TWENTY-ONE

“Sessela?” Rixavox called when he entered their dwelling.  He shook the silver ice off his furs before shrugging them off.  He slung them over the cushions in the central hub, so they would dry by the fire in time for their journey to the Rillirax that night.

He strode across the floor and went down the hallway leading to their quarters, wondering if she was sleeping.  She’d seemed tired the span before and Rixavox told himself that he would let her rest that night, to keep his hands off her so she could recover.  It would be difficult, but he would do it for her sake.  She was still healing, after all, and she needed her strength for their journey back to the Golden City.

His body relaxed when he scented her in their sleeping platform.  She was huddled under the furs and when he approached and scooted in beside her, she jolted from sleep.

“Hi,” she whispered, blinking slowly, her voice scratchy.

“Rest,” he murmured, smoothing his hand through her hair.  “I did not mean to wake you.”

But then Rixavox’s palm grazed her forehead and he frowned.  Her skin was damp and felt warmer than it usually did.

“Luxiva,” he murmured, worried, “Are you ill?”

“Luxiva,” she whispered, before moving to sit up in their furs.  “I need to know something.”

“Sessela, I think we should run another scan,” Rixavox said lowly.  The healer had said the scan from last night had been normal, that the hellixaxava hadn’t progressed.  Was this something else?  “I should summon Kirzalla.  She can—”

Sessela cut him off, drawing her knees up to her chest, clarity returning to her sleepy gaze.  “I want you to answer something for me first.”

Rixavox blew out an impatient breath, but then said, “Ask, female.”

“What’s the real reason why you don’t want to have sex?”

Rixavox went still, furrowing his brow.  What in the Fates had prompted this question?

“That is not important right now, Sessela,” Rixavox growled.  He ran his hand over her flesh, not liking how hot her skin was.  “I need to get the scanner.”

He made a move to get off the sleeping platform, but her words stopped him.  “It’s a simple question, Rixavox.  I just want to know why.  I want you to tell me.”

“It is not a simple question, female,” he growled in frustration, looking towards the hallway.  He’d left the scanner near the Coms.  “It is one of the more complicated questions you have asked of me.”

“Just tell me,” she pleaded softly.  Rixavox turned to her, kneeling on the platform.  Her eyes were glassy but he didn’t know if it was because of the fever that raged through her body or because she seemed sad.

Rixavox cupped her soft cheek in his palm.  “Sessela.  We will have this conversation when you are well.  Right now, there is something wrong.  I feel it.”

He turned from her and strode out of the quarters quickly, heading for the Coms in the central hub.  He prayed to the Fates that Privanax was available.

Sessela was quick on his heels.  He almost reached the scanner lying on the silver platform where the Coms were situated, but she grabbed his arm before he could reach it.

Rixavox whirled to face her, panic surging in his chest when he saw that her face looked leeched of color and that she was sweating, despite the chill in the air from the ice storm.

“Luxiva…” he said, reaching out to steady her when she wobbled.  “Vrax!”

Quickly, he put in an emergency summons into the Coms for Kirzalla, Velraxa’s prime healer.  His female needed immediate attention.  Privanax could wait.

Nix, nix, nix.  It didn’t make sense.  The Rillirax was supposed to help heal her, not make her worse.

Fear imbedded itself in his chest like a dagger.  What if their treatments did not work on her?  What would happen to his female?

“Rixavox, please listen to me,” she said softly.

“You are worrying me, female,” he told her softly.  “We will talk as much as you want once Kirzalla has attended to you.”

But she was already shaking her head.

And her next words made him freeze.

“I’m falling in love with you, Rixavox,” she admitted softly.  “I wanted you to know that, regardless of what happens.”

“Female…”

“But you’ve been lying to me since I met you.  And I just want you to say it, just once, so that I can understand.”

There was complete silence as Rixavox digested her words.  Emotions pummeled him from all sides until he felt both beaten down and lifted up by them.  It was an indescribable feeling.

But one thing was clear to him.

She knew.

It was not the situation in which he’d wanted to tell her.  He’d thought of a million different ways to tell her, but this had not been one of them.

Even as dazed and sickly as she looked, his luxiva was not going to back down from this talk.  He could see the stubbornness shining clearly in her eyes.  Even though it frustrated him, seeing her this way, he admired her persistence.

He admired much about his female.

And at any other moment, where she told him she was falling in love with him, he would be the proudest Luxirian to have ever lived, blessed with the love of an amazing female.  At that moment, however, his joy was dulled by his concern, his worry.

Still, he felt the words tumbling from him, all the words that he had collected for his female that he couldn’t voice before right then.

