Page 44 of Eat My Moon Dust
My nostrils flared, tendrils spinning tightly over the underwear still clutched against the back of my neck.
No.
Shedidn’tknow how dangerous a coil this strong could be.
Shedidn’tknow that my instincts saw her as a bleeding fish on a line and I was the shark.
This was a perfectly on-brand Tinsley Act of Stupidly Spontaneous Selflessness. If I wasn’t currently fighting a civil war in my mind, I’d berate her from Hell to high waters.
My shoulders softened, emotions swinging like a pendulum. All that frustration didn’t mean I wasn’t grateful, though. No matter how I sliced it, Tinsley might have just saved my life. Wasting disease was a slow illness, sure, but insidious and persistent. Most men never fully recovered. Tinsley’s coil was a different beast though. Stronger than the strongest stimulants and synthetic pheromones. No doctor would have believed my transformation had happened in less than fourteen hours.
Zufi would be over the fucking moon about it.
A less jaded man might take the intensity of her coil as evidence of her extreme interest, a thought that made my tendrils perk up with excitement. But I knew better. She wasn’t attracted to me after the shit I’d said to her over the past year. She’d cooked up this plan for access to my fucking printing bay. Quid pro quo.
It didn’t explain the extra mile she’d gone for me, though. She’d defended me in front of Zufi, forgiven me for being an asshole, then offered up her most intimate taste. She’d been so nervous that her voice shook…
Because she didn’t want to makemeuncomfortable.
I felt like a creep, realizing now just how much I was getting out of this arrangement. I’d need to go all-in on thisKrismisthing she obsessed over, or else the guilt would eat me alive.
The spats’ door slid open and Reha turned the corner. She blinked at me, her coral-colored stripes blushing just a little brighter against her turquoise skin.
“Woah.”
I took a deep breath and sat up straight. Though her only memories of me were as a grey and teal husk, there was no hiding that her coloring took after mine now. My daughter hated me most of the time, and for good reason. Would she hate me for this too? I fought the urge to curl my tendril tips in apprehension as her wide eyes grazed my bright red stripes.
“Morning, sweetheart,” I said with a rasp.
Tahavir and Ladh joined soon after, rubbing their eyes. “Morning? It’s lunch, Baan. You didn’t wake us up for scho–” Ladh froze, jaw slack, Tahavir bumping into his shoulders with a sleepy grunt.
I cleared my throat when none of them said anything, then motioned three hands to the other chairs at the table. “Sit.”
For once, they did what I asked without fussing over it. Three adolescent butts slid into their seats, knowing exactly what my vibrant colors meant. Tahavir stared at my throat, brushing his fingers over his own with awe. Little white speckles had begun to form along his red throat, signifying that his colors there would come in soon. His first.
“Baan, you look–”
“Really good,” Ladh finished for him.
“Why is yoursentiso long? Your mane is way shorter.”
“I always thought your markings would be blue…”
“Shush.” Reha’s tendrils shivered, shutting down her brothers as she met my eyes, waiting. She put her only two hands on the table and laced her fingers together.
“My contract is up in a few weeks,” I said, starting with the easy part. Funny… It would have been the hard part, had I told them earlier. “The ambassador wasn’t planning to renew because I didn’t meet one of the requirements.” Tahavir’s chair creaked. “Coiling with a human.”
“But now you have,” Reha guessed. I nodded like a human, then roiled my tendrils in uneasy confirmation. “So do we meet your newpriya?”
That word made me grimace, especially coming from my daughter.
“You already have,” I croaked, motioning to my cheek with a tendril. “It’s Tinsley.”
A flash of nerves crossed my daughter’s face, but she swallowed it down. “Is that why you were so mad on the playfield?”
I sighed, glancing at the ceiling. This was absolute torture. “I was mad because you hurt someone. It was reckless and stupid.” Rubbing a hand over my face, I decided to just spit it out. “Tinsley and I aren’t really together. She’s helping me fulfill my contract, and I’m helping her with a human festival.”
“So you aren’t…?”
