by Milana Jacks
“If you go after him, you’ll break the truce?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Don’t go after him.”
“I need to feed you, and you said our flesh tasted delicious. If not Ark, the alternative is one of my males, and I can’t do that.”
I purse my lips. “If he knows you’re coming after him, why is he still here?”
“Because he’s a lunatic.”
My belly growls loudly, and I pat it.
In the cathedral, silence falls.
Oh God.
I stare at the floor.
Hart lifts my chin with his claw. “Shall we start the games, then?”
“No, Hart, I don’t think you should. And if you do, because I’m sure you will, I’ll have you know I love chicken more than…”
“Sor?”
“Yes, Sor. I love fried chicken, grilled chicken, teriyaki chicken.” He’s staring at me because he’s never heard of chicken or beef or rabbit or anything. “Mashed potatoes?”
Hart shakes his head.
“Any other animal will do,” I say.
Hart stands and takes me with him, then puts me on my feet and walks to Ark. He dips two fingers into Ark’s cupped hands. Ink drips from his fingertips as he swipes his lips again.
“Where is your Sha-male?” Ark asks.
Mas climbs the throne steps, looking even more annoyed than he did yesterday. He doesn’t spare me a glance, even though he walks right by me.
“Good morning to you too,” I huff before I sit on the throne, violently hungry. My belly cramps. I haven’t seen a single plate, fork, kitchen, or anything since I landed. They hunt for food. They have no need for cookware of any sort. “Whatever or whomever you bring, I won’t eat it. Just so you all know.”
Hart marches back up the steps. “You will, female.”
“I will not.”
His lips press together, and I grab the back of his neck, trying to bring him down so I can whisper in his ear, tell him it doesn’t matter what he brings. I’d eat a bat if he brought it for me, but Hart steps back.
“The games continue,” he announces. “But I forbid you from killing each other.”
Murmurs start, then shouting, and I sort through the voices, trying to listen to what they’re saying. They all want Ark. He’s the only one in the games from another tribe, but Hart shouts back something about the truce and more females like me and bringing women here. “More females means more games,” Hart announces. “This one is already mine. Everyone in the room knows this.”
Protests erupt, and a roar rips from his chest. His muscles bulge. “This game is not once in a lifetime. I promise you. There will be more womankind. I will bring them.”
“How?” his brother asks.
“I want to know too,” Ark says.
Mas interrupts. “This female is here now, and that’s all we have. Let’s see… One hundred twenty-eight males left, so let the games begin.”
Hart lifts his palm. “Out there, when you come after me, do not make me kill you. Any of you.” He stares at Ark, then back at his tribal males. “When I come, lie on your back and exit the games. Tonight, when I return, I want the hall empty.”
Ark laughs. “You can’t order them what to do during the games.”
“I just did.”
An hour into the games, the cramps in my belly intensify. I’m so hungry that I could take a bite out of Mas’s arm, the one that’s flying over something I can’t see.
“Mas, is there a… I don’t know. I’m hungry and thirsty.” I try to get up.
“You can’t leave the throne platform, and you must watch the games.”
I snort. “I can’t see the games.”
“They’re on the screen in front of you.”
“I can’t see the screen.”
Mas pauses, turns his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Me either, so that makes two people who don’t understand, but that won’t bring me any water, and I need water.” And food.
“You would take water from me?” He waggles his eyebrows.
I sigh, propping my elbow on the throne and my head on my palm. During the games or maybe even after, I can’t accept anything from anyone. “Forget it.”
“About the games,” he starts.
“Hart will win. I’ll ask for water.” Clearly, Hart is preoccupied with winning. Clearly, he doesn’t know I need to drink and eat and use the bathroom. He understands nothing of me, and I nothing of him or the games or this new life I need to start living or else I’ll die out here. A glance out the window shows my pod is still attached to the tower. “I want to go home,” I whisper.
Chapter Thirteen
Hart
On the Ra tribe side of the border, the portal Gur controls stands wide open. Only two males guard it, and neither is competing in our games. I creep up and knock them out, leap inside the portal, and see my brother midleap. Amti’s pussy hole of all holes! Why is he tailing me? I scramble through the portal so it doesn’t cut him in half and close it before my other competitors see us inside Gur’s territory. I cross my arms over my chest. “Why are you here?”
“You’re up to something.”
He knows me well. I walk away from the portal. “Why are you even competing?”
He walks beside me. “There’s nothing else to do.”
I nod. That’s true. Since we declared a truce with the Ra, we’re finding ourselves rather bored and restless. Another reason the games are healthy for all of us, though not when they’re fought to the death, and I need to remedy that. I want to take my brother with me, but I can’t risk both of us for this. One of us should stay behind and inside our territory in case something goes wrong on this side.
To get rid of him, I need to give him something to do.
“You can’t get rid of me,” he says.
