Fragile Bond (2 page)

What if he and Mat were alone in a valley of predators that were already in a feeding frenzy at the taste of blood? Would he be able to pinpoint the roosts of his fellow scouts and, more importantly, relocate to them? His ammunition wouldn’t last. He’d need to scavenge from the kits of his comrades to keep this up for too long.

The next tawny he scoped wasn’t alone. A group of three, treading through the rangy excuse for a forest on the south ridge. He took out the rear guard in another pink mist. Then watched in frustration as the others darted behind a rocky outcropping. Had they really triangulated his location, despite his caution? Their hearing had to be depressingly sensitive. He waited, focused and steady. Too late to relocate. At least it was a defensible roost.

The wind gusted, shifting. Blowing at his back. He canted his head a fraction, letting the dry air slide fingers up under his helmet, a welcome ease against his hairless scalp. He tweaked the scope, adjusting for the change in wind direction.

“Wait for it,” he crooned, stroking his trigger finger over the guard. The pair eased out into the open again, only seconds later, one after the other. “Oh yeah. Right there, Mat.” He took them out in rapid succession.

The breeze kicked up again, bringing a scent he didn’t dare ignore. Unusual for new scents to just randomly surface given how long he’d been in this spot. The faint tang of musk. Something heavy and thick, though fleeting. It brought to mind the scent of soil, moist and dark, clinging to the roots of a dislodged weed. Rotting leaves in the undergrowth of a dense forest.

Nothing like that existed on Horace, not that he’d seen, anyway.

In measured increments, Marc straightened and turned, grip tightening on Mat as he brought the rifle to bear on the stretch of rocky, forested ridgeline at his back.

Another gust of breeze, the scent stronger this time. Closer? He crouched and edged away from his roost, hooking Mat’s sling over his shoulder so he could steady himself against the rocks. He glanced around. Up would make him more vulnerable—no escape route, greater risk of being sighted—but going down this side wouldn’t be an easy feat.

Marc rested his fingertips on the edge of a sharp rock at knee height as he planted his thick-soled boot. He was thankful for the Kevlar-gel reinforcement in his boots and battle dress. Impenetrable right down to the gloves.

A weight slammed into his back and shoulders, bearing him forward and down, crushing him into the rock-strewn ground. Stone gouged his upper arm, a sharp, intense counter to the concussive force of his helmeted head rebounding off a boulder.

The scent of soil and undergrowth saturated the air. So thick he could taste the dirt on his tongue. Between the tight press of rocks and his attacker’s weight, he struggled to pull a knee up. It gave him leverage to heave, loosen the hold, scrabble forward, away.

Only to have claws, sharp and heavy, rake down his flanks. Unable to penetrate his armor, or he’d be bleeding out, shredded to ribbons. Shit, he should’ve dropped Mat and pulled the knife from his boot. Too late. The creature found purchase on his hips. Not just claws, but
fingers
. The alien grabbed hold and pinned him.

Marc twisted, kicked, as he tried to bring Mat to bear on his attacker, fumbling with the tangle of tripod, barrel, and shoulder strap.

Screw getting a bead. He struck out with the rifle’s butt. Aiming for temple, jaw, cheek. The weapon landed true, though from the sound of it, he accomplished nothing but angering the alien.

It lifted its head, heavily muscled shoulders shifting in a ripple of white amber and tawny, with what looked like longer, mud-clotted hair hanging in thin dreads about its neck.

Old training vids of feral felines flashed through his mind. Great cats, they were called. Ruthless predators, living on a planet surrendered to the whims of Gaia.
Mercy
wasn’t in their vocabulary. He’d gotten a chill, watching a pack systematically isolate and bring down a target. He felt that same chill crawl over his skin as his attacker curled back smooth lips on a frighteningly humanoid face, baring sharp fangs inside a wide mouth. A growling sound rumbled up from deep within its massive chest. It carried a vicious edge of warning.

Why wasn’t it eating him?

