Stolen: Warriors of Hir, Book 3 (2 page)

Which left getting past those watchful aliens and into the forest all about plain, dumb luck.

There weren’t any guards visible from her place in the clanhall’s outside doorway, so hopefully wherever they were they couldn’t see her either. She broke from the clanhall and ran to the next building, concealing herself in the shadow it cast. She paused there a moment, her palms pressed to the rough stone, her blood thundering in her ears, but no warrior cried out at the sight of Ar’ar’s human female roaming the grounds in her nightgown.

She winced against the stones bruising her feet as she trotted from building to building, from shadow to shadow, until, shaking, breathing hard from effort and fear, she made it to the outermost structure of the enclosure. 

A family home before the plague struck, located only paces from the edge of the forest, it was here that she’d secreted a pack filled with the supplies she’d pilfered over the last few days.

Ducking inside, already yanking the nightgown off, Summer allowed herself a tight smile. With so few females, g’hir women usually dressed as girly as you could get: long embroidered gowns, sparkling jewels, elaborate hairstyles, delicate shoes.

As the heir’s mate she’d been expected to dress like that every day. It was amazing really, what you could conceal under what looked a lot like an alien prom dress . . .

Getting the clothing out here, even the boots, had been easy. The clan had given her a full wardrobe, already prepared for whatever human mate Ar’ar hunted down, though the fit wasn’t perfect. The shirt, pants, jacket, and boots she changed into had been intended for her to use when riding multari—Hir’s equivalent of horses. The food too was a snap; it was plentiful and available to her at all hours in Ar’ar’s quarters as well in the clanhall’s dining room.

Summer’s lip curled. As a fertile human female, capable of reproducing with the g’hir, she was precious breeding stock; they weren’t about to let her go hungry.

And she knew now they sure as fuck were
never
going to let her go home.

Another change of clothing, rolled into a tight roll, lay at the bottom of the pack but mostly it held food. She stuffed her nightgown inside and fastened the bag. She wouldn’t need a nightie for her trek through the forest but she wasn’t going to leave anything behind that might hint at the direction she’d gone either.

Evolved to be the perfect hunters, these g’hir were fucking
fast
. The males stood between six and a half and seven feet tall and were ungodly strong too. She’d learned
that
quick enough when Ar’ar had kidnapped her not fifty feet from her Uncle Lester’s cabin in Brittle Bridge, North Carolina.

But they possessed a keen sense of smell too—the kind the best bloodhound ever born would envy.

Over the past three days of her “alone time” she’d managed to traverse the whole settlement, even the back stairs she’d just used. Crisscrossing this way and that, she touched everything she could, even leaving here and there bits of hair from her hairbrush that she’d secreted into her pockets. She wasn’t sure just how well their sense of smell worked but she was going to do every goddamned thing she could think of to confuse it.

She’d managed to secure one of their weapons too, a small blaster lifted from the clanhall’s stores when Ar’ar wasn’t looking. She hadn’t had a chance to try this one out but she’d wheedled her “mate” into letting her fire his blaster out at the practice range so she had a basic understanding of how it worked. The indicator showed the weapon fully charged, but just how many shots that meant or how powerful those shots were, she didn’t know.

She hadn’t secured a gun belt though so she slipped the weapon into the thigh pocket of her pants. Summer adjusted the fastening on her boot and stood, shouldering her pack.

Insects hummed and nocturnal birds
whooped
from the forest ahead but from the settlement there was no sign that she’d been missed yet. A few quick steps and she was under the cover of the trees, already bound for the stream at the southwest edge of the Betari settlement.

With the g’hir’s inborn skills as hunters she, a human woman alone on a distant world where no one would help her, probably wouldn’t have stood a chance.

But she wasn’t the same person she was four years ago and nothing—not a race of alien warriors or the light years of space between here and Earth—was going to keep her from getting home.

And one thing she had that these alien fuckers
didn’t
was a great-granddaddy who had once slipped a Georgia chain gang.

D’other men said it was right impossible
, PawPaw would wheeze. His hair was mostly gone by then, wisps of white over a shrunken skull, his face leathery. PawPaw had even fewer teeth than hair but his eyes, pale blue like Summer’s own, were alight with pride and glee.
That it were crazy to try and I tell ya I
was
crazy—crazy like a fox!

Praying some of them fox-crazy genes had made it down four generations and right to her, Summer walked into the creek, just like PawPaw had done in the 1920s to throw off the dogs.

She headed upstream like he had too but it was hard going, much harder than she expected. The water dragged at her feet and even with the moonlight it was a struggle to see her way. The water soaked her boots, icy enough to make her grit her teeth—probably runoff from the nearby Zun Mountains. She slogged along until the shore on either side looked good and rocky then made her way to the eastern side to slide her pack off. 

Then, bending and scooping, she covered herself from head down with mud.

PawPaw had been evading dogs, not g’hir, when he’d done this but what could fool a bluetick hound’s sniffer might just fool an alien’s too.

She coated her hair well, intent on dulling its bright platinum to the muck’s dun color, better to camouflage herself from the g’hir’s sharp eyes. The mud was just as miserably cold as the water, slimy too, but there was one thing to be grateful for: it was mid-spring on the g’hir homeworld; she wouldn’t freeze to death out here. It had been winter in North Carolina; the Smoky Mountains were buried in white, every store in town alight with decorations for the upcoming holidays when Ar’ar had come to Earth and ripped her right out of her life—

Her nostrils flared, remembering. She’d fought that glowing-eyed demon with strength borne of terror until a shot from his blaster had knocked her out. When she’d awakened on his ship they were already light years from home. He’d cuffed her wrists together—some stupid alien courtship custom of theirs—and when he’d finally taken the restraints off he’d tried to mate with her.

