“Xenoth, he’s right. Let’s go find her. She can’t be far.”
Xenoth’s hands opened and closed a few times before he accepted the change in direction.
“Fine.”
He turned abruptly away from the fleet captain, his kropek already doing a scan of the building and surrounding grounds. They picked up various passengers canoodling or gathering their containers. He sent out another pulse, looking for a pheromone trail as they entered the lobby for the terminal.
“There!” He pointed, leaving Urzan to follow in his wake.
They flowed rapidly through the hallways, camouflage activating as they moved. A few people felt their passing as an odd chill. A goat-horned woman jumped as the reports she was reading through suddenly went flying out of her hands from a strong burst of wind in the supposedly empty hallway.
Xenoth slammed through an exit door, pausing to look around and pick up the trail again.
A loudCRACK!sounded, off to his right. His head whipped in that direction and he took off around the corner at full speed, only to stop abruptly at the sight before him.
It was Z’Sally.
Surrounded by Vultarians.
On their knees.
Apologizing.
Xenoth twitched as he took in more of the details, his heart-rate starting to calm down now that his female was in view, and equally spiking again as he prepared to eviscerate the vultures. He paused as he realized it wasn’t necessary.
One of the Vultarians had a nasty cut across the entire front of his chest, bleeding freely. Another had a black eye, and the third just looked generally traumatized, his feathers sticking out in every direction.
“And one more time,with gusto!”Sally instructed the pathetic-looking trio.
They followed her instructions, parroting slowly, but firmly, “I am a naughty bird. I deserved to be roasted for Thanksgiving dinner. I will learn some manners and not be a misogynistic dickwad!”
“Very good! Well done!” Sally said, clapping like a proud parent, before pointing firmly to their bikes. “Now git the fuck out of my face,dickbags!”
The Vultarians scrambled to obey.
Xenoth must have made a noise because Sally jumped and spun, her face giving away her fear. Xenoth dropped his camouflage immediately and approached her slowly.
“Z’Sally?” he said her name reverently, his heart pounding in his throat as they came face to face for the first time. Well, face to chest. She was so…tiny.
Xenoth bowed gracefully, his kropek sweeping back behind himself, before saying, “Zaharash, Z’Sally. I am Zah Xenoth.”
As his eyes came up slowly and met hers, Sally flushed, her entire body tingling at the low growl of his voice.
“Um, hi,” she said, feeling completely unprepared and not a little bit like she just got caught doing something naughty. She looked up at him, and up some more, taking in his…everything. She swallowed. He wasbig.
“Yer awful tall,” she finally managed, fully checking out the extreme musculature beneath his barely-there dress.
And thosetentacles!Dozensof them!
Theoretically she’d know about them. She’d even seen them in the pictures he sent. But seeing them in person was an entirely different experience.
She absolutely, positively,hadto know what they felt like.
Sally was so drawn up with checking him out that she failed to notice that they’d come nearly face to chest until he began to reach for her, his hand pausing inches from her face.
“Does my height displease you?” he asked her softly, not quite daring to touch the feisty creature who had just tackled not one butthreeVultarians with nothing more than a piece of braided cord.
She was truly everything he could have hoped for in a Queen.
