by Loki Renard
“You need this,” she tells me. “You need to know that you will never be permitted to walk the wilds. You are under my protection. You are here because we want you here. And we intend to look after you, whether you like it or…”
“Take your hands off my mate, Shanti.”
I hear a voice I didn’t think I’d hear again. A voice they told me I’d never hear again.
Scratch. Is back.
Holy shit. Thank God. He’s back.
He's standing in the doorway of the house, his arms folded over his chest, looking twice as pissed as I feel. The first time Shanti spanked me, he thought it was cute. He doesn’t think it’s cute this time.
Shanti lets me go, and I run to him.
“Where have you been?” I ask the question as I wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his fur. God, I love him. God, I have missed him.
“I’m sorry. I should never have left without you. I…” He pauses in obvious shame. “Panicked.”
I don’t have to ask him why he panicked. Shanti pulled Skoll out of his nightmare past and confronted him. Maybe she didn’t know what would happen, maybe she did. I think she was trying to fuck with him and with me. From the beginning, she’s had her own agenda when it comes to us.
“You came back,” I tell him. “That’s what matters. I don’t care that you ran.”
“You should.”
“Human men have really lowered my expectations when it comes to mates. Saving me from a beating gets you back in my good books.”
I’m just so happy to see him. I want to hug him, but there’s something in his face and general expression, a sort of intense, brooding foreboding which makes him look hot as hell, but also a little scary.
“She's not yours, Shanti,” he growls. “She’s mine.”
“Are you sure about that?”
That voice does not belong to anybody inside the house. That’s when I look behind Scratch and see that all the male warriors have assembled to form a wall of muscular threat behind him. The wall is headed by Falkri and Skoll.
“Don’t you fucking touch him!” I scream at them. I know I have little physical ability to stop them, but I’ve always been a small woman in a world full of big jerks and I’m not afraid of them. They seem reluctant to hurt me, so my presence is probably the only thing stopping them from attacking him.
Then, they surprise us both.
“You didn’t need to run,” Skoll says to Scratch. “I had no intention of hurting you. My city life is over. I do not hunt bounties for them anymore.”
“Much has happened between us, Skoll. Too much for us to forget. You killed me.”
“Technically, Garbage killed you.”
“No, Skoll. I was dying. You wounded me past the point of survival. Garbage found another way for me to survive. I cannot live with the hunter who killed me for money. I’m taking my mate, and I’m leaving.”
“Don’t run, Scratch,” Skoll says. “Don’t drag your mate through the forests, and don’t take her to the city. You know what awaits you both there.”
I have something to say about that.
“I want to go home! He promised he would take me to the city and show me the way back home.”
“You know she’s safer here,” Skoll says, annoying me. “You know you can have a life here.”
“Why? Because you’ve decided to settle down and make a family, and pretend like everything you did before you ran away didn’t happen? How many did you kill, Skoll? How many bounty pelts have you worn over your shoulders?”
“Too many,” he says. “That is why I have settled here. That is why I have given my life for this tribe, and chosen to raise my cub here. This is somewhere we can both find peace. We don’t have to fight anymore. We don’t have the city telling us that one of us is a criminal and the other is enforcing the law.”
Scratch
I hate the creature in front of me. I have felt my life force drain between his teeth. He killed me. He sentenced me to three years inside a cat. He absolutely destroyed everything I ever had. And when I saw him again, I made it worse. I ran when I saw him. I abandoned my mate. She won’t forget that, no matter how fiercely she is defending me now.
I came back for her. Because she needs me. Nobody has ever needed me. But she doesn't need me as her mate. She needs me to get her home so she can forget this all ever happened.
And that’s what I’m going to do. For once in my life, I’m going to be something other than a completely selfish bastard.
“I told Pixie I would get her home, and that’s what I’m going to do. The city is the only place with the doors set up. So we’re going to go there, and I’m going to get this girl back where she wants to be.”
“It’s a mistake, Scratch,” Skoll warns. “The city has come for us once. You can’t go back there in a soldier’s body and expect them to not notice.”
“I don’t care if they do notice.”
“You’ve cheated death twice. How many more chances do you think you’re going to get?”
It doesn’t matter. Once Pixie is safely back on Earth, they can kill me if they like. There’s not much left for me in this world or any other. Truthfully, I died over three years ago. Everything since then has been bonus time. I’ll set Pixie free, and then I’ll see what’s left over.
11 What A Girl Wants
Pixie
“Let’s go, Pixie. I’m taking you home.”
Home. Where there’s plumbing and internet. Home, where there’s drugs and music and dancing. Home, where there’s grocery stores and new clothes every day of the week. I can’t fucking wait to get home.
“Byeee!” I give a finger waggling wave to all the grimalkin, especially Shanti who is probably annoyed she’s been denied the chance to beat me one last time. “Have nice lives!”
I’m so excited to be finally getting my own way. It’s a triumph I’ve been waiting on for months. But it fades really fucking quickly. Like, within seconds, quickly, and I don’t know why.
