Broken (6 page)

“Down,
now!”
Jaxt
commanded, and she obeyed, dropping to the
dusty ground. She couldn’t believe the alien was still moving with her axe
sticking out of him like that, but
Jaxt
didn’t seem
surprised. He took one big step forward and grabbed the enemy by the throat
with his good arm, swinging him around and bashing him against the cave’s rocky
entrance. Even that didn’t subdue the creature.

She
crawled to her weapons stash and grabbed her bow. “Arrows, arrows,” she
muttered, knocking over her quiver in her haste. “Thank God I didn’t unstring
it yesterday.” She grabbed the arrows meant for hunting boar and fitted one into
her bow quickly. Still on the ground, she swung around, wincing as the alien
punched
Jaxt
in the face. He didn’t even flinch,
though. He just kept moving, jabbing at the enemy with short, sharp punches.
She breathed out and aimed, waiting for an open shot.

“Who
brought you here?”
Jaxt
asked in between attacks.

“Your
lover,” spat the
Xyran
.

Jaxt
growled and surged forward, giving her the opening she needed. She let the
arrow go. Fletching buzzed on the air. Sky smiled fiercely when it hit right in
the center of the alien’s head. “That’ll stop you, fucker,” she crowed, elated.

Jaxt
stopped short as the alien flopped down, just as if a puppet master had cut the
strings.

Sky
stood up. “Are there more?”

He
cocked his head, as if listening. “One, I believe.”

She
grabbed her other boar arrow and slipped it into the notch. “I’m ready.”

“Wait,”
he said, sweeping his arm out.

She
frowned. “What?”

He
didn’t move, just stood there, silent.

Asshole,
she thought, for about the thousandth time.
A
little explanation would be nice.
In truth, though, she knew any sound
might give away their location, so she held her words back.

“
Zoen
,”
Jaxt
said, the tone of his
voice unlike anything she’d heard from him yet. A trickle of foreboding lodged
in her gut. When
Jaxt
stepped back from the ledge,
another
Xyran
fell from the sky. She tightened her
hands on her bow and arrow, focusing on one small detail. He had eyes like
golden fire.

****

“
Jaxt
,”
Zoen
said, letting all the
relief he felt color his voice. They clasped hands,
then
touched heads to each other’s shoulder, inhaling the familiar scent of
blood-sworn kin.
Jaxt
was alive and well. His
universe righted itself.

“I
knew you would come,”
Jaxt
said. He touched his upper
right arm, where his tracking chip was implanted.

Zoen
nodded,
then
stepped back, fighting to contain his
emotions. He’d seen the fight from above, too far away to help. He’d never run
so fast in his life. When the arrow had killed the
Xyran
tracker just before he got there, he hadn’t known whether to rejoice or rage at
the lost opportunity for torture.

“Sky,
stand down,”
Jaxt
said, motioning behind him.

Zoen
glanced behind his kin and went still. The most beautiful female he’d ever seen
crouched on the floor with an arrow pointed at his head. She didn’t obey
Jaxt
, and her hands didn’t tremble.

“Sky,”
Jaxt
said,
his tone colder.

“He
has golden eyes,” she said suspiciously. “That’s not right.”

Zoen
liked this female more and more. She didn’t stand down, even while facing two
large males who clearly had her at a disadvantage. She had courage.
And interesting hair.

“I
told you about his parentage,”
Jaxt
replied evenly.

Her
mouth twitched, and then she slowly lowered her arrow. “He can’t control it?”

“
He
is right here,”
Zoen
said, pointing to himself.

She
sniffed,
then
glared at him with her peculiar blue
eyes. “Are we expecting any more unsavory visitors?”

He
slowly shook his head. “There was only one tracker pod on the ship.”

“Ship?”
Jaxt
asked.

Zoen
smiled at his kin.
“The
Kinruul
.
The rest of the
crew is dead, of course.”

Jaxt’s
eyes took on the cruel gleam
Zoen
remembered fondly.
“Did you have fun?”

Zoen
inclined his head.
“A great deal.”

“If
this is how you two bond, then I’m going to go fetch the turkey. I can’t stand
to watch you crowing at each other,” the woman said, setting her bow against
the cave wall. She grabbed a cloth sack and walked toward them. “It won’t take
long. I killed it yesterday and cached it down trail.”

Jaxt
nodded,
then
touched her cheek. The woman scowled at
him and strode out of the cave.

Zoen
caught a whiff of
Jaxt
on her skin as she walked past
him. “You had intercourse with her.”

“She
is the one,”
Jaxt
simply said.

Zoen
went
still. “You are certain?”

In
response,
Jaxt
pointed to the arrow sticking out of
the
Xyran
soldier. “What other woman would do that?”

“What
other woman
could
do that?”
Zoen
murmured.

“Indeed,”
Jaxt
agreed.

“Does
she know?”

Jaxt
shrugged, then leaned down and plucked the arrow from the dead body. He grabbed
her axe, too, running a finger over the blood smeared on the blade.

Zoen
sighed. “You cannot just abduct her.”

“Why not?
The others do it all the time.”
Jaxt
pivoted on his
heel and led the way into the cave.

“Abducting
a female for offspring is an entirely different thing than selecting a mate,”
Zoen
said, exasperated. “And also, you know I would not
agree to that.”

