I looked up at the ceiling, mentally counting. “Uh, at the last conclave, they reported our numbers had grown to about a million.” I met Sam’s eyes. “We have yearly conclaves so clans can mingle and whatnot. It’s kinda like the highland games. Couple thousand of us show up and we have a huge party with games and shit. Every country has their own conclaves and everyone is invited. It’s kind of a thing to travel and go to all the different ones. I’ve been to conclaves in America, obviously, but also Mexico, the UK, Australia, South Korea, one year in China thatgot wild, Spain, and my last one was in India. Rijitera are really family focused and they consider any of our kind family. Most of the clan heads know each other and their kids, so I’m pretty familiar with them. There are about thirty-five clans, all in all. Each clan has about thirty-thousand members. Clan heads are like mayors or governors. Only its hereditary and the clan heads are always female.”
Whew. Word vomit. I hadn’t had to explain our clan workings in years. My mom used to make me help teach all this in the schools with the little kids. I liked kids. We all did. I gazed up at Ohem. Yeah. I wanted his babies one day. He’d be an adorable father.
“That’s so cool! You belong to a huge spread out family! Sounds amazing,” Sam said, dreamily.
Yeah. I guess I did. I hadn’t ever thought of it like that. But yeah, Rijitera were crazy loyal to our people.
“You guys belong to that family now. I’m officially adopting you into my clan,” I declared.
Callie smirked at me and crossed her arms. “Do we need to be bitten under a full moon”
“Ha. ha. She’s got jokes.”
Patty laughed and covered a yawn with her hand. It was contagious, spreading to the rest of us.
“Storytime is over, kiddos. Time for bed,” Callie said, getting up to grab the bucket to get water so she could douse the fire. We had the rocks and the piece of metal they’d used to start it earlier, so there was no need to keep it burning. Plus, we definitely didn’t need it for warmth. Even in the oasis, it was pretty toasty. She poured water on the fire and found a nice mossy spot to lie on, her arm curled under her head. Sam and Patty went to join her. Ohem stood in one smooth motion, taking me with him. He laid me down a short distance from them on a patch of moss and settled down behind me, his big body spooning me, tails and tentacles winding around various parts of my body until I was snuggled tightly against him. Heaven on Earth. Well, heaven on this hellhole of a planet.
“Sleep well, Jack,” Ohem murmured into my hair.
I smiled to myself and closed my eyes.
We’d lounged around the pools the next few days, eating smoked meat, and having a relatively good time. Sam had figured out a way to make a smoker by piling rocks together and laying the bony spines of the lizard camel over smaller stones to make a grill grate. She placed cut up spikes and leaves from the trees and had them under the bone grate, smoking away. It would help preserve the meat and not make the girls sick. Though Ohem pointed out they wouldn’t die with their nanos working to kill any bacteria, we still didn’t want to risk it. I desperately wished we had salt, but the smokey flavor was pretty good. I may enjoy my meat raw from time to time, but I was a civilized, not-quite-human-human being.
Ohem and I snuck away to have sex under the trees every few hours, not wanting a repeat performance now that Ohem was deeply uncomfortable being intimate in front of an “innocent”. Sam looked both offended and disappointed.
It had cracked Patty and I up to no end. Callie had to be filled in on what had happened and looked positively scandalized, which sent me and Patty into another tailspin of laughter.
We didn’t wander far from the oasis for those days until we ran out of meat.
Ohem and I argued for a long while about who was going hunting. He felt as though it was his duty to provide for me, but I had a biological imperative to provide for him. Instinct trumps duty, every time. I may have growled and stomped my foot until he’d relented, but that was beside the point. Either way, I won hunting rights and left him to watch the girls.
I had to track the damn lizard camels for miles to the east. They’d run forever! I must have left a nasty impression on them.
I finally found them at the mouth of another oasis, about twenty miles from ours. This mountain range must be riddled with hidden canyons filled with water. No wonder all the vegetation stuck to the base of the mountainside. Which also meant that the lake we’d been drinking out of was probably toxic since nothing grew around it. It’s a damn good thing the girls had the superbug, and we’d left quickly.
I trotted around the lizard camels on all fours, moving swiftly to cut them off. I’d just taken one down and had started to gut it when the whine of a ship stopped me cold. The sound of my heart stuttering and then the rushing of blood in my ears drowned out the ship's noise.
A gray ship had dropped out of the sky in the distance, heading to our crash site. It was flying parallel to the mountains. I dragged my kill under the cover of the trees and watched it. No doubt Ohem had heard it, too. I had to get back. I needed to know if that was friend or foe. If it was friends, happy day. But if it was enemies? I needed to kill them all. They’d captured my mate, never mind that I hadn’t known him at the time. It was still revenge worthy. They would be here to retake my family. Never gonna happen.
I tore through the trees to the oasis, fear driving me to run as fast I could. The distance stretched out before me like a never ending hallway. I covered the distance in ten minutes, but it felt like hours. I barreled through the canyon and into the oasis. Ohem was waiting and caught me up in his arms, the breath whooshing out of me at the sudden stop.
I shifted back and looked over his shoulder, sagging in relief when three pairs of confused eyes met mine. They were safe. For now.
“Did you hear it?” I asked when Ohem set me back on my feet.
Izi going dim, he nodded. “Yes. I went to see. It is not my crew,” he said. He looked at me and I knew what he was about to say. My heart dropped to my stomach, a cold sweat breaking out over my skin.
He approached me slowly, his Izi flicking on and off rapidly. He slid his hand around the back of my neck, bending to place his forehead against mine. “I must go.” His tail wound around my calf. “One of us must stay to guard the others. I need to see if it is Vero. I need to get answers.”
It went against every instinct I had to let him go alone. He was my mate. I wanted to tear and shred all who threatened him. I wanted to eat their hearts and howl my victories to the sky in warning to any others who would dare touch what was mine.
I understood that what he was saying was logical. He knew the enemy, and I didn’t. Sure, I could go out there and kill them all, but they would be too dead to answer questions.
I couldn’t let him go! I just found him. I wrapped my hand around his forearm and took a deep breath through my nose, pulling as much of his scent into me as I could. I drowned myself in it.
I was shaking, barely in control. “Okay. Okay, go.” It was the most difficult thing I’d ever done.
I needed to trust him. Trust that he would survive and come back to me.
