Page 32 of Taken to Nobu
“Would it not be a disgrace for me to stay here where Re’Okkari stayed even if I’m the reason he’s dead?”
“My Xhea, no one thinks this.”
I don’t meet his gaze. I don’t need his sympathy. I was there. I saw the hevarr upchuck its acid spit all over him. Meanwhile, I left the battle without fighting, with just a few flesh wounds.Disgrace him? Hah. I’ve already done that.
Finally, he says, “Nox. On the contrary. You honor him greatly by tending his nest.”
“Then I’ll do it. I’ll stay here.”
“Xhivey. I will inform the Okkari and the hasheba who will help ready the nest for you.”
I don't know what to say next, and shift my weight uncomfortably between my feet. “Thank you.”
“Of course, Xhea. I shall leave you.” He turns from me to the door and I feel a strange sadness at his departure, similar to the one I felt when we left Tre’Hurr. She had been real…sweet. The kind of person — being — I could like. Maybe even be friends with, if I have to stay here.No one said I’m not allowed to go back…why do I keep saying if?I clamp down on the thought because the answer makes my whole body hurt with a dull ache, like I’ve been beat up over and over and over and the bruises left behind will never fade.I don’t want to go back.
Like the ice that sweeps in from the sky, blanketing everything, this weird ice world has given me a clean slate. A fresh start.More than that. Panicky thoughts of the Okkari slip into my thoughts and I shake my head to clear them.
“Wait,” I call out just as he reaches the door. He glances over his shoulder at me. “Will you thank him for me? This is…it’s a good idea.”Time alone with only myself for company? What could possibly go wrong?
“I will do just that,” he says, lips quirking again.
The doors whoosh open in front of him and close at his back, leaving me in the dim world that was once Re’Okkari’s. Alone, for the first time insolars, I take a turn of my surroundings. I take a seat at the place where the game is still laid out without touching anything. I’m cold and huddle down in my fur suit as I try to make sense of the curved board and its many black and white pieces. Distantly, I wonder how I should get food, but I’m not left long to debate when the door to Re’Okkari’s home suddenly slices open.
Thinking for a second it might be Re’Okkari again, I’m not prepared for the sight that greets me — not Re’Okkari but Okkari himself. His black hair flicks in the wind, his brutal gaze pinned to mine. Framed by the white world behind him, he looks imposing and masculine and the golden thread in my chest is set alight.Not a thread. A fuse.
The space slicks between my legs as if daring me to stand, but before I can, he holds up both hands and takes a small step into the single room. The doors close behind him and without the strange slithery wall lights, I’m left to rely on the skylights that let in white light. It falls on his shoulders softly, making him glow.
He doesn’t speak. My fingers clench and unclench. I turn away from the game and even though my insides are screaming to fight, to lunge for him, to take him down to the furs and wrestle him out of his suit, to claim him — I still manage to blurt, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been out there. I shouldn’t have…”
He holds up his right hand again and I’m startled quiet by how quickly he gestures. He moves like a specter, coming three paces closer, presenting an occultation of the room behind him, making the whole world darker and more menacing and still, I’m not afraid — or rather, I’m terrified, but I’m not afraid ofhim. I’m afraid of me. Just like I have been this whole time.
From my low seat, my gaze licks up his body. He’s got on fur-lined pants and a pelt wrapped around his shoulders and nothing else but I can still smell the oasis that follows him everywhere, that engulfing heat. His shoulders heave and when he glances down at my face, I notice surprising signs of fatigue — his eyes are a duller purple than they were, and his hair is greasy at the roots. In fact, I think he’s wearing the same pants he was the last time I saw him fighting, though I can’t know for sure.
My jaw works, searching for something else to say, something to ask him, but he breaks the quiet abruptly, in a hard way that makes me jump. Makes my insides rearrange themselves. Makes my heart thrums with the force of an ion round against Droherium.
“I have spoken to the Rakukanna, to our Raku, to Svera. I have read the compatibility manual Svera and Lemoria are drafting, all of Svera’s notes, and every report ever drafted by your human Antikythera Council and its chieftain, Mathilda, and the human chieftain who came before her.”
“You…how? All…in just…two solars?”
He doesn’t reply. He instead edges another half step forward. I waver where I sit, but he still makes no move to touch me or grab me and throw me down onto the furs.How disappointing.
Instead he clenches his jaw. A muscle spasms in his neck. His voice is hoarse when he says, “I have come with only one request.”
“I…” I cough into my fist. My face flushes. My toes tap out an incessant pattern against the worn rug. “Whatever it is, whatever I can do, I’ll do it. I’ve made so many mistakes.”
He hisses, effectively shutting me up. “As have I. I stole you from your home world. I savaged you on the mountain. I denied you answers that I already knew and thought you would not need. I treated you just as I would have a Voraxian. The list goes on, but it is not relevant here. You have spoken to Svera, as have I. From what you know now of Voraxian culture, and from what I know of human history, all mistakes are with explanation. Everything can be understood, even if the way forward remains unclear.”
I swallow hard, wondering where he’s going with this. If this is the moment where he tells me I’m nothing. Where he reduces me to ash in a way Bo’Raku never could.
“You will tell me if this is an accurate assessment.”
I nod and, remembering the way he coaxed me into holding his gaze, I continue to maintain it. Even as his chest inflates on his inhale. Even as his pants tent over the crotch and my insides flutter painfully.
“It is accurate. But what do we do now? What’s your request?” I wet my lips as I speak. I can’t even say I do it unintentionally, but I like the reaction it elicits.
His foot jolts forward just a half a step, he growls in the back of his throat and then exhales gruffly, nostrils flaring. “I have claimed you in the ancient ways of Nobu, but I would like to claim you as a human would. I would like to…” He breaks off and clears his throat so loudly I flinch in my seat.
I lean back and when my hand comes down onto a smooth stone surface, I disrupt one of the game pieces. I wince away from that too, not willing to mess up any others and quickly stand. I hug my arms around myself, feeling so much shorter and smaller than him without a weapon. Not that that matters much. I’ve seen him fight. And it was beautiful.
