Sarazen's Claim, Book One

by Isabel Wroth

  Brennaugh’s lips twitched, but he and the other four warriors took a step to their left and clasped their hands behind their backs, which for whatever reason made Tarek relax. When he spoke, his voice was as rough and uneven as the skin on his right cheek. “You do us great favor by giving us the hope, that your kind might provide more mates for our people. A treasure hunt such as this, is an easy feat and reason enough for us to miss the festival. For future, it upsets the beast in us for another male to touch what belongs to us. Your mate is strong, you honor him well, but take care who you show such innocent kindness to, we cannot always control ourselves when our mates are threatened. Even in small manner.”

  She looked back up at Tarek and found him doing his best to clear his expression of anger, but feeling him inside her like she was, there was no hiding it. “I’m sorry.” She murmured, and he dropped his brow to hers with a huff, “You have no need, as said, you honor me, my one.” She nodded, leaning on him while he straightened to get back to the meeting of his fellows. “The human females have agreed to see if any are called, but they have conditions,”

  “Only one, and her conditions are reasonable.” She interrupted, getting a staunch look from Tarek.

  It made Brennaugh cough into his hand to hide his laughter, and Tarek snarled at him. She elbowed him and he looked so shocked that she burst out laughing too. Like no one had ever elbowed him like that before and lived to tell the tale. “The female’s conditions?” Brennaugh interrupted, and she rolled her eyes at Tarek before turning to answer. “When you find our people, they will be skeptical, afraid, and very distrustful. It’s part of human nature to fear the things we don’t understand, and I’m sorry for the trouble that will cause you. Tara, is an engineer. She’s practical, calm under pressure, I hear tell she knows what I’m sure to your people is just rudimentary fighting skills. She likes being a soldier, she likes being useful, but most of all she likes to fly. Her condition is that if she is called, she wants to join you in the hunt, be useful, but most importantly she is willing to be a liaison and help you convince our people to not be as big of a pain in the ass. Ask Tarek what happened when only one of our people began stirring unrest.”

  “He has told me.”

  Brennaugh lowered his eyes to the deck, looking deep in thought. So far the other warriors hadn’t said anything, but they looked uncomfortable, as much as stone faced warriors could look uncomfortable. Brennaugh rubbed his hand over his mouth and looked at Tarek, “You understand what her presence would do to my crew?” Tarek inclined his head, “Of course. I have told her, she is unafraid. The decision will lie with you, and her potential mate, if she has one among your warriors. The human females have given blood samples, which Ga’rae has turned into an aerosol. It was his suggestion that your warriors gather in the main hangar of your ship, allow the aerosol to be dispensed-”

  “That is a cold, and cruel way for a potential mate to be found.” Brennaugh interjected tightly, and Tarek sighed while he set his palm to her waist and rubbed gently. “They are not like us, my friend. They do not understand and find us frightening enough as it is. They have agreed to be matched, so long as they are not put on parade, as they call it. Time is of the essence, and this was the most efficient way we could see this done.”

  “I can try again, if you’ll tell me what is supposed to happen.” She offered, and for a moment she thought Brennaugh would ask her to try again, but he looked to his men, and they nodded grudgingly. “The breeding festival is a hunt, among our kind. The females who are not mated live in the forested regions of the planets we habitate. To find our mates, we…hunt through the forest. They hunt us, we hunt them. A test, so many muddled scents, the woods, the others, to ensure that our bond is strong enough to be found among the crowd.”

  Annoyance, a small amount of fear, even distrust is what he felt blossom along the bond with Clary. He was shocked. Even his beast sat back with a huff as that fragile, beautiful bond that had grown, the tendrils of hope…snapped. He felt it, felt the connection sever as though cut by a blade so sharp that even a whisper of it could cut to the marrow. It made him flinch, made his body tighten with immediate denial, but so shocked by how that could have happened, he was rendered speechless. Breathless. He stared at Clary, knowing throughout every fiber of his being that she was his mate, he had given her his blood, the bond was made, how could this have happened? “Clary,” She held her hand up to stop him, giving a short shake of her head before stepping away from him. “Humans are in many ways different, from your people. We don’t have a beast inside us that relies on instinct, or an olfactory system anywhere comparable to yours.”

