Taken: Warriors of Hir, Book 2 (7 page)

Five

Hope sighed and shifted to a more comfortable position against the wall.

“You do not need to sit here with me,” R’har said, not raising his eyes from the component he was working on.

“I don’t have anything to do
but
sit here. I’m a gazillion miles from home and even if I had my cell, which I left back at the cabin—a cabin I won’t be getting my deposit back for, by the way—I’m pretty sure I’d be paying roaming charges. I don’t even have a book to read.”

“Rest in the bedroom, then. Or observe the stars from the cockpit.”

“Well, the upside to having been knocked out twice since we met is I can probably skip my naptime today and looking at the stars make me nauseous. Besides, you might need my help with something.”

In his large hands, R’har rotated the component—about the size of a pencil case—to peer at it from another angle. It was a transducer, he’d explained when he first removed it from behind a panel in the corridor wall—not that she’d know a transducer if she fell over one—a vital but badly damaged part of the directional assembly. And this transducer was a small piece in only one of many systems on the ship that had been fried when he’d opened a wormhole and took them away—or “jumped” as he called it—from Earth.

The panel he’d removed two hours ago leaned against the corridor wall beside her and around them both, neatly organized on the deck, were other pieces of the spaceship that he had methodically disassembled.

He spared her a glance. “I thought you would wish to keep as far from me as possible.”

“You’re the only other person on this thing. We’re going to be stuck together in here for days and my first apartment in Georgetown was bigger—although this place has it beat as far as backyards go. There’s no point in trying to avoid you.”

“There are entertainments available to you in the common room. There are holodramas and games. You may utilize them to pass the time.”

She sighed. “I don’t know how to work any of that stuff and this implant apparently doesn’t enable me to read your language. I don’t want to risk breaking something when you already have so much to do. You’d probably have to come help me every five minutes. That means stopping
this
work, which means drawing out the repair time even longer.”

He didn’t reply, his focus on his task. He changed his grip on the component and lifted the tool again.

The hardest thing about sitting here was ignoring the amazing warm cinnamon smell of him. Every time his work had him leaning closer to her she had to beat back the impulse to press her cheek to his neck and breathe him in.

She hadn’t ever wanted to do that with Brian.

Hope rested the back of her head against the wall and looked up at the corridor’s ceiling. “How long have you been on this spaceship anyway?”

The tool made a soft whirring sound as he worked. “I boarded this vessel and departed Hir twelve days ago.”

Hope drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. “So you don’t actually live in space?”

He gave a deep huffing sound— a g’hir chuckle. “I live at my clan’s enclosure.”

“Okay, ‘clan’ is making it through the chip—” She rapped her knuckles on her temple meaningfully. “But ‘enclosure’ isn’t. What is that? Is it a house?”

“The word’s meaning extends to far more than just a structure now. For our ancestors, ‘enclosure’ was just the clanhall—a longhouse made of wooden beams with mud walls and a thatch roof, a simple building where those of our blood would gather to shelter from the winter storms. In the spring, our males and their mates and young would depart to live in the forests in portable shelters. Only those with members too elderly to forest—” From the way he said that she realized it was a term encompassing the whole seasonal nomadic life. “—or families with females close to their birthing times would remain to live at the clanhall during the warmer months. Our people would return again to gather as the days grew shorter. In time the building became more advanced, larger, with private rooms, then private quarters, the land surrounding was cultivated and crops grown. Clans made claim to territory to hold against other clans. Now to say ‘enclosure’ means not only the clanhall and the homes at the center of the territory but the territory itself.”

“So for the spring, summer, and fall your people travel around?”

“Not as they once did. Most live nearly year-round at the enclosure’s permanent housing but we g’hir have a powerful instinct to explore, to learn, to hunt.”

“Hunt women you mean?” she asked sharply.

R’har gave a sigh. “The g’hir hunt beasts of the forest but yes, females too. Unmated males would venture alone to hunt a mate and return with her to his clan’s enclosure for the cold season. Marriages are made in the winter at the gathering. It is a time of great joy for the clan.”

“So what the hell are you guys doing on Earth anyway? Why not stay at home and get yourself a local girl?”

His shoulders tensed but he didn’t raise his eyes from his work.

“R’har?”

“We are a civilized people but at our core we are warriors,” he said brittlely. “When we began to expand beyond our homeworld and undertake space travel we made allies, but we made enemies as well. The greatest of these”—his lip curled—“are the Zerar. They are devious creatures, beasts without soul or compassion. Their attacks on our territories were vicious and unwarranted. Our fathers retaliated and were days from victory when—”

She could see his throat working. “When . . . what?”

“The Zerar unleashed the Scourge on us.”

Hope’s brow creased. “The Scourge? What’s that?”

“A plague,” he growled. “One that has devastated my kind.”

“Wait—there’s a
plague
on your planet?” Her gaze went over him quickly, her heart speeding up. “What about you, R’har? Are you all right? I mean—are you sick?”

“Males do not contract the Scourge. It affects . . . it
kills
only females.” He raised his bright gaze to meet hers then. “You need not fear, Hope, I gave you the vaccine when I brought you onboard. I will never lose you to the Scourge.”

“You just went ahead and—” But the outrage of it paled as the implications of what he’d said came clear. “Wait . . . How many women are we talking about? How many has it killed?”

