Chapter Four
The next day, they returned to their march. As much as Katharine wanted to stay, hidden like Adam and Eve in that paradise forever, their tasks called them, and they had no choice but to answer. Katharine couldn’t have been more grateful for the weather. The rains and clouds bowed and gave the suns full access to the sky. A cool front moved in, keeping her freshly washed clothes from sticking to her skin with sweat.
As they walked, Katharine noticed a subtle change in Breccon. It was small. She wouldn’t have noticed it if they hadn’t had only one another for company during their time on the ship. The farther they walked, the more Breccon glanced in his peripheral vision. His hands, which insisted so often on holding hers, now kept their distance. One wrapped around the hilt of his nuuja blade, the other rested on his stomach. These were little changes, but that almost made them more obvious. Breccon was a creature of consistency, of reliability and habit. What did it mean that all of a sudden he acted so strangely? It was like a fly in a cup of milk; Katharine spotted it instantly.
“Is something wrong?”
“No.”
He scanned the perimeter. Katherine couldn’t imagine he didn’t realize how differently he was behaving, but it was possible. The only thing she was less sure of was if she had a reason to be frightened. With her training and Breccon at her side, she thought she could fight off anything. It was the unknown of it all that set her on edge. What was out there that could make the warrior abandon his cool resolve?
“You seem nervous.”
“I am not nervous. I have—”
“Battled ten Yicardi with one hand tied behind your back, while hopping on one foot.” Katharine rolled her eyes. “I’ve heard it.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Because it doesn’t change the fact that you seem nervous.”
“I am not nervous.” He spit the word like a bloody, knocked-out tooth. Katharine pressed her luck.
“Then why are we walking so fast?”
“Because we are close to the Temple.” The rage in his voice told her she was on the right track. No one who spent most of their life in battle wanted to be told they couldn’t handle pressure. If the tables had been turned, she would have gotten equally frustrated with him. They’d both been through war and earned their cold masks of indifference even as the world crashed and burned around them. He had to be as insulted as she would have been had he accused her of being nervous on a perfectly lovely sunny day. “It’s less than a day’s walk if we’re quick about it.”
She could have accepted that and swallowed the distraction if she hadn’t been distracted by something else entirely. When Breccon lifted his hand away from his stomach to point at the gradually clearing horizon, he exposed an angry red patch of infection. Her stomach dropped. Her throat dried. Her ears rang too loud to hear anything else he was trying to say. It loomed larger than life in her vision, and a tiny patch of infected flesh less than an inch wide expanded until she could imagine it covering his entire body, draining him of life. He’d caught the infection. The illness had finally gotten to him. A shaking finger pointed at it.
“What is that?”
“What?”
“That. On your stomach.”
He rushed to cover it up, as if that would make any difference to her terror. Katharine had to have known, on some level, that Breccon would eventually contract the illness if she didn’t work fast enough. The reality of it just didn’t sink in until he was standing before her in all of his primal glory, pocked by something that could so easily kill him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We have to move.”
“You’ve gotten it.”
“Katharine, this is not the time.”
It was a warning. Katharine did not heed it. She pursued him as he nearly ran towards the horizon, reached for the hand clutching his stomach.
“Let me see it.”
“No.”
All of a sudden, it became clear to her. The reason Breccon’s mother banished her. The reason Mayyalka forbade them to be together. It wasn’t because she didn’t like Katharine or wanted Breccon to be with a Tallel woman. It was because if Katharine remained on Rune-Yon, Mayyalka would eventually have to swallow her pride and accept help to conquer the disease. Pride was essential to the Tallel. It was written in the fabric of their culture. Accepting Katharine’s help was unthinkable, even if the alternative was death.
“You are scared. You’re scared just like your people.”
“Do not bring my people into this,” he snapped at her, but Katharine couldn’t stop turning over the realization in her head.
“That’s why they wouldn’t let me join. They don’t want to admit that they can get sick.”
Breccon reached back with one hand to grab her. He tried to pull her forward but she couldn’t budge now. The only part that didn’t make sense was Breccon’s commitment to this. He came to Earth to find someone to cure them. His pride couldn’t be the reason.
“We have to move. Now.”
