Fragile Bond (5 page)

Its body language shifted, the hair bristling up to stand on end.

Through the sparser mane, he could see the cording tendons in the neck, pulse hammering madly, shoulders and arms and chest distended with strain.

Mat was within reach, but locked in the large male’s grip. And with those vicious claws fully extended, Marc had as much a chance of regaining his rifle as he did of being served tea and crumpets in the next few minutes. That tawny was in a full rage and a breath from launching at him. No way could he defend against a direct attack, even if he pulled his knife. One blade against ten. Close quarters combat would end in the tawny’s favor, swiftly. He needed Mat.

He drew his legs in and shifted his weight, heels digging into the packed soil, ready to move, just as the other male stepped in and restrained the raging tawny. Marc waited, coiled and tense, listening to a murmured litany of growls. The male leaned in just enough to counter any advance, muscles cording in his arms.

The angry one curled its lips, baring the tips of its wicked-looking teeth. The expression degenerated into a gape-jawed, snarling hiss, something happening to the eyes—they shifted, refracting eyeshine in a strange hue of turquoise.

His captor growled, equal measures threat and warning. A heartbeat too late, it registered that the tawny had directed the noise at him. The male grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and pulled him close. Marc found his face all but smothered against his chest. Muscle shifted beneath the feathered dusting of hair, chafing his face. The tawny held him, as immobile as a trigger with the safety on.

Diverting his gaze? Its response to a challenge seemed rather intense, if that’s what it assumed his attentive observation was. Okay, yeah, he’d been staring. But shit, up until this he’d assumed the predators picking off forward scouts and leading battalions were just that. Predators, native creatures looking for some easy meat in a vitriolic ecosystem.

Even the behavior patterns he’d seen thus far reinforced that. Something primal had
twanged
in his captor’s behavior earlier, when the other two had appeared in the doorway. Talk about nonverbal communication. He’d recognized that pattern—a predator defending his kill from scavengers. A display intended to intimidate in the face of challenge.

He tried to hold his breath against the swamping scent of musk and soil coming from the tawny. That didn’t work. Tried breathing through his mouth, shallow sips of air. He would not lose himself in another cloud of arousal. He had to get away from the pheromones.

No way would he just disregard his safety for the urge to rub one out. He wasn’t completely certain what had happened earlier. Never got so turned on he lost his head and couldn’t squeeze the trigger when he needed to.

If he lost himself again, he might not be so lucky. Obviously not every tawny was as receptive and indulgent as his captor. And wasn’t that baffling as all fuck.

Why had this particular tawny decided to indulge him? When chewing his head off at the shoulders was obviously the better solution?

A sneaking suspicion formed in the corner of his mind. It whispered that these indigenous predators were a sapient race. So he’d been staring, yeah. Intently. And now that he thought about it, he hoped this spat was only a misunderstanding. He knew nothing of these indigenes or their nature or culture, so he hoped that’s all this was. He’d stared at his captor with similar intensity and it hadn’t had an ounce of effect. At least, not like that.

“Please, don’t let me have killed a sibling or lover or child or something. Oh shit, fuck me running.” He focused on the sound of his own voice, the quality of it, instead of the damp-dark soil scent trying to crawl into his brain. His hands shook, fingers scrabbling against the dirt floor as he tried to escape, disengage, push away. He put his legs into it, coiling his feet beneath him and flexing with every ounce of energy he could muster.

The alien’s grip proved unbreakable. The tawny didn’t even need to flex a muscle to keep him pinned. Just rumbled something, the vibration of sound resonating through Marc. Soothing away his panic within moments, easing the strain in his mind to a level less likely to create fissures in his mental state.

Language required structure. Structure meant intellect, reason. The pieces shifted around and slid into place, registering with the impact of a well-placed glider round. It blasted through every assumption he’d made and every piece of intel he’d received.

