Page 51 of An Invocation of Monsters

She slowly relaxed, looking up at me. “But all of these customs are about what you do for your mate. What is your mate supposed to do for you?”

I stared at her. It seemed so obvious, but… she was not Mlul’dra. Perhaps human men did not provide for the women in the same way.

“You must… exist as you are. The females run the horde—the word for that is hard to say for you, but the female who runs a Mlul’dra horde is called az’hyrr’drgya.”

It was a word impossible for Elle to fully pronounce, full of growls and rumbling inflections, but I repeated it for her when she tried again and mangled it.

That was fine. She would be a good mate, especially since she did not sprout poisoned spines from her fingers and toes.

“Because so few survive, they are tended with utmost care. She is the consciousness of the people, who decides the horde’s best route to survival. We will make our own horde and you will be the az’hyrr’drgya. You will choose our migration when the time is right. You will make my nest warm and scream with joy when I fill you with my seed. And in exchange I will protect and care for you.”

Elle’s nostrils flared, and another arousing whiff of that scent hit my nostrils. I almost broke stride, my body wanting to do other things besides hold her.

She liked hearing about my seed. My power was not lost on her.

“So for Mlul’dra, the women run the show.” She smiled wryly. “I like the sound of that.”

“It is the natural order of things. Your people seem to have it backwards. Without the brain, the az’hyrr’drgya, the body of the horde slowly dies. But at times, that one is vulnerable. The males will expend their lives to ensure her survival at the cost of their own.”

“Do, um, female Mlul’dra ever scream with joy about seed? I know you said they’re angry, but… that seems to be a very important part of all this for you. How angry are we talking?”

I looked at her, very seriously. “The mating heat sends them into a blind rage. They have five sets of teeth, poisoned quills, and venom.”

Elle nodded. “Okay, that aspect makes a lot more sense now.”

“When they leave the heat, things are much better, but there is no mating. That is when the az’hyrr’drgya will make decisions for the horde, and choose where to migrate to bear their young, or which new people to conquer. We must protect them while they are in the rage, or the horde would be destroyed. It is difficult enough as it is keeping the females from killing each other, but many males also perish during the heat season. That is why we tend our mates carefully. The difference between the life and death of a horde can come down to one female.”

She was watching me curiously as I spoke. Perhaps admiring the length and sharpness of my fangs?

“I think I understand now. But humans don’t have mating rage, so it seems… I don’t know… like I wouldn’t be doing very much in exchange for everything you’re offering.”

“You would lead our horde to victory and prosperity. That is much.”

There was a look in her eyes that made me think she would not let this go. Already she was drawing a breath, ready to tell me why she should not be a cherished mate, that there was something wrong with her.

Humans had their priorities out of order. The power of the horde always came first, and then the other silly, little problems.

She did not understand yet that she must first lean on the strengths of her mate, that she felt weak because she did not have the loving, unconditional support of the horde around her yet.

She was not ‘wrong’, she was simply outcast from that strength.

I would fix that.

I loped a little faster, not giving Elle time to come up with her rebuttal. “Look, the ruins are here. What are you looking for, my curious human?”

I lowered her to the ground, but remained on alert.

The creature that had invaded the Void had been here many years, but it was a coward. It would not harm Elle while one of my kind was near to tear it limb from limb.

“I’m looking for history,” she murmured. “My mother was here once. I want to know how she came to be here, and what happened.”

“Your mother was here?”

After many years of wandering, I had only recently found this door. It was a comfortable area, a good place to find a mate and start a horde of my own.

I had not considered that Elle herself might have ties to it, although her natural scent had a particular hint of the Void to it.

“She was part of this group of weirdos,” my future mate told me. “The Wendigo Society. Actually, I shouldn’t call them weirdos anymore, since there is in fact a door to another world here, but… let’s be honest, they’re weird.”

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