“You are my luxiva, Sessela,” he told her, grasping her waist and holding her weight.  “My fated mate, the one female that the Fates have gifted me for the rest of my life span in this world.  I have known since I first saw you, since you first awakened the dormant Instinct within me.  There will never be another for me.  It is you.  You.  It will always be.”  He pressed her closer.  “If anything happened to you, luxiva, I would not know how to process it, but if you chose to leave me, I would accept your decision.”  He couldn’t stop the words now, even if he tried.  “But if you choose to stay, with me, on Luxiria, to build your life here and live out the rest of your life span with me at your side, I will make you happy.”  Tears started to glimmer in her eyes and Rixavox rushed to finish, worried that he would not be able to tell her everything that he wanted her to know before she stopped him.  “I want to build a family unit with you.  I want to sire offspring with you.  I want you here with me.”

Tears began dripping from her eyes and Rixavox’s heart sank in his chest.  Tears meant humans were sad, didn’t they?

“Luxiva…” he murmured, wiping away the strange liquid off her warm cheek.

“I c-can’t have children,” she said, more tears replacing the ones he’d smoothed away.  “The chemo…and the radiation…I can’t—I can’t give you children, Rixavox.  And Levrix said that they’re important, that—”

“Vrax what Levrix says,” he growled softly, crouching so that they were at eye level, his heart thundering in his chest.  “No offspring then.  It does not matter.  What matters is you, tev?”  More tears fell and he growled at the sight of them, hating to see them.  This was too upsetting for her.  He worried it would be too much.  He brought her to his chest, embracing her, feeling her body against his.  “Enough now.  We will talk of this once you have been healed.”

“And what if it doesn’t work?” she asked softly, sniffing.  Her voice seemed so small, so weak, and it only worried him more.  “What happens then?”

“I will be there with you, luxiva,” he murmured down to her.  “Have faith that the Fates will see you through.  You were led here for a reason.”

“That reason was you,” she murmured quietly, looking up at him.

Rixavox’s chest ached and he wondered what was taking Kirzalla so long.  He didn’t like the way she sounded resigned, like she was already expecting the worst outcome.  How sick was she?  Had she been hiding this from him?

“Be an idealist, female,” he said quietly.  “Remember?”

She huffed out a weak laugh but then flinched.  She was so pale that it made Rixavox’s stomach clench.

“Rixavox,” she murmured, her eyebrows furrowing.

“Tev, luxiva?”

“I…I don’t feel so well.  I-It started getting worse after you left.  I’m not sure if…”

But she never finished because her eyes rolled back into her head.  Rixavox roared in alarm and caught her just as she fell, unconscious, in his arms.

After what seemed like rotations, he heard a hovercraft land on the terrace outside his dwelling.

He scooped up his female gently and carried her over to the cushions lining the central hub fire pit, his heart as heavy as stone in his chest, but pumping like howling wind.  Just then, Kirzalla shouldered her way inside the dwelling.

Kirzalla was an older female, one of the few females that had chosen the healing profession.  She was as straightforward and gruff as Privanax was, so it made sense that it was rumored they’d once been involved as pleasure partners.

More importantly, Rixavox trusted her and she was an accomplished healer.

“Step away,” she commanded when she saw Sessela.  Immediately, she dropped down near his female and began unpacking her scanners and equipment.  Swiftly, she made a cut on Sessela’s arm that had him growling when he saw her red blood drip.  Kirzalla shot him a look.  “Signal Privanax on the Coms.  I cannot work with a warrior’s Instinct looming.”

Rixavox knew she was right and strode to the Coms to signal Privanax, channeling his warrior training.  Panic and fear would accomplish nothing.  He needed to be calm.  For Sessela.

The healer’s face appeared on screen.  He scowled when he saw Kirzalla but then his gaze focused on Rixavox’s female and he demanded, “What happened?”

“She was sick when I returned back to our dwelling,” Rixavox explained in a low tone.  “Her skin was hot and damp and pale.  She blacked out just before Kirzalla entered but she said that the sickness got worse suddenly before she did.”  Rixavox’s hands clenched at his side, guilt overwhelming his senses.  “She seemed fine earlier, when I left for the command center.  I should have stayed.  I should have made sure.”

“The scans you sent last span showed nothing progressing with the hellixaxava,” Privanax insisted.

“It is not hellixaxava that is causing this,” Kirzalla suddenly chimed in, looking down at her scanner, which was analyzing the blood sample she’d taken.  “I do not know what this is.”

Rixavox ran a hand over his horn and he paced the floor in front of the Coms, a restless energy building.  He strode over to Sessela, not caring if Kirzalla wanted him out of the way.  He needed to be near his mate.

“Let me see the scans, female,” Privanax barked.

Kirzalla’s scowl was more frigid than the ice storm outside but she quickened her pace towards the Coms and uploaded the scans.

As Kirzalla looked over them a second time, her breath hitched and she said, “Wait, I know this sequence.”

