Eleven
Patta was trapped deep in the brambles, their grasping thorns stuck in her rough and matted coat. She was crying piteously and holding one paw in front of her as though it hurt.
“Oh, my poor Patta,” Nallah crooned to her. “Hold on, sweet girl. I’ll get you.”
But try as she might, she couldn’t reach. The curving thorns tore at her flesh but the little lanna remained just out of her grasp.
“Here—let me.” For a wonder, Harryx was right beside her. In fact, it was he who had carved a path through the brambles in the first place, pushing their sharp, grasping creepers aside with the power of his big body, allowing Nallah to get close to where the yowling sound had originated. But they had come up against a fallen tree trunk too big and solid to get through and Patta was stuck on the other side of it.
Now he reached for the little animal, his much longer arms making it possible for him to get to her though Nallah could not. He got one big hand fitted around her body and tugged gently while Patta mewed piteously and struggled in his grasp.
“Hang on, little girl,” Nallah heard him muttering. “Just hang in there—gonna get you out, I promise.”
At last he was able to pull Patta free and then, for a moment, he held her in his big hands.
Nallah felt her heart begin to gallop in her chest. The last time she’d seen Harryx with one of her pets in his hands, terrible things had followed. Would he do it again? Would he kill Patta the way he had killed Pitta? He seemed so different now—completely changed, in fact. But the idea wouldn’t leave her head and she kept seeing Pitta dangling limp in his grasp after he had broken her poor little neck.
But Harryx didn’t hurt the piteously mewing Patta at all. Instead he gathered her close to his broad chest and held her, just as he had held Nallah.
“All right, little girl,” he soothed, stroking her fur. “It’s all right now. Everything is going to be okay.” He looked at Nallah. “I think her paw is broken or hurt somehow. Remind me, sweetheart—are their animal medics around here?”
Nallah could scarcely believe her ears.
“You…you would pay to have her healed?” she asked. “Really?”
“Yes, really,” he said firmly. “Come on—let’s get out to the hovercar.”
“Oh…I have to get a veil on first,” Nallah exclaimed. “I can’t go out in public without one. I…” She cleared her throat. “I shouldn’t even be without on in private.”
“Why not?” He reached out with his free hand and gently brushed her flushed cheek with his knuckles. “You’re beautiful.”
“Oh, but…” Nallah could feel herself blushing. “But a woman should not expose her face unless…”
“Unless her husband wants her to?” he asked softly. “Believe me, I want you to, baby. From now on, don’t wear a veil around the house, okay? Let me see how gorgeous you are all the time.”
“All…all right,” Nallah whispered. For some reason when he looked at her the way he was now, her heart began to pound. And his eyes had gone dark again—black and velvety and deep. Was it a trick of the light that made it seem like his normally pale blue eyes were switching colors? Or something else?
“Good.” Harryx nodded. They had walked out of the bushes and brambles by now and were headed into the domicile. He still held Patta close to his chest with one large hand and the little lanna seemed to be resting comfortably against him. She was even purring a little, though her paw was still held stiffly out in front of her.
“Can…do you want me to take her?” Nallah asked anxiously. “I mean, you might want to, uh, clean up a little too. Your cheek…you’re bleeding still.” She motioned to the place where she had clawed him, feeling the blood rush to her face. “I shouldn’t have…have done that.”
“You didn’t do anything I didn’t deserve,” Harryx said firmly. “I don’t mind holding Patta while you get changed. I can wash my face one-handed.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Unless you’d rather hold her yourself? I, uh…don’t blame you if you’d rather not leave her with me. Considering…what happened in the past.”
Nallah bit her lip, thinking hard. Could she trust this new, gentle Harryx with her last remaining lanna? Pitta and Patta had always been her babies—it had just about killed her to lose Pitta. But the man standing before her didn’t seem to be the same Harryx who had behaved so cruelly. He called her sweet names and seemed genuinely sorry for his past actions. He even let her hit him and cry in front of him and didn’t punish her afterwards.
Yes, but can you trust him? whispered an anxious little voice in her head.
Well, could she?
What decided her was the sight of Patta, cuddled so trustingly against his broad chest. As Nallah watched, the little lanna stretched lazily and rubbed her cheek against the big hand that held her. She looked perfectly at ease—perfectly content to be held by him.
