Because revenge is what I want. It’s all I want…isn’t it?
LYDIA
Deus is quiet as we return to his sector. I presume the work was hard as it certainly looked like it. As many as five Sarkarnii at once, working like machines to clear the fallen rocks. The little Paralnyi who was in the egg and who showed me what to do told me she had never seen any Sarkarnii take to the whole burrowing/mining the way Deus has.
When we reach the cabin, the lights around it are glowing, and it looks so welcoming I feel tears pricking at the back of my eyes. Inside, Deus’s shoulders droop a little.
I wonder if he’s thinking about her, about how he built this place for her and now, when he returns, she isn’t here.
“I’m going to take a bath,” I say, walking past him and pulling off my jacket which, when dropped, emits a cloud of dust.
I push off my boots, pull my top over my head, and I’m about to drop my pants when there is a deep growl from behind me.
“Deus?” I look over my shoulder.
He stands there, one arm resting above him, his hair hanging around his face, almost like the day we first met. His scales are covered in streaks of dirt.
“Do you dare to tease me, female?” he says, his voice like coals being raked over a fire.
“I’m hardly teasing.” I step out of my pants and make my way to the bathroom. “When all I want to do is get clean.”
I remove my underwear, and as a final gesture, I flick my knickers to one side before entering the room entirely naked.
Behind me there is a peal of fruity growls.
I ignore them. I want to know what is going on in his head, but I can’t see any way of being bold enough to ask.
Either Deus wants me, or he doesn’t. But either way, I’m going to have a bath, I’m going to have something to eat, and somehow we have to get through this without being banished to some barren moon.
Then he really will be stuck with me.
The water tingles as I slide in, bubbles rolling over me like a hot tub, only deeper and big enough I’m able to swim from one side to the other, which I do, and then I wait.
I’m not sure what I’m waiting for. This isn’t a test. I can’t test Deus. If he is in rut for me, then it is what it is.
I close my eyes and duck my hair back in the water, allowing it to swirl around my ears and cut out all other sounds.
That is, except the deep growl which reverberates around the pool. Nothing could hide that noise.
I lift my head. Deus holds on to either side of the doorway as if he’s attempting to hold up the entire universe on his back.
“What’s wrong?” I’m already swimming back.
“I had a plan,” Deus says. “But then there was you.”
He stares at me, his eyes burning like they’ve never burnt before. As if he can see into my soul.
“The rut. My…desire.”
“I didn’t…I don’t…” I push back from the edge into the center of the pool, not sure what it is he means or what it is he wants. “I wasn’t looking for a mate,” I finish lamely. “Or you.”
Deus blinks at me, but it doesn’t seem to do the usual reset. Instead, if it is possible, his eyes burn even brighter.
“This is not what I want, but it is what is happening to me,” he growls. “Dylia.”
Ice pools in my stomach, the warmth of the water not doing anything to thaw me. Her name is everything in this moment. It is the name on his lips, the name in his head. Deus is simply trying to fill the void of the mate he loved, the one he thought he’d have forever. He thought it could be me because for one brief moment he thought it would be possible.
He knows it isn’t.
