Page 24 of Taken to Voraxia
My Rakukanna utters a curse that sounds likefawhk.I wonder about this, and also about the significance of the hair covering when my Rakukanna sticks her head out of the wet room. Starting at the sight of me standing so close, she blinks quickly, then pulls her shoulders in beneath her ears.
“Why didn’t he give her the sheet?”
“The covering for his sleeping pallet?” I say. She nods. “He does not have a translator. He would not have handed them over without understanding why she needed them.”
My female huffs. “Well she needs a cloth to tie back her hair.”
“It can be arranged,” I answer slowly.
My Rakukanna glares and this time I know she thinks that I have grown too bold. I think the same. But my Rakukanna’s weaknesses are so easy to exploit.Like my own.She will do anything for her traitors.Anything.And the harder my xora grows, the harder it is to find shame in the hot recesses of my need.
Perhaps, once my first rutting of her is complete, I will again recall the meaning of such concepts as honor and dignity, but for the moment these seem as distant to me as her ownfawhkand many of her other human words that don’t translate properly.
“What do you want?” She whispers.
Curious, I tilt my head. “What else do you have to offer?”
Her expression flattens, then hardens. Her mouth pillows disappear again into her mouth and she says in a rush, “We can kiss. During the mating, we can kiss.”
“Miari!” The sound of the weaker human comes from behind her.
My Miari — myRakukanna— does not wince. “Deal?”
I do not know what thiskissword means, but judging by my Rakukanna’s offering of it, and her own traitor’s reaction, it must be of value to her. Something she will not enjoy, but that she thinks I might.
Too curious to deny her, I nod once. “Hexa.”
Without turning, I bark over my shoulder for Krisxox to fetch the required cloth. He does so, but more slowly than I would have expected from any other of my warriors. He has always been disobedient.
I rip the cloth from his hands, marshaling my anger, and shove it forward. The Rakukanna shuts the door, there is more shuffling, and the traitor is not restrained in her disproval.
“You can’t, Miari…”
“I can. It’s done. It was going to happen anyways. We’ve already made an agreement. My willingness for your safety and Kiki’s. I’m going to keep you safe. No matter the price.”
I feel something wicked shift in my chest, a gelatinous mass that had existed from the moment we made our pact and now won’t stop growing.
“Miari, you are avirgin. Does he know that?”
“Yes, he does.”
“That brute…”
“Don’t worry about me. It’s actually…the deal we made is actually a good one. He’s going to help all the humans in exchange. He’s going to stop the Hunt.”
That gives her pause. “But the cost, Miari…”
“I’m not like you,” she says, emotion seeping into her pitch that makes that sludging mass behind my breast surge high, up into my thoughts, scrambling them. “I’m not Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim. I don’t need to get married or have a declaration of love before I give away my V-card. I don’t have expectations to have a husband and pop out babies. If I have to do any of this, then it might as well be here and now where it can do the most good for the people I care about. This isn’t a big deal.
“I’ll do it long enough that I can make him happy and get you and Kiki back into the colony. As soon as I give him an heir —ifI can give him an heir — then I’m sure he’ll get bored and his whole weird thing between us will fade and he’ll get excited for another girl and forget all about me. Maybe he’ll even be nice and let me go back with y’all to the colony.”
“But I…”
“No buts.” The door opens then and my Rakukanna reemerges. The other woman is behind her with Krisxox’s sheet fastened around her hair to conceal it from view, but for a few golden and sand-colored strands that whisper along her hairline. Neither Voraxian women or my own Rakukanna have this soft down, but the humans seem near entirely covered in it.
“Are you ready?” My female says, gaze flicking up to mine as the wet room entrance slides shut behind her.
I recognize immediately that my ridges have flared with dark light and cut it off, startling my Rakukanna.Xok. How can I lose focus so quickly around her?But I had. And I am still distracted by her words.Let her go?I knew these humans were of sub-intelligence, but I had not expected this level of ignorance in my own Xiveri mate even after Itold herwhat was required of her.The price she agreed to pay is forever.
