“The chanu zayul have honored you. They have chosen your body to host them while they mature. In doing so, they must have purged the parasites from your system.”
She lifted a hand to rub the back of her neck. There was no sign of a scab or scar there. “Did you put glow worms inside me?”
He still seemed confused as she slowly backed away from him, breathing deeply to avoid hyperventilating. “They will protect you and heal you, and they have somehow made it possible for me to understand you. This is a great blessing.”
“Blessing,” she whispered, her throat dry as she thought of the wriggling worm that had crawled out of Jotaha’s wounded neck. “I still have a parasite inside me!”
“No!” Jotaha said and his tone sounded offended as he tried to reach for her. His spines rose to half-mast when she dodged him and stepped backwards. “The little spirits are not parasites. They give much and take very little in return. For you, they demand even less. You are not Jotaha. To have them choose you anyway is an honor that was unthinkable before I brought you here. You were dying, Sarah. They saved your life.”
As if to reiterate his point, she suddenly felt a rush of endorphins, like she’d just finished a heavy cardio workout and was pumped with energy and positive feelings. “Oh, my god, they’re manipulating my hormones, aren’t they?” Despite her words, she still felt pretty good, all things considered.
Glow worms in her brain that sent her happy hormones—or vicious parasites in her belly, eating her alive from the inside? It wasn’t really a tough choice, but it was a nightmarish one.
“What, exactly, did you mean about the, uh, chanu zayul maturing?”
“You have seen their adult form in the urvaka. They came to your aid when you fought the twisted human.”
“The beetles!” her voice rose as she started to feel panic again, despite the flood of endorphins. “How the hell do they get out of my neck if they’re vauteg beetles the size of vauteg walnuts?”
He managed to catch hold of her as she started to panic pace, and he pulled her close again. “They will numb your body so you feel no pain when they leave it. You will not be harmed as the parasites harmed you. I swear this to you, Sarah. I would never have asked them to choose you if I thought they would hurt you.”
She tried to pull away from him but he held her firmly against him. Despite the bioluminescence of her body increasing in intensity, she eventually had to sag in defeat against his chest. She felt stronger than she ever had before, but it was nothing compared to Jotaha’s immovable strength.
“You did this to me?” she asked through numb lips. “Why?”
His hand rubbed her back, close to her neck where she just knew those little worm thingies were latched onto her brainstem. “I had to do whatever it took to save your life. We did not know the hon-gree were parasites. I thought you needed them to survive. I believed replacing your spirits with the chanu zayul would be enough to save you.”
She couldn’t help it. She chuckled, her cheek mashed against his firm chest, the linen slightly rough against her skin. “Hun-gry, Jotaha. It means ‘atya.’ My stomach makes that growling noise when it is empty. Humans don’t have worms inside us. Well… let’s just say we don’t have beneficial worms inside us.”
Feeling her submission to his superior strength, Jotaha relaxed his arms, allowing her to shift against him until she could rest her chin on his chest, craning her neck to look up at his face.
“Nixirs are strange creatures,” he said.
“Nixir….” She shoved at his chest. “Hey! I just realized that you use the same root word for ‘parasite’ as you do for ‘human’!” She glared up at him, wriggling in his hold. “That’s not very flattering, you know. I mean, first you put worms in my head, then you call my people parasites!”
He released her, allowing her to step back, though she didn’t bother to move far away from him. He could always grab her again. She wasn’t fast enough to avoid him.
“What would you call a people that invaded your world and took your land, destroying your civilization and chasing your people underground?”
Sarah tapped her chin. “Some humans can be assholes. I’m not gonna pretend otherwise. But I swear we’re not all conquering, genocidal dickheads.” She cocked her head. “You have words for ‘claveklin’ and ‘salavidu.’”
He seemed distracted, his gaze fixed on her chest, his head spines at half-mast, his tail lashing back and forth behind him. He made no comment on her discovery that his species had names for asshole and dickhead—well, the latter was more like dickless, but it was certainly intended as an insult.
“Yoo hoo, Jotaha,” she waved a hand in front of her, catching his gaze. His eyes lifted to meet hers. She smirked. “Human parasite eyes are up here, on our face. I can see how you’d get confused.”
Despite her poor attempt at humor, Jotaha still seemed serious as he stared at her. “Sarah, now that we can understand each other, we must speak of important things.”
“Oh, right. Because bugs in my head isn’t really an important topic.” She put her hands together in prayer position. “Please, please tell me you aren’t about to sacrifice me to some ancient dragon god that lives in a volcano and loves to feast on human flesh.”
His spines flattened to his skull as he seemed to be taking her words seriously, which only made her fear she should be too. There weren’t enough endorphins in the world to make her feel good now.
“Seta Zul would not send you to me, only to demand your flesh as an offering. She is sometimes known for capriciousness, but never for such cruelty.”
“Soooo, there is a dragon god living in a volcano?” Her voice ended on a squeak as her stupid glow worms decided now was the time to light her up like a firework.
Jotaha also looked a bit disturbed. When he spoke, his tone sounded like he was trying to reassure himself as well as her. “No, she would not do such a thing. It would be unheard of. She would not choose you as my mate and then demand your life in sacrifice.”
“Choose me as your what now?” Her body flickered as contradicting emotions warred inside her. This bioluminescent stuff was going to make playing poker a challenge. “Did you just say I was your ‘drahi?’ Vauteg! That’s what that word means! That’s what you were saying the whole time!”
It was difficult for her to think straight after such a revelation. It was perhaps even a confirmation of some suspicions she’d had during their journey. At first, she felt a rush of excitement at his explanation, but that was quickly dashed as she recalled the embrace she’d walked in on.
Jotaha was watching her silently, as if waiting to see what her reaction to such shocking news would be. She wondered if he had any idea that she was already attracted to him. Then the old self-esteem issues rushed to the forefront, making her wonder if he was even attracted to her.
“If I’m your mate, why were you hugging that other woman who called you her beloved?”
The fact that Jotaha didn’t immediately respond with a quick explanation that she was actually a sister or a cousin or some other non-sexual relationship to him made Sarah’s stomach twist—and this time, she was fairly certain it wasn’t with parasitic worms.