Ruth's Bonded (Ruth & Gron Book 1) (12 page)

The next morning, Gron felt the fire
still in his blood but it did not burn him the way it had the morning before.
He was able to lie with Gruth in comfort. Mating three times in roughly a day
must have secured their Bond enough that his body was able to relax. He nuzzled
his face into her hair blissfully. He loved the way she smelt, which was
natural he supposed for a Consort. He loved how she felt in his arms and the
sounds she made when they mated and her beauty as well. It was in the quiet
moments like this when she was still asleep that he could allow himself to love
her selfishly. He knew she had no other males, not with her at least, but that
would change. He would not always be her only one, the only one trusted to
protect and provide for her, to sleep with her in his arms, to mate with her
and give her pleasure and possibly, if she allowed it, children. While she was
asleep though, he didn’t have to worry about her seeing how he felt and
thinking him obsessive, possessive, controlling. He knew he was none of those
things, but without the use of words, he had to
show
her he knew his
place.

She was so kind to him, receiving him
each time the Bond made his body need, taking him into her body and even
letting him plant his seed, as if she deemed him worthy of giving her children.
The thought warmed his heart so much he wanted to pick her up and squeeze her
to him, and offer his body again. But he knew he was much stronger than she was
and might hurt her, and no Queens liked that behaviour. Mating with her for the
first time had been the most intense experience of his life. He would do anything
to maintain her favour now. He was beyond lucky even to be Bonded, but to be
studding for a beautiful, ethereal Queen like Gruth was madness. Even now he
was afraid if he let her go he would wake up.

She continued to give him so much
pleasure during their mating it made it difficult for him to contain his seed
until she wanted it. She pulled his tail not only to stimulate him to mate with
her, but throughout the mating as well, massaging it as if deliberately seeking
his pleasure. Several times he had thought she would not take him into her body
but would keep him as a Consort only. Only the thought that perhaps she was
testing him, seeing if he was worthy of studding, and his desire to be all that
he could be for her and not to be held in the lower class at a distance from
her, gave him the strength to withhold. Yes, he had had to bite his tail the
first time, and she had not allowed him that control, demanding that he control
himself through strength of will alone. She was demanding, in that way, always testing
him, pushing him further, taking more from him, but his wishes were greedy too.
He wanted to be inside her. He wanted her to choose his seed out of all.
Naturally, she would test him if she was to give him that honour.

Last night she had been particularly
creative in her trials of pleasure, teasing his maleness with her mouth! He
thought he would die, he thought releasing then would almost have been worth
not being a stud, so tempting was it. But the memory of how her warm, wet
breeding channel seized his flesh and wrung his seed from him was too sweet, he
knew he could not live without it, and he must withhold. And when he did,
Goddess! What a reward! She had dragged him down to mount
her
! Such a
thing was... forbidden. Dirty. Illicit to even think of it. It was perverse,
reprehensible. His blood heated at the thought and his maleness swelled.

No! Just because Gruth had allowed it
once, did not mean she would ever do so again. He must not dishonour her by
desiring it. It was enough, more than enough, for him to be mounted in the
natural way.

He tried to cool his blood. If they
were home, with a tribe, with domiciles already built and food in plenty, yes
they could spend days tied in mating, but they were not. Here the food was
scarce with little to offer, and they lived in a cave with no furnishings or
comforts. When they mated, they did so on hard stone, always with the fear that
their captors would find them and lock them in cells again. Gruth was growing
thin and weak, slow, even more of her bones showing under her bald skin. His
scent was all over her, but she had no pelt to mark him with, except between
her thighs. She generated scent enough to soak him when they mated, so he hoped
it was enough. He would try to ru       b it into the pelt on his chest next
time, just in case.

He almost regretted that his priming
had come now, when there were no soft, safe places for them to lie on, and no
other consorts to bring them food, when Gruth slept longer after every mating.
He knew they would have to do better if they were going to survive. He needed
to find a more plentiful, reliable source of food, and furnish their cave with
soft things. It may not even be safe for them to stay there much longer if they
were still being hunted. If they had to move again, Gron did not know where to
take them. He knew nothing of this land. He had led them away from the hunters,
which meant that now the water they had was thin, and he had neither seen, nor
heard, nor smelled any animal in these woods. If they were to survive, they
would have to find a place that other life had already thrived, and learn from
them. They would have to leave the forest, and he knew not which way to go.

He had a duty to her, he knew that.
It was the only thing that made him get up at morning and sleep at night. If he
was going to fail her, he would die in the attempt. He was well aware that if
they were to starve, she would starve first, and if they were to freeze, she
would freeze first. If they were to die, she would die in his arms while he
watched, and it was that vision that would make him stand every day no matter
how weak he was, and find food for her no matter how hopeless it seemed.

