The big building was made of sturdy brick and there wasn’t anything but flat land and highway to the north and west.What little ‘civilization’ there was, was sprawled out haphazardly for several miles to the south and east.
They had the perfect perch between open hunting and scavenging.Not to mention a large group wouldn’t have any cover to get close without being spotted.
I shook my head, feeling the tight itch of sunburn on my face and neck.Once upon a time I used to strategize how to be as efficient as possible during a waxing appointment, now I was checking for visibility and defense potential.
“How many people live here?”I asked, taking in the large group of red males clustered around a big smoking fire.I could see at least thirty from here, and more were scattered among the tents, or standing in the distance around the strip mall.
Tovis grabbed my free hand, the other was occupied holding Sal to my chest.“A little over a hundred I think, Adak would know exactly.Most are from a different cruiser, but Vret and I came from the same cruiser as the Kwin.”
I sensed a story, but there was so much to absorb so I decided to ask later.
A few turochs waved at us, ears perked and tails flicking with interest once they spotted me.Tovis greeted some, but mostly ignored them as he headed toward the fire.The smell of roasting meat filled the air and my mouth watered.
Fresh meat?This may be as close to heaven as I was getting.
A flash of yellow caught my eye and I turned to see a blond turoch turning a spit at the edge of the fire.I gawked at him.His hair was almost waist length and shockingly bright in the sea of black-haired males.
A blonde woman pushed through the crowd, a bucket clutched in her hands, and she stopped to kiss the yellow haired turoch before staggering past.
I froze.“Who’s that?”I whispered, my eyes following the woman through the red figures as she laughed and bumped into people.Clearly, she was comfortable here.She’d kissed that turoch, so I guessed that was her mate.
“Thequered?”he asked.For the first time I noticed the translator, it buzzed in my ear and the translation lagged before it just repeated what he’d said.Huh, must not be an easy equivalent.
“The blonde woman,” I said.
“That’s Hope, her mate is Aeko.”
I itched to follow her and start a conversation but there were so many turochs milling around it felt like I’d have to shove past a lot of alien strangers and I wasn’t quite there yet.
“I need to find Adak,” he said.“You can come with me, or wait here, one of the other females will show up before long.”
I blanched.“Don’t just leave me,” I said.
He smiled and ducked down to steal a kiss that left me blushing under my sunburn before scanning the crowd.
“There,” he said, pointing to a circle of red bodies who seemed to be cheering for something.“We can find Dargo’s mate anywhere there’s sparring.”
I shuffled after him as he pulled me along and soon we were standing on the edge of some sort of fight.Two leaner turochs had locked horns, each attempting to stomp their opponents legs and flip them?It was hard to tell, but there was a lot of shouting, cursing and laughing and it was easy to tell the two grinning fighters were having fun and not actually trying to hurt each other.
A big, scarred male stood on the other side of the circle of turochs, his hair cut into a stiff mohawk and there was a wiry, red-haired woman sitting on his shoulders.My interest in the fight disappeared as I took her in.
Another human.I felt like a weird fan girl as I stared up at her.She was easily seven feet in the air and she wasn’t even holding onto the male, simply trusting him not to drop her as she pumped her fist and roared encouragement at the battling turochs.
Her hair was spiked into a short pixie cut and she had piercings all over her ears and few in her nose.The thin, holey tank she wore exposed the lean muscles on her arms and she looked perfectly at home in an apocalypse.
“Get him, Tine!”she hollered, grinning bloodthirstily as one of the turochs landed a punishing kick to his opponent and he staggered.“Get up, get up, show Kadal what a real male can do!”
Her mate laughed, his hands wrapped around her skinny ankles and she grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked on it.He looked up obediently and she managed to bend over enough to give him a raunchy kiss that made a few of the nearby males hoot and stomp.
Tovis lifted my hand up and waved when she straightened.“Taz!”he yelled over the crazy noise of it all.“Come down and meet my mate.”
She squinted across the fight and her eyebrows rose, also pierced, I realized.I was suddenly regretting making Tovis find me a human, this girl looked like a badass, and I wasn’t prepared to confront just how unprepared for this life I was.
It would take her less than ten seconds to see that compared to her, I was a soft, fluffy loser.She bent down to talk into her mate’s ear and he backed out of the ring of observers and strode towards us, Taz still perched on his shoulder like some sort of roman general on an elephant.
“Tovis,” the scarred male greeted cheerfully, his ears pushed forward by his mate’s thighs.“I heard you came back, We were starting to think you found a female and were planning on hiding her away permanently.”
“I found a female,” he said, hugging me to his side.“But we ran into sytos.”
