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His eyes narrowed. “Why do I suspect you are planning something I would not approve of?”
She patted his chest. “I don’t have any plans yet. I’ll let you know when I do. Until then, tell me about those missing tattoos. I want to know how a guy can become the commander of GI7 after getting kicked out of warrior training.”
“I completed my training. Or I would never have received my tattoos.”
“I didn’t realize. It sucks to have your dreams die, doesn’t it? Even worse, to have something you love taken from you.”
He cupped her cheek. “If I could undo what the og’dals did to you, I would.”
She stepped away, breaking contact with his hand. “No way. You’re not turning this around. We’re talking about you now, not me. The tattoos. Spill.”
He cocked his head.
“Please, Zirkov. I need to focus on something else for a while. Okay?”
“Understood.” He pointed to a holovid that protruded from the wall. She had walked around it earlier, inspecting the five zyanthan males in the image from all angles. All wore dark black short-cropped sleeveless tops that hugged their chests. A wide black fabric, a band of sorts, covered their abdomens, and they all wore loose-fitting pants, some beige, others gray. The four broad-shouldered, thick-chested males could almost pass for quadruplets, but their horns varied in lengths and thicknesses. It was the fifth male that stood out, by how much thinner he was, though he had a few inches on the other males both in height and length of his horns. Between his build and the smile in the holovid, she almost didn’t recognize the lanky young male. Zirkov.
“You’re taller than your brothers. Are you the youngest?”
“I was seventeen there. Tazzov, my oldest brother, was twenty-seven when my brother recorded this. Aragez, Keiz, and Vadiron were twenty-one, twenty-three, and twenty-five.”
“Every two years, except for you. Your mom took a break after four kids, huh?”
“Peli was born before me, but she died a week after she turned six. I was only four, too young to remember her. Nor do I have any holovids of her. My mother could not bear to see any reminders of Peli, so our father packed them away.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss. I can’t imagine what any of you went through, though having other siblings to support you probably helped.”
“My brothers and I have always been close. They left their families and off-world assignments to return home to convince me not to go to warrior training.”
“But you said they are all warriors.”
He tapped on his image in the vid, interrupting the signal until it grew fuzzy and disappeared. “My father, uncles, grandfathers, great grandfathers… Every male in my family is a warrior. When I came of age to enter formal training, I’d already mastered many of the skills required to be a warrior. But I did not have the physical strength to compete against other males, and even the few females. The warriors’ council would have rejected me immediately, without considering my skills or intelligence. Tazzov advised me to enter engineering or medicine. I remember his words quite clearly. ‘Zyan will not be served by your death, little brother.’”
“He really said that?”
As Zirkov stared at the picture, his shoulders tightened. “None of my brothers believed I would survive as a warrior, but I never considered another path.”
Maggie reached out and gripped his hand. “If this is too hard, you can stop. I shouldn’t have pushed you. I know better. When people don’t want to talk about their past, it’s usually because there’s something traumatic they’d rather not remember.”
“I agreed to tell you,” he said with a rough voice as he stood straighter. “A friend offered me a drug developed on Tunzen. For seven months, I added the powder to my morning meal. My strength increased and the next year, I qualified for warrior training. I continued taking the drug to ensure my body remained strong during training.”
Maggie wrapped her hand around one of his biceps and gently squeezed. “All this is from drugs?”
“Not quite,” he chuckled. “The drug accelerated my natural growth, giving me the strength I needed to enter and train in Izoran within the year. I took the drug until my body achieved its full potential, but there was a side effect I didn’t know about until after warrior training. My mating cock rose for someone it should not have. A mated woman.
“I pursued her, thinking she’d entered into a pleasure mating with the male, and she’d dissolve the relationship once I confronted her and told her she was my sholani. She informed me I was mistaken. I did not believe her, but I would not force her to leave him. One does not control a sholani, but a warrior doesn’t give up either. I continued to follow her until the male confronted me. That’s when I learned the female carried his youngling. He was her sholan. I still didn’t believe it. I accused him of lying, but then the female spoke with me. When I saw the pity in her eyes, I knew she told the truth.
“I still remember the shock and the confusion in that moment. I did not understand what had happened, as my mating cock had risen for her. For days, I entertained the idea I had imagined it. Then it happened again. My mating cock rose for another female, one with a newborn youngling in the park.
“I consulted doctors and discovered the First Lead of medicine banned the drug on Zyan decades before because of the damage it did to several males. It caused a false rising of the mating cock.”
“How old were you when you experienced this, um, side effect?”
“Twenty-two. A zyanthan’s mating cock doesn’t rise for other women, Magdalena. Ever. Only for his sholani.”
“Not even, when you’re… ah… home alone and need a release?”
“That is what the pleasure cock is for. The mating cock is to conceive younglings. Only one’s sholani can cause it to rise. By her mere presence.”