It was a battlefield order. Katharine recognized the tone from her days at Telept Airbase. But she would not answer it. If he was taking her to the battlefield, she would gladly accompany him there. On the battlefield, her patients’ safety and health was her top priority. Nothing would get in the way of her treating him. She used his momentum to pull him into her, oblivious, at first, to the panic in his voice.
“Not until you let me examine it.”
In the back of her mind, Katharine realized their amulets were glowing, but Breccon’s condition and his rough commands distracted her.
“This is the borderlands. Yicardi are always waiting for—”
Thwack! Katharine and Breccon’s tussle came to a halt as an axe embedded itself in a tree just over Breccon’s shoulder. Everything happened too fast. A series of battle yells from behind Katharine. Breccon pulled the axe from the tree and shoved Katharine to the ground as pounding footfalls barreled towards them, the force shaking the very leaves beside her head.
“Hey!”
“Stay back!”
Then, she saw it. Everything came into focus. From her place on the damp ground, Katharine watched as Breccon took on two soldiers at once. They were locked in a battle for their lives. These creatures had to be Yicardi. Their Carvings were gold, and they shimmered as their arms pulled their axes high to meet Breccon’s blows. Her heart thundered. Breccon ducked and wove, evaded and caught blade edges when he could, but the advantage stood firmly with the two Yicardi. Breccon was all muscle, all skill, but even the best warrior struggled when faced with two enemies. Breccon charged forward, pressing the advantage of his height. But the Yicardi raised their instrument wildly underhanded, managing to snap Breccon’s axe out of his reach. He moved for his sword, only to find himself kicked into the nearest tree by the closest soldier.
“Breccon!” Katharine screamed, unable to help herself. The fight became more intensely physical as the Yicardi threw away their own axes. It had to be a fair fight, it seemed. Or maybe they wanted to feel Breccon’s blood on their skin. They were warriors, after all.
Fists flew and Katharine’s spell broke. She’d fought Nazis and won. She was going to let Breccon get attacked by these wild things? Breccon might not have been able to take on two soldiers alone. But if Katharine could make a distraction... She formulated a plan and set about it as the Yicardi landed punch after punch, punctuating every throw of their fists with another word.
“For my father! For my brothers! For my mother! For my—”
The first one stopped dead as Katharine brought a rock down on his head as hard as she could. Slam. The skull crunched under the crippling blow, and blood splattered over Katharine’s robes. He slumped off Breccon, lying limp on the ground, but Katharine knew she hadn’t done enough to kill him. After all, she’d taken an oath to do no harm. She had to assume that extended to aliens, too.
With Katharine’s victim frozen on the forest floor and his friend momentarily distracted, Breccon took his chance. A tree-shaking roar and a ripple of Tallel muscle and bone sent the last standing Yicardi soldier slamming into a nearby tree as Breccon tossed him away as easily as one threw away an empty bag of flour.
His spine cracked. He fell, lifeless, and his body did nothing more than crunch a few leaves and flower petals beneath his weight. Dead.
Katharine scrambled to the unconscious soldier. She laid a slap across his cheeks. That opened his bleary eyes right up.
“You run,” she snarled, “and you tell anyone waiting in the trees that they’d better run, too.”
He was off like a shot, sprinting haphazardly into the Yicardi forest. His steps swung wildly from side to side, dizzy with the head injury, and Katharine watched him until he finally disappeared behind the brush. Her breathing was ragged; the adrenaline pumping in her blood was stronger than any drug she’d ever taken. Everything was hyper-focused, too real and too close. She spun like a hunted animal when Breccon called her name. But her concern switched on as soon as she spotted blood coming out of his new wounds.
“Are you all right?” she asked, her muscles drunk and tight on the high she’d gotten after the fight. For a moment, Breccon said nothing. He was awed; at least, that’s how he looked to Katharine.
“You are a warrior,” he breathed.
“I told you that.”
“No,” he corrected her as he closed the space between them. With a single hand, he reached down to her stomach and touched the splattered blood there, never taking his eyes off of her certainly wild ones. “You are a Tallel warrior.” He held up his red-stained hand. “You have won your first battle.”
