Chapter 8

It’snight on Lohnyal now. The planet floats beneath us, swirls of white and gray clouds obscuring much of the land. Pale blue and rich greens peek through, but I wish I could see more. I thought I’d recognize my planet without any need to be told, but when I stare down through the viewing port, I don’t sense any spark of recognition, any innate knowledge that this is the place that shaped and formed me.

The Medway Queen is in synchronous orbit with Lohnyal. We have permission to be here, but haven’t been given leave to come any closer. Jace and I will be the only ones from our crew to see my home world—a transport ship will come to fetch us when it’s morning in my birth settlement.

I can look out the port view window and see Lohnyal beneath me, but now that I’m only hours away from reuniting with my people, it feels less and less real.

“So this is it.” Jace’s voice echoes behind me.

My talons scrape softly over the thickness of the transparent wall that separates us from the world below. I drop my arm and turn to face him. He has a particular look about him, like he has plans designed to shake me upside down and turn me back around again. That wouldn’t be much of a departure from his usual modus operandi. If I know one thing is true, it’s that Jace Cesari has the power to throw my world into exquisite disorder, over and over again, and I’ll always welcome the chaos.

“What are you doing up?” I ask. When I left him he was tucked into my bed, his face slack with the peace of sleep.

He raises an eyebrow and the right corner of his mouth lifts. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you leaving? I gave you thirty minutes, but when you didn’t come back, I decided to come check on you.”

“You knew where I’d be?”

Both eyebrows lift this time before they draw together, mobile lips hardening as the playful expression vanishes. “Of course.”

He walks toward me with quick, purposeful steps. Then he raises his arms and sets his hands against my stomach, palms pressed over my bare skin. Sometimes I imagine there will be marks left behind when he touches me like this, that as soon as he steps away, the brand from his small hands will darken my hide with the physical evidence of what he’s done to me where no one else can see, the undeniable proof I’m claimed. There’s a part of me that would like that.

Instead he leans forward until he folds into me. His face presses against my chest, and I can feel his warm breath when he speaks. “So that’s Lohnyal. It’s a pretty planet.”

I chuff into the soft bristles of his hair, tempted to rake my talons through it. It’s longer than he’s ever worn it before. He talks about cutting it, shearing it back to his scalp again until it’s just a dark shadow on his skin, but I don’t want him to touch it—I want it long. I want to be able to tangle my hands in it, to hold him just how I want him, to wrap it tight around my wrist until he growls up at me, head back and neck extended, eyes blazing with pale fire.

“This is the first time I’ve seen it like this. When I left, I didn’t exactly have a view,” I tell him.

He tilts his head so that his face pops up and fixes his gaze on me. “You chose to leave, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t under auspicious conditions. I upset many people when I left. Some of them may even say that I abandoned them. My birth settlement had to approve our journey to Lohnyal, but that doesn’t mean everyone there will be happy that I’m returning.”

I shouldn’t have waited until now to tell him this, but I’ve had to force out every word I’ve given him about my homeland. Now that I’m counting in hours the time until we walk among my brethren, I know I can’t be reticent any longer. There are things he needs to know.

“Will they talk to me? I know you mentioned that although they have access to translation devices, many of your people choose not to use them, and Lohnyal’s a closed world for a reason. Everyone knows they’re suspicious of other species. Do you think they’ll accept me as your partner, or are they just going to see me as some sort of glorified companion animal?”

My wings lift up, the bottom edges shuffling across the floor as I release an abrupt chuff. “No, they will not see you as my pet.” I smile as I speak, until it comes to me—the realization that when the men of my eyrie see him, they’re liable to find him just as desirable as I do. Jace is right. My people don’t like outsiders, but they do appreciate beauty, and Jhevase is undeniably captivating.

“What’s wrong? You look like someone just told you Vanna ate all of the eevoh bars.”

I try not to let the rumbling moan that’s building in my chest slip free. Any of my people would forgo a thousand eevoh bars just to get a taste of him, no matter how tempted they might be if they’d ever tried the Nallioth delicacies.

“The mating bonds my people form are different from typical human pair bonds.”

Another lifted eyebrow accompanies Jace’s twinkling eyes. “You know humans don’t exclusively form pair bonds. Some of us are polyamorous.”

“Not you,” I state firmly.

Sunset on the planet Reeva is one of the most magnificent sights I’ve ever experienced. The atmosphere there makes it so the sky blazes ultra-saturated shades of blue shot through with a startlingly vibrant color Jace calls turquoise. It’s one of his words that I wouldn’t be able to wrap my tongue around without the help of my translation implant. The smile on his face right now is a bit like one of those sunsets. It starts slow, but develops into something so brilliant I can hardly look at it straight on.

