2

Serik

My mate has a magnificent pair of lungs. She screamed and cursed for hours without running out of air. Once inside, her high-pitched rants fill my cave. I wonder if the other human mates, Vera or Sydney, can screech as loudly or plead so prettily. Probably not, for no human female is as fierce as my chernyrozd. To name her after the Chuchunya word for the black songbird was a reaction to her hair, but it fits her capacity for sound as well.

Confirmation that she was made for me, whether she approves or not.

I won mating chases in the past—twice. Patricika and Manya have spent niibin seasons in my care, but our souls weren't bound in dushevnayasvyaz. We weren't pleasure mates, either. Their sweet surrender was a ploy at the mating chase to secure a place in my warm dyla weturanya. I'll never be fooled again. I won't allow my hospitality to be taken advantage of either, because my chernyrozd has flown home to nest.

She is my dushevnayasvyaz. I have all the symptoms.

"Release me at once! I'll never stop screaming. Some passersby will hear me. Then what will you do? Fight off a gang of criminals for me? I'm not worth it," she yells for the hundredth time. For all her tears, she doesn't cower from me. She shakes her fist and lunges at me when I'm easily a foot taller and fifty kilograms heavier.

"I'll tear apart every male on this planet with nothing but my teeth and claws if you ask me to. This world will burn to the ground before I give you up," I sneer, as exhaustion shreds my patience.

Her brown eyes bulge from her black-painted eye sockets. She has more black paint on her eyelashes, fingernails, and pretty feet, too. When she calms, I must ask her about the paint. Does it mean something—like camouflage? Was she expecting the men who attacked Adam's lab and painted herself with war paint? Or does she feel a spiritual bond with raccoons and wishes to honor them? The more she cries, the more the paint smears, and the more she resembles a raccoon.

She shrieks and runs into my arms. Her fists pummel my abs while her nails score my flesh. Her little fingers tangle in my fur and give sensual little tugs with each strike. I let her pound her frustration on my body while my wandering hands map her curves. She's sweetly rounded, as if her parents provided well for her…or perhaps she's strong, like Patricika and Sydney. If she provided enough for herself and ate well, why would she need a male? Having an underground home of her own would explain why she's furious to be in my dyla weturanya.

Well, I'll show her why she needs a male—no, not any male—why she needs me.

I roll my hips, so my cock emerges from my thick fur. With dushevnayasvyaz, my body has adapted to my next phase in life—breeding. My cock doubled in size with a thick knot at the base to lock her to me until she conceives. I heat my cave without fire and fill it with a vanilla scent in my sweat. The other females won't cover their noses and complain I smell like a wet dog, thanks to Chernyrozd.

Wouldn't it shock the clan if I showed up at the niibin mating chase with a pregnant mate? That would show them! All those females who rejected me and males who pushed me around would know my virility. Too bad my chernyrozd won't have the time to swell with the telltale belly of pregnancy. With her volume, her cries of pleasure will shake the trees at the next mating chase. When the clan hears her yell my name in a fit of passion, they will realize who the most powerful Chuchunya is.

Wait until that human male, Adam, who stole Patricka out from under me, hears me reduce his human friend to a trembling, wanton, submissive—

I'm startled from my daydream by a knee to the crotch. My mind blanks with white, hot pain as I fall to the floor like a sack of hazelnuts.

"What did you do that for?" I howl and roll around on the floor. "I offer myself to you and you choose to break me?"

"Offer? Offer?" She squeaks and chirps like her namesake bird. "Your ‘offering' is big enough to split me in half. Stay on your side—or better yet, let me out of this hole! There's no way the thing you carry will fit in my vag, and I'm not letting you close enough to try. So don't get any ideas! Keep your—your—your monster to yourself!"

"You aren't ready for mating," I mutter, crawling to the far side of the main chamber. My cock screams in agony as I sit against the wall.

I anticipated her reluctance—as my past pleasure mates refused me the first night, too—so I built a second bed of furs in my home's atrium. My bed chamber is beyond the bathing chamber where the hot spring's heat keeps me warm. If I could crawl through the crevice with my aching cock, I'd retire to bed. I'm too tired to fight her. I watched over her metal box home for days. I only wish to sleep with my mate in my arms.

"I'm surprised, but I guess I shouldn't be. It's the teeth, right?" The question pulls my lips into a wince—more than my aching cock.

I hate my mouth. Instead of the sixteen teeth, plus two fangs that fill a regular male's upper jaw, twenty-two teeth fight for space inside my mouth. I'm blessed with four extra fangs. They push against my lips when I hide them and jut out when I smile. Vicious points frighten Timor's daughters, who make up half the female Chuchunya left in our pack. The other male Chuchunya take every opportunity to make fun of my teeth. Only Patricika looked beyond the teeth to tell me what she thought of me…how much she despised me before she ran into the arms of a human.

