Hunting Purity (The Hunting Series Book 2)

by Tracy Lauren

  Warm water sluices over my cheeks and down my neck as he works and I find myself wanting to cry, I’m just so damned grateful for this man. Make no mistake, I would be dead right now without him.

  “I don’t know how you found me…or why you’re helping me,” I tell him. “But you’re my hero,” I murmur, feeling tired again.

  “He’Rokvska Naa,” he replies in that gruff voice of his.

  “I don’t know what you’re saying.” We need to start working on communication, I mentally note, but I’m still too out of it to focus on talking now. I try to keep my eyes on his, but with every blink they stay closed a little bit longer. The shadows in the cave lengthen and the only light comes from the low burning fire. When he finishes cleaning my face, he moves down my arms, until he has cleaned me to the tips of my fingers. Then, he moves to my feet. I don’t know if it’s the head injury that puts me to sleep, or the relaxing sensations of my sponge bath. In any case, I fall asleep feeling warm and cared for, but when I awaken some hours later, I’m shivering and alone.

  I blink, trying to force my eyes to adjust to the low light coming off the coals from the fire. The night air is too frigid to fall back to sleep. I lie there a while, shivering, until I finally decide to scoot closer to the fire pit.

  The second I try to push myself up I hear my friend’s voice. I look around and find him sitting up, watching me from a shallow recess across the cave.

  “I’m cold,” I tell him, gesturing to the fire pit. “I just want to get a little closer to the coals.”

  He frowns and shakes his head, motioning toward the open entrance to the cave. Getting closer to the fire would mean moving toward the entrance and away from the cover the cave provides.

  “Oh, yeah. I guess you have a point,” I agree. I lie back down on the cold dirt floor, turning onto my side to tuck my body into fetal position. I’m still shivering, though, and I can feel my friend’s eyes on me. It isn’t like he has a jacket to offer me, though I know if he had one it’d be around my shoulders in an instant. I try to relax my body so he thinks I’ve fallen back to sleep. I feel guilty taking so much from him and not being able to give anything in return. Does he even know how grateful I am? Does he think I expect more?

  He clicks his tongue at me and I hear him get up.

  “I’m okay, I promise. I don’t want to be any more trouble,” I whisper into the darkness, but he either can’t understand me or he pays my words no heed. Instead, he comes to me, kneeling. His large and masculine hand touches my forehead, like he’s checking my temperature. Then he does the same on my bare upper arm. He clicks again, as if reprimanding me for being cold. Without warning, he lies down by my side and pulls me firmly into a spooning position, even throwing his heavy arm over me.

  “Oh!” I say, surprised by the unexpected full-body contact. I even blush a little, though I can tell this isn’t a come on. His hands aren’t groping and there’s no conspicuous bulge pressing into my back. He’s only trying to care for me, to keep me warm throughout the night.

  Still, I’m suddenly feeling more awake than I’ve felt in the past day. I reach my hand up, placing it on my friend’s forearm, connecting with him and letting his warmth soak into me.

  We lie like that for a long time in silence. Though he’s utterly still, I can tell by his breathing that he hasn’t fallen asleep. I want to talk to him. I muster my courage and turn over, so we’re facing one another. He keeps his arm draped around me and I tuck myself in close to his chest, my hands resting against his pectorals. I can feel his scales against my skin and I long to explore our differences, if only to learn more about who…or what…he is.

  “What’s your name?” I ask. He doesn’t respond, even though I can see his eyes shining in the dim light the coals provide.

  “Purity,” I say, touching my chest. “That’s my name, it’s who I am. Purity,” I repeat, then I touch his chest and wait.

  Silence. I think I see that second set of eyelids blink at me.

  “Purity,” I say slowly, touching my chest again. “And you are?”

  Nothing. I huff my breath at him. “If you don’t tell me your name, I’m going to have to come up with something on my own. I can’t very well call you Lizard Man.”

  He grunts. It’s a very masculine sound, I notice. “He’Rokvska Naa,” he says finally. I recognize this. He said it earlier in the evening. I replay the nuances of the word in my mind. There’s a hiss in there and some sounds that come from deep in his throat. I don’t think I can say it.

  “Herock Vaskanna?” I try.

  “He’Rokvska Naa,” he says again, adding emphasis.

  “One more time?”

  “He’Rokvska Naa.”

  Then I get what he’s saying. I push myself up abruptly. It’s the first time since my head injury that movement hasn’t brought with it a wave of nausea. He pulls himself up just as quickly, his expression concerned, foreign words spill rapidly from his mouth.

  “I understand you!” I tell him excitedly. His expression relaxes as he drops down to his elbows, reclining. He begins to speak again, motioning toward the place on the side of his head where his ears should be, but I stop him short.

  “Hero! You’re my hero. Like I said earlier! Or…or maybe that’s your name? Your name is actually Hero?” I ramble, trying to make sense of everything swirling around in my mind. “It doesn’t matter. The most important thing is that we’re communicating. We’re talking! Hero!” I say, repeating his moniker. I feel so overwhelmed with happiness. We have already begun to bridge the language barrier! I throw my arms around his neck in an embrace.

