“You can give him the soap and the clothes and the food,” he says. “But it won’t change the fact that he is being preyed on.”
“And what are you going to do? I don’t see any other males here. These young ones must come by all the time. You don’t let them live with you.”
“No. I don’t,” he says. “Because young bucks who live with me soon learn to stand on their own feet. That’s the second line of my defenses, Jem. Around this region, a very large percentage of the bucks owe their survival to me.”
“So it’s your protégées who have been inflicting themselves on Billy? Beating him up? Doing I can’t even imagine what else to him?”
“I’m not a law man,” Gruff says. “I am not the horned sheriff of the woods. I am a buck with territory, and they are bucks without. Their world is a harsh one. They are not kind to interlopers. I have the advantage of being able to be generous, because I have all I need. Now. Go get him. I will make sure I am upwind.”
That sounds like a reasonable plan. I’m prepared to go ahead with it. I go off to try to find Billy, hoping he is still here.
“Billy?” I hiss his name to the foliage. I know he’s here somewhere. I can smell him. Or maybe not so much him. I can definitely smell the same scent that coated my dome.
“Billy? Are you still here?” I’m sure he’s gone. I wouldn’t have waited this long, especially if I thought there was some chance the biggest, baddest buck in the region might come for me.
“Shh,” Billy hisses from the depths of the bush. “They’ll overhear us. I thought I caught the scent of a buck nearby.” He sounds so scared.
“There you are. I thought you were gone.” I ignore the part about the buck nearby. Obviously there’s a buck nearby. Gruff is never far away.
A flash of red appears behind the green. He does an impressive job of hiding given how brightly colored he is. He still hasn’t emerged fully. He’s lurking. Waiting. It would creep me out if I didn’t know how scared he is.
“I got you some food,” I tell the eyes staring at me from the bushes. “But I can’t stay long. Gruff will notice that I’m gone, so grab it before I have to run.”
A red furred hand extends from the bushes. He’s spooked. Maybe his instincts are telling him not to trust me. Maybe it’s because I’m wearing Gruff’s scent like a cloak. I am owned and possessed. I am controlled, like a puppet.
There’s a high pitched shriek as Gruff bursts through the bushes behind Billy. I throw myself into the foliage to see what is going on, and try to stop Gruff from doing something terrible if that is what he was secretly planning.
Gruff is twice Billy’s size and has captured him by the hair.
“Don’t hurt me!” Billy’s cry is one of panic.
“Relax. I’m not going to hurt you,” Gruff says. “Stop struggling. You’re hurting yourself.”
“Let me go! I’ll run away! I’ll go all the way to the ocean. You’ll never see me in your territory again!”
“It’s alright, boy,” Gruff says. “You’ve gotten the pity of my mate, and I have no interest in hurting you.”
“Your mate? The human?”
“Yes.”
“She wanted me to take her to the city.”
“I’m sure she did.”
“She was planning to steal a ship.”
Gruff’s eyes slide to me. “Was she?” He asks the question in a way that sounds mild, but makes my ass ache all over again with the realization that it is possible to get in trouble twice in one day.
“Billy! What the fuck!? Shut the hell up!”
I can’t believe he betrayed me that quickly. I could have left him to rot in my ruined dome, but no, I tried to help him and this is what I get for that. The first chance he gets, he turns me in. Gruff didn’t know about all the details. He knew I was up to some shit, but that was it.
“Sorry,” he says. “But I can’t support a human female against a caprine male.”
“Why not?”
“Your plan wouldn’t work,” he says. “There are too many reasons to even begin to explain, but there are no interstellar ships waiting for an invasive species to take them.”