This is what I’ve wanted from the moment I woke up on this planet, but I don’t feel happy.
As we’re leaving the village, I look back and see Shanti and her sons standing outside the roundhouse. I can feel their eyes on me even when I turn around and face toward the future.
“Why do I feel like shit?”
Scratch shrugs. “Life’s hard. You’ll feel better when you’re back in your world with your drugs and your parties. You can forget about all of this.”
“Yeah. Forget all about it.”
There’s something else implied in the silence of the words not said. Forget about him? I don’t think I can do that. I’ve spent the last few days yearning and pining for him, and now we’re going to be separated forever? On one hand, I feel like that might be the best logical choice. There’s no happily ever after with a dude with a cat face. But the heart wants what the heart wants, and my heart wants this big, bad, misfit alien.
“Scratch?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you come with me?”
“I’m not going to be able to fit in on your planet. You could stay here with me in the city.”
“What’s the city like?”
“It’s not like cities in the sense you’re used to. It’s not one big conglomeration of buildings and population. The city is actually spread out all over the planet. There are nodes connected by the walking walls, like the one you were dragged through. Practically, it makes no difference, but if you walk around an area of the city far enough, you’ll reach the borders of it swiftly.”
“So these nodes just turn into the wild? Or are there suburbs?”
"There are suburbs, but almost every node is surrounded by a wall.”
“Why? It seems really strange and impractical.”
“Grimalkin are an evolutionary derivative of the feline creatures on your own planet. We all like boxes.”
“You guys are so weird.”
“You’re an evolutionary derivative of a beast whic
h lived in trees and flings its feces.”
“I think you’re understanding evolution wrong.”
“Maybe.”
“Are there hot parties and things to do in the city? Drugs?”
“Sure. I don’t know what effects grimalkin drugs will have on a human, but we can always find out if you don’t mind your head maybe falling off.”
“That’s not going to happen. Is it?”
“We will find out, I suppose. If the authorities are involved, there is a chance of heads being removed regardless. They are not kind.”
“You’re saying the city will be dangerous.”
“I’m saying it’s no place for you. It’s barely a place for me. We’re going there so you can go home to Earth.”
“So that’s it for us. Once we get back, this is over. Forever. That’s what you want?”
He looks at me and his words hit me like a punch in the gut. “This isn’t about me. This is about you.”
“Fuck,” I swear, stopping. We’ve barely walked ten minutes from the village, and I’m starting to think this might be a mistake.
What if I do go home? What then? How’s any other guy ever going to compare to Scratch? I love a bad boy, and he’s absolutely the worst boy.
“How far is the city, again?”
“I don’t know. Your legs are short and your fitness is lacking. Maybe a month?”
“A month. Fuck. A month’s a long time.”
“That’s the only way to get back to the city. It is a long way.”
“Yeahh…. What if… What if, er… I don’t know.”
He looks at me in the kind of way which makes me want to step back into the undergrowth and melt into it. “Tell me you’re not done with this less than an hour into the journey.”
“I might be?”
“You are a brat,” he growls. “An absolute brat.”
“I mean, it sounds like you’re going to die there. So…”
“I’m not going to die, and if I do, I have ways around it.”
“Are you supernatural? Or have you just gotten lucky a couple of times?”
“Is there really any difference?” He gives me that intense stare he has, the one that makes me feel like I’m falling into a psychedelic experience. “Getting lucky is beyond control or explanation. It’s essentially supernatural.”
“You’re secretly incredibly smart.”
“It’s not a secret. You just don’t notice anything around you unless it is irritating you,” he smirks. “Pixie, if you don’t want to actually go home, if this is all some grandstanding to make a point to someone…”
“To who?”
“Shanti. You’ve been going at her since you woke up. You’re like a spoiled teenager rebelling against her mama.”
“She is not my mother.”
“No, she’s not. But you act like she is. And that’s why she acts like she is. She can see what you need.”
“What are you saying? And why the fuck are you saying it?”
“If we go back, she’s still going to be the matriarch. And you’re still going to be you. If we return, you will have to accept her authority.”
“Who said we’re returning?”
“You don’t want to go home, Pixie. You just want things your way.”
“So!?” Scratch, you’re a fucking criminal. This whole thing has been about you being chased by a bounty hunter and then dying and then un-dying. What the fuck are you lecturing me for?”
He pauses.
“I’m standing in the middle of a forest because you have insisted for months that you want to go home. And the minute we actually start walking, you don’t want to go?”
“It’s not just because I don’t want to walk for a month. I want to be with you. And I can’t be with you in my world. I don’t want you to be killed in the city either. So I guess we have to stay here.”
“And by here you mean, back in the village we just left.”
“I, er, I mean, I guess?”
Scratch puts both hands to his face and rubs it in frustration. “Why didn’t you tell me this before we left?”
