by Ruby Dixon
BEK
The female—foolish, foolish female—goes limp in my arms. I scowl down at her, not understanding. Why is she running away? Vaza and I have done nothing unkind. I haul her small body against me, shielding her from the worst of the cold with my body heat. Is there something wrong with her that she would wish to leave so badly? I eye the blood in the snow and her small, filthy feet—now crusted with iced-over blood. She has torn the soles right off of them with her haste.
This one is a fighter. I feel grudging respect for her, even if she is unsuitable as a mate. Far better to have fighters in the group of new humans than the weepers. I hate it when they cry. Claire cried all the time when she was sharing my furs, and it made me feel awful. Like I was being cruel to her simply for disagreeing. I give this female an unhappy shake. “Why do you run away?” I ask. “You are not dressed for this—you will die.”
She doesn’t answer. Her head lolls in my arms, and for the first time since grabbing her, I realize how still she has gone, so very suddenly. Is she…dead? I am filled with a stark pang of loss that surprises me. I gently grab her delicate chin with my fingers and tilt her face toward mine. Her eyes are rolled back, a line of drool freezing over her cheek even as I watch. But she breathes. Something is wrong, then.
I cradle her against my chest and race back toward the ship. “We need your healer!” I bellow to Trakan’s cave-ship, hoping it will let him know. “Hurry!”
Vaza and Trakan both meet me in the entry hall of the cave-ship, and Trakan quickly shuts the door behind me. The other humans huddle against the wall with their thin blankets, looking terrified and upset. The pink one is crying again.
“What is it?” Trakan asks. “What happened?”
“She is unwell!” I hold the fragile, smelly female out to him. “She does not move. We must take her to your healer so she can be cured.”
Trakan looks at the female in my arms, and then at me, clearly confused. “I turned her collar on so she couldn’t escape.”
His words make no sense to me. “Why would a collar stop her from escaping?”
Trakan steps forward. I hold the female out to him, but he does not take her from my arms, simply points at the small band of silvery metal around her neck. “This one’s a troublemaker, so they gave her this to stop her from causing problems.”
I feel a sick twist in my gut. “What does it do?”
“Well, it sends enough electricity through her body that it stops her in her tracks. I’m guessing she’s small enough that it knocked her out.”
I do not know what ee-leck-tris-tee is, but the female does not look well. “It is…bad?”
“I guess? I’ve never worn a collar.” He does not look as if he cares, either. “I can imagine it hurts, and it’s not my favorite method to discipline, but you use the tools you’ve got.”
Wait…hurts?
He has hurt this female? This small, helpless female who does not weigh even a third of what he does? I growl low in my throat. “You hurt her?”
Trakan looks surprised at my anger. “It’s a shock collar. It’s not designed to feel good.”
I…do not understand this. I do not understand at all. I bare my teeth. Females are precious and meant to be protected, not abused. I look over to Vaza, a warning in my eyes. “Take her.”
He steps forward and pulls the female from my arms, cradling her against his chest.
I waste no time; I grab Trakan by the front of his leathers and haul him into the air. I pull him close so I can snarl my words into his face. “You will turn the collar off, now.”
“Whoa, Bek, calm down, buddy—”
“Now,” I say in a deadly voice. I am shaking with rage. He has hurt a female. Hurt her. All because she was afraid and tried to run. Did he truly think she would go far? I think of the slack look on her small, dirty face, the cold feeling of her thin arms. The blood crusted on her feet.
And this foolish one thought she was such a threat that he hurt her enough that her mind turned off. My own mind is about to go numb with fury. It takes everything I have to control myself.
I am sick that I considered this one a friend.
Trakan babbles on and on about how the collar was not his idea, but I am barely listening. I shake him. “Get it off her. Now.”
“You have to put me down first,” he cries.
I drop him and look over at the other females, who are clustered in a corner, cringing. “Who else wears a collar?”
“Just Elly,” the one called Chail tells me. “We’re okay.”
