Quit Your Waning (Over the Moon #3)

SIZZLE

I’d found the jackpot.

That perfect little sliver of warm light cast across the freshly laid floor of my new nest and lashed across my belly as I stretched with all four limbs in the air. I’d fallen asleep in a stupor like a melted puddle of tar, draped halfway off a piece of furniture with my muzzle smashed against the floor, but I couldn’t complain. I was so close to done. Not the nest—I’d never be satisfied—but spinning. My fur smelled like me again, and as I opened my mouth to drag my tongue lazily across the wine-colored biria planks, they tasted like wood.

And maybe semen.

I pursed my mouth claws thoughtfully. I didn’t remember marking the nest. I did remember marking trees though. Staking claim on my territory, rubbing my oils and seed into the moss and bark. I might have been obsessive about it the last week, but Jihae deserved an ironclad personal bubble, and I was going to give it to her. If I was already doing that to the nest, then I was farther along than I thought.

Huffing pent-up steam from my lungs, I smacked my lips and swallowed down my own taste with satisfaction. It had changed. Spicy, hints of salt, with maybe a dash of gasoline. Did humans drink gasoline?

Probably not.

But she would fucking love it. All of my taste buds were sure of it. After all, my body had remade its chemistry just for her. It knew that she was a mammal above anything else. Not a cephalopod like the shilpakaari. Not an exoodenatus like the venandi. Not a fowl like the guvers or tirdeul. Mammal. Yiwreni, uids, humans. Mammal.

“You’re an overgrown cat, you know that?”

“Fuck!”

I sprang six feet into the air in an explosion of wood shavings and construction detritus like my limbs were made with springs as Imani Renatex’s deep, smooth voice cut through the jungle’s lazy morning murmur. My back end fell right off the edge of the unfinished platform as my eyes popped open wide. Imani sat on a bench near the central trunk with one brow raised towards her shaved carpet of black springy silk as I fell ass first to the jungle floor. The trees shook when I crushed a glade of ferns.

“Fucking fuck!” I growled up at her from the ground, trying to get my feet under me. “Get out of my fucking nest!”

“Is this a pilot’s chair?” she asked, her voice echoing down the length of the tree with mild interest. “Oh, I like it…”

I snarled, clawing my way back up the side of the tree like a ryhidon in a glass shop. Sapling branches snapped, and I jumped from bough to bough until I was hissing at her, crouched in the next tree over and covered in twigs and leaves.

“You and Vin are not allowed to fuck in my cockpit on the weekends. It’s mine. I’m the only one allowed to fuck in it. No cock pocket, no cockpit.”

Imani smirked at me, her gold eyes glinting as she ran her fingers across the stitching on the headrest. I hissed at her, complete with my tongue unraveling down the center of my muzzle like a devil. She left it alone, crossed her arms, and leaned back against the central trunk, showing off her muscular red and pink dappled arms. The human had taken on Vin’s coloring and a short set of spires when they’d converged, and her dark red features made her moods just a little sharper.

Like when she looked pissed.

As in right now.

We hadn’t always gotten along—she’d been nearly eaten by a bilong after her abduction, which had obviously put a damper on my charm—but these days we were solid. Anyone that came out of a bilong fight with their hide intact was worth respect in my book.

…

Anyone except Davor.

But the way she was looking at me now had me wondering how I’d fucked up. I licked my primary fangs, which had snagged on my gums, trying to make myself look presentable as I sized her up.

“I… only took half of the infra-drones from the hangar,” I said slowly, squinting, trying to suss out exactly which theft she was here to scold me for.

She waved it off. “Hunar can yell at you for the drones.”

My ear twitched. Not the stuff from the hangar. I blinked, sitting up straight with pride when I figured it out. “The carcasses are gifts. It’s bilong tradition—”

She rolled her eyes. “Bilongs don’t have traditions—”

“Instinct, tradition. Potayto, potahto.” I licked my eyeball, rolling my wrist one way then the other in a lazy this-or-that motion.

“Who is it?”

I snapped up straight, nostrils flared, ears perked. My mutinous tail thumped once on the wooden floor. “My human?” I asked, tilting my head.

