Daahn Rising (12 page)

The corpsman hesitated, then nodded. “I think I understand.”

“However, knowing you are a human medic will work to your favor when captured. The Xxan would prefer to allow humans to tend to their own rather than waste Xxanian resources on enemies.

“To tell them, you will say
zhahhh zee etthhh ahh
.”

Before the corpsman could repeat it, the other man who’d motioned for her attention asked the impertinent question she’d suspected was coming from him.

“How do I tell him I’m going to peel his scaly skin from his corpse?” His eyes were cold and his smile more of a warning than a sign of humor.

Zondra pretended to consider it. “You want to compliment your enemy?”

His eyes narrowed, and his smile went brittle. “How is that a compliment?”

“Having scales means he’s a Xxanian warrior and not a human soldier. And someone bold enough to make such a threat is either a stupid Subdominant or a formidable Dominant.” She searched out his rank and found him a lieutenant. “Since most men of your rank and rate are... passably Dominant, he will assume the latter is true.”

The man gaped at her, seemingly stunned by her assessment.

“That means your death will honor him. After a threat like that, he
will
kill you or die trying to. And if he does fell you, he will take your threat to you, perhaps while you are still breathing. If you scream, he will make it last longer.”

Several of the soldiers went pasty, and a few swallowed down what was probably the urge to vomit. Humans were so easy to disgust.

Zondra sauntered between the rows of desks toward her prey. “If you wish to intimidate a Xxanian Dominant, it cannot be accomplished. If you wish to insult him...” She placed her hands on his desk and leaned forward. “
Zhoe zhathhh s’huuu zayahh ta.
”

A bark of laughter from behind her drew Zondra’s gaze. She turned her back on the stunned lieutenant and headed for Aleeks with a smile of welcome.

“That will get him killed for certain,” her brother opined. “Only a Subdominant would be careless enough to lose after that.”

“His attitude will get him killed,” Zondra dismissed the concern.

Aleeks’s jaw tightened, and he assessed the soldier as a threat to her.

“What does it mean?” the man in question asked, oblivious to the scrutiny.

Yes, his attitude will get him killed. Probably before he learns better tactics and situational awareness.

Aleeks answered before she could. “‘You are impotent and should be clothed as a woman.’”

“Zoey zath shoe say ah ta?” he asked, grasping at the sounds he remembered.

Zondra shot him a bland look. As she’d expected, he’d ignored the warning Aleeks offered about how a Xxanian warrior would react to it. “You think telling him you prefer fucking his brother rather than his sister will make him fall down laughing and allow you an easy kill? I don’t think that is wise. Neither do I think it will work.”

Aleeks didn’t bother to stifle his snort of laughter. His eyes glittered in amusement.

Of course, he knew that wasn’t what the lieutenant had said, but gibberish wasn’t acceptable. By the time the men learned enough Xxan to know she’d lied, they would have forgotten what he’d said.

“How do you say it?” he grumbled.

She smiled. “There are sixty-two base sounds in Xxan. Once you can make them all, you can learn to speak the language.” Zondra glanced at Aleeks. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

Her brother shook his head. “And miss this? I don’t think so.”

But his sideward glance toward the lieutenant said he was staying to protect her.

****

“You know, I heard something
very
interesting, Jobel,” Reynolds taunted.

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

By his tone, Evan could tell Jobel was less than interested. Since almost none of what Reynolds said was worthy of attention, Evan was personally trying to tune it out as well. Sometimes it was better to let Reynolds talk and feign interest. At least that way, the work got done without something Reynolds was working on breaking.

“I heard Duncan has been offering little school girls candy lately.”

Evan froze with the wrench in hand. His heart was pounding, and the ventilation fans were the loudest sounds in the compartment. Evan didn’t doubt that everyone was staring at him, waiting to see what his reaction to the accusation would be. He went back to work, tightening the bolt and fussing unnecessarily with other things to avoid looking at them. Reynolds could hang himself how he would.

The jackass in question moved closer, and Evan tightened his grip on the wrench, picturing teeth shattering to his swing.

“What is she, Duncan? A high school junior? Sophomore, maybe? How old is your child bride?”

