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The mud was gone, but the skin beneath felt electrified, raw in a way that had nothing to do with the abrasive moss. Every time the warm water lapped against my core, my breath hitched, the memory of those forked, flickering points of heat rushing back with a violence that made my head swim.

"You are very quiet, Ly-ra," Sora murmured, her voice echoing softly against the damp stone walls. She dipped a heavy wooden bowl into the pool and poured it over my shoulders, the heat of the water washing away the last of the gritty peat. "The venom... does it still cloud your mind?"

"No," I lied, my fingers gripping the edge of the smooth stone pool until my knuckles turned white and ached. "The haze is mostly gone. I’m just... trying to process your Huntmaster’s 'training' methods. He has a very... hands-on approach to survival."

I leaned my head back against the stone, staring up at the glowing moss on the ceiling, trying to keep my voice casual. I wanted to sound like a scientist conducting an interview, not a woman whose soul had just been rattled by an alien’s tongue.

"Sora... what are the rules here? Among your people? About... mating? Or sex? I mean, given Kaelen's position and his... well, his form... I’d assume a male like him has a lot of experience with your kind. He seems like he would be... well-practised."

Sora stopped scrubbing. I couldn't see her face, but the silence stretched out, punctuated only by the plip-plop of water.

"The Pulse is sacred, Ly-ra," she said eventually, her voice taking on a formal, almost hushed tone. "Mating is a resonance of the spirit and the blood. To align one’s markings with another is to promise a life of shared hunting, a merging of paths. It is not done lightly; it is the heartbeat of our Tribe." She paused, and I heard the soft splash of her hands in the water as she let out a small, huffing sound—the Alu’un version of a dry, knowing chuckle.

"The Huntmaster? No. You misunderstand him. He has been sought by the daughters of every High Elder in the nest. They preen for him at every Moon Festival, showing him their finest silks, their sharpest blades, and the brightest glow of their markings. But Kaelen-Thul is a male of stone and frost. He has laid with very few in all his cycles. He has always looked through those females as if they were ghosts—distractions from the Hunt. Most in the nest are too intimidated to even meet his gaze, let alone his bed. They fear the darkness in him."

My stomach did a strange, uncomfortable somersault. My face dropped subtly, a sudden, sharp pang of something—jealousy, or perhaps a terrifying sense of gravity—stabbing at me. If he was that selective, that legendary for his discipline... then what did that make what happened in the woods? Was I just a curiosity? A biological anomaly that had cracked his armour by accident?

"But you, Ly-ra..." Sora continued, her voice dropping to a low, melodic hum as she moved to my side. "You are the first thing I have seen him truly look at. He has changed in the short time you have been at the nest. He has softened, though he would sooner cut out his own tongue than admit he feels the heat of the suns."

"Softened?" I scoffed, gesturing toward the mud-caked leather wrap-skirt discarded on a nearby rock. "He shoved me into a bog, Sora!"

"He shoved you into the mud to save your life," she countered softly, her amber eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made me want to look away. "Because he could not hide the way he smelled of you. When the Pulse ignites, the scents of the two become... intertwined. It is a sacred thing, a marker of a bond that the forest itself recognises. He knew if the others caught that scent on you—the smell of his hunger and your release as one—they would question his ability to lead. They would see a male compromised. He protected you from the eyes of the Tribe by drowning you in the earth."

My breath hitched, a sharp spike of panic lancing through me. "I don't—we didn't—it wasn't like that," I stammered, my face heating up until I felt like I was glowing as brightly as the moss. "The venom... it was a medical necessity. He was just..."

"I smelled it myself, Ly-ra," Sora interrupted gently, her expression not judgmental, but deeply knowing. "The moment I arrived. The air around you both was thick with it—a scent so heavy it nearly choked me. Do not fear; I will not speak of it to the Elders. But do not lie to yourself about the Huntmaster’s intent. If he were the male he was a moon ago, he would have left you in that thicket the moment the venom hit to preserve his own dignity. Instead, he brought you back. He carried your scent on his skin into the heart of the village."

The walk back to Kaelen’s hut was a blur of swaying vine-bridges and humid air. My mind was reeling, flipping between the image of Kaelen as the cold, untouchable leader and the man who had tasted me with such terrifying, focused hunger. Why the hell am I feeling this way? I berated myself. He’s an alien. He’s a different species. He’s my captor. And yet, my body didn't care about taxonomy. It didn't care about the star-maps or the distance between our worlds. It only cared about the way his golden markings had felt like a brand against my skin.

When we reached the hut high in the secondary fork, Sora squeezed my hand—a silent gesture of solidarity—and disappeared into the shadows of the weeping willow-vines. I took a deep, shaky breath, steeling myself for the confrontation. I expected him to be there, brooding in the corner, ready to bark orders to hide his shame.

I pushed aside the heavy woven door and stepped inside.

"Kaelen?" I whispered.

The hut was empty.

The bioluminescent greenery on the walls cast a dim glow over the room, illuminating his discarded training bracers and the neat pile of furs. The air still carried the faint, spicy scent of him—sandalwood and ozone—but the man himself was gone. He must have left the moment he realised I was coming back, fleeing the space before our scents could mingle again in the small room.

The rejection stung more than the mud ever could.

I sat down on the edge of the furs, my damp hair clinging to the back of my neck. My thoughts spiralled into a dark, frustrated loop. Was he out there right now, scrubbed clean, washing the taste of me out of his mouth? Was he disgusted that he’d let a 'star-woman' break his legendary discipline?

I pulled the heavy furs over me, shivering despite the humid warmth of the jungle night. I felt like a fool. A delusional, lonely human who had mistaken a desperate biological reaction for something meaningful. He probably regretted every second of it. He probably regretted me.

I closed my eyes, trying to force sleep to take me, but the forest was never truly silent. The Great Tree groaned, the wind whistled through the vines, and the distant calls of predators echoed through the canopy.

Just as I began to drift off, a strange sensation prickled the back of my neck. Like a subtle shift in the pressure of the air, a presence that felt like a low-frequency hum in my bones. I couldn't see him, and the hut remained empty, but I knew with a bone-deep certainty that he was there. Out there in the dark, perched on a high branch or hidden in the shadows of the vines, those gold-ringed eyes were fixed on the hut.

He hadn't truly left me. He was watching. He was guarding the very secret he seemed to despise.

Safe in the knowledge that he was near, yet terrified of the coldness that would surely meet me in the morning, I finally fell into a restless, dreaming sleep.

Chapter 25

Kaelen-Thul

The night air was thin and biting at this altitude, a sharp contrast to the humid heat of the forest floor. I sat perched on a thick branch twenty feet above the entrance to my hut, my tail coiled tight around the wood for balance, my secondary lids flickering shut as I filtered the sounds of the sleeping village.