4. Nevarn

Chapter 4

Nevarn

I woke with pain lancing through my belly and the smell of woodsmoke choking my throat. Snapping my eyelids open, I stared at the sky streaked with dawn's pink and gold, wondering why I lay outstretched on the ground with a sweat-drawing fire blazing on my right.

Memories rushed into my mind. Someone stabbing me. Following me. Me stumbling upon someone's campsite and falling on my face in front of her.

Her.

With widening eyes, I stared at the human woman standing near the tree. She held a bow in her hands, the arrow pointed at me.

"Don't make any sudden moves," she said softly. "I can hit almost anything with this baby even at fifty feet. One wrong move on your part will be your last."

"Who . . ." I croaked. My throat felt like I'd been crawling across the vast, open sandy plain I'd only seen once in my lifetime. The Browze Clan lived there, though I couldn't imagine why or how. There appeared to be no vegetation there, let alone food or water. But they might say the same thing about the forest where I made my home.

"I'm Kerry," she said. "Who are you?"

"Nevarn." I swallowed past a throat coated with dust. "Traedor of the . . . Celedar Clan."

"You have tusks." Her gaze locked on my mouth, and her attention made a strange thrill shoot through me.

"You do not," I said.

"What do you rip into with teeth like that? Arms? Legs?"

"I don't . . . really know. I suppose my ancestors might've used their tusks to tear through meat. I prefer to cut it with a knife."

"What knife?" she barked, scanning my body. "I didn't see one on you."

"Stolen."

"You're unarmed, then?"

"Never." The woods surrounded us, and they'd answer my call.

I needed to craft weapons soon if I was going to fight off whoever tried to kill me. They may have left the area for a brief time, but I'd bet anything they'd be watching, waiting for the chance to finish me off.

"Who stabbed you?" she asked.

I shrugged and bit back a groan as pain spiked through my belly. "I don't know."

With a grunt, she took one step closer to me but kept her arrow cocked. "I've been watching, but no one has come near. Whoever did this to you seems to have left the area."

They'd be back. I had no doubt about that.

The stony look in Kerry's eyes told me she not only knew how to use her bow, but that she wouldn't hesitate if I gave any indication I'd attack. Good. She'd need to be on high alert until I was strong enough to stand beside her. Then, we could protect each other.

Mate. She was my mate .

"I won't hurt you," I growled, though I wasn't angry. I was frustrated that I felt pinned to the ground while she stood over me, confident and strong. But I sensed if I tried to move my limbs, they'd only flop.

Her low laugh rang out, the sweet sound tickling down my spine. "I don't believe you're capable of causing even my groundhog friend harm."

Groundhog? I wasn't sure why I focused on that. Perhaps because I'd otherwise gape at this female's beauty. Her hair wasn't silver like a Zuldruxian's or dark like Vanessa's. It was like she'd reached up into the sky and captured the sun, sliced it into tiny strands, and draped it around her shoulders. It curled at the tip of her braid, also unlike a Zuldruxian's straightness.

Her blue eyes were lighter than mine, and her pale skin was dotted with brown specks marching across her tiny nose. Actually, everything about her was tiny, from her two—instead of four—breasts to her slender body, to her booted feet barely longer than the palm of my hand.

"You're sure you don't know who did this to you?" She nudged the tip of her arrow toward my belly.

"A Zuldruxian like me."

"That's your species? I assume this area is called . . . Zuldrux?"

"This planet, yes."

The strips of golden fluff above her eyes lifted. "And you didn't see them attack you?"

"They rushed up to me from behind and they wore a mask."

"Then they're someone who doesn't want you to be able to ID them."

I didn't know what ID meant, but I nodded.

"You're lucky you found me," she said. "Lucky you're still alive. I'm still not convinced you're going to survive, but the fact that you're awake and talking coherently suggests you might pull through."

"Zuldruxians are strong." I bristled at her subtle slight. " I'm strong."

Her lips quirked up before smoothing. "Not from where I'm standing."

I struggled to rise and nearly let myself sag back onto the ground when agony barked through me. "I'll show you."

With her free hand outstretched, she took another step closer. "Stay where you are, you fool. Your body raged with a fever for the past two days, and I doubt you've healed enough yet to do more than twitch your fingers."

"I live because I found you."

"That sounds sweet, but I'm not buying your Zuldruxian pick-up line, assuming that's what it is."

More confusing statements that almost made sense if I let them skim across my mind and didn't try to analyze them.

I somehow got myself up to a sitting position and, with multiple repressed groans, worked my way over to lean against the tree. I hated how this small amount of effort wore me out. But I lived, and I'd stumbled upon my gods' given bride while trying to outrun someone determined to kill me.

They were after me, though I had no idea who it might be. If they were only after my pack and weapons, they would've taken them and fled, not followed me to make sure I died.

The woman's gaze followed me, and even when she could see I had no hope of hosting even a paltry effort against her, she still didn't relax her pose.

Urgency flew through me.

"I . . . um." I gestured to my cock.

"You need to pee."

I didn't know what pee was. "Yes."

"If you promise not to touch me, I'll help you."

"How can you help me if we don't touch?"

