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I licked my lips, and the words finally came.

“I’m checking on the goat. What was that?” I asked.

Rauf glared up at the sky.

“It means we need to get out of here.”

6

RAUF

A chunk of surveillance drone was steaming and making a pathetic, dying mechanical noise. I kicked it and watched the arc, only wishing I could do more damage to the device.

The piece struck the road and split again. Black casing peeled away from a nest of crushed wires, and one of the rotor arms twitched against the dirt. The sharp stink of burned insulation mixed with something chemical and bitter enough to coat the back of my throat.

There wasn’t much left to break. I wanted the hands that had sent it.

I held out my hand to Teresa, trying to tamp down on the rage surging through me. “Come on, let’s go.”

She looked at my hand before she looked at me. Her breath was still coming too fast, and dirt streaked one side of her shirt from shoulder to hip. For one terrible beat, I thought she was afraid to let me touch her.

Then she put her hand in mine. Her fingers barely reached across my palm. I closed mine around them carefully, feeling each small bone and the warmth between them.

The thought that the drone might have carried a weapon turned my stomach. It could have killed her before I reached her.

My grip tightened before I caught myself. I loosened it and pulled her upright.

I took the heavy bag from her shoulder and dragged her toward the farm, keeping myself between her and the open road. The ditch offered no cover, and I wanted walls around her before another machine came over the rise. Cold wind pushed at our backs while the clouds climbed over the fields.

“What was that thing?” Teresa demanded.

“It was a goddamned surveillance drone.” If I’d growled like I was doing now back in the arena, the crowd would have gone wild, knowing that death was certain to follow, a painful death full of blood and viscera.

A twisted strip of casing lay near my hoof. I picked it up and hurled it into the field. Two more pieces glittered beside the road, and I threw them in opposite directions as we passed.

“I haven’t seen drones in town.” Teresa was keeping her distance, as much as she could when I still had a hold of her hand. And that made me even angrier.

I would never harm her, not under any circumstances.

“Squeeze my hand any tighter and you’re going to crush my bones,” she warned.

I let go and stomped closer to the farm. “We don’t have drones like that in town,” I said. The words were calmer the more I said. I was getting control over myself; there was no other choice.

In the arena, rage had given me a target and a simple path toward it. I closed the distance and kept fighting until only one of us stood. Some days I had even enjoyed it.

Crushing the drone hadn’t helped when whoever sent it was still out there. I wanted to plant myself between Teresa and every threat, taking the blow before it reached her.

I had never felt that need before.

“We don’t have drones,” I repeated. Talking was a way to center myself and quell the killing rage. “It was part of our agreement when we settled this place. The Protos Empire offered the technology as part of their settlement package, but we’d all seen enough of them for a dozen lifetimes. Those damned pests flew around the arena while we fought. I’d recognize the buzz anywhere.”

Teresa closed the space I’d put between us. She didn’t say anything. She reached for my hand and worked her smaller one back into it.

Her thumb brushed once across the center of my palm. I wanted to turn my hand over, catch her wrist, and pull her against me.

Instead, I held still and let her do it again.

Her scent threatened to overwhelm me. It scoured my nostrils, sank into my flesh and made my cock twitch in awareness. My blood was running hot, too hot for her nearness. The best thing for both of us was for me to send her back to town where there were no mysterious drones or males who could only disappoint her.