“What is it?” Rixavox demanded, smoothing a hand over Sessela’s forehead.

“It is the sequence of anglavix.  I saw it in a female fifteen rotations ago who had misused it for fertility,” Kirzalla said, realization dawning in her gaze.  “It is dangerous if not properly administered.  A poison.”

Dread filled his gut.  Poison?

“How would she have access to anglavix?” Privanax questioned.

“I do not know,” Rixavox started, shaking his head, racking his mind.  He’d always prided himself on keeping a calm, level head.  And now, when it came to his luxiva, he was failing her.  “I—”

His eyes caught on a familiar flask, wedged between the cushions of the fire pit.  When he swiped it up and sniffed the contents, he knew.

“Kirzalla,” he called, unfathomable rage filling his veins.  He’d never known hate as he did in that moment.  When the healer turned to look at him, he tossed her the flask.  “It was Levrix.  She must have been dosing her with it.”

Kirzalla sniffed the contents and jerked her head in a nod.  “Anglavix.”

“How is it cured?” Rixavox demanded, stuffing his anger deep inside.  Now was not the time.  He needed to see his luxiva better first.  She was his first and only priority.

He didn’t like the shared glances that Kirzalla and Privanax shot each other through the Coms.

“Rebax?” he demanded.

“It is almost impossible to determine the concentration and the dose Levrix has been using,” Kirzalla said, eyeing him, as if afraid at any moment, he might channel his animalistic Instinct.

“What does that mean?” he asked through a clenched jaw.

“It means it is risky to administer the correct cure, even for a Luxirian.  Much riskier than curing something simple like hellixaxava,” Privanax finished for her.  “It could kill her if it is not precise.  Not to mention that she’s human.  We do not know how she would react since we cannot run tests first.”

“What are you saying?” Rixavox asked.  “That we do nothing?”

“No,” Privanax said.  “There is one other way that should be safer for her, but only the Fates will determine whether she lives or passes into the blackworld.  At least we know a human has survived it before.”

“Tell me,” he growled.  “I will do anything.”

“He means a blood bond,” Kirzalla said, facing him.

“Rebax?” Rixavox asked, dumbstruck.  A blood bond was only performed during a mating ceremony, one of the most primal and erotic experiences Luxirians could share with their mates as they bonded their life forces together.  It would not only announce their matehood for all of Luxiria, but it would tie them together, with the magic of the Fates, for the rest of their spans.  And the blood bond…even Rixavox didn’t know what that would feel like, to have another presence in his mind, to feel his Sessela, always.  “I will not mate her while she is in this state!”

For a blood bond could not be accomplished unless it happened during mating.

“The Seeing will take her pain away.  It will bring her back from this, return her health for a brief period of time,” Kirzalla argued.  “Your blood is strong.  Coupled with the power of the Fates’ blessing once the mating has been completed…I believe it will be enough, not only to cure the anglavix, but also her hellixaxava.  The magic is strong there.  It is strong within you both.”

He knew what a blood bond meant.  Their lives would always be intertwined.  If one of them died, the other would as well, unable to live another span without the other.  If Sessela did not survive the poison that Levrix had given her, if she did not survive the mating ceremony, Rixavox would enter the blackworld with her, perhaps that very night.

But he would try anything to save her.  He would gladly give his life, if there was a small chance that she would survive.  Because without her, he did not wish to be a part of that world any longer.

“Tev,” Rixavox said, inclining his head, standing.  Carefully, he scooped his luxiva up in his arms.  “We will journey to the Rillirax immediately.”

The mating ceremony was always performed in a sacred place.  Usually they were performed on the plains of the Ravrax’tor, where the Fates’ presence was the strongest.  But there was no time for that now.

“Ambassador,” Privanax called from the Coms.  Rixavox looked back at him from the doorway, impatient.  “Your Instinct will tell you when enough blood had been given and taken.  To be safe, give and take a little more.”

Rixavox inclined his head, mood grim.  Sessela’s life was dependent on the blood bond.  He would do everything he could to make sure it worked.

Kirzalla packed up furs and bundled them into Rixavox’s hovercraft outside, for which he was grateful.  The ice storm outside stung his skin and he held Sessela more tightly, trying to shield her.

“Do you think this will work?” he asked Kirzalla softly.

“I believe it is the best option you both have,” she answered honestly.  She inclined her head and stepped away.  “I will see that the Prime Leader is alerted to Levrix’s actions.  Her crime is severe.  She will not go unpunished.”

But at that moment, Rixavox found he couldn’t think about justice.  He only thought about his female, lying unconscious in his arms, who had told him just that night that she was falling in love with him and who had cried when she’d told him she couldn’t give him offspring.

So, as he carried her onto the hovercraft and activated the cold shield, he sent a prayer around to the Fates and he repeated it over and over again the entire journey to the Rillirax.