“Don’t push your luck, mon’dalla,” he growled. “I said I’d come—not that I would dress and act as some kind of animal. There are limits, you know.”
“I know,” Whitney said happily. Though they were still in grave danger, she couldn’t help feeling better. She always felt good when she had something to look forward to and the idea of going to Kat’s Halloween party on her favorite Beast Kindred bodyguard’s arm was enough to lighten her mood, despite the danger.
Life never could keep you down, little girl, her mama always said to her. You’ve got the joy of the Lord and the spice of the Devil in you and nothing puts out your light for long.
For as long as she could remember, Whitney had been a naturally happy person—a born optimist and she chose to be optimistic now.
We’re going to get through this, she told herself as the new planet came into view—a purple and green speck in the corner of the viewscreen. We’re going to land safely on that planet, make the repairs, go through the wormhole, and be back in time for Kat’s party. And I’m going to get Rafe to let me make him up like a wolf and then I’m going to wait until midnight and kiss him and let him know how I feel.
Of course the whole waiting until midnight was supposed to be something you did at a New Year ’s Eve party but the big Beast Kindred didn’t have to know that. She could tell him it was an Earth tradition and she doubted he’d mind, even if he found out she was fibbing. There was definitely something between them—something besides just a bodyguard and client relationship, she was sure of it.
Well, reasonably sure.
Either way, I’m going to find out, Whitney told herself. And I’m going to be alive to do it. We’re going to get through this—I know we are!
And she kept telling herself that as the little ship dipped nose- down towards the vast green and purple globe and dived into the alien atmosphere.
Chapter Five
Rafe was more worried than he wanted to let on to Whitney. The strange new planet growing in their viewscreen might have a breathable atmosphere and a temperate climate that could support humanoid life but it also had a higher gravity than either he or Whitney was used to.
The long-range shuttle he was piloting would have handled it with ease if it hadn’t already been damaged by the futile fight to get free of the worm hole but as things stood now, it was anyone’s guess if the hull would hold together as they made their way through the atmosphere or pop like a balloon put under too much pressure.
He would have prayed to the Goddess as they went but he had long ago given up praying to the Mother of All Life. After what had happened to Tenda, he wasn’t even sure he believed in the Kindred deity anymore. And if she was out there somewhere, she was either a cold, heartless being who cared nothing for the people she had created or else a sadist who enjoyed visiting misery on them.
Either way she was not to be trusted so Rafe didn’t pray—he just kept watching the temperature gauge climb and hitting the mute button on the alarm which informed him over and over that the ship was losing hull integrity and could rip apart at any moment.
Beside him, still strapped securely in the passenger seat, Whitney sat with her with eyes closed. There was a tightness around the corners of her mouth but she seemed determined not to give in to panic or fear, which Rafe admired greatly.
She has courage, he thought approvingly. Any other female would be screaming and having hysterics right now but she sits there quiet and composed.
Indeed, she was even humming to herself—a soft, soothing sound that Rafe found calmed his own nerves as they shot through the deadly atmosphere, headed for the ground.
They made it barely in time. Just as the hull pressure was so great the ship couldn’t possibly take another instant of the crushing pressure, they shot through the lower atmosphere and Rafe was able to level off their trajectory so they were flying at a normal speed, skimming over the tops of a vast forest with incredibly tall trees that seemed to have purple and green leaves.
Just like the trees in the Sacred Grove back on the Mother Ship—only about ten times bigger, he thought as he silenced the alarm for the last time and watched the controls begin to normalize. If I were a religious male, I’d think it was a good sign.
Of course he wasn’t religious so he chalked the tree color up to luck and began hunting for a good place to land the ship.
“Look at that—in the distance.” Whitney’s voice distracted him from the readings on his instrument panel and he looked to where she was pointing on the viewscreen. “Are those…skyscrapers?” Her voice was filled with awe. “Look at the size of them! They’re like twenty or thirty times bigger than anything we have on Earth. There must be hundreds of thousands of people working and living in them at one time!”
“They do appear to be buildings of some kind,” Rafe acknowledged, frowning. “But I think it’s better we stay away from them if possible. The natives might be hostile.”
“We don’t know that,” Whitney objected. “They might be peaceful and willing to help us. What if they’ve mapped out the area around their planet and solar system? It might give us a reference point as to where we are and how to get home.”
She had a point, Rafe had to grudgingly admit. But he still didn’t like to approach the inhabitants of a strange planet without scouting carefully ahead to see if they were dangerous or not.
“I tell you what,” he said to Whitney. “Let me get the ship fixed first and then we’ll do some recon to see if they can be trusted or not. If we find someone we think might help us, we’ll take a chance and try to make contact. But not unless I decide they aren’t dangerous.”
She frowned. “I thought you were letting me make the life and death decisions.”
Rafe shook his head. “Not about this. The decision to land risked both our lives equally. The decision to contact an alien species we’ve never seen before will put you in much more danger and it’s my job to protect you.”
Whitney put a hand on her full hip.
“And how is that? Why am I more in danger than you are in that situation?”
