Page 57 of Alliance
“The bedroll?” I asked, getting to my feet with an arched brow. “What do I need the bedroll for?”
“To– oh.” We stared at each other wide-eyed. Fásach swallowed. “Well, you can sit on the bedroll at least, while you charge with the vital pods.”
As he turned towards the shelves, I couldn’t help but call back out, “I want to try sleeping, just… not tonight.” Denying myself something that I wanted felt surprisingly good. It reminded me that I was in control of myself. I smiled. “Maybe when we get to the colony, you can teach me how to sleep in a bed?”
Fásach’s hackles rose, his ears straight up. He bared his teeth and rubbed his forehead, staring hard at a ration label. “Yeah, okay. When we get to the colony, we can… we can do that.”
That’s when the hatch in the floor clanked open.
18
All higher thought fled Fásach’s brain as his instincts stepped into the spotlight and took a massive fucking bow before diving into bloody thoughts of ripping whatever was emerging from the sea to shreds. He jumped in front of Roz, his fur standing on end everywhere, and tensed his claws so they’d extend to their full length from within the pads of his fingers. Then he peeled his lips away from his jaws, exposing gums and the full snapping power of his teeth as a writhing mass of tendrils sought out the edges of the pool.
Large red eyes set in a steel-blue face emerged from the water, their golden striped pupils fixated on the room as they adjusted to being above water. Calloused mitts for hands grasped the edge, and a shilpakaari with two arms hoisted her elbows up onto the ledge, cocking one shoulder with a grin.
“Well, you’re definitely not Idesh. Hand me a towel, traveler, it’s fuckin’ freezing down there.”
But Fásach was seeing red. His nose lifted away from his fangs at the gesture. The shilpakaar’s voice was deep and rough, and their build wasn’t nearly as narrow as most females of the species. When a longsenticotylussnaked over their shoulder, healthy and glowing with white stripes, he knew that regardless of having only two arms instead of four, they were speaking to a simult.
Simults were intersex, sharing a range of traits from across the shilpakaari biological spectrum. They were the pinnacle ofsociety, embodying the redundant genetic traits that had pulled their species out of the ocean hundreds of thousands of years ago. Some were female-presenting with pheromonal glands and four arms while others had a male’s enlarged spleen and triple set of fanged dental ridges but nosentior phallus. Whatever their presentation, no two simults were alike.
Which made the one grinning at him an unpredictable opponent.
No way they were getting near his fuckingthuaisand pups.
“Um, here,” Roz said in a small voice. She squeezed Fásach’s shoulder and brushed down his hackles with a soothing hum as she leaned around him with a towel in her hand. He clutched her outstretched wrist, freezing her in place.
“Don’t,” he ground out.
But she continued to pet him until the snarl in his throat was at a low idle rather than a revving engine. She hummed for him in his ear, her breath tickling his fur, distracting him with her calming harmony, then pushed past his hand. “It’s okay, Fás.”
The shilpakaar hoisted themself up the ledge and took the towel with a long look up and down Roz’s figure. Their tendrils curled with interest and Fásach snarled again.
“Thanks,na’syali.Could you tell your buck that I’m happily coiled?” they teased stiffly, obviously using the shilpakaari honorific “older brother’s honored one” to soothe Fásach’s temper. A long drip of saliva fell from his fang as he pulled Roz back slowly with a firm grip.
“You must be the station operator,” Roz said, trying to break the ice. She grabbed Fásach’s hackles behind his back and pulled with a sharp warning.
Yeah, yeah, his brainknewwho they were talking to, but the rest of him—his symphony, his cock, his rut fever—it all told him to fight for territory. Little discordant notes pulled theoperator’s tone off key here and there. Not lies, but suspicion. Concern.
The operator knew what a human looked like. Everyone did.
“That’s right.” The simult stood to their full height, not actually much taller than Roz, and patted down their neoprene suit. “I’m Gilladh Sharef, Pahadthi 03’s chief operator. Gil for short, prefer they. Good to meet you both.”
“You too,” Roz said, twisting Fásach’s pelt again. His shoulder twitched from the sting as he retracted his claws, one by one, licking his gums back into place.
Fine.Roz wanted to play nice? He wouldtryto play nice.
“Fásach,” he said, practically gurgling gravel.
Gilladh nodded slowly. “Right, and your humanpriya?”
“Roz,” she said. “Sorry, Fás is protective.”
The operator grinned. “That’s alright. Not too many yiwren on Yaspur, but we’re practically the same kettle of fish.” They winked. “We both go feral over our mates. You two sheltering from the blizzard?”
Fásach chuffed, finally getting his teeth back in his mouth. He gave Roz a thin smile, and she gently brushed his pelt where she’d been pulling. Having her hands in his fur nearly made him chirp and roll his eyes back.
And Gilladh wasn’t doing a bad job either. Of course a shil would know how to diffuse a territorial wreck like him, referring to Roz as hispriya.Their species was perhaps the most competitive about their matehood practices. More so than the yiwren, no question. The operator understood the boundaries of his instincts.
