Page 27 of Bred By Zyros
“Hey, little dudes!” Melody chimes behind me, so I glare at her, too.
“You brought the Thryss home?” I grumble, setting down the piles of items.
“They brought themselves; your kiddie pool is dangerously unsecure,” she quips, raising her palms up to face me as if to surrender. The thought makes my cock pulse behind my seam.
“KED-die?” I mimic her words. “My spring is more than adequate for an adult or child.”
She stops where she knelt down to look over all her new goods, and pride swells in my chest to have done something right for her. Until she speaks and ruins the moment. “K-I-D-D-I-E. You weren’t even close, but of course you’d work a murder word in there somehow.”
I decide to ignore her strange rambling and gather supplies for her meals. As I return from the cool chamber to prepare her burnt meat, she’s already got a handful of prey food to nibble on and has made a wild mess of her items. My scales prickle as a Thryss attempts to swallow one of the little charms she bought for her hair, hissing in warning as she scolds the annoying creatures. They don’t seem to enjoy her tone, chittering and hissing about to each other before hopping straight through themessy piles she’s erected around herself. They make no move to hurt her, and they're disturbingly difficult to kill, so I decide to ignore them, too.
My thoughts drift to the way she awed at the sky on our way back to the cave tonight. The moon is in its goddess-blessed phase tomorrow.
Tomorrow is the night that will change everything. Ruin it or salvage it. Possibly both.
Tomorrow night, I will force my mate onto the goddesses; I will demand their blessing, or I will rut her without it. I have spent many solars doing my best to preserve our planet, to worship as I should, despite the cock behind my slit deeming me unworthy of the goddesses' communion, but still, they whisper to me. I will listen, and they will too. My soul is a part of Nyssara, born from its moon. But the better part, the part that makes my chest ache and tighten, belongs to the human female making a mess of our cave.
I will burn it to the ground if it would simply earn me a smile. There is no deity nor machine, nor Vrircik to waver my devotion. No line is too terrible to cross. She wrapped herself around me of her own will. My mate likes my touch. The hole that she had gored in my chest this morning was all but blamed by her heated cheeks pressing into my scales as she mumbled against me.
You deserve it.
This maddening, soft, sweet, and vibrant creature wantsme.
I do not know much about the world she comes from, but I am sure what I am to do next goes against what she will find acceptable. The risk is just too great; there’s far too much to lose. The mere idea of her slipping from between my coils makes such a heady, sickening feeling bloom between my ribs that taking in a lungful of air seems impossible. My mate hesitates, but she wants me.
She wants to stay.
So, I will make the decision for her.
In time, she will understand.
I am a bad male, a cruel male, but I am hers, and I am drowning in my devotion. The only thing I have ever felt so fully is hatred, but even that is quieter with her around. Memories of nasty thoughts and sickening touches washed away byher.
To lose that…to even know there is an option for her to choose another over me...
I bear my fangs, my venom swelling in my mouth. My eyes turn toward her, watching her sunshine-spiraled hair bouncing as she laughs at the Thryss. The sound comes so easily from her, despite when she grows quiet, her eyes sad, despite her having been soaked and needy on my lap just zentics ago. It makes me feel like maybe I could laugh, too, someday, without it feeling like a betrayal to the hate in my chest or the faint scars on my scales.
fifteen
Melody
My eyes are slammed wide, all the grogginess of sleep long gone as I stare at the large male coiled outside the entrance of my sleeping chamber. His chest is rising and falling, features typically turned into a scowl or intense thought now look…peaceful. His teal-colored hair is splayed out across his own tail. My heart gives a deceptive little flutter at the sight. He stayed here all night; I have no doubt.
Before emotion clogs my throat, I slip out of my pajamas we bought at the station, my feet slapping the cave floor before I jump just as he stirs, slamming into the spring. I don’t surface, my eyes wide under the hot water as I grip the rock below, attempting to calm my throbbing heart before I face him.
Zyros is everything scary and harsh andsweet. My every waking thought is now more his than mine. It takes mere domtics before emerald green and teal fill my vision, his hair floating around him like serpents themselves. His slitted eyessearch me for answers just as my lungs let out a little pang for air. His large hands clasp around my face while the others press me into him, smoothing his scaled fingers across my skin with adoring passes. It lasts a blink before I’m hurled to the surface, my lungs burning as I suck in fresh air. His voice is a heady rasp when he speaks. “The sight of you, human Melody, disturbs the very soul of me. It is the oddest sensation in my chest, not unpleasant but demanding like it’s taken up the space for everything else. What would humans call a thing like that?”
Love.
We’d call it love.
I don’t answer him, only grip him back just as furiously as he holds me, like suddenly my life depends on it. Maybe it does.
Maybe every line and every rule are broken, and we’re both doomed, anyway.
We spent the greater part of the day in that very spot, Zyros feeding me as I rested on his tail in the water like a float. It wasn’t until evening fell that something within him changed. I wouldn’t call it nerves but on edge certainly, and it was rubbing off on me. I tried to nibble on one of what Zyros called ssseerafa leaves, having grown quite addicted to their sweet citrus taste, like an orange but with sugar on top, when the gaggle of little dudes around me kicks up a fuss. I bring the plant away from my lips as they all chitter, hop, and carry on. My brows furrow before I go to take another bite, a sharp gasp catching in my throat as one of them slams their head back and fires a tooth at me. It clinks into the cave wall just to my left. Immediately,my eyes slam to the entrance of the cave where Zyros had disappeared just moments ago, hissing something under his breath.
“Bad little dude!” I scold them quietly. “That could hurt me!”