I grunt. This is starting to feel very ‘not okay’ to me. I cross my arms and wait, watching as Trakan moves to the small female’s side and pulls the collar off of her. He puts it in his pocket, but I hold my hand out for it.
Like a guilty child, he hunches his shoulders and hands it over to me. I had seen it on the female and thought it was nothing but decoration. Now I know better. I examine it and the delicate parts on the other side. I crush the entire thing in my hand, pleased when it makes a crunching sound, and I drop it to the ground. “Are there other things like this collar?” I ask Trakan coldly. “Tell me now.”
“Nothing else.”
I look over. “Chail?”
“Nothing else. He’s right.” There’s a bit more confidence in her voice. “Is Elly okay?”
“She needs the healer,” I say, and because Trakan is not moving, I glare at him. “Well?”
“Niri?” he asks, tugging on the front of his leathers. “Why?”
“To fix her feet.” I gesture at them. “She hurt them stepping outside.”
“That’s because she stepped on metal in a sub-zero temperature. Her skin froze to it.” Trakan shakes his head. “I doubt that—”
“I do not care what you doubt,” I tell him. “I want the healer to look at them.”
He sighs and rubs a hand down his face. “Kef it. Fine. You’re being psycho. I just want you to know that.”
I do not know what that is, and I do not care. All I know is that I asked for these females to be brought here, and I will do everything in my power to ensure they are safe.
ELLY
When I wake up, I’m staring back at the ceiling of the medical bay. Oh crap. Not again.
I didn’t get away. I close my eyes, steeling myself. My new masters are not going to be pleased. I’m going to be punished.
It was worth it, though. I got to see the sun again. I got to feel fresh air—however cold—on my face. I’d do it again. I’d endure daily beatings if it meant I could go outside on a regular basis. Funny how something so small can become something so important. I never liked to go outside as a kid. Then again, as a kid, I never thought I’d be stolen away by aliens and forced to live in cages for ten years.
“If you’re done pretending to be asleep, everyone’s waiting on you so they can leave. Us included.” The sharp-tongued blue woman speaks somewhere off to my side.
I open my eyes and glance over at her, then sit up, testing things. My head throbs, but that’s not unexpected. My feet don’t, though, and I see they’re wrapped in bandages. I can’t feel them at all, and I suppress a bit of panic that they’ve been frostbitten. I reach down to touch one.
“Leave that alone,” the woman snaps. “I gave it a dose of medication to stop infection, but it’s going to make it numb for the next few hours. You should be thanking me instead of fiddling with it.”
I just look at her blankly. Thanking her? She hasn’t been nice to me at all. Her bedside manner definitely needs work.
When I don’t respond, she sighs and turns on her wrist communicator. “She’s awake. Tell your friends to come and get her out of my medbay.”
I hold myself stiffly, remembering to hunch my shoulders so I look thinner and more delicate in case the big, mean one lashes out with his fists. I tilt my head forward, letting my nasty hair hang in my face, and pull my paper gown closer to my body. I wish I had kept my blanket.
The door opens, and the blue guy with
tattoos steps inside. Behind him is the big angry one. I can feel myself flinching backward, and I try to scoot back on the table at the force of his displeasure. He storms into the room, heading for where I’m seated, and the urge to flee rushes through me again.
“She should stay off her feet for the next day or two,” the woman says, as snappish to him as she is to me. “They’re rather torn up.”
“I will carry her,” the big one says.
Oh no, no, no. I don’t want to be carried. I try to get up, to prove that I can walk, but the big blue alien just growls in my direction. Growls. I freeze in place, and he scoops me up into his arms like I’m a damsel in distress instead of a slave.
He’s very warm, I notice, even as I do my best not to touch his bare skin. Warm, and his skin feels downy, like suede. It’s almost like he’s fuzzy, which is double-strange given that he looks frightening as hell.
“Stop moving,” he growls at me. “I do not wish to drop you.”
