Everybody stared at him blankly—no doubt because they had as much trouble understanding the words veiled by his strange accent as she did!
“What’s wrong with what we got here?” a woman asked in a quavering voice.
He sent her a look Lexa found difficult to interpret. “Beyond everything?” he asked dryly.
“But … what if we don’t want to go?”
“I don’t recall asking for volunteers. Gather up the supplies you were instructed to bring.”
Everyone stared at him blankly. “The food and water,” he clarified, and then glanced up at the sky. “If we move quickly, we should be able to reach the first campsite I selected before nightfall.”
Everyone merely stood where they were, gaping at him with expressions that varied from angry disbelief to terrified suspicion. He pointed. “That way. Now!”
Since he punctuated the command by assuming a stance that seemed distinctly menacing—feet spread, balled fists on his hips, a dark scowl on his face—and then lifted his wings in such a way that he suddenly seemed twice his size the entire group whirled enmasse and fled down the street. Lexa, a little slower to react, was buffeted by the throng and nearly mowed down. She stumbled but was able to keep her feet under her and leap into motion with the others. She was carried along with the panicked wave until they’d nearly reached the gate. She managed to spare a look back then, however, and discovered the angel, contrary to what she’d expected, wasn’t right behind them. He’d vanished.
That circumstance puzzled her, but it was enough to prompt her to remember she’d planned to escape at the first opportunity. With that thought in mind, she worked her way to the edge of the herd as the group bottlenecked at the gate. Waiting until everyone else had squeezed through, she followed and then halted abruptly when she saw that Gabriel had ‘appeared’ outside. She jolted to a halt, gaping at him for a moment in stunned disbelief and then glancing back the way she’d come, wondering if there was more than one of them.
He looked downright amused when she looked at him again—and knowing, as if he’d guessed what she had planned.
Or knew because he’d read her mind.
He pointed toward the rest of the group—which was once again running although the necessity of slowing to exit the city had temporarily tamped their panic.
With Gabriel now directly on her heels, Lexa hurried to catch up to the others, too unnerved to feel much in the way of resentment that he’d once again foiled her plans to part company with him. When everyone tired enough to begin to slow again, Gabriel moved forward to adjust their course.
Thoroughly winded from their panicked flight out of the village, everyone dropped from a run to a trot and then to a walk and finally to trudging at a snail’s pace. He waited until they reached a point of making very little progress at all and then called a halt for a short rest. There was nothing to shade them from the blistering sun overhead, but no one argued. Most of them simply dropped where they were, panting.
Lexa was fairly desperate for a drink of water by that time, but she waited until she’d caught her breath before unearthing a bottle from her supplies and taking a small sip, swishing the water around in her mouth before she swallowed.
“You’d be wise to conserve your water,” Gabriel announced to the group. “It will be two days before we reach a safe water supply—assuming, of course, that we make good time—longer if we don’t.”
The announcement was enough to make everyone examine their water somewhat fearfully. As accustomed as Lexa was to taking very great care of her own supply, she felt her heart sink. She had a very bad feeling that Gabriel’s estimate of the time it would take was optimistic and that it might take far longer. After all, he could fly and she doubted it would take him nearly as long as it would everyone else.
He had flown. That was the only thing that made any sense at all as an explanation for how he’d managed to get in front of them when they’d all run off and left him standing in the street.
Of course, he had wings and she’d heard the angels could fly, but she didn’t think she’d actually believed they could before.
Mentally assessing the water she still had, she took a couple more smallish sips, capped the bottle carefully, and returned it to her pack. She didn’t want to run out anymore than anyone else, but it wouldn’t do her any good to have it if she passed out before she ran out. Someone would just take what she had and leave her with none at all.
The sun had moved about half past its zenith before the angel allowed them to stop again, but then it had been well upward in the sky before they’d even started out. This time, he suggested they eat and not simply rest and drink.
Lexa scanned their surroundings and finally spied an outcropping of rock that offered a little shade. As tired as she was, she hurried over to it to claim it before anyone else could. Unfortunately, she wasn’t fast enough. She arrived at the shelter only just before one of the village men. Before she could plant her ass in the little bit of shade it offered, he gave her a shove that sent her sprawling.
More than half expecting him to punctuate his claiming of the spot by kicking her a few times for good measure, Lexa scrambled to get to her feet even as she hit the dirt, ignoring the burning scrapes to her palms and the bruising of her knees. She slipped on the pebbles strewn across the hard packed ground, however, and before she could do more than roll to her back to face the threat she expected, a dark shadow fell over her.