  Brennaugh and his warriors were paying rapt attention now, because the scent of Clary’s unhappiness, of anger, was growing. Brennaugh shot him a quick look, but just like they had when she had spoken to her people, Clary’s words held his attention completely. “We are in our infancy as an evolutionary species, some would even say we were inferior I’m sure. But we’re also strong. We’re survivors. Even though we might not think we are able to cope, we can, if we’re given the chance. Some of us are arrogant and blind, some of us are afraid, but most of us are just alone and we spend our whole lives trying to find ways to fill that gaping void inside us. On my world, there was a legend about how we were created. It says that males and females were once a single being. A being with four arms, four legs, two hearts, one soul, and a head with two faces. But our creators, our gods, were afraid of the power that one being could hold, so they separated them into two and condemned humanity to constantly seek out the other half of their soul. Their one. And I tell you that, because I think you and your warriors understand what it’s like to hope for more.”

  She was struggling not to cry, he could hear it in her voice. See it in the little quaver of her bottom lip but she stood proudly before them. Even as he struggled not to show the weakness stealing his calm from him now, she stood strong. He didn’t understand what was happening. “Commander Brennaugh, honor is important among your people, yes?” His eyes narrowed because of that tone, the distrust and doubt in it, making her ask such a ludicrous question of another male she didn’t know, and not of him. “It is what we live for, when we have nothing else.” Brennaugh answered gravely, and Clary nodded, swallowing audibly to hold back the teeming waves of her growing distress.

  He moved to take her, to hold her against him but she stepped away again and held her hand between them. Her small, delicate hand, that was a wall suddenly thrown up between them, and she didn’t look at him. “Then I want your word, and I want the word of your men if they are called as mates by my crew, by any of the humans you find out there among the stars, your word of honor. No matter what you fear their reaction might be, you will keep nothing from them. Find a way to explain the wonders, the terrors, the dangers, the beauty and uniqueness of your world, your people, your culture. Explain what it means to be a potential mate. Explain what they may or may not expect from the bonding. Even if you think it is of no consequence, explain it. Do not assume that just because we have language translators that we will understand the meanings of your words, or that because of the bond that develops we will understand your emotions and why you’re having them. Speak to us, and not like we are stupid, or like we are children. We will follow and obey, believe in you, accept you for what you are, so long as we have knowledge and are able to understand. Do this, or you risk losing our trust. If we have no trust, all there is left is fear. And what humans fear, we fight. Even if it means our death.”

  The silence that followed was deafening. She didn’t understand where all this profound sounding bullshit was coming from. She had never been this…long winded and confrontational before. Get a rise in rank, some crushing responsibility, and apparently she turned into a hell of a philosophical crazy person. A philosophical crazy person who felt like someone had just sliced a hole through her heart. She felt like an emotional basket case, the wave of disbelief that had overwhelmed her when Brennaugh had expl
ained a few more of the details of what went down at the breeding festival, that would have been key pieces of information to know before she’d talked her people into allowing themselves to become potential mates to a race of warrior aliens.

  Predatory, warrior aliens.

  The kind who hunted their mates down in forests like game.

  Her chest hurt from holding back the sobs that built, and she didn’t really know where the pressure came from that made her want to cry so badly. But there was this ache, this snapping pain at her sternum that had happened and now she was feeling adrift, lost. Alone. Tarek had had ample opportunity to explain the details of their mating customs to her, she’d asked, a lot. But he had doled out only pieces of information, not the whole story, and more and more this was sounding like a terrible idea. An extremely dangerous one. Did Tarek not understand? Not a single one of the humans alive on his ship, had ever seen a forest.

