Chapter 1
Chris Sebastiani's eyelids fluttered, but before she could bring herself fully awake, the room rocked beneath her and tumbled her out of bed onto the floor. This wasn't the same room where she fell asleep. Where was the soft pile carpet? Where was her mirrored Queen Ann dressing table across the room? Where was her goose down comforter and pillows?
They were all gone. She landed hard on her knees on a cold concrete floor. White walls surrounded her on all sides. The warm wooden paneling of her bedroom and the carved plaster ceiling were all gone, too, and instead of the comforting glow of her frosted wall sconces, a stark fluorescent glare lit the room. It left no shadow and stabbed her sleepy eyes.
The room heaved and shook. She dared not rise to her feet, but clung as best she could to the floor for stability. The floor itself swayed and pitched until she lay down flat and screamed in terror. “What’s happening? Where am I?”
All at once, a deafening crash smashed her ears, and she rolled sideways. She slammed into the wall, but the floor only heaved the other way, and she slammed into the opposite wall. Back and forth she tumbled, side to side and every which way. She screamed until her voice wouldn’t work anymore. “Mama! Help me!” Her mother lived fifty miles away in Redding, “Where are you, Alex? Where’s Riccarton?” Alex was her boyfriend, and her cat Riccarton always slept at the end of her bed. “Help me, anybody! Why won’t anybody help me? Where am I? Oh, dear God!” She couldn’t hear her own voice over the din.
The tumbling and falling and crashing battered her bones black and blue, but it didn’t stop until she screamed in pain. She couldn’t hold her hands over her head to protect herself. Just when she couldn’t bear another moment, an almighty shock sent her flying through the air. She slammed into the ceiling and back down onto the floor. The concussion knocked her out, and for the first time since she woke up, she lay still with her eyes shut against the future.
An incredible quiet dragged her out of her stupor, and her eyelids fluttered open again. She raised her head, and blood and saliva trickled out of her mouth. The wind brushed her cheek and cooled it. Her eye fell on faraway mountains, and her blood ran cold. “Where am I? What’s happening?” Her voice vanished into the distance.
Then she looked around her and collapsed to her knees. She stared and stared, but she couldn’t comprehend it. All around her, women staggered through hideous piles of twisted metal. They moaned and screamed in terror and agony. Women stuck out from under the debris with half their bodies hidden from view. They called for their mothers and loved ones the same way Chris just did, but she couldn’t move to help them. She could only stare in blank shock.
A sturdy young girl with straight black hair hanging down to her waist walked up to Chris. She laid her hand on Chris’s shoulder and peered into her face with sparkling black eyes. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Then she noticed the bruises on Chris’s face and head and arms. “You’re hurt. Sit down over here.”
Chris struggled to her feet. “No, no. I’m okay. I just got banged up when the....I don’t know what happened, but I....” She trailed off. Nothing made sense.
The girl nodded. “That’s all right then. As long as you’re not hurt, that’s the main thing.”
She started to move off when Chris grabbed her by the arm. “Hey, wait a minute. What’s going on here? What is all this?”
The girl turned back. “Can’t you see? We crashed.”
Chris looked around. “But I....I was sound asleep in my room at home. Then I woke up and....the room was shaking all over the place, but it wasn’t my room. I didn’t know where I was.....and then, I was here.....I don’t understand what....” Words failed her.
The girl fixed her with a hard stare. Then she nodded again. “That explains why you don’t understand what happened. We were on an alien ship. We were abducted from Earth, and they were transporting us to a galactic slave market. But it looks like we crashed on some other world. That’s what all this mess is.”
“But how do you....?” Chris shook her head, but she couldn’t clear her thoughts.
The girl pursed her lips. “Listen....what did you say your name was?”
“Chris,” she stammered. “Chris Sebastiani.”
“Where are you from?” the girl asked.
“I’m from Humboldt, California,” Chris replied.
“Well, I’m Sasha Marquez, from Eagle Pass, Texas,” she answered. “I wasn’t asleep in my bed when they took me. I was standing on the sidewalk in front of my father’s convenience store with five of my girlfriends, and a white van pulled up to the curb next to us. We didn’t pay it any attention until my friend Netta pointed out that it didn’t have any windows or license plate.”
Chris frowned. “That’s weird.”
“Of course it’s weird,” Sasha replied. “But we didn’t have time to figure it out, because the next minute, a blinding flash of light covered the sidewalk. The next thing we knew, we were all in a plain white box moving off somewhere. We couldn’t see where, but when the box stopped moving, we were on an alien ship with these sick creatures who said they were taking us to sell in the market on another planet.”
Chris stared at her. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head. “That’s impossible.”
Sasha waved to her. “Follow me. I’ll show you something that will make you believe me.”
She walked away, leaving Chris no choice but to follow her through clusters of terrified women. Some huddled together for protection against unseen dangers. Some sobbed and moaned and rocked in mindless agony. Others stood still and stared into space. What had they been through, to disturb them this way?
Sasha led Chris through the wreckage to a hunk of twisted metal. She kicked at it. “Here. Take a look. Then tell me how impossible it is.”
Chris peered down at the lump. The sun slipped closer to the horizon and the light faded to dusk. It would disappear in a minute, and already, the wind bit her skin with its cold teeth. These frightened and injured women couldn’t spend the night out here in the open, with no food, no shelter, and only the flimsy clothes on their backs.
Then a flicker of movement caught her eye. She bent down to get a better look. A head stuck out from under the debris. But there was no way on God’s green earth—or anywhere else for that matter—that she could mistake this head for a human being.
The thing had pale pink skin and bright purple eyes with no pupils. The dusky light set off the mottled tones of its skin—or maybe its injuries made its skin change color from pale pink to darker violet. It stared straight up with its featureless eyes, seeing nothing. The creature didn’t move at all, but a ripple of movement shimmered around its lips. Chris bent down closer, but she couldn’t make it out.
Sasha laid her hand on Chris’s arm. “Don’t get too close. He could catch you.”
“How could he do that?” Chris asked. “He’s dead.”
Before Sasha could answer, the shivering skin around the creature’s mouth hole shot out toward her. Tiny tentacles as thin and whispery as fine hairs lashed the air.
“You see?” Sasha told her. “They’re called the Romarie. They have telekinetic powers, and the power comes from these tentacles.”
Chris’s mouth fell open. “Telekinetic powers? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Sasha grimaced. She set her hands on her hips and threw her hip out to one side. “Look at him! You can’t stand there and tell me it’s impossible that aliens abducted us from Earth. You might have been asleep when it happened, but it still happened. How do you think all these women wound up wandering around this crash site?”
Chris stared down at the creature and shook her head. “I can’t believe it—I mean, I have to believe it because it’s right here in front of my face. It’s just so incredible. I.....I guess I’m finding it hard to believe. ”
“Believe it,” Sasha snapped. “These things are the sickest, most sadistic bastards in the galaxy, and they treated us like cattle. This one.....” She kicked the creature in the shoulder, and one arm flopped out from under the debris. That arm ended in a featureless stump. It had no hand. “His name is Albinim, and he attacked my friend Sabrina. When she resisted, he killed her. They don’t give a rip about human life. We’re nothing but a bunch of lifeless cargo to them.”
Chris stared at her with her mouth open. “But I....”
Sasha fixed her with a ferocious glare. “They did the same thing to you, even though you slept right through it. You’ll never get back to your family now. You’re in the same boat as the rest of us. You better get used to that.”
Chris stared down at the creature. It still didn’t move. It must be close to death, with more than half its body crushed under that gnarled pile of what was left of its ship.
Then she sighed and cast a critical eye around the crash sight. “Well, we better round up the others and see what sort of supplies we can salvage. We’ve got a long, cold night ahead of us, and none of these women can stand much more than they’ve already been through. Come on, Sasha. The first thing we have to do is build a fire to keep everybody warm. We can’t survive a night in the cold without one.”
Sasha didn’t turn around. “Not so fast. We’ve got a bigger problem right now.”
Chris looked down at her, but Sasha wasn’t looking at the crash site at all. “What do you mean?”
Sasha didn’t answer. Chris followed her gaze to the horizon, where the last light of day set off the black outline of the hills. Wide, flat meadows surrounded them on all sides and created a bowl between the hills surrounding them on all sides. Standing on the crest of the rise, set off black, crisp, and clear against the bright sky behind, was a figure.
Chapter 2
From that distance, Chris could almost believe it was human. It stood tall and straight with its two arms hanging at its sides, and square, strong shoulders jutted out on either side of its head. Two sturdy legs stretched down to the ground, and it looked across the field with a steady, fearless gaze. Chris’s heart gave a leap. Here was a glimmer of hope, a lifeline in their hour of need.
The next minute, her spirits plummeted as another figure broke the horizon and stood next to the first. Then another appeared, and another, until a ring of strangers surrounded the crash site in a ring around the bowl. These could only be some other species of alien, come to take advantage of their misfortune. Maybe they planned to attack the stranded women and eat them. Maybe they would collect them and ship them back to the intergalactic slave market anyway.
Then, to her horror, the ring of figures advanced on the crash site. The ring contracted with every step, coming closer and closer. “Holy crap!”
She put out her hand to grab Sasha, but at that moment, the creature on the ground jerked and rolled to one side. The chunk of metal holding him down on the ground sailed off and thumped down on the grass some distance away. The body underneath it was nothing more than a flattened mass of pulverized flesh. Only the creature’s trunk, head, and arms moved from its waist.
With lightning speed, he reared up off the ground. His tentacles stretched out from his face to an incredible length and snaked around Sasha’s ankle. He collapsed back on the grass, but his tentacles kept a death grip on Sasha’s leg and pulled her down with him.
The instant she realized what was happening, Sasha kicked and struggled, but she couldn’t free herself. The creature dragged her down on top of him, and he crushed her against his chest with his handless arms. More tentacles slithered out of his face and surrounded Sasha’s throat. They covered her face and chocked off her surprised cries. But it did no good. She disappeared under the mass of tentacles, and only a horrible gurgle came out of the creature’s mouth as he sucked her down.
Chris stared down at them. Horror and disgust welled up from the depths of her being and she attacked the creature with an enraged bellow. She kicked it as hard as she could on the side of the head, and after the first kick, she couldn’t stop kicking it again and again. She stomped on its face with the sharp point of her heel. Then she picked up a steel bar from the ground and bashed its chest and head with every particle of her strength.
She heard her own voice echoing over the field, but she couldn’t stop herself. This thing took her and all these women away from their homes. They marooned them on an alien planet. And now, with the last of its life, this hideous thing was destroying in front of her eyes the one friend she’d found in this place.
She roared at it and pummeled it with her club until bright violet ooze trickled out of its mouth and eye sockets. The tentacles retreated back inside its face and left Sasha’s head and neck clear. The creature fell back on the grass and didn’t move again. Not even its tentacles twitched. Every sign of life vanished from what was left of its body.
But Sasha didn’t revive. She rolled free of the creature’s grasp and lay still on the grass. A livid band of purple bruise stood out on her neck, and her chest no longer rose and fell with breath. Chris bent down to feel for a pulse on her neck, but another sight made her whirl around the other way.
The figures that ringed the meadow increased their pace and closed in on the crash site. By the time she finished bludgeoning the Romarie to death, these new aliens were close enough for her to get a good look at them.
She no longer mistook them for human beings. They stood several inches taller than the tallest human she’d ever seen, and their hair spread over their cheeks and ears to form a distinctive ruff. Pointed ears stuck up out of their hair, and their noses pointed down to their mouths in a strange way. Their noses twitched as they approached the wreckage.
The first alien Chris noticed was distinctly male. Her eye swept to the next figure in line, and he was male, too. They must all be male. They were coming for the stranded women after all. She leapt forward with another roar and challenged them with her club.
Even when her eye fell on another figure in the line, much shorter than the others, and registered that it really was another human female, she still didn’t stop. She couldn’t. Adrenaline surged through her veins, and she swung her club at these newcomers.
Her challenge only encouraged them. They strode faster and faster toward her until they broke into a run. They couldn’t possibly be human beings. They loped over the grass with a smooth, skipping canter, and they covered the distance in the blink of an eye. In a flash, the first figure closed on her.
The other women ran around in frenzied terror. They screamed, and some of them snatched up weapons and tried to fight back, too, but the aliens moved too fast. The human female in the line ran with the choppy motion of any other human being. What was she doing there, with those aliens? Why was she attacking the stranded women along with these other strange males?
Chris didn’t stop to think about it. She swung her club at the first male, but he caught it in his hand and moved it harmlessly out of his way. He threw his arms around her and clasped her against his wiry body.
“We’re here to help you,” he growled into her ear. “Stop fighting. We won’t hurt you.”
Other males grabbed the other women and held them helpless, too. None of the women who tried to fight back landed so much as a single blow. In the twinkling of an eye, the aliens removed every weapon from their hands and held them captive.
Chris thrashed against her captor’s arms. She kicked at his shins and smashed her head into his face, but he paid no attention except to move out of her way. His lithe arms pinned her arms to her body, and he lifted her off the ground so her feet kicked at empty air. She was no threat to him or anyone else.
“Let me go!” she shrieked. “You can’t do this to me! Let me go before I beat you black and blue.”
He only chuckled, and all around her, the other aliens surveyed their victory over these helpless women. They stood in a ring around the crash site so none of the women could get away. The other women stopped struggling, and one by one, the aliens set them on their feet and let them go.
Some collapsed in sobs on the ground. Others sat down and stared in front of them at nothing. They couldn’t comprehend what was happening to them. Chris couldn’t stop herself from fighting back. They could tie her up or lock her in a cell. She would never stop fighting. Her own rage and fear took over, and her brain no longer functioned.
The tallest alien strode over to her and nodded at the man holding her. “Put her down. It’s all over now.”
The alien holding her set her feet on the ground, but before he could back off, she aimed her head back and cracked him across the nose. He growled in pain and cursed under his breath, and he immediately strapped his powerful arms around her again and lifted her back off the ground where she couldn’t move.
The tall alien gave a wry grin. “She’s a fiery one. That's for sure.”
Chris kicked and fought harder than ever. She would get away from these things if it was the last thing she ever did. But just then, the human female who advanced on the scene with the aliens rushed forward. She pushed the tall alien out of the way. “Leave her alone, Caleb. Can’t you see she’s out of her mind with terror? You would do the same thing if you were in her situation.”
Caleb turned away. “You talk to her, then, Marissa. You understand her better than anybody.” He walked away and left them alone.
Marissa watched him walk away. Then she sighed and turned to Chris. Her face softened. “It’s all right. You don’t have to fight anymore. They won’t hurt you.”
Chris snarled and spat at her. “You’re one of them! You’re one of these sick aliens. You killed Sasha! I’ll never stop fighting until I kill you, too.”
Marissa studied her. Then she glanced down at Sasha’s still form on the ground. “None of us killed Sasha. We don’t kill helpless women like the Romarie. We came here to help you after your ship crashed on our planet. We came to take you home and give you food and blankets and shelter. Is that what you want?”
Her steady gaze and gentle words started to penetrate Chris’s brain. She still fought against the arms holding her, but her strength weakened, and she didn’t kick as hard. “How do I know I can trust you?”
Marissa smiled. “Look around you. Do you see anyone else here you think you might like to trust?”
Chris frowned. “You’re one of them. I saw you come down the hill with them. They’re surrounding us right now so we can’t get away.”
“That’s right,” Marissa replied. “They don’t want to let you get away because you wouldn’t survive the night on your own. They want to make sure you get to safety before it gets dark.”
Chris frowned. “Who are you? How did you get here, and what are you doing with... with them?”
Marissa sighed. “The Romarie captured me and some of my friends, too. They stopped here on their way to the market, and we escaped—with the help of the people of this planet. They don’t have space flight capability, so we had to stay here. We made our homes here, and we’ve been very happy.”
“Well, I won’t be very happy here,” Chris shot back. “I’m getting out of here.”
Marissa fixed her with a sharp stare. Then she nodded to man holding Chris. “Put her down.”
“Not a chance!” he growled.
A smile touched Marissa’s lips. “It’s all right, Turk. Put her down.”