Gabriel caught the man by the front of his shirt, snatching him clean off the ground and shaking him. His expression was frightening as he pushed his face close to the man’s and snarled. “Savage!”
Resisting the urge to plant his fist in the middle of the man’s face, Gah-re-al shook the man again and then tossed him toward the ground. Turning, he saw he had the full attention of the entire group. “You may consider that a warning. The strong will not be allowed to prey upon the weak. They will not be allowed to take what they want from those weaker than they are. This is not civilized behavior and it is against the laws of the udai. The punishment for such unacceptable behavior will be swift. Is that clear?”
Lexa didn’t know about the others, but she was so stunned it was many moments before that sank in—and it wasn’t terribly clear when it did. She felt a mixture of emotions as she struggled with what had happened and what he’d said. Resentment, embarrassment, and shame that Gabriel saw her as weak were the dominant emotions, making it difficult to assess the others. She also found that she was distinctly uneasy about someone else fighting her battles for her, though, since she didn’t understand his motive for doing it.
She had more to worry about, she discovered, when she saw the reactions on the faces of the villagers. There was accusation in the expressions of every man, woman, and child as they stared at her. She was an outsider and, because of her, one of their group had been attacked and humiliated.
Gabriel compounded their resentment by gesturing for her to take the place she’d tried to claim and then sitting down near enough to make it appear that he was guarding her.
To their minds, she knew, he’d just claimed her as his woman. She was fairly certain that he didn’t realize that. She didn’t believe that that was why he’d done it because he’d had plenty of time since he’d caught her the night before to rut her if that was what he had in mind, but she knew that was what the others were thinking and she didn’t think that would be a good thing for her.
* * * *
Gah-re-al thought, at first, that the hostility he saw in the faces of the humans bold enough to show it and sensed even in those too timid to display it, was merely fear and hatred of the udai in general and him in particular since he was the only representative close enough to focus on. There had certainly been no show of appreciation for the fact that he’d eliminated the gang that had been terrorizing them, he thought wryly—not that he’d expected it—far from it.
Gratitude should have been a given under the circumstances—with any species of
intelligence. He’d been around humans enough, however, to see that they weren’t inclined to look upon anything the udai did for them with even a modicum of appreciation—which was the main reason he was inclined to discount the possibility of a higher understanding among them. They were not only not cowed or inspired to feel awe for the beings who walked among them, displaying superior abilities and weaponry, such displays of power only seemed to increase their hostility.
It wasn’t reasonable. It made no sense to him, at any rate.
Logically, they should have been joyous and relieved at the very least to have the monsters that had been preying upon them removed. Even if they were fearful of the beings who removed them and/or the way it was done, it seemed unreasonable to look upon their saviors with hate and distrust.
He supposed, knowing that, he shouldn’t have been surprised at their reaction to his punitive action against the male that had assaulted Lexa, but he was. He thought he understood why the males had been resentful. They were accustomed to doing as they pleased when it came to anyone weaker than they were—the women and children and any male they were able to dominate. The reactions of the women and children thoroughly confused him.
Instead of simply shrugging it off as a sign of low intelligence as he had in the past, however, he began to wonder if there was a reason behind it—at least as far as they were concerned—that simply escaped his understanding.
Maybe they weren’t simply too stupid to grasp that he’d improved their lot?
Because he couldn’t see that Lexa’s attitude differed a great deal from the others and he’d judged her to be intelligent.
There was no real reason why he needed to understand the humans. The social workers had taken that task upon themselves when they had decided to rehabilitate them and it was no part of his job as lawgiver. And yet it rankled that Lexa’s distrust seemed to deepen with everything that he did.
Truthfully, he’d seen a look of awe and admiration in her eyes before—or thought he had—and the fact that that seemed to have vanished bothered him far more than it should have.
And angered him.
It was completely irrational and unreasonable that his protecting her seemed to have diminished him in her eyes!
Her explanation only baffled and angered him more. It didn’t bring enlightenment.
“Would you care to explain why you are angry that I protected you?” he asked, having fallen back to walk beside her as the group got up to resume their trek.
“No.”
Surprised at her curt response, he sent her a startled glance. Anger very quickly replaced his surprise. He tamped it with an effort and summoned patience. “Explain anyway,” he ground out after a long moment spent wrestling with his temper.
Lexa rolled her eyes heavenward. “It was my fight.”
“One you had already lost,” he pointed out tightly. “And could not have won.”
“You don’t know that!” she said indignantly.
“I do and what’s more you should. There is bravery and there is stupidity.”
