by Cara Bristol
She looked so adorable cuddled up in the hide, her yellow hair curling around her face, clutching the bowl in her two tiny hands. But for Armax and Yorgav, I would have passed her over, and that would have been terrible. I owed them a debt of gratitude. Curses on Armax for taking the dispute to the next level and forcing me to enforce the law. Our survival depended on order, on us working together. Fighting among ourselves would destroy us faster than any freezing temperature ever could. Murder was the ultimate taboo. Aggression ran high, and men fought, but in my lifetime there hadn’t been a homicide.
“Lucky guess,” she said. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
“Soon.” Darq signaled he wanted to speak to me alone. “I’ll be right back.”
I followed my brother deeper into the tunnel where our voices wouldn’t be overheard.
“You seem very pleased with your female,” he said.
“I am.”
“She is…different from what I expected. Her hair and eyes are most unusual. Very alien.”
“Her features are starting to grow on me.”
“Did the others look like her?” He waved his hands. “The yellow…the eyes…”
I shrugged. “I arrived too late to see them. The others had been chosen. Enoki was displeased with me, but I’m happy it worked out the way it did. I don’t want anyone making her feel bad for her appearance.” I narrowed my eyes. “Including you.” Including myself. I felt ashamed of my initial disappointment.
“I would never do that.”
“Good.”
“While you were gone, a council messenger came to the camp,” Darq said. “The Terrans intend to set up a communication center at the meeting place so our two peoples can better conduct business. They have something called a ’net. It allows you to talk over long distances. In exchange for more ore, they will expedite the shipment of more females.”
Armax and Yorgav, a communications center, more females. I’d only been gone for six hours. “Much happened in my absence.” Surprising Enoki hadn’t mentioned it, but then he’d been annoyed with me. For good reason. I shouldn’t have kept my mate waiting.
“I’m considering entering the lottery.”
“That’s an excellent idea.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “I wish you to be as fortunate as I am.”
“But…” He fidgeted.
“You don’t like the Terrans’ appearance.” Anger in defense of Starr kindled in the pit of my stomach.
“That’s not it at all. Forget I said anything. I’m sure it’s just jealousy. You should go back to your female.” Darq turned to leave.
“Hold it.” I barred his path. “What do you mean, jealousy?”
“It’s nothing. A rumor.”
“Now I need to know.”
He sighed. “The messenger told me he’d heard gossip in another camp that the females sent were problems.”
“Problems? What does that mean?”
“That they had broken Terran laws and were given the choice of being warded or coming here.”
“That’s ridiculous! If that were true, I would have heard.” As clan chief, I rotated on a council seat. Enoki would have told me.
Unless Enoki didn’t know. The females had just arrived.
Why had they left their planet to fly across the galaxy to become mates of men they’d never met? To leave their advanced, warm planet for a challenging existence on a frozen alien one?
Starr couldn’t have done anything wrong. I didn’t know her well, but my gut voted for innocence. We hadn’t gotten off to a great start, but since then I’d sensed a bond growing between us. The rumor couldn’t be true.
But I would ask her about it to prove to Darq and anyone else that it was false.
* * * *
Starr peered up as I entered the main room. Relief flashed in her eyes, and if I wasn’t mistaken, welcome. She was glad to see me. A pleasurable warmth filled my chest along with the conviction Darq was wrong. I put the rumor out of my head to enjoy her smile. Her empty bowl rested on the floor.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
Yes, because the rumor was baseless. Men jealous at not winning a female tried to spoil it for the rest. “Just fine. Are you still hungry? Would you like more to eat?” I asked.
“I shouldn’t, but…yes. It was delicious.”
“Why shouldn’t you?” I refilled her bowl and got one for myself. I settled next to her on the kel. We would sleep here tonight. The other chambers were heated by small fires, but they weren’t this warm. Once she acclimated to our winter, we could move where we would have more privacy.
She lifted a shoulder. “I shouldn’t eat so much. Where is your brother? Will he be joining us?”
Not if he knew what was good for him. “His chamber is a bit deeper in the cave. He has retired there.”
“I’m glad,” she said, and then clapped a hand over her mouth. “That didn’t come out the way I had intended. He did all of this.” She waved her hands at the stew pot, the pile of kel. “He seemed nice…I should shut up now.”
I chuckled. “I know what you meant.” If Darq hadn’t made himself scarce, I would have suggested it. I desired to be alone with her. That she wanted the same was a good sign.
I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I was sitting here on my furs with my mate! Starr was everything I’d longed for. There was so much I needed to say to her—yet the words fell away.
Flames snapped and crackled, throwing shadows of two figures on the wall. For so long, there’d only been one. Now there were two. I had my brother, and I was surrounded by others in my camp, but their company couldn’t compare. My dream had come true, and I could think of nothing to say? Like a fool, I shoveled stew into my mouth as silence swelled.
She glanced around the cave. “This is cozy. Much warmer than I thought it would be.”
“Yes!” I agreed. “It is warm.”
“If not for you, I would have died out there.”
“I wouldn’t have let that happen.”
“You said most other Dakon do not live in caves. What do they live in?”
