Page 43 of Fated to the Dragon Warlord

I huff out an annoyed breath. “Yeah, I know you take in return for protection.”

“They asked us for it when we first arrived. Our food replicators were damaged by the wormhole. We were sick, our females dead. We were willing to do anything to survive,” Daraxsays, his words slightly slurred. “They expect our protection now.”

He lifts his head to look me in the eye. His are half-lidded and there is an easy smile on his face.

“We are the warlords because we make war, but only if that war comes to us.”

DARAX

Ienjoy cleaning my mate up this time, sucking down her juices and my seed like a Sarkarnii starved, despite her protestations, her squirming, and ultimately, her pleasure at my efforts.

“Nothing goes to waste, Kerra. You have taken the seed you need and the rest is mine, little snack.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “You probably need to tell your friends where you got to.”

“Shit!” Kerra sits bolt upright. “They’ll be terrified.”

“I doubt that.”

“Where’s my swimming costume?” She looks around us in a cursory search.

“You do not need clothing to swim with me, my Kerra.”

“Unless you want me parading around naked, I need it.”

I cast an eye into my aquium where the ruined costume floats, unlike my shed which has already been absorbed into the filters.

I consider her pink skin, shining in places from the heat, red in others from our activities. It is true my experience is limited, but this mating was even better than the last, with my skin so new and her bite on me.

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to show off my mated female.”

Kerra’s eyes widen in alarm before she narrows them again.

“If being naked was a thing, you wouldn’t bother with the pants,” she says carefully. “I call bullshit.”

“I do not know what sort of shit this might be, but plenty of Sarkarnii do not like to wear the pants. They are, however, our clan uniform, and it is enforced, unlike Dante’s clan.”

“They don’t wear pants at all?”

“He claims to dislike them, insisting they are ‘itchy,’ which is a nevving lie,” I growl. “Dalox always gave him too much because Dante reminded him of his brother, Drekkan, whom we lost when we went through the wormhole.”

“Do you have anyone left…on the other side, as it were?” Kerra asks. “My parents passed when I was in my teens, and it’s been me, on my own, since then.”

“I had a brother,” I say, teeth gritted. “But he was badly affected by the wormhole.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Darax,” Kerra says, sliding her hand into mine.

It makes the anger the rut makes so much worse rise within me. I have made many mistakes, many missteps, but I have created a good place here. A place which contains its specters well. A place I want my mate to be happy.

And happiness is not something the Sarkarnii usually crave.

I shake her free and stride out of my aquium. Her friends remain in theirs, only one of them making a slight shriek as I appear.

“What have you done with Kerra?” the one she calls Rosalie demands.

“You know exactly what he’s done with her. We heard plenty,” the one with hair like flame replies.

“Oh lord,” the smallest one says, and I wonder why she is exhorting the ancestor old greeting for a member of the High Bask.

I scent out Kerra’s clothing and bundle it up.

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