Seeing the High Tasqal at the exchange had set him into high alert.
It wasn’t usual to see one at a low-level exchange such as the one on Hudo III and he’d known something terrible would happen.
He hadn’t been disappointed.
The Tasqals really had no regard for any life except their own.
The female Tasqal that owned the mines he’d worked in as a chid certainly hadn’t.
He wondered what had become of her.
After he’d escaped with Sohut and ended up at the exchange, he’d found himself making another escape from the beings who’d wanted to place them in cages for sale.
That’s when they’d seen a Torian pushing his huge wife on a cart through the exchange.
He and Sohut had hurried to hide in the cart’s basket before they were seen.
That Torian had turned out to be Geblit and when Geblit had noticed them there, he’d hid them from his wife till they were safe enough to escape into the plains.
The first time they’d returned to the exchange was when Geblit had visited the plains to check if they were still alive.
He’d registered them and that had officially started their life as free beings.
They’d lived in the plains ever since.
He owed Geblit a lot for that. He doubted that taking the human off the Torian’s hands would repay the debt fully.
He’d saved his and Sohut’s lives. If they had been brought back to the mines, they’d have surely been killed.
Memories of working in the mines came back to him, this time not in his dreams but while he was wide awake, for he couldn’t manage to fall asleep.
No matter how he tried, insomnia chased him like an angry umu set loose.
“Hey, little chid. Can I stay in your cave with you? Mine is wet and I cannot sleep.”
He glanced over at Sohut. “There is only enough space for two.”
The female’s face looked sad and he felt bad for saying no.
The mines were cold and wet and people got sick easily.
He’d been lucky to claim the cave they were in. He’d been watching the owner for weeks. He saw the signs of the mine sickness early, knew the being wouldn’t survive.
It’d been hard to do, watching someone die, but he’d had no choice.
There was nowhere to get medical attention in the mines.
Beings came, worked, and died. The Tasqals always found replacements.
As soon as the male had died, he’d hauled the body from the cave.
It was hard work for a chid, but he’d succeeded and the cave was claimed for Sohut and himself.
It was difficult keeping it, though.
There was always someone who was bigger, older, and stronger who was looking to take it away from their control and without a cave for shelter, death came quickly in the dampness of the mines.
“If you promise to share, you can come in,” he said, his gaze studying the female.
She smiled at him and crouched to enter the small space.
They coexisted like that fine for a few days…until the males started coming in.
Males she invited.
Males who would pay her with talix metal in her collection bucket. She preferred to fill her bucket that way than to go out and dig.
When she was servicing the males, he and Sohut had nowhere to go.
They’d sit outside the cave in the damp, waiting for it to end.
Praying to Raxu…even as the sounds and smell of phekking filled the air.
It didn’t take long for Sohut to start sniffling and soon his sniffles turned into sneezes.
He was getting ill.
Alarm fueled his anxiety and Riv asked the woman to stop what she was doing.
She had to leave their cave and go somewhere else.
They needed their cave back. Their home.
Her activities were killing his brother and Sohut was all he had in the universe.
The female had laughed—a response so shocking it still chilled him to this day.
Then, her mouth had set into a hard line.
Without warning, she’d begun screaming.
She’d screamed that he and Sohut were trying to take her cave away.
She’d screamed for help, saying vile things about him like he was trying to be an adult male and put his little cock inside her.
He’d been frozen, unable to believe what she was saying, stunned by her accusations.
…and help had come.
For her.
Never mind that he and Sohut were chids.
The miners didn’t care.
They’d beat them. Bruised them.
They’d laughed as if it was a joke and they’d thrown him and Sohut from the cave, threatening them more harm if they ever returned.
That’d just been one experience.
There were so many.
So so many.
Riv’s hands balled into fists on the sleeping cushion as anger flooded through his veins.
The memories were fresh, as if they’d happened yesterday.
Stretching his arm across the cushion, he felt for Grot. The tevsi always managed to calm him and ground him in the present.
Grot reminded him that the mines wasn’t his life anymore.
But Grot wasn’t there.
He was sleeping with the human…La-rehn.
Riv groaned at the thought of her.
He’d phekked up majorly today.
He could still feel her face nestled against his neck, that memory overpowering the one of his past in the mines with such intensity, his cock grew hard immediately.
He was playing a dangerous game with the female.
What had started out as a day to send her away from his Sanctuary had turned into something else completely.
Groaning, he turned on his side to stare at his closed door.
Whatever had happened between them today needed to be ripped out by the root.
He couldn’t get close to her and he couldn’t allow her to get close to him.
She made him feel…and feelings were always what led to hurt and deceit in the past.
All these years living in the plains, he’d locked that part of him away and it had kept life simple and safe.
He couldn’t allow himself to grow weak.
He had to remember.
Never forget.
Nothing had changed.
He hadn’t achieved his goal of sending her away today but she still had to go.
The female had to leave.
21
Working with the animals was good. It always cleared his mind.
Helped him to focus.
It’d been two days since they’d visited the