“Stone huts.”
“Like the meeting place?”
“Yes, like that. Only smaller. And huts are shared because digging stone is hard work and the growing season is so short.”
“Are the different clans spaced very far apart?”
“One to four tripta from one to the next.”
Her face fell. “Pretty far, then.”
“Not so far,” I corrected her. “We traveled two tripta to get here.”
Her shoulders slumped.
“That’s a concern for you? Why?”
“My friends are at other camps. I had hoped to visit them sometime.”
“I will see that you visit them.” Anything to ensure her happiness. “What are their names? Do you know who they were paired with?”
Her eyes brightened. “Andrea and Tessa. Andrea went with a man named Groman, and Tessa was chosen by Loka.”
“I’m familiar with both of them. Their camps are not that far. Loka’s is closest to the meeting place. We’ll go for a visit soon.”
“Thank you!” Her eyes glowed, and my chest swelled with pleasure at the way she was looking at me. Like I’d done something special.
“I’m a clan chief.” I wasn’t boasting but minimizing. “It’s a small matter.” My heart hammered in my chest as I reached over and covered her hand, warm now but no less small and delicate. When she did not pull away, the thudding in my chest increased.
“It’s not a small matter to me,” she said softly. She raised herself up onto her knees and then leaned in very close to me and brushed her lips against my mouth. I widened my eyes as the unfamiliar touch reverberated through my body.
She sat down again, as calm and still as could be, while sensations and emotions careened inside me.
“How many people are in your clan?” she asked.
“Just over two hundred.”
“Are the other clans the
same size?”
“A few are smaller, some are larger, perhaps five hundred or so.”
“And there are how many clans?”
“Fifteen.”
“That can’t be all the people on your planet?”
“You know about the asteroid?”
She nodded.
“It killed millions, and the winter that followed killed millions more. And animals. Many species are now extinct. The clans are the descendants of the survivors who found each other and banded together. It is possible descendants of other survivors live on the far side of Dakon, but we have no way of finding out. It is too far to travel by foot. The strike flattened every structure to rubble, caused fires that burned for decades, and released so much dust and smoke into the air it caused a climate change.
“At first, winter had no end and our people fought to survive. Now we have three months of sunny weather we call the growing season, and we gain about one day per year. During the growing season, we send explorers to search for other people, but time and distance limit how far they can go. They have to be back before winter comes again.
“We never traveled among the stars like your people, but we weren’t always this primitive. We had big cities and vehicles that flew through the air. We lost all that.”
“You couldn’t rebuild?”
“With what? We lost infrastructure, tools, and the people with the knowledge. You traveled here on a spaceship, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“Explain how you build a spaceship.”
“Robots do that in factories.”
“The factory and the robots have been demolished.”
“You build more robots.”
“The parts and machinery to build robots have been destroyed. And where are the instructions to build the parts?”
“In databases.”
“Which have been wiped out.”
“Oh.”
“The asteroid strike transported us to an elemental, basic existence. We were forced to start over.” I smoothed my hand over one of the hides. “Fortunately, the kel survived. They provide us with food, clothes, and tools. We use the skin, the meat, the antlers, the bones. No part of the animal is wasted. Without them, none of us would have survived.”
“You have illuvian ore.”
“Which we use.” I paused. “Remember the meeting place? The stone walls…”
She widened her eyes. “You build your structures out of it? But it’s useful for so much more…transmitters, energy cells, it’s a natural electromagnetic conductor…”
“We don’t have the knowledge to use it in that manner. Or, if we ever did, it was lost when the asteroid hit. But we found another good use for the ore.”
“What?” she asked, but then realization dawned and she flushed.
“Yes, that.” Ore became the currency that we used to buy females.
I sought her gaze. “Why did you come, Starr? Why did you fly across the galaxy to a planet as primitive as this when you had plenty of potential mates on your planet?”
Chapter Seven
Starr
I’d been expecting the question, but not this soon, so I had no answer prepared. In the depths of Torg’s fierce, piercing gaze, vulnerability and earnestness glinted. He deserved the truth, but the truth would hurt him and endanger my safety, and I couldn’t do that, miring me in another dilemma not of my design. I was falling for this alien, tumbling hard and fast. Huddled under animal hides in a cave on an alien planet cursed by an ice age, I’d never felt more treasured or protected. Torg had carried me through the snow, seen to my comfort, tended to my needs, and made me the center of his life in a few short hours.
Dakonians weren’t the primitive people I’d expected but intelligent beings who’d suffered a huge setback in their technological evolution.
His sincerity, his honesty, his hotness made me wish I had come for romantic adventure and a chance for love, but unfinished legal business awaited me. Even if I’d intended to stay, the decision wasn’t mine. When the appeal came through, I would be summoned for retrial.
I forced myself to meet his gaze. “Escape.” My answer fell short of a half-truth.
Heavy brows came together in a frown. “Escape from what?”
“I learned some things about certain people so I left.”
“They were bad people?”
Bad didn’t begin to describe the Carmichael organization. I eyed my wet clothing. Speaking about my former life even in carefully worded terms spurred an urge to grab my stuff and flee. “The worst.”