She brandished her club, but she didn’t attack him. She glared at him, and for one moment, they faced off in equally matched hostility. Then she let her club fall and turned back to Marissa.
Marissa nodded again. “You see? They won’t hurt you.”
Chris narrowed her eyes at Marissa. “Leave me alone.”
“You can’t leave,” Marissa told her. “There isn’t a single vehicle on this planet that is capable of breaking orbit. You’re stuck here like the rest of us. It’s terrible, and you don't want to believe it. No one understands that better than I do, but it’s the sad truth. You won’t get back to Earth. Your life is here now.”
Chris looked around her. On every side, these aliens spoke to the stranded women in the same soothing tones. They must be explaining the same thing to all of them. Some of the women broke down in tears. Others attacked the aliens as best they could, but the aliens never fought back. They kept the women from harm until they calmed down.
Chris’s shoulders slumped. “What is this place?”
“It’s called Angondra,” Marissa told her. “It’s a beautiful planet. You couldn’t ask for a planet more like Earth, and the Angondrans are kind, caring, honorable people.”
Chris lowered her eyes. “When you came down the hill with them, I thought you were coming to kill us or take us prisoner again.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Marissa replied. “Once you’re all ready to travel, we’ll take you back to our village. You can have something to eat and rest.”
Chris nodded. “I suppose your friends will be happy to have some other human beings around.”
Marissa cocked her head. “My friends?”
“The other women with you,” Chris replied. “They’ll be at the village, too, I guess.”
“They aren’t at the village,” Marissa replied. “They all live with different factions.”
Chris blinked. “Factions?”
Marissa waved her hand at the aliens surrounding the crash site. “These aren’t all the Angondrans. They belong to the Lycaon faction, but there are four other factions, the Felsite, the Aqinas, the Avitras, and the Ursidreans. They live in different parts of the planet.”
Chris closed her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t understand this right now.”
Marissa sighed and took her by the elbow. “No, you can’t. Come on. Let’s get going. We have a long way to go before dark.”
Chapter 3
They didn’t get very far before the women broke down. Chris stayed close to Marissa’s side, and she did her best to encourage the others. But it was no use. Exhaustion and emotional distress took their toll, and the column barely made it out of the meadow before the first woman collapsed.
Chris and Marissa hurried to her side, and after several long minutes coaxing and encouraging, they got her on her feet again. But a few steps later, someone else fell over, too. Pretty soon, the column came to a standstill.
“What are we going to do?” Chris asked. “We can’t leave them here.”
Marissa looked over her shoulder. Caleb and Turk walked behind them. “We’ll have to carry them.”
The two men exchanged glances.
“Why can’t we camp here for the night?” Chris asked. “We could light fires to keep them warm.”
“They need more than that,” Marissa replied. “They need food and roofs over their heads. They won’t recover from their experiences until they have a fixed place to settle.”
Chris eyed her. “How can you be so sure?”
Marissa smiled. “I’m sure because the same thing happened to me. As a matter of fact, it happened to all my friends. None of us settled here and recovered from our experience with the Romarie until we made our homes with the factions.”
Caleb and Turk stood with their heads together a few paces away. Then Turk went to talk to the other Lycaon warriors. Chris studied them. Their hair presented a range of colors from grey to orange and even black. They glided over the ground when they walked, and their eyes and ears took in ever detail of the landscape. “Tell me more about the factions.”
Marissa cocked her head. “That’s not so easy. I haven’t seen much of the other factions. They keep to themselves. The Felsite are bigger than the Lycaon, thicker in their limbs, and the males have a mane of hair around their heads like lions. They live in cities that stand up off the ground. They think they’re very advanced, but it’s the Avitras that make the rules on Angondra.”
“What are they like?” Chris asked.
“The Avitras? They’re more like birds,” Marissa replied. “They have feathers on their arms and lower legs that helps them glide through the trees, and they have a big headdress of feathers on the back of their heads. I’ve only seen them once, but they’re very grand and splendid, not like the Ursidreans.”
“Tell me everything you know about them,” Chris told her. “I want to know everything about this planet.”
Marissa nodded. “That’s better. Now you’re starting to use your head. Ursidreans are bigger and stronger and bulkier than any of the other factions. They have heavy limbs and dark hair. They live in caves in the mountains, but I heard from one of my friends that they have the most advanced technology of any faction. They preserved it from a time in the distant past when Angondra had space flight and a lot of other advanced technologies. But they keep it hidden.”
“How do you know they don’t still have space flight?” Chris asked. “There might be a way to get off this planet.”
Marissa smiled. “I know what you’re thinking, but it won’t work. If the Ursidreans have any vehicle left over from the space flight age, it no longer works. All the Angondrans agreed to put space flight away and stay put on their own planet. They don’t want contact with the likes of Romarie.”
“Then how did you wind up here?” Chris asked. “You said the Romarie landed here with you and your friends.”
“The Ursidreans let them land,” Marissa replied. “They were desperate. There was a terrible plague that wiped out the female population of most of this sector of the galaxy. Most of the other planets in the area have been purchasing kidnapped females from the Romarie to reestablish their populations. The Romarie played on the Ursidreans’ trusting nature to convince them to let them land with a group of females on their way to the slave market.”
Chris made a face. “So these people aren’t as neutral and benign as they pretend to be. I thought so.”
“You’re wrong,” Marissa replied. “None of the Angondrans trust the Romarie, and the gathering broke out in a pitched battle. One of the Romarie was killed, and the other two had to flee for their lives. They tried to take one of my friends hostage when they escaped, but we got her back. The Angondrans helped us get away from them, and they took us in afterwards.”
“What about the Aquinas?” Chris asked. “You haven’t told me about them yet.”
Marissa cocked her head to one side. “I can’t tell you much about them. I only saw them once at the gathering I told you about, and I was a little distracted at the time. The most I can tell you is what the Lycaon have told me, and even that’s colored by their prejudice.”
“Prejudice?” Chris repeated. “Are these factions at war with each other or something? That’s just what I need right now.”
“They aren’t at war,” Marissa told her. “They just don’t mix with each other very much. Occasionally hostilities do break out, but for the most part, they keep to themselves. The Aqinas live near the water. Their lives revolve around the water, and they communicate with each other and every other form of aquatic life through the water.”
“How do they do that?” Chris asked. “Do they do it chemically or something, like ants?”
“I really don’t know how they do it,” Marissa admitted. “The Aqinas are a mystery to everyone but themselves, and since I’m Lycaon, I don’t imagine I’ll ever have the chance to find out about them. They’re the most private of the factions.”
“Didn’t any of your friends go to the Aqinas?” Chris asked.
Marissa shook her head. “Carmen went to the Felsite, Penelope Ann went to the Avitras, and Aria went to the Ursidreans. And I’m Lycaon.”
Chris cocked her head to one side. “You might live with them, but you aren’t really Lycaon, are you? You’re human. You’re a different species. You'll never be one of them—not completely.”
“I’m human,” Marissa replied, “but I’m as Lycaon as any of the others. I’m Caleb’s mate, and he’s Alpha of the faction. I couldn’t stay with them if I wasn’t a member of the pack.”
Chris started back. “Pack! What pack?”
“The Lycaon live in packs,” Marissa replied. “That’s one thing that distinguishes them from the other factions. They migrate through the woods in temporary dwellings and dens, but the pack structure takes precedence over everything else.” She gazed into the distance. “I suppose that’s what attracted me to them in the first place.”
“Not Caleb?” Chris asked.
Marissa chuckled. “That too.”
Chris shot a sidelong glance at the tall leader. His dark hair spread back from his forehead in smooth ripples to his sharp pointed ears, and his eyes flashed over his surroundings with practiced acuity. He knew and understood every detail of his territory. He strode among his people issuing orders in a low voice. The others hurried to obey him, and the column functioned at its best from his direction.
Then Chris noticed what they were doing. The Lycaon collected poles from the woods and laid them out near the fallen women. They constructed litters to carry them. Caleb ordered his people to carry out Marissa’s suggestion. They planned to carry the women who collapsed. Marissa directed Caleb from behind the scenes, and he used his authority to do as she told him.
Chris took a closer look at Marissa. She kept a keen eye on everything her people did, especially Caleb. “It must have been hard for you to lose everything the way you did. You lost your life back on Earth and had to start all over again here.”
“It wasn’t so hard,” Marissa replied. “I didn’t have much back on Earth to lose, and the pack gave me everything I ever wanted. I have a family. I have a loving mate. I have a place in the world now. I never had that before.”
“But you’re a different species from them,” Chris pointed out. “You might never be able to have children with Caleb.”
“Yes, I can,” Marissa told her. “Aria has twin children with her Ursidrean mate and another set of twins on the way, and Penelope Ann is pregnant, too. We’re close enough to them biologically to reproduce.”
Chris grimaced and turned away. “I could never do it with an alien. I would puke.”
Marissa snorted. “You’re not so different from me. You’ve lost everything you ever had on Earth, too. In fact, I’ll bet you lost a lot more than I did. When you’ve been here a while, you’ll see the Angondrans as human, just like we do. Then maybe you won’t puke when one of them wants to mate with you.”
The Lycaons shouldered their litters and carried the crash survivors into the gathering evening gloom. Chris and Marissa and the other women who could still walk followed behind. Turk and Caleb came last.
The column traced its way through miles of trackless forests. Two ghostly moons sailed through the heavens, but Chris barely caught a glimpse of them through the treetops. The darker the night, the more comfortable the Lycaon warriors became. They stiffened on their guard when they broke cover and entered open places in the forest. They only relaxed again when the trees closed around them.
Hours into the night, clouds covered the moons and heavy rain set in, but they never slackened their pace. Marissa kept up with them, and Chris steeled herself to match their stride, too. She couldn’t let her circumstances defeat he.
All night they trekked until the rain slackened and cleared. The moons set, and morning light set the treetops on fire. The forest burst into life, with the noisy calls of animals echoing through the woods. Clouds of steam rose from the forest floor and evaporated into the sky.
One by one, the human women from the crash site dropped to the ground, unable to go on. And one by one, the Lycaon picked them up and carried them forward. In the end, only Chris and Marissa remained on their feet, but when dawn broke, Chris’ knees wobbled under her. She couldn’t go much farther, but she refused to ask Marissa how far they had to go before they would reach their destination.
Marissa showed no signs of flagging. Chris gritted her teeth and walked on. As long as Marissa kept going, she would stay on her feet, too. Then, without warning, the Lycaon at the front of the column set down their litters and sat down on the ground. Chris stopped, too, but before she could ask any questions, she saw it.
Across a small clearing, an untidy pile of sticks and leaves rose from the ground under an enormous tree. Poles stretched down to the ground from the tree’s lower branches, and the sticks and leaves lay in bundles against these poles. A Lycaon woman squatted in front of it, and two little children huddled at her feet.
Bright red hair ran back from her face and down her neck. The children looked just like her, with the same red hair and the same square cut to their facial features. They stared at Chris and inched closer to the woman.
A Lycaon left his litter and approached them. He squatted next to the woman and ruffled one of the children's hair. Then he surveyed the new arrivals as if seeing them for the first time.
Some of the warriors left the column and strode into the trees. Other piles of debris scattered through the forest. The warriors disappeared into them. These must be the temporary dwellings Marissa told Chris about. The closer she looked, the more dwellings she noticed. A whole village of them spread through the forest.
Chris stopped at the edge of the clearing. Lycaon of every age and color came out of their dwellings and stared at the women on the litters. Chris flushed bright red. Would these aliens really take them in and care for them? She had only the word of a woman she just met that they would.
Turk and Caleb strode past Chris and Marissa into the clearing. Caleb called to his people, and one by one, they took custody of the women. One by one, they led the new arrivals away to their dwellings. In a few cases, they picked them up and carried them away.
Chris watched them disappear into their make-shift shelters until only she and Marissa remained in the clearing with the last of the warriors. She couldn’t exactly call these women her friends, but they'd been kidnapped together and crashed together. Now they were vanishing before her eyes, just like Sasha. No sooner did someone come into her life than they passed out of it without a word of warning.
Chris’s gaze met Marissa’s frank eyes, but she didn’t have the courage to ask the question that plagued her mind. Marissa smiled at her. “You’re going with Turk. He’ll give you something to eat and a warm bed. The world will look a lot brighter in the morning.”
Chris glanced across the clearing. Turk stood next to Caleb near the now-empty litters. He studied her from afar with his sharp eyes. Chris snorted. “I’m not going anywhere with him.”
Marissa started back. “Why not? He won’t hurt you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried about him hurting me,” Chris shot back. “I’d smash his head in if he tried. But I’m not going anywhere near him, not after the way he attacked me last night. I wouldn’t go within a hundred miles of him.”
Marissa stared at her. “You’re the one who attacked him, remember? All he did was hold you still until you calmed down.”
Chris turned away. “Find another place for me. I don’t care where, but I’m not going with him.”
“You can’t be serious,” Marissa exclaimed.
Chris rounded on her. “You can’t expect a single woman to stay with a single man. He could do anything he wanted, and I would have to defend myself anyway I could. Even these crazy people must have some laws about that.”
Marissa laughed. “So that’s what you’re worried about? Well, you don’t have to worry. He lives with his mother and two sisters and his sister’s two children. You won’t be alone with him, and his mother will make sure you’re comfortable and you have everything you need. Does that satisfy you?”
Chris turned away again. Turk stood in the same spot. His ears twitched toward her. He heard every word she said. “Forget it. I’m not going with him.”
Marissa sighed. “Then you better come with me. It’s the only other place in the village. If you don’t want to come with me, you can sleep right here on the ground if you’d rather.” She walked away into the trees.
Chris couldn’t see any dwelling in that direction, but no one else remained in the clearing but Turk and Caleb. Caleb murmured something to Turk and strode after Marissa, leaving only Turk staring at her.
Chris stared back at him, and their eyes sparked in the space between them. Why couldn’t she accept basic hospitality from these people? They didn’t kidnap her to be sold into slavery. They brought her to safety when she had no prospects at all, and now the Lycaon took her into their homes to give her shelter. What more could she ask for?
But it wasn’t the Lycaon she couldn’t accept. Not even their great size and strange features could make her throw their hospitality back in their faces like that. It was him—Turk. She couldn’t accept it from him, not even if it came from his mother and his sisters and his sister’s children. He caused a reaction in her she couldn’t handle. She couldn’t go home with him, no matter how much she needed shelter. She would rather sleep on the ground.
He put his arms around her and held her against his body. He imprinted his essence on her skin, and even now, more than twelve hours later, she couldn’t shake it off. He was still in contact with her now, even when he stood across the clearing and stared at her, and she couldn’t stand it.
She stared at him as long as she could, but he had all the advantage. This was his territory, his home village. She was the stranger here, the outsider, the alien from another planet. She spun on her heel and hurried after Marissa.
Marissa was long gone, but Chris caught sight of Caleb and followed him to another dwelling tucked far back into the trees. She never could have found it without following him. He didn’t go inside, though. He went around behind it and disappeared still farther back into the dense forest. Chris ducked into the entrance with a sigh of relief.
Chapter 4
A hole in the roof let a shaft of light into one round room inside the dwelling. Dust filled the beam of light and obscured the surroundings. Only a shadow on the far side of the room showed Chris where Marissa was. She sat next to a smoldering fire in a pit, and Chris barely recognized her.
She wore a light top of pale tanned animal skin hanging off one shoulder, and another wrap of animal skin around her waist, but her legs and arms shone bare and bright in the light streaming down from overhead. Her shoulders hung rounded and relaxed from her body, instead of standing square and sharp the way they did when Chris met her at the crash site.
She smiled at Chris. “So you decided to come after all. I wondered if you would, or if you would settle down in the clearing.” She laughed to herself. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you did.”
Chris blushed and dropped her eyes. “You fit right in here. I didn’t think you could. I thought you’d be too different from those... those people.”
Marissa chuckled. She picked up an earthenware pot and set it on the glowing coals. She dropped a handful of dried herbs into the water and stirred them with her forefinger. “It took me a while to relax here. It took me almost six months before I would take off the clothes I was wearing when the Romarie abducted us. I wouldn’t wear these skins. I thought I wouldn’t be human anymore if I changed my clothes.”
