Page 15 of Taken to Nobu
I follow the traces of lights until one meets another, then I follow that. I follow the patterns they make until I can’t follow them anymore, even tilting my head all the way back.
Wondering how in the comets the water stays hot even though I feel myself shriveling up inside of it, I paw at its surface, watching air bubbles bloop and blip as they rise. I can feel dirt lining the bottom of the once clean basin now and am shocked when I reach back to touch my hair to feel how soft it is.
“I should just drown you now.”
I start at the sound of the bitch’s voice but refuse to let it show. Instead, I glance dismissively over my shoulder at the female standing against the wall, a white rag to her mouth to staunch the flow of copper, nearly orange, blood. I smile a little at the sight of it.
“What happened on the mountain?” I ask, not because I care but because I want to know why she’s here.
Her ridges burn an even brighter red even though her expression doesn’t change in the slightest. “What do you mean, what happened? I wasn’t selected. The hunters who found me smelled my clothes and ran off again.Yougave me your filthy human clothes and like the pathetic savage you are, you ruined my chances!”
“You weren’t the only one carrying my scent. So why were you the only one who wasn’t chosen?”
“I…” She falters.
I grin. “So now what? You’re his slave? Or what? A whore?”
“What? The Okkari’s…if you weren’t…I would…you dare insult me!”
I try to revel in her pain but something painful breaks across my sternum.Shame again. A new friend.And something else I refuse to name. Because the thought of the Okkari’s other women makes me restless. I don’t like it.
I shake my head, ready with another insult, but say instead, “Whatever. You’re not even worth it.”
Her jaw works. It takes her a moment to speak and when she does, her voice is shrill. “You’re evil. You are the most dishonorable being I’ve ever met. I wish that the Great Ocean of the After drowns you and your whole filthy human colony!”
Yes. Good. Hate is good.I inhale, letting it fill me up like a cistern in the rain. Hate I understand. Hate is easier.Hate is all I have to my name.“You can go fuck yourself. Why are you even here anyways?”
She scoffs in disgust. “You heard what Hurr said. The Okkari organized the Mountain Runfor you.Tales of the great warrior Xhea have been spreading for solars. The one who fought khrui. Who helped the Rakukanna escape her Raku in this strange human ritual where you ugly females fight the males instead of accepting the Xiveri bonds the goddess Xana has so generously gifted you. He claimedyou. He thinks you’re his Xiveri mate and he has namedmehasheba. A disgrace.”
Her voice rises. “I have known the Okkari since we were kits. I watched him swing his first sword. I was there when the Dra’Kesh invaded, seeking to claim Nobu females. I was there when the Okkari before him fell and he rose up to take command of our warriors to fight the brutes off even though he was hardly grown. I stood beside him at that chamar and laid down the second to the last stone,” she says, colors flaring in her brow — some grey, some blue — before her gaze flicks again to me and the colors dim, becoming less vibrant.
“I even know his slave name, the name given to him as a kit.” There is implication in her tone and I hate that I feel myself rise to it. I grip the edges of the tub to remain where I am and my toes all curl.What is a slave name? What is a chamar? A Dra’Kesh invasion? These beings suffered at the hands of the Dra’Kesh too?
I bite my lips together and hate the way her expression twists. She can see me and knows that she’s gotten under my skin. “You don’t even know it, do you? You’re hisXiveri mateand you don’t even know his true name. Does he know yours?”
Yes, because he called me Kiki on the mountain and I loved hearing my name in his voice.“No. And he doesn’t need to. I don’t need to know his either. You can have him.”Over my dead fucking body.I jerk, startled at the onslaught of that particular emotion.I can’t be jealous. I don’t even know his name, the one given to him as a boy.
“I’m not his anything. Not his ziv-air-ee or whatever you want to call it. I’m not the szhay-uh of anything.” Watching her face, I grip the edges of the tub so hard my knuckles lighten.
Something in my tone — more so than my bad pronunciation — must give her pause, because she uncrosses her arms and stares at me now with unblinking eyes, slack-jawed and in a way that’s totally and utterly human. “You…you do not feel…”
“No. I don’t feel anything.”Does she hear that my voice is higher pitched than it had been?“I just want to know where my friends are and how I can get to them. But I need to escape first.”
“You would escape the Okkari?”
“Yes.” I lick my lips, the rich taste of the water reminding me of something I cannot place. “And if you help me, I’ll be gone from here forever.”
When she hesitates, I bark out a laugh and the sound is a horrible, tortured thing. I never used to laugh like this. “Whatever you’re talking about with humans fighting in a ritual — it’s a lie. We fight because we don’t want to mate with you stupid, alien fucks. We just want to be left alone in peace on our colony.
“Instead, I was transported without my consent off-colony and dragged up onto the top of a freezing cold mountain where I had to fight for my life in order to escape a male who I’d never met before wanting to hunt me down and fuck me. And that’s exactly what happened. He hunted. I fought. I lost. We fucked. And now I want to go home.”
The bitch fires back, “The Xanaxana reveals itself in pairs, demanding that they breed. It is nature’s way of helping us ensure the continuity of our species, since kits these days are so rare. Even our stoic Okkari speaks of it at length — he says that he knew you were his from the moment he saw you on the filthy little moon you humans occupy.”
That makes me start.He was there?I’d been so focused on the evil red one that I don’t remember seeing him. Knowing he’d seen me and that he’d recognized me and felt something for me then makes my stomach flutter.If the Hunt had happened, he would have come for me.
“In the tales he tells, he had every intention of participating in the Dra’Kesh version of your Hunt to claim you — to fight Bo’Raku even, for he knew that Bo’Raku wanted you too. However, he left with the Raku when Raku was unable to claim his own Xiveri mate.
“One rotation later, he brought you back to Nobu to participate in the Run on the Mountain tohonoryou. He paid more credits than the entire wealth of Voraxia’s smaller planets for the merillian you so casually bathed in after you fought khrui monsters on your human colony and yet you show him scorn. Do you have a surplus of merillian on your human colony? Do you have healers who could have done a better job?”
