Page 20 of Keeping His Mate

A high-pitched mewl reaches my ears, and immediately I turn to Bruvix to see if he hears it too. He whips his head around when it happens again, and that’s how I know it’s real. We race to the side of the roof garden, and peer down at the ground below, seeking the source.

“There,” he says as he points to a bush nestled against the corner of his house. I wonder briefly if he got it wrong, or is hallucinating, but then the branches begin to shake and we hear a low, halting cry coming from that exact spot.

“Come on,” I yell as I throw the door open and race down the stairs. I hear Bruvix’s heavy steps as he hurries close behind me. When we reach the bush, Bruvix parts the branches slowly before dropping a douku orb to the ground. The inside of the bush is instantly illuminated, and the little red eyes of a tr’gory pup blink up at us.

CHAPTER 9

BRUVIX

Hot breath fans my cheek, and I wonder where I am. Confused but comfortable, I decide to push my worries aside and deal with them later. When a paw swipes against my face and the little pointed claws dig into my skin, my dread returns tenfold.

On my bare chest sits a tr’gory pup, and its long bushy black tail wags against my thighs as I lift my head. Next to me lies a slumbering Elle-noor, and as peaceful as she looks, the need for answers has me shaking her shoulder until she awakens.

“Tell me this is not reality,” I beg quietly as the pup lies on my stomach, tilting its wide head side to side with each word. Elle-noor looks around my bedroom for a few moments before her eyes land on the tiny monster in the room. “Ohh fuck. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” she squeals as she hops out of bed and covers her mouth. “We stole a tr’gory puppy. This is bad,” she whimpers as she rubs a hand over her lush bottom.

“When, Elle-noor? When did we do this?” I demand as the pup slides off my body and curls up into a tight ball on the pillow Elle-noor used.

“Last night. You don’t remember?” she says in a rush as she begins to pace back and forth. “We were still high, and we heard something crying in the woods, so we looked down from the garden, and you saw a bush moving, so we ran downstairs and found this little guy hiding just outside your house.”

None of that sounds familiar. “I remember not wanting to look at the water in the bucket,” I tell her, searching my memories for a moment in time when I would have willingly taken a tr’gory pup inside my home. “I do not recall anything after that.”

“Okay. Okay,” she murmurs in a panicked voice. “This is okay. We can handle this. We’ll just put it back where we found it, andnanaytr’gory will never know.”

“Who?”

“Huh?” she asks, pausing her frenzied pacing to look at me.

“That word you used… before tr’gory…”

Her eyes light up. “Oh! Nanay, right. It’s Tagalog for mom or mama––an archaic term, but it’s a nickname my dad gave to my mom once I was born. Or ‘Nay, for short. Sorry, I didn’t even realize I used it.”

“How do you say this word?” I ask. If it is something that comes from her past, I am eager to learn it. “Repeat it for me.”

“Nah-naye,” she replies, moving her pink lips slowly so I may follow.

“Nah-naye,” I repeat, giving her a questioning glance at the end.

“Yup! Well done!” she says with a smile, causing her chin to form that sharp point I am so intrigued by. “My dad was always trying to get me to speak Tagalog at home. Korean was harder for me to pick up, so we spoke mostly English, but I know some Tagalog words.” She sighs, her smile fading. “I’m never going to see them again… It just sort of… hit me.”

I do not know what to do. Elle-noor is sad, and I long to comfort her. Would my embrace be acceptable to her? Would she welcome my touch? Before I can open my arms to her, the pup releases a yawn that ends in a howl, and then promptly sneezes all over my bed. A layer of sticky white mucus covers my right arm and my pillow, and despite my obvious disgust, it crawls toward me with its tail wagging behind it.

Elle-noor, on the other hand, is not at all deterred by the pup’s eagerness to spread bacteria via its snout, and rushes over to examine it. “Aw, poor baby,” she croons as she uses my shirt to wipe the mucus off its face.

The pup wiggles and wags as she pokes at it, checking its abdomen, and dropping her head down to its chest to listen to its heartbeat. “Hmm,” she mutters to herself as she picks it up and places the pup on the floor. Its legs shake before it collapses. When I hear a loud squelching sound followed by a horrid stench, I realize how much trouble we are truly in.

“I think he’s sick,” she says.

“It is male?”

“Yeah, I just checked.”

“How do you know he is ill?” I ask, deeply concerned about what that means for us.

“Well, there’s the alarming amount of snot he got all over your bed, the diarrhea on your floor, and his heartbeat sounds irregular to me, but he’s not an Earth dog, so maybe that’s normal.”

I survey the mess and have never been so eager to do anything as I am to drop this pup in the bush where we found it, but I am starting to worry that is no longer the plan. The odor that fills my nose, the bodily fluids that are scattered across my bedroom––it is utterly disgusting. And unacceptable.

“That could be why he was alone,” Elle-noor says. “His mother might have abandoned him if she didn’t think he was going to survive.”

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