Chapter Two
As hard as it was to accept in many ways, Zhor knew without a shadow of doubt that his captive was not of their world.
The vessel she had arrived in was a dead giveaway, of course.
They did not have anything like that—never had—not evenbeforethe fall and they sure as hell had not had the wherewithal to produce anything like it since.
He would have known instantly, however, even if he had not been close enough to witness the attack that had disabled and then caused her vessel to crash into the canopy, even if he had not seen the vessel at all.
She was notzorph… she had only two legs and two arms—not the six appendages of thezorphthat served them so well. That made it possible for them to scale a cliff—fully armed—in less time than it took to blink—or suck in a breath to call out an alarm.
That made it possible for them to run on four of those appendages almost faster than thekerricould fly and still cast projectiles with deadly accuracy.
And she certainly was not one of his kind—kerri.
She had no wings nor any sign that she had been maimed.
She had been born with neither wings nor an extra pair of appendages and so she was clearly neitherzorphnorkerri.
What she was, was a mystery.
But she was unquestionably a she—a female—of her species and he was not as interested in breeding as he was in fucking.
Gods! Of all the things he had missed, the body of a warm, breathing woman was one he missed the most.
And next to that the sound of a woman’s voice.
And next to that the skills to give comfort that seemed to come naturally to women.
But they were few now as a species and there were fewer still of their counterparts, few females, and those who had a woman guarded her with his life.
Because there would be no more in their lifetime—possibly ever.
Oh they had tried for a time to pull themselves together after the fall. They had managed to pull together small pockets of civilization. They had struggled to lift themselves from the brink and establish a quality of life well above survival, something worth living.
He had been born into those days. He had not known their realm before the fall or traveled their world to see and experience the wonders of other realms.
But his childhood had been almost magical by comparison to the life he now had, before the scavengers had breached their village walls and raped and killed and destroyed what they could not carry away with them.
His throat closed as his last memory of his parents invaded, but as always, he thrust them away. It was too painful to relive them. When he allowed himself to think of his past at all, it was only memories of the good things.
And of course, those tortured him in another way, reminding him always that life had once been more than a day by day struggle to survive.
The female could change that … if she survived, if she was not too damaged from the crash.
She would give him comfort, gods willing.
She would give him something to strive for.
He hoped.
Of course, none of those things had crossed his mind when he had seen the crash, naturally enough. It was curiosity that had brought him closer, the hope that there might be something worth having in the wreckage, to be sure, but he had not in his wildest dreams considered that there might be a female.
He had thought of food, items he might trade for food, and items that might make life a little more comfortable.
He had realized that he had stumbled upon a fortunate circumstances—from his side—and that he must move very, very fast before thezorphthat had brought the ship down reached the wreckage and took everything for themselves.
Thezorphwere no doubt dismayed that they had failed to bring it down on the plateau above, but, luckily for him, it had crashed into the canopy rather than the ground far below. It was not likely there would have been anything of any consequence left in one piece if it had. And also it would have been easier for thezorphto beat him to the prize that had tumbled out of the wreckage just moments before he reached it.