“Zondra has bachelors in archeology and xenoliguistics.” It was true and one of the many things he’d learned about her after the mating frenzy passed.

“Yeah. I’ve heard most of them go through school quickly.”

Evan didn’t reply to that. There was no need to. It was a fact. Instead he triple-checked the bolts for a tight fit.

Reynolds squatted down next to him, trying to catch Evan’s eye. From anyone else, it might have been a challenge, but Reynolds wasn’t man enough to make a challenge believable.

“So how old was she the first time you fucked her, Duncan?”

Reining in the urge to bust him in the mouth for that comment alone was difficult. Sarcasm was the lesser of two evils; it wouldn’t land him in the brig. “Want a vicarious thrill, Reynolds? Can’t get any of your own, so you want other people’s adventures?”

“For the sake of argument... let’s say I do.”

A peek around showed everyone in engineering waiting for an answer. Evan made a show of securing the panel and turned his back to it.

That gave him time to consider his options. If he refused to answer, they’d make up their own stories, and those stories would likely be damning hyperbole. If he played it up, he could make Reynolds green with envy and ensure all that was passed was something resembling the truth.

“All right then. Since you’re so hard up, I’ll tell you. She was sixteen luscious years of virgin.” His cock came up at the memory of their first night together. He’d decided in the last few days that their son had likely been conceived in the excesses of that night.

Reynolds gaped at him. Evan pretended to be oblivious to the response.

“Sixteen?” Jobel parroted, his eyes wide. “You are seriously shitting me.”

“I didn’t know it yet,” he admitted. “Zondra is very mature for her age, being Xxanian. I thought she was drinking legal, at least.”

“A virgin,” Deacon groaned.

“Ohhhh, yeah.” He drew that out, savoring the fact.

“How’d you find out?” Jobel asked.

“That she was a virgin?” Evan replied. “In the usual way.”

“No. That she was sixteen?”

Evan laughed harshly. “Her family found us in bed together.”

“Her family?” Reynolds had finally found his tongue and ripped it out of the cat’s mouth.

“Well... her older brother, father, and godfather.” He imagined facing her grandfather — or
gran-seir
, as Zondra called him — would have been very different and pretty bloody. Then again, he wasn’t sure how a Xxanian Grea Elder would have interpreted the scene. He did know the elder of a nest ruled with an iron fist.

Jobel muttered something unintelligible. “Shit. That must have been ugly.”

“All things considered, not too bad. I did give the admiral one hell of a shiner before we got it straightened out.”

Deacon shifted closer. “Admiral? What admiral?”

“Guess I forgot to mention that.” Evan hadn’t forgotten it. He’d been saving it for the right moment.

“Spill,” Jobel urged him. “How did an admiral get into the mix?”

“Zondra’s godfather is Admiral MacNair. Course, I didn’t know I was laying a punch on the fleet admiral when I did it.”

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“Let me get this straight,” Deacon stated. “You fucked Admiral MacNair’s teenaged goddaughter.”

Evan hooked his hands behind his neck and leaned his head back. “Yes, I most certainly did.”

“He
caught
you in bed with her.”

“At the lodge. Still going at it when they came through the door. Almost all night long and still going.”

Jobel grumbled a series of curses.

Deacon continued. “You punched the old man in the face.”

“He did have his own bruises,” Reynolds griped.

“Bruise. Singular, and I was outnumbered,” Evan reminded him. “But I held my own.”

“And the admiral didn’t crush you,” Deacon marveled.

“On the contrary, he told us to decide what we wanted and helped us get married.”

Reynolds snorted. “It was probably a shotgun wedding. A choice between military prison and marriage maybe. She pregnant, Duncan?”

He smiled. “We didn’t know
that
when we got married, but... yes, she is pregnant.” He shot a warning look at Reynolds. “To me. And no. It was not a choice of military prison or any other punishment and marriage. It was a choice of go our own ways or get married.”

“You knocked up the fleet admiral’s sixteen-year-old goddaughter?” Jobel exploded.

Evan smirked. “Oh yeah.”

Deacon chuckled. “Man, you are either screwed for life or set for life.”

