Chris nodded. “I suppose your friends will be happy to have some other human beings around.”
Marissa cocked her head. “My friends?”
“The other women with you,” Chris replied. “They’ll be at the village, too, I guess.”
“They aren’t at the village,” Marissa replied. “They all live with different factions.”
Chris blinked. “Factions?”
Marissa waved her hand at the aliens surrounding the crash site. “These aren’t all the Angondrans. They belong to the Lycaon faction, but there are four other factions, the Felsite, the Aqinas, the Avitras, and the Ursidreans. They live in different parts of the planet.”
Chris closed her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t understand this right now.”
Marissa sighed and took her by the elbow. “No, you can’t. Come on. Let’s get going. We have a long way to go before dark.”
Chapter 3
They didn’t get very far before the women broke down. Chris stayed close to Marissa’s side, and she did her best to encourage the others. But it was no use. Exhaustion and emotional distress took their toll, and the column barely made it out of the meadow before the first woman collapsed.
Chris and Marissa hurried to her side, and after several long minutes coaxing and encouraging, they got her on her feet again. But a few steps later, someone else fell over, too. Pretty soon, the column came to a standstill.
“What are we going to do?” Chris asked. “We can’t leave them here.”
Marissa looked over her shoulder. Caleb and Turk walked behind them. “We’ll have to carry them.”
The two men exchanged glances.
“Why can’t we camp here for the night?” Chris asked. “We could light fires to keep them warm.”
“They need more than that,” Marissa replied. “They need food and roofs over their heads. They won’t recover from their experiences until they have a fixed place to settle.”
Chris eyed her. “How can you be so sure?”
Marissa smiled. “I’m sure because the same thing happened to me. As a matter of fact, it happened to all my friends. None of us settled here and recovered from our experience with the Romarie until we made our homes with the factions.”
Caleb and Turk stood with their heads together a few paces away. Then Turk went to talk to the other Lycaon warriors. Chris studied them. Their hair presented a range of colors from grey to orange and even black. They glided over the ground when they walked, and their eyes and ears took in ever detail of the landscape. “Tell me more about the factions.”
Marissa cocked her head. “That’s not so easy. I haven’t seen much of the other factions. They keep to themselves. The Felsite are bigger than the Lycaon, thicker in their limbs, and the males have a mane of hair around their heads like lions. They live in cities that stand up off the ground. They think they’re very advanced, but it’s the Avitras that make the rules on Angondra.”
“What are they like?” Chris asked.
“The Avitras? They’re more like birds,” Marissa replied. “They have feathers on their arms and lower legs that helps them glide through the trees, and they have a big headdress of feathers on the back of their heads. I’ve only seen them once, but they’re very grand and splendid, not like the Ursidreans.”
“Tell me everything you know about them,” Chris told her. “I want to know everything about this planet.”
Marissa nodded. “That’s better. Now you’re starting to use your head. Ursidreans are bigger and stronger and bulkier than any of the other factions. They have heavy limbs and dark hair. They live in caves in the mountains, but I heard from one of my friends that they have the most advanced technology of any faction. They preserved it from a time in the distant past when Angondra had space flight and a lot of other advanced technologies. But they keep it hidden.”
“How do you know they don’t still have space flight?” Chris asked. “There might be a way to get off this planet.”
Marissa smiled. “I know what you’re thinking, but it won’t work. If the Ursidreans have any vehicle left over from the space flight age, it no longer works. All the Angondrans agreed to put space flight away and stay put on their own planet. They don’t want contact with the likes of Romarie.”
“Then how did you wind up here?” Chris asked. “You said the Romarie landed here with you and your friends.”
“The Ursidreans let them land,” Marissa replied. “They were desperate. There was a terrible plague that wiped out the female population of most of this sector of the galaxy. Most of the other planets in the area have been purchasing kidnapped females from the Romarie to reestablish their populations. The Romarie played on the Ursidreans’ trusting nature to convince them to let them land with a group of females on their way to the slave market.”
Chris made a face. “So these people aren’t as neutral and benign as they pretend to be. I thought so.”
“You’re wrong,” Marissa replied. “None of the Angondrans trust the Romarie, and the gathering broke out in a pitched battle. One of the Romarie was killed, and the other two had to flee for their lives. They tried to take one of my friends hostage when they escaped, but we got her back. The Angondrans helped us get away from them, and they took us in afterwards.”
“What about the Aquinas?” Chris asked. “You haven’t told me about them yet.”
Marissa cocked her head to one side. “I can’t tell you much about them. I only saw them once at the gathering I told you about, and I was a little distracted at the time. The most I can tell you is what the Lycaon have told me, and even that’s colored by their prejudice.”
“Prejudice?” Chris repeated. “Are these factions at war with each other or something? That’s just what I need right now.”
“They aren’t at war,” Marissa told her. “They just don’t mix with each other very much. Occasionally hostilities do break out, but for the most part, they keep to themselves. The Aqinas live near the water. Their lives revolve around the water, and they communicate with each other and every other form of aquatic life through the water.”
“How do they do that?” Chris asked. “Do they do it chemically or something, like ants?”