He’d never killed anything but animals before. Some unusual predators in Mat’s scope over the years, but never any sapient creatures. Every single shot he’d taken this afternoon began playing through his mind. In slow motion, from first moment in the scope to the flare of pink mist.

“Oh gods help me, I didn’t know.” He closed his eyes and tried to think of something else, anything else. Those damned stupid-looking fuchsia rodents on that one planet. With curly fur, huge floppy ears, and fangs—the squads had nicknamed them vampire bunnies. They’d found the name had unexpected accuracy while they’d scrambled to take shots at the things. Persistent buggers. Especially with those wings. How’d he forgotten the wings? Freaky leathery-black appendages that snapped in the air. Not large enough to carry the vicious bloodsuckers very far, just enough to be annoying. And jump frighteningly high.

Silence. The grip relaxed on his shoulder, but didn’t withdraw. Seeing as how the tawny was holding him captive, that touch shouldn’t feel reassuring. But it did.

Marc risked a glance at the rest of the room, only to discover the angry tawny still present. He could see the tension still. Feel it. The black-maned one glanced at him. Its gaze flicked over his form, swift, dismissive, and impatient. It aimed a throaty snarl at his captor. The tawny’s large hand, strangely human if he ignored the sheer size of palm and fingers, slid up Marc’s neck to cradle his head and turn Marc’s attention back to him.

The single thing that most baffled the hardened soldier in Marc was the gentle touch in that hand. A light, almost-caress from the callused, warm hands of a male who had, not moments before, held him in a viselike grip.

“Why the sudden change, buddy?” Marc knew the tawny couldn’t understand the words, but he wasn’t about to discount the ability to translate tone. “Worried you’ll break me?”

The tawny growled as though reprimanding him, but the moment Marc dared lift his head and met the male’s gaze, the harshness gave way to something else. A crooning purr. Encouragement, perhaps? His irises were a fascinating blend of amber and molasses, with veins of gold bleeding through. No hostility in his features.

“Probably wondering how the fuck I managed to kill so many of your buddies, aren’t you?”

The tawny furrowed his brows.

“Because I’ve acted like a completely brainless idiot around you, I mean.”

He rumbled, but it sounded noncommittal to Marc.

“What did you do to me? And how do you do it, for that matter? These two here don’t do it, never seen any other of your sort do it either.”

Not that the tawny could answer any of his questions. He might as well be addressing them to the wall for all the good it did. Marc could spill every military secret he was privy to at this point, and it wouldn’t matter a whit.

Which made him wonder why the tawny had bothered sparing him. Why he’d hauled him back here in the first place. It wasn’t like they could torture him for intel.

The tawny rapped him on the chest with his knuckles, hand heavy against the Kevlar vest. He chuffed once, a curt sound. Marc looked back at him, raised a brow in question. It took some effort to suppress his instinctive response. He wanted to slap the tawny’s hand away and roll into a defensive crouch. To regain possession of Mat, now lying on the floor on the far side of his captor’s leg. At least the male hadn’t tossed the rifle around like so much worthless junk. A sure sign of higher intellect. And he knew to keep it out of Marc’s immediate reach. Definitely wasn’t stupid.

His captor chuffed again, following Marc’s gaze. And then he shook his head sharply and let his palm rest against Marc’s chest. Marc could feel the weight of it, restraining him. Gently.

What the fuck had happened to change the tawny’s tendency for violence?

“Why’d you spare me? Why bother being nice after I killed all those boys of yours?” Marc shook his head in confusion. His captor continued watching him with a calm, steady gaze. “Why not just kill me? Simpler that way. I mean, thanks for the humbling experience, riding over your shoulder like that. And the rest of it.”

Stupidest thing he could’ve said. While his dick wasn’t painfully hard anymore, he could still smell that intoxicating musk, so rich and thick he was tasting it. It gave him that faintly lightheaded sensation like the first hit of nicotine sometimes did. Made it difficult to focus on anything beyond the simple things, the immediate. Made it difficult to freak out, too. Which was kinda nice because he was sure that, given a clear head and a few moments to really think this through, he’d be worried. Maybe.

