Page 9 of Defiance
“Hurry up,” Novak snapped.
“You know Fas’s girl, right? Roz?”
“I knowofher. Fas never introduced us.” With good reason. She was a doll with living code modeled after the human Novak had accidentally shot dead outside of the Conrad.
“Well, there’s a hiccup in her code. An echo like what we saw on thePalembreduring that media blitz. It’s like something was erased.” Vin bared his fangs.“Aftershe arrived.”
“Are you saying that the Figment wasn’t Lokurian?” Novak creased his brow. “That’s impossible.”
“Oh no, that fucker was definitely walking arround invisible.”
“So you think there’s another conspirator.”
Vin nodded like a human, his golden eyes glowing brighter with anger. “This invitation to Piaoguo is a bright red flag, Novak. Thel and Liv are off on a diplomatic mission, Roka’s rotting below the hangar, and there’s suspicion infecting the rest of us. I put the bogs on ice when I went to Huajile and it damn near cost us the colony. I can feel it in my fangs, y’know? Something’s not right, but we can’t say no to Piaoguo either.”
Novak swallowed another pool of venom. The need to relieve the pressure was uncomfortable, tinged with a bloody, iron tang. His brow creased as he pressed his plume mail tighter to his skin. “You need me to be Imani’s bodyguard?”
As soon as he said it, he knew it was wrong. Ferulis wouldn’t have forced him onto a ship without meeting his donor appointment for a gig with Imani James. Either Ferulis planned for him to donate to the colony again or…
Novak’s heart kicked into high gear and Vin looked at his chest. Advenans had an impressive scent organ, but venandi plates were primed for vibrations like heartbeats. His brother’s eyes flicked to meet his shocked stare, both men frozen in place on the side of the path.
“It was Ferulis’s idea,” Vin started slowly. “And it has to be you.”
“Why was I called here?” Novak snapped.
“Brother…” Vin’s jaw parts clenched, his stare hard and unyielding. “Did you pick up anychemiatrails last time you were here?”
The question forced Novak to take in a gulp of air out of instinct and he instantly regretted it. His lungs filled with the hustle and bustle of the colony. Hundreds of people, walking to and from on this very path. Needles, levicarts, and drones. Steaming jungle decay.
But alsoher.
His nostrils flared as he pressed his long fingers over the bridge of his muzzle to quell the intense swelling of his coleara He clamped his long mouth shut so that he couldn’t taste the air with his tongue or drop his desperate, heavy fangs. His tail whipped through the ferns, cutting them apart like a bullwhip as he grimaced and snarled.
“Oh shit,” Vin said, an unmoored, uncertain look on his scarred red face.
“Srrraç,”Novak swore between clamped teeth, both fists holding his maw shut. His plume mail rose like hackles, exposing the collar of bright orange downy feathers around hisneck and shoulders. The sound they made was like a thousand knives on a grinding block as the hard plumes shifted and sang.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Vin sighed, leaning back on the soft bark of a dark pink tree. He put his talons in his pockets and waited for Novak to rein himself in. But he couldn’t. The draw was too strong. His feet flexed in his boots to run.To hunt.“It was only a guess. Humans are so potent, y’know?”
Instead of following her trail, Novak stumbled into Vin, sinking his long claws into the bark by his brother’s head. He fisted one of Vin’s spires with his other hand, tilting his face away so that the meat of his neck was exposed. The massive venandi tensed, thick cords of red muscle bulging with the effort to stay still when Novak snarled and hot venom dripped down the front of his shirt.
“Brother–” Vin growled.
“Don’t move.” The kral hissed, nose pressed into Vin's familiar scent. His nose found the venandi’s three-beat pulse and he fixated on the rhythm. Counting, counting. He needed something else to drown out the scent burn from the mystery human. The one he’d been so careful not to breathe in too deep. He dragged in a lungful of Vin’s spice, the lingering oils of hisvirafrom when they woke up that morning. The sex on his mandibles and hands that make Novak’s helices swell. Plasma discharge from his hand cannon.
“Getting pinned is against my nature, y’dig?” Vin rumbled, forcing himself to relax even as Novak’s tail wound its way around his calf. Vin was bulkier but the kral was the lord of their guild for a reason. He could slice his brother apart like ribbons faster than the venandi could unholster his hand cannon.
“Almost,” Novak rasped, breathing in against his shirt.
Vin raised his free palm, talons extended to their full, lethal length. Novak clutched at it, smashing it against his snout.
“That’s it, big guy. Take whatever you need,” Vin murmured. “Fuck of a thing, seeing you lose your shit like that.”
“Fuck of a thing for me too,” Novak croaked with a grimace. His scent organ felt scorched and stung when he spoke. His cock throbbed in his cloaca where it was pressed tight against the seam of his pants.
“What happened?”
Novak’s ear twitched. He wanted to look down the path, to see how visible herchemiatrail was, but he couldn’t trust himself to do it. Instead he clenched his fists and managed one more step away from his brother.