“I really don’t know how they do it,” Marissa admitted. “The Aqinas are a mystery to everyone but themselves, and since I’m Lycaon, I don’t imagine I’ll ever have the chance to find out about them. They’re the most private of the factions.”
“Didn’t any of your friends go to the Aqinas?” Chris asked.
Marissa shook her head. “Carmen went to the Felsite, Penelope Ann went to the Avitras, and Aria went to the Ursidreans. And I’m Lycaon.”
Chris cocked her head to one side. “You might live with them, but you aren’t really Lycaon, are you? You’re human. You’re a different species. You'll never be one of them—not completely.”
“I’m human,” Marissa replied, “but I’m as Lycaon as any of the others. I’m Caleb’s mate, and he’s Alpha of the faction. I couldn’t stay with them if I wasn’t a member of the pack.”
Chris started back. “Pack! What pack?”
“The Lycaon live in packs,” Marissa replied. “That’s one thing that distinguishes them from the other factions. They migrate through the woods in temporary dwellings and dens, but the pack structure takes precedence over everything else.” She gazed into the distance. “I suppose that’s what attracted me to them in the first place.”
“Not Caleb?” Chris asked.
Marissa chuckled. “That too.”
Chris shot a sidelong glance at the tall leader. His dark hair spread back from his forehead in smooth ripples to his sharp pointed ears, and his eyes flashed over his surroundings with practiced acuity. He knew and understood every detail of his territory. He strode among his people issuing orders in a low voice. The others hurried to obey him, and the column functioned at its best from his direction.
Then Chris noticed what they were d
oing. The Lycaon collected poles from the woods and laid them out near the fallen women. They constructed litters to carry them. Caleb ordered his people to carry out Marissa’s suggestion. They planned to carry the women who collapsed. Marissa directed Caleb from behind the scenes, and he used his authority to do as she told him.
Chris took a closer look at Marissa. She kept a keen eye on everything her people did, especially Caleb. “It must have been hard for you to lose everything the way you did. You lost your life back on Earth and had to start all over again here.”
“It wasn’t so hard,” Marissa replied. “I didn’t have much back on Earth to lose, and the pack gave me everything I ever wanted. I have a family. I have a loving mate. I have a place in the world now. I never had that before.”
“But you’re a different species from them,” Chris pointed out. “You might never be able to have children with Caleb.”
“Yes, I can,” Marissa told her. “Aria has twin children with her Ursidrean mate and another set of twins on the way, and Penelope Ann is pregnant, too. We’re close enough to them biologically to reproduce.”
Chris grimaced and turned away. “I could never do it with an alien. I would puke.”
Marissa snorted. “You’re not so different from me. You’ve lost everything you ever had on Earth, too. In fact, I’ll bet you lost a lot more than I did. When you’ve been here a while, you’ll see the Angondrans as human, just like we do. Then maybe you won’t puke when one of them wants to mate with you.”
The Lycaons shouldered their litters and carried the crash survivors into the gathering evening gloom. Chris and Marissa and the other women who could still walk followed behind. Turk and Caleb came last.
The column traced its way through miles of trackless forests. Two ghostly moons sailed through the heavens, but Chris barely caught a glimpse of them through the treetops. The darker the night, the more comfortable the Lycaon warriors became. They stiffened on their guard when they broke cover and entered open places in the forest. They only relaxed again when the trees closed around them.
Hours into the night, clouds covered the moons and heavy rain set in, but they never slackened their pace. Marissa kept up with them, and Chris steeled herself to match their stride, too. She couldn’t let her circumstances defeat he.
All night they trekked until the rain slackened and cleared. The moons set, and morning light set the treetops on fire. The forest burst into life, with the noisy calls of animals echoing through the woods. Clouds of steam rose from the forest floor and evaporated into the sky.
One by one, the human women from the crash site dropped to the ground, unable to go on. And one by one, the Lycaon picked them up and carried them forward. In the end, only Chris and Marissa remained on their feet, but when dawn broke, Chris’ knees wobbled under her. She couldn’t go much farther, but she refused to ask Marissa how far they had to go before they would reach their destination.
Marissa showed no signs of flagging. Chris gritted her teeth and walked on. As long as Marissa kept going, she would stay on her feet, too. Then, without warning, the Lycaon at the front of the column set down their litters and sat down on the ground. Chris stopped, too, but before she could ask any questions, she saw it.
Across a small clearing, an untidy pile of sticks and leaves rose from the ground under an enormous tree. Poles stretched down to the ground from the tree’s lower branches, and the sticks and leaves lay in bundles against these poles. A Lycaon woman squatted in front of it, and two little children huddled at her feet.
Bright red hair ran back from her face and down her neck. The children looked just like her, with the same red hair and the same square cut to their facial features. They stared at Chris and inched closer to the woman.
A Lycaon left his litter and approached them. He squatted next to the woman and ruffled one of the children's hair. Then he surveyed the new arrivals as if seeing them for the first time.
Some of the warriors left the column and strode into the trees. Other piles of debris scattered through the forest. The warriors disappeared into them. These must be the temporary dwellings Marissa told Chris about. The closer she looked, the more dwellings she noticed. A whole village of them spread through the forest.
