Her heart leapt in her chest as she looked around, but she saw no sign of Zorn.

  Deciding, perhaps, he was working in the area she saw where there appeared to be domesticated farm animals, she followed Kiah into the storage building on the edge of the fields, collected a basket and then followed her into the fields to begin picking—whatever it was they were picking.

  It didn’t have much of a smell, but it was an appealing shade of yellow and rounded. It reminded her somewhat of bell peppers, she decided—mostly just because of the shape and the color.

  Kiah pointed out, she supposed, the ripest and instructed her to leave the rest on the bush. The work separated the two of them as they moved down different rows, but they would come together from time to time and exchange a few words and when either finished filling their basket they would wait on the other and then walk together to empty the contents into a large bin in what appeared to be a cellar almost as large as the building over it.

  She looked for Zorn whenever the chance presented itself, but by the time they stopped to eat around mid-day she had to conclude that he just wasn’t there.

  It made her uneasy when they’d had the confrontation with the colony people less than a week earlier, but there didn’t seem to be much point in sharing her uneasiness with his mother. No doubt she was just as aware that Zorn was absent and at least as worried about it as Alayna was.

  Alayna was tired enough by the time—apparently by silent if mutual consent—everyone began to put away their tools or finish up their load and head to the basement storage area to store it. Then she discovered, instead of heading directly back to the village, all of the women were headed in another direction entirely.

  Alayna was too hot, sweaty, and tired to be particularly intrigued by what the plan might be. All she really wanted to do was to return to Zorn’s hab and bathe and collapse, but Kiah followed the other women and, with reluctance and irritation, she also followed.

  She discovered fairly shortly that the destination was a smallish natural pool not far from the edge of the most distant field. Once there, all of the women found a spot and began to strip.

  Ok, so Alayna had no desire to strip naked in front of everybody. She’d managed to get used to the practice, somewhat, in the military, but she had never gotten ‘comfortable’ with it and she damned sure didn’t like it.

  Beyond that, it was a natural body of water on an alien world. To her mind, it was likely teaming with creatures from microscopic to big enough to swallow someone whole, and that would’ve killed any desire to get in if she was an exhibitionist.

  She stood indecisively for a time, wondering if she could find her way back to the village without losing her way, disturbed, also, by the likelihood that her refusal would just set her apart even more firmly from the others. Eventually, though, that thought and the realization that everyone else was already in and there didn’t seem to be a problem with wildlife, she stripped and joined the others.

  The water felt absolutely divine! It was a perfect temperature—cool enough to drop her internal heat and yet not so cool as to be a shock to the system.

  One of the young women from the village approached her when she’d gotten in and swam across and back, smiling at her in a friendly way. “I Tera.”

  Alayna struggled with her natural tendency toward wariness, but the ‘vibes’ she got from the young woman all felt in the ‘good’ region of the spectrum. “I’m Alayna.”

  The young woman frowned. “A- lay?”

  Alayna chuckled. “How about Layna? That’s what Zorn calls me.”

  The young woman blushed and Alayna felt a thread of uneasiness, wondering abruptly if this was the woman she’d been warned about since it seemed Tera just might have a little crush on Zorn. “Clan chief,” she said, nodding. “You his woman.”

  Ok, it was charming in a way to have Zorn so arrogantly inform her she was his. She wasn’t sure she liked everyone thinking of her as his possession. “Mate,” she said with just an edge to her voice.

  The young woman, for good or bad, didn’t seem to notice. “You sky people.”

  Alayna wondered if her use of their language was as bad as theirs of English and thought, wryly, that it probably was because Zorn always looked amused when she spoke to him in his tongue. “Yes,” she responded. “From far away.”

  “Like dis dere?” Tera asked.

  Alayna frowned, considering it—realizing quite suddenly something she hadn’t accepted before. She was the alien here. Her and the other colonists were aliens. These people belonged here. It was their world even though she was certain nobody from Earth actually looked at it that way.

  She hadn’t before.

  And the truth was, she thought it was probably very similar to what it had been like on Earth … many years ago … maybe only a couple of hundred years, but at least a hundred. She didn’t think either of them had a good enough grasp of the other’s language to discuss it in much depth, though. “Some places, I think. I came from a big, slummy city, though, and there wasn’t anything like this around—not that you’d feel safe to swim in. And I never saw food actually growing. It was … well in markets and restaurants.”

  Tera looked more than a little confused, but she finally just smiled and left.

  Inwardly, Alayna shrugged. Maybe it was an offer of friendship and maybe just curiosity. She supposed she’d know before long.

  Dismissing it, she focused on working the ‘tired’ out of her muscles.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t notice that the women began to ‘melt’ away one or two at the time. It would’ve been hard not to notice when the pool began to be less and less crowded. But she didn’t notice when the last of them left until she abruptly found herself completely alone. That discovery sent a shaft of something close to panic through her—especially when she realized they’d completely disappeared from sight.

