Page 66 of Bred By Sor'en

“What are you doing?! No! Don’t you fucking touch him! How dare you?! Don’t you touch him!”

Melion, thank you for your service all these long years. They will need you.

His fear, his sorrow, have been a nagging wound in my chest since I made up my mind. I hope it eases with time.

The Balla’mar steps before me, impervious to my mate's pleas. There are no blessings of balance, no words of hatred, just his pained face as he slides his palms against my bare chest and the world goes dark.

thirty-three

Hue

My sobs echo off the walls of the temple as I’m pulled back inside, Melion torn between Sor’en and me. When he breaks toward me, rippling mournfully away from his companion’s crumpled body, I hurl myself from Me’alma’s arms, my hair flying wildly in my face as I point to the male lying behind him down the tunnel. “Go to him! Melion, go to Sor’en, get him!”

He doesn’t move, and my choked screams vibrate in the tunnel. “Get him now and run!”

Melion wavers, making my heart ache.

I sob, falling to my knees to beg. “Melion, it's okay. It's okay,please. Pleasehelphim.”

He appears at my side instead, making the women flee and gasp as he takes me into him.

We cry together.

A day later, a Kalzait imperial ship lands outside the dome. I am not there to watch them drag my mate on board to his death. To watch his people turn their backs on him with such ease, a sick feeling building in my gut.

I don’t bother looking at the Balla’mar as I address him. He has been uneasy, checking on me often despite my obvious show of hatred for the male. “I wish to go outside.”

“Human Hue, I am unsure—"

“I do not give a fuck if you areunsure. You cannot keep me prisoner in this godforsaken temple,” I state numbly.

Melion flares beside me as I’m turned down again. His anger and sorrow making him warble intensely. Melion has not left my side since, a painful fire for Vena’lel as they draw their energy, their life-force from the souls beneath the fields.

I take a deep breath as Lyr’ael swirls her hand above my head. Something she has taken to doing constantly despite my shoving her away. “My Vena’lel needs to go to the fields.”

“I cannot stop him—"

“He will not go without me.”

The Balla’mar leaves with a simple apology and a blessing of balance. My body and mind are numb, my throat raw from the hours of sobbing and screaming as I collapse down on the bed.

“Your spirit is so low, something feelswrong, human Hue. We must bring you into balance for the baby.”

I glare up at Lyr’ael from my bed. “I will not bebalanceduntil I am with my mate.” She shifts, casting a panicked glance at Me’alma. I refuse to look at the other woman, at the tiny bundlecradled at her breast. “Y-you have been refusing food, Hue.” My eyes widen slightly as she drops the formality. “Please, the child needs—"

“None of you were concerned with what my child needed when you traded off one of your own like he were nothing to you. Nobody stood for Sor’en, so do not bother standing for his child now.” The words are harsh, I know that, but I’m there now… in that old anger. The old injustices and unfairness slithering back like they never left. My eyes track the door, locked as it was hours before that when I tried to leave. And hours and hours before that too.

She huffs in frustration before clearing her own imbalance, although it doesn’t seem to calm her at all. “Your mate killed achild. He lied to us all, snuck off to murder for the very system that kept us in danger. We had to save ourselves, saveyou.”

I take a line straight from the Jin booklet. “You insult my intelligence and your own if you truly think any of it would be that simple. Have you even stopped to considerwhyhe fought so hard, why he did all those terrible things? Maybe it wasforyou. He was the first to defend this dome when the attacks came, the last to leave when it was time to clean up the corpses that rotted in the fields. And you all didn’t bat a fucking eye when he offered the Kalzaits his head? What if what happened with that child wasn’t so simple? Have you even considered it?”

She hesitates, shifting on her feet, before another voice pops up from across the room.

“I have.”

Both of our heads snap toward the new mother. Bouncing her fussy baby in her arms. “Botanist Sor’en has always taken care of everyone. Even when it was unnecessary. He was… a good male. Perhaps—"

Lyr’ael scolds her friend. “Me’alma, go with bal—"