Marc forced himself to relax. Some things weren’t difficult to understand. It had him overwhelmed, the dominant edge of authority clear in its tone. His heart pounded against his ribs, fueled by adrenaline-saturated blood. He tried breathing deep, needed to, but the air was thick with musk. It coated the inside of his nose and mouth, reaching down into his lungs.

Dark, vivid, golden brown eyes. Pupils oblong, just enough to make its gaze odd. But the intelligence was there, the awareness, buried beneath the wild sun-bleached mane tapering over its shoulders. That chimera blending. The slope of the nose, the arch of brows above deep-set eyes. The jaws distended further than normal, but the tawny had more teeth in there.

“Yeah, we’ll do the whole ‘cease and desist’ thing. When you fucking dismantle us both,
you hairy fucking bastard
!” Marc swung his rifle again, striking the beast in the face, followed with his elbow, drawing his knees up into the resulting gap.

Just enough to use his legs, boot soles braced against the thing’s hips, to push it away. A grunt of effort escaped him, a whoosh of breath. The alien roared, snarled, grappling at him, claws snagging Kevlar but finding no purchase. Marc rolled to his side, twisting Mat to bear on the tawny. It eased away, aggression checked by Mat’s barrel.

“We’ll take our boring job back, thanks.”

He took another breath, watched the tawny’s nostrils flare as it matched his rhythm, chest expanding. Sun-dark skin smooth and hardened with muscle, only a trail of white amber hair arrowing down the meridian of its torso to a very well-endowed groin and a pair of faintly hairy legs, sinewy muscle cording in its thighs.

Of course they’d have to tangle with the largest, meanest tawny on the planet.

“You’ve got great taste, Mat.” Marc’s skin started tingling. Everywhere. At this range, one round could tear off a sizeable chunk of flesh. He eased his finger inside the trigger guard; the male’s gaze dropped, catching the move.

The air became too thick to breathe. No oxygen left—he inhaled nothing but musk and pheromones. He had trouble focusing. His arms felt heavy, his brain thick. All the blood was heading south, and he couldn’t think. The tawny roared, fangs bared, twisting Mat’s barrel off to the side and pouncing back on top of him, claws raking at his gloved hands.

Things started getting hazy. Marc’s muscles felt limp. His trigger finger finally squeezed, but it was too late, too much delay, harmless. The male flinched at Mat’s kick and report, but only ratcheted his grip tighter. He should drop Mat. Pull his knife. He knew that, but didn’t care. The desire to resist, to struggle and fight, at least on a lethal level, faded into the background. Desire of an entirely different sort surged to the fore in his mind and body. There was something horribly wrong with this, he knew there was, but he couldn’t hold onto the thought long enough to make any sense of it.

Yeah, it had been a while since anyone had cuddled up to him like this, but he wasn’t
that
desperately horny. This was wrong, all wrong. He wouldn’t do this, not in the middle of a life-threatening situation.

Okay, maybe. But not on a mission. Not like this. Something was going on.

He couldn’t let go of Mat. Mat and him, they went back a long way. Mat wouldn’t be offended by his arousal. The tawny seemed offended by Mat, though, which was a problem. Slowly easing his rifle down to rest against his stomach and thigh was the best he could do.

The solid cylinder of alloy, radiating warmth from recent discharge, pressed against his cock. That he was even hard sparked confusion. But the contact, the weight and pressure of the rifle, only made him twitch more. The tawny rumbled again, more vibration than sound.

Marc squeezed his eyes shut, white-knuckled his grip on Mat, and took another deep breath. It didn’t relax him at all. If anything, it made things worse. He groaned and rotated his hips, the rifle’s barrel and scope resting on either side of his erection.

The fucking tawny was doing this. He didn’t know how, except that scent.

Mineral-rich soil, dark and damp. And it had gotten stronger, thicker.

With every breath, Marc’s resistance weakened in favor of . . .

“Fuck.”