  The planets they had been to were dead husks, barely any scrub brush or water, no sustainable life except for hungry predators. They didn’t know how to hunt, how to survive in the wilderness, let alone be part of some crazy ritualistic hunt amongst shapeshifting warrior aliens. There would be no sniffing out the Sarazens via a human nose. There would be running, and panic, and probably a lot of pain and suffering, but no finding. “I give you my word of honor. Your words are acknowledged, my lady. They will not be discarded and I will tell my warriors what you have told me. We will go and prepare the aerosol dispersal aboard my vessel.” She found some kind of gut strength to nod her thanks to Brennaugh, to answer him, “I’ll tell my crew you’ve arrived.”

  They left the room and she stood there staring at the door they had gone through, just staring, trying not to feel anything at all. She thought she was going to make it until Tarek stepped in front of her and reached out to take her chin in his hand. She vibrated with the desire to shove away from him, slap at his hand, but it would be an exercise in futility, he wouldn’t understand and every argument in history was lost because of the overload of emotions. She had to keep it together. Somehow not fall apart. Somehow, she had to be strong. “Our bond, I felt it sever,” He stated, and she was somewhat glad to know that what she was feeling now, that tearing pain, was all her own. “When you told me about the breeding festival, you failed to mention anything about a hunt.”

  “It did not matter at the time,”

  “I told my people they could trust you. Trust me. I literally told them that they weren’t going to be hunted down and drug off by the hair. But unknowingly I lied to them, and you stood right there in front of all of them and didn’t say anything, about a hunt. How could you possibly think that wouldn’t matter?”

  “Clary,”

  “Is it going to be modified in any way to suit us?”

  “No.”

  She nodded as much as she could and lifted her eyes from his chest to look him dead in the eye and hoped to god that if he couldn’t feel her emotions, he could see it and smell it. Her absolute fury that made her entire body feel like it was on fire. Emotional basket case. Right here. “So let me see if I understand correctly. You and any potential mate, will go into a forest separately, hunt these potential mates down by scent, to prove that you can both find that one special one among several thousand other people.”

  “That is the general idea, yes.”

  “Did it occur to you, what an utterly fucking stupid idea that is?”

  He blinked in surprise at her, and she lost what tenuous control she had on her temper. She did slap at his hand, wondering if her hair was going to catch on fire, “You’re going to put Andi, in a forest of predators, knowing full well that well over half life she was traumatized by a predator, who hunted her down to hurt her? Terrify her to the point where she might mentally fracture and be unable to look at Ohlen without screaming her head off?”

  He opened his mouth to probably tell her that Ohlen would never hurt her, but she was on a roll now and there was no stopping. “You’re going to take humans who have never in their lives seen or set foot inside a forest. A forest filled with a predatory, alien race of warriors that we don’t know, leaving us utterly with no option but to fail because we don’t have any hunting or practical survival skills, or a beast inside us to rely on. No extra olfactory senses, no intuition, and expect us to somehow find you amidst what sounds like unmitigated chaos. Unless you’ve left out other important details to say that because of the blood you gave us, we’re going to change into a cat like you. Hmm? Were you going to wait until the day of, to explain the rules of this game to us? Were you going to explain at all?”

  “I see your anger. I smell it. But I cannot feel it, you have closed your heart to me.”

  “That’s what humans do, Tarek. We do not love or accept, what we do not trust.”

  “I have lost your trust, because I did not explain the breeding festival rituals to you?”

  “Because you have been telling me only what YOU think, I need to know. I am responsible for the people I brought on board your ship, and the ones who came after! They chose me, to be responsible for them. If it concerns us, in any way, I need to know it! They, need to know it! They need to understand the rules of your world to survive, it they don’t know the rules, they will survive in whatever way they can. It’s what we do.”

