Chapter 2

TWO

Whitten

I scratched my ears with a growl followed by a sneeze. Something here was giving me allergies. Probably this moss I currently sat on, which was also why my butt was itching. I moved away with a huff to a patch of non-offending dirt and sat on my tail for an extra layer of protection from whatever was bothering me.

This was not my idea of a good time. I didn't like field work , as Tain called it. I liked to sit alone in my dark office with plenty of food at my disposal and enough screens and gadgets to keep me busy for many rotations. But instead, here I was doing on-the-spot surveillance because two of my brothers were busy with their mates. Another was occupied medically with a new human boy we'd adopted. And the third, Tain, was unpredictable with anger issues, and I didn't want to deal with him.

So that left me as the option to figure out what the fuck Xaberians were doing abducting human women from Earth and hiding them underground in secret. Well, they thought this location was secret but thanks to Kyle, the human teenager we'd rescued and who now lived with us, the location was no longer secret.

Home was Akoma, created by our mother Queen after she and our father rescued us from the Xaberians. My brothers and I were products of genetic testing. The Xaberians used our Drixonian father's sperm and unknown eggs from whatever species they fancied and produced us. Queen, the human who'd been tasked to raise us before she fell in love with our father and risked everything to escape, said I resembled a wolf on Earth. However, I wasn't gray or black like I'd seen of Earth wolves. My fur was a mottled blue black, but my ears and short snout resembled a wolf, as well as my long tail. My fingers weren't very dexterous, they were rather short with claws, but I had a wicked sense of smell, excellent hearing, and great eyesight.

Sometimes my hips ached. We weren't perfect, my brothers and I. Eleric sometimes got dizzy when he used his wings to fly. Tain was angry a lot. But we had each other, and now two of us had mates when none of us ever thought we'd be mated. We lived only to find our sixth brother and take care of Queen in her older age. But now we had two human women, a young human male, and the knowledge that more human women were being held prisoner on this very planet by our former captors. The new purpose fueled us.

I leaned back against the trunk of a cipper tree and studied the tablet in front of me. I had positioned several spy cameras around the open plains known as the Swallee. The area was known for its spongey ground that grew nothing but a rare moss. It had long been considered uninhabitable, and my brothers and I hadn't bothered to do much searching here. Until Kyle had reported being taken here. Of course, he didn't know anything about Swallee, but as soon as he described the ground, I knew the exact location. Kyle said he'd seen many human women disappear underground. I'd almost not believed him, but his descriptions had been so vivid, and he had no reason to lie. He wanted the women safe as much as we did. So I traveled to Swallee and installed my cameras as discreetly as I could. Now I rested well enough away from Swallee to maintain cover while also being within range of my cameras' signals. My tablet currently showed me views from all ten of my cameras. And other than an interested birchig sniffing around, all had been quiet.

So I waited. Surveillance was boring business for all my brothers, but I enjoyed it. I liked quiet. I trusted my equipment, and I valued what I could see with my own eyes. Hear with my ears. Smell with my nose.

I also trusted my instincts, and there was something in the air here that wasn't right. I could feel it under me. Above me. All around me. Suffering was happening, but I didn't know where . Swallee covered a huge area, and Kyle didn't know where within the grounds he'd been taken.

I pulled out some jerky and gnawed on it, worrying the toughest parts with molars and digging into the length of it with my fangs. The salty, gamey meat burst with flavor on my tongue.

I was just about to reach for my water canteen when movement from one of the cameras along the top right of my tablet caught my eye. I checked the location—that camera covered one half of the northwest quadrant. As the top of a Dayloes helmet came into view, I was already on my feet, my bag slung on my back, and my paws hitting the dirt. Dayloes worked for the Xaberians as guards, and wore bulky armor to protect their soft chests, while their backs were protected by a natural armor-like shell. They were big fleckers, but not bigger than me.

The quickest, most direct route would be to cross the Swallee on foot, but I didn't dare do that. I had no idea what kind of traps the Xaberians would have set, and they likely had surveillance of the area just like me. I skirted the Swallee on silent footfalls as I kept an eye on the camera and one of my path, so I didn't smash into a tree. Two Dayloes were visible now, and they were holding something between them. I couldn't tell what it was. The entire thing was in a big, rough-clothed bag. Whatever was inside was an awkward shape. Sharp points mixed with smooth curves.

My fur pricked on end all over my body, and my tail puffed without thought. My senses were immediately on alert. What was in that bag?

They glanced around before tossing the bag on the very edge of the Swallee, close to the cipper tree line. They brushed their hands and then returned to a path of Swallee that was slightly raised. I hadn't seen how they'd arrived, but now I saw how they departed. They stood on the patch of dirt, and a moment later, they were sucked beneath it.

A small part of me screamed to stop. To report this to my brothers. To turn around and forget about the likely trash that was in that bag. But I didn't. And as I drew closer, I slowed to a creep before crouching behind a cipper tree and studying the bag.

It remained still. A dark stain covered one area of the brown bag, but the color was indecipherable. Just dark and wet. New.

My senses fired. Alerted. I surged forward and slid behind another, closer cipper tree. An iron tang scented the air. I could taste it on my tongue. It burned my nostrils.

Blood.

My claws dug into the bark of the cipper tree until I reached meaty pulp. No, it couldn't be. A human? But fleck, I could smell it. And I knew the scent of human. Of human blood.

But why would they place a human out here? This had to be bait. They had to be testing if anyone was watching them. They'd know by now that my brothers and I were involved. That we'd rescued some of the women, and we wouldn't rest until we'd rescued more.

Danger. Danger. Danger.