“I didn’t feel it before we left. I couldn’t think then. I was confused. I thought I lost you, and then you came back and that was all that mattered, and they they said you might die, and you said you wouldn’t come to my planet and…” I flap my arms helplessly. “There’s a lot going on!”
“Yeah, there’s a lot going on,” he says, sitting down on a fallen tree. “Come here,” he beckons me.
I go to him, and he pulls me into his lap.
“I fucking love you,” he says, with perfect human phrasing, perfect human intonation, and my heart breaks because if I just close my eyes, he could fit right in on Earth with me.
“I love you too,” I say. Holy shit. I’ve never said those words before, not as an adult.
He pushes his thick mane back from his head and gives me one of those looks that makes my insides go all melty. “What are we going to do with each other?”
“I don't know,” I say softly. “I missed you. And I want to be home, but not without you.”
He kisses me, the way leading men do in movies. The way that makes my head spin and my heart race. He kisses me like he loves me, and I realize for the first time that it doesn’t matter where we are, as long as we are together. I just need him.
“Don’t run again,” I beg when he breaks the kiss. “And if you do, promise me that you will take me with you.”
“I can’t run,” he says, his voice gravelly and emotional. “I tried. And for the first time in my life, I couldn’t just leave. I’ve run from everything for as long as I can remember. I’ve lived my life skating past people, never really being involved with any of them. Seeing Skoll gave me all the reason I needed to go. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I had to come back to you. And I always will.”
There are tears running down my cheeks. Tears of happiness.
“Hey. It could be worse. We could have gone all the way to the city before having this conversation,” I say, wiping them away.
“True. Or worse, you could have gone back to your planet before realizing what you really wanted.”
“So really, this is actually pretty efficient decision making, right?”
“Welll…” he draws out the word dubiously, then breaks into a sexy smile. “You do know what this means, don’t you?”
“We’re going to have to ask them to take us back?”
“Mhm.”
“After I was like, fuck y’all.”
“Right.”
“You know what we need?”
“What’s that?”
“A demonstration.”
12 Home Again
Pixie
“We are back,” Scratch announces as we stroll back into the village.
They clearly knew we were coming. When we walk back in through the flax woven gates, the village is entirely empty besides Shanti, Falkri, and the warriors of the tribe, including Skoll, who is giving us a ferociously dirty look. The rest of their expressions are impassive. Cat-like, if you will.
I find myself feeling nervous and silly in equal measure. It wasn’t even an hour ago we were striding out of here, brave and bold and full of ourselves. I was escaping Shanti’s tyranny. I was returning home. I was free.
The moment I see the tribe’s warriors, I know that my freedom is an illusion. We’re coming back to throw ourselves on their mercy. An embarrassed smile rises to my lips. I try to bite it back, but that only makes it bigger.
“So you are,” Shanti says.
This is awkward as hell. There are gathering parties who have been out longer than we left the tribe. But I’m leaving all this to Scratch. He says he knows the perfect way to get the tribe on board with our return, even Shanti. I’m waiting with interest to see how he unburns that bridge.
“The human has decided she doesn’t want to return to her planet, and that she does not want me to return to the city,” he announces. “She decided that not l
ong after we left the village.”
“Kinda throwing me under the bus here, guy,” I hiss.
He doesn’t acknowledge me having spoken.
“And you are letting her make those decisions for you?” Skoll asks the question with an intonation which suggests that doing so is less than alpha, or whatever the fuck he considers himself to be.
Scratch side-eyes the grimalkin he once fled in fear at the very sight of. “I’m letting her make that decision for herself, Skoll. We don’t all have to knock a girl up and make her drip with chains to keep her.”
Wow. That was catty. Should I be surprised? They are cats, after all, in some way.
Skoll gives him a death stare which slowly melts into a smirk. “I hunted you for years. I almost killed you. And I still don't think I’ve put you through enough. You’re a complete…”
“Enough,” Shanti says. “Whatever the two of you were before coming to the wild, that is behind you. Now you are brothers, defenders of the wild and of the tribe. And you will behave as such.”
Is it really this easy? I’ve never thought of Shanti as being forgiving, but she doesn’t seem interested in holding this over our heads. If anything, she seems pleased that we’re back. Is it possible that she actually likes us and wants us here? That’s going to take some getting my head around.
“Take your mate, Scratch,” she says. “Pixie is yours. You will be held responsible for her actions, as she seems to be unwilling to be responsible for her own.”
“Hey… what have… what’s the deal with blaming me for everything? We both wanted to come back here. We both really like living in the dirt.”
Scratch’s palm meets my ass in a sharp slap, shocking and surprising me.
“Apologize to Shanti,” he says. “If you want to be here, you have to accept being here. You have to accept their rules, follow their customs, and make amends for all your misbehavior. You’ve gotten away with far too much.”
I stare at him. Is he serious? Half the stuff I’ve gotten away with is stuff I got away with, with him. He’s been the beneficiary of almost all my getting away with shit.