Chapter Eleven

Zondra opened her eyes to the darkness, shivering at the empty space next to her, at the lack of Evan’s warmth. She pushed from the mattress and donned a
S’suuhhea
, feeling exposed though she couldn’t state why.

There was something too still, even for late on an evening when everyone who wasn’t on duty would be ashore. Holiday weeks were like that. Those that could take leave took it and didn’t look back. Those that couldn’t celebrated however they could, legally or not.

Aside from the usual sounds of ventilation and machinery, there was nothing of note. A sudden wish for the sounds of the center nest assaulted her. Zondra closed her eyes, visualizing the whisper of the tabletop fountain as the rushing water of her
gran-seir
’s water wall, the splash of water in the family pool, the rustling of plants —

It lasted only until the click of the lock.

She looked at the clock, her mind doing the calculation that it was too early for a meal break. If there had been an incident, the response would have woken her.

The door started to slide, and Zondra searched for a scent, recoiling from the sour smell of Reynolds. As if his scent wasn’t unpalatable enough alone, he was unwashed and stank of cheap liquor, sweat, and grease.

Zondra folded herself into the clothing cabinet, working on stilling her air as she settled on the cold deckplates. She shut the door carefully. There was no way to know how sensitive Reynolds’s hearing was. If he heard her, hiding would gain her nothing.

Reynolds crossed the room toward the bed, making a poor showing of stealth. A string of foul language left his lips. “Where the fuck is she?” The mattress rattled on the metal frame as he tore the sheets and blankets off the bed with a roar of frustration. The whisper of them landing on the floor caressed her abused ears.

Zondra listened for signs of running feet on the deck plates and shouts of alarm. Holiday or not, someone had to have heard him. There was no reaction. That was bad. It meant there was no one close enough to hear it if Reynolds attacked her.

His muttering was getting louder, a rambling nonsense. “Can’t sleep. Don’t dream of anything but you. Can’t fuck anyone else. Little cock-tease bitch!”

She bit her lower lip, considering that. It sounded as if Reynolds had drawn in her
Zhigaaah
, but that was impossible. They hadn’t had sex. She hadn’t even touched him.

He touched me.
Memories of his attack at the base club sent shivers down her spine. Reynolds had touched her. He’d burrowed his face in her hair. How much of her
Zhigaaah
had he inhaled? Was the change to him permanent?

If it has lasted this long, it likely is.

No. The doctors at SLAL can do something. If they made Zhigaaal for Evan, they can do something to reverse the effects on Reynolds.
She prayed it was true and feared it wasn’t so acutely that her stomach ached.

Reynolds started pacing back and forth, his voice and speed increasing intensity together. The first crash of glass against the metal bulkhead was so abrupt that Zondra had to swallow down a squeak of surprise.

The destruction went on, hiding any sound she might have made. Splintering stoneware and statuary overlapped with the splashing water that was probably from her beloved fountain.

It ended abruptly, and Reynolds laughed harshly at the destruction.

Most likely the pseudo-victory driving him.
It wouldn’t have been enough for a Dominant, but Reynolds wasn’t a Dominant or even a true human alpha.

The tearing of fabric sent her heart skipping in a sickening non-rhythm. Zondra fingered the clothing hung around her. Would Reynolds attack only what he could see? Only the things that held a pungent scent? Or would he seek out every corner for more to destroy?

As if in reply, the cabinet door banged open.

For a long moment, they stared at each other. Reynolds panted hard, his hand fisted around the short work knife all members of engineering carried. The sheen of sweat on his skin and runnels of the same glistened in the shaft of light from the still-ajar corridor door.

The knife clattered to the debris-littered deck plates. Before she got her closer hand halfway to it, her wrist was trapped in one of his meaty fists. Reynolds yanked Zondra out of the cabinet and to her feet.

A spearhead of glass sliced her, gouging from the ball of her foot to the height of her arch. She screamed and pulled the assaulted extremity up, shaking the shard loose.

He slapped her hard enough to snap her head aside. Zondra stumbled and fell onto a pile of quilt stuffing with a crunchy layer of shattered glass beneath it. In the next heartbeat, Reynolds was squatting beside her, his mouth pressed to hers. He tried to force her beneath him, and Zondra squirmed against his grip.