It was strange that she should behave that way, Nallah thought. Both Pitta and Patta had always been wary of Harryx, even before what he’d done to Pitta. But her pets had always had an unerring instinct about people. Before his change, the two lannas had avoided him. Now Patta was snuggling against him just the way she always snuggled with Nallah herself.
If Patta trusts him, I can too, Nallah decided.
She took a deep breath and nodded.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I…I trust you, Harryx. Let me go change and I’ll be right back.”
“Take your time.” He nodded at her, his eyes still that strange but lovely shade of black. Was it a trick of the shadows? “Patta and I will be here.”
With a last glance back, Nallah ran to change her ripped and stained robes and put on a new veil. Had her husband really changed so much for the better? And was the new Harryx here to stay?
Please, she prayed, not knowing who she was praying to but praying all the same. Please, let it be so. Let him stay kind and gentle. Let me be able to trust him.
* * * *
After finding an animal House of Healing and dropping off Patta—who had a fractured paw but would otherwise be fine—Reeve turned to Nallah and smiled.
“What do you say we get something to eat? Are there any good restaurants around here?”
Her eyes got wide. “You mean…go out to eat?”
“Yeah. Um, sorry baby, but I don’t think that, uh, grackle haunch is going to be salvageable.”
“Gracken haunch,” she corrected him, her cheeks flushing. “And you’re right—I burned it most shamefully.”
“Hey, it happens.” Reeve shrugged. “But I think we’re both pretty tired from all the excitement with little Patta. So instead of trying to make something else, why don’t we go out?”
“I…guess we could.” Nallah still sounded surprised. “If you really want to.”
Reeve heaved a sigh as he recognized the familiar pattern.
“Let me guess—we didn’t used to do that a lot.”
“You’ve never taken me out to eat,” Nallah told him. “Not even on our wedding day.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Reeve shook his head. Goddess-damn it, Harryx—couldn’t you do anything nice for your wife? Couldn’t you even throw her the smallest crumb of kindness once in a while? What kind of an asshole are you, anyway?
But he already knew what kind of asshole his host was. Harryx was the kind of male who beat his wife and killed her pet. The fact that he never took her out or did anything nice for her shouldn’t come as a shock. Still, it pissed Reeve off.
“So I made you cook even on our wedding day, huh?” he said.
Nallah nodded. “When we got home after the ceremony you told me to make dinner. After… after my first submission to you, that is. You said…” She cleared her throat and looked away, her cheeks flushed, her eyes unhappy. “You said it worked up an appetite—doing that to me.”
Reeve felt the now-familiar clenching of his stomach muscles. He could just imagine what her wedding night had been like. Harryx didn’t seem like the kind of male to be gentle, even with a virgin who had no experience in the bedroom.
Of course you don’t have to imagine—you can always look it up in Harryx’s memory banks, whispered a little voice in his head. But Reeve couldn’t bear to do it. Not after seeing what his bastard of a host had done to Nallah’s defenseless pet. He couldn’t stand to watch Harryx be cruel to Nallah too.
Later, he told himself uneasily. I’ll look at it later if I need information for some reason. For now, it’s enough to know he was a sadistic son-of-a-bitch and leave it at that.
“I’m sorry about everything that happened in the past, baby,” he said gently to Nallah. “I’m sorry I was never sweet to you.”
“You were sweet today,” she pointed out in a low voice. “When you helped me rescue Patta and paid to have her paw fixed.”
“Let’s say I’m on a new path, then,” Reeve said. “And let’s keep it up—where do you want to go for last meal tonight?”
They settled on a restaurant Nallah admitted she had always wanted to try and got a private table with a kind of tent around it so that she could remove her veil to eat. Reeve noticed that all their servers were females, probably because it was considered improper for strange males to see another male’s wife’s face.
This was the first time he had seen women working outside the home. He wondered if it might possibly be a job Nallah could take if he managed to complete his mission without waking Harryx and left the other male in his coma.
He didn’t admit to himself that the idea of leaving her—whether her abusive husband remained in a coma or not—held less and less appeal. He had promised himself he would find a safe place for her—make certain she would be all right—and he intended to do just that in the three days they had until he had another chance at the wormhole tech.
