Warlord's Mercy - Cynthia Sax Page 0,22

him. She was a mess, yet her barbaric male didn’t seem to care about that. He splayed his fingers over the small of her back, holding her to him.

“This feels nice.” She lowered her head to his heaving chest, riding that rise and fall, relishing the skin-to-skin contact, the connection with another being.

With him.

She would miss her Warlord. Their parting would cause her pain.

That was one type of hurting she didn’t embrace.

Chapter Six

The next planet rotation, Tolui sorted his female’s eclectic collection of weapons by their functionality while she poked decorative holes into a chest covering.

“I had a special tool to do this.” She pierced the leather with the tip of a dagger. “I inherited a set of them from my mother. She died in a freak manufacturing facility accident when I had nine solar cycles.” That information had been relayed in a previous flow of words.

The reminder wasn’t needed. He would never forget anything his little human told him.

“The tools had gorgeous green handles.” She chattered as she worked. “And when I held them, I felt like she was with me, like she was looking over my shoulder, approving of my designs.”

The grief in her voice tore at him. He strapped yet another blade to his body, securing it in place with the strips of leather she’d given him. A rope was already looped around the waistband of his ass covering. It held an elaborately crafted target his female had constructed.

“When we were attacked by Daisun and his brutes upon landing, I lost the pack containing those tools.” Lea sighed. “I lost so much that planet rotation.”

Daisun and his males would die. Tolui would shred them with his claws. He extended and then retracted his natural weapons.

Lea was his gerel. His base had swelled when they had rutted without entry. And he craved her touch. It was physically painful to go long durations without feeling her skin against his.

The only explanation for that wondrous occurrence was there must be a significant variance between his source and himself. When the scientists added the enhancements to his DNA, they must have changed his genetics in other ways.

He wasn’t a replica of his source. A different female was his biological match.

Tolui studied Lea. Unfortunately, that female was too small, too delicate, too fragile to rut fully with him. If he lost control, he could hurt his gerel…more severely than he already had.

That would destroy him.

He selected two guns from the assortment before him. They hadn’t been calibrated for a specific being’s usage and could be operated by anyone. He stuffed the weapons into the waistband of his uninspired ass coverings and stood.

His wounds had healed. His strength had partially returned. He would return to normal in another planet rotation. “We’ll train outside the tunnels.”

Training inside the tunnels wasn’t possible. The projectiles might ricochet off the stone walls and injure his gerel.

“I’d like that. I could use some fresh air.” She set her materials aside, exchanged her dagger for another one, slid that into an intricately decorated sheath on her ass coverings.

He lifted his eyebrows.

“That was my fabricating dagger. This is my stabbing-beings dagger.” She said that as though it was logical.

It wasn’t important. She wouldn’t be using any daggers. He would protect her.

Tolui held out his hand.

Her palm slid over his as she linked their fingers. Some of the tension inside him dissipated.

“I’ve never stabbed a being with a dagger.” His chatty human knew the route and led the way.

He followed her, memorizing the twists and turns, and he listened to her, also navigating the flow of words.

“But I could do that if it was necessary.” Her tone was overly casual for a conversation about killing beings. “I taught myself how to throw a blade.”

He said nothing. It was doubtful she had the power in her form to inflict significant damage on a foe.

“My father would be mortified.” She grimaced. “He believed violence was a tactic of last resort.”

Her father was dead. He wasn’t the best being to glean knowledge from.

Tolui kept that insight about his gerel’s much-loved parent to himself. “You should know how to defend yourself.”

They had to part. He had to return to his clone brothers, rejoin the war, battle Berke and the other two Chamele Warlords for the right to rule the system.

Tolui had promised his warriors a home. He wouldn’t break that promise.

His gerel would remain on Chamele 4, where she’d be safe…from his enemies.

And from him.

He tightened his grip on her hand.

“Did your source teach you