Turning at the waist to face me, he lifted his hand to my face, and I halted my breath in anticipation of his touch, unsure where it would lead but not willing to stop him.
With a soft whimpering sound, Lesh scooted closer to us from his spot by the wall. He placed all three of his heads across my legs and onto Wyck’s lap.
I froze in alarm as the animal’s long scaly necks stretched across my thighs, his black curved claws resting on my shin. His right head, the more outgoing one, nuzzled my hand.
“He wants you to pet him.” Wyck huffed a laugh, dropping his hand down without touching me after all.
“This one wants it, maybe.” I tentatively stroked the red stripe of scales on the side of Lesh’s right head. “I’m not so sure about the middle one, though.”
In the past three days, as I’d worked on taming his master, Lesh and I had also grown closer. The animal had been staying in my room all this time. Wyck had brought us both food, and all three of us had eaten every meal together.
Unchained, Lesh was free to roam my room, but he appeared to respect my space, sticking mostly to the area along the wall and near the door. He was guarding me when Wyck was not around. And for that, I was beginning to feel a real appreciation for him.
Wyck wasn’t lying when he’d said that Lesh had been toilet trained. Ever since he’d unchained him, Lesh had been using the bathroom without fail, which had gained him a new level of respect from me. There hadn’t been any more stinky incidents.
Yet until today, Lesh hadn’t allowed any physical contact between us.
“The middle head looks like it wants to move away from me as soon as possible.” I continued gliding my fingers over the hard, smooth scales on the side of the left head. Lesh’s left head also appeared relaxed, but the central one kept watching me with its shiny, black eyes. “It has a rather suspicious personality, doesn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?” Wyck petted the middle head then scratched under its jaw. Lesh closed all his eyes, releasing a soft hiss of pleasure. “They’re all one animal.”
“They are,” I agreed quietly. “But if you look closely, each head has its own personality. The middle one is obviously in charge, I’m going to call him Lesher. This one is Leshic.” I scratched under the right head’s chin, the way Wyck had done to Lesher. Leshic let me do it, its thin lips stretching into a blissful smile.
This was the most amazing ability of Lesh’s, in my opinion—he could smile. With his razor-sharp teeth now on display, the smile wasn’t far from a scowl, but I could tell the difference.
“You’re a mellow fellow, aren’t you?” I murmured, petting the smooth flat top of the right head. “That one, on the left, is cuddlier than the rest. That’s how he gets away with much more, too. You are a troublemaker. Right, Leshy?” The left head opened an eye at my question, as if responding to the nickname. I’d seen him demanding and getting more attention than the rest from Wyck.
Wyck watched me intently as I spoke. I wondered if it annoyed him that I’d gotten to know his pet this well and even was taking the liberty to name his heads.
“I call them Boss, Calm, and Cuddly,” he finally confessed, his expression a little sheepish. “You’re the first one to notice the difference in their behaviours. Normally, I keep Lesh away from everyone.”
“Why? He can be friendly once he gets to know you.”
He exhaled sharply, shaking his head.
“There is no need for others to know that. Being friendly and approachable may get him killed.”
“That’s horrible.” I hugged Leshic with both hands. “Why kill a friendly animal?”
Wyck shrugged his shoulders, with a somber expression.
“For fun.”
I could point out that there was no fun in murdering anyone, let alone an animal. Sadly, I’d gotten to know the dwellers of the Dark Anomaly well enough by now to agree that most of them would possibly derive a perverted kind of pleasure in murder.
“Lesh arrived with the ship that was transporting a large group of mahdis,” Wyck explained. “All of them were killed within days. He must’ve escaped the cage somehow because I found him hiding in a short, narrow passage near the vasai farm. I was fourteen at the time, and he was