  Seventeen

  She walked into the common room and got the entire crew together, men and women, and updated them on what was going on. The festival, how their people were going to be found by Brennaugh and his warriors, everything she knew. Not surprisingly, some of the men were outraged and distrustful, and the women were frightened, rightfully so. Especially Andi. She paled and looked sick, Gwen went a little pale too, but Cassie just looked pissed. “You mean those big furry assholes, didn’t tell us about this hunt because they didn’t think we needed, to know? Fuck that!” She slapped her wrist unit and demanded that Falken get his ass to their quarters, now. “You’re diplomatic and I respect that. But clearly you didn’t grab your boy by the balls and demand some answers. Excuse me.”

  She shoved back from the table, and she could hear her from the other room and had to roll her lips under to keep from smiling. “Did you just refuse to take me to my mate?” Cassie’s tight snarl was answered by a soothing rumble of sound, no doubt one of the warriors trying to calm her down, “Busy. He’s busy and cannot speak with me at this time. But he had enough time to tell you, he’s too busy to speak with me. I see. Well, fine. You take this, and with my compliments please relay to him that he can shove it up his ass.”

  Cassie came back, the muscle above her eyebrow visibly twitching, cheeks bright with her anger and missing her wrist communicator. She sat down with a slow, deep breath and pressed her hands to the table top, “Gwen?” The little doctor nodded and tried to contact Ga’rae, “I cannot come to you now, my one. I am debriefing the Fifth medic on human physiology.” Gwen’s green eyes narrowed on the communicator on her wrist, and if Ga’rae had been able to see her face, he might have been worried by how sweet her voice was. “Perhaps you would care for the assistance of a human doctor?”

  “No need, my one, enjoy your time with your sisters.” He sounded warm and sincere, but he’d done it now. She looked at Andi, and the dark haired girl touched her wrist unit with a shaking hand, “Ohlen?”

  “Yes, little one?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the hunt?”

  “What hunt?”

  “The breeding festival. Why didn’t you tell me that you were going to leave me alone in a forest full of predators, and hunt me like an animal?”

  “I am coming to you now.”

  Gwen and Cassie scowled, but Cassie reached over and took Andi’s hand and huffed. “It’s the delicate tone of your voice. He can’t resist it.” Andi managed a weak laugh and looked around at all of them, “I’ll get what I can,” Cassie snorted and confidently told the entire table that by tomorrow morning, they’d have the full tale. “I’m sorry.” All eyes swung to her, an
d she felt her bones ache as the guilt of the responsibility she’d failed to maintain, pressed down under those stares. “I understand if you no longer have confidence in me to lead our group. In all honesty I think the lot of you were crazy to pick me, and not even a good two weeks in, I’ve failed.”

  She sat there ready to take their confirmation of having no confidence in her, and she was surprised when it was Tara who spoke up. She’d been thinking the engineer didn’t like her, but the dark haired woman snorted and shoved a hand through her thick hair. “These guys have an agenda, it’s not your fault they didn’t tell you what it is. The big guy in charge made it clear when Andi’s cat came for Ethan, that we might have potential mates among their kind. Don’t mean we have to accept them. He was pretty clear on where they stand about harming women, could be bullshit, but while I’m pissed that I agreed to this, I agreed and I for one am blaming no one but them for treating us like ignorant children. Cept for Andi’s cat. Seems to legitimately give a shit. I’m still down for letting you take the lead, you don’t bullshit us.”

  The women shared the same sentiment, which made her feel like sinking deeper down into the chair, but in some perverse way it made her feel better that some of the men were questioning her. She was half hoping one of them wanted to take the responsibility from her, but though they grumbled, they didn’t vote her out. Ohlen suddenly came bursting into the common room, eyes only for Andi and he went right to her, kneeling by her seat to growl with displeasure while he brushed her tears away. Only she, Cassie and Gwen understood what he said, but no doubt the others got the conviction behind it from his tone, “I will never, leave you alone.”