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  Quist left the brook to follow after her, flinging water from his wings. They banded around her, magically dry, and pressed her back into his hard chest. He lifted her in his arms and tickled her ear with his hot breaths.

  She felt vulnerable and protected but wary that he’d strip her naked and take her again without restraint, knowing she was too tired to stop him, knowing she wouldn’t regardless of how she felt. Thinking about it made her body respond with desire.

  His voluminous cloth pants were another barrier between them, but as she felt its belted cord dig into her skin, she knew it would only be a moment for him to get naked again.

  “Quist,” she squeaked while his wings blanketed her. Yahiro pressed her thighs harder together to relieve the sudden, yawning emptiness that bloomed, and focused on the well-used pain he’d inflicted without knowing.

  “Did I hurt you?” he asked, suddenly, as if he’d known her thoughts. “I saw enjoyment on your face before...”

  “You didn’t hurt me,” she said and swallowed, her body burning in a blush.

  When their eyes locked, the connection burst like wildfire between them again. Yahiro reached out and closed her fingers over the familiar weight of the glowing stone. The luminescence it gave was weak but appeared to grow stronger with each passing second.

  Quist placed his hand over hers as she lifted the stone between them, peeling her fingers back. In the low light, its rounded edges were covered in gilded rose-gold. The patterning stemmed throughout the clear parts of the rock like veins which glowed more vibrantly as the minutes passed.

  “It came back,” Quist murmured.

  “How? I swear I haven’t been carrying it all this time.” Yahiro plucked at her lower lip, allowing Quist to take the stone from her hand and flip it from side to side. Her palm burned from where it had been.

  “It vanished at dawn. I watched it do so. Perhaps it doesn’t exist during the day. It makes sense.”

  Her eyes met his. “How? That doesn’t make sense at all. Things don’t vanish like that.” Aliens don’t exist. Alien gods definitely didn’t exist. Sunlight that bathes is too good to be true. God killers are only found in fiction books. Yahiro frowned.

  “Things vanish all the time in Sonhadra,” he responded sadly.

  “Lusheenn might come back...”she said, thinking he spoke of his creator.

  His lips peeled back in disgust. “He’s already back. I feel him more than ever near this stone.” Quist scanned the vicinity around them in earnest.

  She hugged herself tighter and refused to look about with him, shivering, wanting to again reach for a weapon that wasn’t there and to hold on to its imaginary comfort. But what she had instead was a man with a whip and a set of wings.

  He pulled a string from his pants and wrapped it around the stone then tied another to it to make a necklace. When he was done he pressed the stone into her hands and stood up. “We should leave.”

  Yahiro pulled the necklace on over her head. “Are we in danger?”

  “We’re always in danger.”

  She deadpanned. I wish I had a godsdamned gun.

  “My brothers are nearly upon us.” He picked her up.

  “Is that a bad thing?” Yes, Yahiro, more aliens are always a bad thing.

  QUIST

  He flew her as far as he could in the dead of night, following the stream inland, knowing it wouldn’t be far enough. There was not enough stored light within him to keep them airborne for long.

  The human was strange.

  Some of the things she did and said were unlike anything he had been privy to in his millennia of travels. But as he watched her, he began to understand that each thing she did had a purpose. It was a different purpose than his own, but still something he understood. He ran his fingers through her hair and brushed out some of the sticks and leaves that had gotten caught within the strands during their mating.

  She had fallen asleep in his arms and when her body relaxed against him, he found a place for them to nestle down for the night.

  Her small body fit perfectly on his lap, curled up and receptive, and he didn’t know how he felt about it. His member engorged and hardened every time he touched her, but she was so different from his kind and the other valos he didn’t know how to proceed.

  Strange feelings and needs coursed through him. Vengeance and matehood mixed in one. Blindsided by the later right as the former felt out of his grasp.

  He had watched the heartstone fade as the night had into dawn. Gone then but now returned. He told Yahiro the truth but he hadn’t mentioned that while she still slept, he’d torn the foliage apart looking for it. Now it sat like a beautiful, warm pendant between her breasts.

  He drifted his finger over one of her covered nipples until it peaked. The things her body did were strange and yet enrapturing. He played with the other until it was as equally stiff. She moaned sleepily, shifting over his again erect member and he moved his fingers to the stone. The moment he touched it, he felt home.

  He was right there, right there! Quist squeezed his human closer to him. And I lost him.

  But now Sundamar stood, staring at him, drenched on the other side of the brook. His eyes fierce and haunted, resembling the worst part about him. He was created in the image of the single most reviled being in Quist’s life. Sundamar’s eyes daggered at the trembling human he held.

  The connection he had with the girl was just as startling as Sundamar’s rabid features. The covetous uncertainty. The confused lust. The helpless want.

  And that connection. The same one mirrored on his own face.

  Quist’s wings stiffened and his hand poised to grab his whip.

  “Hello, brother.”

