by Willow Danes
“Do you know what they would do if they found out about you?” she demanded, throwing her arms wide. “If—and that’s a big if—they didn’t kill you on sight, they would capture you, experiment on you—!”
“Perhaps,” he growled, “because they are uncivilized.”
Her eyes narrowed at having proved his point for him.
“Ra’kur,” she began, willing herself to an even tone as she took off her apron and laid it over the back of the chair. “I’m going into town. You can work on your ship or take a nap or watch a movie, whatever—I’ll be back in about two hours.”
His jaw hardened. “I am going with you, little bird.”
“No, you’re not!”
“Then you will not go.” He folded his arms, looking down at her from his great height. “And we will make do with the provisions I have on my ship.”
Jenna put her hand on her hip. “Just how many provisions do you have out there? Because, quite frankly, you could out-eat a whole football team.”
“It would be pleasant to have more human food,” he allowed. “But we do not need it in any case. We will leave in a few hours’ time.”
Jenna blinked. “Leave? What do you mean, ‘we’ll leave’?”
“Leave,” he repeated. “Journey to my homeworld.”
“Well, you just . . .?” The thrill that he wanted her with him smashed against the realization that in his mind her leaving the fucking planet was up to him to decide. “Don’t you think you’re assuming a little here?”
“I am not assuming. I have reconstructed the directional assembly and need only recalibrate the system. Once that is done we will gather your possessions and leave this world.”
She took a step back. “I’m not leaving. I’m not going anywhere!”
“Of course you are. You will return with me to Hir.”
“Just when did you decide that?” she demanded.
He frowned. “The first time we fucked.”
“And you didn’t even stop to think that maybe you should ask me?”
“We are lifemated, Jenna,” he said sharply. “You must come home with me.”
“This is my home.” She backed away further, shaking her head. “And I’m not leaving it. I’m sure as hell not going to another planet!”
His eerie inhuman eyes narrowed. “You are being unreasonable.”
“What?” she flared. “What did you just call me?”
“Even if I were welcome here by other humans, you cannot truly expect that I would allow you to continue to live on this—”
He broke off, snapping his head toward the living room and baring his fangs, his whole body taut.
Her breath caught at the sudden change. “Ra’kur?”
“Trespasser,” he rumbled. “The peacekeeper has returned.”
“Bill’s here?”
She’d called and left Bill a message three days ago, as soon as her phone had charged. What the hell was he doing here?
“Okay.” Jenna headed for the living room, scrambling to think. “Okay. Hide. I’ll find out what he wants.”
“I will not hide,” Ra’kur snarled, stalking after her.
“You hid the last time he was here!” she threw back. “What the hell was so different then?”
“I knew little of the ways of this world and you were so frightened I thought it best to comply then.”
“Yeah, and I’m frightened now, goddamn it!” she cried. Sure enough, that was Bill’s cruiser coming up the road. She urged Ra’kur toward her bedroom. “Don’t you understand? He can’t see you!”
“I do not care if he sees me! If he shows himself a threat, I will kill him.”
She felt herself blanch. “Stop it,” she whispered hoarsely. “Don’t even talk like that.”
Ra’kur’s huge hands clenched. “I have every right to defend my lifemate!”
Jenna wet her lips. Bill would be knocking on the door any second. Ra’kur wasn’t human, he was a g’hir warrior and he was reacting as if Bill really were a danger to her. But nothing could be further from the truth; somehow she had to get him to understand that—and fast.
Ra’kur’s alien visage was fierce, savage.
Deadly.
“Bill was my father’s friend,” she said, keeping her voice quiet and even. “He was my grandfather’s friend. He’s like an uncle to me. The last time he came here it was because he’d tried to contact me and got worried when he couldn’t. Bill is a good man, a man who would protect me with his life if I had need of it.” She touched his arm, felt the trembling tension in his muscles. “You want me to trust you. Well, right now, I need you to trust me. Please, Ra’kur, hide.”
His nostrils flared but at last he gave a reluctant nod. “I do not like this. I will be vigilant. I will come if you have need of me.”
“I won’t,” she promised. “He’d never hurt me.”
With a final unhappy look Ra’kur went into the bedroom and eased the door shut.
“Hey, Bill,” she said cheerfully but not like the manic cheerleader as she had last time as she opened the door for him. “Good to see you. Everything all right?”
Bill gave her a long-suffering look. “You ain’t been answering your phone again, Birdie.”
She frowned. “You’ve been calling me?”
She glanced back to see the phone where she’d left it on the coffee table. A few steps and she had the cell in her hand.
“Damn it,” she muttered. She held it up to show Bill. “I forgot to tell you. The cabin and the back woods are some kind of dead zone for this thing. I have to go out front to get reception.”
“Now, Birdie, what kinda phone is gonna be any good if it don’t work in the house?” he scolded. “Lester Mills’s been calling you, Sarah Jane’s called you, and now I’m driving up here to check on you again. It ain’t right for you to be needlessly worrying folks who care about you.”
