Chapter 9

Lynix

I was obsessed with Yanna. From the top of her head to the tips of her small toes. I counted each notch in her spine. Each rib. The small, dark, raised dots that were splattered all over her skin with no rhyme or reason. She said they were moles. I thought they were beautiful and unique. That made her snort and roll her eyes.

We lay naked on the banks of the river, neither of us wanting to move after our mating that had me wanting to bow and offer treasures to Fatas.

Yanna was perfect, and I wondered how I ever thought she wasn't. Why had I wanted a perfect submissive mate who worshipped me? That wasn't me. I wanted Yanna, who fought me and challenged me, and even now teased me by pointing out that water must make my cock hard since I couldn't keep my paws off her when we were around it.

"It's not water," I growled at her with no heat.

The warm brown of her eyes melted in the sun, making me think of sweets and fire. "Sure." She rolled her eyes. Her attitude made me hard.

I cupped her cunt. "Be careful, and I'll get you so dirty you'll need another washing."

"Ooh," she grinned. "Don't threaten me with a good time."

I leaned down with a growl to devour her mouth, but her soft hand on my chest stopped me. "Hold on, tiger." She blinked. "I mean… lion. We have some things to talk about."

She had used that word before. "What's a lion?"

Her head cocked. "I mean… you?"

I frowned. "I'm not a lion... Whatever that is."

She sighed. "There's an animal on Earth, and you are similar to him."

"How so?"

"Your mane and tail." She flicked my ears. "These cute little ears."

Well now she was just insulting me. "My ears are not cute."

"But lions on Earth walk on all fours and are usually a light brown color. And they are not fully sentient like you are. At least, not by human standards."

"This animal sounds like nothing like me."

She opened her mouth to protest, but then closed it before taking a moment. "You know what? Nevermind."

"I'm not a lion."

"Okay." But her lips quirked, and I knew she was calling me a lion in her head.

"What's so great about lions?"

"There's a lot of great things about lions. They are considered an ultimate predator. Kings of their pride."

I eyed her. "You're making that up to make me feel better."

She shook her head emphatically. "Am not."

I made a note to ask Whitten to find me information about lions on Earth. I had to see for myself if I was anything like these animals.

"Enough about that," she said softly as she began to dress with the clothes we'd raided from the Dayloes supplies. I didn't like her covering her skin, but she needed the protection from the sun. I tugged on my pants as well. "Tell me about your brothers. Your Queen. I want to know about your life here." She held up a finger. "And for the record, I am never interested in anyone. But I'm wildly curious about you, so feel special."

I did feel special. Her smiles, her laugh, her attention. All of it made me feel incredibly important. Like I was on top of the world.

"I have four brothers. We also have a sixth brother that we know of, and we have spent much of our lives looking for him. We won't rest until he's home safe with us. That's what I was doing in Nomoria when I first saw you. The Greysa are great for gossip, and I'd hoped to get some information from them." I winced. "It'll be a while before I'm welcome back."

She nibbled her lip. "Because of me?"

I nodded and explained to her what happened—that I'd told them I'd punish her myself so they'd release her into my care, but everything had gone very wrong. "I'm sorry I had to bind you. I was walking a fine line of keeping my relationship with them and keeping you safe. But as soon as you were injured, I didn't care anymore. Fleck them."

"I only stole some food." Guilt twisted her features. "I know it's wrong. I don't believe in stealing, but I was starving. I didn't know what to do." I brushed my paw through her hair. She blinked rapidly, and a single tear slid out of the corner of her eye. "I was so scared. So alone."

"You did good," I assured her with a soft purr. "You stayed alive. I'm so very glad you stayed alive."

She smiled and sniffed. "I'm glad too."

"Tell me how you got there. What do you remember?"

Yanna told me how she woke up in a cage in Geveen and shortly after were taken from the city. After that, she said she was injected with something and she was unconscious for a while, long enough that her hair and nails grew. When she woke up, she was in a container like the one I'd been locked in… with a dozen other human females.

I cursed as I sat up and rubbed at my head. "I wasn't just in Nomoria in search of my brother," I said.

"No?" She asked as she sat up beside me with her legs cocked to the side. "What's the other reason?"

"I wanted to know if they knew anything about the cargo of human women who we had learned about. I didn't find the whole caravan, but I found you."

"Why were you interested in finding us?"

I gripped her small hands in my paws. "We are Drixonian warriors. Well, at least our father was. We don't know our mothers. You'll see when you meet my brothers. We are all different. The same in some ways, but also different. But we were raised with the values of Drixonian warriors. She is All is our creed. Females above all of us. We lay down our lives for you."

She sucked in a breath, and whispered, "She is All. You said that before."

I nodded.

"So that doesn't just apply to your women? That means… all females?"

"The rest of the Drixonian warriors are planets away. Here, it's just my brothers and Queen."

"And who is Queen?"

"Our mother."

"But I thought you said you all had different mothers?"

"Birth mothers. We don't know who helped create us with our father. But Queen raised us."

She blinked, and I could tell she was confused. It was confusing. "Our father was stolen from his home planet by the Xaberians. He was held by them and…" I swallowed. "He was made to provide his seed for experiments. My brothers and I are the results of those experiments."

Yanna placed her hand over her mouth, eyes wide, as a shiver shook her body. "Without his consent? As a prisoner?"

"Yes, and Queen was the only kindness we had. She and my father bonded. Mated. And then they escaped with us when we were very young."

