49. Ree

49

Ree

When I wake up, I'm laying across him. He must have moved me in the night and I was too exhausted to remember.

There's even a puddle of drool that's soaked into his mane near my mouth as further evidence. I wonder how long he'll spend trying to make the fur lay right with his fingers.

I should feel bad about the smirk that thought causes, but I don't. I assume we've been asleep all or most of the day.

It was a long night finding traps to protect Silver, and we were too late.

Thivoll distracts me before I can spiral down into regrets. "Did you sleep well?"

I roll off of him so I can stretch. "Oh yes. Like a log. You?"

"What an odd expression. I am quite refreshed."

"Take me to the stream?"

"Of course."

We are watered, washed, and fed in short order, then without having to further discuss our plans, we are loping through moonlit trees.

I appreciate his impressive sense of direction. With the exception of giant landmarks like our cave's cliff face and that immense lake, everything looks the same to me in this thickly forested planet.

One can hope that's another one of my future changes, but I bet they just focused on aesthetics when they designed whatever caused the metamorphosis.

Although I suppose giving me claws doesn't seem to fit well with the whole slavery plan, so it must be an imperfect process.

I hope there's a genali out there right now finding out just how bad their idea was. My lips quirk at the idea before I chide myself for wishing anything like that on anyone. Except . . .

I roll my eyes, forcing myself to reroute my errant thoughts.

The night sounds of the forest and the loamy smell are so pleasant it's easy to forget how much danger lurks out here.

At least easy for me.

I have that luxury because Thivoll is constantly on alert, his rounded ears forever swiveling. I'm sure he's setting our course so we avoid sounds and smells he doesn't like.

The rumble of his speech startles me. "Tell me some more about your family. We've gone from one emergency to another."

"We still found time to scratch an itch."

"Itches get annoying."

I can tell by his voice that he doesn't understand my meaning. Damnable idioms.

"I mean we took time to have sex."

He chuffs. "Time well spent," he says with a purr, and I feel an answering ping down low.

It makes me realize I still haven't had the perma-arousal return since the cave.

Small fucking mercies, assholes , I grumble to myself, imagining myself flipping off the genali from the ship.

That would be a nice revisionist history, though I guess at least some of them Thivoll already killed in one of the most painful ways possible.

"Your family?" he prompts me again, breaking me out of my fantasies.

I think for a moment, then share.

"My parents drove me hard to succeed. They both grew up poor and didn't want me to have the same struggles. Time spent together was precious because they worked a lot. So I could go to good schools and I wanted to make that sacrifice worthwhile. I didn't have much of a social life. I just focused on being a student, until they both died in a wreck when I was twenty. After that I lost my way for a while."

He growls lightly and his tail whips around to pat my ass. "I remember that. Just a kit. That's terrible."

"Well, a bit more than a kit, but yes. I miss them so much. Sometimes a song plays and I can hear my dad singing it. Terribly. His voice was terrible."

A tear escapes, along with a chuckle.

"My mom would dance around to whatever he sang, but she was graceful and creative. It made it into a beautiful show, despite the caterwauling . . . er, bad singing. I look a lot like her."

"She must have been beautiful. I'm shocked you didn't have a mate. I apologize. That was rude."

"Well, I did, but it didn't work out. Unfortunately, all of that social isolation to be a successful student meant I didn't recognize a predator. I married young. To a horrible person, though it took me a long time to realize he was the problem, not me. Or mostly the problem. I'm not perfect."

I suppose it wasn't something my parents felt like they needed to mention, but I wish I had known there were people who could seem like they loved you while slowly eroding everything about you until your confidence was completely gone.

It would have avoided a lot of heartache.

I shake off the memories that try to surge up and continue. "It took the limits of my body, and realizing how sick it was for him to be angry with me about that, for me to realize I should leave."

"How so?"

"I couldn't have kits. Uh, children, because of endometriosis."

I let out a grunt of frustration at how little of that translated. "Let me rephrase. I have scarring in my uterus that makes pregnancy impossible."

"The scarring is still there. Nanites only minimize them slightly on fresh wounds and do very little for old ones. There would be ways around it, though. With the right technology."

I blink, gobsmacked.

The thought never occurred to me that there would be other options. Even after healing like some sort of freak from a fucking gunshot.

I shake my head, shelving that life-changing possibility for much later.

