“Yes. I had a comrade, but he and I came to…differences.” His words, coupled with a flat tone, confirmed the outcome if he discovered her identity. “What is it you are called?” he demanded.
“I am Anjot.”
“Anjot means warrior.” He narrowed his eyes. “You do not look like a warrior.”
She ignored the insult. “What is it you are called?”
“Icor.”
* * * *
Anika waited until the moon floated high in the sky and the males snored before she slipped out from under her sleep covering. She tugged on her boots and tiptoed through the camp. Since they’d arrived, she’d been unable to slip away alone even once to relieve herself. Someone had always been with her—most often Icor, who dogged her every move, but, if not him, then one of Qalin’s alphas or betas.
She could not do as they did—walk a few steps out of camp and turn her back.
Under lunarlight, she crept into the woods. Every step jarred her full bladder, but she needed to put distance between her and the others, lest they awaken with the same needs and happen upon her.
Behind a stand of trees, within a small clearing ringed by a thicket of brush, she stopped. Urgency growing by the second, she tore at her uniform. The harsh chill bit at her exposed skin, but cold was the least of her concerns. Dropping to a crouch, she released her bladder and sighed in relief as urine spread in a widening, steaming puddle across the frozen ground.
After her bladder emptied, she wiped with a handful of dried grass, then stood and fixed her uniform.
“You are not alpha, you are female!”
Anika whipped around.
Icor circled her, flexing his arms. The violet Parseon moon radiated a strong glow over them both, and Anika watched in horror as recognition dawned. “You! You did this to me,” Icor accused.
For a male who’d moved gingerly, he struck fast. Pain splintered across her cheekbone, knocking her to the ground, and she struck her head against a fallen tree. The moon blinked in and out of focus.
“Drakor!” he spat.
Anika stumbled to her feet, but Icor grabbed her before she could take more than a step, and spun her around. His fist shot out, but she ducked, and it glanced off her temple.
She wrested away, her guerilla training channeling panic into action. With an uppercut, she jabbed under his chin. His feral howl echoed in the night. She aimed again, but he feinted, caught her wrist and, with a wrench, forced her to her knees.
Murder gleamed in his good eye. A thick white substance oozed from the facial abscess.
“It will be my pleasure to see you beg before I kill you,” he snarled, and twisted her left arm. Anika screamed as her shoulder dislocated. The world fogged. Icor slapped her to full consciousness, knocking her onto her side.
She inched her fingers into her boot.
“Get up!” He kicked her ribs.
She closed her hand around the dagger’s hilt.
“Stand up!” Icor hissed.
Her dangling, useless right arm could assist with no purchase, but she used to her injury as a distraction, staggering to her feet while easing the knife from her boot with her right hand. She shielded the weapon behind her thigh then lunged forward and drove it into Icor’s abdomen.
His eye bulged with disbelief, and he gasped. He clutched at her hands, but his strength dwindled with his life force, and she held on. Scarlet froth dribbled from his mouth and red seeped through their fingers, warm against her cold skin. His features went slack, and he pitched forward. She jumped away, yanking out the knife, as Icor fell dead.
Bile clogged her throat. Her breath came in panicked gasps
. I have killed someone!
She gaped at the bloody knife, at the body.
I eliminated a threat, a male who intended to kill me
.
I had no choice
. She dropped the knife and stumbled from the body, a starburst of pain shooting into her shoulder as her left arm swung. She pressed it to her side and moved gingerly to a large tree. She took a deep breath, gritted her teeth, and dove into it shoulder first. With a pop, the ball of her humerus snapped back into its socket.
Anika sank to her knees and vomited.
When the retching ceased, she rose and tested her limb. Her injured arm, though sore, had regained function. Her cheekbone, however, throbbed with greater intensity. Anika fingered her face. Nothing broken. But she would have colorful bruises to explain.
But her biggest problem was how to dispose of Icor’s body.
Under the moonlight, she could see steam rising from the spreading pool beneath the corpse. Once the blood froze, she would be unable to eliminate it. She recalled how Urazi had hidden Grogan in a thicket, and she scanned her environs for the densest clump of brush. There. She wished it were thicker, wished for more time to conceal what she had done, but she needed to act before anyone awakened, noticed their absence, and investigated. Their screams and shouts might have carried. Someone could be looking for them already.