Chris stopped at the edge of the clearing. Lycaon of every age and color came out of their dwellings and stared at the women on the litters. Chris flushed bright red. Would these aliens really take them in and care for them? She had only the word of a woman she just met that they would.
Turk and Caleb strode past Chris and Marissa into the clearing. Caleb called to his people, and one by one, they took custody of the women. One by one, they led the new arrivals away to their dwellings. In a few cases, they picked them up and carried them away.
Chris watched them disappear into their make-shift shelters until only she and Marissa remained in the clearing with the last of the warriors. She couldn’t exactly call these women her friends, but they'd been kidnapped together and crashed together. Now they were vanishing before her eyes, just like Sasha. No sooner did someone come into her life than they passed out of it without a word of warning.
Chris’s gaze met Marissa’s frank eyes, but she didn’t have the courage to ask the question that plagued her mind. Marissa smiled at her. “You’re going with Turk. He’ll give you something to eat and a warm bed. The world will look a lot brighter in the morning.”
Chris glanced across the clearing. Turk stood next to Caleb near the now-empty litters. He studied her from afar with his sharp eyes. Chris snorted. “I’m not going anywhere with him.”
Marissa started back. “Why not? He won’t hurt you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried about him hurting me,” Chris shot back. “I’d smash his head in if he tried. But I’m not going anywhere near him, not after the way he attacked me last night. I wouldn’t go within a hundred miles of him.”
Marissa stared at her. “You’re the one who attacked him, remember? All he did was hold you still until you calmed down.”
Chris turned away. “Find another place for me. I don’t care where, but I’m not going with him.”
“You can’t be serious,” Marissa exclaimed.
Chris rounded on her. “You can’t expect a single woman to stay with a single man. He could do anything he wanted, and I would have to defend myself anyway I could. Even these crazy people must have some laws about that.”
Marissa laughed. “So that’s what you’re worried about? Well, you don’t have to worry. He lives with his mother and two sisters and his sister’s two children. You won’t be alone with him, and his mother will make sure you’re comfortable and you have everything you need. Does that satisfy you?”
Chris turned away again. Turk stood in the same spot. His ears twitched toward her. He heard every word she said. “Forget it. I’m not going with him.”
Marissa sighed. “Then you better come with me. It’s the only other place in the village. If you don’t want to come with me, you can sleep right here on the ground if you’d rather.” She walked away into the trees.
Chris couldn’t see any dwelling in that direction, but no one else remained in the clearing but Turk and Caleb. Caleb murmured something to Turk and strode after Marissa, leaving only Turk staring at her.
Chris stared back at him, and their eyes sparked in the space between them. Why couldn’t she accept basic hospitality from these people? They didn’t kidnap her to be sold into slavery. They brought her to safety when she had no prospects at all, and now the Lycaon took her into their homes to give her shelter. What more could she ask for?
But it wasn’t the Lycaon she couldn’t accept. Not even their great size and strange features could make her throw their hospitality back in their faces like that. It was him—Turk. She couldn’t accept it from him, not even if it came from his mother and his sisters and his sister’s children. He caused a reaction in her she couldn’t handle. She couldn’t go ho
me with him, no matter how much she needed shelter. She would rather sleep on the ground.
He put his arms around her and held her against his body. He imprinted his essence on her skin, and even now, more than twelve hours later, she couldn’t shake it off. He was still in contact with her now, even when he stood across the clearing and stared at her, and she couldn’t stand it.
She stared at him as long as she could, but he had all the advantage. This was his territory, his home village. She was the stranger here, the outsider, the alien from another planet. She spun on her heel and hurried after Marissa.
Marissa was long gone, but Chris caught sight of Caleb and followed him to another dwelling tucked far back into the trees. She never could have found it without following him. He didn’t go inside, though. He went around behind it and disappeared still farther back into the dense forest. Chris ducked into the entrance with a sigh of relief.
Chapter 4
A hole in the roof let a shaft of light into one round room inside the dwelling. Dust filled the beam of light and obscured the surroundings. Only a shadow on the far side of the room showed Chris where Marissa was. She sat next to a smoldering fire in a pit, and Chris barely recognized her.
She wore a light top of pale tanned animal skin hanging off one shoulder, and another wrap of animal skin around her waist, but her legs and arms shone bare and bright in the light streaming down from overhead. Her shoulders hung rounded and relaxed from her body, instead of standing square and sharp the way they did when Chris met her at the crash site.
She smiled at Chris. “So you decided to come after all. I wondered if you would, or if you would settle down in the clearing.” She laughed to herself. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you did.”
Chris blushed and dropped her eyes. “You fit right in here. I didn’t think you could. I thought you’d be too different from those... those people.”
Marissa chuckled. She picked up an earthenware pot and set it on the glowing coals. She dropped a handful of dried herbs into the water and stirred them with her forefinger. “It took me a while to relax here. It took me almost six months before I would take off the clothes I was wearing when the Romarie abducted us. I wouldn’t wear these skins. I thought I wouldn’t be human anymore if I changed my clothes.”
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