Page 29 of Xara and the Xenobeast

No.

With brutal force, he reined himself in. She deserved better than to wake to his hands on her body, his need pressing against her. She deserved a choice. Consent. Things his creators had never given him.

He would not become like them and take what wasn’t freely offered—even if it killed him.

And it might. The ache in his body was physical pain now, desire transmuted to agony by denial. His skin felt too tight, his blood too hot, his control too fragile.

He needed to move, to run until exhaustion dulled the edge of this knife-sharp want, but her hand still held his wrist, and the pups still slept against him, trusting and vulnerable. He couldn’t leave them. Wouldn’t.

So he lay there, rigid with restraint, watching the firelight play across her face. Memorizing every curve, every shadow, every soft breath.

Dawn was hours away. Hours of exquisite torture, of wanting what he couldn’t have, wouldn’t take.

The fire popped and hissed, the only sound besides their breathing—hers soft and even, his carefully controlled.

He would endure. He would protect. He would wait, and until then, he would lie beside her, aching and wide awake, caught between the beast he was made to be and the male he was struggling to become.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Over the next few days Xara’s leg improved enough that she could explore more of the cave system without the makeshift crutch. The pups scampered ahead of her, their bioluminescent markings casting playful shadows on the rough stone walls. Their confidence had grown with her recovery, and now they treated the entire cave as their playground.

“Wait up, you little monsters,” she called, following them down a narrow passage she hadn’t investigated before.

The passage opened into a room unlike she’d seen before. Most of the rooms followed the cave’s natural formations, but this room had straight edges and flat surfaces beneath years of dust and debris. The ceiling was partially collapsed, allowing thin beams of red-tinted sunlight to filter through.

“What is this place?” she whispered, running her fingers along what appeared to be a control panel embedded in the wall.

Dot chirped excitedly and scrambled over a pile of rubble. The other two followed, their markings pulsing with excitement.

“Hey, be careful!” she called, picking her way through the debris. “There might be?—”

Her foot caught on something, sending her stumbling forward. She caught herself against the wall, dislodging years of accumulated dust and revealing another metallic surface beneath. She continued clearing the wall, revealing what looked like script—alien characters she couldn’t begin to decipher.

Dot squeaked again,uncovering something half-buried in the rubble—a flat, rectangular object about the size of a tablet.

“What did you find, little one?”

She knelt beside the pup, carefully lifting the object. It was cracked across one corner, the surface scratched and dulled with age, but as she turned it over, a faint blue light flickered along its edge.

“It still has power?”

She sat cross-legged on the floor, the tablet balanced on her knees as the pups gathered around, their markings pulsing with curiosity. She ran her fingers along the edges, feeling for any kind of button or interface.

“Come on,” she muttered. “How do I?—”

A section of the screen illuminated, displaying more of the alien script, and she sighed. What good was finding working technology if she couldn’t understand any of it?

She tapped experimentally on different areas of the screen. Most did nothing, but when her finger brushed across a small icon in the corner, the display changed. New symbols appeared, arranged in what looked like a list.

“Files,” she realized. “These must be files or entries of some kind.”

Dot climbed into her lap, her tiny claws clicking against the tablet’s surface as she accidentally stepped on the screen. A new display appeared—this one with what looked like waveforms.

“Careful,” she said, gently moving the pup aside. “You might damage?—”

The tablet emitted a burst of static, then a voice—deep, mechanical, and unintelligible. She nearly dropped the device in surprise.

“It talks!” She stared at the tablet, her heart racing. “It actually works!”

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