“Warol? Is that you?”
She was barely aware of the birds scattering from the trees above when she screamed. Five monstrous men closed in around her, their breath and bodies fetid, their faces coarse and inhuman from their brow to their heavy tusks. The males shouted gleefully as they dropped down around her with their net. She fell to the ground under the snare and screamed for all she was worth as she begged the gods for her Ragoru to find her.
Warol groaned and slowly picked himself up from the broken brush all around him. Every part of his body ached, as he would expect after falling down a mountain. He still couldn’t believe his cursed luck. They’d traversed that path numerous times, and he’d never had the ground break loose right beneath his feet. He winced as he rolled a shoulder to loosen the muscle.
His eyes narrowed on the steep slope above him. That wouldn’t be easy to climb. They needed to get started if they wanted any chance of rejoining Rager and Kyx before nightfall.
“Come on, human. Let’s see if we can make it back up from here,” he snarled.
His ears perked when his demand was met with silence.
“Human? Arie?” he called. Worry began to gnaw at him as he swung around in place, searching for any sign of his human.
“Arie!” he shouted. “Do not play games with me, human. Answer me right now!”
He dragged in a huge breath and began to panic. He couldn’t detect even the faintest sign of her. Warol knew she’d been ripped from his arms in their fall, but he’d assumed that they’d fall within the same area. He’d figured they would both be pretty banged up, perhaps she would have been injured, but they’d rely on his strength and be capable of going on. His assumption had clearly been wrong.
A surge of annoyance distracted him from his worry. This was all Rager’s fault. He’d insisted on rescuing the tiny human rather than continuing their mate hunt. Bad luck had plagued them since she’d joined them. First the snowstorm, and then the fall down the mountain. And now he was suffering from unnatural and unwanted pangs of concern for her.
A growl rumbled from his chest as he scanned the trees once more. He let out a raspy howl, calling out to his brothers, but to no avail. They had escaped being thrown off the side of the mountain and were doubtlessly still far away, picking their way down the sheer cliffs. That wasn’t going to help him find Arie. With a sinking feeling, he realized that the human would have to depend on him to find her.
His ears twitched as a branch snapped, and he spun around in time to see a misshapen naked human dart through the brush. His hackles raised. That was not normal human behavior. Arie never went without her coverings for even a handful of minutes in view of them. He wasted no time. With a snarl he pounced, driving the full weight of his body into the bushes where it hid. The thing squealed and tried to wiggle away. He ruthlessly applied pressure through all four of his hands, effectively trapping it.
He stared down at the hissing, viciously spitting creature. A dirty yellow mane hung down its back, and it stared at him with hate-filled colorless eyes so pale they couldn’t qualify as blue to his mind. Unlike Arie’s smooth, rounded face, its brow protruded with heavy knobs that erupted often into sharp horns before forming a steep slope to the bridge of its wide nose. The jaw was prominent, and the mouth had sharp teeth and two pairs of stained tusks. A fine pelt covered its body, and the fleshy protrusions on its chest and the crevice between its thighs told him it was female. An unusual female, however. He was certain that Arie only had two breasts.
He curled his lip in distaste. The thing was barely human, but somehow its condition seemed to be worse than the typical human he was familiar with. It was racked with madness as it twisted in his grasp, unmindful of its potential for injury. Worse, it stunk foully. Arie often complained that she smelled bad after several days without bathing, but she still smelled sweet and earthy. This strange human-like creature stank of rot and the bodily wastes that seemed to cling to it.
Although Warol doubted her potential to understand him, he snarled and shook her only slightly. The one positive for this strange creature was that its form and bones seemed much larger and thicker than the average human. He doubted it would break easily beneath his grip.
“Have you seen a red-maned human female?” he demanded.
The female beneath him ceased struggling to free herself and stared up at him with wide eyes.
“What do you want, beast-man?” she growled, her eyes flickering warily over him. Her thick brow furrowed, and she glared at him with blatant distrust. A cunning look of crossed her face and she attempted to grip his sheath. She likely would have succeeded if he hadn’t pushed away from her at the first sign of aggressive movement toward him.
“Oh, I know what you want,” she cooed, stroking down her three fuzzed breasts. “Beast-men come to Ehurmuvale Village seeking to bury themselves between ehurmu thighs. They trade much meat for a very good time. You wish to trade, stranger? You don’t need a red-maned female. I will service you well.”
Warol was appalled as the creature’s meaning sank in. Some of the Ragoru traveling through the neutral territory were bartering meat for pleasure-seeking with these strange not-humans, or ehurmu, as the female called her kind. Although Warol had been raised to believe that Ragoru reserve their sexual bonding experience for their mates, he knew that many males sought sexual relief through other avenues. Some triads were as intimately involved with each other as they were with their female once they found her. Some were content without a female, preferring their own company among their triad. These were all acceptable to him, but bartering for sexual release sat ill with him for a reason he didn’t fully comprehend.
His ill feelings were confirmed when the coy look on the female’s face shifted to one of anger.
“What? I am not good enough for a beast-man? You want the deformed, smooth-faced, furless female with the red mane?” she spat in disgust at his feet.
