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“Thank you for saying so. But my point is that choosing not to be intimate was meant to be about my peace and my control,” she explains. “I thought I would feel that control start to return to me. But there I was, in a situation where I chose to be with you. And yet, I wasn’t in control at all. In one moment, my desire was revived, and in the next it was gone, replaced by my fears.”
I’m thankful for the goggles, thankful for the years I’ve spent stone-facing diplomats, politicians, and social climbers. Because I don’t want to show her the pain and confusion roiling in me. I feel like half a rutting bastard for enjoying it, for fantasizing about the taste of her on my tongue since then. If her emotions are this jumbled after what we did, then I fear we should never have done it to begin with.
“We’ll have no reason not to protect your peace from now on,” I assure her. “My promise to you still stands, and you won’t be forced to make any other exceptions.”
She opens her mouth, but the radio buzzes Tevi in once more.
“They’re headed your way,” she says frantically. “Get to it!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
FRANKIE
With Tevi’s urging, we turn toward the place where denser brush gives way to the tundra. As we fix our attention there, a kaia bursts out from misty cover and takes off sprinting. My hands are suddenly shaking, but with a shot of adrenaline, I tap my way through the basic instructions Tevi gave me with the controller. The drones hum to life, zooming down toward our subjects just as a second beast appears.
The first was the female. She races through her territory with speed and grace, darting around the rocky outcroppings to confuse her pursuer. The drones are lightning fast, so I soon have an up close visual on the kaia. I start snapping shots of her as she tears across the very path that Tevi had shown us before we left.
The male who’s gunning for her heels is growling with such ferocity that it carries across the flat expanse of scrub and rock.
I glance at Mak to find he’s pushed up his goggles, watching in amazement.
They run and run, all the while I smash keys on my controller in an attempt to get some content worth looking at. But they’re so fast, and soon they’re heading underneath our speeder’s idle position.
“Should we follow?” I ask into the comm to Tevi.
“I honestly wasn’t expecting her to get that far,” she radios back. “If you’re up for it, I say do it.”
I nod at Mak, but he’s already pulling down the goggles to prepare.
“You focus on your little drones,” he says. “I’ll take the helm.”
His arms come down around me to take hold of the speeder controls. I ignore the rush of heat, chalking it up to adrenaline and other lingering hormones from last night.
Mak effortlessly pilots us in pursuit of the kaia from above, keeping us a short distance behind them. It’s just like he said, with mating on the mind, the kaia have hardly noticed our presence above.
I try for some aerial shots with both the animals in frame as the male kaia gains on her, pushing closer and closer to the final goal. I hadn’t considered until this moment that the result of this helpful project would include the two of us watching the female get mounted by her mate. Maybe the awkwardness is in my imagination, but after what we discussed, it feels too on the nose to witness. The heat within me caused by the excitement and Mak’s arms caging me into my speeder seat has not subsided, either.
We reaffirmed the agreement that we wouldn’t engage in intimacy, so my haywire heartbeat is distracting.
“She doesn’t look tired at all,” I say, zooming on the female. Her powerful strides remind me that while I think of Nisi as a wolf or a dog, she isn’t one at all. I’m not sure a wolf from Earth has speed capabilities like this. It’s hard for the drone to keep up with her evasive movements, too. She keeps dipping out of frame. “What happens if he doesn’t catch her? They’re mates, aren’t they?”
“Maybe he’ll have to be patient and try again,” Mak replies.
The male hesitates, confused for a moment while his prey has ducked around a rock formation topped with dark scrub. From above, I can see the female bolt ahead. If she keeps going now, she might lose him entirely. But then she stops, pausing with heavy pants to check on her pursuer.
“See, she’s playing with him,” Mak says with a laugh. He slows the speeder and swings it around so we can take another pass over where the mated kaia have paused their chase.
The female starts to circle back around the rock formation as the male trots on the opposite side.
Who is the real prey here? I think in amusement.
“We’ll be at this all day,” Mak says.
He ends up being right. We spend all morning making circuits on the speeder, because just when we think the first mated pair have exhausted themselves, another pair starts the chase heading the opposite direction. We follow Tevi’s orders, conducting a chase of our own with the drones from above. We eat our midday meal at Tevi’s field station, which she built in a well-camouflaged crevice between two boulders.
Once we’re well-frozen down to our bones and tired of the ceaseless tundra winds, we head back to the base and call it a day. Tevi gushes her appreciation for our help, but since I have no experience with this form of photography, I have no idea whether anything good came of our efforts.
Tevi offers her facilities to me for bathing so that we can tackle the ride back to Makiva’s Revenge in comfort, rather than suffer the damp cold clothes and sweat. Mak and I part ways for a while, him focused on fueling our vehicle while I shower and dump my clothes in the washbot.
