by Q. Zayne
I padded across the clearing on the comfort of my bear paws, much better suited for walking this terrain than my human feet.
In the silence of the sacred place, I bowed my head for the murdered wolf. With my scientist’s mind, I examined the kill site. I saw where he fought, alone and outnumbered, the stones stained brown where he bled out. A tuft of grey hair waved in a crevice.
Several hunters on horseback surrounded him. They slaughtered him in our temple. He didn’t have a chance.
Wind covered most of the tracks with leaves, but the heavy horses left hoof impressions in the soft ground. I found their trail leaving the clearing and followed it.
I stopped when I came in sight of their camp. I was alone and unarmed. Naked, for that matter. Lida would kill me if I got myself killed. But I wasn’t going to let this go on any longer. There was only one thing I could do.
I dug my paws into the earth and shifted to man.
I walked into the camp, my cock swinging before me. Strangers stared. From the assessing expressions on the faces of some of the women, they thought I might be viable to seed them for offspring. I avoided looking at them.
“I’m looking for Karok.” I’d picked up a little of their language from Miren and Lida. The ones surrounding me looked surprised. An aged man’s mouth quirked in a smile, the indulgent look someone on Earth might give a foreign tourist who at least made an effort to speak the language.
I spread my hands, making it clear I was unarmed. “I come in peace.” Miren raised her unruly brows when I asked for those words, but it was a crucial point to make. All living beings, nearly all, sought to maintain their own lives. I’d speak to their self-interest. And their honor. I had to respect them more than they’d earned.
Karok emerged from a tent, his trousers blowing against his slim legs, outlining his small genitals. I bested him in that department. It bolstered me to know his pistol didn’t even shoot.
I directed my words to him, glad we had an audience. At least they were listening, not attacking me.
“There’s no need for more injuries, more deaths. Your kind is infertile; the more lives you lose, the lower your chances of survival. Every loss takes you closer to extinction.”
“We don’t back down.” Karock thumped the earth with the butt of his spear.
“We can settle this between the two of us. Spare the rest of your group and restore your honor. I challenge you to fight me, one on one.”
He stood considering, face tight in thought. If he refused, he’d look bad to his own kind and to the shifters.
“All right, stranger, bear-man. I’ll fight you. I’ll fight you for her. She’s the prize.” He made a high-pitched sound and guards pushed Lida through the crowd.
I barely controlled myself from shifting. My heart slammed in my chest at the sight of her. The pit of my stomach went cold. He’d done too much harm already. Now they’d recaptured her while I followed them. Had they discovered our den, or had she come after me? Damn him for touching her. I wanted to bite his arm off. I wanted to end him. He’d never reproduce. I’d destroy him and his potential heirs right here, right now. But not on those terms.
“No. She is not on object to be given as a prize.” I took a full breath and growled, a roar that shook him and made him step back.
Lida stepped to the center and raised her hands. “I’m willing to obey the winner.” She lowered her face. Her hair blew across her lips.
What made her do that? But I couldn’t see her eyes, couldn’t speak to her. Karock’s people approached me and I crouched in a fighting stance. They offered me a shield and a spear. Not entirely unfamiliar weapons, I had similar things in my collection, but I’d never had to use them to fight for my life. And for the freedom of the woman I loved more than life.
Karock stepped forward with matching gear. Whatever else I might think of Karock, in this he was fair. He hadn’t given himself the advantage of a larger shield or a longer spear.
I tested the spear, finding its balance point. The sun made its cruel barbs glitter. I got my grip on the shield and circled, adjusting it to cover my vulnerable areas as I moved. If he got that spear into my body it was over, I’d seen that in my first sight of their cruelly barbed harpoons.
Only one chance I could see. I wove around him, using fast footwork from my boxing and fencing days, lunging, making jabs with my left fist, whirling the spear overhead like a fighting dancer. The watchers’ eyes widened. Whether they liked my moves or thought I was crazy, I had no idea.