  Struggling out of the water, she realized that by itself was a strong indication that she’d been in the pool way longer than she’d realized. She didn’t wait to dry. She slipped into her undies and shirt and, carrying her pants and shoes, hurried to the path they’d followed from the field, trying to convince herself that she would catch up to them if she hurried.

  She knew she was in trouble when, about halfway back to the fields, a village woman stepped out of the woods and into the path directly in front of her.

  There was no doubt in her mind that she’d been waylaid. Everything about the woman said ‘antagonism’—the smirk on her face, the body language—just the fact that she’d hid and then stepped out to block the path.

  Alayna stopped, sizing the woman up—sorry she hadn’t stopped to put on her pants and shoes—especially the shoes since they were steel-toed.

  “So you Zorn’s female, yes?” the woman said in very bad English that still conveyed the sneer without difficulty.

  “And you must be the one he didn’t want,” Alayna said baitingly.

  That thoroughly pissed the woman off. Alayna could see her struggling with a comeback. “Did. He feel sorry for sky woman. Her people no want.”

  That struck a little closer to home than Alayna was comfortable with and what made it worse was that no one had been around to see anything except Zorn.

  So had he said that? Or something like that to explain why he’d taken her?

  And why would he have felt like he had to explain anything to the bitch?

  She’d grown up in foster care, though, and weakness wasn’t something you showed unless you just wanted to get your ass kicked.

  “Oh now my feelings are hurt,” Alayna said snidely. “All that sex we’ve had was just pity sex? And I was having so much fun! Well, he hasn’t shown any signs of being tired of fucking me yet, so I think I can keep him a while.”

  She knew damned well the bitch couldn’t have understood half of what she’d thrown at her, but apparently it was enough to send her into a rage. Uttering a snarl, she launched herself at Alayna. Alayna had been anticipating it and managed to leap out of the way and kick her in the ass as she went by since her opponent had thrown too much momentum into the attack to stop or change directions when Alayna leapt out of her way.

  She realized she probably shouldn’t have done that right after she had—the kick in the ass.

  Because it just pissed the bitch off way worse and she was bigger and most likely a hell of a lot stronger.

  She had learned hand-to-hand in service, though. And, thankfully, the Asian fighting skills she’d mastered had been developed by and for people who tended to have a disadvantage in size to white people. She managed to throw the woman when she caught herself and charged back. But in the next attack the woman launched, she caught Alayna at the waist like a fullback and carried her a couple of yards before she slammed her into the ground. Alayna was too stunned by the body slam to react as quickly as she needed to.

  Taking instant advantage, the woman straddled Alayna and proceeded to attempt to choke the life out of her.

  Alayna was at a complete disadvantage then. The woman wasn’t just heavier. She had a far longer reach. Alayna managed to drive a fist into the bottom of the woman’s chin—which spurted blood from a bitten tongue, a broken tooth, or busted lip—but it only drove her fury higher until Alayna ceased clawing at any part of the woman she could reach and was circling drain.

  The weight on her belly and the vice on her throat were abruptly ripped away. Alayan sucked in a sharp breath and nearly threw up. When she managed to get the coughing under control, she saw that Zorn had apparently dragged the woman off of her.

  She hadn’t realized he was anywhere around. She’d caught a glimpse of several men coming from the woods just before the woman jumped her, but she hadn’t spotted Zorn.

  She didn’t know for a handful of moments if that was a good thing or a bad.

  She’d never seen him in such a rage before.

  Thankfully, most of it seemed to be focused on her opponent.

  “The gods are my witness, Ner—if you attack my woman again I will banish you from the clan. She is breeding and you have endangered her and our unborn babe. Get out of my sight before I rethink that!”

  The woman gaped at him in disbelief, struggling with the men holding her. “You would take her part above mine? When I am a clan member and she is a … sky child? She is the one who started this! I was only defending myself!”

  Zorn’s eyes narrowed. “I should tell you that we witnessed the entire incident, Ner—from the moment you stepped out of the woods and confronted her.”

  Ner gaped at him. “Before that! She had threatened me when we were at the pool!”

  Zorn regarded her with brooding violence. “You do not want to push this, Ner. She is a clan member—as much as you are—because she is my mate.”

  Alayna could see she actually did want to push it, but apparently she thought retreat was in order to reconsider the situation. She said nothing more and the men released her. When they did, she spat at Alayna and turned and walked off.

  Alayna thought if she could’ve gotten up, she would’ve done her best to knock the bitch’s head off for trying to spit on her.

  Thankfully, she missed because Alayna discovered she was in no shape to bound up and knock anybody’s block off. She was still having trouble swallowing and breathing after having her windpipe nearly crushed.

  Frankly, she was amazed the woman hadn’t managed it.

  Zorn didn’t even try to just help her to her feet. He scooped her up and held her cradled against his chest. “You haven’t even had time to recover from your wounds,” Alayna chided him. “I’ll be ok. I just … need to take it slowly.”

  “Where is my mother?” Zorn growled instead of responding to her comment.

  Alayna blinked at him. “Uh … I don’t know. I was swimming and everybody started leaving and the next I knew they were all gone. I didn’t see her leave. She probably thought I already had,” she added uneasily.

