Chase (3 page)

"Stay here, Hexar. You will be fine in a few minutes." Nenita moved toward the sounds of battle while checking back on Hexar. He was lying on one side, his hand pressed to his neck where the paler skin marked where the collar had been.

Drioth was dealing with more than two suitors. Four men bearing the marks of the guards were attacking him. Drioth was in that in-between form again. Long claws, huge teeth, a long muzzle and only his blue-green eyes were the same. His body covered in molten gold fur and muscles banded with sinew and looked designed to kill.

Two of the guards were sparring with Drioth and a third was using a remote to trigger the collar. His teeth were clenched as he fought the pain, but the growl was constant. He wasn't going down without taking them with him.

The fourth guard was waiting for an opening. He was the only one to notice her. He approached swiftly and her talent kicked in, measuring a grid over his body and finding the weak points. He reached out to grab her arm and she dodged, ducked and struck at the position that gleamed with a violent purple to her inner vision.

He stopped, choked and fell to his knees. She turned on the man who was using his remote on Drioth and rushed him.

It took three swift strikes to cause him to buckle, but he went down with features contorted in pain. Nenita quickly disabled his remote and turned to watch Drioth dispatch the other two guards.

She looked cautiously at him, blood dripped from his claws and jaws. "I turned the collar off."

He nodded and jerked his head back toward where Hexar was recovering. Taking the hint, she returned to the Oefric who was struggling into a sitting position.

Hexar was rubbing the back of his neck and looking at her warily. "Is it off?"

She smiled. "Yes, it's off. It's on your left. I think Drioth is cleaning up, that or he is eating the guards that came to retrieve us."

"He is cleaning up. It isn't proper to speak to you covered in blood." Hexar reached out and closed his hand over the collar, his fingers whitened as he gripped it.

"If he will let me, I will remove his collar as well. Where is the nearest stream or body of water? I am a little thirsty." She was more than a little thirsty, but downplaying it seemed safe.

"I will take you. I could use a good splash of icy water on my face." He wobbled to his feet and held out his hand.

Nenita took it, her vision giving her a number of spots on his body to touch, none of them for the purpose of immobility. A light blush heated her features as she took his hand. It was slightly cool, but steady and strong as his fingers closed over hers.

She swallowed at the inappropriateness of her hormonal surge at the polite contact. This was not the time for her to find a man that she responded to and certainly not the place.

He tugged her through the brambles and three minutes later, they were at the edge of a stream. Drioth was in his bipedal form washing his hands and face. "How are you feeling, Hex?"

"Better. It feels really weird, but better. Do you want to get yours done?"

Drioth looked over at Nenita, "Would you please assist me by removing the collar?"

She shrugged and tugged the quill from her wrap for what she hoped was the final time. "Sure. Kneel a little away from the water. We don't want you falling in."

"Nenita, have your drink of water first. You are very pale." Hexar ducked his head under water and shook out his hair, the dark locks flying.

"Good idea." She went upstream from the bathing and blood and washed her hands before palming water to her mouth. It was ambrosia, but her stomach gurgled angrily. She hadn't eaten in over a day and she was rather hungry.

Feeling more alert, she turned to Drioth and gestured for him to kneel. "I will tell you what I told Hexar, you must hold still when I activate the withdrawal. The nodes will have to be pressed in a certain order and then I will warn you to hold your breath. Understood?"

He inhaled and exhaled slowly, "Yes."

Hexar shifted to his feline form and watched the edge of the woods, his ears swivelling and his attitude one of full alert.

Nenita did her own deep breathing as she blinked and analyzed Drioth's collar. His had a different sequence than Hexar's or her own. As she readied her quill, she bit her lip. The quill was fracturing from the pressure required to activate the release. Her stupidly enhanced sight was pinpointing each stress point, so she gripped it carefully and aimed it. "Hold your breath."