“Are you still human?” Chris asked. “Do the...whatever you call ‘ems....to they keep their distance from you because you’re a different species?”
“I’m not a different species,” Marissa replied. “The pack is everything to the Lycaon. If you belong to the pack, nothing else matters. I’m Caleb’s mate, and the pack worried he would never find one after the plague. So the whatever you call ‘ems are very happy to have me. They don’t treat me any differently than they would a female of their own species.”
Chris couldn’t look her in the eye. “I don’t think I could ever live like this.”
Marissa regarded her for a moment. Then she waved her hand. “Sit down. You can’t stand there all day long.”
Chris hesitated. If she sat down, she had no choice but to sit on the floor. And what was so bad about that? She’d sat on the cold, dirty ground dozens of times on camping trips back home. Yet somehow, sitting down on the dirt in this hovel carried a finality she couldn’t face. If she sat down here, across from Marissa, she would be accepting this life as her own. She would be accepting her fate, that she was on this crazy planet for good, and she would never get home again.
None of the other women would suffer these doubts. The Lycaon carried them into their houses and laid them on the floor, or on the bed, or wherever they laid them, no questions asked. They were here, whether they wanted to be or not. They had a long way to go to recover from their ordeal with the Romarie before they started wondering if they belonged on Angondra or not.
Only Chris was strong enough and healthy enough to worry about getting stuck in this place. Only someone as fortunate as herself, with hands outstretched on all sides to help her and make her comfortable, could doubt the blessing of her circumstances. She had to shoulder this burden alone. No one would help her cross the gap between herself and Angondra.
She raised her eyes and found Marissa watching her. She read every nuance of Chris’s expression, and a twinkle of understanding danced in her eyes. She’d lived all those doubts and anxieties herself before settling into this life. If anyone could help Chris bridge that gap, it was Marissa.
Chris lowered her eyes again.
Marissa pursed her lips. “Sit down....Sorry. I don’t even know your name.”
“Chris.” The memory of Sasha lying lifeless and still flashed through her mind. Sasha lay across the body of the Romarie who killed her, out there in the rain-drenched field, where Chris left her. She would never be buried. Chris swallowed hard. “I'm Chris Sebastiani. From Humboldt, California.”
Marissa smiled again. “All right, Chris Sebastiani, from Humboldt, California. Have a seat and drink a cup of tea. You’ll feel better.”
Chris looked around the room again, like that was going to do her any good. Not one piece of furniture occupied the perimeter of the dwelling. Only indiscriminate bundles lined the circular walls. An assortment of furs and blankets lay in a pile under one of the lodge poles. Chris blushed again. Marissa slept with Caleb on those furs. Where would she sleep? She might wake up in the night to the sound of them mating.
Marissa’s eyes pierced Chris’s soul. “Sit down, Chris. I won’t bite you, and you’re making me nervous, standing there. You’re a guest in my home, and I’ve offered you a cup of tea. The least you can do is sit down.”
Chris hesitated one more minute.
Marissa’s voice softened. “Sit down, Chris. You won’t lose your humanity by sitting down and drinking a cup of tea. If anything, it will help you stay human.”
Chris buckled. So Marissa understood after all. She wasn’t alone. Chris inched her way around the fire and sat down near Marissa. She folded her legs under her and stared down at her hands. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be so rude. I don’t know how to understand all this.”
Marissa took the pot off the fire and poured steaming tea into a cup. She handed it to Chris. “You don’t have to understand it. In a lot of ways, the others have it easier than you. They don’t have to wonder if they’re doing the right thing by accepting the Lycaon’s hospitality. You’re the only one who has to think about it.”
“I just don’t want to get stuck here,” Chris explained. “I want to go home.”
Marissa nodded. “I know. But you have to remember you’re not signing any contract by spending the night here. You’re not agreeing to anything. You’re just spending the night. You can decide to leave first thing in the morning, and the Lycaon will send you on your way.”
“I’d have nowhere to go,” Chris pointed out.
“You could go to one of the other factions,” Marissa pointed out. “When the other factions find out we have a bunch of Earth females here from a crashed Romarie vessel, they may want to take some of them in. The other factions are just as desperate as we are for females. I’m sure the Alphas will have to negotiate about it.”
Chris’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t sell these women to the other factions, would you? That would make you just as bad as the Romarie.”
“We wouldn’t sell anybody,” Marissa replied. “No one would go anywhere or do anything against their will. But these women have to find homes somewhere, and families somewhere. If they don’t want to stay with the Lycaon, they can go somewhere else. I’m sure some of them would be more comfortable with the Felsite, or with the Ursidreans, the same way my friends were. I can contact them and find out if they have room in their own factions.”
Chris shook her head. “I don’t like this. You make it sound like some kind of mail-order bride service you’re running.”
Marissa patted her hand. “You’re a really good person, aren’t you? You don’t even know these women, and you want to protect them and make sure no one exploits them again the way the Romarie did. You’re a natural leader. Well, don’t worry. Nothing will happen to them until they recover their strength. Then they can decide for themselves where to go.”
“I’m sure some of them will want to go home, too,” Chris pointed out.
Marissa gazed down into the fire. “I’m sure they will.”
Chris peered into her tea cup. She still didn’t dare to put it to her lips. “I wish Sasha was here. She’s much more of a natural leader than I am. She was going through the crash site checking on everybody when you showed up.”
Marissa shrugged. “Sasha’s not here anymore, but you are. You have to be the leader now, and as long as I’m around, no one will do anything to those women. You have my word on that.”
At that moment, Caleb entered the room, followed by Turk. Caleb scanned the room and nodded. Turk frowned when he saw Chris. Then he turned his eyes away. Caleb sat down next to Marissa and kissed her on the cheek. Turk sat across the fire, as far away from Chris as he could get.
Marissa handed Caleb a cup of tea, and then handed Turk one. Both men drank the fragrant liquid, and Marissa refilled their cups. Then she opened a bundle from the side of the room and removed a chunk of meat. She cut it into pieces on a flat rock by the fire and set it to boil in the pot.
Caleb turned to Turk. “We’ll have to call a council to discuss these women.”
Turk nodded.
Chris’s head shot up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Turk frowned at her. “Don’t you think they will want to help you any way they can?” He waved his hand at Marissa. “These women have been living alone among the factions since they escaped from the Romarie. Marissa came out to the meadow to see you and help you and make sure you had everything you needed after you crashed. The others will want to do the same thing.”
Chris glanced at Marissa. “I didn’t think you....”
Marissa lifted her eyes and smiled. “I know what you thought. You thought I was one of them, one of the warriors. You thought that’s why I was out there, to take control of you. But I’m not. I wouldn’t have gone if you weren’t my own kind.”
Chris’s shoulders slumped. “Sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“I do,” Marissa replied.
Turk faced Caleb. “Let’s let these women recover first, and then we’ll know what to do.”
Caleb nodded. “I should put you in charge, Turk. You have a good head for strategy, and it was you and your scouts who spotted the crash in the first place. You always find a way to benefit our pack. I’m nothing but a figurehead.”
“Even a figurehead needs his lieutenants,” Turk replied. “If I was Alpha, I would need you as my lieutenant, and I couldn’t function without you. You’ll meet with Renier and Donen and Aquilla, and we’ll find homes for these women, one way or the other.”
“Who are Renier and Donen and Aquilla?” Chris asked.
“Renier is Alpha of the Felsite faction,” Marissa replied. “His mate is Carmen Herrera. Donen is Alpha of the Ursidreans, and Aria McCray is his mate. And Aquilla is Alpha of the Avitras, and Penelope Ann King is his mate.”
Chris cocked her head. “How did it work out that you all mated with Alphas?”
Marissa shrugged. “It just worked out that way.”
Caleb listened to their conversation. “As a matter of fact, the Alphas were all present at the gathering where you escaped from the Romarie. We fought with them. That’s where I first noticed you.”
Marissa blushed and looked down at her work. “Caleb saved my life at the gathering. One of the Romarie fired his weapon at me, and Caleb stepped in front of the blast and was injured. After he and Turk brought me to this village, I couldn’t forget what he’d done for me. That’s how we came to be mated, and I became a member of his pack.”
Chris frowned. “You said the Alphas were at the gathering. What was Turk doing there?”
“The Alphas of the factions went along,” Marissa explained, “and most of them took their secondaries. The Felsite sent their whole Alpha clan. That’s the way they do things. The whole clan has to keep up with political developments in case anything happens to the Alpha and someone else has to step in.”
“What’s a secondary?” Chris asked.
“Just what I told you,” Marissa replied. “It’s a member of the Alpha’s family who stands to take over if the Alpha can’t lead his people. Turk is Caleb’s secondary.”
Chris stole a glance at the two men. Something eerily familiar about the two of them struck her for the first time, even when they sat on opposite sides of the fire.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Chris muttered. “You said the secondary was a member of the Alpha’s family. How could Turk be Caleb’s secondary? He’s only a lieutenant.”
Marissa shook her head. “He’s a lieutenant, and he’s a secondary. He’s practically an Alpha himself. He would be Alpha if he’d been born a few minutes earlier.”
Chris blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you understand?” Marissa asked. “They’re brothers. Actually, they’re twin brothers.”
Chapter 5
Chris’s eyes popped open, and she took a fraction of a second to figure out where she was. Her eye traced the star pattern of lodge poles above her head, with a circle of clear sky in the center. A cloud of smoke covered the hole for a moment, and then the smell of roasting meat and strong tea stung her nostrils, and everything came flooding back.
She closed her eyes against the memory of Caleb and Turk sitting across the fire and sharing a meal with her and Marissa—at least, they shared it with Marissa. Chris couldn’t stomach the food, no matter how delicious it smelled. Everything she put in her mouth, everything that touched her skin, poisoned her in favor of this planet. In a little while, she wouldn’t be able to get this planet out of her system. She would turn into one of them, just like Marissa had.
Did the other women who landed with Marissa go through this paroxysm of alienation? Did they fight it the way she did? How long did it take before they finally accepted defeat and mated with these aliens?
Marissa no longer considered herself another species from them. Her transformation was complete, and no doubt it began the same way. She ate their food, drank their tea, and one of them touched her with his hands until Angondra invaded her very cells.
She wasn’t human anymore. She didn’t have the same patterns of hair on her head or their pointed ears or their blunt noses, but she was one of them. She admitted it herself. The pack was everything to the Lycaon, and she was a member of their pack.
Chris couldn’t let that happen to her. She had to fight it, and she had to find a way off this planet. She would get hungry and thirsty and lonely, and those needs would wear her down until she gave in. She had to escape before that happened.
Marissa only smiled at her during the meal. She read Chris’s every thought. She knew exactly what was going through her mind. That smile drove Chris insane. She had to get away from Marissa, too—but how? The Lycaon could outrun her, and their strong senses of smell and hearing could track her through the woods.
She sat up. Maybe one of the other women would help her. The women she crashed with couldn’t help her—not before she transformed into one of these aliens. They might even welcome the transformation after their ordeal with the Romarie. They would tell the Lycaon what she planned to do and try to stop her from getting away.
Who would help her? Not Marissa. Marissa only wanted to make the assimilation process painless for her. None of the Angondrans understood her problem. Turk kept staring at her all through the meal. He fixed her with his inscrutable gaze. Then he would catch himself and look down at his food again. But eventually, his gaze always migrated back to her face.
What was he thinking? Was he planning to destroy her as an enemy of his people? If he could read her thoughts the way Marissa did, he would understand how much she loathed everything he represented. If she couldn’t escape, she would destroy anything that crossed her path.
Caleb barely noticed her. He talked to Marissa and his brother through the meal, but he gave Chris only the most cursory attention. Maybe he couldn’t forgive the slight of her rejecting his family. Turk lived in a house nearby with their mother and sisters and children. These were Caleb’s relatives, too. They’d honored her by offering to house her with the Alpha’s family. Marissa explained all that, but Chris couldn’t accept it. She didn’t want to be honored. She wanted to disappear into the ground and never be seen by these people again.
But where could she go? Marissa insisted again and again that Chris could choose where she went and what she did. She could choose any other faction if she wished. Maybe one of Marissa’s friends wanted to get out of here as much as she did. One of them would help her get off this planet.
She ran through the scanty information Marissa gave her about them. Carmen was with the Felsite, Aria was with the Ursidreans, and Penelope Ann was with the Avitras.
She got up and tiptoed to the door. No one saw her. Marissa and Caleb went out together after the meal, and Turk went to his own house. No doubt his mother and sisters would wash his feet and give his shoulders a rub. They fawned all over their hero brother. Chris could just see it now.
She peeked outside, but the village was deserted. Afternoon sun slanted through the trees. Smoke twined out of the roofs of the other houses. The Lycaon must all be inside resting after the trek back and busy tending the new arrivals.
So much the better. Chris stepped out of the house and, with one last glance around, set off through the woods.
She glanced back over her shoulder, but nothing stirred in the village. She walked faster, and the farther she went, the faster she hurried until she broke into a dead run.
How long she ran, she couldn’t tell, until she stopped to catch her breath. Nothing but miles and miles of trees surrounded her on all sides. She couldn’t distinguish one direction from another. She could be running in circles and never know the difference. Only a faint shimmer of sun snuck through the canopy to lighten the forest floor. She couldn’t use that as a guide.
In Girl Scouts she learned that the moss grew on the north side of tree trunks. If you ever got lost in the woods, you could guide yourself with that to find your way. Maybe the moss didn’t grow on the north side of the trees here, but it would grow on one side and not the others. She could use that as her guide.
She ran her hand around the nearest tree trunk, but moss grew on every side of it, all the way around in a uniform mat of velvet green. Every side of the tree was in the same shadow as every other side. Chris shook her head. She couldn’t let this discourage her. She had to go on.
But she didn’t run blindly anymore. She walked and let her mind turn over the problem of finding her way to one of the other factions. She knew nothing about this planet except what Marissa told her. The Aqinas lived near the water, and the Avitras lived in the trees. The Ursidreans lived in caves in the mountains, and the Felsite lived in cities on the plains. That didn’t tell her anything about how to find them or how to deal with them when she did.
The sun slipped by overhead, and the day disappeared. In the depths of the forest, Chris noticed only a change in the quality of the light, and a drop in the temperature. The golden sunbeams streaming through the trees turned to grey, and the animal life chattered to quiet. Night was coming.
Where could she spend the night? A pile of sticks and leaves sounded pretty good right about now, and the memory of Marissa’s stew of meat, herbs, and roots made Chris’ stomach grumble. She should have eaten that stew when she had the chance. Who knew how long it would be before she got a hot meal like that again?
But she couldn’t go crying over spilled milk now. She had to keep her thoughts clear to find food and water for herself. Thirst started to gnaw at her, though. That was a much more pressing problem right now than food. She ought to head downhill. If she kept going down, she would find water. And she could follow a river or stream—where? To the Aqinas?
Then, out of the corner of her eye, a shaft of light caught her eye. It was different from the rest of the grey sky falling into dusk. A rainbow of glorious color split the cloud cover and illuminated the canopy. The trees opened up, and she hurried toward the place. At last, she was getting out from under those trees.
She struggled up a rise and broke out onto bare ridge stretching up to a headland overlooking the countryside all around. She rushed up the slope to the very pinnacle and gazed out at thousands of miles of empty wilderness. Nothing moved in that trackless land. No plains or mountains interrupted the view. As far as the eye could see, the same dense forest covered the entire planet.
If the Lycaon territory covered so much forest, how could she find any of the other factions? She would travel for weeks just to get out of that forest. But she couldn’t turn back now. She had to press on.
She fell back on her first strategy, to find a river or stream and follow it out of the forest. She went back down the promontory and into the trees, but as soon as the canopy closed over her head, night set in and she couldn’t see more than a foot in front of her face. She had to find a place to spend the night.
With night, the air turned freezing cold. It cut right through her shirt, and when she rubbed her arms with her hands, the cold fabric chilled her hands until they ached. Her teeth chattered, and she stumbled through the crumbly loam underfoot.