  Because she didn’t want him pissed off at her because she’d done something stupid, but she sure as hell didn’t want to pass the buck to his mother!

  Kiah met them before they got past the farm, her expression worried and fearful. That didn’t abate when she saw Zorn was carrying Alayna.

  “Is she hurt?” she asked sharply.

  “Ner tried to kill her,” Zorn said tightly. “If we had not been there, it would not be a case of tried and failed.”

  Kiah looked like she would cry. “I thought she had gone ahead of me! I was gossiping … I did not see her!”

  “It isn’t your fault!” Alayna said crossly. “I’m a grown woman! I just did something stupid by not keeping track of the time.”

  “Yes,” Zorn growled. “You no take care ob my woman and my babe.”

  Kiah glared at him at that. “It could have been a deadly mistake, but it was a mistake—on both of us!”

  Zorn’s lips tightened, but he decided he didn’t want to fight with both of them, or either of them. Alayna was hurt and the fault was Ner’s. If she had harmed Alayna and his child—and that was still to be determined—he thought he might kill her. Banishment would be the better option, but they were going to have to remove her quickly if anything happened to his mate or child. He made sure the men who’d accompanied him knew that before he took Alayna into his cottage so that his mother could examine her and the babe.

  He paced the ground floor from the back door to the front and back again while he waited to hear what his mother had found, what she thought about Alayna’s condition and the health of the babe.

  Her face looked so eloquent of grief when she came down at last that his heart nearly failed him.

  Apparently, she saw the effect it had had on him because she rushed to reassure him. “They are both alright, but you are right. That bitch nearly killed her. Her throat is so damaged it will take a while to heal and it may not heal entirely as it should. The babe is tiny enough it has suffered no harm—even though the bitch apparently tried to crush it with her ass when she jumped Layna. I’m … I will never get over the part I played in allowing it to happen. I nearly lost both of them—you nearly did—and I could not have borne the guilt of it.”

  He pulled her close and hugged her when she burst into tears even though he desperately wanted to rush to Layna to assure himself that his mother had not said what she had to try to break the bad news more gently. “It is no one’s fault but Ner’s,” he murmured. “If we all had the ability to see the future, no doubt we would make many different choices. But we do not. We do the best we can. If things had turned out differently ….” He found he could not bring himself even to voice the worst possible scenario. “But they didn’t. Layna was able to defend herself until we could reach her. She is a warrior even if she is very small and weak compared to our people and she did well to protect herself and our babe. We have to learn from the decisions we did make and hope we will not make another mistake that will cost more than we can bear to lose—as this very nearly did.”

  Chapter Eight

  Layna found that the tea Kiah gave her soothed the pain in her throat, but it also scrambled her wits. She found herself weaving in and out of a bizarre reality—where she could hear Kiah weeping in the distance and Zorn’s deep voice speaking soothingly to her.

  Was she dead then, she wondered? Was that why she felt so strange?

  She asked Zorn when she discovered he was standing at the foot of the bed, staring down at her. “Am I dead?”

  A jolt went through him. After staring at her in dismay for several moments, he climbed slowly onto the bed and up it until he could gather her against his length. “Why would you say such a foolish thing, beloved?”

  “I feel so strange … and I could hear Kiah crying …. And you were soothing her.”

  “If you had died I would have been wailing and she would have been soothing me,” he responded tightly.

  Alayna managed to smile at his joke. “You would have been upset, though?” she mumbled.

  “I would have been devastated,” he said flatly. “Why do you think I was so angry?”

  “Because I did something stupid?”

  “Because you could have died for doing something stupid. You could not have known that crazy bitch would be laying in wait for you,” he added. “But you are too smart not to think about the wild things and how dangerous they are.”

  “I was thinking about you,” she murmured.

  He was silent for several moments. “That still does not make it alright,” he growled finally.

  Alyana sighed. She really wanted to talk him into a good mood to banish the anger, but she just didn’t feel up to it. She was just so tired all she could really think about was going to sleep—and then hopefully waking up to discover her throat felt better.

  “I’m not angry with you,” he lied. “Go to sleep. You will feel better tomorrow.”

  “Did you read my mind? Because I was just thinking that.”

  He chuckled. “You weren’t thinking, beloved. You were muttering. Go to sleep.”

  Sighing, she drifted off. She woke several times throughout the night, desperate for water, but Zorn was always there with a cold glass to soothe her throat and she went right back to sleep. She’d convinced herself that she’d only dreamed it by the time she woke, but Zorn brought her another glass and she could see he hadn’t slept very well.

  “What happened to that bitch?” she asked when she finally recalled why her throat was hurting like a son-of-a-bitch. “Please tell me I killed her.”

  Zorn felt his anger evaporate. The comment surprised a chuckle out of him. “Alas no. I am considering banishment,” he added as the anger flooded back. “If she had succeeded in her aim, you would be dead and our unborn babe with you.”

  Alayna felt her face heat. “You know … I might not be pregnant, right?”

 

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