"No," I whimpered barely above a whisper.
I watched from the floor as my daughter struggled in his hold.
"How are you still moving?" he grunted against her.
"I could ask you the same thing, you sick fuck!" Faith went limp, but I saw the way she pleaded with a look at me before she tensed up and pushed upward to knock him off balance. But krelins were harder to knock down with their wings supporting them, he simply lifted off the ground and floated with a push of his wingspan.
I was equally confused. Faith was still moving, the krelin musk not affecting her, and her tincture oils were not subduing him.
My worst fear was playing out before my eyes with nothing I could do.
"Are you playing with the estrelds, Li-aq?" Another male voice came from behind them.
"No, Commander," Li-aq he said still struggling to hold my daughter. "Why didn't my musk work like yours did on the other one?"
"You're still young," the commander said with sympathy. "It's possible your musk isn't fully developed, or..." he said ominously then tsked.
"What? Or what?" Li-aq panicked.
"Or this little estreld is a potential mate, but that would be very dangerous for the queen to even think about. She's just as likely to dispose of you as she is to let any of these estrelds get away with harboring the trill responsible for murdering her mate."
Murdering her mate?
That was news to me.
"The Almder hasn't murdered anyone, you psycho!" Faith hissed, and I heard the krelin holding her scream.
"The demon has sharp teeth!"
"Yes, estrelds do have retractable fangs used for drinking blood for the minerals when they are still young and unable to crush a sufficient number of rocks. This one is still not fully grown it seems," the commander said with a calm dismissiveness. "If you are unable to handle the youth, then perhaps I was hasty in bringing you on this important mission."
"Argh, no... I can handle it," he grunted before my eyes widened in distress. His mouth clamped down on my daughter's neck and she gasped before collapsing in his arms.
"We're here for the trill, kill these ones and meet me at the shuttle. We are on a time constraint. The shuttles are our only way to enter the main planet without being detected by their new radiation net."
The commander left, and my limbs remained too heavy to move. I'd pass out soon, because I was too late in activating my loh to burn off the musk. The other krelin had blood dripping down his face from where I scratched him down his eye, and he hissed as he shifted my daughter's weight from where I dug my other claws into his arm. It wasn't enough. I didn't disable him in time.
I failed, I thought with a growing ache in my chest.
He clucked from the back of his throat, and crouched down, gently placing my daughter next to me. "I should kill you," he whispered while tucking her hair behind her ear.
My own throat wouldn't answer my call to scream.
"You'll die with me," Faith choked out.
"Perhaps," he said with a wince while licking the blood dripping from his cheek where my nails had dug in. "But if we both live through this, I will find you again. I'll become a commander, and you'll carry a future queen of Krelis." His throat clucked, vibrating off the walls like a promise. "Try not to die, mate."
No, my mind screamed.
The young krelin left us, and my daughter's arms shook as she lifted her weight to check on me.
"Mom," she stroked my hair back, and sighed when she saw my eyes still open. "Guess the commander scum was right about his musk not being strong enough yet. Don't worry, I bit him. He won't survive the venom."
I whimpered.
I couldn't tell her that him biting her back changed everything. I still had her father's mark on my inner elbow. He had bonded me to make sure that I didn't die from his poison. I could only hope that they weren't mates, and the commander was wrong. Because if they were, then she marked him as hers and neither of them would be able to bond with someone else.
Chapter twenty