She searched everywhere for some shelter—a fallen log, a hollow tree, an overhang of rock—but nothing offered her any protection from the cold. In the end, she had no choice but to rely on the Lycaon and their methods. She kicked a bunch of fallen leaves and debris into a big pile at the base of a tree and crawled into it. Dirt and leaf meal sprinkled into her eyes and mouth until she choked, but as soon as the leaves closed around her, they trapped her body heat and she stopped shivering.
The ground under her still chilled her, but the cold wasn’t so bad. Hunger and thirst pushed sleep just beyond her reach, and her mind raced around and around trying to come up with some solution to her predicament.
How long could this go on? She couldn’t travel even one more day without food and water. She couldn’t sleep like this another night. She wasn’t sleeping now. Where was her four-poster bed with the down comforter when she really needed it? Where was her dog Tanner and Riccarton, her cat, to keep her warm? She'd grown soft with comfortable living these last few years.
Her heart ached at the memory of the life she left behind on Earth. When would she get it back? What if Marissa was right, and she never got off this planet? Why did the Romarie have to take her instead of the lady next door? The lady next door didn’t have any family or pets or a business to run. It wasn’t fair.
But she couldn’t drown in self-pity. She peeked out of her leaf pile. Was it dawn yet? But black night still covered the forest. She couldn’t even make out any stars in the sky above the canopy. She tucked her head back inside her pile of leaves.
What would she do when she got....wherever she was going? What would she say to the next human woman she met? “Marissa told me there was no way off this planet, but I didn’t believe her. Can you help me?” That didn’t sound very good. They would laugh her out of the room.
Or they might be so disgusted with her for scorning the Lycaon’s hospitality that they would refuse to help her at all. They might send her back out into the wilderness to fend for herself. But Marissa insisted the Angondrans wouldn’t do that. Her friends made their homes with these aliens, so they wouldn’t do it, either. They would take her in.
So why couldn’t she be happy that the Lycaon took her in? Why couldn’t she accept the honor of staying with the Alpha family? It couldn’t be the little stick houses they lived in, could it, that she couldn’t stomach? It couldn’t be their animal nature, or their garments made of animal skins. She couldn’t be so shallow as to reject them for that, could she?
Would she be happier in the city on the plains, or a house in the treetops with the feathered Avitras? What if Marissa was right, and she really couldn’t get off this planet?
Chapter 6
She must have dozed off, because she started awake and choked all over again on the dust and leaves. She fought her way out of her pile of debris and stood spluttering and coughing in the misty morning. At least that night was over. She set off once again right away and wound her way downward, always downward, into deeper darkness and thicker stands of trees, away from the bright sky in search of water.
Time disappeared without the sun to guide it. She pressed on and on. Most of the day vanished under her feet, but she couldn’t stop. Unbearable thirst drove her forward. She had to find water, and soon. She couldn’t last the day without it. The sun touched the treetops. It must be close to noon. She couldn’t go on this way. She needed food and water. Then something like music tickled her ears. It soothed her, but her heart sank at the sound. Was she hallucinating in her dehydrated delirium?
Then she listened to the music closer and recognized it. She fought off the exhaustion threatening to drag her down. She had to move. She would die if she laid there any longer, and the sound gave her one last glimmer of hope.
She started forward, toward that wonderful sound. The sound drove her mad. She put out her hand from one tree to the next, when she almost fell headlong down a sheer cliff to an expanse of stony rubble below. She dug in her heels and clawed the crumbly soil for support, but her foot hung in mid-air over a towering canyon of sheer rock.
At last, she dared to look over the edge at the rocks below. Trees and brambles dotted the ground between the rocks, and light glistened on ripples of water snaking through the canyon. The soft musical sound she heard higher up thundered against the canyon walls and echoed in her ears. The river crashed over waterfalls and giggled through deep pools.
Chris caught her breath. This was so much more than the stream she hoped for. This river would turn into a major waterway when it left the forest. It would lead all the way to the sea, through continents and into the territory of the other factions. It would lead her where she wanted to go.
She stepped back away from cliff edge and skirted around to her left to find a way down. The cliff stretched as far as she could see in both directions, but she didn’t care. She followed it with her spirits soaring to heaven. She’d done it. She’d escaped.
After an hour or more of searching, she found a path down the cliff to the boulder field. She spent another hour picking her way over boulders and between puddles of algae to a rivulet of clear running water. She knelt down on the hard stones and lowered her parched lips to the blessed water. She touched the silver liquid to her lips. Then she cupped it into her mouth, and at last gulped it down in mouthfuls.
When she sat back on her heels and gazed across the water at the woods on the other side, her eye fell on a patch of low-growing moss wedged between the rocks. Tiny blue balls dotted the grey-green surface, and Chris held her breath to stop the apparition from vanishing before her eyes.
She picked her way across the treacherous riverbed. She stepped from one teetering rock to the next. She dragged her eyes away from those tantalizing blue beads to place her feet at each step, only to lock her gaze on them again.
Closer and closer they drew, but still she dared not hope they were what she thought they were. They might be poisonous, and she’d be dead out here in the middle of nowhere. No one would know where she was or how she died.
But she didn’t care. Her stomach told her to hazard everything on this one slender chance. She tiptoed across the river, and her hands shook when she plucked the shiny blue berries from their bush. They dropped into her palm, hard and taut with juice, and pearls of river foam clung to their dusky skin.
She popped the first three into her mouth and bit down. The juice squirted down her throat and pricked her tongue. Oh, she never tasted anything as good in her life! She clawed handfuls of the berries off their bushes and crammed them into her mouth as fast as she could. She would probably give herself a gut ache, but she didn’t care. She would suffer any torture to satisfy her hunger—and what a way to satisfy it!
She ate as many of the berries as she could find, and at last her hunger faded. She drank some more water to wash down her meal and sat down on a rock to rest. Her legs and feet burned from walking. She sighed and looked around the canyon.
These sheer walls wouldn’t let her follow the river bed very far. She would have to hike back up to the tablelands to follow it. But at least she could come down to the water’s edge for a drink and something to eat. She could follow the river wherever it led her.
But right now, she had a different problem. Where was she going to spend the night? She couldn’t spend it down here, and she didn’t care much for the idea of spending it inside a pile of leaves again. If she was going to spend any time near this spot at all, she would build herself a sturdier shelter, something more like the Lycaon’s dwellings.
She hated to imitate them, but they must have learned a thing or two about living in this landscape. Marissa said they were nomadic and moved around. They kept their dwellings simple and temporary. In retrospect, with the benefit of a full stomach, their practicality made sense. How could she think them squalid and dirty? Wasn’t Marissa’s food good enough for her?
The sun sank below the cliff rim, and the canyon fell into shadow. In an instant, all the warmth vanished from the world. Chris definitely couldn’t spend the night down here. But she couldn’t force herself to stand up. She would rather freeze to death than to take one step away from the precious water and berries. She might wake up in her leaf pile again and find out it was all a dream.
Then, out of the shadows across the pool, two glistening black stars pierced the gloom. She stared at them, but they never wavered. She blinked, but they didn’t. Her scalp prickled. Would some fearsome creature leap out and tear her limb from limb?
The last light sparkled on those two unblinking points. Dense foliage surrounded them on all sides so she couldn’t make out the shape behind them. But the longer she stared at them, the more certain she became that two eyes watched her from a hiding place beyond the water.
She tore her gaze away from them just long enough to look around. A stick stuck out between some rocks nearby, but it was too far away. She would never reach it before the creature attacked. Instead, she bent down and picked up a baseball-sized stone from the riverbed at her feet. She kept her eyes locked on the creature the whole time.
She hefted the stone in her hand. It was perfect; round, smooth, and heavy. It sent a surge of adrenaline through her. She squared her shoulders and gritted her teeth. She would have one shot at this, but if she hit it hard enough, it would probably run away without a fight.
She did this once with a brown bear in the mountains near her home. One good hit with a rock stopped it in its tracks and sent it running for the hills. Most wild animals didn’t want to fight something that would fight back. They wanted easy prey.
She wouldn’t be easy prey. She never had been, and she wasn’t about to start now, not when she finally found food and water to help her on her journey. She eased herself up off her rock and planted her feet wide.
The eyes narrowed at her in malicious rage. The branches swayed around it. Chris pulled her hand back and cocked her wrist. She wound up all her strength to send the rock smashing through the undergrowth.
But at that moment, the creature broke cover and charged toward her. It rushed at her so fast she never got her weapon launched before he struck her with all his weight. Chris recognized him halfway across the pool, but the sight of him only enraged her even more. It was Turk.
He’d followed her. He was probably laughing all the way at her hunger and thirst, at the night she spent in a pile of leaves. He probably got a good chuckle out of her staggering halfway across hell and gone trying to find her way out of that wilderness.
And now here he was, attacking her the way she always knew he would. He was dangerous. She knew that the moment she laid eyes on him. She didn’t care what Marissa said about him and the rest of the Angondrans. She would never trust him. He was a killer, and here he was to prove it.
The moment she recognized him, she changed her strategy. She didn’t hurl her rock at him. There wasn’t time. Instead, she gripped it tighter and waited for the impact. His arms closed around her, and he knocked her backwards onto the ground.
A stick stuck in her back and sent a lightning bolt of pain through her, but she paid it no heed. She brought her rock up and slammed it with all her might into the side of Turk’s head. He bellowed in rage, and his lips peeled back from sharp pointed teeth. He snarled and snapped in her face, but she didn’t waste an instant. She drew back her hand and hit him again, harder this time.
Turk roared into her face, but he kept control of himself. He reared back just enough to get hold of her wrist. He smashed her hand down on the gravel, again and again. Chris shrieked in pain, and her hand fell open. The rock tumbled out of her grasp and joined all the other rocks in the riverbed.
Chapter 7
The fire crackled, and sprays of sparks floated up through the trees into the star-speckled sky. Chris studied the face across the fire. “How long have you been following me?”
“Since you left,” he replied.
She looked away.
“You made quite a racket,” he mused. “I never heard anybody make so much noise just walking out of the house.”
Her head snapped around, but he wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t even smiling.
“Why didn’t the others come after me?” she asked.
“No one would come after you,” he replied. “You’re not our prisoner. If you want to leave, you can leave.”
“Wasn’t anybody worried about me going into the woods by myself?” she asked.
“Only Marissa,” he replied. “But when she told Caleb to follow you, I asked him to let me go alone.”
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I wanted to see what you would do. I wanted to see if Marissa was right about you, that you couldn’t survive out here by yourself, or if you would be able to handle yourself. I was curious.”
Chris stared into the fire. “I suppose Marissa knows enough to be able to handle herself in this wilderness.”
“Marissa would never be foolish enough to go out into the woods by herself,” he replied. “She knows enough to stay in the village.”
Chris frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean? Doesn’t she know how to survive out here?”
“Marissa has certain capabilities we don’t have,” he replied. “And we have certain capabilities she doesn’t have. Marissa, and you, and all the other human women, don’t have the adaptations we have for survival in the deep woods. You’re a different species.”
Chris dropped her eyes. “Oh. I see.”
He regarded her across the fire. “You lasted a lot longer than I thought you would. I thought you’d be dead within the first day. I didn’t think you had the stamina or the wits to find your way this far.”
“Would you have let me die out here, then?” she asked. “I suppose you would have stood back and watched while I walked over the edge of that cliff, or frozen to death during the night, or died of thirst if I couldn’t find water.”
He cocked his head to one side. “What did you think was going to happen? If you wanted help from the Lycaon, you never should have left the village. You had no idea where you were going or how you would survive. You left the village purely out of spite.”
“And it was out of spite that the Lycaon wouldn’t send anybody after me,” she grumbled.
He smacked his lips. “How many times do I have to tell you? You’re not our prisoner, or our slave, or anything else. You’re free to come and go as you please. If you want to throw your life away, go ahead. None of us will try to stop you. We have better things to do. Marissa told you the same thing. We aren’t Romarie.”
She couldn’t look at him. His words stung her heart. “So now you’re here. What are you going to do?”
“The question is what are you going to do?” he asked. “You found the river, and you found the berries. You can go on if you want to. I won’t stop you.”
She turned her head to one side, but as he said, he had capabilities she didn’t understand. He could see her well enough in the dark to read her mind. “I won’t go back to the village.”
He sat up straighter. “Alright.”
Her words burst out in a rush. “You and your people and Marissa shouldn’t have been so nice to me. It would have been easier.”
His ears swiveled toward her. What could he hear in her voice that she couldn’t hear herself? “Do you want to go to another faction? I’m sure we can send word to the other Alphas. They’ll be happy to take you.”
Chris’s shoulders slumped. “It’s not that.”
“Marissa said you were disgusted by our village,” he went on. “You’re probably used to a different standard of accommodation. Maybe the Felsite city would suit you better.”
Chris clamped her eyes shut. She couldn’t listen to this. “She said that?”
He tossed a stick into the fire and sent up another plume of sparks. “Marissa has been with the Lycaon long enough to learn from us. She notices more subtle body language and facial expressions now than when she first came to live with us. She can read a person’s thoughts and feelings almost as well as any of us.”
“I’m sorry,” she moaned. “I never should have done that.”
“Done what?” he asked.
“I never should have been disgusted by your village,” she replied. “I should have been grateful that you took me in when I needed it. I shouldn’t have turned up my nose at your food and your houses and your clothes and everything else about you. I’m ashamed of myself.”
“Why should you be?” he asked. “Anybody could understand why you would be surprised. It wasn’t what you’re used to, and after the crash, you were shocked at what you found. Marissa told us you were asleep in bed and then woke up on the Romarie ship as it was crashing. Is that true?”
She nodded down at the ground.
“That explains everything,” he told her. “You were in a state of shock at what happened. You were in the crash, and then you found yourself stranded on an alien planet. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re in a state of shock now. That explains why you hit me in the head the way you did.” He touched the side of his head with his finger.
“I had to protect myself,” she replied. “I couldn’t let you attack me and not fight back.”
“I didn’t attack you,” he countered. “You were about to throw that rock at me. I had to protect myself from you.”
Chris opened her mouth to say something else, but she stopped short. “I guess we both read each other wrong.”
He shrugged again. “Anybody who had anything to do with the Romarie could be forgiven for thinking everybody else in the world was as bad as them. They’re the lowest form of life in the galaxy.”
“Do you know much about them?” she asked.
“Everybody on Angondra knows about the Romarie,” he replied. “That’s one thing we all agree on. We don’t want to have anything to do with them. I’m one of the few people on the planet that’s seen them up close. I fought them off our planet when they brought Marissa and her friends here, and I’ll fight again to keep our people free of them. I don’t care how many females they have to sell.”
Chris cocked her head to one side. “The Ursidreans must have been really desperate to let them land here.”
“Everyone was desperate,” he replied. “Being desperate is no reason to open our doors to the Romarie. We’re still desperate, but even the Ursidreans learned their lesson. Anyway, now that Donen has a human mate, he won’t invite the Romarie to Angondra again.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you really desperate? I saw plenty of females with their children in the village.”
“They are exceptions,” he replied. “We keep our females in the Alpha village, at the center of our territory to protect them. The other villages aren’t so well off.”
“What about you?” she asked. “You’re a member of the Alpha’s family. You’re Caleb’s own brother, but you live with your mother and sisters.”
“Now you know why,” he replied. “Caleb couldn’t find a mate until Marissa came. I will stay with my mother until I find a mate of my own. Maybe one of the new women will choose me.”
“Choose you?” she repeated. “Isn’t it you who chooses one of them?”
He studied her with his head tilted to one side. “Me? No, I don’t choose. A female must choose a mate for herself.”
“That doesn’t sound very Alpha,” she remarked.
“I don’t know how it is with the other factions,” he replied. “Maybe the other Alphas pick their own mates and the females have to go with them. But I don’t think so. We might be different factions, but we’re all Angondrans. We have a code of honor, especially when it comes to mating with females. No Angondran male would take a female against her will. The Alphas uphold that code more than anyone else. The others follow our example.”
