Page 29 of Argurma Monster

A bellow of rage filled her ears, followed by another as the darkness eclipsed the world—and then there was nothing.

Awareness returned slowly. First with the sensation of something warm pressed close around her, and then scent. She didn’t smell the blood and filth that had last filled her nose. She didn’t even smell the dust and debris that she had smelled every waking minute since crash landing on the planet. There was a stale quality to the air that she breathed that made her think it was recycled, but over that there was a crispness of some sort of spice and fruit that she didn’t recognize.

Though it took more effort than she liked, Beverly’s eyes slowly cracked open and then squinted against the overhead light shining down on her face. Her brow furrowed slightly. It looked familiar.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re awake,” a woman’s voice whispered, and Beverly turned her head and wanted to cry when she saw Meg’s familiar smile. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see it, especially since I thought you had died on Earth. I think I would be quite mad if you died now.”

Her eyebrows flew up at the sight of the woman cautiously hovering over her between the two Argurmas. Although Zoreth and Talech were seated in chairs pulled up beside her bed, both males had collapsed forward to pillow their heads on their arms draped on the side of the mattress as they slept. They lay so close to each other that it was a marvel that Meg couldn’t find any room at all between them, especially since their vibrissae twined together. It made for an adorable picture and Meg gave them two males a fascinated look.

Beverly frowned. “What happened?”

“I’m not sure on all the details, but Kaylar intercepted the beacon. Thankfully we were still pretty close to this area, so it didn’t take us long to get to you because you were in rough shape. They had cut the parasite from you before it could begin to burrow, but there was still a lot of damage from imbedded segments of legs and... well, you don’t want to know,” she finished with a wince.

“No, I’m certain I can live without that memory,” Beverly muttered, which earned her a sympathetic smile. “What about them? And Sieylana? She helped us.”

“They mostly suffered from mild bite wounds and cuts. Some where from fighting their way out against the infected to get to the receiving area of the spaceport with you in tow. Others are from their previous battle that hadn’t been treated. Kaze teeth are close to those of an Argurma, but thankfully the ‘zombies’—as Zoreth called them—don’t transmit the parasite through bites. He explained it once we got them patched up, but they otherwise haven’t moved from your side while the med unit has been working on you. As for your new friend. She is resting. At her insistence, we did thorough scans for all of you, and you all came up clean for the parasites.”

Beverly glanced at her mates. Neither male showed any sign of being bitten or even cut. Beverly ran her fingers over her face and neck experimentally. She didn’t even feel a scar from what Meg had described. “The med unit was able to do all of that?”

Meg grinned knowingly. “Pretty neat, huh?”

Hope rose, tightening Beverly’s chest. “If it can reverse what was done to Talech, then we have to tell him!”

Meg’s smile dropped and she shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I suggested it to Kaylar when he was being mended, but apparently Argurma tech fuses too quickly to their internal system grafts... or some such technological stuff that went rightover my head. The gist is that it would have been possible if the implants were only a few days old, but he’s had them for a really long time.”

Beverly closed her eyes in disappointment. It had been too long. He had them for weeks before he even went under stasis.

“How do you feel?” Meg murmured, her hand swiping over Beverly’s brow.

“Like I was run over by a bus,” she groaned. Her brow furrowed. “A bus is—”

“I know what a bus is,” Meg chuckled. “They may not have been operational by my time, but I’ve seen more than a few abandoned buses. That good, huh?”

“Could be better,” Beverly muttered. “But at least we’re all alive, and that’s the important part. I don’t know what I would’ve done if anything happened to either one of them.”

The other woman nodded and cast a glance toward the sleeping males. “They are quite devoted. It would make it hard choosing a mate between them, I imagine, if at all.”

Beverly nodded miserably. “And damned if I don’t love both of them.”

How would she ever choose and risk breaking the heart of the other?

Chapter 25

Zoreth surveyed the room that he would be sharing with Talech and Beverly. Meg had refused to allow their female to leave the med unit at all until she was convinced that Beverly had fully recovered. Although Zoreth processed the reasoning behind it, the separation had been difficult. Not only did he struggle to sleep but he found it difficult to maintain any sort of focus or calm. Emotions that he once swore he suffered little affliction from rose to the fore, drowning him in their chaos. If not for Talech, he would have been lost. He found some measure of peace with the male, their vibrissae tangling as they instinctively sought comfort from each other as they suffered from the absence of their female.

It was not made any easier that their request to share a cabin had been met with incredulity from Kaylar, but it had been granted. His systems screamed with the wrongness of it all as he lay night after night with Talech without their mate safely wedged between them. It increased the stress on his systems knowing that Talech suffered on a deeper level. Every evening and every morning when they were locked out of the med unit, Zoreth was vigilant in his attempts to soothe Talech to keep the male from losing his grip on sanity on destroying the ship when he was refused access to Beverly.

Seeing Talech in such pain plagued his systems, enough so that Zoreth came close to attempting to wrestle control of the ship from Kaylar, just so that he could unlock the med unit to give the male some relief. It was only the knowledge that Beverly required the time to heal completely within the med unit’s operating bed, and that uninterrupted sleep was a necessary part of that healing, that kept him from acting.

And now finally Beverly was being released.

He processed that relief was flooding his systems at finally being reunited with her, but it was also making him edgy. He desired perfection for their coming night together. He was forced to acknowledge that part of that was due to Kaylar’s announcement that they would soon be joining the house fleet. Things would change then, and it was not knowing precisely what impact that change would have that made him anxious. The biggest of which was whether the mother-house would separate him from his small family. He was unable to calculate whether they would even allow Talech to live without the male at least tethered to a mate to assure some degree of stability. For the first time since meeting Beverly, he felt their time together winding down and it alarmed him.

He had erroneously assumed that he would have more time. Of course, he had also made the mistake of assuming that it was all a simple matter of proving himself a pleasing mate and waiting for Beverly to make her choice. And he had been certain that she would pick him. He had grievously miscalculated, unable to comprehend at the time how much she obviously loved the other male. She had hidden it well—or perhaps had not been aware of the emotions that she was experiencing—but the signs had been evident to anyone who was observant. If he had clearly processed the situation, he would have found a way to make Talech receptive to his presence much sooner.

It was rare for a female to accept more than one male. It was done only among houseless females who desired the additional protection of more males, or in cases where males had to pool their resources to care for a mate and offspring. Because of that it was discouraged as a mark of poverty and undesirability among both males and females alike for somewhat different reasons. Beverly was not Argurma, but he could not guarantee that no one within his mother-house would casually remark upon such a mating where she might hear it.

His jaw clenched. Anyone who spoke unwisely would have to deal with him. He would not have anyone bringing his mate pain and embarrassment... or Talech for that matter.

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