“Yes, the one you are doing this for.”

“Why don’t you guess?” I purred. It was a test for me rather than her. Had I succeeded in my nest-building?

Imani looked around the nest’s platforms, taking in all the detail as I puffed out my chest and panted with equal parts pride and anticipation. Her eyes lingered on the many round beams like ribs that made the roofs, each carved with the painted patterns in K’riyan palaces. I tapped my claws on the floor. They were smooth and shiny from multiple sheddings.

She picked up a jakko lantern by the base, looking at its diabolical cut-out face. It was one of many stacked along the corners and ledges, nestled on sturdy branches, peeking out between vines to giggle at the interior of my nest like they knew a secret.

“The teacher. The one working on the trail.”

“Yessss,” I confirmed, my hackles fluffing up with triumph.

Imani set the gourd down and gave my tongue-lolling smile a hard stare. “Does she know?”

I licked the grin off my face and trotted across the room to reassert my dominance. I touched the pilot’s seat, then rubbed my neck on it. Imani rolled her eyes, surrendering the gourd to my tongue so I could place it exactly where I wanted it.

“Well?” she asked impatiently. “Sizzle, this is important–”

“She doesn’t know the details,” I admitted, turning the face a quarter inch to the left and backing up to scrutinize it. “I’m working up to it. Jihae can be a nervous thing. I want her to feel well taken care of.” I pushed the lantern an inch sideways.

“That’s not good enough. You tell her, or I will. This is dangerous for her, Sizzle. If bilongs are anything like venandi and you lose control–”

I ruffled Imani’s black tank top with a haughty snort. “I’ve made plans with Ezra, don’t worry. Tranqs for me, and heat suppressants for her if she doesn’t want me.”

Imani leaned forward. “I bet it’s hard for you to imagine that she could reject you.”

“Correct. I’m a delight.”

“But think about it. She runs away screaming, crying, whatever. And in two months? She starts seeing someone else.”

I barely stopped myself from snarling. “Not gonna happen.”

“Mhm. Are tranqs gonna be enough for that bilong temper? What would you wanna do? Kidnap her? Force her? Eat her? Do I need to make a contingency plan for getting you off planet? Anything I should know about putting you in a prison cell?”

I snapped my jaws at her, but she didn’t flinch. Imani was as solid as a boulder. I started pacing, breathing hard even as I tried to calm the angry heat in my blood.

“You’ve made your point,” I bit out.

“Have I? Good. Send me a report. I don’t want another accidental convergence in my colony.” She gestured to herself with a sideways smile. “Even if the first one turned out to my liking.”

“Fine.”

Imani pushed off her perch and walked across the nest to a branch slung with a weighted rope. I’d yet to build entrances. She pulled the rope to her with her heavy boot, then smiled at me.

“I’m rooting for you, rafiki.”

My tail thumped. “I appreciate your blessing.”

“Also, you should take a bath.”

“Excuse me? Rude.”

“You look like a cheap shag rug on its tenth wash.”

I opened my throat teeth and splayed my entire mouth wide, mouth claws and all, shivering the digits with an unwelcoming hiss.

“Think fast!”

Imani whipped out her pistol and shot me right in the mouth.

Three of her plas slugs thunked straight through the self-healing tissue of my throat. She’d shot me just where I liked it, and I swallowed the bullets down with a hungry gulp. I chuckled, pushing her off the ledge with one claw.

“Thanks for the snack. Now get off my tree.”

Imani swung, her boot already secured in the rope. She winked at me, holstering her pistol, then descended to the jungle floor. I stretched my neck over the ledge and looked down, trying to find her in the ferns, but her red skin made it difficult to spot her.

Once I was sure her footsteps had faded, I sniffed myself surreptitiously. I smelled amazing. What was she on about? A bath? Me? I thought of Jihae taking in my scent at the clinic and my cock swelled with excitement. I was the king of the jungle and no one told a king to take a bath. My musk was the pinnacle of monstrous masculinity.

Thirty minutes later, I was swearing in the middle of the Saphed River, scrubbing my hackles with a rake and a gallon of shampoo.