Which was a good thing, because Jotaha had no answer for that, unable to meet her eyes as a long silence fell between them.
It was Sarah who broke that silence. “That’s all I needed to know, I guess.”
Then she turned on her heel and retreated to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her loud enough that he shouldn’t be able to hear the sob she bit off.
26
Sarah was alive, and that should have been all that mattered to Jotaha, but now that they could understand each other, he felt conflicted about their future together. Farona couldn’t have chosen a worse moment to bribe the guard watching over Sarah’s sickroom so that she could sneak in and visit him. Seeing her delicate beauty and grace again reminded him of what they had once had together—and of the future they had planned. Even the home he’d had built for his future drahi had been designed with Farona in mind.
Farona was always soft-spoken, kind, gentle, and submissive. She would never have been as combative as Sarah, facing off against him with her alien eyes glaring, her full lips tight in a frown, her arms crossed in front of her like a warrior. He couldn’t help but make a comparison between the two females. Though he found Sarah’s ferocity strangely glorious, especially with her body glowing so beautifully from the chanu zayul that had honored her, he realized that his future would probably always be like this. Strife, verbal combat, misunderstandings. Doors slammed in his face when he had not given her permission to leave the conversation.
Sarah would always struggle against his control. It wasn’t the nixir way to submit. She would not glide elegantly among his people like Farona. She would likely charge through them like a nixir siege weapon. Her voice was commanding, her tone sarcastic, and her words sometimes sharp and crude. He couldn’t picture her sitting among the yan-kanat females, sipping xirak and politely exchanging stories of their days crafting and shopping and doing whatever other arcane activities the females did.
He could also picture her turning their mating room into a battleground. For some reason, that thought excited him instead of worried him. The thought of her clawing at him, her skin scorching against his cool scales as her flat teeth clamped on his shoulder or arm while he thrust inside her made his salavik shift beneath the seal, eager for the first mating ceremony—very eager to make Sarah his forever.
A part of him—a small part he didn’t want to acknowledge—enjoyed antagonizing her, watching her light up with anger and outrage, her eyes flashing as her body glowed with her fury. He could acknowledge that she was magnificent when she was at her fiercest, and he would never forget seeing her smash a burning inferno stone into the skull of the twisted nixir, giving him just enough time to slay it. He realized now that he had fallen for her hard in that moment, the way his heart suddenly seemed to burn for her catching him by surprise.
His drahi wanted him to disavow his feelings for Farona—and rightly so. Any honorable yan-kanat would always put his drahi first, dismissing all his previous lovers from his mind—and also openly to those lovers, if necessary. Farona should not have visited him. She should not have seen him in person until after he had sealed himself to his drahi. The elders were right to insist upon separation. Anything else caused confusion and doubt, especially when he had such a long history with Farona.
She was comforting and familiar. She was the symbol of the life they’d planned together. As much as he should do it, he found it difficult to completely deny that some feelings remained for her, even if they were as soft and gentle as she was, versus the inferno inside him that burned for Sarah.
No matter what his misgivings were about his future with his alien drahi, the panic he felt when he thought of her leaving him was enough to make him a little crazy. If he wasn’t bound by his honor, he would have pinned her against the wall behind her when she dared to suggest returning to her own world instead of staying with him. He would have shown her that he still held all the power, despite the chanu zayul that had undoubtedly made her stronger.
He would have tasted her the way he had wanted to since she first stumbled into his hunting grounds and scored a hit on him with a nixir weapon. Even then, she had fascinated him, intrigued him, made him hungry for the delights the nixir shataz were rumored to deliver to their partners.
Instead, he had released her when her words dripped with nixir scorn. She didn’t like him. Not now that she could understand him. She’d barely reawakened, and he’d already lost her affection—if he’d ever had it. She was slipping away from him before he even had a chance to make his case to her.
Seta Zul had been wise to create the seal so that the drahi had to voluntarily submit to being marked. It would be too easy for him to use his superior strength against her to claim her as his forever. In his panic at the thought of losing her, he might have even lost his honor to keep her.
She changed him in ways he didn’t like. Ways that made him worry that her nixir nature could rub off onto others, like a contagion. With Farona, he was civilized and honorable. With Sarah, he was on the verge of becoming a savage.
The door between them faced him like a daunting barrier. He wanted to knock it down, march into her room, and claim her right then and there. Instead, he managed to do the right thing and turn away. He left the anteroom, speaking sharply to the guard who had let Farona enter. He didn’t like the pity in the guard’s eyes. They thought he was being punished in some way by having a nixir drahi.
He found a servant and asked her to send hygiene items to his drahi’s room. Sarah had made it clear that she wanted to bathe. Though the hygiene practices of a nixir female had long ago been forgotten by the residents of Draku Rin skilev, they probably still had some items in the museum that might be useful to his drahi.
After seeing to it that Sarah would receive supplies to hopefully please her, and also that she would be offered a variety of foods to fill a belly that should be healed now, he made his way to the training grounds, eager to burn off excess energy caused by his confrontation with Sarah.
He was angry at himself, not her. He should have immediately told her he didn’t love Farona. He knew that beginning their mating with a lie wasn’t the best idea, but it would have smoothed things over for him, making it easier to claim Sarah. Eventually, he knew he would put Farona out of his mind. Eventually, it would be the truth. He didn’t think the feelings he had for his lifelong friend and former lover would survive the conflagration Sarah caused inside him.
The jotahs training in the arena were quick to greet him with bowed heads when he arrived, and equally quick to accept his challenge. Normally they sparred alone, but he was too strong for that to be a decent fight, so six of them surrounded him at his request, then charged him at once, attempting to tackle him to the ground.
Jotahs were usually shorter in size, though generally very stocky. The lesser height made navigating the smaller tunnels in the urvaka easier, though Jotaha had grown accustomed to moving and fighting in a crouch, and now could do so rapidly.
He tossed one jotah to the ground as the others punched him, clawed at him, or tried to grapple him. Two others went down fairly quickly, as the last three threw their full weight against him, causing him to stagger and take a knee. It wasn’t enough to put him off balance. He hooked an arm around the neck of a jotah clinging to his flank and squeezed until the younger yan-kanat sagged in unconsciousness.