Chris humphed. “It all sounds a little too flowery and chivalrous to me.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Does it look to you like Marissa is Caleb’s mate against her will? Do you really think she would stay with him if she hadn’t chosen to do so of her own free will?”
“I suppose not,” she replied. “But appearances can be deceiving.”
“When you’ve been here a while, you’ll realize it’s true,” he told her. “You’ll come to trust us the way Marissa and her friends have.”
“I told you I wouldn’t go back to your village,” she snapped. “I don’t care what happens, I don’t plan to stay here long enough to trust you. I’m getting off this planet and going home to Earth.”
He didn’t bother to tell her it was hopeless. He only gazed at her. “How are you going to do that?”
Chris blushed. Her flimsy plans sounded ridiculous coming out of her mouth now. “I thought I’d find the other women—the ones in the other factions—Marissa’s friends, as you call them. I planned to ask them to help me find a way back to Earth.”
“They don’t want to go back to Earth,” he replied. “They’re happy with their mates and their lives here.”
“Just because they’re happy with their lives here doesn’t mean they don’t want to go home,” she argued. “If they had a way to get back, they just might take it.”
“So what will you do when you find the other women?” he asked. “What will you suggest you do to get back to Earth?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Maybe the Ursidreans have some technology we could use. I know, I know. The Ursidreans don’t have any space flight capable technology that still works. But maybe we could adapt it to serve our purpose. Maybe Aria knows something that could help us.”
He studied her with his direct, inscrutable eyes. “Anything else?”
The words rushed out of her before she could stop them. “If even one of those women wants to leave Angondra, I have to find her. I have to find one person who feels the way I do and won’t keep telling me I’ll be happy here and come to trust you people.”
He didn’t react at all. His eyes never wavered from her face. He sat in silence so long she wondered if he’d abandoned the conversation. Then he shot up to his feet and strode to the edge of the circle of firelight. “Alright. So you want to find the other women. Do you have any idea where you’re going to find one of them?”
Chris stared down at her shoes. “Well, no. I hadn’t planned that far in advance.”
He nodded. “Hmm. Yes. I have to admit I think Marissa was right about you. If I leave you out here alone, you’ll be dead in a few days. You made it this far, but I can’t let you go on alone.”
She stole a glance at him. “You won’t take me back to the village, will you?”
He shook his head. “I won’t take you back to the village, but you can’t stay out here alone. Look. You couldn’t even get a fire going until I showed up. If you’re determined to go on, I’ll go with you.”
Her head whipped around. “You... you will?”
He nodded again. “It’s the only thing to do. Besides, you can’t show up in one of the other factions’ territory without some plausible explanation for why you’re there. If I go with you, I can explain the situation.”
“Won’t the other factions mistrust you?” she asked. “Won’t they consider your presence in their territory an incursion?”
He paced back and forth in front of the fire. “That is possible. We’ll have to be cautious in our choice of which faction to visit. Of course, it would be more helpful if Marissa went with us. She could explain everything to her friend.”
Chris turned away. “I don’t want Marissa to go with us. I don’t want her explaining to her friends how cracked I am in the head.”
He didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smile. He only nodded. “Then it’s just you and me. We’ll go to the Felsite first. The Lycaon are on better terms with Renier than any of the other Alphas. He won’t start a war if we show up at his city and ask to visit his mate.”
Chris cringed. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
Turk examined her. “Don’t tell me you’re losing heart already when we haven’t even begun. You started this. You better finish it. If you don’t, you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering what might have been. Renier’s mate Carmen is a reasonable woman, and she suffered the worst when her friends went to other factions.”
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“I was there,” he replied. “I was there when Marissa told her she planned to stay with the Lycaon. She broke down in tears.”
Chris made a face. “She doesn’t sound like a reasonable woman. She sounds like a cry-baby.”
“Don’t be too hard on her,” Turk replied. “You crashed here with dozens of others of your kind and found Marissa waiting for you. If you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life here alone and never see another human face, you would probably react the same way.”
“Maybe we should visit one of the other factions first,” Chris suggested.
Turk shook his head. “No. The Felsite are the closest to us by land, and we’ll be much better visiting the others after we get Renier on our side. Carmen had ideas about finding a way off this planet, too, before her friends decided to settle here. She was the last to give up. She might have some ideas on how to proceed. After we talk to her and Renier, we’ll decide who to visit next.”
“Do you know anything about the other Alphas?” she asked.
“I know as much as anybody outside their factions can know,” he replied. “Aquilla won’t be happy about losing his mate. None of the Alphas will be, but their mates might know a way to convince them.”
“They don’t have to leave if they don’t want to,” she pointed out. “If they’re as happy as everybody says they are, they’ll want to stay. But that’s no reason I should want to stay. I don’t have a life here, or a mate, or a faction to belong to.”
He cocked his head to one side. “You could.”
Chapter 8
Chris rolled over and pulled the heavy robe around her shoulders against the night chill. That’s when she woke up and realized there was a heavy robe over her. She lifted her head off the ground and looked around. Turk watched her from nearby. “Aren’t you going to sleep?”
“I already did,” he replied.
She blinked the sleep out of her eyes. “Is it getting close to dawn?”
He looked up at the sky. “No, not for a while.”
She frowned, but sleep fogged her mind.
“We don’t sleep the same way you do,” he told her. “We sleep in short bursts, mostly during the day.”
“How’s that going to work out with traveling long distances?” she asked.
“We can go without sleep when we need to,” he replied.
She let her head fall back onto the ground. Her back and hips ached from sleeping on the hard ground, but at least the fire kept her warm. Her eyes relaxed in the flickering flames. Turk must be keeping it going.
The warmth permeated her exhausted bones, and her eyes drifted shut. She drifted back toward sleep, and the mellow buzz of firelight vibrated all the way out to her fingertips. All of a sudden, she snapped awake again when she remembered Turk was sitting right there watching her.
She dragged her eyes open, but when she checked, he hadn’t moved. The flames glittered off his eyes until orange licks of light shot out at her. She closed her own eyes so she wouldn’t see them. In an instant, sleep washed over her and pulled her down into dreams. Her body softened under the robe, and heat spread over her cheeks.
She rocked on ethereal waves. She levitated off the ground and sailed over the treetops. She looked down on the fire from a great height. Turk sat by the fire and stared down at her sleeping form. An unimaginable gulf separated them. It seared her heart, and her mind searched for some way to bridge that divide.
But he was a different species. They could never come together. Chris herself couldn’t cross the gulf, no matter how much she wanted to. She almost woke herself up with a start. She didn’t want to cross that gulf. She didn't want to come together with him. What was she thinking?
He wasn’t all bad, though. At least he supported her quest to find the other human women. That was more than anybody else did, even Marissa. He certainly didn’t lack other attractive qualities. He followed her because he cared about what happened to her, and he saved her from certain starvation in this wilderness.
So why couldn’t she warm up to him? Why did she have to treat him as an enemy when he protected her and helped her at every turn? Then again, why would she want to warm up to him? What was he to her but a stranger in a strange land? If she succeeded in getting away from this planet, she would never see him again.
That future scenario played itself out in her dreaming brain. She stood in front of a space craft of some kind. She didn’t recognize it. It belonged to some forgotten era of Angondran history. But there she stood, clothed in glory at her own accomplishment.
The other human women, those that crashed with her and those who landed with Marissa, waited near the ship’s door. They admired her from a distance, in awe that she accomplished the impossible and freed them from their imprisonment.
Turk and Caleb stood in front of the bunch of onlookers. Chris surveyed the crowd. Maybe Marissa stood next to Caleb. She wouldn’t go back to Earth. She would stay with her Angondran mate. Penelope Ann waved good-bye to her Avitras mate, but Aria would stay with her children. But the women who crashed with Chris would all go back. They couldn’t wait to reunite with their families back home. They revered Chris for her struggle to free them.
The women entered the ship. Chris raised her hand and saluted the Angondrans who helped her accomplish this feat. She would hold them in her heart for the rest of her life. Turk waved back, and so did Marissa. Then Chris stepped into the craft and closed the door behind her. It rose from the ground and rode off into the sunset.
The Angondrans went back to their lives and the human women flew back to Earth, where they landed in a remote cornfield in Kansas. They traveled back to their homes and reunited with their families. Some people didn’t believe they were ever abducted by aliens, but that didn’t matter. They were back, and they put the whole experience behind them. And they lived happily ever after. The End.
Chris hovered over the fire wrapped in bliss. Whatever happened on this planet wouldn’t affect her life at all. She would go back to her ranch in California and pick up her business training horses. Some of her clients would think she was a little eccentric for talking about the alien planet she visited, but after a while, she would let it go. Life would go on as normal.
What happened here didn’t matter. It was nothing but a vivid dream. The Lycaon were a product of her fevered imagination. Turk was a combination of a number of men Chris found attractive in her life. Only her alarm at finding herself on an alien planet made her hold him at arm’s length.
From her position above the fire, she noticed the woman on the ground open her eyes and looked at Turk. She looked straight into his eyes, with none of the hesitation or hostility she felt for him before. She communicated everything through her eyes.
Turk returned her gaze with a firm, unwavering stare. He understood. He stood up and crossed the distance between them. He sat down next to her on the ground. When he passed in front of her, his body blocked the fire’s heat from warming her. The night chill stung her back. Then he moved aside, and the heat struck her face again.
When he sat down, the firelight glowed off his cheeks and nose. The line of fur running down his cheekbones gave him an even more powerful expression. He fixed her with his fierce eyes. She’d invited him. Now he was here, and she couldn’t un-invite him.
What would he do? What would she do? Could she really let this happen? Could she open herself up to this alien creature in the wilderness of a strange world? She slid back and forth between her position hovering over the treetops to her bed by the fire. She looked into his eyes at the same time that she observed them together from above. From far away, a shimmer of excitement shot through her being.
Why shouldn’t she enjoy this moment? It would never be anything more than a moment. She would love him and leave him. She would go home to Earth and he would choose an Angondran mate. She would float away into the past for him the same way he would float away into the past for her. They would remember each other and the night they spent together under the stars, but that was all. No one would ever know what she’d done. He would be her delicious little secret.
Her eyes widened and she extended her hand toward him. She traced the line of his cheek in the orange light. His nostrils flared, and his strong hands descended on her body. Her heartbeat quickened, but she didn’t hesitate or pull away. She raised her arms and threaded them around his neck. She pulled him down on top of her.
Turk slid the robe out from between them and stretched out at her side. His arms wound around her, and they closed in a passionate embrace. Chris buried her face in his neck to hide herself from what she was doing. She couldn’t think about it, or she would die of shame. She let his body rock her away on ebbs of delight, but she couldn’t look him in the eye. She couldn’t look herself in the eye.
He had other ideas, though. He wasn’t about to lie down next to her and hide his head in shame. He ran his hand up under the back of her neck and laced his fingers through her hair. He pulled her head back and arched up so his gaze drove directly into her eyes. He caught her in his undeniable stare and held her there.
Chris caught her breath. He bared her soul, and in that moment, he understood more about her than she understood herself. He judged every nuance of her face and body. He uncovered her deepest hopes and fears even before she knew they were there.
Without breaking eye contact, he lowered his head and kissed her. She couldn’t turn her eyes away. Her heart and soul belonged to him, even when razor-sharp torrents of light coursed through her veins. The subtle pressure of his lips, the irresistible pressure of his arms around her—every shade and permutation of his presence electrified her and carried her beyond the brink of experience.
She held on for dear life to the only thing she could find to hold onto—him. She clutched his body closer to hers and leaned into his kiss. His eyes kept her captive, and he was the only safety from the storm that was him.
She tumbled down from her perch above the trees and crashed back into her body. She gasped for breath underneath him, but at least she knew where she was now. She couldn’t fly away back to Earth, not with him lying on top of her. She couldn’t pretend anymore that this was her own little secret.
He wouldn’t let her go. If she found a way to get back to Earth and leave him behind on Angondra, he would haunt her dreams and fantasies for the rest of her life. Every man she ever loved would have to pass the test of living up to the standard Turk set. His touch and his love changed everything, and she would never be the same.
Chapter 9
The trees thinned out, and Chris paused at the edge of the forest to breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank heaven! I thought we’d never get out of there.”
Turk pointed to an escarpment of steep rock against the clear sky. “That’s the pass leading into Felsite territory.”
“Will they send out scouts to stop us entering it?” she asked.
“They won’t know we’re entering it until we do,” he replied. “We’re still in Lycaon territory. They won’t be watching us now. Their scouts will see us when we cross the pass.”
“Will they attack?” she asked.
“Not likely,” he replied. “They’ll report to Renier so he knows we’re coming.”
“Won’t they see us as a threat?” she asked.
He raised his eyebrows. “Us? We’re no threat to them.”
“I only meant....” she began.
He waved his hand and started forward. “I’m an Alpha. Renier knows me. He might be annoyed that I came, but he won’t harm us before he finds out our business.”
Chris started after him. “Does Carmen know you, too?”
He shook his head. “I only saw her twice—once at the gathering and once when Marissa visited her. I never talked to her in person.”
“Then how do you know she’s a reasonable person?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Most human females are, aren’t they?”
Chris snorted. “You obviously haven’t met very many of them.”
“I’ve met you, and I’ve met Marissa,” he replied. “And I’ve met all those other women you crashed with. They seem like reasonable people, too.”
Chris looked away toward the bluffs. “Most men on Earth would say human women are the most unreasonable creatures they can imagine.”
“Then how do you manage to live together?” he asked. “You couldn’t keep your species going if that was true?”
Chris chuckled. “That’s what they say. They think we’re too emotional and manipulative.”
He frowned. “That makes no sense at all.”
She laughed out loud. “Ask Caleb. He must have something to say about living with a female from Earth.”
“He says it’s exactly like living with a Lycaon woman,” he replied. “The only difference is Marissa can’t tell when he’s eaten Karola flowers. Lycaon women can tell instantly by the smell.”
“What are Karola flowers?” she asked.
“Karola is a plant that grows in our part of the forest,” he told her. “The flowers give you a fuzzy feeling all over, sort of like the fuzzy feeling you get right before you mate with someone. But they also make everything look sort of blurry and vibrating. It’s a very pleasant feeling.”
Chris stared at him. “So you people take drugs, too? I thought you were so much better than that.”
“I don’t recall ever saying we were so much better than anyone,” he replied. “Some of the men eat Karola just before they go home to their mates. The females can smell the flowers a mile away, so they know what the men want.”
Chris nodded. “Oh, I get it.”
“But Marissa can’t smell when Caleb eats Karola,” he went on. “So he has to be more direct about what he wants.”
Chris turned away. “Let’s change the subject.”
He eyed her. “What for?”
“Never mind,” she muttered. “What can you tell me about the Felsite?”
“Nothing Marissa hasn’t already told you,” he replied.
“Then maybe you can tell me about the Aqinas,” she prompted. “Marissa wasn’t able to tell me anything about them. They must be very mysterious.”
“I’ve seen them a few times,” he replied. “They aren’t any more mysterious than the other factions, though no one really understands how their communication system works. They have a way of propagating their chemical signals in the water to send them out to every other body of water in the area. Don’t ask me to explain it. That’s all I know.”
“Maybe they have a way to travel into space,” she suggested.
He turned away. “I wouldn’t bet on it. Anyway, you have no friends living with them, so you wouldn’t be able to ask them.”
“There must be a way,” she muttered.
“What are you going to do if there isn’t?” he asked.
She cocked her head. “What do you mean?”
“You have your heart set of going back to Earth,” he replied. “What will you do if you can’t find a way?”
“There must be a way,” she argued. “We got here through space. There must be a way to get back.”
He didn’t answer.
“You want me to say I’d settle down here with you,” she went on. “Is that where this is going?”
He wouldn’t look at her, but kept walking. “You said it, not me.”
“I won’t settle here,” she told him. “I’ll keep working until I find a way off this planet. I’ll never rest until I succeed.”
“What do you have back on Earth that’s so important?” he asked. “Do you have a mate, and children? Is that it?”
“I don’t have a mate, as you call it,” she replied. “We call them husbands—husbands and wives. I don’t have one and I don’t have children, either. But I have a home and business and animals I take care of. I have a life, and I don’t want to give that up.”
