Sarazen's Claim, Book One (11 page)

Her amusement faded, and suddenly she was so uncomfortable she could barely stand it. Tarek noticed, he always noticed, and he set his big, incredibly warm hand on her nape and brushed her pounding pulse with his thumb. “If you are not willing to discuss such things with males, I will not fault you.” She shook her head and raised her hand when he would have probably told Ohlen to get lost. “It’s okay, I’m just not used to being asked for relationship advice. At all. And I really don’t know Andi well,” Ohlen nodded, but he looked haunted. Lost even, and she gnawed on her lip as she wracked her brain for something, anything.

She thought back to the first time Ethan had accosted her in the hallway, his group of cronies behind him. The helplessness of being trapped, powerless, forced into a corner with nothing to do but fight her way out if she wanted to live. Inspiration struck, and she looked up at Ohlen, choosing to fight again. Fight now, for someone else. “Andi is physically, small. Petite. She lacks the physical strength to fight, or to physically make you stop if she got frightened,”

Ohlen looked disgusted, offended as hell, vehemently denying he would ever hurt her by forcing anything upon her. She struggled to find words that Ohlen might understand, words that wouldn’t confuse or upset him. Her father used to tuck her in every night, kiss her on the brow and tell her, ‘
Our people survived the decimation of our planet, we can survive anything. What doesn’t kill us, my flower, only makes us stronger
,’

“I know you wouldn’t, and logically Andi knows it too. But she suffered repeated trauma, her mind has reverted to an instinctual…primal state. To shut down when she is frightened and not in control. How long were you listening to us speak?” Ohlen’s cheeks turned dark with fury, but he answered her question frankly. “I had arrived in time to hear Andi begin to speak of her torture.”

“Then you didn’t hear her say how much larger you are than she is. That you are the Devil she doesn’t know.”

His stricken expression made her rush to continue, “She knew what to expect from Ethan. She knew how he would behave, not to trust him or expect anything but pain from him. Clearly Andi has the heart of a survivor, so give her your patience, let her know you. Offer to teach her, gauge her response as you would any soldier and tailor that training to suit her physical ability. You’re a warrior, teach her how to be strong. To fight. To be in control. To trust you by showing her your patience, your understanding. That’s the best advice I have to give you, I wish I had more, but unfortunately I have very little in the way of experience here. I think one of the others of my crew is a psychologist of some kind, one of the men, maybe he could offer you some better insight.”

Tarek stroked his hand down her spine and back up to knead his strong fingers into her scalp, “Your insight is very wise, my one. Very, wise.” She looked up at him, feeling like she was blushing clear to the roots of her hair at that look of pride on his face, the tone of it in his voice. He inclined his head to her, then looked at Ohlen with that powerful, commanding confidence, “Let your mate know you, Ohlen. Offer your strength as you have, but teach her to find her own as well. She will thank you for it later. Treat her carefully,”

“But not like she’s stupid and won’t understand you. Or tell her you don’t expect her to do as good as your normal students, because she’s human, and a girl.” She added hastily, and Ohlen’s brow furrowed thoughtfully as he nodded, “I thank you, for your help, truly. I will take heed of your words and think on them carefully.”

She smiled, glad she could help, hoping Andi would be receptive. Ohlen hesitated, glancing at Tarek briefly, looking about as uncomfortable as a seven foot tall warrior could look. “I have already asked much of you, but may I be bold enough to ask for one more boon?” Tarek made a rumbling growl of displeasure, “Depends on the um, boon.” She said with an easy smile, and Ohlen blushed, “Andi wished to return to the common room with the rest of your female crew. Some of them seemed angry with me, and I don’t know why.”

“Did you ask?”

“No. They enfolded Andi into their midst and made it clear by their expressions that my presence was…not needed. I lost control of myself, I am ashamed of that, not of what I did, but that I did not stop to think of how Ga’rae and Commander Falken’s mates might react to the sight of my beast.”