  Chapter Seven

  GALAN

  He came to a fallen temple, one the likes he had never seen. It was jagged as if torn apart by fire and claws but he knew of no such creature on Sonhadra that could’ve done what was before him. The smell that he had followed had grown stronger until he came upon the raised butt of forged metal. It stuck up with a half mile of skid marks leading up to it until the front had stopped it amongst the dirt and burned-up trees.

  Orange beings, not unlike the raven-haired girl, milled about near what remained of the temple’s ruins. Many wore the same clothes the girl had but some were dressed differently. Those were less noticeable, and he decided that they must be the lesser brothers and sister valos of this new race.

  Galan looked up. One that came from the sky... He itched to move closer but chose to remain hidden in the nearby trees. As the hours passed, he was privy to more than he ever thought he would be.

  Females, not many. Males are the majority. All looking broken in some way. One of the men dragged down his pants beneath him and released his member, only to spray the stump of the tree with yellow liquid. Galan watched the man handle it, his member not unlike his own—although significantly smaller—before he put it away and returned to the others.

  At least he knew these valos were built similarly to the others. His own shaft, having been painfully stiff since he left Dawn behind, jerked at the thought. It meant the girl Sundamar chased would be compatible with him and that what she had between her thighs would fit over what was between his. Galan shifted and pulled his wings tighter against his body, his quiver and bow hanging on either side of his stems but only a twitch and turn away.

  His nostrils flared. He now had a name for the strange smells in the air. It smelled like newly forged precious metal weapons mixed with blood and something sharp and gaseous. It made his head spin. The constant drizzle of rain hadn’t lessened the stench. It only exasperated it and with it, the need to find out from where and from whom the new species had come.

  They looked nothing like Lusheenn nor some of the other Creators he had seen. They were smaller than any valos on Sonhadra and appeared weaker. He cocked his head to the side and deepened his crouch on the branch, moving for a better view. Some held shaped metal rods on their hips, others carried them in t
heir hands, while some had no rods at all. Only one female, he assumed by the curve of her bust, had one of these rods.

  And yet, as they went about, all with a job in mind, many held electric lightning in their hands also shaped from thinner sheets of the same metal the rods and the ruined temple were made of. The flash emitted from the lightning electrified his eyes and he felt compelled to jump down and touch it like the tiny valos did.

  He counted a total of twelve beings but couldn’t account for any that may have been out of the vicinity. Galan moved slightly on his branch and stiffened when excess rainwater spilled to the ground. He waited to see if any of the beings noticed but none had so he lowered his arm that had jerked up to his weapon in response.

  His attention shifted to the several females in the group. None of them looked like his raven-haired girl; none of them stirred the shaft between his legs like she had, and to his frustration, he felt nothing for these other females. If he could muster any want for one of them, he could claim her as his own and conquer her, leaving the other beauty behind for his brothers to tame.

  His jaw ticked at the thought and a well of disgust rose up in him. She’s as much mine as she is Sundamar’s. I saw her right as he had. He could even argue he saw her first as there was no way to prove...

  It didn’t stop him from watching the new species or gathering intel for himself and his brothers. Galan found it strange that no other valos had come out to take in this new temple and these new people. He found it more disturbing that the Creator of these new valos was nowhere to be seen. They appeared to be left to their own devices. A new species had far too much to learn before their Creator left them alone.

  “Stop! Stop, no!” A shrill feminine voice seeded through the humid air, drawing his attention away from the larger group, who in turn stopped to watch the sudden commotion.

  “Please, you’re hurting me!” A disproportionate male, holding one of the rods against a female, dug its blunt metal head into her back. Galan slowly rose and turned as the female was dragged off and away from the larger group. The others who were left behind went back to work as if the female’s strange yelps had no effect on them.

  He neither understood nor liked the sound of her crying plight and knew she must have done something wrong to deserve the punishment she was about to be given, however, it didn’t sit well with him.

  Where is their Creator? Their leader? Punishment had guidelines and codes with choices allowed and decided upon by both parties. Judgment and sentencing had been a favored pastime of Lusheenn’s, and Galan knew his methods well.

  Each kingdom had their own codes, their own way of handling things, but in one mutual respect, judgment and punishment were just. The way the male dragged the smaller, clearly weaker female intrigued and angered him at the same time. There was nothing but him and her and that didn’t sit well with Galan.

  The sky deepened into evening above. His eyes caught the two moons rising as the female’s shrieks grew distant and more frenetic. As they continued without stopping, aggravating his nerves, he stepped off the branch slowly, allowing his wings to flow through the air just enough for him to hover. When it was clear none of the new valos paid him any mind, he moved through the thick, mossy canopies until he reached the source of the noise.

  And stopped.

  The female’s lower body was bared. The male struggled with her clothes, knocking the rod against her skin as she was shoved roughly against the trunk of a tree. Even from his position he could smell the speckles of blood where her skin met the bark. It didn’t smell like Sundamar’s blood. It smelled like the rest of the new valos’ temple and products: different.

  His nose twitched as a deluge of other scents washed over him next. Grimy, dirty, unwashed, and metallic, body odors that sickened his stomach.

  “You’re hurting me! Please,” the female’s screams grew shriller. The man remained focused on his intent to punish. “No!”