"Anyway . . ." I clear my throat, still reeling. "He had a way of twisting things around. Isolating me. Blaming me. It took an extended, nasty argument about my condition for me to finally see him for who he was."

He growls in earnest now. "He sounds like he needed a few claw marks on his hide. At minimum."

I smile at him, though he can't see it.

"Well, sometimes we need those sorts of people to find ourselves. His frequent, illogical anger meant I learned how to read people. That I know how to convince people of something based on limited information my brain just puts together into an intuition without conscious thought."

He lets out a chuff. "I can attest to that. It's awe inspiring . . . and terrifying all at the same time."

I let out a mock growl and poke him hard on his right shoulder. Which really just earns me a throbbing finger and he doesn't even flinch.

Scales are annoying.

I let out a huff, then make the connection between the topic and our current quest to find missing women.

"I think the genali picked me to be the leader because I seem timid. It's a mask I had to wear to survive my marriage. I was strong enough to leave him. I was too strong for them to break me. Deplorable people, just making me tougher."

"They all underestimated you," he says with confidence in his voice.

"They certainly did."

He shudders. "Even I get scared when I hear that tone in your voice and I still have my tail."

A laugh bubbles up. "Thivoll . . . You could kill me with a single paw. Maybe even with just one claw."

"Well, sure. Lots of things can kill us, but I'm not sleeping beside them."

I let out a cackle, and he joins me with his chuffing. I shush myself quickly, but laughing feels good.

It's official, though . . .

Our humor is getting worse and worse by the day.

We fall back into silence after that.

I realize with a start that I was able to talk about my ex without my heart racing. Is it because he is so far away? Or have I changed?

Either way, it feels like a significant improvement. Something else life-changing, but this one doesn't need any analysis.

My heart feels lighter than I ever remember it.

After a while I realize his ears keep coming back to the same cardinal direction, and he's making more of his whistling breaths to better sense smells, so I assume we're headed toward something.

Not long after, I hear a roar of water, then shortly after that we come to a river.

It's moving fast, with numerous rapids pounding against giant rocks. He pulls in another long breath and then runs up stream.

I'm finally getting curious enough to risk breaking our silence when I see what he's after. There's a cryochamber stuck among a logjam, the water breaking over one side of it in a fan of rushing current.

I can't make out who it is from this far away. Thivoll crouches down so I can climb down and then repositions himself so he can talk near my ear.

"I don't like what I smell here. I think I should take you back and return for her."

I don't like the idea of leaving her alone.

"What if that suddenly breaks through and she hits a rock so hard it breaks her chamber? She'd drown before she even woke up. I can't lose another one, Thivoll."

My chest constricts and my heart is pounding in my ears as I think of everything that could go wrong for this woman.

He growls. "You are my priority. I smell hunters everywhere."

I thread my hands in his fur. "I want to take the risk. I would never forgive myself. Unless you think you'd be hurt trying to get to her?"

"That isn't my concern. I don't want you here while I do it."

"How about a tree? I could—"

I break off my thought when I see another log headed toward the cryochamber.

There's no way it will miss her.

"Look!"

I point at it, expecting him to start toward her right away, just like I would.

When he doesn't move tug on his mane. "Go! Now!"

"No," he says as he moves forward to grab me.

I dodge him, which makes me trip over a rock and land on several jagged edges.

"I'm not going," I tell him in a tight voice.

I can't betray how much pain I'm in or he won't budge.

"There's no time. Go!"

He snarls, but starts running.

"Hide," he growls back at me as his claws scrabble for purchase on the rocks.

I look around and see an overhung boulder with a small cubby. It looks slimy but I move over to it, ignoring the squish of water and the wetness seeping through my suit.

I haven't been able to convince myself to wear any of the clothing we've pilfered, but I'm regretting it now.

Luckily the moon is bright out here without the tree cover and I can see him clearly. My heart's in my throat as I watch Thivoll leaping rocks upstream, then making his way in a sharp arc back downstream to get to her.

He isn't going to make it in time. I hold my breath as it hits her. Her chamber spins but doesn't dislodge and I let out my pent-up breath.

Thivoll carefully tests his weight on the surrounding logs as he makes his way out to her. I'm pretty sure he's wrapping his tail around the chamber soon after, but it's hard to tell with the spray of water between us.

I don't hear the hunter before they move to block my view, a pistol in their green hand.