16

RAST
It is night.My mate lies sprawled next to me, sated. Her mind is a tired, delighted jumble after the attention I have given her body. She has come for me many, many times, and I have the welts on my scalp to prove it. I enjoy feeling her marks, though. Her scent is all over me, and I welcome it and the calm it brings to my spirit. It does not matter that my cock aches every time she shifts on the bed, or with every little sigh she makes. My pleasure in mating has waited many, many years. It can wait a few nights more. I stroke my hand over her arm, enjoying the sight of her strangely colored flesh against my golden scales. I admire my large hand on her small frame. I know a drakoni should want a fierce mate who can challenge him and attack at a whim. A mate who needs no protecting.
But I like my soft, sweet Amy.
It does not matter that she has no battle-form. I realize that she only has the one form now that I have delved in her thoughts. There is no hint of any other form in her mind, or else I suspect she would have changed to it long ago to relieve the near-constant ache her bad leg brings her. Truly, it does not matter that she cannot hunt her own food, or that she is fragile. I am here now, and I will take care of her every need. And while I feel a little fear that my mate is so helpless, I am strong and powerful. As long as I am at her side, she needs to fear nothing.
She is mine to protect.
She is my world. My everything. My reason for living. I am still filled with awe when her gentle thoughts thread through my own, like strands of smoke. I love that even her ideas and reactions have the same innocence and sweetness of her spirit, and it is a joy to connect my mind to hers.
I am nothing like her. I am not a good male. I am not honorable or noble. I fought for the enemy and did terrible things, and I was very, very good at them.
Just thinking about my past makes the fires in my mind flare, and I feel the wildness start to churn at the back of my thoughts. I want to move toward it, to sink into the blood-filled depths of it and revel in my hatred and need to destroy. But then Amy turns over in her sleep and presses her small face to my arm, and her hand finds my stomach in her sleep.
And just like that, the fires disappear. I reach over and caress her cheek, lightly so as not to disturb her slumber. I am filled with such wonder and joy at the sight of my beautiful mate. To think I had to come to this hellish world to find her.
It is worth it. It is worth the years of madness, the fragments of my splintered mind. It is even worth my past as a Salorian general, though I hated every moment of those years.
Amy is my future, as she has said. I need to focus on her and not on Salorians.
But…I cannot help myself. As Amy sleeps, my thoughts stray towards those cruel, capricious overlords. Just thinking about them makes my gut churn.
I hate that they are here. I hate that not even this world is safe from their evil. I hate that Amy might meet one someday. I hate the worry that my mental connection with them will return in an instant despite being broken, and that if it does, she will see me as I was at my worst. She will not see her Rast, just a merciless killer with no control over his own soul.
If one Salorian is here in this world, there will be others. No matter how many enslaved drakoni they sent into battle for them, a few would ride with us, on our backs, so they could command on the field. If we were taken from battle—and it reasons that we were, given that we arrived in this world in battle-form—there will be more than one Salorian.
They need destroying. The thought of one of them meeting my sweet Amy and snatching her mind away makes the fires in my mind flare. My thoughts fill with helpless rage. I cannot sit and act as if their presence does not gnaw at my gut. I cannot pretend that my past has not scarred me.
But Amy has not asked me to pretend the past is not there. She acknowledges her own past, too, and wishes to learn from it. I need to be more like her, I think. I need to focus on the day-to-day joys. Now that she is here, there are so many pleasures to be found. There does not need to be worry about Salorians. There does not need to be fear.
There does not need to be evil in our lives. I do not have to be that bitter, soulless husk I once was. The general who had no control over his thoughts, whose claws were at the beck and call of any vile overlord.
That is not who I am anymore. I tell myself this repeatedly, until it starts to feel as if it might be the truth.
Amy sighs something in her sleep. It sounds like my name, and my cock stirs in response. It will never grow tiresome, seeing her pleasure, I think. Even now, I hunger for it. I carefully slide down on the bed so as not to wake her, and then roll her gently onto her back. Before she even wakes up, I have my mouth on her cunt, licking and tasting her again.
After all, she said I could wake her up like so. I intend on doing so on a regular basis.
If Amy is on my tongue and in my senses, perhaps the past will remain where it is and not haunt my future. I would like that very much. For now, I sink into Amy's reactions and enjoy the little moan she makes even as she curls her fingers into my hair once more.

We are easier togetherthe next day. The odd tension between us is gone, and I realize I have been lost in my own thoughts too much to realize that my Amy was worried I did not find her attractive. I pick up the feel of this in her mind, though she tries to hide it. She feels foolish for thinking so, and amid her mental blushes, I catch more threads of pleasure and how much she enjoys my tongue.
Ah, it is enough to make a male pull his mate back down into the bed and show her again how much he cares for her. I lick her until her arousal coats my tongue and she is shuddering with release, and I keep licking her until every last drop is gone and she makes little mewing noises of protest, her hips undulating against my face.
That was a fine meal, I tease her as I nip the inside of one thigh, just to watch it tremble in response. I shall have that every morning to break my fast.
