Page 5 of Taken to Voraxia
Is this a test? The Xanaxana has come alive within us. The rest should be obvious.I answer her slowly, “To take you to Illyria, Voraxia’s capital, where you will serve as Rakukanna to your people. Where you will live as Xiveri mate by my side.”
I reach for her again and again, she recoils. I frown and palm the front of my xerbu leathers. With my other hand, I reach for her hips and cup her mound. We hiss in unison.
The clothing she wears seems much too rough for her silken skin, yet I cannot force myself to withdraw. Not with a heat so unforgiving burning my palm, branding it with her scent. I have never scented anything — no female, no flower, no creature, no breeze — to melt me as that scent does here. I need to see it. Touch it. Devour it.
I lean forward to do all of those things and more, but she pushes my arm. The force of the movement throws her off center. She slips and when she tries to draw her legs away from me, I grab hold of her ankle and jerk her towards me over the hot sand.
She lets out a small scream. “Svera,” she shouts, “what is he saying? What does he want with me?”
Something is wrong. She cannot understand me. She does not wear a translator.If these beings were joining with Dra’Kesh in the breeding Hunt, then they would have been equipped with devices for communication…
An alien female wearing a strange garb covering her hair pushes through the crowd. “Let go of her,” she commandsme, her Raku.
The world is washed in red. I would have slaughtered her then and there if I were a lesser male. Instead, I temper my pitch and seethe through clenched teeth, “Youdaremake demands of me.”
“I just…I…You shouldn’t be here,” she stamers, despite her utter and complete lack of conviction.
“You will tell me who you are before I have you whipped for your insolence.”
She squeals and the female below me swats my upper arm. Startled, I glare into her gaze. There is fire there.There is also fear. My Xiveri mate fears me.Something is terribly, wretchedly wrong.
“Don’t hurt her. And Svera, don’t try to be a hero. Just let him do whatever he’s going to do. We can’t stop him…”
I grab my female’s arm, the one she used to hit me. “Do whatever it is I’m going to do?” I parrot. “Youknowwhat it is I intend. I will bind us together in the way of the Xiveri. You aremine. Just as I belong to you.”
The female shaking where she stands makes a crude translation for my Xiveri mate. As the interpreter finishes speaking, my Xiveri gasps. “I…what does he mean? What’s he going to do to me?”
Water wells in her eyes and though she has no ridges to betray her emotions, I canfeelher fear, her anxiety…her hopelessness. As if somehow in a perversion of the Xanaxana, meeting her Xiveri has become — not the singularly most important experience two beings can share, but the gravest torture.
I am breathing hard as I speak over the interpreter’s whispered words… “You will provide this female with a translator. Now,” I bark.
The interpreter shakes her head, light brown hands wringing together in a clear display of worry. “Translator? Only the Antikythera Council have translators.”
I do not know of this council and frown.A governing body within Voraxia that does not report, in some way, to me? Do they not know that I am their Raku? What lies and liberties has Bo’Raku allowed these beings?
Forcing myself to focus, I bark, “You will tell me then how it is that you come to speak the Voraxian tongue.”
“I learned.” Her replies are each dipped in an accent I have never heard before, despite that her words are, in fact, Voraxian. There is a charm in hearing her talk that I might have appreciated had her words not made me want to rip her tongue right out between her teeth.
Below me, my Rakukanna writhes, attempting to free herself from my grasp. I squeeze her wrist even harder, anger firing up my spine, and wrench her close. Close enough to feel her little body’s heat like a brand.
“You will tell me why my own Xiveri mate attempts to distance herself from me,” I say, locking eyes with my Xiveri mate as I speak to her interpreter who then whispers two words that haunt me — so foul I am sure that they will haunt me forever.
“What’s that?”
The dissonance of my twin hearts is a reckoning I cannot face and cannot fall back from. There is nowhere to retreat.
“True mates,” I whisper hollowly, “brought together by the universe, Xana, and her mate, Xaneru. He is the soul. Xanaxana is the mating power they create, that binds two Xiveri as one.”
“What is he saying, Svera?” My Xiveri mate asks of her kinswoman.
The female only shakes her head. “I don’t know.” She turns to me and reverts again to Voraxian. “I can’t translate because we don’t know what those things are. What is Zi-vair-ee? What is a Za-na? What is a Za-nay-roo? They don’t exist in our language so could you please…” She gestures wildly towards me and my Xiveri mate with her hands. “Would you please get away from her? She doesn’t consent and she isn’t part of the offering this rotation. She isn’t old enough. She’s not of age.”
Consent? Offering? Of age?I am tortured. There is nothing that a Raku does not know about his federation and yet here I am, faced by an entire species who knows nothing of our cultures, our customs, our ways — our xoking biology! — and I know nothing of theirs in return. How is this possible?
Bo’Raku…
I hiss and rip away from my mate. On my feet now, I feel enormous looking down at her small form. Punching my fingers through my hair, I try to control the rippling and ripping of the Xanaxana through my body. The realization is enormous and cutting.She does not understand the power of the Xanaxana or what it means for us.