Behind him, the black-maned one growled. Its voice was distinctive, or at least the hostile edge was. Some things didn’t need words. The male didn’t look away as he moved his hand from Marc’s chest and extended it over his shoulder. When Marc turned to look, his captor gave a sharp warning bark, hand tightening painfully on his shoulder. The alien’s thumb hit a pressure point that made his entire arm go numb.

“Ow, fine! Looking at you, tawny dude. Swear I am, see?” He grabbed his captor’s wrist, tried to pull the male’s hand from his shoulder but the alien didn’t budge. Fucker. Two could play that game. He shifted his fingers, found the ligaments running up through the wrist into the hand. The physiology was similar enough that he knew he’d get a release reaction digging in with his fingertip, applying ruthless force.

The tawny roared, jerked his hand back, and struck Marc on the side of the head. Hard enough to send him sprawling half a dozen feet. His skull-jug of a helmet protected him from the worst of it, but his captor hadn’t pulled the punch. He knew, then, what
seeing stars
meant; they glittered in his narrowing gray field of vision, a thousand imaginary pixies. Tangling themselves in blurry paths around the unshod feet and bare legs of his captor as the tawny male stepped toward him.

It came down to this then. He’d expected it. Being a prisoner led to interrogation, and that involved softening and cooperation through whatever means worked. Even as he let himself admire the tawny’s well-toned musculature, he struggled through processing how to fight back. How best to defend against the assault, the injuries that would follow.

Surely the tawnies had been studying his physiology as much as he had theirs. That was a safe assumption to make—the cautious one.

Marc flinched away when the tawny reached out for his head.

It was hardly a deterrent.

The male probed up Marc’s neck with his fingers, lingered with faint pressure against the tender, vulnerable spot behind his ear. A sharp, gouging pain followed, dissipated swiftly into a dull ache, but he still thrashed, twisted, trying to pull away, escape. No way would he lay supine while they dismantled him.

As much as he struggled, the tawny’s restraining grip proved stronger. Held him to the floor with ease. When the male leaned close and began a series of rumbling growls, they sounded different. Echoing through water at first; his head wasn’t working anymore. Another faint jolt of pain. A sensation like electricity surging through the inside of his skull. Disorientation followed, like someone had rebooted his brain with an adjusted frequency setting.

Suddenly the tawny’s words were crystal clear.

“You need to understand, alien. A prisoner doesn’t challenge a soldier. You shouldn’t look a furr in the eye that way, ever.”

Who’d taught the tawnies to speak Standard?

Why hadn’t he understood them before?

Why did his head feel as though someone had replaced his brain with a soup sandwich?

Fucking sloppy clusterfuck. The world around him had gone blurry unless the number of tawnies in the room had tripled, colors and shapes bleeding together like water paints. Marc squeezed his eyes shut, grateful he was already on the floor. He groped for his rifle, but it wasn’t there. A moment of panic, thinking he’d lost it. He would never misplace Mat. Mat never left his side. Something was horribly wrong.

Hamm knew the soldier had to be disoriented.

No more than he would be shortly, granted, though in different ways. He double-checked the second bio-processor Dehna handed him, then slid it into the small bald spot behind his left ear.

It was a highly coveted little piece of programming assistance that tapped into the temporal lobe of the brain and enhanced the processing of auditory input, translating what was heard into a comprehensible format. Given that there were as many dialects as there were clans, it was crucial for communication these days. Bringing the clans together against the invading forces had been a simple enough matter—mutual understanding and coordination, not so much.

He saw the moment of recognition in the warrior, that instant when the bio-processor fired up the linguistics subroutine. The moment, a breath later, when his native
fefa
dialect translated into a language he could comprehend. The soldier’s skin shifted hues, shades paler; his eyes slid shut, his body went limp. No, no. Something had gone wrong. The male hadn’t even been this relaxed after finding release during that pheromone-fueled frottage.