Page 10 of Ulune's Daughter

She feeds me until my belly’s distended to a hard balloon and I can barely keep my eyes open. Then she picks me up gently, not putting any pressure on my stomach, and carries me through into Aladdin’s Cave.

A gigantic geode, split open like a dragon’s egg, the hollow core encrusted with glittering black crystals, sits in the middle of the large room. Carved stone heads with elaborate, plaited beards and gemstone eyes, still half-encased in matrices of rough stone, perch on pedestals. Scrolls capped with gold and silver are stacked in rough crate shelves. Every surface overflows with parchment, crystals, delicate chisels and brushes. As my mind sorts through the seeming chaos, I see there are three workstations set up. Each station is dominated by a strange machine, framed in metal, the insides strung with crystals that move of their own accord, sending the softest chiming through the air. Paper falls in long rolls from the bottom of each machine, covered in tiny, colored scratchings, like a rainbow seismometer.

I’m desperate for my human form, to speak with our mate, to find out what each of these odd machines—maybe of her own design?—does. Is the huge geode something she brought back from her excavation or does it have a different significance, to have such pride of place? Who are the statues of? Ancient warlords? Princes of their people? They have the fae cast of cheek and eye, as she does, as I do, but their ears are as rounded as any human’s.

If I meow, she might speak to me anyway. She likes to talk to animals as though they can understand her. It’s a good trait to encourage, since most of the animals she’ll deal with as our matewillbe able to understand her.

But I’m so stuffed, I can barely manage more than a sleepy squeak.

“Oh, is it nap time, pretty kitty? Here.” She shuffles piles until she finds a round cushion. She creates a spot on the workbench, puts down the pillow, and lays me as gently as a baby atop it.

I can only stretch and yawn and knead the cushion until it’s the perfect shape.

She begins working, sorting things into different piles, moving some of the parchment into overhead cabinets, clustering crystals together in different combinations. If Luca was here, he’d know what she was doing, but he’d also be disturbed by the shifts in the aether. Although I can faintly feel them, they don’t trouble me enough to reduce my steady purr.

As she works, she pets me. Her fingertips smooth the fur behind my ears. She runs a gentle hand down the curve of my back and, when I roll over to give it to her, the lump of my belly. She never tries to touch my tail, for which I lick her fingers, since I hate having my tail fondled. She never touches my balls either, even when they grow heavy for her, for which I should bite her, leaving them unattended. But I’m too inebriated on her scent and touch to do anything more than squirm on the cushion and kick my back feet.

When she leans over and kisses my paws and croons about toe beans, I come. It’s a quick spurt, hidden in my thick fur, but only my true mate could draw such a response out of my Cait form.

Did I really promise my brother I’d wait? It’s impossible. I need her now. I need my fur, my skin, my hair saturated with her scent until I smell nothing else. I need her stroking fingers everywhere, over every inch of me. I need to wrap myself in her satin skin. I need to mate her a dozen times a night until she swells with our kits.

I roll over to rub the wetness on her pillow. Tomorrow, when she’s out, I’ll scent-mark every inch of her den. That will see off the freaky chicken. This is my territory now. Luca’s likely right that she’s not ready to be marked and mated; she’s too human. We’ll need to observe human customs, coaxing and wooing, instead of a straightforward claiming as it should be. But she’s our mate and our mate’s den will smell of me.

Soon, our mate will smell of me, too. I capture her wrist between my paws and bite playfully, then lick the back of her hand, grooming my scent into her.

Chapter4

A Spanner Works

KELLAN

The scream’s followed by a heavy clang.

I push out onto the loading dock, moving the doors out of my way with a quick breath of Air. Two students, looking too young to even claim the title of teenager, stand at the edge of the twenty-foot long, concrete pad, looking down. Was I really that young when I was here? I couldn’t have been.

They startle and turn toward me when they hear the heavy doors wheeze open.

Those are very guilty looks.

“Should you be here?” I ask. There’s nothing on the loading dock that indicates it is off limits to students, but I don’t see any reason for them to be here, either. There’s nothing on the dock but the big recycling containers and a little fleet of two motorized carts that I’ve seen the cleaning staff use to move garbage.

“Ar-are you a professor?” One of the students asks, a girl by the delicacy of her features, although she’s wearing the unisex uniform of college students: hoodie, baggy jeans, and heavy-soled sneakers, so it’s hard to tell.

“I’m Professor Wyndham. Who are you?”

Both the girl and the lanky boy beside her turn red.

“Aubrey,” the girl says.

“Gene,” the boy says. “Professor Wyndham, we didn’t mean to break it. It started up and shot off the edge?—”

He waves helplessly past the lip of the loading dock.

I drop my armfuls and stride to the edge. On the asphalt below, lies another cart, this one on its side. A wheel has popped off and rolled a few feet away and the front bumper’s askew.

“That doesn’t look so bad,” I tell them. “Let me get some tools and we’ll fix it.” I give them each a stern look, channeling my mother. “You’ll help. Good life lesson.”

They both smile sheepishly. “Sure.”

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