All he could do was hope the spiritstriders wouldn’t enter this den, and that if they did, their eyesight was poor enough that they would mistake his dark hide for more shadowy rubble and his markings for clusters of crystal.
It was a struggle to keep his strained breathing quiet, and his hearts would not slow no matter how hard he willed them to do so.
The sounds from the tunnel now came from just beyond the entryway.
He held his mate yet tighter.
Please, let them keep striding…
There was another harsh exchange between those guttural voices. One word was repeated frequently, sounding very much likedak—no in vrix—but Urkot still couldn’t make out much else.
A spiritstrider hissed, and the sounds of movement in the tunnel intensified. Figures came into view, indistinct in the scant light that reached the corridor, locked in a struggle that made them seem more like a jumble of mismatched limbs than two individual beings. Urkot could tell only that one of the vrix was larger than the other.
The spiritstriders wrestled, slamming into the tunnel walls and scraping legs and claws over stone. When one struck the doorway with its hindquarters, fine dust and tiny pebbles rained from the top of the opening.
Urkot offered a silent prayer to the Delver.
No more rockfalls. Please.
The spiritstriders’ struggle swept the pair out of view, farther along the tunnel. Relief sparked in Urkot before he could quash it. The spiritstriders had passed; he and Callie just needed to wait a little while before moving on. The immediate danger was over, and this den was safe.
An agonized snarl from the corridor sent a chill to Urkot’s core.
The larger of the two spiritstriders stumbled backward into the chamber. A female—four arms, four legs, no claspers, standing three segments tall. There was a leanness to her frame that was not common in shadowstalker and thornskull females, accentuating the bones beneath her hide in some places and her powerful, sinewy muscles in others.
In the light of the crystals, her pale hide took on a bluish glow of its own.
She clutched a lower arm to her chest. Dark blood flowed from beneath the hand she’d clamped on her forearm. Her clawed mandibles spread wide, and she hissed at the doorway.
The smaller spiritstrider, a male, darted into the chamber, launching himself directly at the female. The speed and suddenness of his attack made Callie flinch and Urkot’s leg hairs stand up.
With a roar, the female fell. Before she’d even crashed to the floor, the male, whose glowing hide was crisscrossed with scars, was already winding the silk rope coiled in his hands around her limbs.
Despite her size, the female’s struggles seemed only to tangle her further in the silk. Within heartbeats, she was bound by arms, legs, and neck, the male holding the extra rope taut. She growled and snapped the air with her mandible claws, muscles straining as she fought the silk.
Growling, the male pulled on the rope, forcing the female’s head back. His slit opened, and his white stem emerged. Usingthe silk rope to control her and keep her mandibles away, he forcefully mounted the female, latching his claspers around her waist. A low groan escaped him as he thrust hard.
Callie’s breath hitched, and she hurriedly but quietly covered her mouth and nose. Urkot stroked her with his fingers, reminding her that he was there as his claspers clutched her.
Tangling his limbs around the female, the male spiritstrider quickened his thrusts, breathing harshly. His claws bit into her hide, producing dark drops of blood that gleamed in the dim light. The female snarled in pain and impotent fury.
“Kir’ani, kir’ani, kir’ani,”the male rasped over and over again.
Mine, mine, mine.
As the spiritstriders rutted, their grunts and growls echoing off the walls, Callie trembled against Urkot. The savageness and hostility of this mating was so far removed from what he and Callie had shared in the grotto that he couldn’t consider it the same act.
Binding, conquering, and claiming were instinctual for vrix, but amongst shadowstalkers and thornskulls, they were urges to be explored with a willing mate. What he was witnessing now…this was the old way. A way that had produced so many cautionary stories, that had left countless males maimed or dead.
This was what Zurvashi had tried to revive in Takarahl through the High Claiming—this battle for dominance, this deadly game of conquerors and conquered. This manner of mating that saw vrix acting like little more than beasts taking whatever they wanted, that encouraged violence and killing so only the strong could produce broodlings.
It was what she’d wanted of Ketahn—for him to prove his strength, his worthiness, by conquering her. To prove he was a mate worthy of a queen…or die trying.
Only a few segments of empty air and formless shadow separated the spiritstriders from Urkot and Callie. He wished he could spare his mate from witnessing this. Wished he could become one with the darkness, like Ketahn and Telok seemed to do, and slip past the spiritstriders, carrying his female to safety.
But he knew he would not get past them without being noticed. Just like he knew he’d be at a severe disadvantage if he chose to fight, even if he were to catch them by surprise while the female was restrained.
He could not fight two spiritstriders while ensuring Callie was shielded from harm.