“Ah. I understand. I’ll speak to them.”

“After you sate your hunger.” Tarek growled, dismissing Ohlen with a jerk of his chin.

Tarek brought her a veritable feast of a meal, sitting across from her and giving her these smoldering looks that made her mind shift back to the dream she’d been having before he’d woken her. It made her stomach twist and flop, made desire streak up her thighs, and every time it did, Tarek’s lips would twitch in a smug little smile and a soft purr would rumble in his chest. He could smell her arousal. And her mortification, but he said nothing about either. He did however, ask her if she too would like to train as a warrior might. “Do you think I will need it, to better fit into your world?” He shook his head after taking a long drink of his water, pulling his hand down over his mouth, “No. We are rarely ever in a state of alert, threats are made to our solar system, but with our control of it and our military numbers, it is unlikely you would ever be in a position where you would have to defend yourself against an enemy. If I am not present, my trusted warriors would be. It is not our way to leave our females, even ones who are warriors, unprotected.”

Eleven

She thought about that all the way down to the common room, where the air was considerably tenser than last time she’d been down there. Andi wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but Gwen and Cassie were having an argument over in the corner, some of the other women watching uncertainly. She looked up at Tarek when he stopped in the doorway, looking forbidding and serious now, “Do you require my presence?” He asked seriously, and she sighed, tugging on the end of her braid in agitation. “I don’t think so. I’ll contact you if I do,” He lowered his head and nuzzled her cheek, “And I will answer, my one.” She couldn’t help but to shift her face a bit to catch the edge of his jaw with her lips.

She was pretty sure he was growling under his breath when she left him at the door.

Gwen and Cassie both rushed up to her and started talking at her a mile a minute, so fast and trying to be louder than one another that she had to take a step back to get out of range from the spit flying. “SHUT. UP!” She shouted, and both women blinked, looked at one another and then back at her. “Calmly, one at a time, tell me what the problem is.” She said it slowly and firmly, trying to do her best impression of…her mother, Jesus. Gwen sucked in a deep breath, but Cassie beat her to it, “We’re worried about Andi. She came down earlier, and after a little while she got jumpy, nervous again, wouldn’t quit pacing. As soon as that…crazy monster showed up she almost ran across the room to him!”

Still not understanding the problem, she looked at Gwen and raised her brows, inviting the other woman to add her input now too. Gwen was wringing her hands, agitated, fidgety even. Probably as fidgety as Andi had felt out of Ohlen’s sight. “She shouldn’t be alone with him. I don’t have enough information about this whole interspecies mating thing to say that it’s safe. Or a good idea. We’ve been here on board for what seems like seven days, a whole week, and after what happened yesterday, Andi is acting weird. Not how I would expect someone who just witnessed the mutilation of their abuser, to react.”

Insecurities. Feelings. Emotional…stuff. Three things she was unable to handle well on her own, let alone settle for others. Cassie and Gwen were acting so strangely, not as confident and self-assured as they had been before they’d met the Sarazens who intended to claim them. And then, like a live wire shock, it hit her. Andi wasn’t the only one experiencing a change. “The first night I spent here in this barrack, after having slept in Tarek’s bed, I tossed and turned, I fidgeted, I freaked because thought I wanted to be away from Tarek so I could think straight, but all night, all I thought about was him.” Gwen and Cassie both shared a quick, uncomfortable look. “I asked Tarek about it, he told me it was a pheromone related reaction. My body responding to the blood he’d transfused me with, or something. I’m sure if you ask Ga’rae about it, Gwen, you’ll come up with some medical explanation. All I can say, is that too long away from Tarek, and even I get fidgety. It’s weird, but I feel safe when I’m with him. And I hope Andi feels every bit as safe with Ohlen. She told me he’s kind to her, gentle, that she feels as comfortable as possible with him even after everything she’s been through. God knows we all need some of that feeling right now.”

