Bihter looked spooked.
I caught Ashleigh by the arm when she barged past me to march after Ohx. ‘Both of you, go wait on the ship with the others.’ When they protested, I snapped my fingers and pointed towards it. ‘Go.’ My attention turned to Venomous and Beowyn. ‘Will you stay?’
‘Until you bid us leave,’ the Great Alpha replied.
Not prepared to wait around, I pushed through the Horde, struggling to hold my own in their midst. I panted. They radiated heat and smelt musky. Their laboured breathing seemed a single heartbeat, their footsteps soft crunches on the fresh snowfall.
I shoved past the foremost rank and file, then stumbled to a halt, sick to my stomach.
Bhyr looked short.
Gnarled Aztekan females towered over him. The victims from the underground Horde camp. There was nothing graceful about the emaciated segments of their eight limbs, coloured a lacklustre blue, nor a feral beauty to the narrow wedges of their upper trunks and lower abdomens. A bud of knotted flesh sat between their thighs where a sex would be.
Somehow, they’d escaped and then they’d come to the battleground, of all places. Why? If I’d gotten free, I would have run as far and fast as possible. Maybe the noise drew them? Maybe they didn’t know better and returned to the master they understood.
Hearing my arrival, Bhyr turned. He didn’t appear happy. He’d wanted me to stay behind, to stay safe. His tortured gaze met mine, and I almost wish I had stayed away. A plea for understanding lurked within his eyes. He no longer looked like a demonic barbarian slaughtering his way across a blood-soaked battlefield. He looked like a person teetering the brink, clinging to sanity with his strength of will alone.
I ached to ameliorate his pain, but he wouldn’t thank me for it. I wouldn’t have wanted him to interfere. I wouldn’t have wanted him to, but it didn’t mean I mightn’t have needed him to. A cold wind rushed between us. The air was ice in my lungs. ‘You can’t imprison them anymore.’
His eyes spoke of danger.
‘No matter the reason. It’s not right.’
I wouldn’t stay if he did.
A pained look twisted his features as he realised this was my line in the sand.
Returning his attention to the looming Aztekan females, Bhyr signalled a withdraw.
The Horde retreated in a soundless wave. They hemmed us, the defeated and the females in a sickle of bodies, a flooded damn near bursting. One word, one signal, and they’d drown the females in a killing rage.
‘Go,’ Bhyr told them, voice carrying. ‘Be free.’
Scarred and regal, the largest Aztekan female lumbered forward. Her head was narrow and smooth like eggshell and the skin on her wide face was stretched thin, a smear of waxen flesh over sharp bone. Horn protuberances capped her shoulders and elbows. Muscles like steel cables roped her forearms and spindle legs, and her digitigrade feet were far more pronounced than her male equivalent. The hindwings on her back were translucent but diamond hard, forewings opaque and veined.
The whistle they made as they flexed made the fine hairs on my neck stand on end.
Ovoid eyes glinted as they watched us, devoid of warmth.
A lipless mouth slashing her lower jaw parted. ‘I am queen. I nest.’ Her gaze latched onto Bhyr. ‘I claim the strongest.’
48
Indira
‘No.’
‘My sisters take the next strongest,’ the queen said.
The Horde recoiled.
She was their nightmare, a boogeyman come a calling.
‘No, I said again because she wasn’t listening.
‘Next strongest?’ a voice said, pissed. Cristina shoved forward. ‘She means Bihter. Over my dead body.’
‘Ignore us.’ Ashleigh appeared and flashed me a sheepish look.
‘It has a posse,’ Cristina said in her tough girl voice. ‘We need to back Indira up.’
‘Shhh.’ Ashleigh dragged Cristina towards where Venomous and Beowyn witnessed the proceedings.
The queen trilled and rolled her hips. Folds of malleable flesh between her legs bloomed. The vivid purple edges of her sex secreted stringy fluid and unfurled with a moist sound of parting that reminded me of sweaty skin.
Honestly, I didn’t know what I looked at, except it was her vagina, and it stank.
