I’ve run from this as long as I could. I can’t run any longer.
Esme is pinned against the warm stone where I caught her, her chest rising and falling, her hands holding my face. She’s asking me so carefully, so genuinely to tell her the truth that I can’t refuse her this time. She’s too stubborn to fight. I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m exhausted.
I step back and put the width of the porch between us. She reaches for me, her fingers closing around dry air. I smile, but my smile is a poor, sad thing, the smile of a male who has already lost.
“Drink some water first,” I tell her, and move toward the door.
She frowns but follows me.
“Are you evading again?”
“No. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
In the kitchen, I take the pitcher and pour her a glass. I set it on the table and sit down. She joins me. She wraps both hands around the glass and drinks greedily.
“You already know part of it,” I say. “You read the book. You know about the clicking and the hunt. But there’s something the guide left out intentionally.”
“Tell me.”
“When a Scorpius male doesn’t find his mate, his body doesn’t stop wanting one. It turns on him. The male enters a rut, and with no mate to answer it, it gets worse and worse, until the male goes feral. Mindless. Dangerous to anyone near him. My people don’t let it get that far. A male like that is exiled or put down before he can hurt someone. They call it mercy, and they’re right.”
“That’s what’s wrong with you,” she whispers.
“Yes. No one exiled me. They didn’t have to. When the people of Haara started to fear me, I sold my house in the city and bought this one at the edge. I moved out here before the Elder Court could order it. I wanted the choice to be mine. It was the last one I thought I’d get to make.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m close. Closer than ever.”
She turns the glass on the table, looking at her own hands.
“I’m your mate, though. This shouldn’t be a problem anymore.”
“You are my mate. The clicking you’ve heard, the sounds I’ve been swallowing and masking since I met you… That’s the signal. It’s all the proof I need. But just because I found you, it doesn’t mean it’s all good now.”
“It’s not common for a Scorpius to mate with a human, is it?”
“It’s rare. My shaman thinks that an ancestor of mine mated with a human, and that’s why I couldn’t find my mate among my own species.” I make myself keep going, because the worst of it is still ahead. “As I told you, the guide left out the most important thing. It was written to make human brides feel safe. Whoever wrote it decided the truth would scare them off.”
“What truth?”
“The claiming involves one last step. When the male catches his mate, he stings her.”
The color leaves her face and her blue eyes grow wide.
“Stings her?”
“With the tip of his tail.” I don’t look away from her. “For a Scorpii female, the sting isn’t a wound. Her body is made for it. The venom sends her into a kind of euphoria, and it seals the bond between them. Mated pairs sting each other for the pleasure of it. During the claiming, the female usually stings the male back.”
“And a human?” Her voice has gone thin. “What does it do to a human?”
“I don’t know… My shaman doesn’t know, and he’s old and wise. He’s read all the books. Maybe the bond changes the venom in your blood, and you feel what a Scorpii female feels. Or maybe…” I sigh. “Our venom kills humans, and it kills them fast. That’s one thing we know for sure.”
She pushes back from the table and stands. She crosses to the middle of the floor and stops there, her arms wrapped around herself. She starts pacing.
I rise too, because I can’t sit while she’s on her feet. I watch her, and there’s nothing I can do or say that will comfort her, that will make this less terrifying.
“Then don’t,” she says. “Skip that part. Just don’t sting me.”
