Destroyers Little Pet | 18+

⋭ thirty-eight

I don't sleep for a single second. The night crawls toward dawn while I cycle through every emotion. My mind races. What if they kill him before he can get back to me? He didn't tell me about his plan. If it doesn't work out, then what?

It feels like he dropped me in the center of an endless maze and left me here, twisted up in my own thoughts with no way out.

A sound from outside of the door has me shooting up out of the bed. All night long visions of long-horned assassins creeping into the room to strangle the life out of me hover over me like a raincloud.

The door opens and the hulking stranger that stands before me draws a scream from the base of my throat.

He lunges forward and covers my mouth. "Silence, woman. I will not harm you."

With his hand so tightly pressed to my face that he splits my lip against my teeth, he carries me out of the room. He runs into the next room and shoves me into his bathroom. "Silence. Stand in the chamber." He points to the shower tube before stopping and sniffing the air. He gives me a strange look before closing the door. The walls start to move in around me as I jump into the tube. The whole panel shuts down around me.

Hyperventilating, I sit on the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees. The tiny, dark space feels like a tomb.

He said he wouldn't harm me and technically he didn't. My lip stings but it could have been much worse than that.

Minutes tick by, it feels like forever.

When the walls start to move, expanding outward as the panel opens, I brace myself.

"Shasta," Destroyer opens the door.

A lump burns in my throat as I jump up, flinging myself into his arms.

"Rousur is from my pod. He stood guard over the room in my absence. When he heard an inspection was imminent, he moved you." He shocks me by explaining everything without any prompting from me. He must feel my body trembling like a leaf.

"Rousur? I wish you would have told me someone was looking after me! I was so afraid all night! Then when he came in I thought he was going to kill me!" I look between the two of them. They don't offer up anything else, no apology for scaring the life out of me or translation of his designator. It's not worth pursuing. "What happened?"

He sets me down and I know it's bad. Whatever he found out, whatever he had planned, his posture is wrong. He's tense. The hunched muscles in his upper back are rock hard and shaking. If he clenches his jaw any tighter, his teeth would crack.

"Ousnes compiled information." He opens his hand, a little metal ball rolling in his palm. "His woman had this hidden in her possession."

"Ousnes?" He said that as if I should know what it means.

"Fire Bringer." He hands the ball to my guardian and pulls me out of the room.

"Wait, what was that?"

He doesn't answer, just pulls me out of the room and into the next one, his.

Moving quickly, I open the panel to the bathroom and start the water in the shower chamber. I want him to talk.

He pulls his shirt over his head but doesn't come in, instead, he paces, growling low in his throat. "They have lied to us all. We have given everything, bled and died for them. A swift death is the compensation we receive for upholding our oaths." The shirt rips as if it were tissue.

"What does that mean?"

"We are animals, chained by our masters and released when it pleases them. At the end of our service, at the end of our usefulness, we are not taken to green pastures. Instead, we are dispatched to make room for the next in line." He rolls his neck, his bones cracking loudly.

"What are you going to do?"

"My pod will follow me to the end, they will follow me into certain death. It is the others I cannot count on. They will fight by my side, die with me, but follow me into rebellion. I cannot be sure."

"Rebellion?"

"The high council is aware of your condition," he looks at my stomach. "The inspection of my quarters was no coincidence. They searched for you. They would have me kill you. Hypocrisy." His jaw ticks. "I would be punished for my misdeeds, for breaking my oath. Yet all the while..."

"Wait," I grab his arm. "They're planning to kill me?"

"I will not allow it."

"But-"

"Shasta," he takes my face, tilting it up to look at him. "I will not allow it. You and my offspring will be safe. It is the oath I swore to you. I will protect you. You have not deceived me, you are still worthy of my allegiance."

My heart flutters, in his way, that is him trusting me.

"What are we going to do? How do we get out of this?"

"Ousnes' woman will help us. I have spared her life. She will take you and shelter you."

"Wait, what about you?" Bile rises in my throat. I told him to drop me somewhere but faced with that fate, I wouldn't choose it. I don't want to do this alone.

"I will come when this is over, when it is safe to join you. I have never considered a life outside of this one, I never allowed the thought to even form. It is now at the forefront of my mind. I will raise him to protect you, he will-"

"Hey, it might be a girl."

His mouth snaps shut and his brows furrow. "No. It cannot be."

"Why not? You can train her too, you know."

"Train a female?" He shakes his head. "That is unheard of."

"Well, she can be the first one." I watch as he processes the idea.

"I suppose it could be done." He sounds unsure.

"We can figure that out later." I rub one of his horns. Poor thing, he's had a lot to process recently. He doesn't have the experience that I do with having your whole life turned upside down. "Where will we go?" 

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