Excitement thrilled his nerves and his fur raised with awareness. “You know of whom I speak then.”
“Yes, yes, I know her,” she said sourly. “As I was coming out to gather berries and roots, some of the males saw her from a distance and were talking of her and making a strategy of how to capture her. They say ehurmu women are all dried up and used too much for slaking the lust of beast-men. They want to breed with the ugly one with the red mane and keep her for themselves.”
“I thought humans mated in pair bonds,” he said.
The female snorted and rolled her eyes. “I don’t know of what you speak. Ehurmu is all that is, and we live in our valley safe from the death all around. Our men sometimes mate only one to a woman, sometimes more. There are no rules.” She thumped her chest with a proud smile. “I was once a highly desirable female. All men wished to have me as their mate.”
Her face fell, pulled down with an angry scowl. “I traded my cunt for good meat for my people when we hungered, and males no longer consider me since they’ve seen the red-maned one. Now a beast-man doesn’t want me either. Everyone wants the red-maned soft female.”
Warol flattened his ears warily. He wanted nothing more than to be far away from the maddened female. She had a certain light to her eyes that unnerved him. It was his curse to be without any other aid. He needed this female to show him to the village. He could threaten her, but he doubted it would do much good, so he tried another tack.
“If I remove the red-maned female from the ehurmu, it would benefit you greatly,” he said in an exaggerated show of thought. The female paused and regarded him shrewdly, the feverish light in her eyes intensifying.
“Yes,” she said with a shrill laugh. “Yes, come on then. I will show you the way to the village and you will take the ugly one far, far away.”
She turned and raced through the trees, pausing only briefly to shout, “Come, beast-man.”
He loped after her with a savage grin of triumph.
10
At some point, as she was dragged through the forest, she hit her hea
d on a stone and lost consciousness. When she awoke, Arie couldn’t help but wish for that blessed darkness once more. She was lying on a pile of furs that reeked as if they were stripped from the animal and dried without utilizing any sort of tanning methods. They were stiff rather than supple, and smelled of decay instead of the warm, earthy scent of leather.
Arie didn’t think anything could be worse than the smell until she opened her eyes.
Five large men were crouched around her, talking among themselves in low voices. It was clearly English, although accented, and seemed to have unfamiliar words added to it in a sort of local dialect she had never heard before. Arie immediately attempted to push away from her captors. She discovered that she was unable to back away when she came up against a wall.
Her mouth dropped open as her eyes scanned over her surroundings. What little she could see in the dim light, anyway. There was a small fire built up in the center of what appeared to be a rough shack made of logs and woven vines. It didn’t look stable, much less defensive against the elements. She couldn’t imagine how they managed during the colder months of winter. The wall behind her creaked, and she frozen in horror as the men stilled.
The biggest member of the group stood and faced her. Four large tusks pushed out from a heavy jaw, between which thick saliva seemed to perpetually drip. Folds of flesh hung from his jowls and were prickled with coarse hair that hung in clumps down to his chest. This seemed counterbalanced by his heavy brow that was weighed down with several thick horns varying from two to six inches long, and his nose was wide and thick.
His entire body was larger than a normal human’s. As he stood in front of her, she got a good look at a pelt covering his body—except for his purplish-red phallus, which jutted out toward her and seeped a thick precum as he looked at her. Arie jerked her eyes away from his member, not wanting to unintentionally signal anything that could be misconstrued as interest.
Almost immediately, she understood whom she faced. The mutated feral men. She’d often scoffed at the rumors, thinking them nothing more than tales to scare children. Be good or the feral men will get you. Bile rose in her throat as he moved closer, a grin hitching the corners of his lips.
“You are lucky, woman. You will have a big honor. You will be our mate. We will keep you safe,” he said, his grin slowly widening as his eyes roamed possessively over her. “Timel,” he said, gesturing to one of the other males standing a short distance away, “has seen the presence of a smooth-faced male near here. He has many weapons.”
He paused as if to think for a moment, one coarse hand raking through his beard. “We do not recognize him. You are both different from the ehurmuvale. But he comes and you come. We think this is not a coincidence. Maybe he looks for you?” His eyes narrowed on her with interest. “He won’t find you. You belong to our family now. You should thank us,” he said expectantly.
Even if she wanted to, Arie couldn’t force out the words he wanted. Her tongue felt thick and uncooperative in her mouth. Finally, she managed to force out a few intelligible words.
“What exactly are your plans for me?”
He grunted as if interpreting her question as a sign of acceptance.
“You will cook, tend to our needs, and breed. Your duties to our family are simple.” He looked over her with a leisurely critical eye. “We hope that our offspring resemble the ehurmu rather than your kind. We enjoy your softness, but we want our children to be strong ehurmu.”
“Perhaps it might be wiser to find an ehurmu woman, just so you can be certain?” she put in cautiously.
The man barked out a rough laugh, which was joined by the laughter of the other men. He shook his head at her and made an unfamiliar gesture looping two of his fingers. The other men seemed to find it funny, and their laughter broke out again uproariously, no doubt at her expense.
