Rhani (Dragons of Kratak Book 3)

by Ruth Anne Scott

  Chris followed the direction of her arm and spotted a wiry figure moving through the battle. He didn’t have a mane like the Felsite, and his arms and shoulders were too slender to be an Ursidrean. The flood lights caught his black hair and blunted nose, and Chris recognized the features of the Lycaon. She caught her breath. “Turk!”

  Chapter 13

  “What’s he doing there?” Carmen asked.

  Chris pushed herself back from the balcony. “He must have gotten caught between the ranks when he tried to leave the city.”

  “He shouldn’t be there,” Carmen remarked. “Both armies will view him as an enemy.”

  Chris wasn’t listening. She elbowed her way through the crowd toward the door.

  Carmen called after her. “Where are you going?”

  “I have to help him,” Chris called back. “He’ll be killed down there.”

  “But you’re unarmed,” Carmen cried. “You can’t go down there.”

  Chris didn’t answer. She was already on her way down the stairs two at a time. She raced through the deserted city to the flat ground behind the parapet, where she jumped up on the wall to see better. The Ursidreans recovered from the initial Felsite attack and gained the upper hand. Their cannons and siege machines thundered over the plain, and one of the buildings near the top of the city caved in.

  Chris breathed a sigh of relief. She’d escaped that death trap just in time. But she didn’t have time to celebrate now. The Felsite fell back in front of their enemies, and the phalanx twisted and turned toward the river.

  The Ursidreans pressed their advantage. They had all the advantage of numbers, weapons, technology, and physical strength. What did the Felsite have? Only their incredible bravery, their agility and speed. A Felsite could outmaneuver an Ursidrean any day of the week.

  The Ursidreans drove the Felsite down into the river bottom. The Felsite splashed through the water in a desperate effort to reform their defense, but the Ursidreans kept them on the back foot. They attacked the Felsite with clubs and spears, but they also used some kind of energy blast weapon the Felsite couldn’t match.

  Renier still dominated the field and crushed any Ursidrean who came near him. He darted forward and back, slashing with his club and breaking heads, until none of them dared engage him. His guard kept a loose circle around him, and together they cut a swath through the Ursidrean ranks.

  Chris surveyed the scene from the wall, and her heart went out to Renier. He would conquer these invaders and drive them out of his territory. But then she caught sight of an Ursidrean standing on the running board of a siege machine near the back of the Ursidrean line. He observed the battle with a cool, determined eye. He spoke into a hand piece, and his amplified voice echoed down the line of cannons. He was directing the battle. He must be Donen, the Alpha Ursidrean.

  He spotted Renier and recognized him. He had to defeat Renier to conquer the city. He gestured to the machine’s driver. Then he jumped to the ground with a long-handled staff blade in one hand and an energy blaster in the other.

  A handful of Ursidreans surrounded him in an instant, and the group set off toward Renier. Chris scanned the battle scene. Renier didn’t see Donen coming. He was too busy crushing Ursidreans right and left. Then her eye fell on Turk.

  Armed with only his short hunting blade and whatever heavy stick he could pick up from the ground, he fought his way through the battle as best he could. But his quick eye caught sight of Donen striding through the trees. He leapt clear of two Ursidreans closing in on him and raced toward Renier. His lips curled back from his teeth in a snarl.

  Chris couldn’t wait any longer. She jumped off the parapet and ran for her life down the field. What was she going to do down there, with no weapons, no training, no heightened senses to see in the dark? She ought to be running the other way to get as far away from this battle as possible.

  Only one thought dominated her mind. She had to get to Turk. She had to protect him somehow, or die fighting with him. She couldn’t let him face the Ursidreans alone. If the Felsite couldn’t stand against them, he certainly couldn’t.

  Donen raised his blaster and fired into the trees. He hit a Felsite warrior, and the man flew back and landed against a tree. He lay still and panting, and Chris recognized Manu. Was he alive or dead? She didn’t have time to wonder. When he flew aside, a space opened up between Donen and Renier. Donen’s hand tightened on his weapon, and nothing stood between him and his enemy.

