Page 2 of Remmen

Someone else got there first.

“Move. Clear a path. I have medical training. Move.”

A woman’s voice. It cut through the noise, hard and flat and certain, and every male between me and the sound of it stepped back before he’d decided to. So did I. I had my mouth open to command my own dock, and I shut it.

I was three steps into obeying a stranger before I understood that was what I was doing.

Then the wind shifted off the ramp and her scent reached me.

Mine.

It hit and set. My body knew her before my eyes did, and the need was already there, whole, with no other part of me consulted. The rut came up under it, fast, and I held it where I stood.

I wanted to see her more than I wanted anything on the planet.

I put the last two males aside with my hands, and there she was.

Smaller than I’d braced for, down on her knees in the ruin of split figs with a small male laid out in front of her. Her hands were already in the work, one flat on his chest, the other turning his face toward the light. She got two fingers to his jaw, said something low to him I couldn’t hear, and the screaming dropped to breathing.

She didn’t seem to give a damn that she was surrounded by horned giants. There was blood on her wrist and she didn’t care. She ran her palms down the injured male’s arm and her mouth went flat. She moved his sleeve aside without asking anyone for room.

“You.” She said it without looking up, pointing to a male twice her height. “I need clean cloth. Anything you’ve got, now.” She pressed her palm flat below the ribs and leaned her weight into it. “Is there a doctor on this rock? Or a freaking first aid kit?”

Whatever scramble that started, she took for a yes.

“Then somebody go and get him. The rest of you, back up. You’re in my light.”

They backed up. Bulls who answered to me, and half of them answered to her instead, on a dock she’d been standing on for the length of a breath.

Any bull could claim a bride.

And I wanted her.

She needed a husband. Every woman on that ramp had come for one. And I was just as eligible as any other minotaur in town.

I could do it now. Step forward, set an example, and claim her before another male on this dock got his feet under him.

I was already moving when Nezara came down the ramp with her slate, ticking off names.

“Oh, well done.” She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at the woman in the figs. “One counselor saving another counselor before you’ve so much as seen your rooms. Otho will kiss you.”

Counselor.

That stopped me. Not a bride. One of the ones I’d come down to greet myself, the ones the program paid and the Agency sent under contract.

She wasn’t here for a husband. She was here for a job.

And no matter what the roaring in my blood demanded, I could not touch her.

Not without dooming everything.

CHAPTER 1

ANNE

I didn’t make it three freaking minutes on my new planet before I was wearing somebody else’s blood. It had to be some kind of record, and not one I was in a hurry to beat.

“Get me something clean. Now,” I said in the voice that got people moving, the one I’d learned on the mining colony. The budget there was a joke, so everyone did three jobs whether they’d trained for them or not.