Karock’s eyes narrowed, his thin face looking shrewd and wary. He didn’t allow himself to be baited by my unfamiliar strategy, but he couldn’t keep his gaze from being drawn in by my antics.
I quickened my pace, fast lunges and jabs, quick groups of steps racing in a tight circle with the spear whirling overhead. The watchers stepped back to give me room. A dust cloud rose around me.
Karock stayed back, perhaps hoping to allow me to wear myself out. He was too canny to waste energy on such a fast and erratic target.
The dust made a thick curtain between us. I crouched and performed the fastest shift of my life, growling my lowest, fiercest growl.
I sprang out of the dust cloud, snout raised, jaws wide and slavering, meat-rending fangs aimed at his face. I clawed at him. His trousers darkened from crotch to ankle.
My second swipe got his hair. I dragged him to my mouth. His feet kicked at the dirt like a hanged man’s. He dropped his spear. He didn’t have the strength to stop me. He’d pay for hurting Lida. Nothing he could do would derail his fate.
I breathed in his face, aiming my jaws for his carotid artery. A few watchers wiped at their tearing eyes.
Karock made a croak, then cleared his throat, panting. He dropped to his knees and spread his hands. His eyes beseeched me. “We come in peace,” he said.
I narrowed my eyes and stared at him. I huffed out my breath, so hot and close his eyes watered.
“Peace?” I gestured at Lida. I didn’t have the words to condemn him for what he’d done to her. She stood, hands clasped in front of her, as though she were on an auction block in the barbaric past in a place where it was acceptable to sell human beings.
“Yours. I’m sorry. Never again. None of us will go near her again. I promise. Peace.”
I raged inside. I felt my revenge squirming away. But I wasn’t the kind of man to kill a defeated foe as he begged for his life.
A stooped old woman ran out of the largest tent and dropped to her knees in front of him, spreading her arms wide. She bared her own throat to me and pointed. Her meaning came as clear as if she shouted it. ‘Spare him, kill me instead.’
I didn’t need a genealogy of the aliens to know she was Karok’s mother, that like my parents,d she do everything she could to save his life. My eyes watered. All that damned dust from my fighting dance.
I took a breath and subsided, hunkering down to her eye level. Pained, wise, amazing eyes looked out at me from aged folds of that thick, light-absorbing skin. She met my bear eyes without fear, willing to accept death to protect her adult cub.
The old woman, still beautiful in the androgynous way of the aliens, broke my heart, drained my rage.
I nodded to her.
She remained kneeling in front of her son with her throat offered, arms spread wide to shield him, the image of maternal protection that spoke across all species and cultures. She would not stand down while any threat to her cub remained.
I shifted back to man and extended my hands, palms forward. I spoke their title of respect to her, a word I could barely pronounce. The male elder gave another satisfied grin. Her eyes widened, lifting the weight of age on her face.
I extended my hand. She hesitated and took it. Looked me in the eye with the fierce pride of a stranger in a strange land. My parents were immigrants to a strange world. These were so by accident.
I took in my breath. My choice might spare this world, shifters and aliens, from extinction. None of us had people to spar
e for senseless deaths. A hard thing to do, but I extended my other hand to her son and raised him.
“Peace,” I said.
“Peace,” mother and son agreed. All the people took up the word, made it a chant and interwove melodies so we stood buffered by music, a soaring acapella song. Miren kited over us. I swayed to the sound of a new future for this realm.
As I harmonized, I wondered what technology they had, and if we could make advancements here without damaging this place the way humans damaged the earth. The spears displayed not only their understanding of dealing death, but of advanced metalwork.
I released the hands of Karok and his mother and they embraced. Lida ran into my arms, banging my chin and hugging me fiercely. Her face transformed with joy and apologetic laughter. She kissed my chin and got on tip toe to kiss my lips.
