Page 35 of K'Vella

"No!" My body is too hot now at just the idea of him taking it off and finding out immediately that he's better off with someone else.

Holoth smiles at me like he's gotten what he wants out of this argument. It's a giant grin that mocks how fast and how loudly I opposed him taking the blocker out.

"Want me to go ask some of the females down there if they want to come to help me build my nest for the night?" He steps closer to me, wrapping an arm around my waist and tugging meclose to him. I shake my head weakly. "Then what do you want, K'Vella?"

I bury my head in his neck, my arms wrapping around him as tight as I can hold him. "I could lose you so fast."

"You won't," he murmurs into my ear, his purr rattling between us. "I'll have Essa check the longevity of the blocker in the airlock tomorrow if it makes you feel better."

"It will," I say, not wanting to release him, even though I know we need to leave this shipyard at some point tonight. "I'm sorry."

"For worrying about losing me?" Holoth asks. "Don't apologize for that. Our species are different, and your fears are valid. I've no interest in finding a Rytharian that smells good to me. I only have an interest in four-armed females now."

I roll my eyes but can't deny that his words have a smile splitting my lips. "They'll all be waiting for us." I nudge his shoulder, but he doesn't make any move to release me, and I don't release him, either.

"They can wait," Holoth says, burying his face into my neck and taking a deep inhale that reminds me just how much I'm depriving him of.

Of course, he doesn't give me a second to think about that before he's urging me backward, back into the ship, with his arms still wrapped around me and his mouth now finding purchase on a fresh patch of pelt.

"I need you," he groans as we stumble onto the ship. We make it as far as the entertainment room before he pulls me to the ground and reminds me just how much his body responds to me.

thirteen

Holoth

"Some of my friends were hoping to stop by this morning," Helna says as she eyes my disheveled appearance and tired eyes.

I never made it to the great hall last night. In fact, K'Vella and I fell asleep in the entertainment room after I tried to distract all of her fears with how wonderfully our bodies fit one another.

I'd be lying if I didn't also do it to help ease some of my worries, too. All of K'Vella's fears are warranted. If this blocker malfunctions for any reason, and I scent a female here, there's a good chance my body will respond. I don't want it to. I won't want to follow the smell, and the entire time I'm tracking the female down, I'll think of K'Vella. But I'll still respond, and it will break us.

"I'm a happily mated male," I tell my sister, shooing her away from the food synthesizer.

Phial came back early last night. He sent a message to my comm telling me to dress K'Vella if we left the entertainmentroom so I wouldn't have to kill him if he saw her. He's probably the one to let Helna in the ship this morning, or he was so out of it worrying for Avery that he forgot to lock up.

Either way, Helna was in the kitchen when I stumbled in, and I'd much prefer to get food and go back to K'Vella.

"No, you're not," Helna snorts.

My growl is immediate and deadly, and it has my sister turning her eyes to the floor. I gnash my teeth once to make my point stick and then silence the growl.

"I'm here until Avery's heat is over, and then we're leaving," I tell Helna, not turning to look at her to see if she's sorry for what she said.

I know how Rytharian females can be. My sister is no different. She'll want me mated to one of her friends or to one of our kind so I can help to repopulate the clan. I love my sister, and I love the traditions of my culture, but I'm only ever going to be with K'Vella.

"Why?" Helna asks.

"Why what?"

"Why her? Why'd you leave? Why didn't you ever contact us?" Helna gets more and more fired up as she speaks. "No one here thought you did anything wrong. You protected a female who was being attacked. No one wanted you to leave."

"I wanted to leave," I snap, hating that this is how my sister and I are communicating after not seeing each other for so long. "I saved her, sure, but I killed three males. Three, Helna. With my hands and my teeth. I thought I was a monster. I still think I'm a monster sometimes. And you ask why her? Because she's the first one, male or female, to make me purr in so long. She brings me joy, and she brings me comfort. And you should see her nest building skills. She's a master at it."

"I didn't know her kind made nests." Helna toes the grounds. She sounds at least somewhat more understanding of my relationship with K'Vella, but she'll be easy to convince.

It'll be the other females in the tribe who see the blocker and know I haven't scent matched K'Vella. If it's not a scent match, then I'm still fair game as far as our culture dictates. It's one of the main reasons I didn't want to take K'Vella to the great hall yesterday. I'd prefer not to at all, but we'll need to get it done with. I just need to warn her before it happens.

"Still, you were missed last night," she says, giving me a pointed look that tells me she knows I had no intentions of joining them in the great hall even though I said I would. "Your friends were fun, though. I think the human, Sloane, about gave her mates a heart attack when she started dancing with some of the unmated females."

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