"Yes, your scary fangs!" She yells through the tears and snot flowing down her face. "The teeth, the claws, the closed-in space, the kidnapping, the growling, and your huge cock! You terrify me!"

Her words stab at my heart. Growling? She confuses my purr with growls. How weak does she think I am?

"I haven't growled at you," I say. Hurt laces my words after her comment about my teeth. I release a deep, rumbling growl from my low belly that knocks pebbles in the icy rock wall from their perch. Her eyes grow to the size of apples as she whirls around to watch them fall. "When I growl at you, you will know it."

"Please don't hurt me," she whimpers. She pulls her arms around herself in a self-soothing hug and drops to a sitting position. Her knees protect her throat as she curls into a ball, inadvertently showing me the shape of her slit beneath her clothes. "Please, just let me go home."

"I'd never hurt you. You're too precious to me. I've searched my whole life for the other half of my soul. You scream to make me miserable, but every second I spend in your presence fills me with hope for a better life. Curse me or sing my praises, it doesn't matter as long as you are here."

"Doesn't matter? You don't care if I hate you or try to slit your throat in your sleep? Damn psycho," she hisses like a cornered hellcat.

"No," I say, sliding down the wall to recline on the floor and ease the pinch on my knot. "Because dushevnayasvyaz is never wrong. When I chased the golden-haired friend of Adam, Holly, I felt like myself. It wasn't until she drove away, and I went after you, that I changed. No matter what Adam says, she's not mine. You are."

"Great," she says, hugging herself and rubbing her arms. "Let me get this straight. My coworker said you could kidnap another one of my coworkers, but you liked me more? Why me?"

"I wish I knew, besides the obvious," I say with a shrug. She shakes her head at me as if her beauty isn't obvious to her…maybe that's why she adorns herself with black paint. "I'm not weak like a human male or gentle like a ‘civilized' Chuchunya. You are sturdy enough to take what I give. Match me in the furs and out."

"Sturdy? You chose me because I'm ‘sturdy?' Geez, you're a real charmer," she sneers.

She turns her delicious backside to me and stands to run her hands over the walls. What is she looking for? Onto her tiptoes, she rubs the wall. I swallow my tongue when she drops to a squat. With a step to her right, she repeats the motion with her hands on the rock. Stretch and squat, it's an erotic dance that she hasn't a clue she's performing. My hand pumps down my shaft and massages my knot. I bite my lip to contain my moans of ecstasy.

"Eek! Keep that thing far from me." My erection withers under her angry expression. The devastating insults she hurled at me still ring in my ears. "I'll find the door and then you can continue, but please control yourself until I'm gone."

"There's the way out." I point to the outer crevice. If she wants to inspect my weapons, tools, and herbal stash, she's welcome to see where I hang them in the hallway. If she runs outside, she will return. The snow thickened to curtains of falling sleet as I brought her underground. In the time we've argued, the temperature dropped as the sun rose and fell. I bet there's a fresh coating of snow. She will bury herself to her knees in a few steps, with frozen tears and frostbitten toes.

"I can't fit through there!" She wedges her fingers in the crevice as if to pry the rocks apart with her tiny human fingers. Black paint chips remain on the rough surface when she curls her fingers in frustration.

"You fit through when I carried you inside," I point out, dodging her foot when she tries to kick me. For that, I won't tell her the secret at the end of her nose. She can discover the crevice is slightly wider at the top than at the bottom on her own.

We fit through the doorway because I lifted her onto my shoulders. My foot wedged between the stones lengthwise raised us a few inches. Her soft belly cradled the back of my head, while her shapely legs wrapped around my arm. She surrounded me with her feminine scent and hugged my other arm. My hand supported her face as she snuggled against me. Based on her reaction to my other advances, she won't appreciate how we cuddled while she was unconscious—even if it gives her the instructions to escape me.

My eyelids drift as she reaches an arm into the crevice, then a foot, before jumping away. She squeaks in terror when the rocks catch on her clothes. The wall proves a more formidable foe than me. Her legs brush against my shoulder when she shifts to study the puzzle. We are inches apart, yet she's not screaming or striking me. I'll take this as a victory.

I'm too tired to do anything else. With my mate safe in my dyla weturanya, my body releases the last of its tension. As much as I wish to claim her, exhaustion claims me first. Keeping watch for days, and then scared within inches of my life when the humans attacked her home, I thought I would lose my self-control and kill them all. As I chased the blond one, I had one eye on the human males. That's how I knew she was another potential pleasure mate, not my true love. Once I crawled against the building, my body changed. Like lightning struck me, the urgency to find the female who awakened me and to secure her underground was my sole focus.

"You are warm and safe,Chernyrozd," I whisper. How embarrassing to address her with a weak thread of voice! "Sleep, and we will fight more when I'm rested."

"Fight? How will I fight you? You're a giant," she snaps.

"You've fought valiantly for hours. Rest your voice, Chernyrozd, so I can rest my ears."