Chapter Eleven

 

Savich felt uneasy. He’d learned to listen to that intuition living on Kavelt. It was time to move on. He looked out over the tree canopy one last time but saw no signs of fires. He listened but heard nothing outside of normal forest noises. Even so, he would move their camp. See what Tabby wanted to do next. He would take her anywhere. Except near any Krinar, of course.

He returned to the cave and saw Tabitha hugging her pillows.

“Why do you keep going out?”

“Want to make sure we weren’t followed,” he answered her. “But I think we should leave. Something doesn’t feel right.”

Savich stepped closer and saw her trembling.

“You’re healed now. I should take you to your home,” he finally said. “Where is it?”

Her fair skin blanched yet again.

“I can’t go back there. Don’t make me go back there.” She began rocking in place, not seeing him. She was back at the cabin.

Savich squeezed his hands into fists. He wanted to maim and kill those bastards. He knelt down beside her. Placed a huge hand on her head. “Tabby.”

She blinked a few times and focused on him. “They took me from my home. At the park service office.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I can’t go back. Not ever again, Savich.”

She looked at him with such pain and earnestness that his heart clenched. His voice deepened when he uttered “Never.”

Then she thrust herself into his arms, and he felt a rush of gratitude that she would let him hold her. “I thought I frightened you when I put my arms around you before.”

She cried into his shirt. “No, Savich,” she sniffled. “You don’t scare me.”

They held each other like that for some time, until Savich felt that niggling doubt itch the back of his brain. He held out his hand with a small metal nugget and pressed a button. The bathing room collapsed into itself, folding and re-folding until it disappeared. With his left hand he continued to rub circles on Tabby’s back. He whispered into her ear. “We have to leave this place. If you don’t have a preference, I’ll choose.”

She nodded into his shirt, and his chest swelled with pride.

He gathered her tiny frame into his arms and took down the invisible forcefield with the press of a button. Looking around the small clearing, he saw no threats and began to run through the Kwadacha wilderness. He headed in a northwesterly direction, toward his aircraft. He was several hours away, and undecided about taking her to it. He still had the Resistance outpost to find.

He didn’t know what Kumar would expect him to do about Tabby either.

He ran for an hour, backtracking and zigzagging, leaping over boulders or fallen trees, and running upstream for a while as well. The unsettled feeling eased but didn’t disappear.

Savich found a likely spot for a rest and set Tabby down. “How are you?”

She blushed at his intense gaze. He loved watching her skin turn pink. “I’m fine,” she said and looked down at her feet. “You’re amazing.”

Savich once took down the biggest predator on Kavelt, a reptile three times as large as a scabika, with deadly venomous fangs and a barbed tail. And yet Tabby’s compliment had him feeling like a God.

“We’ll rest and eat,” he told her. “And then we’ll talk.”

After scavenging for edible roots, briar patches with berries and savory mushrooms, they sat together to eat.

“You brought me my breakfast in a bowl made from branches. But you used your silver button thingie to make me a pillow.”

Savich scratched his head.

“I am kavelt, do you know the word?”

“No.”

“I am an exile of Krina,” Savich announced, waiting to see disappointment in her eyes, but none came. She merely cocked her head and waited for more. “I am unwanted by my own people.”

She picked a tall weed and began stripping it of its fibers. “That’s very sad.”

He shrugged. “I killed my own kind.”

“You must have had good reason,” she said, looking out from beneath long lashes.

His heart skipped a beat. He looked down at his huge hands. They bore multiple scars from his battles. “No. I had—have a lot of anger in my heart. I provoked men. In my civilization, we challenge each other to an Arena match to solve arguments if nothing else works. Most Krinar will never go to the Arena. Maybe thirty percent of us will go once.”

She watched him, idly playing with the plant.

“I went four times. After the fourth time, the Elders determined I was unfit for society,” he said and leaned forward on his knees with his elbows. “They called me a savage.”

She pursed her bow-shaped lips but said nothing.

“I was exiled to a planet I named after myself.”

“Kavelt?” She said with raised brows. He felt proud of her for remembering but didn’t smile.

“Yes. It is populated with fearsome beasts. The Krinar are a peaceful society. We do not kill living things for food. Yet I slaughtered the beasts of that planet daily.” Savich felt like he was confessing sins to Tabby. “I ate meat.”