“You already did give it up,” he pointed out. “You’re here, not there.”
“I didn’t give it up,” she replied. “The Romarie stole it from me, and I’m going to get it back. That’s one thing you’ll have to learn about me. I’m determined.”
“Tell me about your business,” he told her. “What did you do for a business?”
“I train horses,” she replied. “I’ve worked with horses since I was seven years old, and I never wanted to do anything else. Let me guess. You don’t have horses on this planet. Well, that tells you all you need to know about why I don’t want to stay here. What would I do if I stayed—sit around the fire and raise your children? No thanks. I want to do something meaningful with my life, something more meaningful than being a pack mule for some man.”
He cast her a sidelong glance. “Is that what you think the other Lycaon females are doing? Is that what you think Marissa and her friends are doing on this planet? You think they’re pack mules for the Alphas?” He shook his head.
“I don’t know what they’re doing with their lives, and I don’t care,” she shot back. “I only know I won’t stay here, and I won’t mate with any Angondran male. I don’t care if he is the Alpha of his faction—or the Alpha’s twin brother. I’m not a brood mare. I have a life.”
“You said that,” he replied. “You said you wouldn’t be a pack mule, and you said you wouldn’t be a brood mare. No one said you had to be.”
“But that’s what staying on this planet would mean,” she pointed out.
“Who said?” he asked.
“I said,” she countered. “What else is there to do on this planet? Aria’s got two babies and another two on the way. She must not have had anything she wanted to do with her life. She must not have had anything back on Earth that gave her life any meaning.”
“As a matter of fact,” he replied, “Marissa says she was a nurse. She took care of people the same way you take care of....what do you call them?”
“Horses.” Chris blushed. “I didn’t know she was a nurse.”
“And Carmen was a police officer,” he went on. “Marissa worked at something called a library where she educated children. And Penelope Ann had her own business, too.”
Chris looked the other way. “I didn’t know that.”
“No doubt the other women who crashed with you had meaningful lives, too,” he pointed out. “You won’t be the only one who had a meaningful life.”
“Then they’ll be all the more ready to go back,” she replied. “They’ll be thrilled that someone is working to get them back to their homes and isn’t just settling into this life in defeat.”
“Is that really what you think they’re doing?” he asked.
Chris scanned the horizon. His eyes bored into the back of her head and made her skin crawl. “Let’s talk about something else.”
He gazed into the distance, too. “As you wish.”
“How are we going to handle the Felsite when we come in sight of their scouts?” she asked. “Should we have a plan worked out?”
“No doubt the scouts will tell us what they want us to do,” he replied.
“Are you telling me you don’t have a plan?” she asked.
“None whatsoever,” he replied.
“Do you really just plan to wing it?” she asked. “Do you really think that’s wise?”
He cocked his head to the side. “What does that mean—wing it?”
She waved her hand. “You don’t have a plan. You’re going to let them tell you what to do.”
“That’s my plan,” he explained. “My plan is to wait until the scouts leap out from behind their observation posts and threaten us with their weapons and march us to their city at spearpoint. That’s my plan.”
Chris stopped dead in her tracks and stared at him. “You’re not serious.”
He rounded her with no expression on his face. “Do I look like I’m joking?”
“You can’t be serious,” she insisted. “You can’t seriously plan to let them threaten to kill us and drag us away as their prisoners.”
“Why can’t I?” he asked.
“You said you would help me find Carmen,” she cried. “You said you would help me find a way off this planet. Now you’re betraying me.”
“I am helping you,” he replied. “If they capture us and march us to their city at the point of their spears, the very first thing they’ll do is take us to Renier. When they do, we can explain the situation. The closer we get to him, the closer we’ll be to Carmen. She might even be present, since the scouts will send word ahead to Renier that they have a human female in custody. Carmen will want to know who you are and how you got here.”
Chris narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you sure this will work?”
“This is the simplest way to get directly to Renier and to Carmen,” he told her. “I wouldn’t do this if I thought there was any chance it wouldn’t succeed.”
“What makes you so certain they won’t kill us on the spot?” Chris asked.
“First of all,” he replied, “they wouldn’t kill any Lycaon that crossed their borders. That could set off a string of hostile events that could lead our factions to war. The worst they could do is keep me under lock and key until they contacted Caleb and determined I wasn’t a spy or a maverick out to plunder their city. But as it is, Renier’s scouts will recognize me. They’ll have to treat me well, since I’m Caleb’s brother and the son of the Alpha family. Only Renier has the authority to decide what to do with me, and when he hears your story, he’ll bring you and Carmen together.”
“What happens then?” she asked.
He started walking again. “What happens then is entirely up to you.”
Chapter 10
Turk strode down the path to the base of the pass. The path wound up through red clay walls and disappeared between odd-shaped rocks. Chris looked up to where the path vanished into a wall of red, and her steps faltered.
Turk didn’t stop. He climbed into the pass and started to disappear, too. Chris didn’t dare hesitate any longer. She scrambled up steep steps into the pass behind him. The path wound higher until her legs burned.
At the top of the slope, the path leveled out so they could walk abreast again. Chris caught her breath, but Turk showed no signs of exertion. He climbed those steps as easily as he walked on level ground. He kept his head steady and his eyes on the path in front of him, but he muttered under his breath, “We’ve crossed the border. The scouts are just ahead.”
Chris kept her step calm and her eyes forward. “I don’t see anything.”
“Behind the rock,” he replied. “They’re waiting for us to come up to them. That’s when they’ll show themselves.”
Her hand went out automatically and slipped into his. For a brief instant, he turned his head in surprise, but he recovered right away. He walked on with her hand in his. His feet made no sound on the stone path, but hers rang off the red walls. She listened to the beat of her own heels on the ground to keep it steady and strong.
The rock loomed closer, but she still saw nothing. Was Turk mistaken about the scouts waiting for them there? He could see and hear things she couldn’t, but maybe he was wrong this time.
She didn’t have time to question him, though. They strode alongside the rock. Even when his prediction came true and four Felsite scouts jumped into their path with spears pointed at them, Chris cried out in alarm and sprang back. Her hand pulled free of Turk’s grasp, but he kept his eyes locked on the scouts.
Not even Marissa’s description of the Felsite prepared Chris for meeting them in person. They had the manes of hair around their heads the way Marissa described, but they resembled the Lycaon enough that they had to be the same species. They stood just as tall, with the same body shape and direct, clear faces.
One of the scouts stepped forward with his spear aimed at Turk’s chest. He frowned when he saw Turk’s face. “What are you doing here? This is Felsite territory. You keep to your own territory.”
Turk lifted his head in silent challenge. “We have business with Renier. Take us to him.”
The scout shot Chris a glance, and his eyes widened imperceptibly. She must be developing the Lycaon ability to detect subtle changes in expression and body language. She wouldn’t have noticed his interest before. “State your business.”
Turk pulled his lips back from his teeth, and his hair bristled on the back of his neck. He snarled through his teeth, and Chris shuddered. “If my business was with you, I wouldn’t be asking to be taken to Renier. My business is with him, and I’ll state it to him.” His eyes slid down to the scout’s feet and back up to his shaggy head. “I won’t state it to you.”
The scout bared his teeth back at Turk, and his orange mane stood out from his head. He tightened his grip on his spear. “You won’t cross our border, and you won’t go anywhere near Renier until you state your business. He’ll never know you were here.”
Turk growled and laughed at the same time. “What do you think he’ll say if he finds out I came to see him and you turned me back at the border because I wouldn’t announce my business to you?” Turk took a step forward until the spearpoint jabbed him in the chest. Chris tried to hold him back by the hand, but he never took his eyes off the scout’s face. He slapped the spear aside with one stroke of his hand. “Run along, baby cub, and don’t bother me.”
The scout swung around with a roar. His spear whistled through the air, and the point stabbed toward Turk’s face. Chris yanked his hand harder than ever to pull him back, but he stood firm and flexed his shoulders at the scout.
The two men would have flown at each other in rage if another smaller scout with darker brown hair hadn’t seized his comrade by the arm and restrained him. He muttered something under his breath.
The orange-haired scout rounded on his friend. He bellowed in fury and turned his spear on his own comrade. “Out of my way, Jaro. I’ll spike you just as fast if you get in my way.”
“Not so fast, Manu,” the smaller scout countered. “If you harm a hair on his head, our faction could be on its way to war before the night was out.”
“So much the better,” Manu shot back. “They crossed our border without permission. Our duty is to repel invasion, and that’s what I’m doing. Now stand out of my way.”
Jaro shook his head, but before he could reply, Manu rushed his comrade with his spear aimed. Turk stood back and watched the two Felsite face off. But in spite of a noticeable size difference between them, Manu was no match for his smaller opponent.
Jaro didn’t even bother to brandish his own spear. He didn’t bristle or growl the way the others did. He stood back and waited for Manu to thrust his spear at him. Then, when Manu’s weight shifted to his forward foot, Jaro dodged the spear and drove it neatly between two rocks behind him.
Manu tumbled forward and the spear shaft splintered into matchsticks. He tumbled forward and fell on his face at Jaro’s feet. Jaro hauled Manu to his feet by his elbow and shoved him back. He kicked the spearpoint into the rocks and nodded to Turk. “Please forgive this insolence, Alpha Lycaon. Some of our people take their positions too seriously.”
Turk raised his eyebrow. “Both our peoples have too much to lose to fall into petty bickering.”
Jaro nodded again. “If you follow me, I’ll conduct you and your mate to Renier.”
Chris stiffened, but before she could correct him, he walked away into the rocks. His friends went on ahead, with Manu in front. Turk and Chris came last with their hands still clasped. “I thought you said they were no threat to us.”
“They aren’t,” he murmured back. “They have orders to watch the border, but they won’t risk hostilities.”
“He called you Alpha,” Chris pointed out.
“I am Alpha,” Turk replied.
“You’re secondary,” Chris returned. “Caleb is Alpha.”
“I am as Alpha as Caleb will ever be,” Turk replied. “If he so much as breaks his ankle, I am Alpha. The Felsite know that. They don’t know I’m here to indulge the whim of a human woman to chase some impossible fantasy. For all they know, I’m here on business that affects all Angondra. They won’t turn me away.”
“He thinks I’m your mate,” Chris pointed out. “Why didn’t you correct him?”
“You are my mate,” Turk murmured.
“Don’t fool yourself,” Chris snapped. “One night doesn’t make me your mate.”
“What do you call it?” he asked. “We call it mating.”
Chris grimaced. “It wasn’t anything more than a bit of harmless fun. It doesn’t make me your mate.”
To her disgust, he chuckled under his breath. “Words. Nothing but words. You can twist them around every way you want.”
“Believe what you want to believe, Loverboy,” Chris shot back. “I’m not your mate, and I never will be.”
Turk let it go at that, but for some reason, she didn’t let go of his hand. The farther they traveled into Felsite territory, the more she held onto him. She wasn’t scared, so why did she stick close to him? If he wasn’t her mate, why did she reserve this bond in the face of the unknown?
The Felsite scouts led them through the pass, but Turk and Chris could have found their way alone. There was only one path winding through sheer granite defiles. The wind moaned between the cliffs. Voices murmured from every direction, sometimes sobbing, sometimes chuckling, and sometimes singing. Chris glanced one way and then another, but nothing surrounded them but blank stone.
Turk paid the noise no mind. He kept his attention on Manu. The big orange-haired scout put as much distance between himself and the rest of the party as he could, and when they broke out of the defile into open country, he put on speed and left the party in the dust.
“Where’s he going?” Chris asked.
“No doubt he’s on his way to report his friend to Renier,” Turk replied. “He’ll tell all about how his friend stopped him from attacking me and then disarmed him. He’ll try to get his friend disciplined and removed from duty. That sort of thing happens all the time.”
“Has it happened with the Lycaon, too?” she asked.
He nodded. “I had to remove someone from duty once. One of my lieutenants attacked an Avitras who crossed our border. The Avitras landed in a tree near their outpost, and my lieutenant threw his hammer at it. He struck it in the head and killed it instantly.”
“Oh my God!” Chris exclaimed.
Turk nodded. “Afterwards, we found out the Avitras was Aquilla’s cousin, and he’d come to warn us about a river in flood that threatened to wipe out one of our villages. A logjam of rocks and tree trunks gave way in Avitras territory, and the water was rushing down the valley toward our village. Because my lieutenant killed the messenger, we didn’t find out in time. The village was destroyed, and Aquilla was furious.”
“What happened?” she asked. “Did you go to war over it?”
“Thank the stars Aquilla is a sensible man,” he replied. “When Caleb told him I removed the man from duty, he let the incident go. He said any of us could have made the same mistake, and his cousin should have given us fair warning instead of landing in a tree near our scouts’ heads the way he did.”
“He does sound like a sensible man,” Chris remarked.
“He would have been within his rights to launch a war against us,” Turk went on. “None of us can afford to make a mistake like that. I’m sure Renier will exonerate our friend Jaro when he learns the full story.”
Chris shook her head. “I thought you people were peaceful. I didn’t know you were on the brink of war all the time.”
He shrugged. “Hostilities come and go. It’s everybody’s responsibility to keep the peace.”
At that moment, they rounded a corner in the rocks and Chris looked out over a million miles of waving grassland. The sun dipped toward the horizon and cast a golden glow over the landscape. Chris paused and admired the scene. The sun glinted gold off a shiny surface in the distance.
“That’s Melnili,” Turk told her.
“Mel—what?” Chris asked.
“Melnili,” he repeated. “It’s Renier's city. The sun is shining off the windows.”
“Windows!” Chris breathed. “I never imagined any place on this wretched planet would have windows.”
Turk didn’t answer, but when she turned to go on, she found him studying her. “Is it really that important?”
“The windows?” She shook her head and turned away. “I only meant......”
“If it is that important to you,” he went on, “you could stay with the Felsite. I’m sure Carmen would arrange it for you. She would be happy to have you there.”
Chris closed her eyes. “It’s not that important. I’m just surprised. That’s all.”
He watched her walk after the Felsite scouts toward that golden plain. She didn’t look back, but after a moment’s hesitation, his undeniable presence approached her from behind. He didn’t take his place at her side again, but followed at her heels in silence.
Chris didn’t turn around, and they walked all the way down the hill and across the broad landscape without a word. She would have to get away from him sooner or later. His presumption set her blood boiling. Who did he think he was to assume they were mated, after one brief fling in the forest night? He obviously didn’t know the first thing about liberated human females.
If she couldn’t get off this planet or encountered some technical delay and if Renier and Carmen offered her a place in the Felsite city, maybe she should take it. She ought to end this nonsense with Turk at the first available exit.
The sun sank below the grass. The sky turned from gold to royal purple to blue to star-studded black, and still they walked. The scouts showed no sign of fatigue, and neither did Turk. They could walk forever and never get tired. Chris kept her exhaustion hidden as best she could. She wouldn’t let them rescue her from herself.
By the time the sun set, Manu was out of sight. The twinkle of light from the faraway city disappeared into oblivion, and Chris put the city out of her mind. They had a long way to go before they reached it.
Full dark descended over the plain, but the men didn’t stop to rest. Chris kept her eyes open for a likely camping spot, but they only marched on and on without so much as a mouthful of water. She gasped and swallowed, but she refused to complain. Whatever they could handle, she could handle. She would march on as long as they did, and she wouldn’t stop until they did.
Chapter 11
Chris huddled down into herself against the wind howling off the plain. It set her teeth chattering and flattened the grass underfoot. The men didn’t notice. Not one of them so much as shuddered. Turk strode at Chris’s side with his sharp eyes fixed on the skyline.
His hand warmed her arm. When did they start holding hands again? She couldn’t remember. She lost track of where they were or how far they’d gone, but he could see in the dark. She could only trust him and let him lead her.
What waited for her at the city? Would Renier and Carmen welcome her the way everybody assured her they would? They might kill her and Turk and throw them into the river. They might not care if they started a war with Caleb. In fact, they might want to do exactly that. She couldn’t think of any reason why they would, but anything was possible. She had to be ready for anything.
