Page 32 of Venomous Heart
Black eyes set on her with an uncanny intelligence, and a long-clawed finger extended toward her. With fear crystallizing her frozen veins, Ava stood still as a claw brushed her long hair away from her ear, then withdrew.
A trill of mandibles clicking in fast succession came, echoed behind them by the male soldiers.
“You are not human. You are a hybrid.”
The words were spoken like a death knell and Ava felt more than she saw Arlen by her side. From the corner of her eye, she saw him hand the newborn to a woman standing close by. Arlen’s face had gone from expressionless to feral, and she could see his heavy musculature rippling with anticipation.
He wasn’t going to let Prime Councilor Aav take her. Tearing her eyes away from the Mantrilla, Ava looked at him, the Eok who had kissed her, who had saved her. He was going to die for defying Prime Councilor Aav. And it would be such a waste.
He knew. This is why he told me to stay inside.
Nothing could save her now. She wasn’t going to drag down Arlen with her.
“Yes, I am.” Ava nodded, her voice strangely calm even as she admitted her own death sentence. “I am a human-Avonie hybrid.”
Prime Councilor Aav inched closer, her mandibles clicking in a frenzied, excited rhythm. She stared at Ava with an open, ravenous curiosity that made Ava’s blood curdle in her veins, her brain stop working.
Because she knew what that meant. It meant she wasn’t going to be protected by human status. She wasn’t going to be protected at all.
She had just become a science experiment again.
* * *
Arlen
What have you done?
Fear raged like molten lava inside his body, igniting his instincts, but Arlen fought the small voices in the back of his head that pushed him to fight the Mantrilla, slash away at the vulnerable spots in her chitin armor. Her cold, black eyes, that junction beneath her abdomen, all those places where he knew she was vulnerable to a surprise attack.
But he didn’t move.
Arlen willed his talons to stay inside his fingers, his war-cry to stay inside his chest. Prime Councilor Aav was a formidable adversary despite her years of soft work in the Ring. A Mantrilla as old as she always was the most vicious, the one who knew how or where to strike where it hurt the most.
“Ava is protected under Eok law.” The writhing inside his veins amplified as Prime Councilor straightened, looking at him head on, her stance over Ava like a claim. Mating Venom rushed Arlen’s mouth, luring him into the frenzied bloodlust of his kind, but he knew he had to resist. Attacking the Prime Councilor out in the open would only lead to a civil war; a civil war with a trillion casualties sprinkled across the innumerable worlds of the Ring.
Even that wouldn’t secure Ava’s safety. There was only one way to make sure she stayed safe.
“I am claiming her as mate.” The words left his mouth, clearly audible above the whispers of the human crowd. Prime Councilor Aav stared at him, her mandibles clacking in a slow, thoughtful way.
“You cannot claim a hybrid as mate. Reproduction of specimens such as this is strictly forbidden. There is no telling what defect she might breed.”
The metallic voice was pensive, and Arlen knew that behind that unreadable surface, the Mantrilla was thinking fast. She wanted Ava, and she wasn’t used to be denied what she wanted.
“Eok genetics dominate any female genes,” Arlen answered easily. “The offspring of our union will all be Eoks.”
“There are no precedents for this.” Prime Councilor Aav still eyed Arlen, not retreating from her stance over Ava.
Arlen felt the burning of Ava’s purple eyes on him, but he didn’t take his eyes off the Mantrilla.
“Eok law is clear.” Another male voice intruded in the conversation and Arlen stared in shock as Khal appeared at his side, his face stern and his attitude one of polished calm. It was so unlike the young, casually brash Eok warrior he usually was that Arlen stood dumbfounded for a second. “If an Eok feels the call of the Mating Venom, nothing can prevent them from claiming a mate. The denial would drive them to madness, to bloodlust. It is a matter of honor to allow the Claiming.”
Arlen stood mutely as his eyes went from Khal to the other Eoks standing in the square, their faces closed off, their bodies on high alert. He knew they would stand by him, trigger a war if need be.
But would Prime Councilor Aav understand that?
“Surely one female is not worth triggering a diplomatic breach.” Prime Councilor Aav lifted one clawed leg as her soldiers moved restlessly at the edge of the assembly. A hundred had descended from the Matriarch’s ship onto Aveyn’s surface—a number Eok warriors could easily defeat in combat, but nine hundred more were still aboard the hovering black figure of the ship, just a short distance away.
Even his Eok troops couldn’t beat those odds.