I…can’t tell if that’s a threat. But I know I shouldn’t push him more than I’ve already pushed so far. If my feet are as bad as they sound, there’s no running away until they’re better. I’m stranded. So I go still, doing my best not to move and bother him.
The big blue alien marches out of the medical bay and down the corridor. He’s silent as he walks, and I mentally cringe, waiting for his anger to explode on me. He moves down the halls of the ship, and then, ahead, I see the others waiting. My fellow human slaves are bundled head to toe in a massive amount of furs, only their faces peeping out. The alien called Vaza stands next to them, spear in hand, and it looks strange to see him in a loincloth next to the furry human bundles.
He holds out a big fur blanket to the alien carrying me, and they both pause to wrap me up in the big one’s arms. Their hands skate over my body as they do, and I slap their hands away when they get too close to my chest.
“Stop moving,” the big one growls again.
I clench my hands. If one of them even so much as grazes a nipple…
But they don’t. They only tuck the blankets around me and take care to make sure I’m bundled well. Then Vaza nods at my captor. “Ready when you are, Bek.”
So the mean one is Bek. I file that information away, memorizing it. It even sounds unpleasant, just like him.
“We go out now,” Vaza says to the others. “It is a short walk to our village. No more than a few hours. Stay close to us and you will not get hurt.”
“You’re going to beat us if we can’t keep up?” someone cries.
Vaza looks shocked. “No, I meant you will not get hurt by wild animals.”
“There are wild animals?” Someone else gives a half-scream, and they all cluster closer to Gail.
“Calm down,” Gail tells them. “They wouldn’t buy a bunch of human slaves just to feed us to bears or something. Like he said, just stay close.” She ignores the look of sheer pleasure Vaza gives her and gestures at the others. “This is a lot of change for us. I’m sorry. We’ll be quiet and obey now.”
Vaza nods uncertainly and looks over at Bek.
“Let us leave this place,” my sour captor says. “I do not wish to be here any longer.”
Then the doors open, and the brutal wind rips inside again, stealing my breath away. The others squeal at the cold, but the one holding me ignores them. He steps forward and into the sunlight.
And I see the suns again. The sky is a beautiful pale blue, dotted with clouds, and the suns are small and distant, but they’re there.
The sight of them makes me so happy.
BEK
It is a mild day of good weather, but the new humans squeal and shiver and whine as if it is the coldest of days in the brutal season. I remind myself that they have no khui to warm them. I remind myself that they have spent their time in the too-warm cave-ship with cowardly Trakan and Cap-tan. That is why they do not like the cold and act as if it is killing them.
But it is still annoying to hear their complaints.
The one in my arms is silent. She is the only one. Even Chail, their leader, has complained to Vaza about the cold. The one in my arms is so quiet that only the constant shivering of her small form tells me she is alive. She, of all of the females, has the right to complain, but she says nothing, keeping her words to herself. Perhaps she is mad about the collar.
She should be. I am still furious. The fire of my anger still burns deep in my belly. It will take many moons for it to leave me. A female should never, ever be harmed. Ever.
That is why I do not care when the big ship leaves again without a goodbye. I watch it go with a cold pit in my stomach and a mixture of anger and gladness in my heart. I do not care if I ever see Trakan or Cap-tan again. I watch the ship rise out of the snow and lift into the sky like no bird flies and then disappear into the skies.
And I am glad for it. The humans are here, and they are mine.
I study the silent one as I walk. The filthy cloud of her mane makes her head look larger than it truly is. Whenever she peeps out from under the fall of it, I see nothing but eyes. She is too thin, I think, her figure more spindly than Farli in her younger years, and so light that I wonder if Erevair weighs more.
She is fierce, though. I remember how she clawed and kicked when I grabbed her. It did not matter that she was hurting—she still attacked. I feel a grudging respect for this small human…even if she smells so terrible my eyes water from the scent of her. She glances up at me, and her expression is blank, but I think she does not like me. I sense it. Sometimes a look flashes in her strange human eyes, as if she would take my knife from my belt and gut me if given the chance.
