Page 64 of Bred By Sor'en

And his best friend.

Blasters open up just as Melion forms a barrier absorbing each burst of energy. It seems to embolden him as he zips forward, one of the Riarthians disappearing in a tornado of carnage. I avert my eyes, not wanting to see that again.

When my mate’s attention finds me, my heart stills. Sor’en is not quite himself, not quite the other, but what he is… is a reckoning. It occurs to me in that moment as I watch him launch himself forward, instantly killing three other males, that what the general said is true. I have no doubt that Sor’en is a murderer.

That I don’t really care.

I lie there in a boneless heap as they both disappear into the pilot's cabin. My mind slow to catch up as I watch Sor’en stab at the center controls right below where the fuselage lives. My pulse spikes. “Hey, that’s full of—"

An explosion rocks the ship just as the pod fails to deploy fully, swinging free from its slot before crashing into the side of the ship, the General inside. My drug-addled brain only connects then, as the ship cants violently upward, that we have left the dome and we’re hurling toward the planet's atmosphere. Air thins in my lungs as my hands scramble for purchase. Thenoseof the ship, which apparently isn’t a nose at all but the back, is a gaping maw for the ground below, and I’m slipping. Four more Riarthians swoop through the open maw, narrowly missing blowing right through me. My scream gets lost in the sounds of fighting and carnage. Finally wrenching my heavy head up just enough to see Sor’en be slammed into the side of the vessel by the only remaining male. His head hits roughly, but his hands slam up, cupping the male on either side of his head. I look away once his eyes burst.

The other bodies, though, too dead to hold on, start slipping too. A pair of large boots grows closer and closer to my face when a shadow takes them.

My fingers are growing numb, my thoughts sluggish. I scream as Sor’en stands there, his chest heaving, eyes wild on the bouncing pod still unable to release its tether on the ship. The male inside seems just as sick as he does panicked. The tether releases with a whirling sound just as I feel the press of something hard on my hand. My only hold on the ship, to keep me from falling to my death, is a few strands of torn netting as we cant vertically.

My eyes widen as Sor’en grips something overhead, keeping himself upright. Crying out in fear as he steps on my fingers, not hard, but enough to make his meaning clear. “Let go!” he roars over the damaged engine.

The ship is about to blow.

I shake my head, a sob clogging my throat. “I’ll fall!”

“Let go, Hue! Now!”

My head snaps toward the opening, fear clawing at my chest as my eyes flutter with the effect of the drugs.

Come on, creepy baby, keep me awake, please.

The whirling of the engine rises to a fever pitch, but it’s a single click, such a quiet, innocuous sound that detonates the vessel holding us. The next few moments pass like one of those horrible slow-motion nightmares.

Melion swirls tightly around my mate as if he's being tunneled over every inch of his flesh, coating him in his shadows as a hot flash meets my skin. It forms like an armor as Sor’en roars, his finger pointed as if to fling his companion at me. “Melion, go!”

The shadow creature hits me like a burst of hot air as I fall.

But not for long.

The last thing I see before the drugs take me and darkness sets in, whether it's from sleep or Melion shadows swallowing me whole, is the ship burst above our heads.

thirty-two

Sor’en

My eyes betray me as I curl in tighter around my mate in the large bed at the temple. It is unbalanced, disgraceful, for a male to cry. For a botanist, even more so. I do not care.

Have not cared in many passes around our sun.

My nose presses deeper into her soft copper hair, ignoring her as she bats at me, trying to cling to her rest. I would love to let her. To keep her curled here and recovering, although I have been assured again and again that she is fine. I kept her under longer than she would’ve been naturally. I started keeping her asleep shortly after I landed in a sprawled heap in a field, miles from the city where I knew Melion would take her. The cast of his shadows had absorbed the energy from the blast and the fall. I cannot pretend it wasn’t for selfish reasons, a desire to hold her like this before I lost everything. Before she looks at me with hate and despair in her golden-green eyes.

Hue mumbles in her sleep, rolling over closer to me with a little wince as something thuds beneath my palm on her swollen belly. I go still, staring down at the spot. Another rolling flutter decorates my palm as her eyes snap open, meeting mine. Everything that’s been mastered into me as a child demands I look away. That I don’t let her see the emotion clogging my throat. The pain in my eyes.

“What's wrong?” she breathes, immediately trying to sit up. “Is he okay? Are you okay?” I keep her down gently, her hands snapping up to rest over mine, pressing them harder into her stomach as our baby rolls within the safety of his mother.

“It is the greatest treasure of my life to see you like this, Draya’la. You and our child are well.”

She seems to breathe easier after that, resting back against my chest to stare at the murals on the ceiling, “We’re in the temple. What happened?”

“I killed everyone who threatened you, just as I promised.”

She shivers at that. “Sor’en, the general… I have so many questions. I’d like to go home so we can talk.”