13. Chapter 13

"What do you want?" Willis demanded the moment we were out of eyesight of the camp.

"A word," I forced my voice to sound timid, like Dawn's would have been.

"A word?" His voice held the hint of a chuckle.

"I think you want something else besides a word ." His fingers made quotation marks in the air.

He stepped into my space. "Except we both know you aren't Dawn, don't we?"

His hand moved incredibly fast to my throat, squeezed, pinning me where I stood. He wasn't choking me yet, but the threat was there. I felt the incredible strength through his fingers. Anger flared in my stomach. Dawn wouldn't have stood a chance against him.

It took all my willpower not to move, not to attack him just yet, but to allow his fingers to hold on to my throat while his thumb caressed my cheek, sending a thrust of bile up my esophagus .

"Amber," Willis sneered. "So you found your sister's body and decided to—"

He broke off as the point of a sharp bone knife nicked his carotid artery. A deep voice rumbled something in Vandruk that neither Willis nor I understood, but the message was clear, even to a thickheaded bull like Willis. His fingers let go of my throat. He made a show of raising his hands in the air and stepping back.

I had no idea how Dzur-Khan had managed to sneak up on us. I prided myself on my excellent hearing. Granted, Willis and I had been in a tense discussion, but I had been in situations like this before without losing awareness of my surroundings. Either Dzur-Khan was an exceptional stalker, or I was losing my edge.

Speaking of, I looked up into Dzur-Khan's thunderous face and swallowed. I had faced many enraged males before, but none of them came even close to the expression of naked fury I read on his face.

Willis must have noticed it, too. His pallor turned a shade lighter. "Now, you might have misread the situ—"

"Spare it, Willis. He can't understand you," I hissed sharply.

"It's okay, we having only joking," I tried in my broken Vandruk.

Dzur-Khan's eyes narrowed at me, sending an icy chill down my neck. "Don't lie!"

I swallowed. I wasn't afraid of him. I didn't think I could have taken him, but I was fairly certain I could have outrun him. The problem was there was nowhere for me to run to. Besides, Willis had just all but admitted that he had killed my sister. Plus, he knew my actual name. My hate for him churned in my stomach. No way was I going anywhere until he was dead.

So, I raised my arms in a gesture of surrender. "Fine." I channeled all my acting skills, honed over the years with the Navy Intelligence and the poker tables. "We fought, okay?" I pointed at Willis and me. "We fought."

Dzur-Khan let out a loud hiss. If possible, he looked even more furious now than before. For some reason, guilt and regret mixed with my stomach acids and the cold anger I held for Willis. I didn't want Dzur-Khan to think Willis and I were having an affair. How else, though, was I to explain this situation with my limited Vandruk?

"This is between him and me," I said, mixing English and Vandruk, pointing from Willis to me before I motioned for Dzur-Khan. "I can take care of myself; leave us."

Dzur-Khan sheathed his knife but shook his head. "Nek. Come gallis."

His fingers clamped around my upper arm like a vise, pulling me back toward the camp without sparing Willis another glance. To add even more insult to injury, he turned his back on the guard.

Predictably, Willis couldn't take that. With a cry, he jumped Dzur-Khan.

Dzur-Khan, ever the gentleman, pushed me out of the way and took the brunt of Willis' body's impact. Willis rammed him like an aggravated bull, and Dzur-Khan actually staggered a few steps back.

"Dammit!" I cursed. "Stop! "

I wasn't going to stand by and allow Dzur-Khan to kill Willis. That was going to be my pleasure, and it sure as hell wouldn't happen as quickly as Dzur-Khan would dispatch him. No, Willis would suffer.

"Stop it, you two!" I yelled loudly enough to draw attention from the camp, hoping the guards' and Vandruks' appearance would stop the two men.

I should have known better. As soon as the men appeared, they stepped back. Eyes riveted on the fight, none of them made a move to stop the two men.

"Fuck it." I jumped at Dhor-Van and ripped the waterskin from his belt as well as his knife. Before he could recover from his surprise, I was on the fighting men, sidestepping a hook. I cut the waterskin to have the liquid splash over them.

"Enough!" I bellowed as I caught their attention.

"Take Willis back," I ordered the guards in my authoritative officer's voice, and they ran to obey.

"Sorry." with a wry expression of apology, I held the ruined waterskin and his knife out to Dhor-Van, who stared at me with a mix of surprise and awe.