And I find this…amusing. It is much better than crying.
By the time we make it to the valley, the others are walking slowly, complaining about the cold, the wind, the air, the snow, everything. Vaza is endlessly patient, but I grit my teeth with every new word. I do not have the patience for this. I am a patient hunter…but not when it comes to whining.
So I am relieved when the long shadow of the gorge comes into sight, and the pulley at the lip of it that we use for going up and down.
I am less relieved when it moves and up comes Leezh and her mate, Raahosh. They have their bows slung over their shoulders, and their kits are not with them. Hunting, then. I curse the timing of it, because Leezh has a big mouth. I wanted to go straight to the chief first, to explain myself. Now I will not get that chance.
So be it. I straighten my spine, ready for Leezh’s blistering words.
But she only gasps and stares at each human face. Then she turns to me, her eyes wide. “Oh god, Bek. What have you done?”
4
BEK
I will not apologize. I am not sorry for what I have done. I am disappointed I did not resonate to one of the females, but if nothing else, I have given my fellow hunters a chance at happiness.
So when my chief rages at me, I endure it in silence. When his mate just gives me shocked looks of horror, I ignore them. When they ask me, over and over again, “How could you?” I do not change my answer.
I know exactly what I have done.
I have traded shiny bits of metal to a male I will never see again in exchange for mates for my friends. I have brought new people into our tribe. I can see no wrong in this, even if my methods were not what Shorshie and Vektal approve of. How else are we to get mates for the other hunters?
It is easy for Vektal to sit and judge me with his pretty mate at his side, his kits at his feet. He has everything he has ever wanted. He has not had to stare down seasons of loneliness, wondering if he will ever have a mate, a family. If he will ever be complete.
“You are not listening to me,” Vektal snarls, a hand-span away from my face. “I tell you how disappointed I am and you gaze at me with that blank expression on your face.”
“Vektal, honey,” Shorshie says in a low voice. “Calm down.” She gets to her feet and hands him his smallest daughter, Vekka. “Hold the baby.”
He
scowls at his mate but takes his little daughter from her, clearly not done raging. The moment she is put in his arms, she sucks her thumb, gazing at him with big, worried eyes. He sighs and hugs her close, patting her back. “Calm. I am calm.”
Shorshie shoots me an angry look, but her voice is calm. “I just don’t understand what you’re thinking, Bek. You can’t steal people and bring them here.”
“I did not steal them,” I tell her. “Trakan did.”
“He stole them for you. That’s just as bad! Why would he do such a thing?”
“We became friends,” I tell her, though now the words feel sour on my tongue. I think of him using the collar on the small, dirty female and feel shame. If he does not know that hurting females is wrong, how can I trust his other decisions? “And the females will be happy here.”
“You don’t know that,” Shorshie exclaims, and she is so loud that her daughter jumps. With a frustrated sigh, she takes little Vekka back from Vektal and hugs her close, trying to calm herself down. “You don’t know that,” she repeats in a lower, calmer voice. “They might have families at home. Jobs. Things they care about. Or hey, here’s a thought—they might not want to spend the rest of their lives on an ice planet making blue babies.”
“But you are happy here. The others are happy here.”
“Because we fell in love,” she hisses, stroking her daughter’s hair. “That’s different.”
“They will fall in love as well,” I tell her. “Once they receive their khuis, they will take mates and be happy. It will be as it should.”
She stares at me, as if my words shock her. “You’re delusional. These things take time. You bought slaves and brought them here, Bek. How can you not understand how wrong that is?” She shakes her head again and then pinches her brow. “This is not the same as when Maddie and Lila were found. I can’t believe you don’t realize that.”
“I have broken no rules,” I tell them.
“Why would we have rules against buying slaves? This is a peaceful place!” Shorshie hisses again, then collects herself, pressing a kiss to her daughter’s cheek. “Maybe you’d better see Papa again, Vekka.”