Page 3 of Feral Tamed

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Fierce

My tracking skills and Snarl’s sharp nose had let us up the mountain at a quick pace. Jakar and Sunder steadily followed us up the rocky slope while they softly conversed, pointing out things of interest along the way and speculating about the human we were tracking. I mostly ignored them, allowing my senses to take over, letting myself revel in the hunt. This felt good, here I was in my element, not stuck aboard that spaceship where I knew nothing, understood nothing.

When we reached a small stream of water, burbling up between the rocks, I knew we were getting close. The mossy ground here hid all her tracks, and I suspected she’d crossed the crystal clear stream, her scent had caught on the water’s surface, swirling in the air and confusing my senses.

Snarl had already leaped across and was rummaging around in the underbrush with his nose. He knew as well as I, the general direction she had taken, but I found myself shrugging at my brothers. “Let’s split up a moment, I’m not entirely sure which way she went.” I pointed Sunder one way, Jakar another, and then followed after Snarl and the female.

“You are meeting Fierce Female alone?” Snarl asked me as we easily slipped through the dense shrubbery. My skin automatically started shifting its tone, blending in with the pink and purple plant life surrounding me. My feet found the quietest spots to walk on as we closed in on our prey. I didn’t know why Snarl was calling this human woman we were hunting, Fierce Female. He tended to add a descriptor to the names of the people he knew, but why he’d picked Fierce of all things to describe her?

Ziame, our captain and a great big scaly creature as unique to this quadrant as I was, he liked to call Warrior Ziame. While Sunder was Wise and Thorin Angry. Recently that one had changed to Grumpy, a step up from angry, since Thorin had mated with Camila. I understood those, they made sense. This didn’t.

I spotted her right as Snarl did, and we both froze, taking a quick moment to observe her. She was small, with pale skin and slender shoulders. Her hair was black as night, like Camila’s, but it was not long and curly. No, it was cut in a sharp line at the bottom of her small, dainty chin, and as straight as an arrow. She didn’t look injured, she looked determined and strong, but small and fragile too, a contradiction.

Her shoulders suddenly stiffened, she turned around, and I finally got a full look at her face. Fine boned, her eyes slanted exotically. Very different from the other humans I’d seen. Pretty, more like the sharp, piercing gazes of the females I vaguely remembered from the Mother planet. The sight of her took my breath away.

There was a scared, panicked look in her dark eyes as they frantically scanned the bushes Snarl and I were hiding in. She had sharp senses, she’d picked up on our eyes watching her, and now she picked out where I stood, where Snarl crouched. Snarl was the first to make a move, slinking from the bushes with his belly low to the ground, a soft whine issuing from his throat as he tried to placate her.

I shifted my small bag with supplies more comfortably to the small of my back and followed Snarl’s example. Raising my hands in a gesture of surrender as I slowly approached her. I wasn’t sure if she had a translator, and if she’d understand me if she did, but I tried to talk to her in a calm manner, assuring her that I meant no harm.

She smelled so good though, I’d noticed that as I was tracking her, but catching a full lungful of her scent… It had my skin prickle and my belly clench in want. In an instant, I better understood why Snarl was calling her Fierce Female. She was Fierce’s Female, mine.

Then she turned on her heel and balked, rushing straight toward the black hole of the cave. My stomach dropped into my boots in fear, I doubted she knew what was inside it, and humans had terrible eyesight in the dark. She’d fall and break something. My body kicked into gear on pure instinct, racing after her in a mad dash, my only thought to stop her from doing something so dangerous.

At the last moment, she spun and turned around the side of the cave, my heart leaping at a danger narrowly averted. But as I followed her around that tight bent, a scream tore from my throat as the last I saw was her body, plummeting straight into a dark abyss. I didn’t pause, didn’t hesitate. My hand found the grip of my ax, freeing it, and I leaped after her free-falling body with my arms wide.

She’d spun around enough that I could see the terrified expression on her face. That I knew she saw me coming. The long strands of my filaments streamed behind me. My heavier body, my leap, gave me the momentum I needed to catch up with her. I curled her in my free arm, twisted my body, and slammed the blade of my ax into the crumbling rock wall.

