Sarazen's Claim, Book One (16 page)

Cassie took a breath and by her expression she was about to profusely object, but she held her hand up to stop her and gently said, “We’ve all thought it, others will too. It’s our nature. If you’re called, do you feel like you’ll be able to handle that fight?” Tara took a deep breath, opened her mouth to speak, her eyes slid to the left and her cheeks turned pink. She dropped her eyes and glanced around at Cassie, at Gwen and lingered on Andi for a minute. “So long as I’m not alone, yes.” She looked over her shoulder and saw Tarek, Falken, Ga’rae and Ohlen, having appeared silently out of nowhere.

The four of them touched their fingertips to their hearts and in the most regal manner inclined their heads to Tara. “Brennaugh and his warriors will be within proximity soon.” Tarek said in his gruff manner, though this time it seemed a little gentler. “Did you bring the things I asked for?” Gwen asked Ga’rae, and he handed over a medical bag. “How did you know we’d say yes?” One of the women asked, and Gwen grinned, “You’d be an idiot not to want one of those.” She hooked a thumb at her scary alien man cat, and giggles happened all around.

Sixteen

She lay in the circle of Tarek’s arms that night, drowsy with the relaxation that came from his fingertips swirling around in gentle patterns on her back. Looping swirls and long swoops, an occasional touch of his lips to her shoulder, or a nuzzle to her hair. She had walked into their suite and had intended to accept her mate, to give herself to him because she wanted to, had even stripped out of her dress and glanced over her shoulder in what she hoped was a come hither manner. Only to have found him rooted to the spot, his talons out and so long they looked like knives, his lips parted to reveal the bright tips of his fangs, his pupils split vertical and his growl feathered through the air between them.

He hadn’t come into the bedroom for long enough that she was starting to doubt herself, he prowled in and had crawled up over her, balancing his weight on the hands he planted on either side of her shoulders, quivering while he stared down at her. “What you offer me…” His voice was a bestial growl, wrapped in silk, “I want it, you, desperately. But I cannot. Not yet.” He bit out. Embarrassed, she’d made to cover herself, but he shook his head almost violently and she froze. “All I can have of you, I will have.” And at first he drove her crazy with desire by touching every bare inch of her body, and not nearly in enough of a sexual way to sate her need. He took long, deep breaths and slowly but surely he’d begun to calm, and so had she.

He’d pulled her close, cradled and cuddled her, leaving no room between them to mistake the fact that he was excruciatingly engorged. She could feel the ache, the throb of his erection pulsating in time with his heartbeat, and the pulsating ache in her own groin. She got used to the sensation after a while and was able to deal with it enough to relax. It helped soothe him too it seemed, and so they had laid there together in the quiet, only his purrs to break the silence. Until the sound of something beeping broke it, and after laying a string of kisses up her arm, he shifted to look at his wrist unit. “Brennaugh and the Fifth are here, my one.” He murmured, and she inhaled deeply, stretching to rub herself against him. “Okay. I’ll go down to tell the others.”

“You may, but we must greet Brennaugh together first,”

“Kay.”

He gave her another green dress, brushed her hair himself, and when she asked why, he had bent himself around her and hugged her back against him, “As much as I can, as much as you will allow, I would touch you. It calms my beast to know my scent is on you, to feel your skin on mine, feel you breathe, your heartbeat, leave with your scent on me. It will keep me sane until the breeding festival comes.”

“How long until the festival?”

“Two more of your weeks.”

He escorted her down to the receiving bay where Brennaugh and his personal guard waited. He was proud to see the look of awe on his fellow warrior’s faces, the brief flash of envy, of respect they gave to his mate. “Commander Brennaugh, welcome aboard. This is my mate, Clary of the Starsong.” The man Tarek introduced her to was every bit as large and physically imposing as he was. The man was dark haired, the left side of his face so beautifully handsome, that if not for the fact that the right side of his face was scarred terribly from just under his eye, stretching to his ear, down his throat to his collar bone …he’d have been the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. Tarek was handsome, the most handsome, rugged, sexy man she’d ever seen, but Brennaugh was beautiful.

