“Your ancestors are calling,” Dante says under his breath. “You had better heed them.”
Under the ever watchful gaze of the pulsar-toting warriors who follow my every move, I make my way over to where Dalox and Darax wait for me. My Lydia watches me, even as the other females talk among themselves until one by one they stop and fix their eyes on me.
“Deus.” Darax lifts his lips and his fang reveal is not one of amusement.
“Darax.” I give him the customary bow, not taking my eyes from him. “Dalox.” Our old leader gets a similar greeting.
“If it wasn’t for the fact you did assist me and my mate on the second continent, and we were able to retrieve the mapping system from your old warship, you would not be here,” Dalox intones.
He was always one for the dramatic.
“Yes, I would have thought helping you out when you were envenomated would count for something.” I move my gaze back to Lydia, who is in the middle of the animated gaggle of humans once again.
“You were envenomated?” Darax asks, eyebrows raised.
Dalox growls. “Sarkarnii females don’t just envenomate those who they do not wish to mate with,” he says. “Sometimes they just…envenomate.”
He turns his gaze fully on me.
“I have been asked by my warlords, who, in turn, have been asked by their mates, to allow you a reprieve.” He snorts out a cloud of smoke and not a little amount of sparks. “Whilst I’d not usually be inclined to grant you one.” He eyes Darax. “Because of yourassistanceand because I am informed you also have an interest in a female human which may help you keep a lid on your…behavior, on this occasion, I am willing to give you some grace.”
My heart pounds in my chest. I hadn’t thought returning to the Sarkarnii would ever be something I wanted to do, but it would seem my body disagrees.
“However…” Dalox continues.
I have a feeling this is going to be a long speech. And while I probably shouldn’t, I tune him out as he continues to talk, instead watching my Lydia as she is in deep conversation with her human female friends. Some of them are large with sarkarnling. I think about Lydia being large with sarkarnling. My mating gland thrums in my neck.
Would she even want to have my sarkarnling? Would she even want to let me bury my cock in her sweet, hot little cunt?
“Is that agreed, Deus?” Dalox snarls in my ear.
“Is what agreed?”
“My terms which will keep you out of Darax’s cells and not sucking up most of Dante’s paraxio output.”
“Yes,” I say quickly as I see the females moving together for a moment. “All agreed.”
I have no idea what I’m agreeing to. But if it means I get to be with Lydia, I care not.
“Good,” Dalox says. “Then your first shift starts tomorrow.”
“Shift?”
“With Dexx. You will work for him first. Then Dante, then Darax. You will be able to stay in your sector in between times.”
“Work?”
“As I said. Prove your loyalty and you can be one of us again. Prove you are a traitor, and I will banish you, and your female, forever.”
LYDIA
“Look,” I say to Kerra. “If we were on Earth, we’d have said Deus has PTSD and he would have been treated for it, not thrown in a cell.”
“These are Sarkarnii we’re talking about,” Scarlett interjects. “It’s not the same.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” Rosalie says. “Just because our boys are big, gruff, grumpy, unhinged, and turn into dragons, it doesn’t mean their minds are as robust.” She fires a glance over at Dante who seems to be dicing with death in talking to Deus, who is glowering like it’s about to go out of fashion.
“Exactly.” I nod as Dalox calls Deus over to him.