With a sigh, she cautiously laid her bow on the ground. A slick rang out, and a tiny knife appeared in her hand. She approached me. "I could gut you with this in one second, so no wrong moves."

It took more from me than I liked to get to my feet, let alone take a few steps into the woods behind the tree. There she spun around while I unhitched my pants and found relief. I fumbled, but finally secured them once more.

"Done," I said.

"Wonderful."

She helped me back to her campsite where I sunk down again, leaning against the tree. I hated how my body shook and the pain that kept stabbing through me, but I still lived. Alive, I could still clear my name.

And win the heart of my new mate.

"Do you have water?" I mumbled past my swollen tongue.

Her bow in hand again, she lifted a pack and tossed it to me. It landed beside my left thigh. "Inside, you'll find a flask. Feel welcome to drink all you want. I can refill it at the river. I wish I had purification tablets, but they were in the larger pack I threw at the robocops. What a waste that was. They leaped over it and caught me in seconds. They brought me here. Dumped me here, I suppose."

"Our gods brought human females here after we pleaded with them to send us mates," I said. "You must be one of them."

"Gods? Mates?" She scowled, and I even found this expression pretty. "Wait. Wait. You said human females with an s, so meaning more than just me?"

"There are many human females here."

"Where are they?"

"Far from this place."

"Well, I'm going to find them."

"I'll take you to them," I said.

"Hmm. We'll see about that." She didn't sound excited about traveling with me, but we'd just met. I wasn't showing her my best.

I had time.

"Maybe once you've healed," she said.

"Yes, then." I studied my petite, though curvy mate, and I couldn't find fault in the gift the gods had given me.

"By the way, I'm no one's mate," she finally said. "Let's get that straight right now."

"I wasn't among those who went to the central gods to plead," I marveled. "Yet they still found me worthy. No, they knew I needed you, and they gifted you to me."

"Are you delirious?" she snarled. "You must be, because you're not making sense." Her spine stiffened even further. "I'm no one's gift."

"You'll see." I tugged her flask from the pack and drank until I couldn't hold any more. After placing it on the ground beside my thigh, I frowned at the tan strips of cloth affixed to my chest and the white pieces of fabric wrapped around my belly. The small, tan things tugged off easily, and I tossed them aside. Tried to. One stuck until I growled at it and ripped it off my thumb, dropping it on the ground.

"Hey, don't mess with my bandages," she cried out. "Leave them alone."

"I don't need them."

"They were keeping the antibiotic ointment in place. That stuff is precious now that I'm trapped on your planet." She collected the tan strips and tossed them into the fire. "Don't litter either. No need to mess up your pretty world with trash."

What did she mean by trash? The gods absorbed whatever wasn't needed.

I looked up at her, shielding my eyes when the rising sun blinded me. "Do you have time to listen to a story?"

"Storytime?" she said with a snort. "This isn't kindergarten. But time, I have. First, however, I need to gather roots and leaves and scout the area to make sure whoever stabbed you hasn't circled back to finish the job. I also need to catch some fish or Molly and I will go hungry, but I can give you ten minutes after I make sure no one's around."

"Molly?"

"My new pet." She swept her arm to the right, and I spied a grundar peering through thick vegetation growing along the edge of the forest. "Every woman needs a friend, someone who'll listen, and that's her. She doesn't argue, and she's polite." She drilled me with her eyes. "The jury is still out on you."

I didn't know what the latter meant, but I let it skim over my mind. "I'm polite."

She snorted. "We'll see."

I'd show her.

"You've made a pet out of a grundar?" I asked. "That's a first." But look at Vanessa, befriending a spiky creature she lured with food. When I visited her and Aizor's clan, even Amanda, who was there with her new mate, Xax, had mentioned taming a drettire. A male might go a long way toward winning the hearts of these humans if he presented them with tiny, vicious creatures. I'd give the idea thought.

"Molly's sweet," Kerry said. "She lets me pat her belly, and she doesn't act cocky, like you."

A solid warning that I was not a pet and that if I didn't behave, she would not pat my belly. I did want her to pat my belly, though I was too injured at this time to appreciate the gesture.

"Not yet," I said.

"Not yet what?"

"Nothing." My tongue was racing ahead of my mind, and I needed to control it, or I'd blurt out something that might frighten her away. I was nearly defenseless, and she was obviously in control of the situation. If she decided to leave me, I wasn't sure I'd have the strength to follow. "I'm grateful Molly came into your life."

"Yeah." Her brow furrowed. "Let me go scout the area. When I come back, we can have story time. I can fish and collect roots this afternoon."

Before I could protest that I should scout the area since it was my role as her mate to protect her, she slipped into the woods behind me, her footsteps light.

I huffed and peered around, seeing the wood gods' sign lying near the firepit. Closing my eyes, I hummed a series of notes, keeping the sounds low. The forest gods would feel the vibration in my body even if they couldn't hear the sound. The spear jerked its way toward me and once I could reach it, I stopped humming. Hefting it, I laid it across my thighs. It wasn't much of a weapon, but the tip had been finely honed, and it would do until I could craft others.

