“Dragons and Xian Warriors have a two-hundred-year lifespan,” I interrupted, knowing where this was headed. “As my mate, you get the same.”
Janelle’s eyes all but popped out of her head from shock. “What? How?”
“Have you noticed the scales around Madeline’s forehead?” I asked, temporarily ignoring her question.
“So, they are scales?” Janelle asked. “I had noticed the darker shapes, but as I can’t see too well, I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t dare ask not to embarrass her in case it was a sensitive topic.”
I chuckled and gently caressed her cheek. “That was very considerate of you, but no, she’s not sensitive about it, at all. Quite the opposite in fact. She’s very proud to display the proof of her bond with Reklig. When you and I are fully bonded, you will also bear my mark on you.”
“Around my forehead?” she asked, shock, awe, and excited curiosity filling her voice.
I shook my head. “No,” I said with a smile, pleased by her reaction. With my fingertips, I caressed the side of her neck and the line of her shoulder. “You will develop some black scales here, on both sides of your neck and shoulder that will match the pattern of my own. It’s what we call the mantle. All the wives of Xian Warriors and Dragons get them.”
“But how?”
“In order for us to make the bond, we must be intimate,” I explained, a fire I’d been repressing for days lighting up in the pit of my stomach. “When our bodies become one, my fangs will descend, and I will inject you with my mating fluid. It will strengthen your immune system, make you less prone to sickness, help you heal faster, and increase your lifespan to match my own. You will maintain your current appearance until the age of one hundred and fifty, at which point you will start to age normally—and as will I.”
“So, we get to go together?” Janelle said with an emotion I couldn’t define.
“Yes, my love, we do.”
“When will we bond?” she asked, her voice suddenly becoming deeper and throatier.
“I’ve been waiting for you to recover. To be stronger and healthier,” I replied, my own voice dipping lower and becoming more gravelly.
“I am stronger and healthier,” Janelle countered.
“You are,” I said with a naughty grin.
She grinned back, her dark eyes smoldering. My mate had indeed come a long way and put on a healthy weight. No longer did her cheeks look sunken in, nor did her ribs poke out under her skin. Janelle has nicely filled out, even more than I had imagined, with beautiful curves at the right places.
I was grateful for this opening as I had planned on taking things to the next level after our departure from Dreija tomorrow once we knew for sure where we stood. It was silly how fierce and confident I felt when it came to battle, but how insecure I became whenever my mate was concerned. There was no doubt in my mind that Janelle was falling in love with me, yet I couldn’t swear that she would choose me over Brees and her other lifelong companions.
We couldn’t just sneak back to the ship without broadcasting to the whole world what we were up to, and we didn’t want to offend our hosts either by bailing out early. Instead, I tried to impress my mate with how hard I’d been practicing Creckel speech. I first showed her an image of Khepri with our ship landing. I continued with a series of scenes with her cradled in my arms as I flew over various landmark locations of the Vanguard’s homeworld. She grinned, and her excitement rising with each image spurred me on.
When I displayed an image of us sitting on top of one of the plateaus overlooking the chasm of Dragons Rise, watching the mesmerizing colors of the sun going down, Janelle’s smile faded. That slightly took me aback. I thought of repeating the image to make sure it had bothered her but then decided to go with the next one instead. Moving to something safer, which I believed my mate would respond well to, I imitated an image Janelle often used with me to display the affection she felt for me. But in my case, I wanted to show the passion she’d awaken in me. I therefore displayed a small flame growing out of my chest towards my mate, spiraling around her before engulfing her. Instead of the lovely blush and smoldering gaze I expected, my female recoiled and glared at me with outrage.
“What’s wrong with you?” Janelle asked, furious.
Baffled, I opened my mouth to explain what I’d meant to say and ask why she’s perceived it as offensive. However, before I could say a word, my mate’s head jerked right to look on the other side of the bonfire at Brees who was clearly trying to get her attention. Janelle jumped to her feet before giving me a cold, hard stare that left me more confused than ever.
“I will assume you have no idea what you just said,” my woman said in a clipped tone before walking away towards the Creckel female.
What the fuck?!
“Now that’s the stiff walk of a pissed off mate if I’ve ever seen one,” Doom said in a taunting tone when Janelle was out of hearing range.
“Yep, definitely a pissed off wife,” Reklig added mockingly. “What did you do?”
Rising to my feet, I approached the men, although my gaze remained locked on the section of the woods where Janelle had disappeared with Brees. I took a seat next to our team leader and ran a nervous hand through my hair.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I was trying to be romantic by speaking to her the Creckel way since it’s more comfortable for her. But—”
“Oh brother!” Doom exclaimed in a gloomy tone. “You obviously royally screwed that up. What did you say?”
I described the images I had telepathically projected to my mate. Doom’s jaw dropped, and he stared at me for a few seconds as if I’d grown a second head. My anxiety spiked, wondering what the heck I had actually said.
Doom whistled through his teeth, while Reklig gave him as confused a look as I felt.
“I must admit, I’m not seeing anything fundamentally wrong with what he said,” Reklig reluctantly conceded. “But you seem to.”
“Most certainly,” Doom said, shaking his head at me as if I was a lost cause. “I used to think no one was more romantically challenged than Chaos, but I have to hand that title over to you, Reaper. You just broke up with your mate, and then said you wanted to kill her: more specifically burn her alive.”
“WHAT!?” I shouted, loud enough for every head to turn questioningly towards us. “What the fuck do you mean? How?”
“For the Creckels, the sun represents life, light, new beginnings, and by extension warmth, friendship, love, and the future,” Doom explained. “But it can also mean an end or death. The sunset means the end. The two of you watching the sun go down, side by side, means the end of your relationship. However, if in that image you had both been old and grey watching the sun go down, this would have meant instead that you would be together until you die. THAT would have been romantic.”
“So, how the fuck was I supposed to simply say that I want to enjoy watching the sunset with her because it is a beautiful sight on Khepri?” I asked, flabbergasted.
“You would have needed to put a focus on both of your eyes first to establish that this was about seeing,” Doom replied. “Alternately, you could have simply shown the sun coming back up at the end to establish continuity, but that could be interpreted as you saying you wanted to break up but decided to stick around in the end.”