And, if I were being honest with myself, I wouldn’t just be doing it to please Zeezee. If one of these females could be chosen as my mate, then perhaps others could be mated to the men of my tribe. In our tribe there was only one woman for every three males of mating age. This could be the greatest blessing our tribe had seen in generations. My optimism soured, however, when I realized Gahn Fallo would likely be thinking the same thing for his own men. He was a vicious enemy, but he was no fool.

Zeezee had been talking almost without end for the entire ride, but my ears pricked as I realized she fallen silent. I’d been so focused on watching the sands for any sign of movement that I hadn’t noticed when she’d stopped. The sun was setting, the broken line of moons rising, casting everything into smoky shadows. The stars blinked in a bruised sky. Zeezee was leaning against me, now, her full weight relaxed against my chest and abdomen. The sensation made my heart surge. Was she finally feeling what I felt? Was she experiencing the sacred bond? She was closer to me, willingly, than she’d ever been. This must mean something.

I was bending my head, muttering her name against her hood, my arm tightening around her waist when I smelled it. The scent normally intoxicating, but in this moment, horrific.

Zeezee’s blood.

OceanofPDF.com

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER SEVEN Cece

The sun was setting, I had no idea where the fuck we were or where the fuck we were going, and I did not feel good. Thankfully Buroudei had pulled my forgotten hood up to help shield me from this planet’s wicked sun (and did so in such a bizarre, almost tender, way that I’d almost toppled over) but I still felt completely unprepared for this environment. I was beyond hot under my solar protection jacket, but I knew I couldn’t take it off with that sun beating down and no extra sunscreen. My throat was growing more dry by the second, and I was starting to regret having refused the cactus juice box I’d been offered hours before.

It has been hours, right? My sense of time was completely shot. It felt like we’d been moving over the same stretch of sand for days. My thighs were on fire, my skin rubbing painfully beneath my pants against the animal we were riding, and my muscles were cramping so hard my legs were starting to go numb. Buroudei seemed to straddle this giant thing with ease. He didn’t even have pants or chaps or a saddle or anything. But he was much larger than me, with longer legs, and skin like some kind of reinforced alien leather. For my weak, stumpy human legs, the positioning was awkward and painful as all get out.

Not like there was much else I could do, though, so I sucked it up. As best I could, anyway. But by the time the stars were starting to peek out overhead, I’d reached my limit. I sagged back against Buroudei, for once not fighting him, grateful for the solid stability his rock-hard body provided, my head swimming, my chapped lips parting as I panted. The sky, the sand, everything was growing black in my dimming vision.

I’m just going to close my eyes...

“Zeezee!”

Buroudei’s voice was a brutal snarl, his hands insistent as he dismounted and pulled me with him. He tried to stand me up on the sand, but at that moment every bone in my body turned to jello and I collapsed, crying out in pain. Head pounding, mouth full of cotton, I looked down and groaned.

The pant legs of my grey uniform were caked with blood, stuck to my inner thighs. The fabric was still intact, but my skin beneath it clearly wasn’t, rubbed raw by hours on the back of dino-centipede. I was in a lot worse shape than I had thought, and I flopped back against the sand, defeated. What is the freaking point of all this? It would have been so easy to just lay there and never get up again.

Well, it would have been easy if a certain alien weren’t going into nuclear meltdown mode above me. He was kneeling at my side, his face twisted in a manic snarl, growling and snapping his jaws, the glimmery bits of his eyes pulled so tight they almost looked like normal irises. Almost.

“You have pretty eyes,” I mumbled. It felt like I was floating. Or sinking. Maybe this was all a messed up dream. Maybe I got hit by a car on my run and I’m in some crazy limbo. Maybe this is Hell.

But as Buroudei picked me up once again, his arms like iron yet somehow gentle, it didn’t really feel like I was in Hell. If this is Hell, at least I’m not alone.

I was vaguely aware of Buroudei leaping back onto his mount. Instead of sitting me up the way I had been, he kept me cradled tightly against his chest, and for an absurd moment I felt almost safe, almost whole, something I hadn’t felt since Grammy had died.

Buroudei urged his animal to go faster, it seemed, with short, commanding barks, but his voice when he spoke to me, his lips moving against the fabric of my hood, was quiet, though strained. He held me in his massive, metal-strong arms as if I were something precious and breakable. I let my head flop against his warm chest, nuzzling in for the warmth. Now that it was growing dark, I was no longer sweating, and was shivering violently. This seemed to bother him, and he tightened his grip on me, as if he could stop me shivering through sheer force of muscled will. I almost laughed. If anyone could do such a thing, it probably would have been this guy.

I turned my face in towards his chest, my nose and lips, then forehead, brushing the smooth but oh-so tough skin. I felt his muscles tense under my mouth as I whispered, “So, so warm.”

And it was then, and only then, that I finally closed my eyes and let the blackness swallow me whole. But that blackness wasn’t cold. Not at all. It cradled me with warm arms and echoed with the alien whisper of my name.

OceanofPDF.com

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER EIGHT Buroudei

Curse me. Curse me ten thousand aching times. Curse my idiocy and my ignorance and my pride. For thinking I could claim this strange creature so easily with no harm done. My stupidity knew no bounds, and now my mate was torn open and bleeding. How can she possibly be so soft and breakable? It defied everything that made sense, everything I knew. If this was some kind of test the Lavrika had set before me, I was most certainly failing. And I was failing my mate, which was the most unacceptable part of it all.

I hissed, then growled at my irkdu to go faster, faster, as fast as it could. Its many legs flew, sand spraying behind us as we whipped over the rapidly cooling desert. Zeezee had been shaking in the most alarming way, but now she had gone totally limp, and somehow that was even worse. I bit back a howl of anguish, forging every ounce of worry and sorrow into a dark blade of determination. I will get her back to the healer in time. There is no other way.

She could not die. She couldn’t. It was impossible. Unthinkable. I would not allow such a thing to happen. She’d only just crashed into my world, but I already knew that there was no way I’d let her leave it now. Not as long as there was breath and blood beating in my body. I’d slain more men than any other in my tribe, had felled zeelk as a cub with nothing but my blades. I was a Gahn among my people. And yet I knew, I knew, with a finality so terrible it made me want to fall to my knees, that I’d be nothing without her.