His hand goes back to my shoulder, and I snap my teeth at him, trying to bite it. But he keeps it just out of reach.
He puts his face closer. “But now everything is as it should be. You’re mine now, and I will share you. With all my friends. We will all mate with you.”
“I will kill you if you try,” I snarl. But my knife is out of reach, and these guys can easily overpower me. This is not looking good. Now that the rain has stopped, the Adropo men are building a hut and a fire, sending hungry glances at me, their eyes glassy with expectation.
They close in as if some unspoken signal has been given. Someone says, “Hold her still,” not loudly, just practical, and another answers, “Aye,” with the same tone you’d use for lifting a log.
I strain against the bonds until my wrists burn, my heels digging furrows into the wet ground. “Don’t,” I gasp. “You don’t have to do this. Let me go, and I’ll be gone. You’ll never see me again.” A hand clamps over my mouth, smelling of smoke and salt, and Ibite down hard enough to taste blood. It earns me a sharp curse and a laugh from someone else.
Sprub’ex watches it all with a thin smile, as if my struggling is a performance he’s paid for. “See?” he says calmly. “She’s as fiery as a little rekh.”
Hopelessness settles like a weight on my chest, heavy and suffocating, and I hate that part of me that knows he might be right—that there’s no strength left.
Fingers hook into my torn jumpsuit again; fabric rips, skin prickles with cold and shame, and I scream a name into the trees, not expecting an answer.
Sprub’ex slaps me straight across the face. “Be quiet! You’re mine now, not his!”
There’s a crashing of branches. A feral bellow cuts through the night.
A man bursts from the rain-shadowed undergrowth, spear raised, eyes blazing straight at Sprub’ex as if nothing else exists.
“Crat'ax!” I exclaim, straining harder against my bonds.
But he has no eyes for me. Swinging his spear, he clangs it into the sword of an Adropo man, driving him backwards.
Crat'ax looks terrible. He’s soaking wet, and he bleeds from several cuts on his body. His loincloth has been ripped, and he has a slight limp.
And still he’s winning. With furious roars and huge swings of the spear, he drives the Adropo men away - their swords are too short to reach him, and just one stroke of his spear would cut one of them in half.
The world turns into noise and motion. Crat'ax surges forward like something unchained, his spear a blur of wet wood and stone. He slams the butt into one man’s chest hard enough to lift him off his feet, then whips the blade around in a flat, murderous arc that sends another sprawling into the mud, shrieking and clutching a ruined arm.
Someone lunges from the side, and Crat'ax answers with his shoulder, ramming the man into a tree with a crack that I feel in my teeth. The jungle fills with panicked shouts and the raw, animal sound of Crat'ax’s rage, a sound I’ve never heard from him before and never want to hear again.
The Adropo men scatter under it, slipping, dropping weapons, vanishing back into the trees as if the forest itself is swallowing them.
For a heartbeat I think it’s over. Then Sprub’ex is there, fast and ugly, hauling me upright by my bonds and yanking me back against his chest. Cold metal kisses my throat.
I freeze so hard my lungs forget how to work.
“Stop,” he snarls, voice suddenly thin and sharp. “One more step and she bleeds out.”
Crat'ax skids to a halt a few paces away, chest heaving, spear half-raised, eyes locked on the knife at my neck. Rain drips from his hair and beard; blood runs down his ribs and darkens the ground at his feet. He looks at me then, really looks, and something in his face breaks and hardens at the same time.
“Drop it,” Crat'ax growls, low and shaking.
Sprub’ex laughs, his breath hot against my ear, tightening his grip until stars spark in my vision. “It wasn’t even Callie wewanted! We were looking for that Plood ship of yours, searching all down the coast. But a woman is as good as any other. And now this one is mine. Now go.” The knife presses closer, a promise I can feel in my pulse.
“It is you who must go,” Crat'ax says, voice raspy. “One way or the other.”
He shifts his weight, plants his feet in the mud like roots, and stares at Sprub’ex with a calm so terrifying it makes my stomach drop. The ocean booms behind us, the jungle holds its breath, and everything balances on the edge of that blade.
A sudden terror grips me. Not the fear of the blade, which is bad enough, but a primal terror that paralyzes.
Then there’s a shadow despite the lack of sunshine.
“Oh, do let me disturb,” an icy voice says, and before I can tell where he came from, Vyrathion is standing in the middle of us all.
It’s the first time I get a good look at him. He’s every bit as big as a caveman, dark-skinned with bright green patterns all over his scaled skin. Still he’s more human-looking than the cavemen, with a breathtakingly beautiful face and an absolute physical perfection in every detail, except the predator claws on his toes and fingers. He wears silver pants without a stain on them, despite having spent months half underwater.