“Because you’re much more valuable. Think about it,” Rafe said patiently before she could contradict him. “Your scientific knowledge of alien life forms and bio-genetic engineering is priceless. While all I know how to do is pilot and protect.” He shrugged. “It’s obvious between the two of us whose life is worth more—and is more worth protecting.”
“It’s not obvious to me.” Whitney’s voice was low and firm with none of its usual bubbliness. “Your life is important too—every bit as important as mine, Rafe.”
He shook his head. “Sorry, but I don’t see it that way. Now let me land the ship—I think I see a clearing up ahead in the middle of the forest. The trees should keep us shielded from prying eyes.”
She got a stubborn expression on her lovely face and he had the idea that she wanted to argue some more about his life having equal value to hers, but Rafe was too busy landing the battered little ship to fight with her about it. She was the important one—she was his mon’dalla—which, if he was being honest, meant a lot more than he had admitted to her. Mon’dalla was a term of affection—an endearment most often used by a warrior for his mate, not just something a Protector would call his charge.
But that was neither here nor there. The important thing was that he intended to protect Whitney with his life—even if it meant protecting her from herself. Her bubbly, optimistic personality made her naturally assume that the natives of this planet must be peaceful and helpful but Rafe had seen enough of the universe to know that wasn’t necessarily true.
The point being that we’re going to keep the hell away from them unless I’m damn sure they’re friendly, he told himself grimly. Because there’s sure to be a hell of a lot of them if they’ve got buildings big enough to house hundreds of thousands at once.
With that intention firmly intact, he landed the ship with a slight jolt in the broad clearing. It was time to assess the damage and m
ake repairs—hopefully in fairly short order.
After all, they had a Hallow-bean party to attend back home on the Mother Ship—if they could ever get back there.
Chapter Six
“These trees are amazing—they’re about the size of the Giant Redwoods back home on Earth. Some are even bigger.” Whitney craned her neck to study the leafy tops of the vast trees soaring far into the turquoise sky above. Even the smallest one had a trunk so big in circumference that a small car could have driven through it comfortably with room to spare on either side. And the bigger ones were so vast they were as big around as a city block.
They had smooth gray bark with little flecks of white and black in it and broad purplish-green leaves almost as big as her torso. She halfway wished she was a Botanist instead of a Zoologist, so fascinating was the alien flora.
“Just stay close to the ship while you admire them,” Rafe growled distractedly. He was stripped to the waist as he worked on the patch of hull which had been damaged, showing a broad, muscular chest that had several intriguing scars she had never seen before. “I don’t want you wandering off and getting lost in the scientific wonder of it all while I’m not there to watch your back,” he added.
Whitney opened her mouth to protest indignantly…and then closed it again. She had to admit, she did tend to get lost in the excitement of exploring a new world. Several times Rafe had saved her from falling into a bog or lake and even once, from walking off a cliff, when she was so engrossed in studying the fauna of a new world.
He glanced at her and seemed to read the expression on her face.
“You know I’m right—admit it.” But there was a touch of humor in his deep voice.
“All right, I admit it.” Whitney sighed. “But it’s just about killing me to be on a strange new world without taking notes and samples and finding new animals to take back to the Mother Ship.” She lifted her chin mutinously. “I don’t see why I can’t just look around a little while you fix the ship.”
Rafe frowned.
“We still don’t know what class of planet this is—the animals out there might be huge and predatory,” he pointed out. “With trees this big and the gravity and oxygen content on the high side, this world could support much larger creatures than you’re used to. Think of your own dinosaurs which roamed on Earth millions of years ago. Would you like to run into a Tyrannosaurus Rex with no protection?”
“Well…no,” Whitney admitted reluctantly. He did have a point about the oxygen and the gravity. She was damn glad to have the regulator strapped around her wrist which controlled both so that she could comfortably breathe and walk around without being squashed like a tin can under a heavy boot. “But we don’t know for sure if there are T-rexes or anything like them out there,” she added, and swept out a hand, including the entire immense forest in her gesture.
“We don’t know that they’re not out there, either,” Rafe growled, sounding stern. “So until I fix the ship and we ascertain if it’s dangerous, you’re going to stay right by my side. Understood?”
Whitney could have bristled at his authoritarian tone, but she decided to tease him instead.
“All right then. I guess I’ll just stay here and watch the local scenery,” she remarked, looking pointedly at his broad, bare chest. “It’s plenty worth watching, I can tell you.”
Rafe gave her a startled look—it often seemed to surprise him when she flirted with him. When it didn’t fly right over his head, that was.
“Are you talking about me?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Whitney drawled, batting her eyelashes at him so he couldn’t fail to draw the right conclusion. “It’s not ever day I get to see you with your shirt off, you know. It’s a pretty nice sight, I must admit.”
“It’s not something I would think you’d care about.” Rafe frowned at her. “And I believe what you are doing is what you Earth people call ‘sensual harassment.’”
“The correct term is sexual harassment,” Whitney corrected him, smiling. “Though it can get sensual too. That could be fun.”
“That is foolishness—stop distracting me.” His frown deepened but was there a faint flush on his high cheekbones? Whitney thought there was—maybe she was finally breaking through that tough outer wall her mysterious Beast Kindred Protector had around him.