All at once, Turk stiffened at her side. Chris snapped alert, and her eye scanned the darkness on all sides. She didn’t see anything, but a clang shattered the stillness. Ahead of them, Jaro stopped in the middle of the path. Chris would have collided with him if Turk hadn’t stopped in time.
“What is it?” she whispered.
The clang echoed over the plain again. Jaro sighed and started walking again. “They’re sounding the warning bell.”
Chris strained her ears to listen. Even at that distance, shouting voices and banging metal struck her ear. Her hackles rose, and she searched the dark for the spot where the sun shone off the city’s windows. “Will they come after us?”
Turk set off after Jaro. He gave her arm a tug and she followed him. “It doesn’t mean anything. It only means Manu has arrived. They have to arm the parapet against strangers.”
Chris gasped. “Arm the parapet! But we’re two people. We can’t attack the whole city.”
He shrugged. “They have to. I’m sure Manu filled their heads full of a bunch of nonsense about the Lycaon breaching their border. They have to prepare. When Renier finds out who’s really coming, he’ll sack Manu and that will be the end of our problems.”
At that moment, a deafening explosion crashed across the plain. Lights blasted through the darkness and lit up the landscape. In a blaze of millions of lights, a phalanx of warriors streamed out from behind the city walls and flooded the plain.
Chris froze in her tracks. She never realized the city was so close. What happened to all those miles and miles of empty plain? Yet here she was, virtually at the Felsite's doorstep, and they sent armed troops to block her passage.
One Felsite stood head and shoulders above the others. He swung an enormous blade above his head and bellowed orders to his troops. Chris couldn’t take her eyes off him. His golden mane blazed in the light and set off his teeth shining between his lips. This could only be Renier, the Alpha Felsite.
Turk steered her forward, but she couldn’t move. Every fiber screamed to flee. Only Turk’s hand kept her in place. The phalanx formed a rank in front of them, and the warriors menaced the newcomers with their weapons.
Jaro strode forward and hailed the formation. He walked right between the warriors’ spears and approached Renier. Renier jumped down from the parapet and he lowered his blade to his side. His eye swept over his scouts, and when he spotted Turk and Chris, he frowned.
Turk followed Jaro into the midst of the troops. Chris quavered in her shoes. Jaro and Turk could walk through those spears like they weren’t there, but she couldn’t. Turk pulled at her hand again, and when she didn’t move, he dragged her forward. This was no time to lose heart, but she couldn’t force herself to advance.
Renier observed them with hard eyes. Jaro murmured into his ear, and he nodded. When Turk finally managed to guide Chris toward him and stop next to Jaro, Renier surveyed them up and down. “What’s the meaning of this? Why do you breach our border and invade our territory? You should know better, Lycaon.”
Turk jerked his head toward Chris. “You see this Earth female? She belongs to the same people as your mate, Alpha Felsite.”
Renier clenched his fists. “I can see that as well as you can. So why is she here, facing off with all my troops? I hope you have a good reason for this.”
Turk shrugged. “You know yourself these females don’t settle here easily. This woman wants to find a way back to her home world. She comes to consult your mate about how to do it.”
Renier glared at Chris. “There is no way off this planet.”
“She would only believe that coming from one of her own kind,” Turk replied.
“Then why doesn’t she believe it coming from your Alpha’s mate?” Renier asked.
Turk snorted. “She won’t believe it coming from anyone who believes it. She must dedicate her life to finding a way, and when she fails, she still won’t believe it.”
Renier stared at him. Then he turned to Chris. “Tell me this isn’t true. Tell me even you wouldn’t be so foolish as this.”
Chris blushed. “I know it sounds crazy, but...”
“It sounds more than crazy,” he replied. “There is no way off this planet. Why won’t you believe it?”
“There’s no way off this planet because no one has tried.” Once the words started coming out, they wouldn’t stop. No amount of telling herself to be respectful and prudent could stop them now. “There has to be a way if we only try to find it.”
He fixed her with a hard stare. Then he glanced at Turk. Turk shrugged again, but didn’t say anything.
Renier sighed. “I see. Then you’d better come with me.” He turned on his heel and headed toward the city ablaze with light. But the warriors didn’t move.
Chris hesitated. “What about... them?”
No one answered her. Turk headed through the formation of warriors after Renier, leaving Chris no choice but to follow him. The troops held their ranks with their weapons at the ready as Chris wound her way up through a gap in the wall and into the Felsite city.
Renier disappeared through a door, and when Chris arrived at it, she found it led to a staircase climbing up through walls of solid brick. She touched the surface with her hand and almost burst into tears. She never thought she’d get back to a real city. Could she feel at home here? If she couldn’t settle in the Lycaon’s crude village, maybe this was the place for her after all.
Turk climbed the stairs in front of her and turned into another door. Chris’s footsteps filled the staircase, but she couldn’t take her hand off those bricks. They comforted her more than Turk’s hand. She never wanted to take her hand off them.
The door at the top landing led into a clean, well-lighted room with a platform of hewn wood along one wall. Mellow tanned animal skins covered it, and Renier sat on it with one leg folded under him. A wooden table sat in the middle of the room, but Chris couldn’t see any other furniture.
A woman sat cross-legged next to Renier. She wore her jet-black hair in a short bob around her neck and ears, which made her look even smaller and more fragile next to her giant mate. She smiled at Chris.
Renier spoke first. “So here you are. You wanted to tell Carmen about your idea to leave the planet. Now you can tell her.”
Carmen motioned to the platform. “Come and sit down. Tell us all about how you got here.”
Turk shifted from one foot to the other. He turned to Chris. “You’re here, so I’ll be going.”
Chris spun around. “What? You can’t go!”
Turk waved toward the platform. “You’ll be safe now.”
She grasped his hand. “Stay here. You don’t have to leave.”
He shook his head. “This is no place for me. I don’t belong here.”
“They won’t harm you,” Chris insisted. “You’re the Alpha of your faction. They have to respect you and give you safe passage.”
His eyes shifted around the room. She never saw him so uncomfortable. “I don’t belong here. These walls... ” He glared at them. Those walls were his enemies, more than any hostile faction. “I can’t stay here. I belong to the woods.”
She tried to hold him back. “Don’t leave, Turk. Stay here.”
He dislodged his hand from hers and withdrew to the other side of the room. “You’ll be safe now. You’re where you belong, and it’s time I went back where I belong.”
A lump stuck in Chris’s throat. He must have seen the way she touched those brick walls. She didn’t want to leave them. If she stayed with the Felsite, she wouldn’t have any further need of him. He understood that better than she did.
Chris blushed with shame. She thought she kept those thoughts of ditching him at the first opportunity hidden in her own heart and mind. But she didn’t count on his ability to read her body language. He knew all along how much she wanted to dump him the first time she found a protector to take his place.
Now he was dumping her instead. She pleaded with him with her eyes, but he walked to the door. He glanced back at her before he disappeared. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.” Then he was gone.
Chris stared at the empty place where he used to be. She would never find what she was looking for, now that he was gone. She thought she was looking for a way off this planet, when she was looking for him all along. What would she do without him?
What good were her horses back home without the solid foundation he gave her? None of it meant anything, especially not some city with windows. How could she be so shallow, so ignorant? He trekked halfway across the planet to support her, even when he knew her quest was hopeless and vain.
Why did he bother? It sure wasn’t out of curiosity, to find out what she would do. He said that to set her at ease, so he wouldn’t have to tell her to her face that he cared about her and respected what she was trying to do. That would only embarrass her and send her running in the opposite direction. He understood her better than she understood herself.
And now he was gone. Leaving was the surest way he could show her what they had between them. She would never value him until she lost him. Now all she cared about was getting him back. She would trek all the way back to Lycaon territory to find him and win his heart again.
Chapter 12
Chris turned away from that door. Her heart ached, but she wouldn’t show Carmen and Renier that. She could barely look them in the eye.
Carmen and Renier waited on their platform. What would they think of her exceptional rudeness? “Come sit down,” Carmen called. “We have a lot to talk about.”
Renier shifted his weight on the platform. He studied Chris for a moment. Then he stood up. “I better leave you two alone. You probably want to talk in private.”
Chris and Carmen spoke at the same time. “You don’t have to leave.”
He looked from one to the other and laughed. “Now I’m certain you should talk in private. I’m going down to the parapet to review the formation. You can call me when you need me.” He walked out of the room.
Chris stared down at the floor, but Carmen smiled. “Come sit down. You’re making me uncomfortable standing there like that.”
Chris stepped closer to the platform, but she couldn’t bring herself to sit down. She didn’t know this woman. She couldn’t tuck her legs under her and cuddle up like they were best girl friends, not in a strange city on an alien planet with hundreds of armed warriors surrounding the place.
Carmen waited, but when Chris didn’t join her, she sighed and leaned back on the platform. She almost laid down. “You’re the first human being I’ve seen besides my friends since I landed here. How did you get here?”
Chris fiddled with her fingernails. “I was abducted by the Romarie, along with about fifty other women. I didn’t know I’d been abducted until the ship crashed here. The Lycaon found us and took us to their village. Then I got the wacky idea of finding you and your friends to help me get off this planet. I left the Lycaon to come here, and Turk came with me.” She cast a glance over her shoulder toward the door.
Carmen cocked her head on one side. “That was very kind of him to accompany you here.”
Chris lowered her eyes. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have stayed where I was. Marissa told me there was no way off this planet. I should have believed her.”
Carmen stared at her. “You’ve seen Marissa? How is she?”
“She’s just fine,” Chris replied. “She seems very happy and settled in the village. I wish I could be like her.”
Carmen chuckled. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. We all went through a period of upheaval when we first came here, including Marissa. There’s nothing unusual about that. You’ve lost your home and everything you loved on Earth. It’s going to take a while before you get over that. I don’t blame you for wanting to get back to Earth. I went through the same thing when I first came here.”
Chris’s eyes widened. “You did?”
Carmen nodded. “I thought if the four of us stayed together, we could find a way to escape. I didn’t really start to settle here until all my friends left to live with other factions and I was left alone. I went to pieces. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help to my friends when they really needed me.”
Chris shook her head. “Not everyone goes to pieces. I’ve seen some women who stayed strong, and they wind up paying for it in the end.”
“Who?” Carmen asked.
Chris looked away. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
Carmen sniffed. “All right. Let’s talk about your plan to get off this planet.”
“I don’t have a plan,” Chris replied. “That’s why I’m here. I was hoping you or one of the others would have a plan.”
Carmen laughed. “Me? I don’t have any plan. I’m mated to Renier, and the others are all mated, too. I don’t think any of them has the slightest intention of leaving Angondra—not now.”
“What about Aria?” Chris asked.
“What about Aria?” Carmen returned.
Chris shifted from one foot to the other. “I thought she might know if the Ursidreans have any technology we could use. Marissa says they used to travel in space. Maybe they still have an old ship that flies.”
Carmen narrowed her eyes. “Aria has twin children and another set of twins on the way. She won’t leave them behind, and you can forget about taking them or any other Angondran back to Earth. That includes Turk. You understand that, don’t you? If you leave, you leave him.”
Chris wedged her toe between two bricks on the floor. “I know.”
“And you still want to go through with it?” Carmen asked.
Chris didn’t say anything. Her ears and cheeks burned.
Carmen sighed. “Okay. I’ll do what I can to put you in touch with Aria. I’ll even take you to Ursidrean territory to find her. Her mate Donen is Alpha of the Ursidreans. If anybody knows what technology they have, it’s him. There’s just one problem.”
Chris’ head shot up. “What’s that?”
“Hostilities just broke out between the Felsite and the Ursidreans,” Carmen replied. “We had an incident along our border with them, and four of their warriors killed a Felsite woman and her two cubs while they were walking in the woods. The Ursidreans claimed they didn’t know they were in our territory. They said they thought the woman and the cubs were on their side of the border.”
Chris frowned. “They shouldn’t have killed a defenseless woman and her children no matter where they were. Even if they crossed the border, they should have spared them.”
“That’s what Renier said,” Carmen replied. “But the leader of the warrior cadre is Donen’s uncle. He won’t back down, and some other political nonsense makes Donen support him. There has been some other hostile confrontations between our factions along that border, and the situation escalated until now nothing can stop it. We expect an attack from them any time.”
Chris’s mouth fell open. “Any time? You mean, like, now?”
Carmen nodded.
“So that’s why the warriors are all on guard outside the city,” Chris murmured.
“Why did you think they were there?” Carmen stared at Chris. “You didn’t think it was because of you!”
Chris faltered. “One of your scouts—his name is Manu—he said we could spark a war by crossing the border the way we did. He attacked Turk with his spear. He would have killed him if another scout hadn’t intervened.”
“Who was the scout that intervened?” Carmen asked.
“Jaro,” Chris replied. “He’s kind of small—for an Angondran.”
Carmen smiled and nodded. “I know who you mean. You don’t have to worry about Manu. He won’t last long on the border. He’s too short tempered. And you had nothing to do with the troops coming out. Manu told Renier Turk was coming in. Renier would have welcomed him if you’d come at a different time.”
“I guess that means we can’t go looking for Aria,” Chris remarked.
Chris shrugged. “It’s not the best timing in the world.”
At that moment, a tremendous clanging noise shook the city walls. Chris jumped out of her skin, and even Carmen started alert and craned her neck toward the front window. On the plain below them, more warriors rushed over the parapet and into the fields beyond the city. Renier’s voice echoed up from the ground, and Chris spotted him standing on the wall. He pointed out over the plain toward the distant line of trees.
Carmen caught her breath. Chris turned toward her, but when she tried to speak, her words came out in a whisper. “What is it?”
“They’re here,” Carmen croaked. “The Ursidreans are here.”
Chris shook to the soles of her shoes. What would happen to her now? She traveled to this city in search of some stability. Now war threatened to engulf her. Why couldn’t she be satisfied in the Lycaon village—or the forest?
She looked around. Where was Turk? If she could only find him, he just might be able to find a way out of this mess. She scanned the scores of men arrayed in front of the city, but he wouldn’t be down there. He would be halfway over the pass on his way back to his own territory, free and safe. Her heart sank. “I have to get out of here.”
“You can’t go now,” Carmen told her.
Chris stiffened. Had she really said those words out loud, or did she only think them? “I don’t belong here. I shouldn’t be here.”
“You can’t leave now,” Carmen repeated. “It isn’t safe.”
At that moment, a black line rose out of the flat plain. Dots of light shone in the darkness and lit up a massive army arrayed across the far hills.
Carmen gasped. “The Ursidreans!”
Before either woman could react, a jet of fire burst out of the Ursidrean line. A rocket soared into the night sky and lit the plain as bright as day. Every detail of the Felsite warriors’ armor and weapons, every hair of their manes, stood out in bold relief.
Then the rocket smashed into the city. The edifice trembled to its foundation. Carmen grabbed a corner post on the platform to steady herself. “Come on.”
She grabbed Chris by the hand and hauled her toward the door, but Chris hung back. “Where are we going?”
“We can’t stay here,” Carmen replied. “The rockets will come through the front windows. We’ll be sitting ducks.”
Chris tagged after her, out the door, but when Carmen turned up another flight of stairs instead of down, Chris dug in her heels. “Can’t we just leave?”
Carmen waved her hand toward the window. “They’ve got the city surrounded. We can’t get out no matter which way we go. Come with me. I’ll take you somewhere safe where we can watch what’s going on.”
Carmen led the way farther up into the very top of the city. She pushed open a heavy wooden door and they entered another room. Dozens of female Felsite crowded around an open balcony overlooking the battle. Chris hesitated. “Won’t this be as dangerous as the window?”
“They won’t hit us here,” Carmen replied. “They’ll aim their rockets for the center of the city. If they aimed up here, the rockets would sail right over us.”
Chris frowned. “I don’t know about that.”
Carmen pushed her way into the room and peered over the balcony. “They’re advancing.”
Sure enough, the Ursidrean line snaked down the hill and across the plain. Their own lights showed where they were. The Felsite couldn’t match their weapons. The Ursidreans had nothing to fear from them.