  Galan didn’t understand any of their words.

  The female suddenly knocked the male away, sending him sprawling on the ground, but as she dove to the side her eyes locked with his, stopping her in her tracks, forgetting about her accuser. Her mouth parted but whatever she was going to say to him never came out. The man had taken her ankle and sent her crashing to the ground.

  This isn’t right. He shouldn’t get involved. I know nothing of these valos. It could be a sacred ritual.

  His fingers wrapped around the grip of his bow. The small female valos’s gaze found his eyes again and she made sounds that could only be taken as garbled pleas. The scene playing out sickened him. The man pressed her into the moss. The fight within her waned.

  Galan lifted his bow and notched his arrow. The male released his erect member and thrust open her legs. Are they mating? His confusion and unease strengthened. His own member surged forth at the prospect and his eyes narrowed.

  She has tears streaming down her cheeks...

  Galan placed the shaft on his arrow rest and aimed. The female who still stared at him with wide-eyed horror, eyed his weapon with sad confusion and dug her fingers into the dirt. She jerked into herself when he released.

  The man dropped on top of her without a sound louder than a whoosh. The female wailed and dragged herself out from underneath the male and crawled to Galan’s side. He held his bow out and helped her to stand up, his eyes never leaving the male valos. He twitched and convulsed on the ground, shuddering as if lightning had struck him from above.

  Galan, still uncertain about what he’d done, stepped forward for a closer look. The female stood sniffling behind him. When he turned the male over, glassy eyes met his.

  “Don’t—don’t kill me,” the male sputtered, saliva spraying Galan’s face.

  “What did the female do to you?” he asked in his own language.

  The male shook his head.

  “What did she do to warrant such a disrespectful punishment?” Galan asked again, knowing the male should know the language of light. All valos did. In all his research, in everything he had seen, never had he heard of a punishment of forced mating. The thought of such an intimate act brought low by law and pain churned his stomach. He would do anything to find relief, anything, but not force someone into it for his own selfish reasons.

  “Please...”

  The female at his side picked up the downed male’s rod and lifted it, pointing it point blank at the male’s face. An ear-splitting blast erupted in his ears, sending him back in shock. Then another one followed, this one accompanied by a burst of excruciating pain. The woman was now pointing the rod at him.

  Galan blacked out, knowing he should’ve never gotten himself involved.

  HE WOKE UP TIED TO the burned-out metal temple with his wings bound painfully at his back. A chain of linked metal secured his wrists and ankles and rivets of the electric lightning he had seen the strange valos use before. But this time the lightning wasn’t made of flashing pictures but was red and hot, and when he tested out his chains, it seared his skin.

  The light it gave off, subtle at most, was barely enough to feed on but it was enough to replenish the barest minimum of his strength. It was the beginning of dawn.

  Galan released a shaky breath and tried to relax. Wait. Wait a little longer. His shoulder hurt and he looked down to see what had gotten him—what the female had done—but it was bandaged up. When he flexed his muscle, dull pain coursed from the hidden area. His bow and quiver were no longer strapped to his body and with a quick glance around the space he was in, they were also nowhere to be seen.

  He closed his eyes and knocked his head back but the vibration that sounded through had him opening them again. He was near the strange temple. Not inside it though... I can still see the sky. Strange forms, corroded and bent and damaged by fire lay about him. Sparks flew from cords off to one side, sizzling the air until they vanished into the ground. Small booted footprints were everywhere, especially around his body.

  They took me. And to some small a
musement, he knew they had studied him as he had them. Which meant one thing: he knew as much about them as they did about him. He had an advantage when day broke.

  I’ll have to avoid the rods they carry. All he had to do was wait. The smell of soot and char filled his nose, making him cough, making his feathers shake and molt beyond its banding, making his shoulder ring out in pain.

  “You’re awake.”

  His eyes flicked up to see a female, the same one as before, stepping out from the gloom. He peered at her through the darkness but couldn’t see her features clearly. His gaze fell on the rod she carried.

  “So you see my gun.” She lifted it off her belt and pressed several triggers. It was enough for him to replicate later if he needed too. “Good, that makes things easier.”

  She took a step closer to him, swapping the weapon from hand to hand until she pulled a smaller, square device from her shirt.

  “Are there others like you?”

  He didn’t understand; he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t look at the first glint of the sun rising through the thick trees.

  “Are you here to hurt us?”

  Galan ignored her and waited.

  “Will more of you come?”

  Shivers of stray light coursed through him. His wings stiffened almost to the point of breaking his chains. Not yet. The female clicked the new device in her hand and something stung his head behind his right ear.

  “You can understand me now.”

  You can understand me now... The words came to him slowly, like lava over cool ground, and he repeated them in his head. His mouth parted, uncertain about this new angle, unsure because he knew she wasn’t speaking his language, but also because he understood her. The spot behind his ear ached even more as he concentrated on it.

  “What you’re feeling is a hybrid translation device. Popped one in you while you were out.”

  Her words seemed to flicker behind his eyes and speak directly into his head, it wasn’t unlike how he and his brothers communicated telepathically.