“We do not want wanku women. They allow beast-men to rut them. They have their uses for our village. They bring in much meat in their trade with the beast-men, but we don’t want to breed children on them,” he said with a disgusted curl of his lip. “Sometime the beast-men like to slip their own offspring inside. No ehurmu man would want to raise a beast-child.”
The other men muttered their agreement and shifted on their feet. was horrified to see that each was in some stage of arousal. Were they planning on taking her together? Nausea roiled through her. What had been sexy as hell in her fantasies with her Ragoru was now unsettling with the feral men, despite them being inarguably of closer relation to humanity.
Arie flinched as one dirty hand stretched out to her, the greasy fingertips sliding against her jaw as he rumbled with pleasure. He turned his head, never once releasing her, and barked at the other men in the shack.
“Get out and go some distance away. I want complete privacy with our mate,” he demanded.
There was some grumbling, but the others removed themselves. Her anxiety spiked as she realized they were completely alone. She wasn’t so inexperienced that she didn’t know what was coming next. She pulled her legs up close to her body, attempting to put some kind of barrier between them as her hands scrambled along the earthen floor beneath her.
He slowly crouched down in front of her, his sour breath mingling with the putrid odor coming from his fur. How was it that the Ragoru always smelled of sunshine, grass, and musk, and yet the man in front of her with far less fur possessed a distinct scent of sweat, grime, rotten meat, and urine? Her skin crawled as he pushed himself forward, bringing his body against her knees.
His hand left her face long enough to join his other hand at her knees as he leaned forward and attempted to force her legs apart. She dragged an arm behind her desperately, finding a small pile of scattered leaves. Her breath hitched as her fingers curled around what felt like a large bone, just as he pried her legs apart and pushed himself bodily against her until they were lined up pelvis to chest.
One large hand palmed a breast. “Only two,” he muttered, “but that is okay. Two is enough.” A lecherous smile twisted his lips as he bent his head to examine the buttons of her dress with the intent of freeing the breast beneath his hand.
With a panicked cry, she jerked her arm around, swinging the legbone in her hand with all her might. The crack of its contact with his skull was satisfying. He raised his head and blinked at her before slumping over. Arie whimpered as she wiggled out from underneath him, groaning under the unyielding weight of his body. It was only by luck, a lot of wiggling, and forcibly shoving against his unconscious form that she was finally able to get out from beneath him.
Once she was free, Arie didn’t waste any time. With the bone gripped tightly in her hand, she pushed aside the greasy hide that served as a door and bolted out the opening. She knew she was probably leaping from one dangerous situation into another, but she refused to linger even a single minute longer than necessary. She didn’t want to still be there when he woke up, or when his friends came back looking for their turn. She rounded a corner of vegetation before nearly falling into a huge outdoor firepit.
The pit was banked, so other than getting a bit sooty from the ash as she scrambled upright once more, no harm was done. Arie was far more concerned by the many females who halted in their activity and turned to look at her. One of the smaller women—with three breasts Arie noted in shock—pointed at her and shrieked in alarm. From some distance away, she could see a number of males step out from the trees, tense with aggression. Her mouth went dry with fear as she noticed the males who’d just recently been in the shack with her scowl fiercely, and one shouted something to the rest of the males that Arie couldn’t quite make out. They immediately began to make their way toward her.
Fear may not be useful for many things, but it gave her wings. Far spryer than she ever recalled being, Arie spun on the ball of her foot and sprinted through the small clearing of the village. The forest loomed dark and ominous all around, but she didn’t care. Anything was better than being held as a captive mate to a bunch of feral men.
The news of what could only be a huntsman did not sit well with her either, but that was a chance she was willing to take. A huntsman was at least familiar, and she could probably talk her way around him if she was unfortunate enough to encounter him in the forest. If he was tracking her, it wasn’t for anything good. She wouldn’t put it past the council to have sent him after her to reclaim any property she had and distribute what they considered appropriate punishment.
But first, she needed to get away from the four other lunatics who thought they could snare and mate her.
She almost felt pity for the women until one tried to wrap her hairy arms around her. Arie shrieked and barely managed to avoid them, but in the process she collided with another that was running at her at full speed. Her breath rushed out of her lungs as her body was sent flying over the other female’s back from the strategic strike to her torso. Hitting the ground was no less jarring, and Arie lay there struggling to breathe as a scowling visage came into view. The man she’d clobbered had come to quicker than she’d anticipated and now was glaring down at her.
Lips pulled back from his teeth in a terrible snarl, he reached down with one hand and yanked her off the ground. He held her in front of him with retribution clear in his eyes when a vicious snarl sounded just behind them. Arie looked over and saw a smug yellow-haired feral woman strut out from the trees. She jeered at the man holding Arie.
“You, Morosh, let go of that woman. The beast-man has claim of her, and you hear him—he doesn’t share.”
From the way his fingers bit into the skin of her arm, Arie knew the plan the other woman concocted wasn’t winning her freedom. Instead of looking frightened or willing to listen to reason regarding the imminent threat to his health, he thrust his jaw out stubbornly. The other members of his family backed away, their milky eyes turning toward the woods. Arie could just make out four yellow eyes reflecting in the dark.
Red: A Dystopian World Alien Romance Page 8
