Page 33 of Taken to Heimo
I have bedded hundreds of females and not one of them ever looked at me like that. So torn. Shattered.
Ruined.
My heart — my sole heart, because I only carry hers now — slows and skips. I coulddiefrom the wound she ripped open inside of me.
I spent inside her, staring down into her eyes and she was so full of emotion. So full of flame. And then moments later, she pulled away.
Never again. She’s mine forever.
What would my sires say?
Oud.
And if I ever heard them call her that, I’d bury them in the same place I buried Vendra.
My foot shoots towards the entrance Lemoria pronounced that we spectators would not breach, but Va’Raku catches my arm. Without looking away from the viewing pane, he says softly, “Your ridges betray you, Krisxox.”
I tense and move my feet back into position and try to get ahold of myself. My ridges are bubbling with emotion, totally unlike the stuff Svera wears on her cheeks. This is dark emotion. Hateful towards her for making me feel like this, and even more hateful towards her congregation for making her feel like she does now. The most hate is reserved for me.
I should hate me for rutting her at all, but all I hate is the fact that I’ve failed her again, perhaps even more miserably.
“It is a beautiful thing, is it not?” Va’Raku says, pulling his own hands behind his back as he stares straight forward, ridges betraying not one hint of the satisfaction I can hear in his tone.
He inhales, “It is enough to make one wistful. And eager.”
I just grunt. If I say something to disrespect his Xiveri mate now, I have no doubt that he will gut me and I don’t have any desire to kill him. For one with mixed heritage, evidenced by his purple skin — a combination of the Voraxian blue and the Drakesh red — he is a decent ruler. He should likely have been made Raku — would have been had he been willing to relinquish his role as Okkari on Nobu. But he was not. It is his home.
Home.
I shuffle uneasily on my feet, unsure why the word bothers me so much and quickly reach for another hard ale from the nearby table.
Svera emerges from the birthing chamber some time later with the Va’Rakukanna and several of the xub’Lemoria. Ki’Lemoria pronounces the birth as a complete success — lauding it as a miracle that the Rakukanna did not even have the assistance of our modern technology to pass the child, but was able to do it on her own, naturally.As if that’s some great victory. Females have been birthing kits for millennia before the advent of our health technology. I ignore the fact that with his pronouncement, I exhale then a little deeper.
“And it’s a girl!” The Va’Rakukanna shouts and she leaps at her mate and he spins her around, taking her off her feet. My lonely heart catches as I glance at Svera. I wish I didn’t, but I do. She’s looking at me with pink in her cheeks and as she looks away from me quickly and engages with another xub’Lemoria, I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing I am.
I want her to greet me like this.
I’m agitated as the festivities carry on with xub’Raku of our great xoking quadrant making bold pronouncements like, “The humans have saved us!”
And other even more bold statements like, “We owe a great debt to the Rakukanna.”
And, “May this be the first of many hybrid kits that are to come.”
And finally, “The little Rakuka marks the beginning of a new solar in the history of Voraxia.”
A solar in whichoudsno longer exist. A solar in which Svera…carries…my…
Xok. What would my sires —
Uff. Thinking like this is exhausting. I haven’t slept in a solar and I’m starting to feel it. I’m falling apart.
Lemoria, at long last, emerges into the waiting chamber and the xub’Raku gathered herald her like she’s a xoking queen. She at least has the decency to hold up her hands and wave off the adulation, though she has to go and ruin her own reserved humility by touting the Rakukanna as the true hero. Something about her birthing canal being no wider than the other humans who were unable to produce living kits, yet managing to persevere with little guidance and produce a healthy baby.
Svera, meanwhile, partakes in all of it. She toasts with her pink beverage that contains no spirits while the rest of us toast in blue. I don’t toast, but drink in the corner of the lavish room. And I keep drinking as the other xub’Raku settle onto the low divans and poufs in this waiting chamber, drawing up their holo screens to communicate the news to the farthest reaches of all quadrants.
Va’Rakukanna returns to the nesting chamber with her mate in tow. She holds the kit while the Raku helps to clean and dress his Rakukanna. Va’Raku’s ridges beam with deep blue satisfaction and pleasure when he looks at the kit. As if it were his own. He even goes so far as to hold the sleeping bundle of rags when it’s offered to him and he takes it without complaint.
I look away, back to my drink, which doesn’t taste nearly as harsh as it should. So, I have another. Meanwhile, Svera and Lemoria leave the chamber and only Svera returns a few moments later. She doesn’t go back into the birthing chamber, but starts towards me.