Jenna kept her eyes on Bill but she could swear she heard a very soft agreeing snorf from behind the bedroom door.
I didn’t even get one of those damned floats.
“You’re right and I’m sure sorry,” she said in her most conciliatory tone. “I promise to go outside and check for messages at least once a day.”
Bill held up a finger. “You need to either get yourself the house phone cut back on or you get your butt to town and get a cell that’ll work up here.”
Jenna gave a nod. “Yes, sir.”
Bill held her with a narrow look for a moment. “All right, then,” he said, straightening. “You come on outside now and show me that thing works.”
Jenna kept her eyes off the bedroom door but her heart sped up. Would Ra’kur consider this threatening?
“It works,” she promised. “It works just fine if it’s got reception.”
Bill stuck his tongue in his cheek for a moment. “In fact, I’m gonna stand there and make sure you hear all them messages.” He indicated the stairs behind him. “Get your coat, Birdie, and let’s go.”
She hesitated, the cell gripped in her now sweaty palm.
“Well, come on, girl!” Bill said, stepping back. “You got your foot nailed to the floor or somethin’? I ain’t got all day—let’s go!”
“Okay,” she said, a little too loudly. “I’ll just come outside for a minute, just to show you my phone works, Bill, then you can get back to town. I know you can’t stay long.”
Jenna grabbed her coat. In the sliver of light under the bedroom door the shadows shifted restlessly.
She stepped outside with Bill and shut the front door behind her.
Eleven
“See?” Jenna asked, ending the call to her voicemail. “I got ’em all.”
Bill blew out between pursed lips, his breath showing in the cold. “All right, then.” He gave her a stern look. “Now, next time I see Lester and Sarah Jane they’d best tell me they got a call from you, saying as to how sorry you are they was frettin’ on you.”
“So, Bill,” she called after him as he h
eaded for the cruiser. “How long you think it’ll be before you’ll be seeing Sarah Jane to ask her that?”
His cheeks reddened. “You mind your business, Jenna McNally, and keep a civil tongue in your head.”
“Don’t I always?”
Bill shot her a sour look then gestured at her SUV. “And get that thing cleaned off case you need it in a hurry.”
She frowned. “Why would I need it in a hurry?”
He paused at the car door; the worry lines clear on his face now. “Last night at Dolly’s Chester Davis said he saw something a couple days ago near his property, running fast. I said, Ches, it weren’t nothin’ but a damn bear, and he said it didn’t run like no bear. Said it didn’t growl like one neither.”
Damn it, I shouldn’t have let Ra’kur run the land like that, even at night!
But he’d needed so badly to blow off some steam from the long hours of working on his ship. There’d been a full moon that evening, the air cold and clear as could be, and he’d been just itching to show her how fast he was. Graceful for all his size, his speed was breathtaking and she’d lost sight of him in moments as he took off toward the woods. Even hindered by snow she’d bet he could run down a buck without breaking a sweat. He was flushed when he returned to her, grinning with pride at her wide-eyed admiration. His deep rumbling laugh echoed through the woods as he swung her into his arms to carry her inside to their bed—
It was January; black bears would be hibernating now. Bill knew that too.
“You know Chester done always drink like a fish,” Jenna said with a toss of her hair. “He musta seen a bobcat. Or a wolf, maybe.”
“You seen anything?”
“No, sir.”
“I guess if’n you can’t be bothered to take two steps from the house to check your messages, Birdie,” he grumbled, “then you sure ain’t seen nothing out here.”
Jenna kept her expression contrite, knowing anything she said back to that would likely just come out sounding like she was sassing him.
Bill sighed. “All right,” he said, sounding a bit weary. “You take care now.”
She gave a nod. “You too.”
She waited outside while Bill got in the car and waved as he pulled away. As soon as the sheriff’s car was out of sight the front door opened behind her.
“I guess you heard everything,” she said. He’d probably be able to tell her what her heart rate had been.
“I think he is, as you say, an honorable male.” Ra’kur came to stand beside her. “I am glad I decided not to kill him.”
Jenna’s head snapped around and he gave a deep, rumbling laugh.
“Oh, very funny,” she muttered.
“You do not appreciate my joke, little one,” he teased and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
“Yeah, that whole ‘aliens slaughtering my friends’ humor is positively wasted on me.”
“Come.” He caught her hand and urged her along toward the woods, to the path they’d walked so many times before. “I must finish the ship’s repairs and take you home where you will be safe.”
And that brought them right back to the argument they were having when Bill showed up.
“Ra’kur, I can’t just move to another planet.”
“Hir is a very beautiful world and not so different from this one,” he said, their boots crunching the snow. “There is nothing to fear.”
“I’m not afraid,” she protested as they passed into shadow, the trees growing denser around them. Not true at all; she just wasn’t sure whether she was more afraid of going with him or how it would feel when he went without her. “I—I can’t just leave Earth.”
“You will come home with me, Jenna.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “You will live at my clan’s enclosure. I will keep you safe and you will be happy there.”
“Enclosure?”
“Like your woods,” he answered with a nod at the forest around them as they headed down the hill. “The Erah clan has much land, many of my blood live there.”