We slid, the ax finding loose gravel first, before abruptly arresting our fall when it hooked properly behind a firm rock. My shoulder screamed in pain as we jerked to a stop, dangling from my grip on the handle of my ax, my feet skidding against the rough surface of the rock wall. The small female in my arm was suspiciously quiet, when I chanced a look I saw her pale face, eyes scrunched tightly closed. Both her hands had curled around my neck and she was holding on extremely tightly. Good, at least now she wasn’t running from me.

Glancing up, I realized we’d gone over a hundred feet, and the rock wall was extremely smooth, not the easiest climb even without the female to carry. A look down told me we were closer to the bottom of this damn hole, and there appeared to be several tunnels branching away from this spot. Coming to a quick decision, I urged the female to curl her legs around my waist, by simply sliding my grip on her down until I could pull her into position. She clamped onto me immediately, and now I had my other hand free for climbing.

Finding a grip with my hand, I freed my ax and tucked it back into its loop on my hip. “Prrrruh?” a sound issued from my bag, just as I started to climb down. I froze immediately. Oh, no. I knew that sound. “Don’t tell me you’re in my damn bag Pet. You silly Riho.” When I was immediately rewarded by the sound of another purr, I cursed internally while I hurried to climb down the rock wall to the bottom.

The tiny human female was shaking when I reached the floor and started pulling her off of me. It wasn’t that I objected to her closeness, if not for Pet, I would have gladly kept holding her a little longer. But if the Riho was in my bag… I had to check if she hadn’t gotten injured when I leaped after this crazy female.

I briefly worried if she would try to run away again when I set her on her feet, but she cast a quick look around herself, and then stayed in one spot. Her eyes were huge as she stared at me, her breaths coming in rapid bursts.

Dropping to my knees, I slung my bag from my shoulder and put it down on the floor in front of me. My gaze darted around to appraise the three black holes that lead into different tunnels, making sure there was nothing there. Then I pulled open the flap and looked inside.

Yup, there was Pet. Sneaky thing that she was. The small juvenile Riho female lay curled on top of the few things I’d thought to bring, rations, rope, and a blanket. Her thick, multicolored pelt was a little ruffled, and her small snout was drawn into a disgruntled look but she appeared completely unharmed, scampering out of the bag and into my arms. It didn’t take more than a few pets before she was loudly purring and headbutting me beneath my chin.

I chuckled at her antics, “Silly Pet, why did you sneak into my bag? Don’t you know this planet is dangerous?” I lifted my eyes from the purring Riho in my arms to look at the small human female I’d just rescued. Somewhat at least, because we were definitely still in trouble down here. She looked at me with huge dark eyes, then looked at the purring Riho, then back at my face. I don’t know what was going through her head, but I figured I’d let her have a look.

Petting the wiggling creature in my arms, I centered myself on my other senses, my sharp hearing in particular. Just making sure we were alone in this place right now. That we were safe.

Chapter 3

Hina

On trembling legs, I sank down to the cave floor in front of the alien stranger that had just saved my freaking life. I could still vividly see that moment when I’d gone over the edge, my body half turned so I saw the purple and pink sky above my head. The sudden form of this male leaping over the edge after me, his body a graceful t-pose as he plummeted faster than me.

That moment had felt like an eternity, with my stomach up in my throat, a scream ripping from my vocal cords. Before his powerful form caught up with me, yanking me into his body. For a brief flicker of a second, I had felt safe, rescued. Like this stranger was going to fix all my problems in a single, daring leap. It was as if not just that strong arm was hugging me close to him, but so were the long, thick strands of his hair.

Sitting on the floor of the cave, struggling with the adrenaline crash, the reality of my situation, I didn’t know what to make of it all. This alien was huge, seven feet tall easily. Even on his knees, he seemed huge, his arms thickly corded with muscles, and his chest carved in well-defined ridges and valleys. Even in the low light at the bottom of this hole, I could see an intriguing triangle-shaped texture to his skin, thicker on his upper chest and shoulders, more faded lower on his body.

With an ax dangling from a loop on his hip, the black leather kilt that covered him to halfway down his tree trunk thighs; he looked dangerous, strong, savage even. So it was incongruous that he was gently petting what appeared to be a cross between a kitten and a ferret. Or maybe it was more like an otter? Its fluffy fur was in all kinds of dappled shades of color, from sable and brown to splotches of deep red and bright yellow.