Chapter Four

Oten

Tasting my venom again sets off warnings in my head. I did not think about it the first time, because my blood was on fire. But the venom is not something I have tasted since I was a pubescent youth, not for a hundred and twenty-five years. It is not something that happens with just any sexual encounter.

It is only supposed to happen at the initiation of the Attachment.

Which cannot be. She is not even Ssedez, of my own species. She is human, and therefore denies the ethic of life and freedom to any people not her own. I cannot be forming a mating bond to her.

But my body, now that I have bitten her, literally has begun to believe she is my mate for life.

Which is impossible. And yet the venom does not lie.

Nor does my deluded urge to protect her. Or the fact that holding her at knifepoint made me sick to my stomach.

Unthinkable.

It must be this place.

The feelings cannot be true.

The Attachment will never be completed. There are other steps involved. My heart and soul have to form an intimate bond as well as my body. My self-preservation instinct has to morph into a willing-to-sacrifice-my-life-for-her commitment.

None of those things have happened. And never will. So once I get away from her, the physical bond will disintegrate.

It has to. That is the only option.

I just have to survive this urge to bite her again. And the need to fuck her senseless.

A sonic boom draws my eyes to the sky.

And there I see a horrifying, surreal sight—General Nem’s starship.

It is so large, it almost seems to float, but it must be falling near the speed of sound. I hear a gasp behind me, and she is there, watching.

Her mouth falls open on a silent, “No,” and her expression is a vulnerable sea of shock. I should be rejoicing. This is what we intended when we boarded her ship. To destroy it.

But instead, I feel sorrow.

Which I should not feel. She is the enemy.

I have no shame over what I have done. The Ten Systems’ army she takes orders from, they murdered a million Ssedez, attacking us mercilessly on our home world and in space, attempting genocide.

After fifty years of war and death, we decided to fake our extinction and vacate our home world. We settled on a new one in a different system—one unknown to our enemies.

Until now, when Nem flies her ship into our airspace.

But that ship is no more. Thanks to me and to my warriors.

A quake of land-moving force shakes the ground beneath our feet. In the sky, the bow of her ship has hit the planet surface, and the stern falls backward until the ship disappears beyond the tree-filled horizon, followed by another quake.

Then silence.

Even the jungle’s creatures are quiet.

I feel a sense of completion. Mission accomplished, without loss of Ssedez life or exposure of the location of our new world.

But it is not a sweet victory. Not like it should be. Because of her.

She hides it well in the set of her mouth, but the shimmer in her eyes gives it away. Losing her ship is a catastrophic loss. It would be for me as well.

But when her gaze shifts to me, it floods with hatred. “You.” Her voice is more gravelly than any voice scrambler could make it. “How many of my crew are dead because of you?”

I am stunned; she is more feeling than I thought. She cares more about the people who are likely dead than she does for her ship. “Many.”

“Why?” she screams. “We did nothing to you!”

My lip curls in a snarl. “You humans attempted to destroy my entire species.”

“We were traveling peacefully through universal airspace!”

“In a warship!”

“We’ve made no aggressive maneuvers since entering the system. Nothing we did gave you cause for attacking us!”

“Your existence gives me cause to destroy you.”

And yet I haven’t. I could kill her now. Torture her for what she knows. Get it over with. But the thought of doing that, of hurting her, reviles me. A war wages within me. My heart, which still aches for the loved ones I lost in the war, wants to see her blood on the ground.

My body, though, will not allow me to lift a knife to her.

It would be so easy. Without her armor, she is so vulnerably mortal. One slice of my knife and she would be dead. Unless she fought me off first. She might.

I cannot do it. I cannot hurt her.

“Why am I still alive then?” she says, her voice low.

“Because I am not ready to kill you yet.”

“Then I guess I’ll find a way to kill you first.” She retrieves the holster from her armor and fastens it around her hips. It is stocked with weapons, not all of which I recognize, and watching her buckle it is akin to a physical taunt.

Her skin is so pale; she’s obviously spent zero time in the sun and most of her life in space.

The white suit she wears, that her armor hid before, accentuates the curve of her hips and the muscle tone of her body.

The heat, the flames, reignite within me. Gone are the horrors and spoils of war, the threats of who is killing whom. She is female, and I am the male who wants to claim her.

I want to strip her and make her come. To feel her body writhe in ecstasy on my hand, on my mouth, on my cock.

I step forward to reach for her, but she grabs the blaster at her waist and warns, “Don’t even think about it.”

“That won’t—”

“I know it won’t kill you, but it will slow you down.” She tilts her head curiously. “And I wonder how many shots you can actually withstand. It’s self-charging. I’ll never run out.”

She disappears back inside the pod.

I force myself to stay where I am. If I move, I will go after her.

She comes back out with a large pack and a little touch-pad computer in her hand. “I was right.” She rattles off a foreign name of a chemical compound I do not recognize. “The air is filled with it, and its effects on life-forms are unknown.”

“How can your computer know it exists but not know its effects?”

She ignores me, goes to a plant, and rips off a piece of leaf. “Shit.” Her hand comes away bloody, like the plant cut her, but she inserts a piece of it into her computer. It makes a processing noise then beeps. “It’s in the vegetation, too.” She sucks the cut on her finger.

“Why did it cut you?”

“I don’t know.” She stands and points in the direction where her ship landed. “What I do know is where I’m going.”

“I will come, too.” My warriors will assume I died in the planet’s atmosphere. There is no rescue party coming for me. The only hope I have of getting off this rock will be from her human friends. Or any locals who might inhabit this place.

That is the reason why I have resisted killing her, I tell myself.

She does not look at me but shoves the pack at me. “Carry this. It’s survival supplies.” Then she ventures straight into the jungle.

I shoulder her pack and follow, glad at least she now seems unaffected by the burn that is once more blazing through my veins like fire. Without her begging me for it, it should be easier to ignore it and keep my hands off her.

We walk through the jungle, and I adjust to a perpetual state of arousal. My eyes fill with the sight of her ass in front of me. The well-muscled cheeks move beneath the fabric that molds to her like a second skin.

My cock aches to the point of pain, and my fangs, no matter what mind games I play with myself, will not retract. I cannot bite her again. I will not. It is a betrayal of the rituals of my kind to share venom without Attachment.

It is sacred. To give it to someone who is not one’s mate is sacrilege.

To give it to a human…

I am revolted by my inability to control myself in this place. I gave my venom to her. I have never given it to anyone. Not in all my life have I met a Ssedez who called my fangs and venom from me, and not for lack of trying.

For it to happen now with this human is a cruel curse.

We push through the overgrown jungle. Vines and vegetation crawl up the massive trees so densely I cannot see the trunks. The mist is ever present, like walking through fog. The smell of growing things is so potent in the air it floods my nostrils.

The sounds of the animals are loud in our ears. Strange and ethereal chirps and squawks, most hidden and unseen, though very few I recognize from any other planet.

The leaves in various shades of green, purple, and blue—which merely scratch my skin and leather pants—slice holes through her white suit. Boots protect our feet and ankles. But after her suit is torn, the leaves cut her skin until trails of blood drip down her legs.

It stirs the Attachment in me.

I cannot allow anything to hurt her.