Page 26 of Bred By Fafnir

Soft hands find my cheeks, my gaze finally leaving the blaster. My shallow breathing slowing as Lenora steers my attention back to her. The smile she offers me is soft, but not the pitying kind. The way you look at someone you love when they’re acting silly. It is a shame our offspring will not know her. She would make a lovely dam. AlthoughI doubt she would accept the hands-off approach our people take. Perhaps that is why she would be so lovely. Perhaps she would hug our child and look at them like this when they act up.

“I could use a shower,” she offers.

I open my mouth to apologize as she pulls back her palm, poking me on the nose. The action confuses me, I growl in response, but something on her hand catches my attention. My heart thunders harder than before as I snatch it, gripping her wrist. She keeps it balled up, refusing to show me. She doesn’t know—

It can’t—

I press my thumb into the heel of her hand, applying pressure until she winces and releases. “It’s nothing, really. Just a tiny burn. I’m okay. It doesn’t hurt at all, just warm.”

Her small, delicate palm is lined with rings, slightly raised ridges, ones I recognize well. All of my people have one's unique to them, no pair of horn ridges like another. Like a fingerprint. These are mine.

This female ismine.

My mate.

A ripe, beautiful kind of pain lances through my chest, deeper than any wound I’ve ever endured. I press her burned palm to my chest, and for the first time in my life, I am terrified. Not by threat or war, by beasts or weapons made to evaporate flesh. The Xyreliths who can cause death or madness with a single touch. I am terrified of a tiny human female, sated, coated in my seed. Iknewit; I hadknown. Time and time again my hands tested my horns, finding them cold, but Iknewdeep down. Lenora was mine. Valhyr and his mate Sylvara, after hundreds of years, have found a warrior fit to receive their thanks. A mate of my own, to keep me in balance, the way Sylvara was born to balance him. Grief wells inside me as the last of the red seeps from myeyes. They sent their gift years too late, long after the war madness had taken root in my mind.

Her eyes are wide and on me now, finally having the good sense to look apprehensive as she pushes against my chest, trying to get me to let her up. I do,after a while. When I try to help her to the shower, she politely declines,too politely. Wincing and hissing with each step she takes until she shuts the wasting room door behind her. Leaving me there more filled than ever, with a gaping hole in my chest. Absently, I reach up, finding my horns hot. My jaw clenches, resisting the urge to rage and bellow at the gods.

No crueler trick has ever been played.

Lenora

My mind raced through my shower, running here and there. So many questions, concerns battering my mind.

The way he looked at me…

Oh god, the way stoney, unmovable, grumpy Fafnir looked atme. His brown eyes wider than I’d ever seen them. Clearer than perhaps I’d ever seen them. Their true shade, nearly golden instead of muddy brown. Fafnir looked at me like he’d just found everything he’d been looking for. Then he looked at me as if I’d taken it away from him. The visceral hate…anguishI’d seen in those golden eyes had robbed the air from my lungs. I all but jerked my palm from the brand on his chest, like he’d truly burned me this time. I’d darted, wellhobbled,as fast as I could into the bathroom. Slamming the shower on to cover the sudden sobs that wracked my chest. It felt… ugly, like a rejection. Even though there is nothing there to reject, this is a job.

But save for that very first day, it hasn’t felt like one.

I’d stayed in the shower for longer than was necessary. When I emerged, I felt better having gotten whatever temporary lapse in sanity under control. My feelings were hurt, but not so horribly anymore. I’m bringing a child into the world for this male, living with him, eating with him, and still trying to figure out if I can smuggle his lion lizard off planet when I leave. What we’re doing… it’sa lot. There’s bound to be confused feelings,growing pains. I feel better until I come back into the bedroom to find the bed remade with clean sheets and five pieces of lukewarm pizza piled on a plate.

And no Fafnir.

For once in my life, I don’t want pizza.

eighteen

Lenora

Much to my continued horror, Fafnir stayed gone. It’d been… I didn’t know. I lost count while I winced and paced in front of the hearth. I couldn’t tell if their god listened to their prayers and took their offerings, or if the blizzard raging outside was considered temperamental weather for this time of year. The dim sun rose, peaked, and set. All the while, I didn’t dare brave the outside… until I did.

He'd found me shortly after, terribly lost, snow blind, and nearly frozen to death. The savage sounds that left his throat shouldn’t have pleased me as much as they did. He gathered my violently shaking form in his arms, shielding me from the worst of the wind as he walked us back to the house. Yes,walked, not rode. Apparently, I was less than a handful of steps away from the front door. I was too chilled to care much about that as he all but slammed me next to the fireplace,replacing my sodden furs with dry ones while saying an assortment of no doubt creative curses in his language. My teeth chattered while I peppered him with the questions that had been plaguing my mind since last night, finally able to put substance to them. He grumped, kind of answered most of them while he ate dried meat. He’d offered to make me more pizza, I’d declined having not eaten the pizza earlier. It’s been over a week now, and he still hasn’t grasped that the human palette goes beyond that. Food replicators automatically supply any food choice with the daily needed nutrients for whatever species’ cuisine it's programmed for, so that’s not a concern, at least.

And that little segway brings us to the here and now, Fafnir glaring in his natural way at the roaring fire as if it’s committed some terrible act against him and me, more unsettled than ever. I’ve learned a lot in the past two zentics. Apparently,not so shockingly,Faf responds better to outright angry interrogation than gentle prodding. Especially when it comes to war madness. First, he was gone, ensuring the mount’s enclosure was ready for the upcoming storm. As if it hadn't already started? Also, his sudden and unexplained absence bothered me more than it should have.

But more importantly,war madnessesonset, like I suspected, is onlyduringorafterthey serve their war contract. Contracts are absolutely required for able-bodied males at the risk of “being set out to wander,” which he declined to explain rather aggressively. War madness, disturbingly, has zero medical basis. It’s an affliction of the mind, a disease, as they call it, without a cure. Long understood to have been sent to males who proved to be without valor by their war god. They go mad, suffering from extreme bouts of paranoia, rage, and uncontrollable fits of violence.

It seems very much like the way humans of Old Earth had once viewed the aids epidemic of their time. Dirty, shameful, and… scary. They’re ostracized, so suddenly by the very people with whom they once shared every meal. A people so deeply set incommunity,resource sharing, the way they rear their young, down to the way they couple, shared partners, only bedding down with one person for any extended time in the winter. Only to serve the war contract they demand of you, against all odds,liveand be received home with pride… then a few months or years later,ostracized. No aftercare, no help, no support. War madness is a newer affliction too, only affecting the two generations before Faf’s in any real numbers.

He'd clammed up when he noticed I was taking notes on my holo pager, sending the messages to myself for safekeeping. He’s ashamed. It only makes me angrier at how the winter festival ended.

They tried to kill him.

Not just the one male who challenged, but he’d brought friends.

All for what?

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