The word rippled over my fur. It felt it like a vice around my lungs. I needed to leave. Forget the bag that had likely been scented with a human's blood and would contain nothing but odd objects. This was a trap. I couldn't be fooled. But the smell was intoxicating to me. My instincts warred with each other. One told me to run. The other told me that a female was in danger, and I had to help. The blood of centuries of Drixonians flooded my veins, reminding me of our ancient creed, " She is all ." Always .

I couldn't leave just as much as I couldn't stop my heart from beating.

I shifted my weight and creeped closer. Swung to the right. From this angle, I noticed a hole in the bag. About the size of my paw. And through that hole, I could see hair. Long brown hair.

It could be anything. Could be a bag of hair clippings. Could be another species. But I knew it wasn't as the smell of human blood increased. If a human was in that bag as I suspected, she was hurt.

I swayed forward. Then back. Then the edge of the bag fluttered. Could have been the breeze. An insect. It didn't matter to me. Because a soft, sure sound came from the bag, a moan that socked me in the gut like a punch.

I threw caution to the wind and raced to the bag. With one swipe of my claws, I ripped an opening from one end to another and flipped back the edges.

I fell to my knees as my suspicion was confirmed. A human female lay inside the bag, eyes closed, clothes askew. One side of her face was coated in dark red sticky blood, congealed in parts and caked in filth in others. Bruises littered her bare arms, and her skin was pale. Too pale. Sickly pale. She remained motionless even as a breeze blew her hair across her face. I flicked it away as I sought to control my panic. Had I imagined a moan? Had I wished for a moan?

"What did they do to you?" I whispered. Why would they hurt something so precious? Why would they spend so much energy abducting women from Earth only to treat them like this? I lifted my paw to touch her, but let it hover above her too-still body. Then I leaned down, placing my ear close to her chest, and listened.

I heard nothing. I felt no puff of air from between her slightly spread lips. But then, just as I was about to lift my head, I heard the thready pulse of her heart. This time without hesitation, I placed my paw on her chest. Sure enough, her heart beat beneath my paw, vibrating the fine hairs there, and her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths.

Injured. Unconscious. But alive.

I shoved the rest of the bag away from her to assess her injuries. After we'd found Kini and Yanna, the mates of my brothers Bastian and Lynix, they sat down with Queen to talk to us some more about human anatomy. How to care for injuries to their delicate skin and fine bones.

Queen had insisted that head injuries were dangerous, and we shouldn't move the human for fear of furthering injuring their neck or back. But I couldn't leave her here. We were close to the underground entrance. The Dayloes might even have eyes on me now. I fumbled with my tablet, forcing myself to take a deep breath. I had to contact Eleric. He'd know what to do medically. Because first priority was getting her the fleck out of?—

A rumble came from below me. The spongey ground rippled. Nearby cipper leaves swayed, and suddenly the ground sank in like quicksand before expelling six Dayloes from the depths as if from a catapult. They landed on all fours, clearly not surprised to see me, before they rose to their full height and withdrew their laser guns.

A gasp came from below me, and when I glanced down, the human's eyes were open. Her black pupils were blown wide, surrounded by a thin ring of brown. Her lower lip trembled, and she blinked. And then suddenly she was scrambling away from me on her hands and knees, head toward… toward the Dayloes.

Was this what had been planned on all along? Did she willingly participate in the bait? Was that even her blood?

I couldn't think straight, not with the female in the mix, and not when one of the Dayloes raised his gun and fired off a shot in my direction. I ducked before it could take off my head, but I felt the heat of the shot as it singed the whiskers on the left side of my face.

I rolled to the right and came up firing with my own weapon, sending it into the armored chest of the one who'd shot at me. My weapon was stronger, thanks to my own invention, and seared a hole in the armor before slamming into the Dayloes's soft, vulnerable body. He sailed back with a cry.

The human had gotten to her feet, but only for a moment before she stumbled and fell back to her knees. Her balance was off. Was the head wound real?

A Dayloes grabbed her around her biceps and hauled her in the air. He shook her, and her head snapped forward and back with a viciousness that lit my blood. His claw dug into her skin, and red drops of blood dripped down to her wrists.

The smell sent me into a frenzy. I fired off three more shots into the advancing Dayloes. The fourth I stabbed in the face with my blade. I wanted to get to the Dayloes holding the female, but he was on the run, heading toward the raised part of the Swallee. No, no way could I let him take her back down there. Would he bloody her up to use her as bait again?

I roared, and the sound rippled the air. The rumble started from below, and I knew what was about to happen. With a leap, I landed next to the Dayloes holding the human just as we were sucked below the spongy moss.

The drop seemed to last forever, but I windmilled with my tail and landed on both feet while the Dayloes crashed to the ground on his back, the human bouncing off of him before hitting the hard ground with a smack. In the dim light, I wrapped my tail around the Dayloes's ankle, slid him toward me, and raked my claws over his neck before he could shout. With a gargle, he spit up blood, arms flailing weakly, before going still with glazed eyes and a still chest.

Blood dripped from my claws as I assessed my situation. My bag of supplies remained above ground as well as my tablet. I stood on a hard floor of packed dirt. A torch lit the wall, but there was no mechanism visible to get me back up and out of this flecking place.

There came a strangled sound, and I glanced at the Dayloes, to make sure it wasn't him before my gaze settled on the female. She was conscious, huddled in a ball against the far wall below the torch so I could see her face. Her pupils were still blown. And from this angle, I could see the sliced skin on her scalp above her translator implant.

Her lips moved, and no sound came out at first, before a shaky, high-pitched, " Who are you ?"