“So these women bringing our food,” he said to Nallah, as casually as he could. “Refresh my memory but I haven’t seen any other females working outside the home. Is this a job any woman could do? Could you do it if you wanted to?”
Nallah’s large golden eyes went wide.
“These women are for sale, oh my husband,” she whispered across the table, making certain no one outside their tent-table could hear her. “They are working here to display themselves to the male customers so that they may be sold when one finds them pleasing and wishes to change wives.”
“I…see.” Reeve clenched his jaw and then noticed the worried look on Nallah’s face. “Don’t worry, sweetheart—I’m not looking to trade you in. There’s not a female on this whole damn planet half as sweet and beautiful as you,” he murmured, trying to reassure her. “Not to mention the idea of giving away your mate and getting another is fucking barbaric.”
She looked at him questioningly. “But…it is the Hascion way. Some men choose to keep their wives all their lives—my own father did so with my mother. But it is exceedingly rare.”
“Not where I come from,” Reeve said before he thought. “Where I come from females are to be cherished and protected—not hurt and abused and passed around like fucking trading cards.”
Nallah gave him another quizzical look.
“But…I thought you came from the Northern Province.”
Reeve realized his mistake. Damn it, he had to do a better job at playing the part of his host. But Harryx Parokk was turning out to be such a horrible bastard, he could hardly control his instinct to divorce himself from the other male as much as possible.
“Forget I said it,” he told Nallah. “I was just talking about the way things ought to be, that’s all.”
“Oh, I see.” She nodded and took another bite of her dessert—which was some kind of bright blue pudding studded with little pink and green seeds.
No, you don’t see, Reeve thought passionately. But I wish I could show you. Wish I could take you back with me to the Mother Ship and show you the way a female ought to be treated. Let you see that not all males are abusive assholes.
But they were stuck on Hascion Five, at least until he completed this mission. He needed to keep the goal in mind and not let himself be distracted.
He cleared his throat and looked at Nallah again.
“I was just asking about the women working here because I was wondering what would happen to you if…if I had never come out of the coma,” he said to her. “Or even if I had died. I wondered if you could get a job or…”
Nallah was looking at him strangely.
“Oh my husband,” she said carefully. “Has the blow you took to the head erased all of your knowledge of our world? You know that if you died, I would be expected to join you on your funeral pyre. Either that or take the slow-acting poison, which many say is worse, because it is so painful. At least the fire is a quick death—if you douse yourself with flame-making agents first.”
“What?” Reeve felt sick. “You’re expected to kill yourself if I die?”
“Either that or I would be turned out on the streets and declared one of the Disgraced,” Nallah said matter-of-factly.
“Tell me about that,” Reeve said, still trying to wrap his head around the barbarous ways of the Hascions. “Tell me about the Disgraced.”
“They are women who have no home—no husband—no honor.” Nallah’s eyes were shadowed with pain as she spoke. “No one is allowed to offer them shelter or more than a few scraps of food. And the…the Punishment gangs can punish them every night if they want to.” She put down the triangular spoon she’d been using to carve little chunks out of her pudding, as though she’d lost her appetite. “That happened to my friend, Gemmah. She became one of the Disgraced and then later…they found her…found her…”
“Go on,” Reeve urged gently. Though his stomach was tied in knots he felt he had to hear this.
“They found her floating in the river.” Nallah’s eyes were bright with unshed tears—she seemed to be holding them back by main force of will. “Please, my husband, can we not speak of this?” she begged softly. “When I think of Gemmah the sorrow rises so strongly in me that it brings tears but I must not weep in public.”
“All right. I’m sorry.” Reeve put an arm around her and drew her to him. At first she stiffened but then, after a moment, she melted against his side. “Sorry, baby,” he murmured again. “I just wanted to make sure you’re taken care of if something happened to me. But I guess…that’s not how things work here.”
“No.” Her voice was muffled as she pressed her face to his side. “No, it’s not. A wife living on after her husband is not the Hascion way.”
But killing women or turning them out on the street to be starved and abused—that is the Hascion way, Reeve thought savagely. Once again he agreed whole-heartedly with Commander Sylvan. These bastards and their sick woman-hating ways could not be allowed to spread across the universe. He had to get in and destroy their wormhole tech and research. He also had to do something to keep Nallah safe—but what?