Kerry wasn't gone long. She slunk out of the woods on the opposite side of the meadow and skirted the edge until she stood a short distance away from me.

What if she never saw me as her mate? The fear she'd never care gnawed at me, raw and unending. She was pretty, resourceful, and confident, and I adored her already for those reasons alone. But as I looked at her, I could barely breathe. My heart pounded with a mix of hope and dread. She was wonderful. Why would a glorious female like her wish to be with me?

"You don't plan to stab me with that thing, do you?" she asked, waving toward the spear.

"It's a sacred object. If someone needs to be stabbed with it, it'll be the person who wounded me, never you. I'll call for more weapons soon, but for now, I'm no longer unarmed."

"I get it. I'm grateful I have my switchblade and knife." The latter, she wore in a sheath strapped around her waist. "I wish I had the gun I left in my other pack, but it's too late to complain about that now."

A gun must be another kind of weapon. "You have your bow."

"I made that after I arrived here."

"You're clever."

"Need's a wonderful motivator, my mom would say in a grumbling tone. She pushed and pushed, trying to teach me all the skills I might need to survive on my own, and I'm grateful to her for that, at least. She died five years ago." Her chest rose and fell with her sigh. "I wish she'd been honest with me about her job, but I'm sure she wasn't allowed to tell me much. If only I could hug her one more time, not wave as she walked out the door on her last supposed vacation."

"I'm sorry she died."

"She was murdered; I'm sure about that, though there were no details about her death in the note the government sent."

I didn't understand many of her words, probably because they didn't translate into my language.

Not long after the gods brought females to their central island to hold them there until they were ready to release them to mates, they promised to give each the ability to understand our language. I was grateful for that. I couldn't imagine trying to communicate with Kerry with hand gestures and grunts.

"As for my bow and arrows," she said, "I made do with the supplies I had." She dropped down onto her haunches, still keeping an arrow set to fly, and nudged her chin my way. "Shoot."

I frowned. "I have no interest in shooting you."

"The word means tell me your story."

"Then why not just state that?"

Her eyes spiraled, a gesture I'd seen Vanessa make at Aizor when she was feeling a mixture of frustration and affection. Did Kerry hold affection for me? I prayed it was so. The gods would never make a mistake and gift me a female who wouldn't soon love me.

Would they?

Uncertainty was a raging storm inside me. Even with her remaining some distance away, I felt her presence. The roar of my heart threatened to drown out everything else. My mind spiraled through an endless cycle of yearning.

But she wanted to hear how she came to be here, and I owed this to her.

"Long ago, our gods lived seamlessly with us," I said.

"By us, I assume you mean the Zuldruxians."

"Yes."

"Are your people the only species on this planet?"

"The lizard people, Veerenads, live many days' travel from here in a city they built. They're descendants of a pack who survived after their ship crashed on our planet before my grandfather was born. They remain in their city and interact with us."

"They don't cause problems?"

"Sometimes. Never fear, I will rip apart any Veerenad who comes near you."

Tightening her spine, she scanned the clearing. "How big are these lizard people?"

"About my size. They have long claws on their hands and feet." I held up my hand. "Not blunted claws like a Zuldruxian or a human."

"They sound fearsome."

"We respect them, and they feel the same about us."

She nodded slowly. "If one comes racing across the clearing, bellowing like a banshee, I'll shoot, and we can talk about their motives after."

She said the oddest things. I sort of understood them, but I didn't. Perhaps my mind still spun from my injuries, and she'd make more sense once I was fully healed.

I took another drink of her water. She wouldn't have to refill the flask. I'd do it for her. It was my role as traedor to assist everyone in my clan, not the other way around. And while she hadn't yet accepted the fact, she was now part of my clan. "Forget the lizard people. They don't play a role in my story."

"Alright."

"When the gods arrived on Zuldrux, they sent their roots down into the soil and various structures erupted from the ground."

"They must be aliens that came to this planet, not gods, because I don't think the two are the same thing."

"My people revered them as gods, and while I agree with your suggestion that they could be beings like me, I'm not convinced. You'll have to decide for yourself."

"It's hard to make a decision about whether a . . . structure, as you called it, is godlike, but you need to know right now that I have my own religion, and I'm not going to be converted to yours."

"I respect that." I sucked in a breath and regretted it when agony gouged through me. At least my wound no longer bled, and pus didn't seep from the healing opening. Whatever Kerry had done for me was working, and I'd show my gratitude for her efforts for the rest of our days. "We lived in harmony with our various gods for many generations. Years ago, a disease swept across the land, killing many of them and most of the Zuldruxians. My people blamed the gods for this and many fled. They lived for a very long time without the benevolence of their gods, but they were slowly dying. Few younglings were born, and only rarely is one female. It looked like this was the end of the Zuldruxian species until recently."

"What happened recently?"

"A handful of traedors," at her frown, I explained, "this means leader. I am a clan traedor myself," I said proudly. "A handful of them traveled to the central god island where the strongest crystal gods still thrive. They begged for the gods' help and they agreed to send us mates. Three have already mated with Zuldruxians, and they're very happy." I met her gaze. "You were captured by the roo-bee-cops and brought here to be my mate."