“We are speaking,” he grumbled.
“No. I mean I’m going to have to alter our agreement,” she said with a tiny smile.
He scrutinized her silently, not moving, as he attempted to process her meaning. She shifted from one foot to the other, though she met his eyes with a steely resolve.
“Speak plainly of your intentions, female.”
“I can’t help you salvage right now. They need my help.”
He blinked at her in surprise. “You speak of the coast. They require your aid to get there?” He shook his head at the glaring fault in her plans. “By your own admission, you have never left this settlement. You would be a disastrous guide.”
“True.” She laughed dryly, her smile slipping. “No, that’s not what they need from me. I’m going into the Reapers’ camp. Before you say anything, no, they didn’t ask me to do it. I volunteered. The women and children they stole—I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try to save them.”
His eyes shifted to the cluster of females and offspring behind her. They watched him warily as if expecting him to lash out and attack his female.
Moving in closer, he dropped his head close to her cheek where he could breathe in her natural perfume as he spoke in a low whisper, his breath fanning her face. “It is dangerous. Do you forget that you are mine?”
“Impossible to forget,” she whispered. “I swear I’m not leaving you or abandoning you in any fashion. I’m not your father. I won’t forget you just because something else demands my attention. I will take care to remain safe and once it’s done, I’m all yours once more.”
Veral growled with impatience, his vibrissae lifting in a show of dominance. In response, all the females stammered, their bodies pressing in close around Terri, though his mate looked on, entirely unimpressed by his display. He snorted, amused by his mate and insulted down to his circuitry by the other females.
He wouldn’t harm his mate or allow harm to come to her.
She was his—hiseverything. She was the safest female on the entire planet.
He wanted to object. However, his female was insisting on aiding them, and they were clinging to her like sap beetles of Octnartova. It was doubtful that he would be able to convince his mate to abandon her plan. If he wanted to safeguard Terri, he understood, somewhat reluctantly, that it required a departure from their original agreement. He shook out his vibrissae in disgust.
Very well. He would be flexible.
He returned his focus to his female.
“We will delay our salvage and help these humans.” Veral smirked to himself as her mouth dropped open but kept his expression blank and unaffected.
“Wait! You’re going to help?”
“You are under contract to meandyou are my mate. That contract has yet to be satisfied and I refuse to allow my mate to wander into danger without my protection. I will not let you go against the Reapers alone. Besides being my female, the debt remains between us.”
Terri smirked up at him. “The debt… I suppose you have a point. All right, my mate, I will allow you to help me since you asked oh so graciously.”
With another long look in his direction, she turned away and waved at the other females. “Come on! Let’s get to shelter before the Reapers decide to investigate!”
Shuffling in a mostly sedate manner, many of them keening quietly to themselves, they left the abandoned bodies of their mates and companions. Clutching their children tightly to them, the females followed Terri and Veral away from the dusty sea of blood. Some flinched from time to time as Krono occasionally circled near, his muzzle and chest soaked with the blood of his kills, but otherwise they made steady progress into the fallen city.
17
Terri offered some water to a small child who looked up at her with wide, scared brown eyes. Everyone was exhausted as they leaned against each other crammed into the room. It had been a long walk, especially for the children. After the dust had settled, it hadn’t taken them long to notice that both of the skinny mares had been killed during the gang’s attack. That had been the first sign that made her realize helping the women wasn’t going to be easy.
Terri had felt her first moments of frustration when a large portion of the women refused to do anything other than wring their hands. They didn’t want to go through their things and pack supplies that could be reasonably carried. They just whimpered as a handful of the women among them dug through the wagons and loaded themselves down with as much as they could carry. Veral spent a good part of their trek back to Phoenix glaring at them.
Even now, sitting in clusters around the living room along the few remaining walls, they did nothing but complain about being hungry and thirsty while Terri worked to ration out the supplies with the help of the women who were among the lead organizers for their caravan. Truth be told, she was beginning to lose her patience with their helplessness. If it weren’t for the few competent women among them struggling to see to everyone’s needs despite grieving for their own losses, she would likely have yielded to Veral’s insistence to let them fend for themselves.
It wasn’t a charitable thought, but she was exhausted and feeling less and less inclined to be magnanimous with every passing hour that she had to tend to them. Despite the number of women who’d fought off the Reapers, and the large handful of them who were dragged away kicking and screaming, Terri had come to find out that most of the women that she was stuck with were the ones who had hidden inside the wagons. She had nothing against hiding—she’d done plenty of it in her own time—but their unwillingness to do anything was quickly eroding her patience. She barely kept herself from making unpleasant comments already. Sooner or later, she was going to crack and go full crazy woman on them.
Josie, a matronly woman of forty-five, scowled from where she stood at Terri’s side. She had a ladle in the hand fisted on her hip as she finished ladling broth into bowls for the women. Although she hadn’t warmed up to Veral, she at least didn’t cower from him whenever he approached Terri. She was perhaps only a bit less impatient with foolishness than he was. Josie possessed a sharp eye and an even sharper tongue for those who tried her patience. She was currently glaring at a young woman who was sulking over the meager ration she’d been given while ignoring the two-year-old who cried and tugged at her breast as he tried to climb into her lap. Josie snorted in disapproval.
“Your guy is a bit rough around the edges, but he wasn’t wrong about one thing,” she mumbled.
Terri arched an eyebrow at the other woman. “Oh?”