The moment he locked up, she hit the sequence and struck the tiny pressure plate deep within the collar. He remained immobile as the wires retracted back into the collar. The moment they were free, he fell to one side and retched. Nenita removed the collar and held it while he shook in reaction to the retraction.

The quill snapped when she pulled it free of the collar. Having done its duty, it simply gave up and turned into a pile of carotene splinters in her palm. She tossed them into the stream and they floated in procession until she couldn't see them anymore.

She sat with her two shifters and her gaze fuzzed as a blast of light struck her. Nenita covered her eyes and blinked frantically.

"What is it?" Hexar was at her side as she regained focus.

"Nothing. My talent was enhanced with a viral catalyst. It surges out of control from time to time." A halo settled around Hexar's face, the dazed and recovering Drioth sported his own. She didn't know why they had changed in her sight, but her own hands were not quite free of the iridescence.

Blinking rapidly, she could not clear the light that coated them all. Unsure if it was her talent or her vision, she ignored it. She could work around it.

When a guard crashed through the trees and into their small clearing, she saw him clearly. Her mind identified him as a target and pinpointed three attack zones.

When Hexar shifted and brought the man down, she watched the savagery absently. While the guard presented himself as a target, the Oefric were glowing with a soft, attractive light. "Oh dear."

Drioth lifted his head. "What is wrong?"

She opened and closed her mouth as his blue-green eyes glowed in his perfect face. Absently she patted his arm as if she had done it a thousand times. "Nothing, love. Nothing at all."

Chapter Five

Once Drioth recovered, they buried their collars and the men shifted into a larger form. At his invitation, she rode Hexar into the lowlands of the mountain range as far away from the raider outpost as possible.

Once there, they made camp in a deep cavern and Drioth retrieved some wood for a fire.

"So, what do we do now?" She sat with them on the rocky ground and listened to her stomach gurgle.

"We come up with a plan to return to the camp, grab a shuttle and get off the surface as fast as we can." Drioth prodded the wood and started to drill to gain a spark.

Nene stood and wandered over to the wall, running her hand down the stone to find what she was looking for. When it sparked in her vision, she knelt and picked up a rock.

"What are you doing?" Hexar was behind her, squinting at her hands in the dim light.

"Speeding up the fire production by chipping off a few pieces of iron-based stones to match the flint on the floor." She smacked the rock to the wall and a chunk slithered down.

She took the fallen piece and picked up the shard of flint, walked back to the pile of wood and scraped the two together. Sparks didn't issue on the first two strokes, but they did emerge on the third.

"How did you know what would work?" Hexar was looking at her intently and his focused gold eyes caught her in a web of intensity.

"What would work?" She blushed when a light smile crossed his lips.

"That those rocks would make fire."

"Oh, I used to go camping with my family. I know what to look for in a sparking rock." She flicked a few more times and the cascade of sparks caught on some of the tinder Drioth had been working on.

"That isn't what I meant. You were able to remove the collars, but you don't seem to have any medical training. You were able to disarm and deflect a guard when you obviously have no hand-to-hand combat training and now you can pick minerals at random and start fires in moments."

She breathed gently on the embers until they flickered into flames.

Drioth added slivers of wood and small twigs.

There were teeth marks on a lot of the wood, but she wasn't up to guessing what kind of shape could fell a tree and crack the branches and logs in that manner.

She nodded to Drioth when he took over on the fire and then she sat back against the wall. "It's my talent. Thanks to the forced enhancement the raiders provided, I can find whatever I need whenever I need it."

Hexar tilted his head, his dark hair sliding along his neck and brushing against his bare shoulder.

She bit her lip as her gaze quickly broke him down into the sum of his very attractive parts.

"Are you the first in your family?"

She shook her head. "My grandmother told me her grandmother had the same talent that we shared. It skips a generation."

"What did your grandmother do?" Hexar settled near her.

"She raised her family and used her talent to untangle yarns and threads when she did needlework. She said the only truly enjoyable bonus to her talent was when it showed her my grandfather."

"What do you mean?"

