Quit Your Waning (Over the Moon #3)

SIZZLE

I trotted up the footpath and rounded the bend where the prefab clinic pod was nestled against the treeline on one side, separated from the home towers, playfield, and school. I held my prize in my mouth claws, too big to stuff into the pockets of my maw, and ran my tongue over its surface obsessively, trying to scrub the taste of soap off my tongue and replace it with the metal tang of tin.

It was no use though. I couldn’t dunk my prize into the Saphed River to clean it. Then it would taste like algae and mud. So in a fit of sacrificial madness, I’d eaten an out-of-service food bay’s cleanser, complete with half a gallon of detergent. Blegh.

But everything still tasted like soap anyway and the situation was dire. I’d bluffed my way through testing Jihae because why would I ever need to know how to read a food bay screen or memorize which button did what? I ate food bays, I didn’t use food bays.

So I did what I knew, which was eat one and clean my prize with a sudsed-up tongue that made my eyes water and my stomach roil.

Disgusting.

But Jihae would like it. That was the important part.

Maybe then she would answer my howls. When she’d commed me that first night, asking if it was me, I’d almost chained myself to the trees to keep from climbing her home tower and slurping her down like a midnight snack. I’d left her a few prey gifts, but after seeing how it upset my precious pets, I realized it was not the kind of gift a human would appreciate. I needed a different strategy.

And this one was perfect.

Ezra was standing outside, already waiting for me as I rounded the bend. His tendrils were tied back in a band, lower arms behind his back out of habit. His manners around the humans were better than the others, considering how many frightened pets he met on a daily basis, and it showed in the stillness of his mane, how they hung limp down his back.

They twisted thoughtfully, coming to life as I approached. The shil gave me a warm if tired smile, stepping off the ramp. Interestingly, he wore a pin on his lab coat of a… hat? I tilted my head at the little purple and green decoration, obviously made by one of the pups for the holiday. My bet was on Pom Pom, the little snacklette of chaos. She spent a lot of her time at the clinic for her treatments.

“Good morning, Sizzle,” he said in that stoic rumble. “Didn’t you say your friend was coming? Tremors and an endocrine regulatory dysfunction.” He glanced at the time on his holotab. “I’ll be opening the doors in about a turn.”

“Soon,” I said, shaking the dew out of my fur before I got too close. I didn’t want to muddy up the little shilpakaari menace’s hard work. “I have business first.”

Ezra raised one smooth brow, eyes trailing down my throat. “Chip a tooth?”

I snorted. As if I’d been chomping down on diamonds. I hadn’t tried doing that since I was a pup and still had my baby fangs.

“I need some tranqs.”

The good doctor’s speculative stare turned concerned. “For… hunting?”

I sat, turning my prize around in my mouth claws. “For me. Ryhidon grade. I need to take the edge off.”

“We… don’t carry that. How badly do you need them?”

I licked my eyeball, staring at him hard. “Badly enough. And no, they’re not recreational.”

“Okay,” Ezra said slowly, crossing both sets of arms over his chest. “I’ll put in an emergency request for printing permissions by this afternoon. But I’ll need a compelling reason or it’ll be denied.”

The union and its stupid regulations. Things would be so much simpler if I could just bribe him.

“What if I said my second bit of business is checking if you have heat suppressants?” My stare sharpened as Ezra’s mane curled with surprise. “Does that give you a compelling enough reason?”

Ezra shifted his weight thoughtfully. “I’m not a reproductive xenobiologist, so just to be clear…”

“My human is probably going into heat soon, and I want to fuck her brains out,” I illustrated eloquently, digging my claws into the dirt, fighting the urge to pant. Saying it out loud made my cock twitch. “Or eat her. Maybe both. At the same time. Either way, I’m spinning, and we haven’t talked about it yet.”

“Wow.”

I grinned, licking my primary fangs, leaving a soapy bubble on one’s surface.

Ezra balked. “Are you foaming at the mouth?”

“Ate a food bay for breakfast. Cleanser was full. Anyway, can we do this before she gets here?”

Ezra brushed a hand over the top of his mane and nodded in the human way.

“Yes, let me grab the genetic coder. Stay here.” He returned a moment later with a handheld coder already booting up. “Where do you have the least amount of fur? I need to get as close to skin as possible, preferably with blood circulating near the surface.”

I stood up on two legs and twisted one hip out, tapping the soft skin flap where my thigh met my hip bone. “Here.”