“Not me,” he agrees, grinning broadly, “and not you either, right?”

“No, not me,” I say, a heavy sensation tugging at my chest. “I told you before I didn’t belong—that’s one of the reasons why. I would’ve been expected to form a large nest. I was one of the biggest gazlas in my generation. The strongest and largest among us become gazlas, the nest guardians.”

“How large a nest are we talking? Four, five guys?” He meets my eyes. “Girls?”

I shake my head side to side, a gesture I’ve stolen from the humans. I can say no in this way, but not yes. The up and down motion makes my horns a much too destructive force aboard the ship.

“Lohnya are all one sex. We are all, I guess you would say, men,” I tell him.

“I feel like we probably should’ve talked about this before,” he begins with a teasing grin. “Is it a secret? I’ve never heard that before, and believe me, I did my best to find out all I could about your people after I first met you.”

“It’s not a secret, but it’s also irrelevant as far as my people’s relations with outsiders are concerned. There’s no reason they would’ve made that information known. When the Allvek’hi first approached us, we didn’t allow them into our eyries.”

Something in Jace’s expression sharpens. “They’ll let us leave, right?”

I look down at my home world with a frown.

“No exit date, remember?” he says.

“My people are private, but I don’t see why they would keep an offworlder captive. I believe the lack of exit date that you find so concerning was simply meant to communicate that I’m welcome to rejoin my settlement if I wish it.”

“If you say so. I still don’t like that we’ll be entirely unarmed when we go down. I mean, I understand why, but I don’t like feeling defenseless.”

I smile. “There will be plenty of weapons for you to explore during the festival, my vicious one.”

“So you think they’ll accept me alright? No one’s going to kick me off the edge of a cliff or give me a drink that necessitates a second round in the detoxification chamber?”

“You were never in a detoxification chamber, Jhevase.” I don’t want him to be flippant now. “The medical unit is just a specialized cot. I don’t know how they will react,” lies, “but I’ll be there at your side. If they disappoint me with their behavior, we’ll leave.” I don’t tell him it wouldn’t be the first time my people left me helpless with their betrayal. If Lohnyal disappoints, I will take Jace from my eyrie and never look back again.

“So, you never answered. Does that mean six men? Seven?” That little smirk is playing around the edges of his lips again, and it would be so easy to wrap my hands around his hips and pull him flush against me, to kiss the questions out of his mouth until he forgets them entirely.

“Three would be the smallest official nest permissible, but they would receive far less support from our eyrie. Four to six is most common,” I say, giving him the answers he asked for.

“No shit,” he says with a short bark of a laugh. “Six? Damn, they must stay busy on Lohnyal. Maybe Dan was right.”

He’s not looking at me anymore, his gaze somewhere in the vicinity of our feet as he chuckles.

“Dan is no expert on the Lohnya,” I tell him, probably a bit too adamantly from the way he grins, eyes wide as he glances up at me.

“Poor Dan. Is he ever going to get off your shit list?”

I frown. “Human expressions are so…”

“Creative,” he interjects, finishing my thought with a laugh.

“I was going to say needlessly graphic.”

“Let’s head back to your cabin. Standing here all night won’t help us. I want to make a good impression when I meet your people for the first time.”

He tugs on my arm while leaning into my side. The gesture is playful, almost childish, but the look in his eyes is full of almost painful sympathy. He may pretend he’s the one worried about encountering my people, but he knows this return weighs upon me far more than I’ve let on.

“I will go, Jhevase. You don’t need to pull me,” I tell him.

He stays by my side as we walk back towards my cabin, at least until the corridor veers right and grows too narrow for us both to fit. I appreciate the wordless show of support. When we lie down on my bed and he nestles against my chest, one muscled thigh pushing between my legs to anchor himself, I cover his body with my right wing and breathe in the sweet scent of his hair. It smells freshly washed, of the special soap he uses only on his head.

He hums against my skin, and the sound is loud, amplified as it echoes beneath my wing’s outstretched membrane. I don’t mind. I’m eager to collect all of the reminders that he’s still here with me and that he knows me.

He falls asleep first, growing silent except for the soft exhales that mirror my heart’s beating. My body becomes looser, my limbs heavier, and I follow him, hoping for undisturbed dreams. I will need a restful night to face my people well in the coming morning.