"Queen sounds amazing." Yanna was in awe. "Is she like you?"

"No," I shook my head. "She's like you. Queen is human."

Yanna

Queen was human?

My breathing came fast as I mind sought to process this information. "So is that how you recognized me as human?"

He nodded.

He was on a mission to save his brother, save the kidnapped humans, and I'd stabbed him, bloodied his nose, and overall made his life a hundred times harder. So I did something completely uncharacteristic of me. I dropped my head in my hands and started to sob. Once I started, I couldn't stop, even as I sputtered through my apologize. "I-I s-s-stabbed you. And and and I p-p-punched you in the n-nose!" My wails reached hysteric levels until I felt him draw me against his soft, furry chest. His purring starting, and soon I found myself calming somewhat as my sobs dissolved into pitiful whimpers.

He rubbed my back. "You have nothing to apologize for. You were defending yourself. And as for what I did in the loft bed… that was my mistake. I shouldn't have done that."

"I wasn't complaining during it." I mumbled against his chest.

He laughed. "You weren't, but you were also half asleep."

"You were trying to do good deeds, and I only made things hard."

He rumbled a thoughtful hum. "You only made the right things hard."

I smacked him. With force. "Don't make a sex joke now!"

He laughed. "I'm sorry."

"No, you're not," I huffed. "Anyway, tell me about Queen. If she's human, that means…" I tried to do the math in my head, and, well, the math wasn't mathing. "How old is she and how old are you?"

"Queen thinks she's about ninety in Earth years. I'm about seventy. But I'm young for a Drixonian. We live many cycles. And Queen said she's not aging as rapidly as she would expect. She thinks it might have to do with her and my father's mating." He rubbed my wrists. "They were cora-eternals too."

I blinked. "So does that mean… I could live longer because of these loks? Because of you?"

"Possibly. We both already have faster healing abilities."

My gaze shot to my thigh, where a laser bullet had grazed the outside of my flesh. In everything that had happened since then, I'd nearly forgotten about my injury. At the time, I swore the pain meant it was life threatening. But the wound was already on its way to healing, way faster than my body could usually handle. "What the…?"

"My brother, Bastian, and his mate noticed it too."

My stomach swooped. "Wait, your brother has a mate? How?"

"A human," he answered casually. "She somehow escaped from the cages in Geveen, and he rescued her. She's the reason we knew about you and the other humans."

My heartbeat sped up. My chest tightened. Wait, it couldn't be…

Lynix was still talking "…talked to another woman who helped her, and she was devastated about it. She made us promise we'd search for the rest of them, as if we needed any urging. She's back at Akoma with Queen readying the place as a sanctuary?—"

"What's her name?" I asked breathlessly.

His eyes caught mine. "Are you okay?"

No, I could barely breathe. My heart thudded like a drum. "What's her name?"

He hesitated a moment. "Kini. Her name is Kini."

Relief washed over me like a tidal wave. Kini was okay. Kini was safe. Kini was cared for by one of these amazing beasts. Words jammed in my throat as tears leaked from my eyes. I fought to breathe, and Lynix rubbed my arms and back through my slight panic attack. "I-I thought she was gone forever." I peered up at my Lion Man through my tears. "I met her. That was me in the cage next to her. And then… she was gone. I never saw her again, and I never thought I would. To know she's safe… I am so relieved."

"She remembered you. And even if she didn't meet the other females, she wanted them rescued. She's told us all she knows."

On the heels of my relief came guilt. She'd fought so hard for survival, and her first thought was to help the rest of us. I hadn't done that, not at all. I'd been so focused on me. On Lynix. I remembered the green eyes of the woman who sat across from me in the container. How she'd sought comfort. How I'd turned away. I pressed a hand to the back of my mouth. "Kini is so good. And I've been so selfish."

"How?" He demanded.

"I didn't think of the other females. Not much. Only myself."

"You can't think like that. You weren't in any position to help them."

But I had been. When I'd managed to get free of the armored alien when I'd first escaped, I hadn't risked anything to help the other women. I'd run. I'd left them all behind.

My gut soured, and I opened my mouth to say something, to plead for his help, when a rumbling cut through the stillness of our peace. Immediately, Lynix shifted to a crouch and peered through the bush. I couldn't make out anything in the distance, but Lynix must have, because he snatched me from the ground and ran on a low crouch along the side of the riverbank. He spotted a small outcrop of land and waded into the river. He ducked underneath a dirt patch held together by tree routes and plastered his back against the bank. I clung to him as voices filtered over the sound of the water.

"We're too late," said a deep voice.

"They couldn't hold him for a little longer?" A thud sounded, like something was kicked.

"He's a beast. They didn't stand much of a chance. Morquet is going to get us all killed."

I shivered against Lynix, and glanced up to find him staring straight ahead, eyes blazing, jaw tight.

"Come on," said another voice. "We need to get moving to sell the cargo and get back."

"I don't understand why we can't just drown the thing and be done with it."

"Morquet said it'll catch a good price."

"I don't get it. It's a scrawny thing."

"Yeah, but Morquet said human males grow up to be good laborers."

Human males. Human males.

I heard a sound, like a squawk of indignation. And then a voice cut through the clearing. "Let me go, assholes!" I sucked in a sharp breath at the tone, like a preteen on the verge of his voice changing. "Fuck you!" His voice cracked on the first syllable.

I didn't think. The guilt over my selfishness surged inside of me like a weapon. I grabbed a slick rock out of the water and leaped over the bank with a war cry.