Page 9 of Eat My Moon Dust
Though this was the first time Corsa had allowed me to take them away for a few days, my little girl didn’t want to go, and I couldn’t blame her. Here, she was treated like a princess. I gave nearly all of my income to Corsa, and Reha was still too young to see that. Instead, she saw the old work boots and oil stains in the ridges of my palms, the gruff manners and dry mane.
Corsa returned, our sons under each of her palms. Tahavir beamed up at me, as red as the day he was born, taking after his mother all the way down to his black and silver striped eyes. But Ladh’s dark blue gaze was round with uncertainty. My brow creased. He was usually a happy spat, though his jungle-green coloring exacerbated the troubled look he gave me. When I caught his eye, he blinked away, staring at pieces of luggage as Virhek set them at the mouth of the hall.
“You look worse for wear, Hunar,” their mother said in that honey-rich, sickly sweet tone I’d come to distrust. Her red tendrils flipped over themselves with manufactured worry. “Long days at work?”
“Yes,” I said with difficulty, distracted bymoreluggage bumping the walls on Virhek’s second trip back. “Is there–”
“Oh! Of course,” Corsa exclaimed, patting the boys’ manes. “I bottled some for you this afternoon. Go greet your baan, dears. I’ll be right back.”
Ladh’s lip quivered as his mother let go. He held his brother’s lower left hand in a tight grip, trying to hide it behind their backs.
Something was wrong.
I knelt on one knee and held out all four arms, my tendrils slipping forward in welcome, and for the first time since I’d last seen them, I gave them a real smile. Warm and loving, lighting up every subtle crease around my eyes. “Come here, sons.”
Ladh broke first, running straight into a big hug. My heart cracked with worry, then a glow of relief flooded my chest, finally able to hold my brood after being away for a satbit. Tahavir followed soon after, and I squeezed them tight between my arms, tendrils sliding over their little heads with affection I rarely showed.
I looked up at Reha, still standing amidst–
What thefuckwas up with this mountain of luggage?
I redirected my stare to Corsa and Virhek, a crease between my brows as he slipped his hand around my… my ex. “What is all this?”
“They’ll need their things, obviously,” Corsa said. She pressed a hand to her abdomen with a timid smile. Virhek emitted a low hiss of satisfaction and flashed his colors at me in warning.
My mane and my arms jolted with shock. I blinked at each of our children and reality crashed down on me. None of them, not even Reha, could look me in the face.
Corsa was having another brood?
Anger exploded in my chest like shrapnel, tearing apart my insides. But because the spats were with us, I got to my feet slowly, carefully extricating my four limbs from eight little uncertain ones as darkness settled over my brow.
“You’re kicking out our three children so that you can replace them with new ones?” I asked. Corsa’s brow creased, and she frowned prettily, holding out a dark orange vial of pheromones. I recoiled from it, forcing my interested mane to writhe behind my shoulders instead of reaching in its direction.
“Don’t be that way, Hunar. It’s how these things go, and we’ve both known that for a long time,” shesaid in a low,reasonabletone. “I’ve kept them for seventeen years. Youknowthat’s well above and beyond most other women. I could have rightfully placed them in a guardianship while you were off serving on that vessel.”
“Yeah, instead you put them in temporary boarding schools where you didn’t have to think about them except on the weekends, spoiled our daughter, and deprived our boys. What’s the difference exactly?”
Corsa’s gentle features twisted with indignation.
Ah, yes.
The age old argument. I’d known it would make this ugly, but it was already as traumatic for the spats as it could be. What had our children endured during the satbit I’d been working, knowing they were being cast off to a baan that hadn’t really been there for them?
“She needs every advantage, Hunar!” Corsa yelled, her perfectly coiffed delicacy cracking apart as her voice rose in volume and octave. “So she can catch good men to–”
“What about Ladhran and Tahavir?”
When she froze, having obviously not considered them, just as sheneverhad, I threw down the bottle of pheromones and it shattered across the ground, filling the room with her scent. Reha screamed, Tahavir started keening, and Ladh pulled his brother back behind a piece of luggage almost as tall as them. I looked at the names on the luggage. As expected, more than half of it was for our daughter. Every piece of her luggage was part of a matching designer set, while the boys’ were scuffed hand-me-downs.
“How will they learn to be good men when you leave them scraps?”
Virhek growled, putting Corsa behind him just like any obedient coil fucking should, nearing a frenzy from her smell permeating the air. I bared my teeth.
Corsa bore her furious eyes into my face and pushed Virhek aside. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, the perfect image of feminine rage, as quiet and still as the eye of a storm. “That isexactlyhow they will learn to be good men, Hunar,” she said with finality.
Her words hit me like ice water and my jaw fell slack. Neither of us had ever been ideal parents, butthis…It tore me in half. I twisted my tendrils hard to keep from keening in pain, staring down at the mess of broken glass and oil on the floor.
“That was your last dose. Don’t come here again. You understand?” Corsa said, resuming her gentle, low tone.
