Chapter 24
Peyton
“Tahk,” I called him for the third time. My voice raw, the pain starting to penetrate. He stood still, staring at the wall the Juldo disappeared in front of.
Borv and Syn were the ones to break him out of his stunned daze. They gasped as they fell into the room. “You did not.” Borv chuckled, falling flat on his back on the floor.
“I speak truth. You did not see the one that clawed its way into the top cavern. I took him down from above you.” Syn sagged against the floor, blood and gore dripping off him and onto the ground.
“No, I caught the one from above. I had seven. Your count is still six.” Borv punched Syn in the chest, glancing up and over to me. He gaped at my neck. “Little human, what happened?”
My hand shook as it reached up. I touched wet, pulling it away I saw it was coated in blood. I weaved on my feet. Only then did Tahk snap out of it. I was up and his arms before I saw him move.
“Only four, Commander?” Syn gasped, glancing around the room. A slow grin morphed his face. “I have not lost after all.”
Borv smacked his head. “The human is injured.”
Syn looked to me and his face transformed from jovial exhaustion to surprise.
“Tahk?” I glanced up at him worriedly. He was frantically patting my neck with an end of the sheet wrapped around me.
“The Shadow Born was here.”
Borv paled. Syn looked between them. “Here?” He asked. Shocked.
Tahk nodded once. “Ready the transport. I must see Uthyf immediately. Comm Haytu. Tell him it is urgent but give no details.”
Borv nodded and left the room. Syn flew out the balcony.
“Tahk?” I was whispering now, my fear causing me to shake. My neck hurt, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The lion-man could have ripped out my throat. But somehow, for some reason, the Juldo assassin had stopped him.
“My sweet, fragile yula. I must tell you a truth.”
I nodded. “Okay.” He needed this from me. His face was grave and worried.
“I have not shared all I should have with you.” He placed me on the bed reverently. “I wished to wait, to ease you into it, but I fear after becoming so close to losing you, I cannot wait a moment longer.”
I blinked at him, trying not to stiffen or show any of the alarm I was starting to feel.
“Dahk live long lives. Far longer than your short life.” He bent and licked my neck slowly. I suspected, but it still scared me to hear it.
“How much longer?”
“Long,” he said gravely into the skin of my sore neck. He fingered the sheet at my breast and slowly loosened it. I let him. “You will age far faster than I. You will die far sooner than I.”
“How old are you?” I barely got the words out.
“Young.”
I gulped. It was sad, but I had always known I wouldn’t live past, sixty? Seventy? Eighty? Who knew. Even that was rare for some humans. But it hurt to hear it from him, hurt to know he would continue to live so long without me. I hurt for him.
“You must know, I cannot allow this.” He bent and kissed the tip of my pebbled nipple tenderly.
“What?” Allow it? He was distracting me. He licked a circle around my nipple.
“There is a part of the ceremony we have not completed. I had hoped to do it properly, but I will not leave this room until it is done.” He took my nipple into his mouth and sucked. My back bowed off the bed. He growled and ripped the sheet from the rest of my body, baring me to his sweltering gaze.
“What?” I couldn’t think. Shouldn’t we be leaving?
He ran his hand down my body. Cupping me between my legs possessively. “We will exchange blood as a true Pythen mating and become one.” He growled and circled my entrance with a folded knuckle. “You will live as long as I. You will breathe as I do. You will share your heart with me. And we will be one.”
“I-I don’t understand.”
“You will be mine always, Pehytohn. As I will be yours.” He spread my legs wide, coming down on top of me. His arm bent, holding his weight. His finger moved up, his knuckle now circling a better, far more sensitive part of me. I whined. “You must agree to this, Pehytohn.” He took his hardness into his hand, running it up and down my slick entrance. I squirmed underneath him. “I will not continue to wander this universe without you tied to me in all ways.” He licked my neck, humming. He sucked my injuries. I felt not a single ounce of pain.
“Tahk.” I gripped his shoulders tight, my hips shifting, trying to nudge him inside.
“Answer me,” he snarled into my neck.
“Tahk, I don’t understand.”
“We will exchange blood. I do not know all that may occur, Gryo has hopes it will strengthen your body. Keep you from sickness as the Dahk. But it will not harm you. I know this. I would never risk you, my lovely.”
“What will happen?”
“Your aging will slow, your heart beating in time with mine. You will live as long as I do. Our life will be tied together. If you should pass from this life, I shall too. We will meet in the great after and be united in the next life. I will not live one moment without you.”