She rolled Icor onto his back to minimize the blood trail, then grasped his ankles, and dragged him into the brush. Next, she piled leaves on top of him and blotted the blood as best she could. Anika gathered tree needles and grasses and scattered them about. Not perfect, but better. Leaving the area, she descended the bank to a half-frozen, sluggish stream.
She rinsed Icor’s blood from her hands and the dagger. Moonlight glinted off the blade. An alpha became a warrior with his first kill. Males recounted that rite of passage with long tales of great pride. Anika felt no triumph, only sickness. But she knew she’d done what she had to to defend herself.
Anika slipped her dagger into her boot, rose to her feet, and headed for camp. She would have to find the privacy to change into a fresh uniform and discard the bloodied one.
Woodsmoke permeated the straggly forest, and through the trees she spied the faint glow from the fire. Sleep would not return this eve; she might as well tend the flame and wait for morning. Hope for the best.
What questions would Icor’s unexpected disappearance raise? Would her traveling companions assume laziness kept him abed when they readied for departure? Would they seek to rouse him to bid him farewell? When they found him gone, would they search? Probably not. But that didn’t mean they might not stumble upon his body. Most of the males relieved themselves just outside the camp perimeter, but other bodily needs might drive them deeper into the wood, and what if she hadn’t camouflaged all the blood? What if animals discovered his corpse before morn and scattered his remains?
Perhaps she should go back and check.
A hand smothered Anika’s mouth, a rough arm clamped her against a hard muscled body, and she was lifted off her feet. She flailed her arms in open air, and screamed, but her cries sounded as mere puffs of sound under the hard, broad palm.
Her captor hauled her back into the wood.
Chapter Eleven
Urazi could feel Anika’s heart battering against her ribcage in terror, but she continued to fight. She beat at him with her fists, and, when her booted heels connected with his shins, he winced. Still, she was so much smaller than he, overpowering her amounted to no great feat.
Then she tried to bite his palm. “Stop it,” he hissed into her ear. “It is I, Urazi.”
She stiffened, uttered a squeaky noise, and then went limp.
When he had distanced them enough from the camp so they could talk without being overheard, he released her.
She rounded on him. “What are you doing here?”
“I have come for you. To see to your safety,” he said.
“Your assistance is not required.”
“Is it not? It was no challenge to carry you off.”
“Because you took me by surprise.” She pressed her lips together and rubbed her hands down her sides, drawing his attention to the way the male uniform molded her hips and thighs.
He did not think she did it deliberately to distract him, but he would have to guard against female machinations. “You should not put yourself in a position where you
could
be taken by surprise,” he chided.
She tossed her head and glared at him. “What do you want?”
He wanted to kiss the sneer off her lips, embrace her with relief that he’d found her safe and sound, shake her until her head rattled on her neck for scaring him, and then spank some sense into her. Finally, he would secrete her away where no one could reach her—not Qalin, not Marlix, and, for sure, not Ilian. “To keep you safe,” he repeated.
Her shoulders slumped before she shrugged and rocked on her heels in defiance. “I am safer within Qalin’s circle than I am outside of it. He will not think to search within his sphere of command.”
Urazi could not argue with her logic—her strategy was something Marlix would have done. But she was not an Alpha, merely a female with a bounty on her head.
“Qalin’s command has expanded,” he said grimly.
“Then it is true?” Anika looked up at him. “Commander Dak’s province has fallen?”
“Yes.”
“I had heard—but still, I had hoped….” She kicked the ground. “We are going to lose the war.”
Urazi stiffened. “A setback. That is all. Marlix and Ilian will prevail.”
“Like Commander Dak? Did he not have forces similar to Marlix and Ilian? Were they not allied? Now that Commander Dak is dead—”
“Dead? What are you talking about?” He stared.
“His province has fallen.”
“But he is not dead.”
“You know for fact he lives?”