When he inclined his head and touched his right hand to his chest, she saw that his arm was burned too. Like he’d thrown his hand up to shield his face as he’d turned it away. He seemed stiff and uncomfortable, which made her wonder if he was uncomfortable to have her looking at him. But she was hardly going to look away and make him think she found him difficult to look at. With their regenerative blood, whatever had happened must have been excruciating. She smiled at him and stepped towards him, “It’s very nice to meet you, Commander Brennaugh. I’m still learning the proper way to greet your people, but humans, we shake hands.”

She offered hers to the space between them, and his bright, bright blue eyes cut to Tarek and then back to her. She waited patiently, and Tarek must have nodded because Brennaugh lifted his scarred hand to meet hers and his rough, callused palm met hers carefully. She squeezed firmly, not shying away from the rubbery smooth scars on his fingers. “Thank you, for going on the hunt for my people. You, and your warriors. Thank you. I know the breeding festival is a massive loss for your men to miss, and though I’m thankful, I’m sorry too.” She squeezed his hand one more time, feeling Tarek’s growing agitation and stepped back, not surprised when his arm snaked around her waist to haul her back against him.

Brennaugh’s lips twitched, but he and the other four warriors took a step to their left and clasped their hands behind their backs, which for whatever reason made Tarek relax. When he spoke, his voice was as rough and uneven as the skin on his right cheek. “You do us great favor by giving us the hope, that your kind might provide more mates for our people.  A treasure hunt such as this, is an easy feat and reason enough for us to miss the festival. For future, it upsets the beast in us for another male to touch what belongs to us. Your mate is strong, you honor him well, but take care who you show such innocent kindness to, we cannot always control ourselves when our mates are threatened. Even in small manner.”

She looked back up at Tarek and found him doing his best to clear his expression of anger, but feeling him inside her like she was, there was no hiding it. “I’m sorry.” She murmured, and he dropped his brow to hers with a huff, “You have no need, as said, you honor me, my one.” She nodded, leaning on him while he straightened to get back to the meeting of his fellows. “The human females have agreed to see if any are called, but they have conditions,”

“Only one, and her conditions are reasonable.” She interrupted, getting a staunch look from Tarek.

It made Brennaugh cough into his hand to hide his laughter, and Tarek snarled at him. She elbowed him and he looked so shocked that she burst out laughing too. Like no one had ever elbowed him like that before and lived to tell the tale. “The female’s conditions?” Brennaugh interrupted, and she rolled her eyes at Tarek before turning to answer. “When you find our people, they will be skeptical, afraid, and very distrustful. It’s part of human nature to fear the things we don’t understand, and I’m sorry for the trouble that will cause you. Tara, is an engineer. She’s practical, calm under pressure, I hear tell she knows what I’m sure to your people is just rudimentary fighting skills. She likes being a soldier, she likes being useful, but most of all she likes to fly. Her condition is that if she is called, she wants to join you in the hunt, be useful, but most importantly she is willing to be a liaison and help you convince our people to not be as big of a pain in the ass. Ask Tarek what happened when only one of our people began stirring unrest.”

“He has told me.”

Brennaugh lowered his eyes to the deck, looking deep in thought. So far the other warriors hadn’t said anything, but they looked uncomfortable, as much as stone faced warriors could look uncomfortable. Brennaugh rubbed his hand over his mouth and looked at Tarek, “You understand what her presence would do to my crew?” Tarek inclined his head, “Of course. I have told her, she is unafraid. The decision will lie with you, and her potential mate, if she has one among your warriors. The human females have given blood samples, which Ga’rae has turned into an aerosol. It was his suggestion that your warriors gather in the main hangar of your ship, allow the aerosol to be dispensed-”

“That is a cold, and cruel way for a potential mate to be found.” Brennaugh interjected tightly, and Tarek sighed while he set his palm to her waist and rubbed gently. “They are not like us, my friend. They do not understand and find us frightening enough as it is. They have agreed to be matched, so long as they are not put on parade, as they call it. Time is of the essence, and this was the most efficient way we could see this done.”

