Page 10 of Taken to Heimo
“He won’t save you now. No one will,” the one who threatened me says, as if reading my mind. Vondah? Was that his title? I don’t remember. It sounds too much like Nondah, a name I know well.
When the others start forward again, I struggle to stay on my feet, knees shaking for an entirely different reason. I refuse to take this lying down, literally, so I’ll stand until I’m unseated and I’ll fight the best that I can.
I curl my hands into fists like Krisxox once taught me. He disparaged me then, because I couldn’t throw a punch. I still can’t. But as my spine meets the dusty wooden wall to my right, I know that I’ll have to try because I’m weaponless now that I’ve wounded him, and I’ve got nowhere left to go.
Krisxox,my mind treacherously thinks. Because I begin to pray to him when I should be praying to my god.
5
Krisxox
I. don’t. have. words.
I. can’t. xoking. think.
Fury has undone the male that I once was. In its place is nothing. It swishes through me like wine in a jug. This feeling of emptiness. Of sorrow.
And above all else, ofwant.
She gave him something that was meant for me. It wasmineand he had it! How many times have I dreamed of pressing my mouth to hers? How many females have I practiced on?
And it was all for her.
She thinks me a wanton — no better than a whore — and that’s fine. I am. But since she arrived in my care, I haven’t bedded one single female. I bring them home, hexa, and I kiss them until my jaw xoking hurts.
It isn’t a practice of Voraxians or Drakesh, but now it’s becoming popular and sometimes, when I’m weak, I imagine kissing her for the first time. I imagine her liking it. I imagine her forgetting her own xoking name and everything she knows until I’m all that’s left. In these treacherous imaginings, I want to be her whole entire xoking galaxybecause she’s already mine. She’s already ruined me.
And when I was off dreaming, Tur’Roth comes…he comes and just…presses his mouth to hers and holds her against him and I…I’m going to skin him alive and then throw the pieces down for the cavra cats to eat. And then I’m going to…then I’m going todo somethingto her.
Rage crests and peaks when I realize that I can’t even think of what I would do. WhatcouldI do? I could…I could grab her…hexa, I could grab her…then I could force her up against the wall of her bedroomand then I could steal that kiss that she so willingly gave to Tur’Roth. A kiss that wasmineby right.And then what would my xoking sires think…If I willingly tasted her…pressed mylipsagainst hers…
Desire slashes into my gut like a blade and halfway across the rope bridge, I buckle. Other Voraxians stop, refusing to move past me. I shout them all away and a youthful female carrying a basket of live endor snakes, likely ready for skinning, winds around me at a run.
The rest pause and wait and let me get a grip on the railings — and find my own bearings — and toss me strange looks as I struggle. They whisper, too. I know that they whisper about me. They think I’m falling to the insanity that claimed Bo’Raku. He might have been right in his views on Drakesh superiority, but the way he forcibly coupled with human females is disgusting. They’re humanaliens, after all, worthless…
And if he’d forced my Svera to couple with him, I swear to Xana herself I’d have yanked his eyeballs out of his skull just so he could watch me xok him with my sword.I stagger on the rope bridge again.
“Krisxox, you will let me know if you require assistance,” the Lira asks me. Head of the weavers, he carries long dried grasses in a basked on his arm. I grab the basket and yank it from his grip, tossing it onto the wooden bridge behind me. Many of the grass pieces slip through the slated grates beneath our feet. He’s a respected elder and the look of surprise and horror that fills his face at so much hard work lost nearly brings me to my knees all over again.
“Don’t speak to me,” I roar.
The marketplace comes to a standstill. I push forward. Towards her. Following the angry pressure of my xora in my training leathers.Disgusting.I should xoking cut the thing off.Xok! Xok me.I’m breathing hard with the control it takes to hold back the emotions eager to blaze like sirens in my ridges, announcing to all of Qath — to all of xoking Voraxia — thatI, Krisxox,last of a line of pure, proud Drakesh have a disgusting, wretched, pathetic human for my Xi…
Krisxox.
I look up. A sudden cold wind brushes my cheek, carrying the sound of my name. I cock my ear to the breeze and wait until I hear it again.
Krisxox.
The cold comes again, more violently now and I know by looking around at the others crowded on the rope bridge that this isn’t a natural sensation. No one else feels it. This cold is somethingotherand right now, it touches the place directly between my two hearts —the place where Svera lives.
I move forward faster than I ever have, dragging myself along the railings. I jump and land hard in the center of the bridge that leads to my home. The door is closed and the platform surrounding my home is vacant except forhim.
His hand reaches for the blaster on his belt. Pink fear sweeps his ridges but I can’t seem to channel my energy towards him. There’s something more compelling than my need to impale him pulling me directly to my door and then past it.
The darkness of my home closes in around me as the door slides shut at my back. “Krisxox…” I hear her voice out loud, coming from her bedroom down the hall, and it’s the same tone I’ve heard before.
Once before.