She could feel his body heat from where she sat. Her own flesh was cold and clammy, but since they didn't have any food to offer her, she couldn't ask them to risk hunting for her benefit.

Her stomach rumbled again and Hexar looked down at it.

She talked over the noise. "She claims that when she first saw my grandfather, a gold glow surrounded him. That glow followed him through their entire life together. She had to chase him down a few times until he realized that she was the one for him. Forward women were not common in his time. She eventually landed him though."

Nene was talking way too fast, her words were tripping over each other as her vision blurred. She slumped to the side.

She heard Hexar calling to her, but she was busy falling into darkness.

With her body relaxed after a day of tension and no food, it did what it needed to do--it shut down for a rest.

A sharp, tart scent woke her.

"Welcome back, Nenita. We have obtained some fruit for you. You have to wake up to eat it though." Drioth was smiling at her, his eyes bright and the glow around him brighter.

She was sitting in Hexar's embrace, Drioth had a peeled segment of fruit in his hand, the enticing scent was coming from his fingers.

"Open."

She opened her mouth and he popped the fruit in. It exploded in a burst of flavour. The liquid spread through her parched tissues and trickled down her throat. It was better than sex. The low moan that broke from her throat caused her companions to share a look.

"Sorry. I was just really thirsty. I don't know how you guys can go so long without eating or drinking." She sighed and opened her mouth for another slice.

"They fed and watered us this morning. I am guessing you did not get the same treatment." Hexar's tone felt as well as sounded soothing.

"No. Haven't eaten for a few days, Nishino likes to show me who is boss by making my food random. That or he is just a dick." She chuckled at her tiny show of spirit.

"Why does he torture you?" Drioth fed her another piece.

"He wanted me to fall for him so that I would come along quietly, possibly besotted by love. I didn't, he killed one of my friends and shot another on the way out and I almost killed him when he managed to get me here, wherever here is. He wants my genes, nothing else."

Hexar asked, "Not to be indelicate, but why doesn't he simply get you pregnant via in-vitro or with force?"

"Ah, because I promised him that I would kill myself before bringing a child of his to term. Heck, with my talent, I can probably keep the sperm from taking at all." She lifted a shaking hand to take the next piece of fruit, but Drioth dodged her and lifted another piece to her lips.

"Really? Why does he want you so badly?" Hexar's words weren't flattering, but they were to the point.

"I have no idea. It might be because a child of mine would have citizenship in the Alliance, I carry talented genes, or he just wants a Terran because we are a limited commodity."

Hexar nodded and settled her head more firmly on his shoulder. "I can understand that. Were you married before he took you?"

"No, the Alliance never made a match for me. They said I was a
complicated case
." She grimaced at the statement as it came out of her.

"Ah. I know that that information can be distressing. It is the same reason that we were assigned to Mkara. There was no one for
us
back home."

"Us? Oh. You two are…" Her Terran mind had no words for that situation.

"Bond brothers. We share a mind and most of a soul. It is not unheard of among our people, but usually a third appears within the population. That was not our case." Hexar's voice was solemn and Drioth kept feeding her.

"How do you tell when you have found your mate?" She tried to sound nonchalant, but Drioth smirked.

"Our folks engage in the most basic of attachments for shifters. We go by scent."

She blushed as she noticed that Drioth's nostrils were flaring and Hexar's chest was rising more than was usual under her head and shoulder.

Chapter Six

Grubby and full of fruit, Nenita made it through a full night without waking in a panic of someone coming into her cell. Hexar was spooning her and Drioth was guarding her front. Nothing was getting to her with two mountains of muscle on either side. Unfortunately, being guarded did not stop nature from calling, so she lifted Hexar's arm and got to her feet.

On silent feet, she crept to the cave opening and shivered in the morning air. Dawn was just making her appearance on the horizon.

Skimmers were appearing and disappearing in the woods. "Oh hells."

She retreated into the cavern and came face to face with the Oefric. "They are looking for us in force."