  Turk ran through the trees, hurdling fallen tree trunks and prostrate Ursidreans. He slashed a Felsite aside with his blade and ran on. Renier rounded on Donen, but he couldn’t reach the Ursidrean leader with any of his weapons at that distance. Donen had him just where he wanted him. Turk dashed through the trees on an intercept course between the two Alphas. He was going to throw himself into the path of the blaster.

  At that moment, the cannon went off again. A rocket whined through the air and exploded behind Chris. She crouched for protection from flying shards of brick and splintering wood, but another rocket sailed overhead and landed near the first one. She looked in every direction, but she couldn’t move. Another rocket might hit her at any moment.

  She must have cried out in surprise, because Turk heard her and hesitated. Even Renier glanced in her direction, but Donen didn’t waver. He aimed his blaster at Renier and squeezed. The cannon exploded, and a rocket whistled through the night. Chris extended her hand toward Turk. He couldn’t sacrifice himself like this, not when she only just realized how much he meant to her.

  What a fool she was, to squander him when she had him in the palm of her hand! She should have treasured him and accepted the gift of his love, instead of running all over hell and gone trying to get away from it. She started forward, but it was too late. Donen’s blaster went off, and the energy beam streamed out of the barrel.

  Renier lifted his hand to defend himself, but the only thing he had to block that beam was a club. Turk was too far away. He wouldn’t intercept the shot in time. Renier would be cut down, and the battle would be over.

  In that instant, another figure materialized between the two Alphas. He threw his arms around Renier, and the blast struck him in the back. He sagged into Renier’s embrace. It was Jaro.

  Renier held the smaller man in his arms and lowered him to the ground. Jaro smiled up at his Alpha before he closed his eyes and sighed. Renier laid the limp body on the soft soil. Then he lifted his eyes to Donen and shook the forest with a deafening roar. Donen hesitated with his blaster still raised, and that was all the time Renier needed.

  He launched himself at the Alpha Ursidrean and knocked the blaster out of his hand. Donen tried to answer with his blade, but Renier clubbed him to the ground with one stroke of his great stick. In a heartbeat, Renier leapt on Donen and smothered him to the ground

  Chris didn’t see his victory. Another rocket landed a few yards away from her, but when she tried to run, another cut off her path. Rockets exploded all around her. She covered her head with her arms, but she couldn’t see which way to go to get away from them. In another minute, one of them would hit her, and that would be the end of it.

  A frustrated and confused scream escaped her, but at that moment, a great weight struck her and threw her back against the wall. She closed her eyes under her arms. She couldn’t watch death take her. A rocket must have struck her, and in a couple of seconds, she would be dead.

  Her head slammed back into something solid, and her mind swam into semi-consciousness. Her body went limp, and care and anxiety evaporated. Nothing else mattered. Her struggle was over. She hovered over the battle scene and gazed down.

  Renier hammered Donen with his massive fists. Renier’s guard closed with Donen’s men, and the two factions fought with all their might for supremacy. Where was Turk? Then, out of the clear blue sky, a velvet touch intruded on her foggy brain. Fingers as soft as downy fur stroked her cheek and cradled her shattered body. She lay back and took a deep breath.

 
Her eyes groaned open, and something big and black blocked out the light. She blinked and tried to sit up, but her head pounded and spun. A voice reached her ear from a great distance. “Don’t move. You might be hurt.”

  Chris fought to open her eyes, and there he was, kneeling over her. She frowned. “How did you get here? I thought you were with Renier.”

  He laid her back on the ground. “Renier doesn’t need me. You do.”

  Chris looked around. Renier knelt over Donen with the Ursidrean’s collar locked in his fists. “But how did you....?” He couldn’t have crossed that distance in the fleeting instant before the rocket struck.

  Turk touched her cheek again. “What are you doing down here? You should be up in the city where it’s safe.”