Gruth stirred awake, and he slipped
his arm from under her head, springing up to bring her one of the root-plants
she had found yesterday. They were bland but tolerable, and to his stomach at
least they bought them time to look for more. He had noticed she ate less than
he, but then she always had, and perhaps her stomach was slower to digest the
alien food. She ate now with no enthusiasm, but she finished most of the root
and seemed satisfied.

He looked out at the forest while she
ate, but still saw no sign of their pursuers. There were no animal scents on
the wind, no calls sounding in the trees. It was as if the forest was not
really there. It made Gron suspicious but what could he do? Perhaps if they
moved higher, he would be able to see more. That would be where he led them
today.

Gruth approached him from behind,
running her hand down the fur on his back. He stilled his tail in case she
wished to pull on it again and initiate mating, but her hand stopped before
reaching it. It flicked involuntarily, perhaps in frustration, perhaps to
attract her attention, but Gron moved quickly away out of the cave mouth. If
Gruth did not want to initiate mating, then they should begin looking for food.
They would need it.

Ruth followed Gron out of the cave,
and as usual, they walked down in the direction of the stream. After they had
both drunk from it and washed the cave dust off themselves, Gron then turned
them uphill, and began walking purposefully that way. Ruth just followed. She
didn’t know anything about surviving in nature so she could do nothing but
trust him. As they walked, Gron kept looking over his shoulder, or up at the
tops of the trees. She didn’t know what he was doing, but she looked where he
looked nonetheless. The roots they had eaten for breakfast kept them going for
maybe an hour or two, after which they had to graze on the nuts they could pick
up as they went.

Eventually the forest around them
changed, one kind of tree giving way to another. Instead of the oak-like trees
with massive leaves, or the shorter pine-like ones with the nuts, more and more
of a very thin black tree with spines instead of branches could be seen around
them. These trees were very tall, so that you almost couldn’t see the top in
most cases, but had no leaves or nuts or fruit at all. They looked like the
world’s angriest cacti, like an evil witch had cursed them, like they should be
guarding Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

It only took ten or fifteen minutes
of walking before the spiny trees were growing so thick they couldn’t walk
between them. At a loss, Ruth looked around, but she didn’t see anything
useful. Whatever this tree was, it had totally dominated the area, choking out
anything that lived in its midst. Gron seemed particularly frustrated by being
stopped, and he kept looking up at the trees and testing the spines. He
gestured for her to stay where she was then, as Ruth watched, Gron seized two
of the higher branches, and began to pull himself up into the maze of spines.

Ruth didn’t know what he was doing,
and she didn’t like being left alone, but she trusted him. She folded her arms
around herself and tried to keep him in sight as he fought his way up, his tail
curling around the giant needles to anchor him. She soon lost sight of him, his
form broken up by his dark fur among the black spines and dazzling beams of
sun. 

A minute or two later she heard him
coming down, and watched as he dropped the final few feet. He certainly was
nimble. She couldn’t tell if he had found whatever he was looking for, but his
hands were empty of anything they could eat. He began leading them back the way
they came, as the spiny trees made the direction ahead of them impassable.

They rejoined the stream and had a
drink and a quick rinse. Gron seemed to be drinking more than usual, and when
she looked at him she saw as he reached into the water that he had an
angry-looking wound on the inside of his bicep where she hadn’t noticed it
before. She quickly seized his arm and pointed at it questioningly, but he
gently brushed her off. He couldn’t tell her what had happened, after all, but
he didn’t seem worried, so she had to believe that he didn’t want her to worry
either. Nevertheless, she grabbed his arm again and he stood still while she
examined the injury. There was a small, dark puncture wound in the middle of a
dark red scratch that looked inflamed, and thinner red lines were spidering out
from it. It did not look good by any means, not to her. He must have been
pricked by one of the spines on those damn trees.

Ruth made sure they did not dawdle on
their way back to the cave, which was a good thing because Gron was already
swaying on his feet before they got there, and collapsed heavily on the bed of
leaves as soon as he could, his breathing laboured. Ruth knelt by his side, her
hands fluttering over him, not knowing what to do. On the surface of her mind,
she believed this was just a fever, a reaction of some kind and he would be a
little out of it for maybe a day or two but she would take care of him and he
would be fine. He was still conscious and moving around after all, he seemed
lucid. What she didn’t want to think was that this was serious. The wound on
his arm had grown, the centre now a worrying dark purple, the dark red lines
reaching further out, up under his arm and beginning to crawl up his shoulder.
It looked like blood poisoning.

Ruth desperately wondered what she
should do. Suck the poison out? Was there even any poison? Would it kill her to
do so? Was it too late? She couldn’t even bring him any water. If he was only
sick for a day or two, they could probably survive. Any longer than that and
she may well run into problems of her own. She knew how to get to the stream,
how to get the nuts and the water-roots, but that was it. She couldn’t travel
without him, couldn’t climb trees or break them open for that nut-sap inside.
She didn’t want him to recover and find her half-dead, and he would need food
and water.