Ezra looked up at me with surprise, then smirked, his tendrils falling over his shoulder. “I forgot how tall bilongs are. It’ll take a couple of minutes. I’ll try your ear and temple as well.”

So I waited, looking over the ferns along the footpath. From this vantage point, I’d know by sight if Jihae was approaching. I took a deep breath and picked up her scent on the air. It wasn’t new scent, but that of her nest. Anytime I breathed in deep, I smelled her nest now, a sign that I was nearly spun.

Thank fuck for that, I couldn’t wait to enjoy eating again.

I pulled my prize from my mouth and spun it by the handle, whisking away some of the leftover soap while Ezra carefully avoided my dick. I grinned. Everyone else’s discomfort at my lack of clothes always put me in a good mood.

“Do you know what symptoms I should tell your…” He paused.

“Human. Bilongs don’t have a mate word.” It was my turn to pause, staring at the gift I was tossing between my claws out of boredom. Mate. I liked that. Maybe that was the word I should use. It was a forever word. A binding word. What words did humans use? Was it specific like most other social species, or did they just make them up like I was doing?

“Symptoms?” Ezra prompted again.

I blinked out of my thoughts and snorted steam into the air. “For me, it’s similar to an advenan Hunt, only I want to nest.” I thought about Davor with a grimace, swallowing down the soap. My eyes flicked to the opposite side of the colony, where I’d been spending my feverish nights in a lust-fueled craze. “I’m working on that part.”

“There’s some literature on advenan spinning. I suppose I should spend lunch today brushing up on—”

“For her, it will be different.” I scraped my claws through the fur of my neck, gathering up the slick oil that caused my skin to itch. I showed him the smears on my palm, extending my hand down so his tendrils could taste the oil in the air. “Bilongs produce this oil. It’s mildly hallucinogenic. Maybe an aphrodisiac. It’s what will put her into heat. I’ve already rubbed it on her clothing, so it’s just a matter of time.”

“But you said you haven’t talked to her.” Ezra removed the coder and I descended back to four claws on the ground, cleaning the oil off my hand by wiping it on the dewy black grass.

“Mm, yes. I chose to withhold the information for the thrill of it because my experimental dead-end species manual tells me that’s the best way to win her over.”

I rolled my eyes to really sell the sarcasm, and Ezra’s hard glare disappeared.

“Have you talked to anyone? Is there anyone?”

“Davor,” I said with distaste, licking away a snarl. “The uids, maybe. Vin knows.”

“Make sure she knows soon too.” The coder made a polite vyum sound and Ezra checked its readings. “I’ll go take care of the requests and print profiles. You wait for your human and let me know when she arrives.”

“Sure. And Ezra?”

“Hm?”

I turned my head sideways, taking him in with the full vision of my left eye as my throat teeth zipped and unzipped. Click click click click.

“If you scare her, I’ll skin you alive.”

He gave me a mirthless smile, unsurprised. “As any good mate would. I’ll be back in a few.”

My muzzle curled into a smirk. Mate. Fucking suck-up.

“Morning!” Jihae called, jogging up to me. My ear twitched, swiveling in her direction. My senses immediately went on full alert, taking in her freshly washed scent, her clean skin, the way her favorite light jacket bounced across her tits. My mammalian parts like that. I pushed my muzzle against her stomach as she joined me, hiding my prize in a claw on my other side.

“It is morning,” I confirmed. She smacked my shoulder, right where it itched with oil, then instinctively rubbed her hands together. I squinted at them, calculating when we should talk about—

“You said Dr Zarabi would meet us outside, right?”

I rumbled in response, licking my muzzle. “Are you alright, morsel?”

She glanced at me, then smiled again, more brilliantly than at first. “Yeah, actually. I feel… good.” She took a deep breath and exhaled, holding her bag on one shoulder with a firm grip. “I would be nervous if you weren’t here.”

“Because you know I’ll eat someone if I need to?”

“Of course,” she said, like I wasn’t offering to commit murder for her. Then her attention moved to the clinic entrance. “Looks like the kids decorated.”

I chuffed, noticing the decorations for the first time. Jakko lantern faces had been adhered to the windows, and glittery black and purple bows framed the sliding lobby doors. Little spiders and bright green creepy crawlies hung from the ribbons off beaded chains of red and green plas diamonds like human and shilpakaari blood. A rubbery decal of oozing blood dripped from the tops of the doors and met bite-sized palm prints and swipe marks that Pom Pom and her human side dish, Rambir, pressed to the glass with paint.