Something he couldn’t identify flickered across her face and in her eyes. She blinked a few times then returned to stripping the plant down to strings.

“You did what you had to do,” she said. “Sometimes we do things we’re not proud of, just to survive.”

Her voice was so quiet he almost couldn’t hear her. The stillness that followed ate at his gut. What did those men force her to do? Besides the obvious? He clenched his fists again, marveling at the rage that continuously boiled inside. He had been angry for centuries, but it had been ebbing. Until Tabby.

He waited a beat before speaking again. “The people of Krina turned their backs on me, so I turned my back on them. I do have a friend, Kumar,” he said. “He brought me anything I could ever want or need when I was on Kavelt. But I refused to use it.”

She tilted her head the other direction. “So you could hunt and make bowls and what,” she paused, looking at his hands. “make clothing out of furs and leathers? But you chose to use the technology for me?”

Savich stopped breathing. How did she see through him so easily? He blew out a breath.

“You deserve comfort.” He stood and paced in the small clearing. He stopped and looked into the deep woods, using his keen sense of smell to assess potential threats. “Do you want to eat meat? I can hunt for you.”

A small hand touched his arm, and he bent his head to look at it.

“I will eat whatever you choose to bring me.”

Savich inhaled through his nose. He smelled Tabby. Fresh like the green fields on Kavelt that hid the giant jeweled serpents. And something sweet like the brown wrinkled fruits he foraged in the cold lands. And was that—he breathed deeply of her aroma—arousal?

His desire spiked instantaneously. He refused to turn and face her. He would frighten her with the strength of his ardor. Instead, he exhaled and counted to ten before he turned.

“Your home was the park service?” Savich recalled Kumar mentioning the government organizations that managed huge lands. “You lived there?”

“Yes, they have residential dormitories,” she swallowed. “It was comfortable.”

Savich cursed himself for bringing it up, but she didn’t cry.

“What about your home before that? Do you have parents or a mate?” Savich kept his hands behind his back, forcing them not to reach out and brush that strand of golden blonde hair away from her eye.

She gave a small laugh. “No, I don’t have a mate. Or parents, for that matter.” She looked up into his eyes. “My mother passed away several years ago. Never knew my father. I used special funding for my education and found forestry to be my true love.” She turned around then, holding her hands to embrace the woods surrounding them. “This is my home. The trees, the mountains.” She lifted her head and arms. “The sky.”

Savich’s eyes roamed over her curves. She may be small, but she was every particle female. Her stance accentuated the graceful curve of her neck, the arch in her back, the tilt of her hips, and an image so clear it could be a hologram came to his mind. Her nude on a bed of ferns, arching to meet him in pleasure, neck exposed right where that artery pumped with her fresh blood, ready for him to sip, then suck, then devour…” Stop it!” He roared.

She spun and gripped her throat with both hands, eyes round as prey, half-crouching as if he would hit her. Tears sprung, and she whimpered, “I’m sorry!”

Savich grabbed fistfuls of his own hair in his hands and squeezed his eyes shut. He lowered his voice and turned three-quarters away from her. “No,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

He released his hair, stood with his proud back to her and spoke to his side. “I will hunt for food.” He pointed his forcefield device at two opposing rocks. “There is an invisible field surrounding you now. No one will see you as long as you remain in it’s radius; you will be safe.”

He couldn’t look at her again. He had betrayed her trust simply because of his lustful desires. He would have to take her somewhere with humans, and it would have to be soon. He couldn’t be in her presence without wanting to fuck her, and she was infinitely off-limits. He was already a monstrosity to his own kind. He would be damned if he inflicted his powerful sexual wants on the ethereal beauty behind him.

He broke into the trees, immediately on alert, using all his senses to determine if there were predators about. He sensed nothing and used his hard-won stealth to hunt a small animal for their evening meal. Tabby needed to gain weight, and meat was the quickest way to accomplish that. He would feed her, clothe her, protect her. Stars help him, he would want her too. But he couldn’t have her. And he sure as hell wouldn’t take her like those bastards had.

Crouching, he found a rabbit warren. And as he artfully snatched the creature with his bare hands, snapping its neck mercifully, an idea came to him. Once he found a haven for Tabby, he would execute his plan.