soft sheets get the better of me. Which was no doubt his intention.

As soon as I got back from the center to see Jin’rayal, Me’alma, and Lyr’ael, supper was hot and ready, and my mate was lost in his fields. No amount of gentle prodding and probing questions got them to open up much about anything regarding any alliances they’d ever had with the, well,Alliance. Not that they’d know anything about the male Sor’en was talking to. No, that was obviously very under wraps, much like how Sor’en seems to have told everyone I crash-landed in a pod and he found me. Like Sor’en was on Vortara Space Station for a reason he has never disclosed. A space station so far from Silloria and the first quadrant, where any space travel is not only breaking intergalactic sanctions so heavy that he could be put to death, but hisownpeople are vehementlyagainstleaving the dome.

Any talk of it, as I found out earlier, is horribly unbalanced and sends everyone into an arm-sweeping frenzy.

Which I now know is them clearing their balance by signaling their goddesses.