“Darq heard a rumor that the females sent here had violated your planet’s laws. Is that true?”
My stomach dropped to the cave floor. For a planet without electronic communication capability, gossip had spread fast. After I’d decided to be as honest with Torg as I could, he’d confronted me with this. Blood roared in my ears at the flood of possible consequences. Torg had ordered the banishment of a man for attempted murder. A court of law had convicted me.
If Torg exiled me, I would die in the wilderness. If, by some good fortune, I stumbled upon another clan willing to shelter me before sending my ass to Terra, I’d still be doomed. It was too soon to go home. If I returned before my appeal reversed my conviction, I’d end up in prison.
I had to give Torg an answer. Outright denial would be foolish. The rumor was out there and would be confirmed by the other women who had far less to hide than I. Would they gossip about me? Whisper to their mates about the murderer among them?
If gossip did spread, confession now would enable me to explain on my terms. He might believe me. A rigged jury and a gullible public hadn’t, but Torg might. Maybe. But if Torg never found out, it would be stupid to risk banishment. To risk or not to risk, that was the question.
In hindsight, we women had been too open about our crimes, laughing about them—or at least the others had. I hadn’t. Mine was too serious. However, talking had been inevitable. As we’d gotten to know each other, friendships had formed, and we’d let our guards down. What else would you do on a three-month journey with strangers other than share the tie that united you? Still, I should have lied about my conviction, fabricated a lesser crime.
How would I tiptoe through this potentially explosive situation?
“I heard that might be the case with some,” I replied, controlling my tone and body language. My employment with the Carmichael organization had taught me to be a good liar. “But their crimes weren’t serious.”
His brows drew together. “But you left to escape bad people?”
Circling back to a question already asked was a common interrogation technique. I’d been “interviewed” enough to know. Torg didn’t believe me. Or maybe he did and paranoia was taking hold.
“I worked for them.” I skated the edge of the truth. First rule of telling a believable lie: stick as close to the facts as you could. “I needed a clean break to start over.”
“I am happy to be your fresh start. Are you finished with your meal?”
The bowl rested in my hands, still half-full with my second helping. I’d lost my appetite. “Yes. Thank you.”
He set the bowls aside. The fire had burned down to embers, and he tossed several logs on the coals. They ignited immediately. With a long stick, burnt at one end, he adjusted them. Fire seemed to need a lot of tending, unlike solar-powered heating. When the burning logs were positioned to his satisfaction, he rocked onto his haunches and rubbed one of his horns.
Were they bone? Cartilage? What other alien features might he have? Did he have a vestigial tail under his clothing? Was any part of his skin scaled?
He expelled his breath. “That thing you did—”
“Your horns—” I said at the same time.
We chuckled self-consciously, a moment of humor uniting us in ways I hadn’t anticipated. Damn, I liked this alien. “What thing?” I asked.
“With your mouth.”
Had I been making faces? I racked my brain for wh
at I could have done with my mouth.
He pointed to his lips. “When I offered to find your friends…you brushed your mouth to mine. Is that how Terrans say thank you?”
“Sometimes.” I shrugged. “Depends on the people involved and the situation. We have other ways, too.”
“I rather liked that particular way.” His husky voice drew my attention to his full lips before I lifted my gaze. Firelight flickered on his face, and a blush seeped over chiseled cheekbones. Good gods, he was handsome. “What do you call it?” he asked.
“Call it?”
“Mouth brushing. Is there a name for it?”
The translation should have popped into my head but I drew a blank. “You don’t have a word for kiss?” I reverted to a Terran Universal word.
“Dakonians don’t kiss,” he replied.
“You’re kidding?”
He shook his head.
“But you liked it.”
He nodded slowly.
I leaned in until our breaths mingled. “Thank you for the dinner. And for keeping me safe out there.”
His nostrils flared. Hesitantly, I touched his chest. His heart pounded against my palm. I closed my eyes and pressed my lips to his, letting them linger for a moment. When I pulled away, he groaned. My own heart hammered with anticipation as heat lit within. How far did I dare to take this? What would he expect? There were so many reasons not to pursue this. But, with my future uncertain, why shouldn’t I grab a little comfort wherever I could find it? Selfish, but when I had tried to do the right thing, I’d ended up convicted of a crime. It could be years before I got off Dakon.
“I will have to find many reasons for you to thank me,” he said huskily.
I smiled. “We kiss for more reasons than to say thank you.”
“For what other reasons do you kiss?”
“Sometimes…just because.” I brushed my mouth against his again. On a hunch, I peeked at him. “You’re supposed to close your eyes when you kiss,” I murmured.
“Why?”
“Just because.”
This time when I kissed him, I parted my lips and touched the seam of his. He jerked as if startled, but he opened his mouth and our tongues met in a tentative exploration. He tasted decadent, exotic, all male. I was relieved to discover that his tongue wasn’t forked or anything, although the surface felt slightly rough, like a cat’s. His touch sent shivers up my spine. He pulled me against his chest and kissed me with fervor. My alien charmer caught on quickly.