Mind reader, this one. I roll my eyes and keep walking, my boots sloshing through the mud. Bugs buzz around me, and I snatch one, put it in my mouth, and chew. Mmmm. I snatch another, eat it. I wonder if Stephanie would like them. They’re like crackers, easier to consume with blunt teeth than most other prey. Does she indulge in crunchy snacks? I do. Sometimes, not always. I catch another one, but Nar slaps my wrist. I snatch my hand away and pop the snack in my mouth.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“Go find Ark and bring the female his cheek. She’d like that. Soft red meat. You’ll win the games.”
“We both know neither of us can touch Ark.”
“Well, I’m not killing any of my males either.”
“You might have to.”
I shake my head. “I’m gonna find another way.”
“In one of Gur’s villages?”
I stop, face him, and want to slap the smirk off his face. “How do you know that’s where I’m going?”
“Mas told me.”
Mas monitors the games and hears just about everything that goes on, so he clearly listened in on Ark’s and my conversation. Mas is not allowed to interfere and compromise the integrity of the games, and he should’ve kept his mouth shut. Everyone deserves a fair chance at mating the female. Nar and Mas are close, sometimes I think closer than my brother and I. I’m a bit of a loner, while Nar enjoys the company of others.
“Mas talks too much,” I say.
“Only to me.”
“Then you know where I’m going which means you know you can’t come with me. Go away.”
He’s marching with me, our boots slushing through the mud, scaring half the animal kingdom out here. We’re not hunting, so there’s no need for stealth.
“What are you going to do in the village?” he asks.
“I thought Mas told you.”
“He only gave me the village name and said I should follow you.”
Mas hasn’t exactly compromised the integrity of games or what happens in the areas he monitors. If he overheard my conversation with Ark in the hole I dug yesterday, he didn’t tell my brother about it, and I do
n’t want to tell him either. My brother won’t give up following me, so I might as well share what Ark and I talked about.
“Ark said Gur has a female,” I tell him, “and he’s planning to open the games for her. But it’s a lure for us to enter. He’ll kill the entrants, and if one of us wins, he doesn’t plan to give her up.”
There’s no response, so I glance at Nar. He’s got a…wishful expression on his face. News of another female will do that to males who haven’t seen one in a decade.
“Ark had to bribe him to sign the treaty,” I add.
Nar spits. “The Ra and their division will cost us everything.”
“Ark wants peace.”
“You can’t trust him.”
“In this I can. He’s not stupid. He sees no future if we war.”
“And you’re going to the village because…?”
Stephanie identified a womankind dress Ark brought to her as a gift. “To confirm Ark’s story.”
“I thought you trusted him?”
“About peace, yes. About the female or Gur’s plan? Not entirely. I need to see the female that looks like my female.”
“She’s not your female, brother. Why don’t you understand that?”
My muscles bulge, and my bones move around. I snarl. “She is mine.”
Nar shakes his head.
We’re almost out of the Jamud area and into the clearing before a hill where Ra males patrol the border. I stop and assess the clearing, then the hill. Two males lounge in the grass, both in hunting forms, both dozing, bathing in the midspan sun.
“They’re not sleeping,” I say and tsk. Too bad. “We’ll go around, come from the east.”
“That’ll take all afternoon. Then we have to cross the river, find the female, and get back the same way.”
I change into hunter and bolt east. My brother is right. I’m risking day two of the games. If I don’t make it back, I’ll lose this day, allowing a male to spend a night with Stephanie. But Stephanie won’t accept a gift from another male. As I run through the mud, cutting across a difficult-to-cross quick-mud area, I think that perhaps, just perhaps, the goddesses haven’t abandoned my people. They blessed me with a loyal female who has no reason to be loyal or trusting of me. Maybe she really is a goddess in the flesh.
Wet, tired, and annoyed that both Nar and I slipped on rocks and cut our flanks, we hide behind a weapons storage shed and lick our wounds before we attempt a stroll down the village street. We stink of blood, and other males will smell it, pay attention to it. Nar finishes first and sneaks inside the storage room. I’m almost healed when he walks out dressed in one of Gur’s subtribe male uniforms and hands me the same sort of outfit. I also dress, and we stare at each other.
The Ra wear iertos. Heavier than vertos to begin with, they are also adorned with belts and jewelry that weighs them down in battle, and I’ll never understand why they keep these old fashions when they know it makes them less agile.
Nar and I swipe mud off our boots and cover our tribal tattoos, identifiers of the Ka tribe on our faces. We spread the mud on our clothes and hands to look like we were working on something.
Rounding the storage shed, we step onto the main road, our boots sinking into the ground. It’s muddy out here. It’s always muddy due to heavier rains than what we get over in Kalia, our main town. We keep our heads down so as not to be recognized, but scan the huts we pass as we move down the path. Many males are sitting on stools, sharpening their weapons. A training drill is in full swing up front.
I glance at Nar, who returns the glance and nods, telling me he sees what I’m seeing. Gur is preparing an army. There’s gotta be two hundred males whose attire I don’t recognize at the border, and the tents at the edges of the village mean those males came to him from elsewhere. From where? Fucking Ark failed to mention this.