No. He had no word of Dak. Had had no contact with anyone from the allies since he’d left Marlix’s domicile. Dak
could
be dead. An Alpha would fight to the death to protect his territory and command, and clearly Dak had lost both. His province was overrun with Qalin’s guards—and many of its citizens had analyzed their options and thrown their allegiance to Qalin.
“No. I am not certain.” Urazi sighed. “Who told you he had died?”
“One of Qalin’s men with whom I am traveling.” She nibbled on her lower lip. “But I did not hear the village bells.” When an Alpha passed, each town rang its bell, picking up the toll when they heard it and transmitting the news to the next hamlet.
Urazi shook his head. “You would not. Many villages have been razed, others abandoned before Qalin could burn them. Few remain to toll the bells.”
Anika pivoted and walked several steps away, drawing his attention to the sway of her hips, her rounded buttocks so much more prominent clad as they were. Still facing away, she halted. “What are your plans?”
“I do not know.” Locating her had been his single objective.
She spun around. “I will not go to Ilian. I will fight you.”
“You do not need to. I will not turn you over to Ilian.” Even if his feelings had not been involved, given the change in wartide, she would not be secure in Marlix’s province, or Ilian’s, and, for a certainty, not in Dak’s. Urazi wished he’d kept his PCD—so he could have had news direct from Marlix. The Commander would give birth to a bovine calf if he saw his female sibling strutting about as an alpha. But Urazi liked how the pants outlined her legs, molded her buttocks. He’d enjoyed that glimpse of her backside. Anika cut a striking figure—except for the flatness of her—
“What did you do to your mammary glands?”
Anika patted her chest. “I bound them so they would not betray my gender—although perhaps it was unnecessary. I have discovered few look beyond outward appearances.”
With talk of gender and breasts, Urazi’s manhood began to awaken. “Nay, it was necessary. Your mammary glands are too bountiful to be left unrestrained. To carry on the ruse, I mean.” He cleared his throat. “I could not believe my eyes when I observed you driving a conveyance.” He’d done a double take, rubbed his eyes at her trim figure sitting so poised and in command of the huge conveyance, controlling the massive, sulfur-snorting beasts.
“You saw me?” she gasped. “I did not see you.”
“I avoided many main roads to skirt the guard convoys, but two days ago a lack of alternative routes forced me to walk the road. Your caravan passed. You were engaged in conversation with a beta, and I hid.”
“Why did you wait so long to approach me?”
“I could not get you alone until this evening.”
Anika swallowed. “I killed someone.”
“Icor.” He nodded.
“You know?”
He’d found the body, and one look at her bloodied uniform had filled in the details. “One could tell by looking at you that something had occurred. You must change your uniform immediately.”
“I was on my way to do so when you abducted me.” She tilted her head. “You called him by name. You knew him?”
“I wandered into his camp during my search for you. He and his companion gave me my first positive lead that I headed in the correct direction. Then Icor shared how he attempted to use you, and I considered killing him.” His flexed his fist. “I would have if he had succeeded.”
“He tried, but I slashed his face. A disfiguring infection had set in so I failed to recognize him. But he remembered me—and intended to avenge the injury.”
“So you killed him.”
“Yes.”
Urazi raised his eyes to the night sky, where the moon presented as a large, round orb. “You left a bloody trail to his body.”
“I tried to mop the blood, camouflage it with leaves, but it froze.”
“I scraped it away with my dagger and disposed of it. Moved his body farther into the woods.”
“They will wonder what happened to him,” Anika said.
“They will.”
“What shall I say?”
“Say, you do not know and nothing else. Any explanation gives them something to dissect. Scavengers will consume the body and disperse his remains. The
chukka
will fight over his bones to build their nests. Let us hope he does not draw
cachinna
, and that we are long gone if he does. The alpha known as Icor will exist no more.”
“How easily one can disappear—unless you try to.” Anika turned away.
Urazi followed, stopped a pace behind her. He raised his hands, hesitated, and then settled them on her slender shoulders. He shuddered to think of a chukka using her bones to build its nest. “Is that what you wish? To disappear?” he asked in a low voice. To never see her again would open a void.