She felt his forehead and he
definitely had a fever. At a loss for what else to do, she raced outside and
gathered as many leaves as she could to make him more comfortable, calling back
to him what she was doing so he would know where she was. When she was done,
she licked the wound experimentally, returning to her idea of sucking the
poison out, and she thought she could taste some foreign bitterness that hadn’t
been on his skin before. Shit. She decided she had to try so, lowering her
mouth to his arm, she secured her lips around the puncture wound and sucked. He
immediately grunted in pain and pushed her off him more roughly than he had
ever touched her before, falling loosely back onto the leaves, panting. He was
sweating a lot now. She guessed by his failure to regulate his strength around
her, that he was starting to lose touch with his surroundings as the fever set
in. She didn’t think she could suck the poison out, not enough to help him,
because the wound seem to have swollen shut around it, and if it hurt him
enough that he tried to fight her off without realising who she was, he could
seriously hurt her.

She had nothing for a tourniquet,
nothing even to amputate his arm, like they might have done in a film. She
didn’t want to believe that she was capable of maiming him in that way, but she
would have done it if it saved his life. She crawled round to his head and
lifted it into his lap. She stroked his hair and spoke to him, telling him
meaningless nonsense about how he would be okay, knowing he didn’t understand
it but thinking he might be soothed by her voice nonetheless.

Time passed and Ruth fretted as Gron
grew delirious. He thrashed and swung his arms, talking and shouting in his own
language, sometimes angry and sometimes desperate. She shushed him and stroked
his hair and sobbed. She couldn’t help crying, seeing him like this and
worrying that he was going to die. She couldn’t stand to see him in pain, he
was too important to her, this sweet face that had protected her and made love
to her and carried her through the treetops on his back. She needed him. She
needed him to be okay, so she kept repeating that, over and over, realising
eventually that she was talking to herself more than to him, but not stopping.

It grew late, and she could feel that
her body expected her to be asleep by now, though of course she had no way of
telling the time. Ruth couldn’t sleep though, not now, not when she felt he
might slip away from her at any second. As long as she was watching him, she
felt like she could fight, like what she wanted mattered. If she gave up and
slept, it felt like she would be abandoning him, and she couldn’t do that, so
she stayed on her knees and rocked over him, holding his head between her palms
as his fevered flush drained to frightening pale and his body grew still. He
was unconscious now, no longer thrashing or crying out. He was as still as a log,
but she kept rocking and murmuring to him as if she was trying to will life
back into him. She probably looked insane, like she was the delirious one, mad
with grief, but she didn’t care. She had to do something.

The lines from the wound on his arm
covered his neck now and were creeping over his jaw, scarily dark against his
sickly pallor. She kept stroking her hands over them as if she could simply
brush them away, the way he would brush the hair from her face at night. She
touched every part of his body that she could reach, scratching her nails into
the fur on his chest because she knew he liked that, tracing the healthy veins
on his other arm, feeling for the fragile, weakening pulse in his neck.

It was the middle of the night. She
had never seen a moon on this planet, but the sky was awash with stars. The
forest was deathly quiet, only a thin breeze stirring the large fronds every
now and then. The only sound was her relentless whispering over Gron’s still
and silent body. She’d stopped paying attention to what she was saying; now it
was mostly begging him to stay and praying to God to find them on this alien
planet and save him. Did he know he was dying? Had he known that when he was
still conscious? She hoped not. She didn’t want him to worry about leaving her
alone in his final moments.

Movement at the cave mouth snatched
her out her reverie, her face whipping up with a gasp. Three of the little
green aliens who had captured her stood just inside the cave, with more
outside.

“No...” she groaned, “Oh no, no, no,”

She took in their appearance. They
were all wearing silvery jumpsuits with some kind of logo on the chest. They
all looked armed, with various belts and holsters strapped irregularly over
their bodies. The one on the right was holding what looked like a rifle of some
kind, and her panicked eyes picked out knives and handguns. The one in the
middle had a short black stick that looked like a cattle-prod, and the one on
the left had one of the longer pronged javelins like the aliens at the cell.
Their skin was green and pocked, with large eyes and wide mouths. They looked
like toads.

Ruth shuffled back but did not take
Gron’s head out of her lap, holding out her hand as if to keep them away.

“Get out! Get out of here!” she found
herself screaming hysterically. This was a private moment, and if they took her
away from Gron and she wasn’t there when he died, she would rip into the little
green things with her bare hands and eat their little alien guts for breakfast.

The one in the middle held out its
hands in a placating gesture.

“Please,” it said in croaky English.
“We’re here to help.”