Page 32 of Meat

He just killed three nith armed with rifles using nothing but stones and a sling?

The three ukkur fanned out, taking stock of the situation.

Jale came straight to Alyx. His eyes went wide as he looked at the new shape of her naked body, and Alyx was certain she saw something jump beneath the flap of his loincloth. But the younger ukkur kept himself under control. With firm hands, he turned her around, inspecting her body for wounds. He let go a great sigh of relief when he discovered none.

Krogg, meanwhile, went for the hover vehicle, rootling through the compartments in search of anything worth scavenging, collecting a strange assortment of goods—pieces of metal paneling, a steel rod, a piece of rubber tubing.

And Ravnar, the last of the group, simply went around making sure the nith were dead. He grunted, mean-faced, and kicked their lifeless carcasses with his clawed toes.

Suddenly, hot rage surged through Alyx’s veins as she thought of what this nith would have done to her if the ukkur had not arrived when they did.

She broke free of Jale’s hands and ran to the nith who would have executed her.

With tears streaming down her face, she shrieked and kicked the dead nith, stubbing her bare toe against the alien’s tough hide. That pain just heightened her anger, and she kicked again and again, growling through her tears like a feral thing.

Hands caught her, pulled her away. A soothing voice. Jale.

Alyx spit on the dead nith. A stream of expletives tumbled from her mouth. The ukkur froze and stared at her.

“Bad,” she said to them, pointing at the dead nith. “Bad nith.”

Ravnar’s scary eyes passed a quizzical glance to Krogg, then returned to Alyx.

“Bad nith,” Alyx repeated. “Bad. Nith.”

Ravnar stared remorselessly at the corpse in the grass.

“Bad,” he grunted. “Nith.”

Then he turned his withering glare once more on Alyx. Eyes smoldering with anger beneath the heavy shelf of his knitted brow.

“Bad…woman.”

CHAPTER 13

The woman squealed and snarled as Ravnar punished her. Jale stood by, watching his comrade’s technique. The older ukkur had the woman bent over his lap, and he was smacking her ass with the flat of his open hand. The sounds of his slapping palm rang out through the trees and over the river.

The sun was getting low now, staining the sky with fiery oranges and reds. They had made a new camp here on the river’s edge.

No campfire tonight. Krogg’s orders. There could be other nith patrolling the area, and the smoke would draw them in.

Let them come, Jale thought. He would be glad for the opportunity to slay more of those bastards.

The old scars that notched his back and shoulders fairly tingled with hatred.

Still, Krogg was right, as he always was. Better to err on the side of caution. If it had just been Jale and the other ukkur, that would be one thing. But now there was another piece of the equation.

The woman.

She let out a sharp yelp of pain and humiliation as Ravnar’s brutal hand punished her ass repeatedly. Her cheeks were rosy from the spanking, and her flesh jiggled with each hard impact.

And today, there was so much more flesh to jiggle. Yesterday, the woman had been practically skin and bones. Now, however, she was plump and soft all over. It was a shape that excited Jale in ways he did not understand.

Hunger.

Yes, it was a feeling that ached like hunger, but it was different somehow. And it wasn’t in his stomach, it was in his balls.

Sure, plain old hunger had been the original reason Krogg had fed her all that ksh last night. When Ravnar brought her back to camp after catching her in his snare, they had assumed she was some kind of animal they had never encountered before. The fact that she wore a collar meant she had been nith property once. And the fact that Ravnar had caught her so near the nith meat factory suggested she was edible.