  Hero is stiff and solid under me, caught off guard by my hug. I pull away, wiping an errant tear from my cheek. “Tomorrow we should cover the basics. Food, water, bathroom. But we have the most important thing down. Purity,” I say, touching my breast again. “And…my Hero.”

  Chapter 13

  He’Rokvska Naa

  Only upon my urging does my prey eventually lie back down, burrowing into the warmth of my chest. It seems she understands nothing of what I say. If she did, she would not seek me out as she does. I am concerned by this. Already my translation processor picks up the majority of her words—and that’s with me ignoring her half the time.

  Purity, on the other hand, disregards all instruction and is unable to answer the simplest of questions. She is either feeble minded or she does not have a translation chip. The latter of which will certainly make our time together more difficult.

  As the night wears on, I try to think of ways to convey my plans to kill her. The female’s soft hands fidget and twitch against my chest as we lie together on the floor of the cave, neither of us finding our rest. “My mind is too busy for sleep,” I confide at last.

  “Can’t sleep?” she asks. “Neither can I. Though that might be a side effect of sleeping for a full day.” She sighs and rubs her temples. I wonder if her head is bothering her. “I don’t know, Hero, my mind is running a million miles a minute,” she tells me, echoing my words. “I have so many questions.” I click my tongue at her bastardization of my name, forgiving her only because she does not seem to be able to form the appropriate sounds with her defective little human mouth. There are just so many things wrong with this one.

  Her costume made a fool of me when I chose her last night. She looked fierce and exotic standing in that ring. Now, she only looks tired and fragile. Once I wiped away the last of her war paint, I was able to see her true face. It was off putting. A gladiator does not often see a creature so…delicate.

  There was a master once, he came from another world and brought with him his harem. They were a different breed than this human, but they were soft like her. I remember thinking how strong he must have been to keep a throng of such easily broken creatures alive.

  Beside me, my prey is talking still and her fluid voice interrupts my thoughts. I wonder if she knows I can understand her even though she cannot comprehend what I say. Is she speaking as a means of communica
tion, or is she simply thinking aloud?

  I should have read the file Kosi supplied. Maybe then I would not be plagued with so many unanswerable questions…questions we both seem to share. It is yet another lesson to take home with me to Braga Faro Sintra.

  “I, too, have questions,” I admit to her, though she cannot understand. “The more I think on it, the less sense I can make of what you’re doing here. You have no translator, I can hardly imagine you were a criminal before you came here, and if you were a slave…” I peer down at her, “you were a poor one. A liability.”

  I think of the females Sarran keeps. They are all hard things, pretending to be soft. They offer their bodies freely to gladiators and to their master’s guests. Perhaps Purity was a favored toy of her last master, sheltered from the type of life that hardens a person.

  “Were you stolen or did you fall out of your master’s favor perhaps?” I assess her. Though she is disturbingly fragile, she is also undeniably exotic. “Maybe he had a debt to pay,” I conclude. “But still, for you to end up here? One would think you would have more value in a brothel.”

  “Do you know how you got here? I mean, do you have any memory of it? Maybe you’re like me—" she says. I scoff at the idea.

  She sits up on one elbow, looking down at me with a wry smile. “Okay, not like me,” she says, pointedly looking over my body. “Besides, it seems like you’ve been here a while.”

  “No longer than you, female,” I answer.

  “It’s horrible what they’ve done to us. We’re being treated like animals. It makes me wonder if this place is an alien zoo or something and we’re the exhibits?”

  “It is a hunt. I am a hunter and you are the prey. In that sense, you are an animal,” I agree.

  “I just…I just can’t even imagine what my parents are going through right now. Do they know I’m missing?” She trembles with sadness and tears fall down her pale cheeks. She reminds me of the moon, I think absently. “I don’t even know how long I’ve been gone. It feels like it was just yesterday that I was safe…in my room, on my world, with my friends. I don’t even know if they were taken too or not.”

  I cock my head, listening to her words. “So, you were stolen from your family then?” Many of the gladiators have similar stories, but they are all strong. Why would someone take this weak one just to bring her here?

  “What about you, Hero? Do you have a family out there somewhere missing you? Or are you native to this place?” she asks, even though my answer will hold no meaning to her.

  “I am from the gladiator planet, Braga Faro Sintra. It is famous for the arena there. This…this is supposed to be my vacation,” I tell her, bemused. She smiles back, without comprehension. “As far as family. A gladiator has none. But I was unique in that sense. I had my mother, Eriona. She is gone now, though she wouldn’t be anywhere missing me were she still alive. And I suppose I have Sarran as well, my former master. Beyond that, my family will be the house I build. It is not the same as the family you left behind. The life of a gladiator is less complicated than the one you came from. There is no sentimentality to be had. You will learn this once your training begins.”

  “I wish I could understand you. I don’t know if you just told me about your parents or your wife and kids,” she gives a sad laugh.

  Wife and kids, I nearly laugh too. “I keep no female and would raise no young,” I say with an adamant shake of my head.

  Her laughter morphs into something honest, no longer laced with pain. “Okay, based on that reaction I’d say you’re happily single.”

