Page 34 of Bred By Zyros
“Do not worry creature—”
“I am not acreature.I am ahumanand my name isMelody,” I spit back, surprised by the venom in my voice.
She remains unaffected. “If this offspring lives, it will be a blessing. You can reside here, where you're safely away from the disgusting males. They are typically not allowed in the temple.You will stay here, and when you are in need of being bred or his bite, we can summon him so that we may repopulate—”
“No.”
“No?”
“I want to go to himright now.”
She frowns, the other females growing uneasy around us.
She slips closer, like she means to console my fit. I jerk away again. “Do not touch me!” My chest is heaving, my curls wild and in my face. “That’s just it, huh? He has to breed because you ordered it so?”
“Yes, of course. You are very upset, get in the spring it will—”
“What if he said no?”
“He extrudes all the same. It simply makes the process more tedious.”
I can feel myself pale, my stomach churning. “Yourapehim.”
“I do not know this word.”
She’s so unaffected, so flippant. “You force him to mate you! Would you want to beforcedto mate?!Thatis rape!”
A violent hissing fills the room, but my self-preservation is out the window. I’m exhausted, in pain, scared and worried, but most of all, I’m mad. I’m possibly, for the first ever…enraged. The heat of it is so strong that it feels like it’s searing my chest.
She darts forward, crowding, towering over me. Zaelshar darts forward too, but I barely notice. My eyes are level on her crimson golden ones. If my mate is the blaming moon, she is the horrid, scorching sun. “If he extrudes, you cannot force a male—”
A roar comes from outside the temple just as my fist connects with her face. A sharp new pain splays across my knuckles and she barely moves, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t react. The room erupts in a flurry of chaos as she strikes at me. The females who had been impartial until this moment all move toward her, claws bared, as I’m jerked back by a dark purple tail as it takes the worst of her bite.
All I can see is red. I’m gasping, sobbing, screaming. “He was right! He was right to say you don’t deserve help! You’re a fucking monster! You’re all fucking monsters!”
A dark, clawed hand covers my mouth as he hisses in my ear. It doesn’t take having a full understanding of the language to know he’s warning me to shut up. Again, not like me at all. Striking someone isn’t like me either, let alone the leader of a primitive alien species that are literal giant serpent killing machines. I'm raging, screaming like a feral woman, everything overwhelming and jarring from the past twenty-five fucking orbits of silence, obedience, and smiles, crashing and vomiting from me like waves. I never allow myself to be angry on my behalf, so I’ll be angry on his. The male holding me tenses, his banding around me hardens, tightens, making a little scream leave my throat before it too is cut off by the squeezing. A new worry fills me, one for the tiny life in my stomach. Zyros’ baby.
Mybaby.
My nails dig into his scales, uprooting them as I try to crawl my way out, my mouth open in a horrified gape.
A sickening crack fills the room over the chaos, and the pressure is gone as soon as it started. When rainstorm musk fills my nose, I sob, gripping my ribs in agony. My body is wobbly, unsteady, so I let it sag into Zyros as his blood-covered arms band around me, catching me before I hit the floor, passing me off into his tail with a gentle, reverent grace. The crescendo of the room finally ends abruptly with his arrival. He’s covered in bites and wounds, bloody and ragged. My eyes land on the females restraining and cursing their leader, but where I expect her to react with anger, she doesn’t.
Her eyes are wide, reflecting horror as well as mine. “I wasn’t going to harm her! I would never harm a preg—”
“I warned you.” Zyros’ voice is graveled rage, “Youtookmy mate.” He stares back at me then, seeing me for the first time—my nude painted body. Something akin to anguish flashes across his features, and I feel it in my gut. Everything she said was true. They’d been assaulting him, forcing him to get them—
Oh god. Oh, my fucking god.
She shakes her head, breathing hard. “I was protecting her!”
He strikes and I scream, shutting off the recording.
Only, instead of his fangs meeting her, his hands do, but she’s not fighting back. I watch in horror as her fangs pierce his palms, digging through to the other side as he grips her jaw, wrenching, forcing it wider, wider, wider. When I hear the tearing of skin, my stomach heaves.
The females scream at him to stop, all of them with translators of their own, and I want him to stop, too. But I don’t dare tell him that. Whatever he does…whatever comes next, no matter how horrible, I cannot bring myself to speak up for them.
None of them.