I averted my eyes from the envy of the watching strangers.
Her soft flesh pressing against me had a predictable effect. I was glad for my shield to cover my condition as I pulled her close and walked with her away from the dueling ground. I kept my eyes off the staring women. Perhaps if the truce held, in time I might use my medical skills to help with their fertility problems.
Miren circled above us, letting out a cry I took as a cheer. The shifters would hear of all that transpired. I suspected that even the the ones most hostile to our love wouldn’t risk peace with the strangers by attacking us.
Lida snuggled with me in a copse of birch near our den and I basked in the pleasure of her unrestrained affection. Now that we could be out in the open without being on guard, we couldn’t wait to touch each other. Lida kissed me and looked into my eyes as she often did when she thought I was thinking too much. Her kisses showed me how much she’d recovered. The latest bout of captivity hadn’t daunted her.
“What’s bothering you?”
“The fact that I let him live troubles me. I longed to kill him.”
“If you were a man who would slaughter someone who surrendered, you wouldn’t be the man I love.” She stated it simply, with such conviction, her words went a long way to expiate my guilt.
I thought nothing short of making him die in agony and burning his corpse to ash would suffice to balance his wronging her. I released a pained breath it felt as though I’d been holding since the fight.
Lida kissed me again, a long, sweet kiss that made my world right again. She found her way through the trauma of what happened to her as a captive of the aliens. Like any shock, and especially the shocks of sexual abuse, the healing would continue over time. None of it was over, and it wasn’t up to me to erase him as much as I’d wanted to do so.
She snuggled against my chest and I wrapped her in my arms. Even when we weren’t making love, our breathing matched. I felt proud of her courage. Lida showed great resilience, and she made her own stand. Her decision to serve as prize in the fight to prevent a war showed me that. She was a force on her own.
Recognizing her strength and resourcefulness silenced the jabbing doubt that maybe I was a husband of convenience, champion and seed-bearer, like an Amazon’s consort. She wanted my help and she was in charge of her own life. I treasured that independence and strength in her as much as I reveled in her ability to surrender and allow me to take her into my darkest desires.
“I bested him fairly.” I needed to say I did the best I could.
“You were magnificent.” Her eyes shone. She grabbed my hand and we hurried home.
In the cave, I pushed her hands and tongue away from my wounds, scrapes I hadn’t noticed during the fight, and brought her face to mine.
“Tell me it’s gone. My life in that other place is gone.”
“It’s gone.” She announced it with finality and a grave expression. I searched her face. She meant it. “Everything. By now every patient you had, even the ones who were newborns, have died and passed out of memory.” A lament in her tone, a little gasp in it, taking me back to my first sight of her waif-like face, long before I saw her as a feline warrior.
That vulnerability emerged in her again and I surged toward her, hard as iron. Wait, was this iron age or bronze age? So long before electricity and the electronics that formed so much of my day back home it hardly seemed to matter, but the former connoisseur of weapons in me longed to know.
But why? I didn’t want to bring more death here. But I did need to protect my own. I imagined Lida swelling with new life, weighed down with pregnancy and more vulnerable to any remaining bigoted shifters who might want to harm her for carrying our mixed-shifter child. The aliens might break the peace one day and attack. Whatever kinds of weapons I could make in this place, I’d make. And pray never to need them. But not firearms. No one here needed to know such things existed. I’d live out my life never having to treat gunshot wounds.
I kissed her. Her lips pressed mine with passion and trust. It mattered more than anything in the other world to me that I helped give her safety.
I held her close, smoothing her hair, loving her with my mouth and hands, cherishing her. She whimpered. I felt her fear, her resistance to my tenderness. I took my time. I parted her thighs and kissed her secret place, delving with my tongue to pleasure her. She responded shyly.
“Please, Doctor, take me,” she whispered.
The animal in me roused even as I clung to my man form.
