Quit Your Waning (Over the Moon #3)

SIZZLE

I recognized her the moment she turned the corner of the hangar, shaking out her hands, eyes darting this way and that. It was the human teacher with long, straight black silk that waved to me on occasion when she left the school pod late enough to catch me at the start of my patrol. This anomaly of her routine piqued my curiosity.

Mainly because overseeing drills was so fucking boring. Do this, do that. Pretend to shiv your dance partner. Playing by the book with an enemy was totally effective… Not. Couldn’t we just fight dirty? More fun and more educational.

So I might accidentally eat a few team members. At least I’d spit them back out.

Hunar opened the windows to talk to the human and I caught a note of her voice. Smoky, a little rough and unexpected. Uneven maybe? My ear twitched and I took a deep breath. The still air hadn’t quite dispersed far enough for me to catch a whiff from across the tarmac. I counted bits, forcing myself to be patient.

One shilpakaari. Two shilpakaari. Three shilpakaari. Dessert.

“Again!” Vin barked. “Better hit your targets before the rain washes your plasma shots off, or you’ll start again, you dig?”

The team groaned as I licked the top of my muzzle with my long tongue, gathering up the bit of rain that tickled my face. Still no scent on the air. Damn the drizzle.

I squinted at Hunar as he lifted a window and leaned out to greet her. Instantly, her posture changed and an acidic growl chattered up the length of my throat teeth.

That was a prey animal in distress. Hunched shoulders, bent knees, turned sideways from the predator so she could bolt… Classic.

Mouthwatering.

As much as I might like the way her nostrils trembled and red splotches painted her porcelain cheeks, I very much did not like the reason. The humans had grown on me, and I was viciously protective.

Humans were a clueless mixture of social chaos, squish, and fearlessness. Specifically where I was concerned. Anywhere else in the galaxy, I was guaranteed to make someone piss their pants by breathing in their direction. But here in Renata, I could snap my teeth and they’d fucking giggle.

Do you understand what that does to a beast’s ego?

I can’t speak for every bilong in the galaxy, but mine swelled like a sponge in water, soaking up the attention. They loved when I shook out my fur or tussled with their pups. They brought me their recycling because they knew I liked metal cans for crunchy snacks. Whether they understood it or not, they were all my pets now. I had adopted every last one of them.

Which meant that this human’s fright was unacceptable.

I ran my tongue up the length of my throat teeth so I could indulge in the slide of fang on fang as they alternated closed in a perfect zipper nestled within my fur. My eyes followed the woman as she left, expecting to hear that awful blubbing sound they made sometimes when they thought they were alone and no one could hear.

She didn’t.

Thank fuck. I couldn’t stand that sound.

It gave me chest congestion.

“Again!” Vin yelled.

The handful of recruits on the ground collapsed with a collective groan of pain, and I took the chance to excuse myself from their misery. I stretched my haunches and sauntered by, smacking Davor’s long black tail with my forepaw.

“Don’t lose that, cousin,” I chuckled, a puff of steam escaping through my fangs. He nodded once, trying hard not to grind his teeth together as he aimed at a drone. Any advenan would be pissed if someone touched their tail, of course, but I couldn’t help it. Our shared genetics didn’t enjoy sharing space, and I felt compelled to remind him from time to time that I was the top of the food chain.

Plus, he hit the target and that counted for something.

Aavar kicked the side door open just as I strolled up to Hunar’s service window. He set up a lawn chair, flicked on a pair of human sunglasses that were definitely his priya’s flavor of fuck off, I’m lounging here, and sipped from a cold beer with a bright pink straw. It was a complete contradiction to the rain, but shils were like that. He shed the top half of his coveralls to soak up the drops as they fell and gave me a two-finger salute that I ignored, catching Hunar’s eye before he closed the window.

“Ding ding,” I hissed, tapping my claw on the windowsill. “Who’s on the menu?”

Hunar raised his smooth brow as he shoveled the detritus on his workbench into a tin can. “Come again?”

“The human was terrified.”

One by one, the chief engineer’s tendrils slithered out of the band at the back of his neck and he picked it up from their grasp. Setting it on his workbench, he looked off in the direction the human had gone with a tick in his jaw.

“She tenses up around us sometimes,” he admitted tightly. “I assumed she’s afraid of snakes. Like Ezra’s priya.”

His nostrils flared as he plopped the can full of metal shavings and wire bits onto the ledge for me. I opened my throat teeth and extended the membranous claws that framed them, taking the offering with an appreciative lick.

“Oh, it’s not snakes,” Aavar said from his lawn chair. Hunar and I both turned our attention to the spring green shil pilot and his clownish smile. There was an edge of discomfort though as he glanced away and tapped his extra thumbs on the sweating bottle. “She was in the same harem as Bree.” He sniffed and that grin fell into a bitter frown as he swallowed what was surely a colorful string of swear words.

“Shit,” Bajora sighed from inside the hangar.

Aavar cleared his throat and taped his signature grin back into place. “But it’s not my place to talk about it, so don’t bring it up unless she does. Just thought you should know.” He glanced at Hunar with a sad smile. “Bree says that if they’re skittish around a certain species, that’s probably why.”

The rest of us fell silent like we’d been ambushed by a wet blanket.

I didn’t know specifically what a harem was—most social terminology was foreign to me—and my linguitor was no help. Black Clack, my native language, was flush with very specific vocabulary for things like theft, murder, hunting, weather, trickery… and skimped on the niceties. The definition, though, seemed to involve slave wives or husbands. I mentally swiped the inquiry, cutting it off before it finished rattling off the implications in my head.

It would make me want to eat someone for breakfast, and no one in my present company looked particularly appetizing or culpable for what my humans had gone through.

“Chudthi,” Hunar swore. He threw his band onto a shelf by his workbench with more force than necessary, causing a metallic clash of sounds as it rolled onto the ground. His tendrils swarmed around his face, disturbed, and the red stripes decorating his teal skin flared. “I need a break.”

He kicked his way out of the side door and stomped off into the black fields, away from the tarmac.

Aavar grinned, drinking the dregs of his beer with a noisy slurp through his straw.

“What?” I asked, snorting the acidic burn of the brutal truth from my stomach.

The pilot shrugged one shoulder, his tendrils slipping in the drizzle that had thoroughly soaked his skin. “How much you wanna bet he’s pestering Zufi about approving a therapist again?”

“I’ll bet on whether he’s successful or not,” Bajora called, interest piqued.

“Goody! Let’s do a spread—”

I rolled my eyes and lowered my nose to the windowsill, smelling the human woman’s touch. Her tracks. Her sweat. The traces of oil on her fingers… I drowned out the betting and focused on the slight berry aroma mixed with the salt of sweat and fear. There was some sort of spice, a marine flavor. Leaves…

“If she ever calls in a work order, I’ll—” I snapped my mouth shut, squinting at myself. I’ll what? It’s not like I fit in the home tower lifts, let alone a unit’s front door. “...pull the uids off rotation to deal with it. So let me know if it comes up.”

“Aye aye, cap’n.”

Then my nose wriggled. Something delicious was burning. My ears swiveled, and I slotted my muzzle through the window, looking for the source. Hunar had left his soldering gun on a breadboard that was now melting beneath its red hot tip. I wriggled my mouth claws and stretched them towards the delectable snack, catching the corner and slurping it straight down my throat.

Bajora’s stare bounced from my perky ears to Hunar’s overturned soldering gun. “Thanks?”

I licked my muzzle with a devious wink.

“Don’t mention it.”