Katharine didn’t know what possessed her. Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe it was the fact that, for the first time, Breccon looked at her not like a queen but an equal. But she kissed him. It was a dominating, powerful kiss. The kiss of battle, a kiss that was thankful to still be alive enough to touch him. She grabbed onto his strong, bloodied arms for dear life. If she let go, perhaps she feared she would fall into the abyss. She’d won a battle. She’d saved Breccon’s life. They needed to be close. They couldn’t be close enough.
She pressed her tongue into his mouth. Locking him between her body and the nearest tree, she was not content to be a shy and retiring flower. She had blood on her hands and she needed Breccon to recognize her power.
“You were nervous. You knew a Yicardi could come out at any time,” she growled, kissing his neck as she reached for the buckle of his baltea. His chest, as usual, was bare, but the blood there kept her from licking her way down to his cock, even as her pussy twitched, craving his hard length inside of her mouth. The thought of taking him between her lips while fingering her own pussy almost sent her over the edge before she’d even managed to touch herself.
“I have battled many Yicardi and won.”
“Then why were you nervous?”
“Because I have never had something so precious to defend.” He hissed as her hand found his length. His tip was already slick. She smirked. A strong woman truly turned him on, didn’t it?
“You don’t have to defend me.”
“I know.” He captured her lips with his again, then breathed against them, “But I may have to defend them from you, you warrior.”
That set her off. She was alive. She was Rune-Yonian. And she would baptize herself as a new creation with a shower of Breccon’s seed. She furiously worked his cock with her hands while her legs grew slick with his every grunt and breath on her neck. When she could no longer stand the emptiness of her own wet pussy, Katharine released his cock, threw herself against the nearest tree, hands digging into the bark and facing the dark wood so her ass was exposed to him. He only had to take her. It was what she wanted.
Breccon mounted her like an animal. He slid easily into her, stretching her tight cunt until her eyes watered. It hurt so well. When he paused at her whimper, she took the liberty of sliding up and down his cock. She moved her hips in time with her own clit’s twinges of pleasure as she reached down to bring her climax to completion. Taking the hint, Breccon stabilized himself with his hands on her hips and began fucking her in earnest. His cock hit every right place. His nails embedded themselves in her skin as he drove himself in and out of her. If there were any Yicardi in the trees on their side of the line, they were getting one hell of a show, something that made Katharine even more wet. She was Breccon’s and he was hers. And everyone, even his enemies, would be humbled by their growling, clawing rutting.
Katharine’s fingers gained speed as her orgasm approached. Breccon’s cock pounded her. Everything was pleasure. She was victorious.
“Breccon,” she screamed as she came, her pussy milking his cock of every ounce of friction she could handle. But Breccon wasn’t done. As she continued to pulse and twitch around him, he rocked in and out of her as if she were a warm, wet sheath for his long, hard sword. He pressed harder and faster. He held her tighter. Closer. Katharine thrust her hips back to meet him, a gesture he couldn’t take without groaning and shuddering above her. Her ass pressed against his hip bones one final time, and he spilled himself inside of her, their victory complete.
“My warrior,” he breathed, tugging her away from the tree and holding her to his chest. Katharine’s eyes slid closed, content for the moment. She breathed in time with him, listening to the sound of his racing pulse at the base of his neck. A small part of her wanted to sleep; the rush of adrenaline and sex emptied her of all energy. But they were so close. So close to the Temple, so close to showing the Tallel that she really did belong with them. After a moment of silence, she pulled away, brushing her robe back down over her bare legs. She shot Breccon a stern look as he fished in the high grass for his baltea.
“Now, you have to let me see it.” Her hands rested on her hips, and she tried her best to put on her nurse face. It was a difficult feat when Breccon’s bare ass was bent over before her.
“This again?”
He covered himself once more and turned to Katharine with a curious expression on his face. It was almost pleading. Like he couldn’t bear the thought of her seeing this part of him, even when he’d shown her everything else.
“Why won’t you let me?” she asked, softening.
“I don’t want you to see me like this.”
“I can’t fix it if you don’t trust me.”
Slowly, too slowly, Breccon removed his hand from his infection, revealing the red patch of skin.
“I trust you.”