Madness of the Horde by Zoey Draven

Chapter Eleven

“What story do you want to be told?” she asked me, frowning.

I breathed in her soft scent deeply until I could taste it on my tongue. I frightened her. Unsettled her. And yet, she’d still stood up to me, glaring at me as she sat draped across my lap.

I…liked that about her.

What story did I want to hear?

I wanted to hear all her stories. But I knew that she would not tell me what I truly wanted to know. Not yet.

The logical part of my mind—the part that I ignored most of the time—told me I needed to gain her trust. And I wouldn’t be able to do that if I kept frightening her, or threatening her, or unsettling her all the time.

I needed to tread carefully. There was more at stake here than my own…entertainment. She might open herself up to me eventually. But it wouldn’t be today, or tomorrow, or the next day. But it very well needed to be before the black moon. Even before then, I amended mentally, to allow me time to make plans.

“Tell me about why you learned to fear the Vorakkars.”

She tensed. “No.”

“Why?” I rasped.

Nillima, my pyroki, picked up her pace suddenly, briefly, and the force of her gait bounced the kalles in my lap. She sucked in a painful breath while I forced myself to hide my growl. The rocking, grinding motion of her backside over my cock was not helping matters. At times, she moved on me like she was fucking me and I needed a distraction.

“You told me the story of the heartstone yesterday because I told you about when I’d been taken to the Dead Mountain. It was an exchange of information,” she informed me.

A slow grin spread across my face and she stared at my sharpened incisors with a strange expression. “Very well. I am a fair male, after all,” I murmured, though my tone sounded mocking to my own ears. “One of your stories in exchange for one of mine then.”

She was suspicious. But intrigued. She’d liked the story of the heartstone yesterday. She was a female who enjoyed stories. I had felt her excitement, her sadness, her contentedness. Those emotions had poured from her easily as she’d gotten lost in the short tale I’d told her.

And she wanted another. A greedy kalles with an appetite for others’ stories.

Well, I had many stories. Not many that were suitable for a female like her but I had a few she might like to hear. Maybe even my sister’s own story.

My mood darkened at the thought, a crippling wave of sadness descending over me. My empty, battered heart gave a dull, pitiful thud, always searching for her and knowing she was gone forever. Yet through the sadness, I found that thread of rage and I gripped it, hanging onto it, until it pulled me away.

Anger, fury, and rage…my oldest and truest friends. They had kept me warm even when my soul had frosted over.

“Tell me why you concealed your hair then,” I said, my tone coming out harsher than I’d intended.

She was still frowning. Nillima jostled us again and her fingers clutched the furs that draped over my chest. I didn’t even think she realized it.

A strand of her hair fluttered across her cheek. Another strand whipped across my chest.

“Maman always told me to,” she said quietly, keeping my eyes bravely.

“Mam—an?” I repeated, brow furrowing.

“My mother,” she told me.

“Is that a different language than the universal tongue?”

“I think so,” she said. When her eyes strayed, she seemed to remember my command quickly and they darted back to me. “There were many languages on Old Earth. My mother called her mother maman, who called her mother maman. As a way to remember. But I am also certain so much has already been lost.”

My lips pulled down. Her voice was gentle, soothing even, but I sensed her sadness. For the first time, I wondered about the vekkiri and what they’d lost. The Old War had destroyed their colonies in space and forced them to scatter across the universe, searching for a new home. I knew little of their home planet or of their cultures. Not many did.

“And why did your mother tell you to hide the color of your hair?” I asked, absorbing this information quickly.

“Because it is unnatural for someone so young. I was born with white hair. My mother always told me it was because I’d been born afraid, that all my mother’s fear after the Old War had transferred itself into me and because of that…I was different. I would draw attention, unneeded attention. Especially among the Dakkari.”

I grunted.

“One of the Vorakkar had golden hair,” she murmured softly. “But other than him, I have never seen another like me. None human, at least, unless they were an elder.”

Rath Tuviri’s golden hair was perhaps the reason he was a Vorakkar. Or, at least, the reason why he’d been allowed into the Trials. Because his mother had wanted it and as the Dothikkar’s favored concubine…she’d succeeded in bending his will.

Females were dangerous and Rath Tuviri’s mother had manipulated the Dothikkar by his cock.

“And when I was young, my mother had a dream that I would be taken away,” she confessed softly. “She always believed it was because I was different and she was so afraid, for so long.”

“Then you did not take all her fear,” I commented.

“No,” she said. “A horde came to my village when I was a young girl. One of the Dakkari saw me and I—I still remember the look on his face. He was frightened, almost. My mother thought they would take me right then, so she quickly led me away, slipped out from the village, and hid me in the woods nearby until the horde passed on. The next day, she made a hood that I wore. And if it was too hot for it, she would conceal my hair with a mixture of earth and soot, to darken it.”

Yet, her eyes would still have given her away, I thought to myself. A grey so light they almost matched the beautiful hair she’d tried to hide.