Cassie huffed, even as Gwen started to relax a little, nodding her agreement. “No, we haven’t been mistreated, but we’re alive because these men wish it. Because they want something from us. We’re being forced to rely on them because they have no other options. For all we know they’re taking us to a…a…an intergalactic slave market or something!”

“Right now, we don’t have much choice but to trust these people. I for one haven’t had any reason for mistrust. Tarek has done everything he said he would, he hasn’t pressured anything out of me or made me feel beholden to him. Has Falken given you reason to mistrust him?”

“He has a penis, that’s reason enough.”

She tried to think about what it would be like on their side of things. Tried to rationalize, sympathize, and admitted that aside from the threat of Ethan and his cronies, she hadn’t ever been betrayed or harmed by a man. She couldn’t wholly understand where Cassie and Andi were coming from, and that to them her quick alignment with an alien, and a complete stranger at that, would be a potentially horrifying pill to swallow. Gwen seemed to swing back and forth between her logic and her curiosity, and seemed to her to be having more of a dilemma due to not being able to medically explain what was happening with their hormones and pheromones. But her own studies of plants and animals seemed to help her accept the oddness of their situation. Or at least find a way to make peace with it.

In the end, she really didn’t know what to say or how to make them believe her when she said that she didn’t feel Andi was in any immediate danger. “This is difficult for me to come to grips with too, and I’ll understand if you don’t agree with my point of view. I’m hardly going to force you to accept any of this. But we are at a disadvantage. I’m not saying sacrifice yourselves to these warriors in exchange for refuge and a home. Before last week, most of us still operated under the assumption that we were in fact the only intelligent life in this galaxy, and look what happened.”

“So what are you saying?” Cassie pressed, and she shrugged a bit helplessly. “Don’t take anything at face value, but don’t yank the tiger’s tail out of ignorance. Ohlen already came to see me this morning, wanting to know how to best care for Andi. What to do to keep from frightening her. It didn’t feel like a farce, and these creatures don’t seem to be the type to waste time on something they aren’t dedicated to. I’m naïve in many ways to men in general, I don’t know if I’m making the right choice. It could blow up in my face tomorrow, but I can’t worry about that without making myself crazy.”

This pleased neither of the women, it didn’t calm their fears at all, which made her doubt her ability to lead any of her people. Doubt herself too. “There’s a name for this,” Cassie told Gwen with a huff, and Gwen nodded shortly, “Stockholm Syndrome. It was an ancient form of insanity on earth, where prisoners fell in love with their captors out of desperation and a primal desire to stay alive.” Cassie jabbed her finger in her direction, eyes on fire, “That’s it. Stockholm syndrome. Insanity.”

“We’re not prisoners.” She rebutted, and for a second Cassie looked thoughtful, “Aren’t we being forced to rely on these warriors for our very lives right now?” That was a rather negative way of looking at it, “Forced? I don’t know about forced. Fortunate, I’d say, given the alternative we were presented with first. And if it makes you feel better, Tarek and his people have offered to begin searching for our remaining ships. Their technology is clearly more advanced, and they have the ability. Which means if there are humans still out there in our tin cans, and once they are retrieved and brought back to us, we would then be able to resume our nomadic roaming through the galaxy trapped inside technologically inferior ships, treated like expendable assets by our superiors, facing unknown alien races with potential ships more advanced, and next time we might find ourselves on some…intergalactic slave auction block and sold as meat. Or worse.”

Both women gulped, paled a little and she nodded, hoping she was drilling her point home as confidently as possible. “See what I mean? Could drive you crazy thinking like that. And maybe I am a little crazy, but not crazy enough to pretend that the idea of a home, on a planet protected by the supposedly fiercest warriors this side of the galaxy, where I am not treated as an expendable asset, sounds rather nice. I can tell however that you two aren’t the only ones who are having trouble adjusting, so a meeting is in order, yeah?”

Twelve