Wow, that sounded terribly romantic, but also totally insane.
“You can’t be serious.” I squirmed as he nudged inside. “Stop that.”
Tahk grinned. “Pehytohn, I have tasted your blood at our first mating,” I remembered. It hurt. A lot. Well after it did. “Are you so disgusted by mine?”
“Tahk.” I pushed his chest. “Are you trying to tell me you’re a vampire?” I asked one-hundred percent seriously. He sounded like a bloodsucker right now.
“What is this, vahmpyeer?”
I laughed despite the totally ridiculous conversation. He was so adorable sometimes.
“A fable. A tale. A human that drinks blood.” What the hell were we talking about this for again?
“Humans do this? Good. Then you agree?”
I laughed again. His face was just so serious. Like blood-sucking was totally normal, and he had no qualms that I might drink blood when the desire struck my fancy. “No, Tahk!”
“No?” He looked heartsick. I hugged him.
“Is this that important to you?”
He nodded, licking the blood from my neck again.
“You know, you’ve been inside me,” I told him in case, ya know, he didn’t know. He grinned arrogantly. “You’ve spilled your seed inside me.” His smile grew impossibly smug. “I’ll lick it, but I’m not drinking it,” I warned him. This alien was mine. I had already accepted every part of him. The good, the bad, the strange, and the amazing. I had almost died.
Several times in the last month.
If licking a little of his blood would make him feel better, so be it. I wasn’t an idiot. It could change me. It could change me drastically. But if that hadn’t happened already, then I doubted a little blood would do more than his spunk did. And if I was already changing? Then it was too late. So, I would play the vampire for this alien man that loved me with wild abandon. I would throw myself head first into every little bit of this terrifyingly amazing life he gave me every day. I was mated to an alien. It didn’t get much crazier than that.
Tahk sagged against me, and I rubbed his back, up and down between his wings. Soothing him. “I will never let you go, my Pehytohn.” He surged inside me. I gasped and arched against him. “My Pythe.” He pulled out and surged inside again. “My yula.” Again, and again he surged inside me. “My lovely,” he purred, licking down my neck. My legs curled around him, my hands stopped soothing and started clawing.
“I won’t let you go either.” I gasped as he ground down against my pelvis. “My Pythe.” I nipped at his shoulder. He shuddered. “My Tahk, if we’re going to be together forever, you better never even think about touching another female.” I strained against him to suck the base of his neck.
“Never. I want no other but my alluring, teasing, beautiful mate,” he rumbled and thrust into me. His hand drifted behind me, grasping my ass, driving me against him. “I will slaughter any other who touch you.” They weren’t the most romantic vows, but they would do. Tahk was romantic every moment he was with me. Somehow it suited us that we fuse our lives together swearing fidelity. It was the only area in our mating I truly ever felt any doubt.
His other hand reached up and slashed a long line down his collarbone. His purple blood beading on the surface. Then he gripped my hair in his fist and gently pulled my neck to the side, so my lips were lined up with the cut.
Part of me rebelled against the act of licking blood, another more wicked part of me, the part that fell so easily in love with an alien, relished in it. Tahk purred and licked my neck. “My sweet yula. My hot, wet, mate.” His clawed hand bit into the flesh of my ass, tightening the pressure of my clit against his pelvis. I whined. “Taste your Pythen.”
I gasped, reaching up and licking the little drops of blood from his skin. My tongue tasted warmth, and spice, smoothing along scales and silky skin. He growled and sucked the open wounds on my neck, fucking me harder and harder. I fell from my body. Fell from sound and sight. Only able to feel. I felt every hard ridge of him inside me as it dragged along my sensitive insides.
“I love you.” I gasped as I exploded into a tight ball of feeling. My body shook, my legs shook, and my heart thundered against his. He roared and hammered inside me.
“My mate, mine.” He bared his fangs, snarled and clawed at the bedding beside me. My inner walls contracted around him. “Mine.” His other claws scraped against the cheeks of my ass. He roared again, trembling against me, pulsating inside me, splitting me apart in another wave of euphoria. I crashed. I split in two. I gasped and shook, clinging to him. “You have my heart, lovely. You were made for my arms. Made for me to hold and cherish. I will treasure you all our long life.”
I fell asleep smiling. Not once thinking of the dead aliens surrounding us. Tahk was here, and he was mine. And I knew he held my fear just as securely as he held the rest of me.