Lexa flicked a glare in his direction and then stared at the back of the woman in front of them, wondering if she was close enough to hear the conversation. Her attitude, the way her head was cocked slightly to one side, said that she was straining to whether she actually could or not. “You don’t understand at all,” she muttered. “And why should you?”
“And how can I when you refuse to explain,” Gah-re-al retorted tartly.
“I’m an outsider and you made me more one.”
Gah-re-al was startled and then annoyed. “How so? By preventing that male from beating you half to death?”
“They think I’m your woman now!” Lexa hissed.
That accusation so startled Gah-re-al that he halted in his tracks. Of all the unreasonable assumptions for them to make, that seemed the most unbelievable! “What?” he demanded, wondering if he’d heard her wrong.
She didn’t answer, slow down, or turn around and Gah-re-al strode forward to catch up. “What?” he asked again, although he thought her bright red cheeks was evidence enough that she had heard him. “Why would they leap to that conclusion—assuming they did? Why do you think they did?”
Lexa’s lips tightened. “Men guard their possessions,” she retorted tightly.
Gah-re-al stared at her in disbelief. “But I’m not a man. I’m udai!”
“Which only makes it worse!”
Gah-re-al didn’t bother to ask her to explain that. It was clear enough that it infuriated him. He stalked to the front of the group. He would’ve liked nothing better than to have simply abandoned the lot of them—if only long enough to get his temper under control—but he didn’t trust the bastards not to scatter the moment his back was turned and he’d already informed the council that he would be delivering the first batch of primitives in ten days.
Which might have been a very conservative estimate now that he thought of it considering the children in the group.
He dismissed that problem for the moment, too angry to worry with the logistics of his proposed delivery date.
He wasn’t certain what part of his discovery made him angrier.
The udai were superior to humans in every way! How dare they … shun Lexa because they thought she might be his woman!
How dare she consider it shamed her for them to think it?
Clearly she did and that was the reason she’d turned so red, the reason she was angry!
He was the one who should, by rights, be insulted! As if he would stoop to take a primitive as his woman! It was ludicrous!
Then again, maybe it was all in her mind? He certainly hadn’t heard any comments to that effect and it was completely unreasonable for them to jump to such a conclusion merely because he’d protected her.
Granted, he didn’t find her repulsive as he did humans in general ….
Unwelcome, honesty intruded as it flickered through his mind that he’d thought Lexa surprisingly attractive … for a human.
But that was nothing more than the fact that he found her unusual coloring had piqued his interest. He wasn’t actually attracted to her per se.
He hadn’t been aroused.
Well, not really. Not because of her, at any rate.
Granted, he’d felt a twinge or two in her presence but that was primarily because it had been fucking months since he’d been within sniffing distance of an udai woman! It was a natural reaction of a healthy male to an uncomfortably long abstinence. It had nothing to do with Lexa!
He considered that for some moments and recalled the possibility that it was her imagination and began to wonder why.
Because she was attracted to him?
His pulse quickened at that thought. He didn’t have to examine that reaction too closely because arousal followed almost instantaneously. He struggled to tamp it by summoning an image of her for his mind’s eye, but that only had the surprising and unwelcome effect of arousing him more.
Incomprehensible and unwelcome!
He was hornier than he’d thought.
And he was imagining things besides.
He had seen awe in her eyes, but it was fearful—and that was understandable. She wasn’t stupid. She knew he was dangerous. He was far more powerful than a human male and he held her life in his hands.
Upon further consideration, he realized that it was pretty hard to ignore the fact that she actually seemed far more leery and suspicious than afraid. If she was truly frightened of him, would she have argued with him at every turn? Would she snap at him as if she considered herself an equal?
He had mixed feelings about that, he discovered. He’d long been in the habit of considering humans inferior to the udai.
In almost every way that he could see, they were—certainly physically. They had no wings for one thing. He had not encountered one male that seemed even close to him in strength. Beyond the physical inferiority, they didn’t make anything that the udai had been able to discover—beyond more just li
ke them. They were scavengers. And they lived and behaved like animals—worse. Most animals didn’t prey upon their own kind and they didn’t foul their dens.
How was it, then, that Lexa seemed to see herself as an equal? Considering everything that she had told him about her life, in seemed almost inconceivable that she would even consider herself the equal of a male of her own kind.
But she did.
She had truly believed she had a chance of exerting her claim to that spot, he realized. If he hadn’t intervened, she would’ve challenged the man … and probably gotten pulverized.
It rankled to admit, even to himself, that he might have underestimated the humans because of his arrogance … particularly when it had never occurred to him that he was arrogant.
The Lawgivers: Gabriel Page 7