At the end of the village, we enter a newly set-up warrior camp and wade through the tents, again falling into line with warriors, disguised as one of them. It’s clear these males are mostly strangers to one another, which is a good thing, but that also confirms that another subtribe has joined Gur’s efforts. How many more want to invade my land again? How many will try to take Ark down and replace him? He’s in trouble, and that’s likely why he’ll need a stronger alliance with me.
Well, I won’t be solving his people’s problems. I want to be sure he can deliver females like he said he could, and also that Gur has one for the games.
But I can’t fucking see her anywhere.
We make it to the end of the camp and stop there.
“No female,” Nar whispers. “Found an army instead.”
I nod. “We head back. Double-check.”
Turning, we move against the flow of males, bumping shoulders with many of them walking the other way. I wanna snarl and start ripping into them. Their scent of dominance and violence offends my Alpha instinct, and I wanna crawl out of my skin and fight them all, taste their blood on my tongue, hear their flesh tear.
Nar bumps into me, pushing me to the side, away from the walkway. We huddle near an unoccupied tent. “What the fuck are you doing?” he hisses at my ear. “I can smell you. Makes me itchy.”
“I know, I know.” I flex my claws, look around, trying to shake off my hunter when I scent something familiar. A human female. I bend lower and sniff the tent’s flap. Faint, but I swear by the goddess, it’s the scent of a womankind. I part the flap, and step inside. My brother follows.
“Same transport system as the female we got,” he says about the white pod before us.
“You mean my female?”
Nar grunts, bumps my elbow. He picks something up, then holds it out. It’s a shoe unlike any other, but an alien shoe nonetheless. I snatch it from him, examine it. There’s no cover on it, just the bottom with something to attach the rest of the foot on the top. It’s small. Female. Has a flower. I pocket the item.
The pod door is slid wide open, and in front of it is the other pair of the same shoe. The drag marks on the ground tell me Gur’s males dragged the female out and she lost her shoes. I pick up the shoe and pocket it as well.
Two bags sit inside on the pod’s floor. One small and pink. One is bigger and blue, and out of the top, clothes stick out, telling me Gur’s males rummaged through her belongings. Entering the pod, I pick up the two bags and consider leaving, but there’s no way I can walk out with these items unnoticed. “Get in,” I say.
Nar tilts his head. “Why?”
“We’re stealing the pod.”
“How?”
“By flying it.”
“You know how to fly this thing?”
“Mas does.”
“Mas isn’t here. Are you all right?” He knocks on my head.
I bat his arm away. “You said Mas has probes out searching for the pods.”
“So?”
“So if I fire this thing up, he’ll pick up the pod’s signal.”
“You hope.”
“Yeah.”
Nar squeezes inside the pod with me, and closes the door. When we can’t fit in comfortably, I sit on the chair and move him to sit on my lap. Neither of us speaks for a beat, and then he turns all hunched down because the roof is so low. “We tell nobody about this,” he says.
“It’s most awkward,” I say. “Don’t wiggle. I might get hard.”
“I hate you.”
I want to laugh, but I snort instead, then move to the side, trying to see the panel past Nar’s massive body. The panel is nothing like the portals or Ra warbird controls. There’re only three things to do, and they come in three colors. Green, red, blue.
“What now, genius?” Nar says.
“Pick a color.”
He points. “The red one here.”
“What’s it do?” I ask.
“Let’s find out.” He presses the button, and the pod lights up, blinks a few times, and shows me a long white line with a smaller red line that’s flashing, though I have no idea why or what it is, but the pod i
s on and Mas should pick up the signal.
Outside, we hear males speaking. They approach the pod and bang on it and keep banging before one calls for Gur.
“We should’ve stolen the female.” From the backpack on the floor, Nar lifts a tiny piece of clothing shaped like a triangle to his nose. His eyes widen, and he licks it, tasting, humming a little. He licks again, partly salivating all over the small cloth. “Delicious female.”
It looks like the piece Stephanie would wear to cover her pussy. I slap his wrist. “No, and you’re not competing in Gur’s games.”
“Maybe I’ll steal her.”
“Nar, if you steal her, it’ll start a war.”
“She smells nice.”
“I think they all smell nice, Nar. I think they’re made of lust and madness.”
“Amti,” he says and shakes out his shoulders. A shiver visibly runs down his spine.
“Amti,” I repeat, remembering how I called on her and then pissed on the fire, effectively marking the goddess.
The pod lifts, ripping through the tent’s roof. Inside, we cheer. Outside, weapons clash against the pod’s sides. Someone throws an ax and cracks the door.
“Hurry up, Mas,” I say to the pod.
Chapter Fourteen
Stephanie
Most of the males come back wounded. They bring either their own flesh or the flesh of their tribal members and lay it at my feet. The scene makes me even more nauseated and fatigued.
They limp, some moaning quietly as they go about bringing in wood, building the fire like they did last night. The smoke starts filling the hall and makes me light-headed, even tired. I hold my head with a hand, wishing I could drop the throne on my own and go lie down on the shredded feather mattress downstairs that smells more like Hart, all woodsy and heavy with a male scent I can’t quite associate with anything on Earth.
I glance at the tower and see two pods.