  “I thought you were in trouble,” she replied. “I had to help you.”

  “I wasn’t in trouble. You’re the one who was in trouble. Take a look.” He helped her sit up and pointed. A wide crater yawned in the ground where she once stood next to the wall. “If I hadn’t knocked you away, it would have flattened you.”

  Chris stared at the hole. He’d crossed the plain in a second and thrown her out of the path of the rockets. He’d saved her life when his own life was in danger.

  He rubbed her arms and legs and massaged her shoulders and head. “Are you hurt? Are you okay?”

  For once in her life, she relaxed into his touch. She would find shelter here and nowhere else. “I’m fine as long as I’m with you.”

  He took her hand and helped her to her feet. Across the river among the trees, bands of Felsite went after lone Ursidreans and drove them back toward their cannons. The battle had turned. Renier pinned Donen’s arms to the ground with his knees and raised his heavy club to finish him off. What would become of these two factions when one Alpha killed another? They would continue in perpetual war for all eternity.

  Chris closed her eyes and turned her face into Turk's shoulder. She couldn't watch this. “Let's get out of here.”

  He didn't answer, but she felt him nod. They turned together, away from the battle and toward the dark. No lights blazed out there, beyond the city, beyond the inhabited part of the planet. The black forest called them home, and they would answer the call.

  Without taking his arms away from her, Turk quickened his pace away from the city and the din of battle. Chris matched his stride, and when she looked up next, the blaze of rockets and the crash of weapons sounded weak and far away. A weight lifted off her shoulders, and her breath evened out.

  At the top of the rise, they paused and surveyed the countryside all around. From up here, the lights of Melnili and the Ursidrean army dotted the black expanse of plain like fireflies in an enormous black night. They amounted to nothing in the overall scheme of things, and they didn't affect Chris and Turk at all. The farther they got from those lights, the more insignificant they became until they would blink out of existence altogether.

  Turk took her by the shoulders and turned her around to face him. The first streaks of dawn struck his face, and he stared into her eyes with curious intensity. “Are you ready to go? I mean, are you ready to go down there?” He nodded toward the pass leading back to Lycaon territory.

  Chris pulled herself up straight. “If I’m going anywhere. I’m going with you. I’ll go where you go.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “Are you sure? You don’t belong with me if you don’t want to be on this planet.”

  “You’re on this planet,” she replied. “That means I belong here, too. I belong with you.”

  He frowned, but a clear light shone in his eyes. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “I’m sure.”

  “You don't want to leave Angondra anymore?” he asked.

  Chris shook her head. “I thought I did, but when you left, I realized there was no point in me going back to Earth. I don't have anything on Earth to go back to that's as important to me as you are. If I went back, I would spend my life dreaming about you and wondering what might have been with you. I'll be much better off staying here and living those dreams in real life than searching for a way to get away from them.”

  “And Carmen?” he asked. “And all the other women? What about them? What if they want to get back to Earth? Don't you want to help them?”

  “None of those women want to leave,” she replied. “No one wants to go back to Earth. What's the point of trying to help them do something they don't want to do?”

  “They don’t want to leave their mates,” he told her. “Is that so hard to believe?”

  Chris gazed toward the rising sun. “I had a picture of her in my mind. After Sasha died, I had this idea about the way she was when she found me at the crash site.I held that picture in front of my eyes all the way here, and even when I talked to Carmen. Sasha was my model, my hero, and she was dead. She died fighting back, and I was going to fight back, too, to make good on her sacrifice.”

  He listened in silence.

  “But that’s all gone now,” she murmured. “Sasha doesn’t want to go back to Earth.”

  He inclined his head toward the west, and she fell in at his side. She slipped her hand into his, and they started across the plain toward the pass. The sun lightened the morning sky, and tiny creatures scattered before their feet through the waving grass. Chris lifted her face into the sunlight. Just over that hill, between the rocks and down the mountain, the trackless forest would swallow them up, and the canopy would hide their footprints.