But despite the heat of his amazing body, the warm male scent of him and that mating sound he made as he caressed her—a rumbling-purr that tightened her pussy and vibrated right through her clit till she was gasping with need, scarcely able to keep from grinding against him to seek release—Summer wouldn’t submit to him and, to her genuine surprise, he didn’t rape her.

That was the one good thing about Ar’ar. He’d taken her from Earth just as other human women had been to be mates to g’hir warriors but he
wouldn’t
force her. With his size and strength she wouldn’t stand a chance and as aroused as he made her, her body would betray her to pleasure if he took her as sure as the cold water raised gooseflesh on her arms now.

He’d claimed her; he brought her back to his clan—proof of his hunting prowess or some such crap. Nightly he tried to seduce her, that rumbling sound making her wild with need. His fangs flashed in annoyance every time when she, trembling with arousal, refused him, but he didn’t insist on anything more than sleeping beside her.

But no plea or demand or efforts to reason with him were going to get her back to Earth either.

Ar’ar’s father, Mirak, clanfather of the whole damned Betari enclosure himself, had told her in no uncertain terms that
this
world was her home—and Ar’ar her mate—no matter what she wanted.

With a hard
splat
she smeared mud on the outside of the pack too.

The capital city of Be’lyn lay due east of the Betari enclosure and she had a long haul to get there. Also contained in her bag, rolled into another set of practical clothes, was a fortune in jewels that Ar’ar had gifted her, as the Betari’s future clanmother, enough to buy or bribe her way back to Earth.

Completely covered in muck, Summer shouldered her pack again and started east.

She
would
get home—and in time—no matter what.

The dried mud started to itch even before Hir’s twin suns—the Brothers—rose. By midmorning it took a lot of her willpower not to scratch. The mud might be disguising her scent from the g’hir but it felt heavy and stiff in her hair and some flaked off as it dried, irritating her nostrils, bitter in her mouth. Gritty on her tongue, it was very like its peaty smell and, even through she knew she shouldn’t waste the moisture, she couldn’t help but spit to clear her mouth of the nasty taste.

It was hours since Ar’ar must’ve awakened to find the place beside him empty, since he’d gone in search of her within the confines of the Betari enclosure, realized she was nowhere to be found . . .

Summer batted at insects, slapping the biting ones, moving through the forest as fast as her leaden legs would allow. She wasn’t sure if his pride would insist he come alone or if the Betari’s leader would send clanbrothers with him to bring her back.

But Ar’ar
was
hunting her now.

Her stomach growled but she ignored it. She’d stopped briefly at dawn to rest and eat but she didn’t want to stop again until—

One instant the cay’ik wasn’t there then it was.

She gasped as dozens of spindly black legs propelled its worm-like body along the ground toward her. About the same size as Granny Delilah’s dachshund, with a pale, waxy yellow body, the creature scuttled forward.

It made a scorpion look positively cuddly. With venom that paralyzed the victim even as it liquefied flesh for the cay’ik’s consumption, it was one of the most deadly—and revolting—creatures on Hir.

Its black gaze fixed on her and her eyes widened as its round mouth opened to reveal rows and rows of sharp teeth. Fumbling in her pocket for the tiny blaster as the cay’ik lunged, Summer backpedaled so fast she lost her footing, landing hard on her butt.

The fall knocked the blaster from her hand and it bounced out of reach.

The cay’ik hissed and spit and Summer kicked hard just as it launched itself at her, catching the wretched thing in the face with her heel. Like quicksilver its body whipped around and the creature’s mouth clamped down on her boot.

Yelping, she scraped at it hard with her other foot to dislodge it. The cay’ik flew though the air to land on its back but it was stunned only for an instant, its many legs waving for a moment before gaining purchase enough to flip it back onto its belly. Summer threw herself to the side as it jumped right at her face.

The cay’ik exploded as her blaster bolt caught it square on.

Shaking with reaction, gripping the blaster so hard her hand hurt, Summer realized a venomous bite would get her off Hir quick too and not in any way she’d intended. 

But she didn’t feel any pain. Liquefying flesh would hurt, right? Wiping her foot against the forest floor, she cleaned the top her right boot off quickly to judge the damage. To her astonishment—and relief—the cay’ik’s teeth hadn’t managed to breach the tough leather of her boot.

Green goo and a few still-twitching black legs were spread over a full square yard, some even sticking to the bark of the trees behind where the cay’ik had been.

Summer pushed her mud-caked hair out her face. “God, I hate this fucking planet!”

Her legs felt a little shaky as she got to her feet and skirted the remains. Cay’ik were fiercely protective of their large territories so she wasn’t likely to come across another for hours.

And at least she knew the weapon worked, and worked pretty well at that since it had blown the cay’ik to gooey pieces. Next time she stopped she would check the blaster, see if it had any sort of power setting or something that she could adjust—

A flurry of movement made Summer gasp and sent her fumbling to raise her blaster again. Recognizing the flock of nuaran birds she gave a short relieved laugh and tucked the weapon away.