She was about to say something else—to tease him further, mostly because it was fun and she was bored—when a flash in the purple and green underbrush caught her eye.
“Hey!” She tugged quickly at Rafe’s bare, muscular arm which he had raised above his head as he made repairs to the ship’s hull.
He gave her an irritated look.
“I told you, stop distracting me, Whitney. You know you’re fucking gorgeous and all these teasing little attempts to make me rise for you take my mind from the business of fixing the ship.”
At any other time the fact that he was one, swearing, when he almost never did and two, calling her gorgeous, would have taken up her immediate attention. But this time she was distracted by the rustling in the underbrush.
“Look!” she insisted in a low voice. “There’s something coming!”
“What?” Rafe was immediately on alert. Together they listened and watched the bushes closest to the ship.
After a moment the sound grew louder and something stepped out into the clearing, only a few yards away from the ship.
Rafe’s dark brows pulled low over his forehead, his blaster out and ready in one hand. But there appeared to be no need to use it.
“What in the universe?” he asked in a low voice.
“It’s a woman,” Whitney whispered. “A bare-ass naked woman. At least that’s what it looks like. And she’s staring right at us.”
Chapter Seven
The naked woman, who was lean and sinewy and looked to be in her early twenties, wandered cautiously closer, never taking her wild-looking eyes from the two of them. She had pale ivory skin with scratches and scars plainly visible in some places and long, wild brown hair which looked like it had never even had a nodding acquaintance with a brush or comb. Her breasts were small and firm and high and she didn’t seem to care at all that they were on display.
She moved, Whitney thought, with an animal grace and perfect indifference to her own nudity. She was tall—almost as tall as Rafe—but not nearly as muscular. Her lean, naked body reminded Whitney of a greyhound or a whippet—something built for speed and agility. And indeed, the woman looked like she might take flight at any time.
For a long moment, the three of them just stared at each other but finally Whitney decided to say something.
“Hey,” she said in a low, coaxing voice, trying not to frighten the woman. “How are you? We’re new here—can you tell us where we are?”
She would have taken a step towards the woman, but Rafe reached out a hand to grab her arm.
“Be careful, Whitney,” he murmured, frowning. “She smells…strange.”
Whitney couldn’t smell the woman at all and her words didn’t appear to have had any effect. Though her translation bacteria should have made her able to talk to anyone of any culture, the woman didn’t look like she understood. She cocked her head to the side for a moment, as though considering Whitney and Rafe intently. But then, maybe sensing they were no threat, she seemed to lose interest and her large grey eyes fixed on something crawling at their feet in the long greenish-purple grass.
Whitney’s eyes followed hers and she nearly let out a yelp of excitement. Here was the first native animal she’d seen since they landed and it was a beauty! It was a large, grasshopper-looking insect with vivid pink and gold markings and three sets of hind legs instead of just one.
The alien insect was large too—as big as a toy poodle. Probably it was able to grow so large because of the high oxygen content on this planet, Whitney speculated. She remembered learning that back in Prehistoric times when Earth had extra oxygen, there were three-foot long centipedes and spiders as big as basketballs running around.
Not that she wanted to meet any of those but the giant, jewel-bright grasshopper with three sets of legs was amazing. She simply had to catch it and bring it back with them to the Mother Ship, she decided.
“Look at that!” she murmured under her breath, nudging Rafe’s arm with her own. “It’s the perfect specimen. I have to get it!”
“You don’t know if it’s poisonous or not,” he objected, instantly on the alert. “I do not think it is wise to attempt to capture any specimens from this world when we know nothing about it.”
“But that’s the essence of scientific inquiry!” Whitney argued, still under her breath. She didn’t want to startle the naked woman, who was still watching the jewel-bright grasshopper as intently as they were. “When you find something new, you study it! Besides, give me some credit. I have collection tools in the ship. I won’t touch it with my bare hands and it won’t take me a minute to pop it in a stasis cage.”
“I still don’t think—” Rafe began and then the naked woman who had wandered out of the forest ended their argument for them by pouncing on the alien insect and ripping its head off.
“Sweet baby Jesus!” Whitney put a hand to her mouth as the woman crunched noisily and messily, swallowing the head with its gleaming compound eyes and then diving in for another bite of the still-twitching body. Green goo was dribbling from the side of her mouth but she didn’t even bother to wipe it away—just kept crunching with a kind of single-minded intensity that reminded Whitney of a lion with its kill.
“Well, I guess that puts my fear that it might be poisonous to rest,” Rafe remarked dryly. “Though that certainly isn’t the way I would have gone about testing it.”
“She stole my specimen!” Whitney exclaimed indignantly. “Right out from under my nose!”
“You want to fight her for it?” Rafe raised an eyebrow at her. “I think you might lose—she appears to want it more than you.”
“Of course I don’t want a dead specimen!” Whitney exclaimed. She took a step closer to the crunching woman and tried to talk to her again. “Excuse me,” she said politely. “Excuse me, but can you tell me what that thing is that you’re eating? What do your people call it?”
Pairing with the Protector: A Kindred Tales Novel (Brides of the Kindred) Page 4