“The blood is cute.”

Jihae giggled and my guts did a flip like she’d called me a good boy. My hackles rose and I tingled all over. I only stopped myself from rubbing my neck on her clothes like a crazed idiot by digging my claws into the dirt.

“Maybe we should bring some of our extra zombie hands over. Or a bloody shoe…” She gasped. “Ah, matta! I have something for you.”

Jihae’s cheeks turned pink as she opened her bag, biting her lip. She held out her hand, a black ball of fur on a chain nestled in her palm. I sniffed it, and it smelled like her all the way down to its adhesive. I licked my lips.

Don’t eat it, don’t eat it, don’t eat it…

“What is it?” I asked carefully, swiping saliva off my primary fangs.

She turned it over to show me a little face with yellow eyes and tall black ears. “It’s you…”

“Me?” I sat so I could take it between the points of two claws from each hand. It looked so fragile with its little gold bell.

Her smile faded, looking at my gift with a critical eye. “Aysh, it’ll make noise. You don’t want that if you’re patrolling. I can remake it and give it to you tomorrow.”

I reared back with indignation. “It’s mine. You can’t have it back.”

“But—”

“No.” My mouth claws unlaced their digits and I slid the charm onto my lowest claw, where its springy chain fit snug. I waggled my claws and throat teeth to hear the tinkle, then gripped it to silence. “It’s perfect.”

Her smile returned and she cleared her throat. “I, ah, hope you don’t mind…” She held up another charm, this one bright pink with delicate white features. “I made one for me too, out of the clump of fur you gave me.”

My eyes dilated as I breathed in a deep inhale.

“It smells like me,” I murmured.

“It does?” She sniffed it, then took a deeper breath. “You’re right, it does.”

My lungs revved like an engine. “Do that again.”

“What?”

“Take in my scent.”

Jihae held my stare, then slowly breathed in, my fur pressed against her lips. I groaned, heaving and panting, my tongue lolling to the side of my mouth.

I’d never felt so hungry in my life.

I had to wait a whole afternoon for those tranqs, and they couldn’t come soon enough. I was already hunching over, hiding how my cock was straining against my prepuce, ready to push Jihae to the ground and mount her from behind. I gripped the handle of my prize hard enough to feel the metal start to bend.

“Here,” I said, abruptly thrusting the pot into her chest. The charm made with my fur plopped inside as she staggered to catch it. “For your noodles.”

Tears sprang to her eyes as she clutched the tin pot like it was a precious treasure rather than junk. “Really?” she rasped.

“Only if you like it.”

“I like it!” She breathed and hugged it harder, like I might try to take it back. “I really, really like it.”

She pressed her mouth to my nose with a little pop afterwards and I immediately dragged my tongue over the spot, soaking up her taste. I opened my mouth to demand she do it again when the lobby doors hissed open.

“Ah, you must be Sizzle’s human,” Ezra greeted with a pointed pique of his brow. His lower hands were once again clasped behind his back, and he’d donned a modesty hood that covered his mane. “I’m Ezraji Zarabi, Dr Ahlberg’s assistant.”

Jihae bobbed her head. “Jihae Jeong. I’m a teacher.”

At that, Ezra broke into a rare smile. “Ah, Pom Pom’s teacher. She’s very fond of you. Would you like to come inside for a scan? Or I can do it out here if you’d prefer.”

“Out here would be great.”

Ezra nodded, expecting that answer. “No problem. I’ll grab my go bag, and we can set up a couple of chairs in the shade and talk through your symptoms.”

When he retreated into the clinic to grab his things, Jihae hugged my neck. “Thank you,” she whispered, tickling the tufts inside my ear. “Thank you so much.”

She was too small for me to wrap her in my arms, so I pressed my claw against the small of her back and crushed her to me. “You deserve care and attention, morsel. And noodles in your favorite pot.”

“I just want to make sure that you know you shouldn’t eat him,” she murmured against my fur. “Even if I get nervous.”

I sighed with relief, air stuttering through my chest like a stallion. “Good. I like his priya and don’t want her to banish me. She’s having pups soon and they’re going to be fucking cute.”

Then we sat down with Ezra under some ferns, me lazing on my side at the foot of Jihae’s chair. And I was a good boy. Ezra kept all of his tendrils and limbs, and I kept my loud mouth shut and my claws in check as Jihae stumbled through the conversation, finally taking control of the things she needed.