“Oh,” she breathes, and her nipples grow stiff, as if the very thought pleases her. My cock aches with fierce need, but I will let Amy set the pace. When she tells me she is ready to take my cock deep into her cunt again, I will claim her. Until then…this is a pleasurable way to bond.
She's dazed and replete as she lies back on the bed, catching her breath. I continue to give her skin little nips, fascinated by how responsive she is. I could do this all day, I think. Perhaps I will.
Amy shudders and tugs at my hair ever so slightly, indicating that it is too much for her. “Should you…” she sighs, arching when I run my tongue along the soft fold of the back of her knee. “Are you going hunting today? Do you need to eat?”
Perhaps, I tell her. My stomach is not growling with hunger, and I can go for days on one good meal. But a wise hunter always takes prey when he has the ability, because it might be scarce later. Do you wish to join me?
“Join you?” She props up on her elbows, looking at me in surprise. “I can't fly.”
I can carry you in my claws. I send her a mental image. I will make sure I do not get blood on you.
She flinches. “I…think I will pass on that. I need to stay here and make clothes anyhow.”
Clothes?
“Things to wear,” she tells me, brushing her sweaty hair back from her brow. Her mental image fills in one of the questions I had—clothes are the strange skins she wears over her body. It is for modesty, it seems. I recall Salorians wearing the same, but it is a detail that has eluded my mind for some reason. She continues on, “I can't go around naked and you ripped all of my other ones.”
I rub my face against her leg, breathing in her lovely scent. Why can you not move around naked? You are cold?
“Not cold.” Amy gives me a shy smile. “I like to cover up, just in case we run into other humans. I don't want strangers to see me naked. Or anyone to see me naked, that is. Except for you.”
A mental image of her leg flashes through her mind. She finds it hideous with its scarring and the odd bend in the bone. I move to that leg and kiss it just to show her that I find it as beautiful as the rest of her. I like you naked.
She chuckles, squirming a little under my relentless onslaught of kisses. “I will need clothes,” she insists. “Especially when we're around other humans.”
Then we will not go around them,I say just as stubbornly. I have no wish to smell their kind. I rub my nose against her skin. Other than you, of course.
“Well, we'll have to be around them at some point.”
I do not challenge her on this. I am not fond of the idea of sharing my mate with anyone, human, drakoni, or otherwise. But it is clear she thinks we will find others and…what? Share hunting grounds? I do not know. I would prefer she remain mine and only mine.
Amy sighs and rolls over on her side, cradling her head on her bent arm. She gives me a sleepy smile and closes her eyes. I move up on the bed and pull her against me, tucking her body against mine so I can hold her while she sleeps. I will fly out later and hunt, I promise. For now, I have no desire to leave her side.
I settle in next to her as her breathing evens, and I am about to fall asleep myself when another mind pings at my own.
My eyes fly open.
I go still, panic and rage flaring through me as I imagine a Salorian reaching out to grab at my mind and snatch it from me once more. The wild anger that always seems to simmer at the edges of my thoughts charges forward, and I cling to my mate, burying my face in her hair and breathing deep of her scent to chase those thoughts away. No. I must stay focused for Amy. I must stay sane.
The other mind reaches out to mine once more. As it grows closer, it feels…drakoni. Strong and unhindered by the wildness that most minds have. It is a drakoni male, then, but not one lost to the madness.
He must have a mate.
And if he has a mate…it is possible these are my Amy's clan. The other drakoni males she told me about. The ones she wishes to be around, along with their human females.
Gnawing jealousy races through me as the male probes outward, looking for a response. I should send a greeting. Tell him I am Amy's mate. Tell him that she is here safe and her sister should not worry.
But then I will no longer have my Amy to myself. She will cover herself with clothes and I will have to share her with others. Her time will not be wholly mine once more.
The thought makes me crazy with jealousy. Perhaps it is still my mind adjusting to the newness of my mate. Perhaps it takes time for our fires to bond. Or perhaps I just do not wish to share. Whatever it is, the thought of acknowledging to that searcher that I have Amy? It makes me want to fling myself into the air and burn the entire human hive to the ground and then roast the ashes once more. Anger flares in my mind and it takes everything I have not to shift to battle-form and present a challenge.
But Amy is next to me, sleeping. I breathe her scent and try to calm.
She is mine. No one is taking her from me.
When I have calmed as much as I can, I send back a warning note to the male, indicating that this is my territory as a mated male and for him not to intrude. It tells him nothing other than that, and he acknowledges it with a thought and then drifts away, heading in another direction.
The wild anger stirring in my mind ebbs away.
I pull my mate close. She stirs in her sleep and then sighs once more, pulling my arm around her. She would be disappointed if she knew what I had done. I hate that I hurt her, but I cannot share her just yet. Nor can I tell her about this. I do not want her to make the sad water from her eyes and feel her unhappy thoughts.
I am not a good, kind male. I am a dark, selfish one. Perhaps in time I will be able to share my sweet mate.
But not yet.