Another rumble of sound, a growling cadence. A firm grip on his shoulder, Kevlar sparing him from claws that leveraged him to his feet and guided him forward over the uneven, rocky ground. Marc made no attempt to resist, stumbled, body still tingling, aroused almost to the point of pain. The alien’s hold steered him with ease, checking and redirecting his momentum with sharp pressure points from wicked claws the length of his hand.

An interesting predatory weapon: inciting arousal so strong it short-circuited the ability to think of anything else.

Even self-preservation.

Hamm’s claws had drawn no blood-scent. The lack baffled him, but it fit with what others described of the invaders. Its skin covering had repelled his attempt to penetrate as surely as the exoskeletons he encountered on prey. Odd little creature, and its inability to control its arousal, to think past it, was a decided weakness.

Hamm inhaled deeply as they walked, tasting the air against his upper palate. The alien hadn’t shown any control over the scents rolling off it: sweat, dirt, and pheromones. Faintly strange, but far from unpleasant. Quite the contrary, he discovered, as his shaft twitched with the rush of blood to his groin, skin suddenly tight. Why was he having such a response to its scent? How had it done that? Was it a weapon his scouts and squads hadn’t encountered yet? Problem was, it didn’t seem to work in the alien’s favor in the least.

This alien represented the first successful subduing short of lethal injury. Hamm wondered if it were male or female. Its voice had a soft, genteel quality, which made him suspect it was female. His nose told him a different story, the pheromones conflicting.

Maybe it wasn’t male or female. Maybe none of the aliens were.

Hamm rubbed at his jaw where it had slammed the weapon into his face. A dull ache, more annoying than painful. He sniffed his hand, then, and growled. Its scent was all over him. There was something tangy in the thing’s musk. Reminded him of ’nip. Maybe the alien had trod through a patch of the stuff somewhere. But still, it irritated him that he wanted to bury his face in the thing’s strange pelt and inhale. He should not be having that kind of reaction. He didn’t
want
to.

Had none of the others considered implementing pheromones? Not that he’d done it consciously; the thought hadn’t occurred to him. It was a weapon restricted to dominance displays. For position, hierarchy disputes, and heated domestic squabbles. Not deadly combat. His chemistry had
shifted
to match the alien’s strong scent all on its own. That disturbed him a great deal.

As though he weren’t disturbed enough. The thing had just slaughtered his entire squad back there. He’d watched, unable to stop it from killing Erri and Kail. Not close enough.

The hiss of the weapon. The foreign odor burning his nose. The sun-warmed rocks beneath his fingers as he’d flexed his claws, testing his balance and grip as he coiled to pounce. He’d been too slow, too late. Picked off one by one by this tiny excuse for a warrior and its death stick.

His vision tripped over into thermal.
Hunt, kill
. The world around him became a landscape of blues and greens, his prisoner a bright beacon of reds and yellows that pulsed and shifted. He flexed his hands, claws unsheathing to their full length, lips curling back to expose his fangs.

He wanted blood. But more than that, he wanted answers. A submissive thing like this, prone to grinding against its death stick instead of firing it, he could work with that. He wouldn’t assume the alien lacked a vicious streak. That would be a mistake. No, he was counting on that warrior belligerence resurfacing. The alien’s resistance would give him a little of what he needed—a fight, some kind of struggle, a reason to vent.

He clamped a hand on the prisoner’s shoulder, claws snagging on the material and straps. His own lack of forward movement was enough to make it jerk to a halt and spin around so suddenly that there was no opportunity for resistance before Hamm got a good grip on the weapon.

The alien made a sound resembling a kit’s attempt at a snarl—high-pitched, gargled, throaty and all wrong—as it tried to pull back. Hamm tightened his grip on prisoner and weapon, weighing the odds on which would explode first as he created distance between them with steady, implacable force. He wasn’t deliberately looking to inflict injury. Just yet.

Without warning, the thing moved
toward
him. Into, instead of away from, the pressure. It vented a string of unintelligible, harsh language as the thicker length along the dangerous end of the weapon pressed into Hamm, digging into the tender flesh where thigh met groin.