“Some humans have pretended interest in me to sate curiosity,” Quilliyn says after a long beat of silence. “It’s hard to fault them. I know we’re so different.”
“Do you think Dante…”
“No,” he says before I can finish. He hits several buttons on his machine, and the running belt beneath his claws slows to a crawl. “I don’t think Dante is feigning kindness because he’s curious about you.”
My ears flick again. Am I so transparent?
“What exactly happened with him?” he presses. “Did he hurt you?”
“No!” I say a little too roughly. I swallow, then stop my machine as he does the same. I feel weak, suddenly. Perhaps it’s the lingering internal injuries. Or perhaps it’s my fatigue from everything in my life going so wrong so fast.
“You can tell me. I know who I am, Cielo, but I promise I’m not one of them.”
I hear truth in his song, and I bow my head. “Dante has been kind. I…I feel a connection to him. A pull. Sometimes it feels like I can understand him even when he doesn’t speak.”
Quilliyn hums deep in his chest, his head tilted to the side. His eyes are focused on my hands, and my claws flick out without warning.
“I hurt him today.”
Quilliyn sucks in a breath. “Intentionally?”
“No.” I shake my head almost violently. “I…I would never. Not him. But he was being…affectionate. He showed me a kiss.”
Quilliyn’s eyes go wide. “I see.”
“I felt out of control. I lost myself, and I hurt him.” I gently scratch my claws over the arm of the machine, and Quilliyn hums when he understands my meaning.
“Was he angry? Did he force you to leave?”
“No.” My chest aches with missing him. “I think he wished me to stay. He insisted he was not injured. Zitha healed him. But I cannot bear the thought of being something that causes him pain.” I swallow heavily, then say, “Also, I had…urges.”
“What urges? Do you feel it’s your time?—”
“No. No.” I withdraw my claws and turn my gaze up to the tall ceilings. There’s a fan above us, and I soothe myself for a moment by watching the blades rotate. When my hearts are calm again, I say, “I wished to bite him. To leave a mark so I could call him mine. But he is not mine.”
Even if I have been calling him that in my head.
Quilliyn says nothing for a moment, then he steps off the machine and beckons me to follow him. I do, and we turn down a narrow hall, ducking past short doorways that lead to an office.
It’s clear this is Quilliyn’s space. I can smell kirrashev in the room, and a hint of lingering cum.
He closes the door behind him, then props his hip against his desk, his tail pressed to the floor as if holding him up. “I think Vyastil have a lot to learn about our relationship with humans. And with each other. I think there’s a lot that we’ve not been told about our history, and I’ve been studying it for a while, but I’ve only scratched the surface.”
“I don’t understand your meaning,” I confess.
He doesn’t look bothered. “I don’t know that I understand most of it myself. Not yet. But I have felt that certain…pull you spoke of. The possessive need to curl around a human so that no one else—not Vyastil, not human—can touch them.”
I want to ask who he’s felt this way about, but I’m terrified the answer will be Dante. I would concede immediately, of course. Quilliyn is a much better choice than I am.
I am an outcast.
And a mess.
“If you feel it, and he is willing to be close to you, to be intimate,” he clarifies. It’s still not a word I fully grasp, but I’m starting to, “don’t run from it. Lean in. Take what he gives. Offer the same to him.”
The thought is terrifying. I feel a tremble deep beneath my skin. “I think it would destroy me if he rejected me.”
“I do not think he will,” Quilliyn murmurs. “And if he offers himself to you—to let you drink from him?—”