A star-shaped vulva gleamed moonstone white. Blue-green feelers ringed and writhed around a black hole dripping mucus.
‘On second thought,’ Cristina said. ‘I’m going to sit this one out. But you set her straight, Indie.’
‘What is happening?’ I asked no one in particular.
Bhyr shuddered. ‘She presents to prove she is fertile. That she is a better choice.’
My face got hot.
I wasn’t going to flash my pussy in return. I suppose she won the round, even if the object of her affections looked as if he’d be ill if she kept it up.
Drawing myself up tall, I glared. ‘Bhyr is mine.’ I stepped forward, then went as far as to slide in front of him, between him and the looming female. His pride be damned. It was my mistake biting him in the ass, so I’d take the brunt of the danger. ‘Take one of the defeated.’ My voice shook. ‘Take one and go.’
The Aztekan queen flinched. Her vagina snapped shut. She lowered her head until it hung below the acreage that was her spiked shoulders.
She stared at me.
Bhyr eased close to my back, so not an inch of me wasn’t pressed against him.
The queen shifted forward. Buzzed. Rocked back. ‘The strong claim the strongest.’
I stood firm.
‘Indira.’ Bhyr sounded strained. He didn’t want me standing in front of him.
Too bad.
‘Can she understand me?’
He choked a desperate laugh. ‘She has no receiver, but your message is clear.’ His chest heaved against my shoulder blades, almost knocking me over. ‘Get behind me.’
‘No. Translate.’ I looked the female in the eye. ‘You can’t have him.’ My voice hardened. ‘I understand you need to meet your breeding drive. You came here believing you deserve something, and maybe you do, but not him. Bhyr is mine. Choose someone else.’ I glanced at Cristina and Ashleigh out of the corner of my eye. ‘Choose from the males over there.’ I pointed at the remaining Horde who had refused to call Bhyr their leader. They didn’t want his protection? Fine. They wouldn’t get it. ‘They are not mated.’ It was cruel to use them to placate the last Aztekan females, but life was hard, they’d chosen to make it harder, and no one but them should suffer the consequences.
A horrified protest rose from the exiles, swiftly quelled by the Horde.
The queen inspected the offering. She hummed a flat note. Shivered and stretched. ‘Only the strongest.’ A swathe on her upper abdomen flashed orange in a threat display.
Bhyr sucked in a breath. ‘Indira, beware.’
You can’t back down. ‘No.’
The orange flashed brighter. ‘Give the strongest.’
‘Choose from the defeated.’
Bhyr hesitated and I shoved him. ‘Don’t. Tell her no.’ I had to wait her out.
Negotiations were won by the party who held their ground, and I would not let him cave out of his need to protect me. I would not be moved.
I am the wolf.
Stains spread across her neck and face, vivid, incandescent. ‘Give the male.’
‘No.’
She screeched. ‘Give.’
‘I’m saying no!’
She swatted me.
The blow came so fast, so sudden, I didn’t realise I was on the ground until I was.
Someone screamed.
Bhyr crouched over me and made a nightmarish noise.
The queen grabbed him in her pincers and hopped back. Her crinkled wings unfurled to a span fifteen foot in length.
They buzzed as they fluttered, sounding like the propellers of a drone.
Snow swept into a tornado around her.
Get the hell up.
; Anger morphed into a primal drive to protect what was mine. I was up. I bounded forward, and as she took off, I landed on her bony back. Her trajectory skewed, upset by my moving weight. We sank. She galloped along the ground, powered through, and then took us up. We climbed, gaining altitude at tremendous speed, the ground growing distant.
Too high, too high.
I hooked an arm around the twig of her neck.
The jagged line of the horizon flipped as she tried to shake me. I hung on for dear life. I wrapped my legs around the stalk of her waist, and then dragged my antler blade across the see-through chitin emerging from the hump between her shoulders.
She reared and shrieked, reaching for the gaping hole I hacked at with my knife.
We dropped like stones.
Air blurred my vision and buffeted my limbs. We twisted and twirled like skydivers.
You better believe I was screaming.
Blinding light cut through the sky. We slowed, the pressure of the air lessening.
