carried her back to bed. Tenderly, he bathed the area, wiping away his mating saliva. The pain faded to a mild, irritated sting, and she lay lax against him, her fingers toying with his fur until his cock slipped free.
“I am sorry, Cha’lii,” Rhyst groaned. “I did not know that it would affect you that way.”
“What the hell was that?” she rasped in a shaky whisper.
He grimaced and gripped a horn for a moment before dragging his hand through his mane in frustration. “When a Tak’sinii male marks a female upon their first joining, his mating glands excrete a chemical that permanently strips away the fur where we mark.”
“But I have no fur,” she said quietly, and he nodded.
“It was instinctual. I should have thought it out first before acting on it. Forgive me, Cha’lii, please.”
She gazed up at his tortured face and winced as her fingertips grazed the mark. “It’s just a onetime thing, right?”
Rhyst let out the breath he had been holding and nodded his head. “Yes, my mate, just the one time.” He very carefully dropped his head down to nuzzle her.
A terrible thought occurred to her. “What about marking another female?”
“There is only you for me. While it could theoretically happen, it will not. You are my mate, Cha’lii. Only you.”
“Good,” she sighed. “Because you’re mine. I won’t share.”
“I will never ask you to,” he whispered. “I thank En’el for bringing you to me.”
“Even though it involved you being caged?”
“Even then.” He chuckled, his lips brushing her cheek before dipping down to caress her lips again.
Rhyst shifted, and his cock slipped back just enough for him to nudge forward again. The pain faded as her mate brought her to the height of her pleasure twice more that night before they lay together, utterly sated.
Chapter 31
Rhyst woke and smiled down at the top of his mate’s mussed head. Over the last few days, they had mated frequently, uninterrupted for the most part. He had transmitted to Vash the first day, to see if any progress had been made regarding the human colony, but received no word from the male. Before, Rhyst would have waited until his superior returned his transmit or would have dismissed the item as unimportant to his service and being attended to by the correct individual.
That was before he had mated, however. Before he was forced to watch every day as the lack of information increasingly distressed Cha’lii. That, in turn, made Rhyst uneasy. Especially since he suspected that Vash was intentionally delaying any communications on the issue. He would have to put a direct line through and have words with him before Cha’lii woke.
Shifting his paws on the bed, he flinched at the squeak and glared down at the f’anril kit snuggled between his leg and Cha’lii’s flank. MacGyver—ridiculous name for a small, helpless pest—looked up at him before finding a new comfortable spot to curl up. Rhyst grumbled as he slid off the bed. Every night he attempted to shut the creature out of the sleeping chamber, and every morning he woke to find it squeezed between him and his mate.
Rhyst stalked into the common room, seeking out the orb projector. Instead, his eyes fell upon a large box sitting in the center of the room. He cast a confused look toward the crate as he stepped around it—it had to be something that Ag’hana left at some obscene hour of the morning. He shook his head at it, bemused. He wondered what it was that she thought was so important to leave in his home. Last time, it had been a series of tangled decorations that she had lacked the patience to unravel the last Estal’lurii festival in honor of En’el.
He wondered what festival was coming up this time that she sought to take advantage of his downtime and presumed good humor. Flicking his tail, he stalked over to where the projection orb sat. Not for the first time, he wished that his implanted orb had the ability, like most orbs did, to transmit, but it was intentionally stripped from a’sankhii orbs in case an enemy might listen in or capture them. The only way he was able to transmit was by the household projection orb that every Tak’sinii home had.
While they provided entertainment, large orbs also transmitted long-range and were useful when communicating with relatives, or with children who were not of age to receive their own orb. It made Rhyst housebound if he wanted to transmit at all, but