Unable to help myself, I reached forward and caught a strand beneath my fingertips. Her pink lips parted and my gaze was drawn down to them. My kakkiva hardened further when I thought of those soft lips on my flesh.

Her breathing changed, becoming quicker.

With her tone soft, she said, “Are you satisfied with my story?”

I grunted.

Not nearly.

But there was panic in her gaze that bloomed the longer I gazed at her.

“I make you nervous,” I purred. “Why?”

“W-why?” she asked, her eyes widening. “You know why.”

“Because you fear the Vorakkars? Because everything frightens you, as you claim?” I lowered my voice, leaning closer. “Or because you know that once we reach my horde, I will take you to my furs to make good on our agreement?”

Her breath hitched when I reached between us to adjust my thickening cock in my trews. I thought her eyes would grow so wide they’d pop from her skull when she saw my length outlined along the hide.

She turned away, an enticing bright red coloring her cheeks.

Vienne’s voice came out a little strangled as she said, “It’s your turn.”

The corner of my mouth rose in a lazy smirk. “For what?”

“I told you about my hair. As you wanted.”

I cast my gaze over the plains in front of us. In the distance, over a half day’s journey, I saw the pillars of towering trees that signaled we’d entered the eastern lands. Ancient trees that had been planted by one of the first hordes to roam that land, and their seedlings had spread. They looked out of place amongst the otherwise empty plains, but they would be a welcome reprieve. I enjoyed the hush of the forests of Dakkar, the quiet.

“That darukkar, who saw you when you were a girl,” I decided to tell her, “it was very likely he was frightened.”

“Of me?” she couldn’t help but ask, frowning. “But why?”

“You are not the first being on this planet with hair like this,” I told her, trailing my claws down the light strands, feeling her shiver in response. “The first was a Dakkari sorceress, who was said to wield a great, unseen power.”

She stiffened in my lap.

“What?” she whispered.

“She destroyed almost an entire horde overnight, though some survived to tell the tale.”

“But…but why?”

“The Vorakkar had been dishonorable. Not only to his Morakkari, but to his own blood.” When I took my gaze from the forest in the distance, I saw her expression was astonished. Her emotions were so easy to read. It was…strange. Different. “He fucked a darukkar’s wife, got her with child, and then killed the babe once it was born to hide his shame, especially from his Morakkari.”

A soft gasp escaped her lips.

“That’s…that’s terrible. He killed his own child?”

I inclined my head.

“The accounts of who this sorceress was, or where she came from, are unclear, but it was assumed that she was a member of his horde. On the night that the Vorakkar took his child’s life, she became enraged. Those that survived say she channeled Kakkari’s power, fed by hergrief. The account says she created a storm above the horde, bringing down unseen strikes that made the ground shake and fires burn. She destroyed everything. Everything the Vorakkar had touched, or cared for, was gone.”

Her neck turned and she gazed away, though her eyes were unseeing. I wanted to know what she thought of. I wanted to know what she was hiding, what she was truly afraid of.

“And the sorceress?”

“Gone,” I rumbled. “Disappeared. She was never seen again. Some believe that Kakkari’s power killed her as well, though her body was never found.”

“So that was why the Dothikkar called me a sorceress,” she murmured quietly. “I had wondered.”

“He is a superstitious male,” I said, feeling a prickling of annoyance whenever I thought of him. “He did not know what to make of your sudden appearance.”

“That was a terrible story,” she said, her face still turned to the plains.

I chuffed out a sound of disbelief. “I quite like it.”

“Why?”

My shoulder lifted. “It is a story of vengeance.”

“Vengeance?” she said, frowning. Then her eyes returned to me. “More like unnecessary slaughter. The sorceress was wrong to kill so many. They were punished for their horde king’s crimes. Females. Children. What is so noble and honorable about killing innocent beings? She was a villain. That was not vengeance. It was murder.”

Her words struck something in me and I growled, “And what do you know of vengeance, leikavi?”

“Enough to know that sometimes you never get it,” she said, her voice throaty, her eyes narrowed slightly. “And that you can spend your whole life letting it consume you, poison you, or you can make amends in your own soul and move forward.”

For a moment, I was speechless, glaring down at her, my jaw tight.

“It was the horde king’s responsibility to bear his punishment on his own. Wasn’t his child’s death enough? Why spill more blood?” she finished, her eyes shimmering with tears though she glared.

“The horde is an extension of its Vorakkar. A crime brings about vengeance and there is no escaping it once it comes. That is the way of our world,” I grated.

“And sometimes,” she said, “I wish I was a part of a different world. Not this one.”

I thought of my family. Of my sister, my mother, my father. Of their cries and screams, of my lungs burning as I sprinted towards our home, panic and dread churning in my gut so strong I’d almost vomited. What I remembered most was that I’d heard my sister’s screams streets away. And no one had come to her aid. I hadn’t gotten to her in time.

Bitterness twisted within me.

“You think I do not wish the same, kalles?” I rasped. “As you said, you must make amends in your soul…and move forward.”