Page 13 of Defiance
“Maybe,” I agreed, following her lead.
“Talk to the bogs after you’re done at the clinic. I’m sure they’ll have a solution.”
“Good idea.”
Imani and I stared at each other, clueless how to go from there.
I exhaled, staring down at our boots with a somber frown. My mind was a whirlwind. How had a lazy day in the clinic become something so absurd? This wasn’t the sort of thing that happened to regular people.
But extraordinary circumstances…
If carving out a new life on an alien moon under galactic political pressure didn’t count as extraordinary, what did? The true weight of our position in the universe rested on my shoulders as much as Olivia Atarian or Imani Renatex, didn’t it?
I cleared my throat.
“So anyway, I’m trying to predict when this fish has itsspawningseason. If they’re anything like Earth, it should be soon,” I sighed as if we’d been in the middle of a conversation. “It could be as early as tonight.”
“So you’re going to camp down by the river?”
“Yeah…” I said, still thinking hard about what I was signing up for and how far I was willing to go. “I’ll be up all night.”
Imani nodded seriously, giving my shoulder another encouraging squeeze. “We’re stretched pretty thin, but I’ll send someone your way.”
05
Novak stood in the lift with his back against the far wall as the doors opened, tail sweeping into the sensors so they’d stay that way while he gathered himself. His mind was a wreck, senses overloaded and raw. He pressed on his fangs and rolled his hips to alleviate some of the swollen ache in his helices.
A moan rumbled in his throat and he closed his eyes, resting his head against the wall as he drew venom from his glands and swallowed it down. The human woman Charlie haunted him. She’d been his ghost ever since that single glimpse he’d caught of her all those months ago. The back of a human woman with defined shoulders and a long plait of fiery silk.
Imagining her face and voice had been his singular obsession in the hour since Vindilus laid out Ferulis’s plan. Foolishly, whether because he yearned for the freedom his species had lost or because base instinct demanded it, Novak had agreed.
Make the human woman his quarry. And if she went missing, go on the Hunt.
Waiting for Imani to approach her and then relay her decision was absolute agony.
His eyes drifted open and dragged across the hallway to the eastern suite, where his sensitive ears picked up the gentle beep of a vitals deck and murmured voices. Clinical odors like rubber, lubricant, and isopropyl alcohol seeped through theseams in the door. A woman carrying young that he’d helped sire was inside. All these years being a compulsory donor and this was the first moment in which it feltreal.
The door slid open before he could decide whether or not to flee, themidwaifhe’d escorted from Huajile leaning out into the hallway. She gave him an ancient smile that was surely missing a tooth or two and waved him over.
“All is well. Come. The mamau is expecting you.”
Novak pushed off the wall with an exhale, expelling the scent of jungle and filtered air as he exited the lift. He strode forward with his usual confident sway, tail brushing the walls. He smiled at her, flicking one ear.
“I’m honored that she thought of…”
He came to a slow halt in the living room, his eyes widening in awe. Amelia Ahlberg sat in a pool of choppy water with a towel draped over her naked chest and her hair in the same bird’s nest atop her head that he remembered from the last time they’d met. But now her stomach was swollen like a melon with a taut line down the center that pulled on her navel. She smelled of sweat and… milk? It was a flavor he barely recognized since he rarely had the chance to catch it.
And just a little bit, deep in her blood, there was a hint ofhimself.
“Novak,” she said sweetly even if her eyes were ringed in dark splotches and pain pulled at their corners. “I’m so glad you came.”
Novak’s feet were rooted to the spot, frozen like a statue but a raging storm on the inside. How was that possible? Her scent had grown to include him like a sibling. Vin had always been his brother, through thick and thin, but this was the first time he’d smelledkin.His tail brushed against Dr Ahlberg’s pool with inquisitive concern.
Ezraji Zarabi came around the kitchen counter and clasped his elbow in a shilpakaari greeting, stealing Novak’s focus.
“Apologies for not greeting you earlier,” he said, tendrils still twisting with anxiety behind his shoulders. It was odd to see the reserved researcher so jittery.
Novak’s ears turned back. “No apology necessary.” He looked at the human mother-to-be again and felt honored to be a donor for the first time since his youth. “It’s a privilege to be here with you and Dr Ahlberg. Are things going well?”