The queen snapped out the branches of her wings. She righted, gliding the last twenty feet to the ice with her stolen prize clutched to her breast.
Head full of terror, I strangled her neck to stay seated.
We met the ground.
Snow exploded outwards, and the violent shock of it almost killed me.
She cushioned the brunt of my landing, but god, Bhyr was under her, and then we were tumbling, and I was being dragged along the shattering ice, its edges broken glass. Her thorny exoskeleton punctured and cut my skin. Pops. Snaps. An ice shard sliced into my side.
We slid to a stop.
I’m alive.
Breathless, a little dazed, but not dead.
Then agony exploded from my lower leg.
Don’t look, don’t look.
My pain tolerance was higher nowadays, and I’d fallen from greater heights. The leg was attached. That was good. I yanked free the ice shard on a raw gasp of pain then tossed it.
My side bled, but the wound wasn’t more than an inch deep. I applied pressure until the flow slowed. It’s fine, I told myself and rolled off the queen’s mangled body. I hit the ground, barked when my leg injury flared, and then lifted my head to catch my bearings.
My antler knife had fused to my swollen fist. I couldn’t let it go if I tried. The wrist on my other arm looked unbroken but deformed, double its normal size. It must’ve jarred while wedged under the queen’s jawbone. My scalp was bloody from where some of my hair ripped out, and it stung, but was all surface damage.
My nose dripped red, but whatever.
The layers of pain blended into a single, overwhelming note I could drown out with sheer stubbornness.
‘Bhyr?’ I croaked. ‘Bhyr!’
He lay limp beneath the queen, but twitched at the sound of my cries. She kept him pinned, her hips pressing his.
Remembering why that was bad, I wedged my hand between their pelvises and jammed my broken knife into the flowering vagina immobilising my petrified mate.
I rotated my wrist and shoved deeper.
Fluid drenched my fist.
‘Get off!’ I shouted.
The queen wailed and flung herself backwards.
Lunging onto a knee, I chased after her. My right step held my weight, but as I shifted onto my left foot, my whole leg folded. White-hot pain set me on fire. So the leg was broken.
The queen swiped her razored appendage at my neck, but I was already going down.
Fighting through his paralysis, Bhyr rocked onto his front. He crawled after us, legs dragging behind. ‘Indira!’
The queen swung for me.
‘Give,’ she shrilled.
‘No!’ I popped onto my knees and leaned forward. I absorbed a weaker smack from the flat of her arm instead of the lethal slice from her pincer.
My ribs started aching.
Her hench size gave her immense strength, but she wasn’t nimble. Her wings were dead weight. The right hindbranch was broken in two places. Hollow bones showed through the skin of the supporting pinion, and the thin membrane of the left forewing was shredded.
I hope those fuckers sting.
Their loss made her unbalanced, uncoordinated. She tried for me again, this time with her prehensile limb.
I rolled my shoulder.
‘Die.’ The edge of her swing clubbed my chest.
So that’s how it felt to be struck by a battering ram. My arm from the shoulder downward went limp, and there were fireworks behind my eyes.
I fell flat on my back, blinking away the floaters.
Her muscular foot pad hiked up to stomp my head. I flailed aside. It landed next to my ear, shattering the ice layer beneath us to the bedrock. ‘Die!’
The queen wasn’t a trained warrior, but the fight was so beyond me, it wasn’t a joke.
Run.
Heart crashing, I tried to lever myself upright. My chest constricted so sharply, for a moment, everything went black. A gasp escaped as a rattle and I dropped back.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
My swollen fist hadn’t dropped my knife. The arm still worked. Use it. I slashed the thick-skinned hock below her backward knee joint.
The queen stumbled.
Bhyr appeared. Balanced on shaking legs, he slid his arms under me. He scooped me to his chest and spun to take the blow meant to finish me off.
The crunch of his back armour and his full body flinch shuddered my frame.
My fault, my fault.
He collapsed, on his knees. ‘Can you run?’
I wheezed, shook my head, eyes dripping tears.
