She went obediently, eagerly even, and Kane was left with Raven.

She was gratingly on edge, pacing the little clearing over and over as her teeth worried at her own claws. Kane tried to ignore her, but her restlessness was contagious. He found his talons flexing and digging at the ground in subconscious tandem to her tight, angry walking and the realization pricked at him. He ordered her to him just to settle her down, although he didn’t object when she came and put her hand on his groin. Heat was itching at him already, itching hard, and her fingers sliding beneath his coverings to close on his cock was a welcome thing, even if it was a little too soon. Her heart wasn’t in it, though, and her eyes were darting from shadow to shadow, continuing the spirit of her agitation even if it showed nowhere else.

“We’ll be gone from here soon enough,” he said, readying a fresh vial for his harvester.

She nodded, but her lips were tight. Her hand continued its slow, soothing manipulation but her mind was elsewhere.

Kane heaved a sigh and tucked his harvester into a pocket of his human coat. “Spit it out then,” he said.

She let go of him and backed up, although she met his eyes fiercely enough. “This is a mistake.” Her voice was low but tight. “Can’t you feel it?”

Footsteps in the woods. Sue-Eye was coming back with a younger male, sparing Kane the aggravation of having to answer that. He turned away from Raven and watched his ichuta’a lead her prey just to the other side of this clearing, nearly within arm’s reach of Kane although they remained shrouded by forest. The male’s sweat stank of high rut; Kane flexed his claws broodingly and waited, letting Sue-Eye get her victim’s blood high for the maximum take of dopamine. He could feel Raven’s eyes boring into his back.

It was a mistake. He could feel it. He couldn’t understand it, but he did feel it, and it infuriated him because he knew he was doing everything right. This was a good hunt, damn it all! What was chewing at him?

Kane killed these thoughts with a snarl and reached out through the branches to seize the young male Sue-Eye was rubbing against. The human was muted with one expert jab, probably before it even knew Kane was there. The male clutched at its throat, blood oozing up between its many fingers, and turned around to gape at Kane. Not run, not duck away, not even to throw itself at Kane in one last, suicidal attack, but just to stare. Gods, this planet.

In a fit of aimless irritation, Kane slashed his claws across the human’s face, flaying it open to the bone. The human’s scream came out through the hole in its throat in a red mist, virtually soundless and not very satisfying. Kane shoved it facedown on the forest floor and broke the skull open, his harvester in hand and sour thoughts circling in his brain. He pulled dopamine into a fresh vial, then scooped up the twitching meat and flung it into the bushes atop the other bodies.

Raven was watching him, not unmoved by the slaughter, but still waiting grimly for her answer.

Kane could feel a growl working its way free of his chest. It was hot, he was over-strung, and he was horribly aware that if he lost his head now, he was probably going to do something he’d later regret. He turned his head in Sue-Eye’s direction, but kept his gaze locked on Raven. “Go on, ichuta’a,” he said tightly. “Get to work.”

Sue-Eye retreated and neither one of them watched her go. Beyond the borders of the forest, the fair roared on.

“We need to have an understanding,” Kane said.

“You’re not my partner, you’re my commander?”

Sarcasm. She looked him right in the eye as he stood there with blood still wet on his claws and met his efforts at peace-keeping with sarcasm. Kane stared her down in silence, wondering blackly why he was surprised. This was the same human who had once been under his foot with his talons crushing the air from her throat, and who had chosen that moment to threaten his life. His fierce little Raven. He’d laugh if he didn’t feel quite so much like slapping her.

“Do you see this?” Kane asked, giving the partially-filled ampule a shake. Amber fluid splashed and settled again. “I would have to kill three sleeping humans to get what I just took from one! You haven’t been tripping over yourself to help me hunt, Raven, and now you’re just going to have to stand there and shut up while I get some work done!”

“I can hear at least ten distinctly different voices from here!” she shot back, her own scarcely carrying. “This isn’t smart, Kane!”

He lowered his hand, his eyes narrowing and his jaw tightening.

“Okay, whatever, that wasn’t smart, either.” Raven cut her hand hard to one side, almost slapping her previous words out of the air. “Hit me if you have to hit me for it, but listen! Statistics being what they are, there have to be at least two hundred guns out there and if something happens, we’re what? Half a mile from our car? With god knows how many people in between us and the only exit! If there’s a panic, they’ll block us in. If…goddammit.”

Sue-Eye was already coming back, this time with two humans. “Kane,” she called, and to her prey added, “He’s got the best shit, swear to God. You’re gonna see through time.”

Kane went out to meet them. He threw a black look Sue-Eye’s way and her smile faltered. He held her in his eyes as he slashed out and tracheated the nearest human. The second sucked in a gasp instead of running, and then just stood there staring instead of screaming. Kane tracheated him as well, and then knocked both their heads together to drop them. He got his harvester in hand, but didn’t get to work just yet.

“Perhaps I wasn’t clear,” he said coldly.

Sue-Eye tensed, color rising in her cheeks.

“I want you to bring me one human at a time. I want you to make them ready to fuck. That’s what I want and you don’t get to improvise. Bringing me more than one is not a good thing in full daylight with a thousand fucking humans running around in easy hearing.”

Sue-Eye nodded. She even had the good sense to look sheepish. “I’m sorry, Kane. I won’t do it again.”

Kane grunted and hunkered down over the shallowly-breathing males. First one, and then the other opened up under his claws, and Sue-Eye stood by with her eyes down for him to finish. He glanced at her as he waited for the harvester to quit humming. “Smile,” he commanded. “You’re trying to attract a fuck-mate, remember?”

She did, at once, but it didn’t touch her eyes. Nor did it need to, he decided, ejecting the spent gland and rising. Not for what she was doing. He waved her off as he gathered a corpse in each hand and pressed the broken chunks of skulls under one arm. She turned and went, her head bowed.

And that was the kind of slave he could have gotten if he hadn’t come across Raven. Raven, whose only offense lay in trying to warn him, the way any truly loyal crewman would do. He needed to make peace.

He dragged the bodies back into the clearing where Raven was once again pacing and gnawing at her own hand. “The next time we come to Earth,” he said, throwing the corpses onto the pile, “we’ll come with a full crew. We won’t be this rushed and we won’t have to hunt out in the open. We’ll have a ship and holding pens. We’ll have the best equipment. We’ll have weapons.”

She stilled and turned to face him, her arms dropping to hug herself and her expression closed.

“But Raven,” he continued, making an effort to speak calmly and reasonably, “we’ll only have those things if we have money for it and this is our first, last, and only opportunity to earn money. Hunting here is a risk, I see that. But what we take away from this fair could damn well make the difference between good crew and good gear…and things I just settle for.”

She looked away, at the trees, at the sky, and then back at him. Her eyes were snapping and her face was flushed-furious and conciliatory all at once-but she didn’t argue.