  I want to tell her that a gladiator cannot have such things, for they would not belong to him but to his master. But I am a slave no longer. I am a master now. I could have a wife, if I were ever to desire one. Though…I cannot think of any other masters who keep only one female. I get the human’s meaning well enough when she speaks of a wife. It is different from a harem. I have seen it in the crowds, usually amongst the poor—a husband and wife pair. And I have met gladiators who had their mate bond broken when taken from their home worlds. Those ones hardly ever last long and most often have to be put down.

  “Happily single,” I agree quietly. “You spoke of your parents, so I assume you were not mated when you were taken?” She doesn’t answer and I tell myself I am not curious.

  “What are we going to do?” she asks. “Is there any way for us to escape?”

  I shake my head and reach for a strand of her golden hair. Even though it is still matted and dirty, it feels as soft as a feather. “Not for you, little one. But if you like, I can talk to Kosi when I am done here. Perhaps he bought you by mistake. I can see that the slavers who misrepresented you are punished.”

  “I’m so lucky to have you, Hero,” she tells me.

  “This is true. I promise you, I will give you a quick and honorable death. It is a much better fate than what it might have been with the Ihasa.”

  “I may not understand what you’re saying, but I like the way you say it. Has anyone ever told you your voice is strong? I mean, obviously you’ve got muscles for days, but there’s something about your voice that exudes strength. Is that a weird compliment?” She wrinkles up her nose. “Anyway, as crazy as it sounds, I feel safe with you.”

  “My voice?” She makes me laugh again. “I have never heard such a thing. Perhaps that is how they should announce me in the arena: He’Rokvska Naa, he of the strong voice. If anything, it will confuse my opponents.”

  “You find that funny?” she asks.

  “I do. Though I seem to keep forgetting I am a gladiator no longer.” I sober at the thought. “My days in the arena are over. A different life awaits me upon my return.” She watches me, waiting for me to continue, so I do. “I was a good gladiator, Purity, and while I know I will be good at training my own slaves, I do not know I have what it takes to do the rest of it. You will find I am not a very social being. Nor am I diplomatic.”

  Whether she senses my mood, or picks up on my tone, she notices the turn in the conversation and offers her aid. “We’re in this together. If there’s anything I can do to help…” She trails off.

  “You will do your duty to me in the end. Until then, it is nice to speak so freely.” Especially since you cannot understand my words, I think, though I do not say that part aloud.

  “Oh wow—” Purity says with a start, drawing my attention. “It’s getting light out. Did we talk all night?”

  “It appears so,” I say, just now noticing the brightening sky.

  “Not bad for a couple of people speaking different languages,” she chuckles, pulling out of my arms. I, on the other hand, find myself reluctant to rise for some reason.

  “Were you still tired?” she asks, noticing my hesitance.

  “No…we should rise. There is much work to do. Though, I expect you to spend the day resting. Your head is still on the mend, I do not want you to do anything to interrupt the healing process. You may sit by the fire, but that is all,” I tell her firmly, gesturing to the fire. She misunderstands me, though, thinking that I ask her to rebuild it and limps over to the stack of wood and tinder I have near the mouth of the cave.

  “Good idea,” she begins. “I need to start learning this stuff as soon as possible if we’re going to be stranded here.”

  “You misunderstand, female—” I start, but she bends over to pick up a log and instead topples head first toward the ground. I am by her side before she can make contact, scooping her up and into my arms. Her legs are weak and I support nearly all of her weight in an effort to keep her upright. Color washes from her already pale face.

  “Oh, wow. Okay, that snuck up on me,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut and relying on me for support.

  “Your head is far from healed,” I explain, leading her over to the log by the fire. I kick it back with my foot, worrying she might fall headlong into the coals if hit with a dizzy spell. Now a safe distance from the fire, she takes a seat. I stand before her, wanting to check her wound again.<
br />
  “I’m already better,” she assures, looking up at me.

  “I will be the judge.” Parting her tangled hair, I see the blood still looks wet and the flesh around her gash is an angry red color. I frown at the wound.

  “It’s not that bad…is it?”

  “Does this pain you?” I poke at it and she hisses.

  “Hey!”

  “You need more than just washing,” I explain. “But first, I will start the fire and you will sit.”

  Deftly, I build a small blaze for her. The sun is not fully out yet and the air is still crisp. Before long, the warmth of the day will fill the air and the coolness of the cave will be a respite. Until then, we will have the fire. Besides, I need to boil more water.

  Once the logs are crackling, I turn my attention to her feet. They are bruised, scratched, and there is a place where one of her toenails has been ripped off. I can’t tell if they look better or worse now that they are clean.

  “You need something to cover these,” I mutter, tossing her my water pouch. “I will find those ridiculous foot coverings you lost.”

  “Thank you,” she tells me again, and I feel a twinge of guilt over her gratitude.

  Chapter 14

  Purity

  When Hero returns some time later, I’m surprised to see he’s carrying my high-heeled shoes, among other things. He sets down the rest of his load and kneels before me, trying to force my injured feet back into the stupid neon torture devices I had planned on wearing to the 80s party.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I tell him. He motions toward my injuries, complaining.