‘Hold on.’ I felt his muscles bunch as he gathered his strength. ‘Do not let g–’ A pincer clamped around his neck and locked under his jaw.
Shrieking, I stabbed it with the last of my strength.
The pincer hefted him, and me with him, into the air then slammed us down.
Bhyr roared, deep, primal.
Flesh sizzled.
The queen wailed and slammed us again.
Again.
‘Die.’ The collisions rattled my bones, and on the third slam, I coughed. A glut of dark blood drenched my chin.
Bhyr hadn’t moved since the second impact.
I was afraid to look past his torso, in case his head was no longer attached.
Heartbroken, I waited for the final blow.
Taloned hands with shimmering olive scales touched me.
Hands with downy fur the colour of aged gold, and hands with nacreous blue chitin attached themselves to some broken part of me and shifted me onto the ground.
Tears blurred my sight.
I protested by jiggling my right foot. It was the sole part of me that didn’t ache. Bhyr and I shouldn’t die separated.
A handsome alien face with freaky eyes and a feathered crest standing erect on his skull popped into view.
‘Still with us?’ His voice was piercing trills and sonorous croaks. My translation device worked despite my head feeling twice its normal size. I understood him fine. ‘You stay alive.’
My eyes followed him.
Even that hurt.
‘Where is it? I know I put it in here.’ Feather Head tossed items from a tactical pack. He unearthed a quartz wand embedded with gems. He tapped it to my neck.
A wash of cold dulled the roaring pain swallowing me whole into a distant throb.
Feather Head was my new favourite person.
‘That feels amazing.’ My mangled lips spoke English. I heard, ‘Ahteelsaashhing.’
‘Don’t worry, I gave you the expensive drugs. Liberated from the Zozon the moontide before last, so it’s fresh, and they have strict harvesting laws. No harm came to the donors, on my honour.’ Feather Head flashed vampire teeth. His words sounded disingenuous all of a sudden. ‘You’re fearless, female. That was the best fight I’ve seen since an eggling. But you’ve had your tail yanked hard.’
Giving him big eyes, I nodded, rather, my head kind of flopped to the side.
He patt
ed my dislocated shoulder and warbled when I whimpered. ‘You won. That’s all anyone will remember.’ He started plucking at my hair.
Is he grooming me?
‘Don’t worry about my fee. I’ll profit from this story for solars. News about humans is the hottest tradable commodity this side of the ‘verse.’
‘She lives?’ a voice asked.
My heart soared.
‘Move.’ Bhyr shoved Feather Head aside. The gouging wounds to his throat and face scarred over before my eyes. ‘Indira?’ He sounded broken.
Sliding my body onto his lap, he cradled my head.
This is so nice.
I couldn’t feel my body, though, and I cried a little.
‘Speak.’
‘Love you.’ It escaped less garbled.
‘Good.’
Darkness hit me like a freight train.
49
Indira
I was conscious. Weak and dizzy, but awake.
Wailing.
‘Cris….’ I cleared my throat. ‘Cristina?’
The caterwauling ended. A warm palm settled on my forehead. ‘Yeah?’
‘For the last time, you cannot sing.’
A gravid pause.
‘I’m so happy you’re alive.’
I peeled open my eyelids. ‘Me, too.’ I struggled onto my elbows and peered around.
The room I lay in was unfamiliar and uncomfortably warm. Roundish. Glowing vines ran along creases in the ceiling. There was a big entrance, but the space between it looked semi-solid, a grey mist veiling us from the corridor.
The air smelt alien.
My breathing increased.
‘Hey now.’ Cristina rubbed soothing circles on my back. ‘Breathe. We’re in the medical ward onboard the Rä spaceship.’
I snapped upright. ‘He did it again. I will murder his face.’
‘No, no.’ She laughed. ‘We’re on Vøtkyr. The First has been here every moment he isn’t off piecing things back together. He brought you here because Rä healing is gentler than Aztekan. It was also closer. You were a mess.’ She eyed me up and down. ‘How much do you remember?’
Relief sapped me of energy and my back bowed. ‘All of it.’
Bhyr Page 43