Page 47 of King of Serpents

She squinted at him. “How do they navigate their differences? Humans choose partners based on emotion and logic, and perhaps because of that many women have assigned some sort of supernatural quality to their mating. Do any of the women there even know that they are mated because of a convenient sniff at the right moment?”

Therxian stiffened. Alex bit her tongue, suddenly regretting hastily speaking her mind.

“Is that what you believe? Do you believe that I would initiate a claim because it is convenient to do so in response to a chain reaction of pheromones?”

She shrugged, trying to play it off as if it didn’t matter. She didn’t know why she cared so much. She was a non-gratas. She should be as thrilled as all the others to be on the receiving end of that kind of single-minded devotion. Why couldn’t she just enjoy the illusion? Why did she have to put a damper on the good feelings they were both experiencing?

“It doesn’t matter,” she sighed. “It’s more than a non-gratas could hope for.”

He sneered, a loud, rattling hiss vibrating from his throat. “You do not insult yourself. You are my ashlava. You do not have to be content with anything just because you believe that you deserve nothing. You are a cunning and disobedient little human, and there is no being that I adore more. The first exposure to pheromones in those initial days may have drawn me in and cemented my bond to you in a physiological sense, but it is you who I have grown to adore beyond pheromones and beyond reason.”

“Could have fooled me,” she replied. “You certainly didn’t seem like you were interested in anything other than getting away from the females of the noble families.”

“I did not wish to acknowledge it,” he admitted. “I was consumed by my perceived duty and felt obligated to play by very specific rules until I realized that not everyone is playing by the same rules. The court of noble matriarchs will use me or destroy me. Or perhaps both once I have served my purpose,” he added with a gruff hiss of laughter. “But everything became clear when I thought I would lose you to another, and suddenly I could not bear it. Pheromones may trigger desire, but the bond that I was speaking of isn’t that. That comes from here,” he rumbles, his hand touching his chest, over his heart.

Alex blinked back the moisture that was oddly blurring her vision. It certainly couldn’t be tears. She never cried. In all the lonely years of desperately wanting something of her own, she had never once wept over it.

“Really?” she whispered and immediately wanted to die of embarrassment due to the way her voice cracked with emotion.

Therxian smiled, the hard lines of his face softening slightly—as much as one of his species could—and he cupped her cheek. “Hithana, I speak truthfully when I say that I wish to be annoyed by your unpredictable mind for the rest of my life. Moreover, I do not wish to be a male cast aside and used by female after female without bond or affection until I cannot function as a proper male and mate anymore. I want to give this part of myself to you.”

“What of nestlings?” She hated that she had to ask. “You will be expected to breed a royal line. You can’t just leave, and no one will accept our own.”

“Unlike my brother, I do not plan on giving them any choice,” he rumbled, a hint of a threat in his voice. “I have seen the offspring of such pairings, and they lack nothing. They are just as strong and comparable in size as any Seshanamitesh, perhaps even a bit larger among a few. We will breed a glorious line from our combined strength,” he added, his voice dropping to a whisper as he brushed her cheek with his. “I look forward to having nestlings who take after their mother and create chaos within the court.”

“Chaos? Me?” she chortled.

He drew back slightly, so that she was looking into glowing red eyes, and he grinned. “Did you not throw a dead insect of consider size and illreputation onto a prospective mate?” he teased.

“Please, it was dead. And just one female. Weren’t you the mastermind of the chaos we created in the corridor?”

“Precisely,” he agreed. “It just proves that we are well suited to each other and will breed cunning and fearless sons and daughters with strong personalities who can lead the shinara into a new age as a model for all the others.”

“Shangla help them,” Alex muttered, drawing another hissing laugh from the male.

“But first you must yield and accept my claim,” Therxian rumbled as he drew closer to her, his tail sliding along her leg, evoking a shiver in her.

“And how do I do that?” she whispered in reply.

His red eyes slitted with pleasure, he drew her into his embrace, his wings closing around them as his tail slid leisurely over her until she trembled. “Let me show you.”

Chapter 34

Desire hummed through Therxian until it vibrated from his chest and rose through his vocal cords. He could not stop the song now even if he wanted to. It was driven by instinct and by the primal desire that rose ravenously from deep within him. Even so, he tempered it as he reached for his female. Alex’s face softened in response, and she went willingly into his arms. Despite her small size, her heat still managed to consume him as he held it within his embrace, enveloping him further in her pheromone-rich scent. He instinctively burrowed his face into her neck, his mouth parting to gulp in her musk. It coated his tongues and scent receptors so thickly that he trembled all over.

If his primary sant had not already extruded, it would have burst free at that very moment. As it was the flesh around the thick, bulbous base of his shaft expanded, stretching the scaled flesh of his sheath tightly. He hissed with a guttural groan as his sant twitched in response to the hunger flooding him. His hips flexed and his sant dragged across the top of her warm thighs, dropping into the seam between them. Alex responded by pressing her thighs together so that a delicious pressure on both sides sent a frisson of pleasure deep within his sexual root. He had little doubt that she knew exactly what she was doing and his suspicion was confirmed when her husky laughter met his choked-off needy groan.

“Alex,” he hissed. “Are you truly aware of what you are doing to me?”

Her lips brushed his ear, the heat of her sending another shiver racing through him from the smallest contact. “Oh, I think I have an idea.”

The smile in her voice teased him, withdrawing some of the gravitas from the situation and easing some of the tension that had long gripped his heart. This was not the disciplined focus of intentional breeding that seemed to regulate reproduction within the shinara, and even among the vehal, for as far as he could recall. This was an invitation to play between mates.

Alex’s fingers danced over his chest, tracing the scales as she hummed. The sound was off-key and far from melodious compared to that of the nubile females who practiced the art from the time of sexual maturity, and yet the effect was a thousand times more powerful. His back bowed in response, his sant pressing far more needily into his mate’s softness.

“Ashlava, you tease me,” he hissed in playful reproach.

“It is better, isn’t it?” she whispered in reply, the breath puffing over his scales as she brought her lips close to them to brush feathery kisses to his chest. “This is not for the approval of the court or your mother. We don’t have anyone to impress and no demands or expectations for us. It is just us here.”