Chapter Seven
Zhor was too pissed off to think straight when he charged out of the habitat. The only thing on his mind was putting some distance between himself and the woman before he completely lost his temper.
It was unfortunate that his brain went out the door with his loss of control of his temper because he really needed his wits about him when he was away from the safety of his rooke.
He barely avoided a nasty encounter with a rogue before he could retrieve his weapons.
How he could have forgotten something so vital was beyond him!
A combination of stupidity brought on by rage and a change of habit he still had not gotten used to, he thought, struggling with the urge to blame that on the woman.
But it had not seemed like a good idea to keep a lot of weapons around a female he had no reason to trust—especially after the deadly look she had given him when he had failed so miserably to please. Right up until that moment, he had only perceived her as tiny, delicate, and virtually helpless.
He was no longer convinced that she was incapable of violence either physically, mentally, or emotionally. He had to sleep, and he damned well would not get any rest if he had to keep one eye open for trouble.
That was the main reason he had chosen the rooke he had—the defensive advantage of knowing no one could slip up on him while he slept and cut his throat.
The location was enough to prevent a zorph from simply stumbling upon it and deciding to attack him for what he might have. As well as they climbed, it would take more effort in a general way than it was likely to be worth to climb down, because even if he had anything worth taking they would have a hell of a time climbing back up the cliff with it.
And it was far too high up for the zorph of the lower forest to even consider it.
Unfortunately, the only strategic advantage the place had from other kerri was that they would be fully exposed for a great distance before they could reach the opening to his rooke. But that was definitely an advantage. Even if they used the crumbling pathways and steps of the ancient ones, they would make a great deal of noise in their approach—which would alert him.
It was exhausting to be forced to always be on guard, however. The hunt for food to sustain life was wearing enough. He had to be able to rest completely and thoroughly at least occasionally.
And that was why he had opted to leave his weapons at the door, so to speak. Originally, when he had first taken up residence in the ancient city, he had fashioned a backup armory, a place to store weapons in case he lost the one he had carried with him or it broke. He knew right where to go to retrieve a replacement quickly.
Since he had found the woman he had begun stowing all of his weapons in his ‘armory’ except the small knife he used for cooking before entering the dwelling and then collecting something for protection when he left.
He did not especially care for the necessity of not having a weapon close to hand—beyond the small knives he used for preparing food—but it had seemed preferable to taking a chance of having his throat cut while he was sleeping.
Or ending up in a life or death struggle that might get one of them dead.
And that was before he had thoroughly pissed her off.
Shaking his distracting thoughts, he checked the area carefully for intruders before he settled on his favorite perch.
He had actually discovered it before he had spotted the ancient cliff dwellings and had decided to explore them with an eye to moving in—a single tree that had grown out of the side of the cliff above the falls, its wide, flat canopy sturdy from many years of maturity.
He liked it because it was a comfortable perch high enough to see for miles, with vistas unimpeded by the canopies of other trees. As long as he did not get too wrapped up in his thoughts, he could enjoy the sun and peace and still keep close watch on the little that he could call his own.
That thought brought his focus to matters broader and less personal.
He knew the woman hailed from a people that were far more advanced, technologically, than his own had ever been—even before the fall. And he had considered that she must feel superior.
What he had not considered, because he thought of himself as a survivor of a devastating disaster, was that, to someone who had no idea what had happened, he must look like a primitive—like a creature that had barely crawled from the jungle to walk upright.
It was not a comforting thought, but he realized that, in all fairness, she had every reason to think of him as the next thing to a dumb animal.
Anger and resentment flickered through him, but he dismissed them fairly quickly.
He had screwed up.
First, he had given in to his baser needs and rutted like a mindless beast instead of proving his prowess as a lover.
Then he had refused her attempts to communicate because he was embarrassed and angry that she spoke to him with the slowness of one trying to communicate with a moron.
It had not helped that she had mimed the question of whether he was deaf and or dumb!
He did not think he had imagined that as an insult. She had meant to be insulting because he had spurned her other efforts.
He rubbed a hand over his face, as if by doing so he could wipe the memory.
He was not going to be satisfied, he realized abruptly, to simply have her around to warm his bed—if he ever managed to get back into it with her—or to have her doing the womanly sorts of things that made a home.
True, that was mostly what he had thought of—the many things he missed about having a woman around. But he also missed conversation.