  Epilogue

  Chris and Turk walked hand and hand through the forest, and Chris started to recognize the terrain. She'd passed this way when she first left the Lycaon village. She hung back until Turk stopped and regarded her. “Is anything wrong?”

  Chris lifted her head to the promontory rising above the trees. “Let's go up and take a look—just one last time.”

  He frowned. “Who said anything about one last time? We can go wherever we like. You can go up there whenever the fancy strikes you.”

  Chris tugged at his hand. “Come on. I want to see it.”

  She strode up the slope and along the rocky outcropping to the summit. The vast expanse of Lycaon territory stretched out before her in a dark green carpet. The mountains far away separated the Lycaon from the Felsite and the sea.

  Then Chris turned around and studied the flat country behind her. A dozen wisps of smoke rose out of the trees and mingled with the clouds. Chris's eyes widened. “There's the village.”

  A smile touched Turk's lips. “Are you ready for this?”

  Chris scanned the forest. “Maybe we could take a few more days before we go back.”

  He raised his eyes and chuckled. “You are so transparent.”

  She couldn't help but laugh. “It's pretty nice out here, just you and me, and I'm enjoying learning all your survival tricks. After we go back to the village, I'll want to go out into the forest to test myself every now and then.”

  “Nothing's stopping you,” he replied. “If you like, I can follow you the way I did before, just to make sure you're all right.”

  “That might be nice at the beginning,” she replied. “But later, I'll want to go alone, just to make sure I can really do it.”

  He nodded. “As you wish.”

  She drew closer and kissed him. “Let's not go back just yet. Let's spend a few more days out here alone.”

  His arms snaked around her and crushed her against his body. “You don't have to ask me twice.”

  “Your family won't worry about you, will they?” she asked.

  He let her go, and they gazed down at those whispers of smoke again. “Don't go back to village until you're ready. I'll stay out here with you as long as you want, but once we go back there, you have to be ready for everything that means. You have to be ready to take your place in the pack, and you have to be ready to mate with an Alpha. Do you understand what that means?”

  Chris nodded. She couldn't take her eyes off those trails of smoke. The village scene played out in fr
ont of her eyes. “We have to be ready to take over if anything happens to Caleb.”

  “And that means any child of ours could become Alpha after me,” he told her. “The pack will want to get to know you. They'll want to touch you and smell you, and they'll never stop asking, every time they see you, when you're going to get pregnant.”

  Chris snorted. “That's got to be hard.”

  He nodded. “She had an especially hard time since she had no family before the pack. She wanted to run away from them every time they came around to get to know her. She wanted to be alone with Caleb the way you want to be alone with me.”

  Chris shook her head. “I don't want to be alone with you to get away from them. I want to be alone with you for you—for you and me.”

  He swept her up in his arms, and his lips crushed against her mouth. Then he peeked into her face. “Can you keep a secret?”

  She cocked her head. “What?”

  “The pack won't bother Marissa again,” he told her. “She's pregnant.”

  Chris's eyes flew open. “What? Really? That's….” She broke off.

  He nodded. “Her children will become Alphas after Caleb. If anything happens to him while the children are young, I'll take over and help Marissa raise them to take over after me.” He hesitated. “There is a good chance, if everyone lives long, healthy lives, our own children won't ever become Alpha. Could you handle that?”

  Chris looked back down into the valley. All those political dramas remained so far away. As long as she and Turk stayed outside the village, they didn't even exist. “I wouldn't mind at all if our children never became Alpha. I'd almost prefer if they didn't, so they could live normal lives.”

  He nodded. “They'll grow up to be warriors, anyway.”

  “The boys will,” she countered.

  He shook his head. “The girls can become warriors, too, if they want to. Anyone can become a warrior or a scout to protect their pack.”

  Chris smiled at him. “I can handle it. I can handle anything that happens now.”

  He kissed her again. “You'll be fine.”

  Chris took his hand, and they started down the hill. “I already am.”