Jaxt
smiled. “You will see.”

****

Sky
cursed all
Xyrans
as she dragged the turkey back up
the trail with her.
Their whole damn race is composed of a bunch of sexist
assholes,
she thought irritably, hands aching from hauling the heavy bird.
She was tired because she hadn’t had enough sleep, and now she had two giants
to feed instead of one. “And you’re pissed because the best sex of your life
ended in a battle.”

She
stopped, short. “Crap.
The
Xyran
corpse.”
She looked up the mountain, squinting as the breeze wafted dust
into her face. The trees rattled like skeletons, which seemed oddly
appropriate. She wasn’t looking forward to chipping out a grave in the rocky
dirt.

“Well,
nothing to do about it except get up there and deal.” She rubbed her eyes on
her shoulder and resumed hiking. “Maybe I can just build a cairn or something.”

Twenty
minutes later she stood in the entrance to her cave, astonished. “What did you
do with the
Xyran
?” she asked
Jaxt
,
her earlier anger forgotten in the face of this miracle.

“It
is only courteous to clean up after oneself,” he said, a hint of his old
snottiness
bleeding through his tone. “As a certain mouthy
woman once told me,” he continued, giving her a bland look.

She
snorted, amused despite herself.
“Truth.”
She looked
around. “Well,
good
. I wasn’t looking forward to
dealing with it.” She let her eyes linger on him appreciatively. She wanted to
repeat this morning’s acrobatics as soon as possible, though she didn’t know
how sex would work now that
Zoen
was here. She tried
to shake those thoughts from her head, but was only partially successful. Just
standing there,
Jaxt
looked like everything she’d
ever wanted. He looked even better with wet hair. She frowned, angry with
herself.
Stop thinking about it.

“Your
hair is wet,” she said, more coldly than she’d intended.

“It
was dirty.” He ran his fingers through it.

She
stared at him some more, then glared.
Dammit, he’s doing that on purpose.
Abruptly, she dropped the turkey by the cave entrance and began searching for
her big pot.

“It
is over there, by your weapons,”
Jaxt
said mildly.

She
frowned, pausing in her search. What the hell was up with him, all of a sudden?
He was being way too nice. “Where’s
Zoen
?”

He
shrugged, edging toward the cave’s mouth.

“Please
don’t tell me you’re going back to being all cryptic on me?” she asked,
irritated.

“He
is not. I was merely cleaning up,”
Zoen
said, walking
out of the tunnel at the back of the cave.

Sky
looked at him. He was almost more handsome than
Jaxt
.
His skin tone was a touch darker than
Jaxt’s
everyday
color, but it suited his spectacular golden eyes. His strong jaw and short
black hair certainly didn’t hurt, either.

“I
am going to exercise my legs,”
Jaxt
announced
suddenly. Before she could say anything, he ran out of the cave.

“What
just happened?” Sky said, staring at the dust floating in his wake above the
trail. “He runs? What?”

Zoen
laughed. “Running is the easiest way to strengthen injured leg muscles.”

She
pivoted. “That makes no sense.”

“You
could, instead, say he is running away.”

Sky
licked her lips.
Jaxt
the warrior?
Running away?
Uh, no.
“That makes no sense either.”

Zoen
shook his head. “He said he told you about my parentage.”

She
nodded slowly, not sure where this was going. “He said your mother was an
Alphan
.
And that you were a slave because
of it.”

“That’s
only partially correct.” He walked over to her and leaned against the wall, in
the sunlight. He looked like one of those perfect men from an old-time movie:
virile and beautiful at the same time.

“I
have no idea what you’re getting at,” she said, slumping down to sit on the
floor.

He
waited a beat,
then
gracefully folded his legs to sit
facing her. “I was a slave because I was born with
Alphan
eyes.” He pointed to his face. “If I had been born with
Xyran
black, I would have been my father’s heir.”

Sky
picked at her boots. She didn’t know what to say. What
did
one say to
that? “Sorry.”

He
waved his hand. “It is old news.” He waited a beat,
then
continued. “
Jaxt
was also born of an
Alphan
woman.”

“He
mentioned something about being a half-breed, but he didn’t explain what he
meant.” Sky rubbed her face. She didn’t know why she was sitting here, talking
to yet another
Xyran
male. Though, to be fair,
Zoen
seemed a little less asshole-
ish
than
Jaxt
had been when she first met him. He was
almost approachable, actually. She surreptitiously eyed him, lingering on his
chest. A row of golden throwing knives accented his musculature nicely.

“When
he found me,
Jaxt
was bleeding from two wounds on his
head.”
Zoen
took a long, slow breath. “He had begun
growing the horns of an
Alphan
male. His father dug
them out by the root with his favorite blade.
Jaxt
was eight years old.”

Sky
gasped. “Wait, you’re telling me that
Jaxt’s
father
cut off parts of his body?
With a knife?”

Zoen
nodded solemnly. “Yes.”

“That’s
barbaric.” Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed it down. The thought of a
youthful
Jaxt
being held down and mutilated… She took
a shaky breath. Life wasn’t fair. She knew that. She would never have survived
if she hadn’t figured that out as a little girl. But to find out that other
sentient species could be just as cruel as humans…
No, you knew that
already, too. Just deal with it.
“Okay, never mind. I already knew
Xyrans
were violent.”