Page 81 of The Delver
His hearts beat a little faster and heavier as he returned his attention to Callie. He knew that to protect his mate, he would sometimes have to bring her into danger. How could that notion both adhere to and oppose his instincts when it came to her?
“We go through,” he whispered.
Callie’s eyes rounded, her eyebrows rose, and her lips parted. She turned slightly onto her side to face him. “That’s…Urkot, we can’t?—”
He quieted her with the press of a finger over her lips. Beckoning Callie with another hand, he retreated from the edge, stood up, and reentered the tunnel. She followed. Once they were several segments from the ledge, he directed her to turn, opened her pack, and took out the damp blanket.
Draping the blanket over their heads, he sank onto the joints of his bent forelegs, pulling her down to kneel before him. The light of a crystal illuminated her face from below, casting odd shadows upon it.
“Is this to dampen our voices?” she asked, words barely audible.
Urkot nodded. He held her gaze and settled his upper hands on her shoulders. “We must go through, Callie.”
“Urkot, that’ssooiside. We can just double back.” She gestured in the direction from which they’d first come. “There were a lot of other paths we can try, weren’t there?”
But the crease between her brows and the way her features had fallen suggested that she already knew what Urkot did—there was no going back.
“Shit.” She closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. “Okay. Okay…”
He gently squeezed her shoulders and tipped his headcrest against her forehead.
After a few more breaths, Callie opened her eyes. “You’re sure about this? There are a lot of them.”
Urkot slid one hand to her neck, thumb trailing along her jaw. “Yes.”
“A fuck of a lot of them, Urkot.”
His mandibles twitched up, and he barely held back a chitter. “Yes. I fear too. But we will escape.”
Callie nodded without pulling back, making her soft skin brush against his hard hide. “Yeah, okay. The spiritstriders…they seem to have underdeveloped eyes. Poor vision, very sensitive to light. They’re using some form of echolocation, so they likely have excellent hearing, and their sense of smell seems comparable to yours. We can assume they’re also sensitive to vibrations and airflow like you are. They’re adapted to this environment.
“But there’s already some ambient sound down there, and I would guess enough scents on the air that they won’t notice ours immediately. And it’s likely that they won’t expect anything to just strollinto their hive, so their guard should be down. If we keep absolutely silent and far enough away…”
He knew Callie well enough to understand that she’d said all that aloud not to inform him, but to collect her own thoughts, to talk herself through her concerns. To convince herself of a course of action.
“They will never know we are here,” said Urkot.
“Right. Hopefully. And if they do find us…” Shifting her bag to her front, she reached in an pulled out the collapsed lantern. “This should buy us a few seconds to run if any of them get too close.”
She opened his pouch and slipped the lantern inside.
“Good, female.” Urkot wrapped his lower arm around her waist and pressed his mouth to hers in a prolonged kiss. She slipped an arm around his neck and leaned into it, holding him tight.
It was a moment of ecstasy, pure and radiant, untainted by the surrounding darkness.
He was fast collecting such moments in his memory, each of which he wished he could lengthen into blissful eternity. But that would only keep him from experiencing all the new moments that awaited in the murky waters of the future.
Urkot took in her scent. It was sweet and potent, carrying the lingering aroma of her essence. Heat suffused his blood, pressure coalesced in his pelvis, and his claspers twitched and reached for her as the desire he thought he’d resisted surged back with a fury.
Her scent.
Breaking the kiss, he snatched his claspers back, crossing them over his slit and pressing them down hard enough to create a throbbing ache beneath. In a harsh breath, he said, “By their eightfold eyes.”
Callie drew back from him. “What’s wrong?”
“Your scent.”
“What about it?”