“The Scourge came through when I was six summers old and it swept through the enclosures like wildfire. The fatality rate was nearly ninety percent.”

Hope’s mouth parted. “Ninety percent? But that means—”

“Billions of our females died in a matter of weeks. There are very few g’hir females now.”

If he was only six . . .

“Your family?” she asked, already knowing what the answer must be.

“I had five sisters, all older. The first case of the Scourge was seen at our enclosure at midday; my sisters—” His face was haunted. “I was the youngest, the baby, and spoiled by them all. But by the following day only I was left to hold my mother’s hand when she died.”

“I’m sorry.” It was so small, so little to offer in the face of all he’d lost that she felt ashamed.

R’har met her gaze then and in those alien eyes she could see the little boy who had sat all alone at his dying mother’s side.

“A handful of females in my clan survived. The other enclosures did not fare any better. And our warriors . . . many simply stopped trying to live. My father was one such; he joined my mother and sisters before the next gathering. The younger males, like me, grew into adulthood knowing we would live our lives out alone, that for nearly all of us there would be no mate to protect. We will be the last generation to fully populate our worlds and when we are gone it will take centuries, perhaps millennia, for our species to recover . . . if we ever do. We can hold against the enemy for now but there are not nearly enough young to replace us. Now the Zerar need only wait. In a generation there will be too few of us to mount even a rudimentary defense and the Zerar will sweep through and level our worlds like a storm.”

He let his breath out slowly as if reaching for inner control, his shoulders trembling a little with the effort. He lifted the component again.

That’s why you couldn’t get yourself a local girl. There aren’t any to be gotten. Me and my big, stupid mouth . . .

“But,” she began awkwardly, “you said you had allies, other species, I’m guessing. I mean, aren’t there any females that your people could, uh—?”

He paused in his work, his hand hovering over the component. “None are compatible.”

“But human women . . . we are?”

“Yes.” His head came up and he met her gaze. “Ra’kur, of the Erah enclosure, ventured far from our space, seeking a mate. He was gone years but he found your world, and his Jenna.”

“And that’s why you came to Earth. Why you hunted a wo—uh, me.”

“I fought in contests, competed in tests of speed and strength for the honor to go. The competition to be selected to travel to your world is fierce. Of those few chosen I was the first.” He gave her a faint, bitter smile. “And I will return with a mate who does not want me.”

Hope swallowed hard. “It’s not you, I—”

“Yes,” he growled, turning his attention to his work, his shoulders hunched again, his grip tight on the tool. “You are promised to another. One who now couples with your friend. But
he
is
human
.”

“What did you expect?” she demanded. “That you could just show up on another world and steal yourself a woman?  That she’d be happy to be yanked right out of her life?”

His head came up, his eyes flashing. “I did not
steal
you!”

“Really? What would you call just grabbing me off my planet?”

R’har’s fangs bared. “And I have taken you from so much joy! From a male who promises you himself then bonds with a different female. From a trusted friend who would take your promised for her own!”

Hope folded her arms, glaring at him.

“Well?” he snarled. “You do not deny it is so?”

“Oh, hell, no,” she snapped. “I’m just waiting for you to remind me how the company I’ve worked for since college threw me out on my ass too. I mean, we don’t want to leave
that
out, do we?”

He blinked. “Your employers assaulted you?”

“Assaulted—? They didn’t
literally
throw me out. It’s an expression. They fired me.” Seeing the alarmed look in his gaze she quickly amended, “They dismissed me.”

“Ah,” he said, the tension in his shoulders easing. “Why did they dismiss you?”

“They had enough people who do what I do so they needed one gone. Lucky me as always, I’m the one they picked to go. Guess I’ll be blowing the dust off my résumé and finding a new job as soon as I get back.” She sighed. “I’m going to move too. I lived in that apartment before I met Brian but—I don’t know, maybe Alexandria or downtown. I’ll get a new place, a new job, put my life back together and never,
ever
”—she gave a short laugh—“go back to North Carolina again.”

He regarded her for a moment, his gaze thoughtful. “What were you employed to do?”

“My job? I was a graphic designer.” From the expression on his face it was clear he had no idea what that was. “I did artwork. Commercial art, intended to get people to buy things or purchase another company’s services.”

He tilted his head. “Were you happy in that task, Hope?”

“Trading virtually all my waking hours to get other people to buy crap they don’t really need or want? Yeah, not so much.” She gave a short, surprised laugh. “You know, nobody’s ever asked me that—if I was happy at my job. Not even Brian. Not even the cheating tool of a boyfriend I had before him, or the one before
him
.”

He gave a chin jerk. “You were not happy.”

“No, and it’s stupid and naïve but . . .” She looked down, plucking at the shoelace of her hiking boots. “I went to art school to be an artist. The commercial stuff just sort of happened.” She sighed again. “No, it didn’t. I wanted to be an artist but so many artists can’t even support themselves. I wasn’t brave enough to say ‘screw it’ and throw myself out there like that so I took a day job thinking that I would work on my art at night. Only a day job isn’t forty hours, not really. Between commuting and oh-my-God-we-have-a-deadline hours you wind up with more like seventy hours eaten up and then you’re tired . . .” She closed her eyes. “I’m doing it again.”