“You still have family there?” she asked, surprised.
He gave a faint, faraway smile. “Yes, though it has been very long since I have seen my father, my brothers, or even spoken with them. It was difficult, sometimes dangerous, to contact them while I searched.”
“You have brothers? Older or younger?”
“Both are younger. I had two sisters as well.” His face clouded. “Before the Scourge took them and my mother.”
“I’m sorry,” Jenna said quietly as the trees gave way to the clearing where they’d met.
He stopped in their little clearing, his face ragged in the winter light. “I was only eight summers when the sickness came to our enclosure. In three days all the females of our clan were dead or dying. The ground trembled with the keening of warriors. Some did not survive their loss.” She saw him swallow. “I wonder at it still that my sire did. But he is clanfather and so many needed him to live.”
“Clanfather?”
“The Erah’s leader, but like most enclosures we have no clanmother now.”
“It’s hard for me to imagine.” She shook her head. “Half the population just wiped out like that.”
“No, it was far crueler than that. Had the illness taken half our people that would have injured us but to tear our females away as they did—They cut the very heart from our kind and left us in agony.” He focused on her again, and his eyes softened. “And you, my Jenna? There are no others of your blood now?”
“No, not now that Pap’s gone. My parents and Becca—my big sister—they were all killed in the car wreck. That’s how I came to live with him.”
His fingers traced her cheek. “I am so glad you were not with them.”
“I was actually. I was only six so I don’t remember much. Highway patrol said that when the back window smashed I got thrown free. I got cut up a bit, not bad, but I broke my arm. Pap”—she swallowed hard, fingering her necklace—“he gave me this when he came to get me from the hospital said, ‘Cain’t nobody take the place of your momma and daddy but you got me, Birdie, always. And I’m gonna make sure you don’t want for nothing.’ I told him how grateful I was, before he passed, for all he had done for me. And he said”—tears blurred her vision—“he said he was grateful on account that raising me gave him a whole bunch of joy.”
Ra’kur pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You will bring joy to our enclosure too, my Jenna, when the clan welcomes you.”
He turned, his hand taking hers again as he headed toward the creek to the place where his ship remained cloaked.
“Would they welcome me?” she asked. “I’m human. Wouldn’t they object if you brought an”—funny to think of herself this way—“alien home?”
He gave a deep laugh and opened the door to his ship. “No, I will be much envied.” His gaze fell on her again and he sobered. “But we must go directly to the enclosure when we arrive on Hir. I cannot risk any others seeing you.”
Not that she was actually going to go but— “Because I’m human?”
“Because you are so beautiful.” His mouth curved into a rueful smile. “Many warriors will seek to take you from me.”
“What do you mean, take me from you?”
“Kill me.” He gave a careless shrug as they stepped inside and the door slid shut. “And claim you for themselves.”
“What?”
He raised black eyebrows. “I do not fault them for this. I would fight and kill to take you from another. I will do so to keep you.”
“Thanks,” she managed. “I think.”
He turned to key in the code to open the inside door. “No one will ever take you away from me. My clanbrothers will help me keep you.”
“Ra’kur”—she caught his arm—“I can’t just go live on another planet.”
“There is no more need to talk of this,” he growled. “This is the way it will be. This is the way it must be.”
She stared up at him, at his set jaw and shuttered alien eyes.
She let him go and took a step back.
“Well, I guess I just don’t see it that way,” she said quietly.
She’d been in the ship often enough to know how to open the outside door herself. She stepped through and headed back up to the cabin.
“Would you have us live here?”
She glanced back down the hill to see him following. He threw his arm out to indicate Pap’s woods, making a dismissive wave at where she’d spent most of the happiest times of her childhood, of her life, of the clearing where they’d met.
“On this primitive world? Where you so fear that someone will see one not of your kind that you hide your own lifemate?”
“You didn’t even ask me if I wanted to spend my life with you,” she threw back at him, plodding up the slope. “You just decided that’s how things were going to be!”
She gasped; she’d scarcely heard him move behind her before he caught hold of her arm. He was just so goddamn fast.
“How can you say such things to me?” he demanded. “I called to you. I offered my life in service to you. I offered my body for your comfort and protection!”
Jenna looked away. “Humans do things differently, Ra’kur.”
His breath caught and he went very still. “Are you saying you do not want me as your lifemate?”
She wasn’t being fair and she knew it. He’d done everything the right way according to his species, his culture.
“I don’t know what I want,” she mumbled and pulled her arm out of his grasp.
She trudged toward the cabin, her eyes on the snow-covered ground, knowing he followed her, knowing there was no hope of compromise on this.
She just couldn’t. If she went with him, she might never see home again.
She was already well past the tree line when a metallic squeak brought her head up.
Bill, just now turning away from the front door where he’d been knocking, spotted her from his place on the porch.
“Hey, Birdie!” he called, waving as the screen door shut behind him. “I clean forgot to tell you that Lester—”
Bill broke off, looking past her, his face going slack in shocked disbelief.