I pinned her wrists and she began to let go, freed by my holding her down, making her captive to my mouth and muscle-bound strength. She whimpered and gasped as I licked her, her sounds gradually becoming moans of pleasure. I pressed my advantage, working her best pleasure spot until she couldn’t stand it and bucked against my face in her sudden, flooding release.
“Sweet, sweet Lida, so good, my love.”
Before her breathing could subside, I growled low in my throat, lifting my face and rising rampant over her, pushing her knees apart with mine. I mounted her and sheathed myself inside her, pushing full-depth, taking her hard.
“Please, Doctor, please, give me your special treatment.” She whispered the words with her eyes wide, her voice small and halting. She took me back to our first time, her hot vulnerability, her delicious tightness.
She’d had as much tenderness as she could stand. I slammed her deep, gave her the rutting bear she desired. Bad doctor, bad bear, out of control on top of her, driving her into the dark—and through it. Yes, I took her the way she wanted me to do it. She chose me, whether because of lore here or something else, I didn’t know. I didn’t need to know. She made a deliberate choice, a sacrifice, just as I had.
I kept her pinned under me, her head rocking from side to side as I pounded her with all my power. I caressed her face and pressed my lips to hers, my heart surging as she let go. She raked my back, crying out in climax. In a frenzy of pleasure I bucked and growled, filling her with my seed.
The crescendo of her cries echoed through the cave as I gripped her tightly against me, rocking her with all I felt for her.
“My love, my mate. For life, Lida. You’re mine now.”
“Yes, I’m yours. And you’re mine, Ian.” She clawed my ass.
She thrilled me. My innocent, battle-hardened, bright and brave beauty. My tiger. She raised her face to me and let me kiss her. Sweet, sweet pressure of her willing lips.
“Call me Garhan.”
“Garhan, my mate.” She kissed me again, a long, soft kiss, no longer driven, a celebration of our love.
I was home. We had more than a lifetime before us to make a good mark on this world, to change it with our love. My heart swelled and I felt at peace, perhaps completely at peace for the first time in my life.
RIP, Blake old friend. I learned more from you than you knew.
Lida is mine, my true mate and we’ve laid the groundwork for the Scurimun to accept us as equals—and for our own kind to leave us be and allow our love.
She kissed me and kissed me again. I lay next to her and she nestled into my chest, her breath riffling my chest hair.
Light coming i
nto our den made a halo around Lida’s tawny mane. Her dark and light markings glowed and shifted as she moved. An eagle called in the distance. My time in my old world passed and I mourned it, yet not too much. My time here was well begun, living in the open for the first time in my life.
Lida rested her cheek on my chest and I held her. I had everything I wanted.
I was a bear in love.
The End
Innocent Captive
Mayan Apocalypse Serial
Episode 1
by Q. Zayne
Danger Signs
Author’s note: If you’re prone to becoming upset by dark material—or you if you don’t like cliffhangers—don’t read this episode.
The events of this episode come to a conclusion, so it isn’t an intense cliffhanger, but I want to remind you this is the first episode of a serial, not the entire thing. I’m repeating myself because as a reader, I don’t like getting into something and finding out it’s not the whole story without any warning. My readers have been amazing and you deserve to be treated well.
Adventurous readers, enjoy.
I had sweat in places sweat never dripped before. My shirt clung to me, the buttons straining across my breasts. The men in the boat didn’t pretend they weren’t staring. Our guides, Tico and Felipe, were good guys, but they were men. I was a gringa with a curvaceous body and long, mussed-up hair. Shorts were a mistake, they exposed my legs. I slapped at my thighs, killing bugs in a frenzy. I didn’t trust insect spray to protect me from malaria and Zika—and yellow fever, dengue, and whatever else those biters carried.
Jace stood in the bow, his well-built body massive in comparison with the two local men he hired for our expedition. I hadn’t seen much of him in the years since Dad died, and now we’d spent three days traveling into the heart of the jungle.
