Page 48 of Bred By Sor'en

He isn’t.

“Gee, I’m glad you’re so cryptic. Context regarding your assessment of my health would be quite anxiety-inducing.”

He leans up, groaning as he does.

Jin’rayal has been moving slower lately, but it doesn’t stop him from righting my dress and helping me gently to my feet. Despite him clearly needing more help than I, the last time I tried, he swatted at my hand like a child.

“I’d like to run a test, an old goddess's tale if you’d humor me.”

“Can I help you this time?”

He offers me a soft smile that looks strange on his grumpy face. “Of course.”

Sor’en

I inspect a cutting of Lyr’lumara, but I’m only half-seeing the flower in my palm or hearing the Balla’mar as he drones about the orders from other domes. Sure, they have their fields and botanists as well, but none are as large as ours. Sometimes their needs aren’t met by their output, and we help them fill the gap. I should be planning which fields feel ready to cull, which flowers are ready to impart to the veil, instead, I’m straining at my connection to Melion as he stands guard outside Jin’rayal’s dwelling.

My bones ache for my mate.

Her touch only soothing my darkening thoughts as she lies sleepy and sated in my arms. I have not slept for several nights. An anxiety, a realization budding as I hold her, carrying her from room to room, watching the sky.

They are going to come for me.

For my people.

Melion’s sadness soothes over my nerves, pulling my thoughts even deeper away from the male still talking in my ear. His purpose is to guide and protect me, to ease me toward the veil as I tend my fields, to be my eyes and my ears when my mind is far from my physical form. But his purpose is alsoher.

To adore, protect, and guide my mate as well.

For a Vena’lel not to be bonded with their companion's mate, it is like him fulfilling his soul's purpose with both arms severed, bound, and blinded.

He is but another tether for our souls to meld.

Another piece of an uncertain, unbalanced puzzle.

He yearns for her greatly.

In that we are the same.

General Adder would be a fool, a fool with a death wish to come here. To threaten her.

But he is a prideful male.

And he saw her.

He knows now why his compliant, sentient weapon has betrayed him.

The thing that put him in power, the power that now threatens us all. His point and shoot blaster, who keeps his hands clean under the lackluster eye of the Alliance he claims to serve.

Adder serves no male nor female. No deity nor quadrant.

He serves himself.

And I am forever condemned to Qavara for being a part of that.

Condemned to fail my mate in helping her lay her mother to rest. It had struck me with such sadness as I watched through Melion as she cried, her long hair tangled in the grass. I suppose the Nysharil adopted tiny human Hue as a youngling, although she had not spoken on the matter long before Jin’rayal interrupted. I wondered if he had assumed I had been watching, had thought to spare my pretty, innocent, unknowing mate from revealing things she meant to keep within her.

I will admit it was a sly, unbalanced thing to do, but I am what I am.