Page 66 of Alliance
The steady march of obsessive heat in his blood was driving him insane, even at a distance. What would happen when she laughed? Or gasped, or sighed, or—
“If you need to take care of that, I won’t judge,” Gil threw over their shoulder, fitting their fingers into the neat cut.
Fásach chuffed helplessly. “I might enjoy the chill, but my prick will still freeze if I pull it out.”
Gil chuckled, shrugging their tendrils as they cut a guiding line over the long arc of gills. “Fair enough. Guess we can’t all be deep water shils, can we?” They winked back at Fás. “We fuck best in the cold.”
Fásach swallowed hard then knelt at the water’s edge. He dipped his claws in, the saltwater so cold it hurt, and washed hishands. The rest of him was a lost cause until they returned to the Buoy.
“We haven’t,” he admitted with a tight throat. Gil continued to work, forging long, deep strokes of the knife beneath its liver, letting Fás vent. “We haven’t slept together.”
“Yet?” Gil asked, the notes of their voice supportive and honest. Fásach nodded, a hopeful heat bristling his ears.
“Yet,” he confirmed, one corner of his mouth ticking up. He swiveled his ear to abate the tingle and walked back over to his kill. Its size finally registered with him. The shark was more than twice his height in length. Slender, with barbs along its belly and lower pectoral fins. Long whiskers around its mouth were secreting a neon yellow substance into the snow. Toxic, no doubt.
He could have died in this fight.
A sudden boyish need to show Roz came over him.
He stood back and opened his holotab to get a snap. Gil stayed in frame but hopped to the far side of the shark, so it appeared bigger.
“Operator for scale,” they teased. “Gotta make sure yourpriyarewards you. You know, with a goodyet,heh!”
Fásach rubbed his antlers, letting a smile really spread across his face. “Yours too. Let me send this to you.”
“Thanks, she’ll flip.” Then Gil handed him the knife. “Do me a favor and haul up that fillet while I cut. Don’t wanna nick the intestines, you know?”
“Thought you gutted fish all the time.”
Gil rolled their eyes. “Right, slain dozens ofmootha saraa. I’ve never seenanyonekill one of these before, let alone with their bare hands. She must really be getting to you.”
Fásach’s smile fell. He rubbed his antlers again. They itched constantly, and in the hours since they’d emerged, they had grown nearly an inch.
“Roz is special,” he grunted, lifting the meat and spine as Gil cut away the head and organs. “And this is my first rut.”
Would be nice if it were my last one too.
If Roz was serious about giving him a chance… How long would his rut last? His tadau’s antlers had grown for decades.
Fásach panted with anxiety, arms bulging from holding up such a massive weight. How had his tadau survivedthisfor so long?
“If it’s anything like a frenzy, you must be in agony.”
“Something like that.”
“My advice, not that you asked for it, is toenjoyit. Ruts, frenzies, whatever you wanna call ‘em. They’re the dessert of life. Especially with apriyathat appreciates you.”
Fásach’s ear twitched again, the words hitting the same as Lugh’s during their sparring sessions, except that Gil’s were born of mischief and knowing rather than cold calculation. There was a warmth in the shil’s voice that dismantled Fásach’s walls brick by brick.
“I might—”love her,an echo of his mamau’s threadbare voice whispered. The unfinished sentence left him shocked, staring out at Svargapan Samudr’s bristling white surface with eyes as wide as saucers and his ears straight up at attention.
Gil snorted. “Be drowning in pheromones? Well, no shit. The Buoy’s so thick with the two of you that I’m afraid to look at the place under a blacklight. Not that I can blame you.”
“What do you mean?” Fásach asked in a stiff tone.
“Just that she’s beautiful and you’re smitten. I’ve been there. Still am. Hey, scootch that way for me. It’s time to cut the belly.”
Their conversation turned back to the shark and its meat. Which organs would a yiwren want to eat? How much did they want to take with them once the snow stopped falling? Should Gil just call them in as a rescue so they could get back to thecolony faster? No transpos in or out during a storm like this, but the skies were clearing and the winds dying down. It wouldn’t be more than a day or two. Comms might have thawed by now.