Rockets crashed into the city. The buildings shuddered under Chris’s feet, but the Felsite ranks held firm and waited for the Ursidreans to cross the plain. They took their sweet time about it. They lumbered along at a plodding walk, and their machines and cannons rolled over the grass at the same steady pace.
When they got halfway across the field, Renier lifted his enormous blade on high and gave a shout. The troops around his legs took up the shout, and the ranks broke formation and surged forward. Spears and swords and clubs bristled above them, and shouting voices drifted up through the dark.
Chris leaned over to get a better look. How did she wind up here when she meant to hang back? She should be searching for a way out of this place instead of gawking at the battle. Then, with a clash of metal and a blood-curdling screech, the Felsite warriors closed with the Ursidreans. Heavy bodies flew at each other with every weapon available, and the fight was on.
The order of both ranks fell apart, and the battle descended into chaos. Renier dove into the heat of the fight. His blade and his club swung back and forth and above his head. Ursidreans fell on either side of him, and he strode through their ranks, mowing them down. A band of warriors surrounded him, and they cut through the Ursidreans on their way toward the great cannons laying rockets on the city.
All at once, Carmen strained over the balcony and pointed into the thick of combat. “Look!”
Chris followed the direction of her arm and spotted a wiry figure moving through the battle. He didn’t have a mane like the Felsite, and his arms and shoulders were too slender to be an Ursidrean. The flood lights caught his black hair and blunted nose, and Chris recognized the features of the Lycaon. She caught her breath. “Turk!”
Chapter 13
“What’s he doing there?” Carmen asked.
Chris pushed herself back from the balcony. “He must have gotten caught between the ranks when he tried to leave the city.”
“He shouldn’t be there,” Carmen remarked. “Both armies will view him as an enemy.”
Chris wasn’t listening. She elbowed her way through the crowd toward the door.
Carmen called after her. “Where are you going?”
“I have to help him,” Chris called back. “He’ll be killed down there.”
“But you’re unarmed,” Carmen cried. “You can’t go down there.”
Chris didn’t answer. She was already on her way down the stairs two at a time. She raced through the deserted city to the flat ground behind the parapet, where she jumped up on the wall to see better. The Ursidreans recovered from the initial Felsite attack and gained the upper hand. Their cannons and siege machines thundered over the plain, and one of the buildings near the top of the city caved in.
Chris breathed a sigh of relief. She’d escaped that death trap just in time. But she didn’t have time to celebrate now. The Felsite fell back in front of their enemies, and the phalanx twisted and turned toward the river.
The Ursidreans pressed their advantage. They had all the advantage of numbers, weapons, technology, and physical strength. What did the Felsite have? Only their incredible bravery, their agility and speed. A Felsite could outmaneuver an Ursidrean any day of the week.
The Ursidreans drove the Felsite down into the river bottom. The Felsite splashed through the water in a desperate effort to reform their defense, but the Ursidreans kept them on the back foot. They attacked the Felsite with clubs and spears, but they also used some kind of energy blast weapon the Felsite couldn’t match.
Renier still dominated the field and crushed any Ursidrean who came near him. He darted forward and back, slashing with his club and breaking heads, until none of them dared engage him. His guard kept a loose circle around him, and together they cut a swath through the Ursidrean ranks.
Chris surveyed the scene from the wall, and her heart went out to Renier. He would conquer these invaders and drive them out of his territory. But then she caught sight of an Ursidrean standing on the running board of a siege machine near the back of the Ursidrean line. He observed the battle with a cool, determined eye. He spoke into a hand piece, and his amplified voice echoed down the line of cannons. He was directing the battle. He must be Donen, the Alpha Ursidrean.
He spotted Renier and recognized him. He had to defeat Renier to conquer the city. He gestured to the machine’s driver. Then he jumped to the ground with a long-handled staff blade in one hand and an energy blaster in the other.
A handful of Ursidreans surrounded him in an instant, and the group set off toward Renier. Chris scanned the battle scene. Renier didn’t see Donen coming. He was too busy crushing Ursidreans right and left. Then her eye fell on Turk.
Armed with only his short hunting blade and whatever heavy stick he could pick up from the ground, he fought his way through the battle as best he could. But his quick eye caught sight of Donen striding through the trees. He leapt clear of two Ursidreans closing in on him and raced toward Renier. His lips curled back from his teeth in a snarl.
Chris couldn’t wait any longer. She jumped off the parapet and ran for her life down the field. What was she going to do down there, with no weapons, no training, no heightened senses to see in the dark? She ought to be running the other way to get as far away from this battle as possible.
Only one thought dominated her mind. She had to get to Turk. She had to protect him somehow, or die fighting with him. She couldn’t let him face the Ursidreans alone. If the Felsite couldn’t stand against them, he certainly couldn’t.
Donen raised his blaster and fired into the trees. He hit a Felsite warrior, and the man flew back and landed against a tree. He lay still and panting, and Chris recognized Manu. Was he alive or dead? She didn’t have time to wonder. When he flew aside, a space opened up between Donen and Renier. Donen’s hand tightened on his weapon, and nothing stood between him and his enemy.
Turk ran through the trees, hurdling fallen tree trunks and prostrate Ursidreans. He slashed a Felsite aside with his blade and ran on. Renier rounded on Donen, but he couldn’t reach the Ursidrean leader with any of his weapons at that distance. Donen had him just where he wanted him. Turk dashed through the trees on an intercept course between the two Alphas. He was going to throw himself into the path of the blaster.
At that moment, the cannon went off again. A rocket whined through the air and exploded behind Chris. She crouched for protection from flying shards of brick and splintering wood, but another rocket sailed overhead and landed near the first one. She looked in every direction, but she couldn’t move. Another rocket might hit her at any moment.
She must have cried out in surprise, because Turk heard her and hesitated. Even Renier glanced in her direction, but Donen didn’t waver. He aimed his blaster at Renier and squeezed. The cannon exploded, and a rocket whistled through the night. Chris extended her hand toward Turk. He couldn’t sacrifice himself like this, not when she only just realized how much he meant to her.
What a fool she was, to squander him when she had him in the palm of her hand! She should have treasured him and accepted the gift of his love, instead of running all over hell and gone trying to get away from it. She started forward, but it was too late. Donen’s blaster went off, and the energy beam streamed out of the barrel.
Renier lifted his hand to defend himself, but the only thing he had to block that beam was a club. Turk was too far away. He wouldn’t intercept the shot in time. Renier would be cut down, and the battle would be over.
In that instant, another figure materialized between the two Alphas. He threw his arms around Renier, and the blast struck him in the back. He sagged into Renier’s embrace. It was Jaro.
Renier held the smaller man in his arms and lowered him to the ground. Jaro smiled up at his Alpha before he closed his eyes and sighed. Renier laid the limp body on the soft soil. Then he lifted his eyes to Donen and shook the forest with a deafening roar. Donen hesitated with his blaster still raised, and that was all the time Renier needed.
He launched himself at the Alpha Ursidrean and knocked the blaster out of his hand. Donen tried to answer with his blade, but Renier clubbed him to the ground with one stroke of his great stick. In a heartbeat, Renier leapt on Donen and smothered him to the ground
Chris didn’t see his victory. Another rocket landed a few yards away from her, but when she tried to run, another cut off her path. Rockets exploded all around her. She covered her head with her arms, but she couldn’t see which way to go to get away from them. In another minute, one of them would hit her, and that would be the end of it.
A frustrated and confused scream escaped her, but at that moment, a great weight struck her and threw her back against the wall. She closed her eyes under her arms. She couldn’t watch death take her. A rocket must have struck her, and in a couple of seconds, she would be dead.
Her head slammed back into something solid, and her mind swam into semi-consciousness. Her body went limp, and care and anxiety evaporated. Nothing else mattered. Her struggle was over. She hovered over the battle scene and gazed down.
Renier hammered Donen with his massive fists. Renier’s guard closed with Donen’s men, and the two factions fought with all their might for supremacy. Where was Turk? Then, out of the clear blue sky, a velvet touch intruded on her foggy brain. Fingers as soft as downy fur stroked her cheek and cradled her shattered body. She lay back and took a deep breath.
Her eyes groaned open, and something big and black blocked out the light. She blinked and tried to sit up, but her head pounded and spun. A voice reached her ear from a great distance. “Don’t move. You might be hurt.”
Chris fought to open her eyes, and there he was, kneeling over her. She frowned. “How did you get here? I thought you were with Renier.”
He laid her back on the ground. “Renier doesn’t need me. You do.”
Chris looked around. Renier knelt over Donen with the Ursidrean’s collar locked in his fists. “But how did you....?” He couldn’t have crossed that distance in the fleeting instant before the rocket struck.
Turk touched her cheek again. “What are you doing down here? You should be up in the city where it’s safe.”
“I thought you were in trouble,” she replied. “I had to help you.”
“I wasn’t in trouble. You’re the one who was in trouble. Take a look.” He helped her sit up and pointed. A wide crater yawned in the ground where she once stood next to the wall. “If I hadn’t knocked you away, it would have flattened you.”
Chris stared at the hole. He’d crossed the plain in a second and thrown her out of the path of the rockets. He’d saved her life when his own life was in danger.
He rubbed her arms and legs and massaged her shoulders and head. “Are you hurt? Are you okay?”
For once in her life, she relaxed into his touch. She would find shelter here and nowhere else. “I’m fine as long as I’m with you.”
He took her hand and helped her to her feet. Across the river among the trees, bands of Felsite went after lone Ursidreans and drove them back toward their cannons. The battle had turned. Renier pinned Donen’s arms to the ground with his knees and raised his heavy club to finish him off. What would become of these two factions when one Alpha killed another? They would continue in perpetual war for all eternity.
Chris closed her eyes and turned her face into Turk's shoulder. She couldn't watch this. “Let's get out of here.”
He didn't answer, but she felt him nod. They turned together, away from the battle and toward the dark. No lights blazed out there, beyond the city, beyond the inhabited part of the planet. The black forest called them home, and they would answer the call.
Without taking his arms away from her, Turk quickened his pace away from the city and the din of battle. Chris matched his stride, and when she looked up next, the blaze of rockets and the crash of weapons sounded weak and far away. A weight lifted off her shoulders, and her breath evened out.
At the top of the rise, they paused and surveyed the countryside all around. From up here, the lights of Melnili and the Ursidrean army dotted the black expanse of plain like fireflies in an enormous black night. They amounted to nothing in the overall scheme of things, and they didn't affect Chris and Turk at all. The farther they got from those lights, the more insignificant they became until they would blink out of existence altogether.
Turk took her by the shoulders and turned her around to face him. The first streaks of dawn struck his face, and he stared into her eyes with curious intensity. “Are you ready to go? I mean, are you ready to go down there?” He nodded toward the pass leading back to Lycaon territory.
Chris pulled herself up straight. “If I’m going anywhere. I’m going with you. I’ll go where you go.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Are you sure? You don’t belong with me if you don’t want to be on this planet.”
“You’re on this planet,” she replied. “That means I belong here, too. I belong with you.”
He frowned, but a clear light shone in his eyes. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I’m sure.”
“You don't want to leave Angondra anymore?” he asked.
Chris shook her head. “I thought I did, but when you left, I realized there was no point in me going back to Earth. I don't have anything on Earth to go back to that's as important to me as you are. If I went back, I would spend my life dreaming about you and wondering what might have been with you. I'll be much better off staying here and living those dreams in real life than searching for a way to get away from them.”
“And Carmen?” he asked. “And all the other women? What about them? What if they want to get back to Earth? Don't you want to help them?”
“None of those women want to leave,” she replied. “No one wants to go back to Earth. What's the point of trying to help them do something they don't want to do?”
“They don’t want to leave their mates,” he told her. “Is that so hard to believe?”
Chris gazed toward the rising sun. “I had a picture of her in my mind. After Sasha died, I had this idea about the way she was when she found me at the crash site.I held that picture in front of my eyes all the way here, and even when I talked to Carmen. Sasha was my model, my hero, and she was dead. She died fighting back, and I was going to fight back, too, to make good on her sacrifice.”
He listened in silence.
“But that’s all gone now,” she murmured. “Sasha doesn’t want to go back to Earth.”
He inclined his head toward the west, and she fell in at his side. She slipped her hand into his, and they started across the plain toward the pass. The sun lightened the morning sky, and tiny creatures scattered before their feet through the waving grass. Chris lifted her face into the sunlight. Just over that hill, between the rocks and down the mountain, the trackless forest would swallow them up, and the canopy would hide their footprints.
Epilogue
Chris and Turk walked hand and hand through the forest, and Chris started to recognize the terrain. She'd passed this way when she first left the Lycaon village. She hung back until Turk stopped and regarded her. “Is anything wrong?”
Chris lifted her head to the promontory rising above the trees. “Let's go up and take a look—just one last time.”
He frowned. “Who said anything about one last time? We can go wherever we like. You can go up there whenever the fancy strikes you.”
Chris tugged at his hand. “Come on. I want to see it.”
She strode up the slope and along the rocky outcropping to the summit. The vast expanse of Lycaon territory stretched out before her in a dark green carpet. The mountains far away separated the Lycaon from the Felsite and the sea.
Then Chris turned around and studied the flat country behind her. A dozen wisps of smoke rose out of the trees and mingled with the clouds. Chris's eyes widened. “There's the village.”
A smile touched Turk's lips. “Are you ready for this?”
Chris scanned the forest. “Maybe we could take a few more days before we go back.”
He raised his eyes and chuckled. “You are so transparent.”
She couldn't help but laugh. “It's pretty nice out here, just you and me, and I'm enjoying learning all your survival tricks. After we go back to the village, I'll want to go out into the forest to test myself every now and then.”
“Nothing's stopping you,” he replied. “If you like, I can follow you the way I did before, just to make sure you're all right.”
“That might be nice at the beginning,” she replied. “But later, I'll want to go alone, just to make sure I can really do it.”
He nodded. “As you wish.”
She drew closer and kissed him. “Let's not go back just yet. Let's spend a few more days out here alone.”
His arms snaked around her and crushed her against his body. “You don't have to ask me twice.”
“Your family won't worry about you, will they?” she asked.
He let her go, and they gazed down at those whispers of smoke again. “Don't go back to village until you're ready. I'll stay out here with you as long as you want, but once we go back there, you have to be ready for everything that means. You have to be ready to take your place in the pack, and you have to be ready to mate with an Alpha. Do you understand what that means?”
Chris nodded. She couldn't take her eyes off those trails of smoke. The village scene played out in front of her eyes. “We have to be ready to take over if anything happens to Caleb.”
“And that means any child of ours could become Alpha after me,” he told her. “The pack will want to get to know you. They'll want to touch you and smell you, and they'll never stop asking, every time they see you, when you're going to get pregnant.”
Chris snorted. “That's got to be hard.”
He nodded. “She had an especially hard time since she had no family before the pack. She wanted to run away from them every time they came around to get to know her. She wanted to be alone with Caleb the way you want to be alone with me.”
Chris shook her head. “I don't want to be alone with you to get away from them. I want to be alone with you for you—for you and me.”
He swept her up in his arms, and his lips crushed against her mouth. Then he peeked into her face. “Can you keep a secret?”
She cocked her head. “What?”
“The pack won't bother Marissa again,” he told her. “She's pregnant.”
Chris's eyes flew open. “What? Really? That's….” She broke off.
He nodded. “Her children will become Alphas after Caleb. If anything happens to him while the children are young, I'll take over and help Marissa raise them to take over after me.” He hesitated. “There is a good chance, if everyone lives long, healthy lives, our own children won't ever become Alpha. Could you handle that?”
Chris looked back down into the valley. All those political dramas remained so far away. As long as she and Turk stayed outside the village, they didn't even exist. “I wouldn't mind at all if our children never became Alpha. I'd almost prefer if they didn't, so they could live normal lives.”
He nodded. “They'll grow up to be warriors, anyway.”
“The boys will,” she countered.
He shook his head. “The girls can become warriors, too, if they want to. Anyone can become a warrior or a scout to protect their pack.”
Chris smiled at him. “I can handle it. I can handle anything that happens now.”
He kissed her again. “You'll be fine.”
Chris took his hand, and they started down the hill. “I already am.”
( The End )