It took some willpower, but I managed to march back to camp without glancing over my shoulder to catch another glimpse of Dzur-Khan. A warm, fuzzy feeling spread through my aggravated stomach at the thought that he had come to my rescue. I hadn't needed rescuing, but he didn't know that, and that was so very sweet of him. It was so very chauvinistic, but it made me feel all kinds of flutter inside. I should hate that, but I didn't. I could definitely get used to having someone like him around.

"What's going on?" Kenley asked sleepily from the comfort of her little fur nest. None of the women had decided to stick their heads out or to even get up. I rolled my eyes at their superciliousness, thinking they were protected because a bunch of men were about instead of being, because of that very reason, wary.

"Not a thing. Go back to sleep," I hushed snidely. "You need your beauty sleep."

"You don't have to be a bitch," Kenley complained.

"I'm sorry, sleeping with a bunch of murderesses isn't my style," I snarled, even though technically… well, let's not go there. My anger at Willis needed an outlet, and these girls had tried to kill my best friend, so Kenley made a great scapegoat.

She must have sensed that it would be wiser for her to be quiet because, with a huff, she fluffed her pillow and turned her back to me, trusting I wouldn't stick a knife in it like she had done to her friend. I returned her huff and grabbed a handful of furs. I would rather take my chances outside than lie in this nest of vipers.

Outside, my eyes fell automatically to the tree where I had seen Dzur-Khan leaning against earlier. But he wasn't there anymore. Instead, he and the other two Vandruks stood by the fire, talking in low voices. I wondered if his offer of me sleeping in his tent was still good, even though I didn't have the balls to test it out.

Instead, I found another twisted tree and made myself comfortable. It wasn't too bad, really. It reminded me of my days in the Navy. It's funny how people always assumed the Navy equals ships and water, but there was a lot more to it, especially for Navy Intelligence. I had spent my fair share of nights in the woods. Granted, not on an alien planet, but that made it just more interesting.

Despite my churning stomach and reeling mind, I fell asleep right away. Another thing the Navy had drilled into me: sleep whenever you get a chance.

At some point, strong hands moved underneath me and lifted me, and strangely, I didn't go into fight mode. Instead, I sighed blissfully and leaned my head against a strong chest as Dzur-Khan carried me gently away. I never even opened my eyes, not even when he placed me on a bed of furs and pushed some strands of hair from my face. I listened to the flap close as he left and fell back asleep.

Part of me thought it had been a dream, but when I opened my eyes the next morning to the sounds of the camp waking and stared at the leathery ceiling of Dzur-Khan's tent, I realized it hadn't been a dream at all. A smile danced around the corners of my lips as I languidly stretched, noticing he had even taken my boots off. Yeah, a girl could definitely get used to a guy like him. Easily.

I put my boots back on and got a whiff from my armpits. I'd had better days, I surmised. I had also smelled worse, so there was that. Ignoring my stench for the time being, I took in Dzur-Khan's tent. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't much to give a hint of his personality.

A hollowed-out rock, looking like a bowl, was filled with the remnants of a low fire. A bundle, presumably filled with spare pants and shirts, stood in a corner, and that was it, besides the array of furs I had slept on .

I wasn't that surprised to find my backpack close to the entrance, so I grabbed it on my way out. Digging through it, I pulled out a large plastic bottle and went in search of Dhor-Van. I found him taking down the women's tents.

"Dhor-Van," I called him, holding out the plastic water bottle, "I'm sorry about the waro yesterday. Please, take this."

Suspiciously, he looked at the bottle. I unscrewed the lid to show him how it worked. "I know it's not like yours," I said in English, hoping the tone of my voice would portray my regret over having ruined his waterskin last night.

"What are you doing?"

Quiet as a cat, Dzur-Khan once again snuck up on me, making me nearly jump out of my boots. I'm really not the kind of girl who jumps out of her boots easily. Damn him. I was losing my edge. But at least now I knew the Vandruk word for doing or hoped I did. Now I just had to figure out how to explain about the waterskin from last night.

I managed with some miming, pointing at his waterskin and his knife, making an apologetic face and repeatedly holding the plastic bottle out to Dhor-Van.

Dzur-Khan said something in rapid Vandruk of which I didn't catch a word besides gallis, but when he was done, Dhor-Van took the bottle from me with a short smile, and I said, "I'm sorry," again.

"Nek, it was funny." He grinned fully at me, making it hard for me to bite back a snicker. Dzur-Khan's expression did that for me.