Page 49 of Meat

The meat she had eaten.

The heart…

Ravnar returned now with more meat while Krogg kept cooking.

Alyx’s first instinct was to refuse it. Her initial repulsion toward eating meat had been erased, but a new repulsion was rising in her throat. The nith was a sentient creature. Evil by nature, but sentient nonetheless. It wasn’t cannibalism exactly, but…

Ravnar saw the hesitation on her face, followed her line of sight to the butchered nith corpse on the floor.

“Bad nith,” he grunted. He used the English words that he had heard Alyx use before. “Bad nith.”

Yes, bad nith.

Her enemy. Hers and the ukkur’s.

Hadn’t the nith brought her here for the very purpose of devouring her? If they had no qualms about it, then why should she? Because it made her just as bad as a nith, that’s why.

But the grumbling, stabbing hunger in her belly left her no choice.

She attacked the platter of fresh meat that Ravnar had brought, digging in with savage bites, zero concern for manners or etiquette. Her fingers and chin were greasy from eating. She wolfed the hot savory meat down in chunks, taking swigs of wine in between.

At last, when she had finally eaten her fill, Alyx collapsed back into Jale’s arms panting.

She had never felt so stuffed in her life.

Krogg left the fire and came crawling over. All three of her ukkur mates huddled around her, their dark eyes watching her intently, their faces cautiously relieved. Jale smoothed a hand over her sweating brow.

“Good?” he asked.

“Good,” answered Alyx.

She was energized. It was like she could actually feel the life of her devoured enemy feeding her cells, feeding the growing child inside of her. Totally full, totally sated.

“Good…”

The ukkur grinned, white tusks winking in the firelight.

Suddenly another sensation wracked Alyx’s body, not hunger this time, but an intense cramping in her abdomen. She doubled over and winced as the walls of her womb clenched.

“Alyx,” Jale said, his voice reverting back to concern. “Alyx, what wrong?”

She couldn’t answer, couldn’t even shake her head until the contraction had passed. It robbed her of motion, stole her breath, swept away everything for sixty crippling seconds. When it finally released her, she dragged in a ragged inhaled and spoke. She used the language that her mates spoke, trying to put it in terms they could understand.

“Little ukkur come.”

CHAPTER 19

In an attempt to take her mind off her agony, Alyx turned her senses outward. She focused on the cave around her, the stony echoes, the crackle and pop of the firewood, the radiating warmth, the spicy smell of woodsmoke, and the sweet odor of cooked meat.

It didn’t work. When the next contraction came a few seconds later, it tightened her core painfully and clenched her teeth until she felt as though her jaw would break.

The ukkur were there, surrounding her, holding her. Jale was trying to ask her what was wrong, but she couldn’t answer in the throes of the contraction.

These were no Braxton Hicks contractions. These were too intense, too close together. Apparently, in the course of her sped-up alien pregnancy, her body had skipped over that preliminary stage and gone straight for the real thing.

Alyx was going into labor.

The baby was coming.