He had not truly had one since he had lost his family. Almost the only time he even heard a voice was when he spoke aloud to himself. Beyond that, there was the occasional challenge—‘I will kill you if you come one step closer!’ or ‘touch that and you die!’, but his world—his life—had become an endless quest for survival and nothing more. There was no living. There was only continuing to breathe.
It flickered through his mind to take her to the abandoned city, but not only was that not likely to impress her a great deal since it was crumbling now, it was not worth risking her life to soothe his injured ego.
The disease that had wiped out his civilization might have died in the many years that had passed since it had ravaged his world, or it might have simply stopped because they had abandoned the cities and all contact with others.
There had been no deaths in his village from the pandemic, but they had been a good distance from the closest city and had closed themselves off from others and he recalled that the elders had still feared it would follow them and wipe out the village.
As it happened, it had been marauders instead, but the point was that it was possible the threat still existed—that it might have when he was a child and might still be waiting only for victims to begin again.
And, unfortunately, if that was the case, then it was also not safe to take things from the ruins.
His village had not been contaminated, but then the marauders had killed everyone and taken everything of any value or use that they had not destroyed.
Would the woman know how to produce things for use and comfort if he could provide materials to make them, he wondered?
Somehow, he doubted it.
Very few of his own people had had useful skills after the fall. They had not had nearly as advanced a civilization as the woman appeared to come from and yet they had grown so used to buying or trading for goods made by someone else that very few retained the knowledge to make things they needed. They had had to relearn by trial and error and the results had not been particularly satisfactory.
The few things made in the village compared very unfavorably to the things they had been able to get from before the fall.
And he did not even have those skills.
He, and everyone else that he had come upon, relied upon scavenging to get what they needed.
So … he had no things to show the woman his people were not stupid animals and he could not speak to her to convince her, he thought with disgust.
Well! She could look down upon him, damn her, he thought angrily!
He was a survivor! He had proven his right to live by developing fighting skills and devising weaponry! He had proven his right to live by becoming a fair hunter and gatherer!
He might be a shit cook and mostly render whatever he found into a nearly inedible mess, but he was not born to such a role!
He had mastered the manly skills! One could not excel at everything!
That was what a male sought a mate for! Someone to share the burden of life.
Someone to lighten the burden.
His anger waned. His thoughts shifted.
He had not thought that he would have a mate as his father had.
The women of the village had either been raped and killed or carried off by the marauders.
Gone were all of those he had once known and he had not seen a great number of kerries since—most of which were male—because, he supposed, most of the females were killed off by the males fighting over them. Or possibly they died in childbirth since there were no physicians to care for them. Or maybe the few males that managed to acquire a mate kept them locked away and hidden to keep them safe?
After a few minutes, he dismissed the mystery he had no way of solving and redirected his mind to his current dilemma—or what he saw as the current problem.
It was not just that Ah-na must look down upon him and consider him unworthy—although that was certainly important as far as he was concerned.
She came from a world where plenty was expected—plenty of food, entertainment, comfort—even luxuries, he was sure. He was competing with that, not just the other males who might try to kill him for her and take her.
Eventually, he was certain, her people would come for her and if he had not convinced her to stay, then she would go.
His belly tightened with the anticipation of pain at that thought.
He was already growing accustomed to her presence.
The emptiness, the loneliness would be far worse when—if—she left.
Beyond keeping her as a prisoner, was there anything he could do to prevent that, he wondered?
A more comfortable living abode would certainly go a long way, he was sure, but was there any way he could offer that within the time he was allowed?
Not unless he found something with some potential that had been abandoned for reasons other than the sickness, and he did not think the odds of that happening were high.
He needed to search, nevertheless. Time was not on his side. He was certain of that. He had no way to determine the speeds their crafts were capable of, or the distance she had traveled, but she was a young woman and the ship had been relatively small, he thought, too small for her and the other crew members to have lived in it for any great length of time, surely.
He had no firsthand knowledge of such things. The fall had come before his memory, but his parents had spoken of such things. They had believed their people were on the verge of being able to travel to the stars. They had not only mourned all of their losses, they had mourned the achievements that they had lost the chance to accomplish as a species.
He was so lost in thought that he had no idea how many minutes passed before the movement his eyes detected was processed by his brain—long enough that sheer terror gripped him when he became aware of what was happening and realized, instantly, that it was already too late for him to stop it.