“I can try again, if you’ll tell me what is supposed to happen.” She offered, and for a moment she thought Brennaugh would ask her to try again, but he looked to his men, and they nodded grudgingly. “The breeding festival is a hunt, among our kind. The females who are not mated live in the forested regions of the planets we habitate. To find our mates, we…hunt through the forest. They hunt us, we hunt them. A test, so many muddled scents, the woods, the others, to ensure that our bond is strong enough to be found among the crowd.”

Annoyance, a small amount of fear, even distrust is what he felt blossom along the bond with Clary. He was shocked. Even his beast sat back with a huff as that fragile, beautiful bond that had grown, the tendrils of hope…snapped. He felt it, felt the connection sever as though cut by a blade so sharp that even a whisper of it could cut to the marrow. It made him flinch, made his body tighten with immediate denial, but so shocked by how that could have happened, he was rendered speechless. Breathless. He stared at Clary, knowing throughout every fiber of his being that she was his mate, he had given her his blood, the bond was made, how could this have happened? “Clary,” She held her hand up to stop him, giving a short shake of her head before stepping away from him. “Humans are in many ways different, from your people. We don’t have a beast inside us that relies on instinct, or an olfactory system anywhere comparable to yours.”

Brennaugh and his warriors were paying rapt attention now, because the scent of Clary’s unhappiness, of anger, was growing. Brennaugh shot him a quick look, but just like they had when she had spoken to her people, Clary’s words held his attention completely. “We are in our infancy as an evolutionary species, some would even say we were inferior I’m sure. But we’re also strong. We’re survivors. Even though we might not think we are able to cope, we can, if we’re given the chance. Some of us are arrogant and blind, some of us are afraid, but most of us are just alone and we spend our whole lives trying to find ways to fill that gaping void inside us. On my world, there was a legend about how we were created. It says that males and females were once a single being. A being with four arms, four legs, two hearts, one soul, and a head with two faces. But our creators, our gods, were afraid of the power that one being could hold, so they separated them into two and condemned humanity to constantly seek out the other half of their soul. Their one. And I tell you that, because I think you and your warriors understand what it’s like to hope for more.”

She was struggling not to cry, he could hear it in her voice. See it in the little quaver of her bottom lip but she stood proudly before them. Even as he struggled not to show the weakness stealing his calm from him now, she stood strong. He didn’t understand what was happening. “Commander Brennaugh, honor is important among your people, yes?” His eyes narrowed because of that tone, the distrust and doubt in it, making her ask such a ludicrous question of another male she didn’t know, and not of him. “It is what we live for, when we have nothing else.” Brennaugh answered gravely, and Clary nodded, swallowing audibly to hold back the teeming waves of her growing distress.

He moved to take her, to hold her against him but she stepped away again and held her hand between them. Her small, delicate hand, that was a wall suddenly thrown up between them, and she didn’t look at him. “Then I want your word, and I want the word of your men if they are called as mates by my crew, by any of the humans you find out there among the stars, your word of honor. No matter what you fear their reaction might be, you will keep nothing from them. Find a way to explain the wonders, the terrors, the dangers, the beauty and uniqueness of your world, your people, your culture. Explain what it means to be a potential mate. Explain what they may or may not expect from the bonding. Even if you think it is of no consequence, explain it. Do not assume that just because we have language translators that we will understand the meanings of your words, or that because of the bond that develops we will understand your emotions and why you’re having them. Speak to us, and not like we are stupid, or like we are children. We will follow and obey, believe in you, accept you for what you are, so long as we have knowledge and are able to understand. Do this, or you risk losing our trust. If we have no trust, all there is left is fear. And what humans fear, we fight. Even if it means our death.”