Chapter Thirty
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VICTORIA STAYED FOR a few hours to get to know her new neighbors. Her stomach rumbled at lunchtime and she reluctantly got to her feet. “I need to head home,” she said. “I still need to get my clothes dry and cook the venison you gave me.”
“I can rig a clothesline for you,” Camriel said, surging to his feet as well. “Show me where you want it and I’ll install it for you right now.”
“Chill, dude,” Vic said in amusement. “I don’t need any help, but I could use some thin rope if you have any.”
“What are you going to cook the venison on?” Zoe asked.
“I stole a frying pan from a store in a nearby town,” Victoria said, pointing towards the quaint settlement. “I can cook the meat over the fire.”
“I think she’s talking about the town we stole the romance books from,” Grace said.
“It does have a small bookstore,” Victoria confirmed.
“You must have climbed the mountain from the east side,” Amaros figured. “We scavenge supplies from a town to the southwest of here.”
“We can give you a spare hotplate and some small propane bottles,” Zoe offered. “It’ll be a lot easier than cooking over a fire.”
“That’d be great,” Vic said, amazed at their generosity. Everyone else she’d met lately had tried to kill her.
“When can you start teaching us how to fight?” Grace asked as Amaros searched for a spare hotplate in a storeroom. Cam scrounged up some of the smaller propane bottles.
“Whenever you like,” Victoria said. “It’s not like I’ve got a fudging list of things to do.”
“Did any of your foster parents ever try to wash your mouth out?” Zoe asked curiously.
Vic laughed and shook her head. “Who do you think taught me to swear so much?”
“It must have been hard to switch to non-cusswords,” Grace said in sympathy.
“It took a while to get the hang of it,” the wrestler confessed, taking the items from the men with a nod of thanks. “It still puts most people off,” she added.
“I like it,” Camriel said supportively. “May I escort you home, my lady?”
She gave him an incredulous look. “It might have escaped you, but I’m no cork sucking lady, dude.”
The girls snickered and Vic joined them. It was nice to have female company again, even if they weren’t in the wrestling business.
“There are wild animals in the woods,” Amaros said to warn her of the danger.
“A bobcat crawled under my log a couple of nights ago. It curled up against me to sleep,” Victoria said, grinning at the memory. “It was awesome.”
“I guess animals must like you,” Grace figured with yet another hint of envy.
“Tell that to the rabid dog and the bear who tried to kill me,” Vic said wryly as she headed for the back exit. “I’ll be near the cabin or out hunting if you need me. Just yell and I’m sure I’ll hear you.”
“Come visit us anytime,” Zoe said. “Would it be okay if we come and see you sometime?”
“Sure,” Victoria replied, pausing at the doorless exit. “Thanks a bunch for giving me this stuff and for being so nice,” she said shyly. “It’s fudging rare to meet good people now, even if they are aliens and half-aliens.”
“Let me carry those for you,” Camriel offered as they started away from the huge stone building.
Victoria sighed and handed him the hotplate and a couple of propane bottles. “Your friends are pretty fudging cool,” she said, glancing back to see Zoe and Grace wave at her. She waved back and the trio went inside.
“We all really want you to live with us,” the warrior told her, tone serious rather than flirtatious. “It’s going to be brutally cold once it starts snowing.”
“My cabin is in pretty good shape,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll be warm enough.”
“Do you have an indoor toilet?” he asked slyly.
“No, but I can always use a bucket,” she countered. It would smell gross keeping the bucket inside, but it beat freezing to death every time she had to pee in the outhouse. They walked in companionable silence for a couple of minutes before she ventured a question. “What’s the Void like?”
She glanced at him to see his gaze going distant. “Zoe said it sounds like cryogenic sleep,” he said. “Except it’s not cold. It’s just a vast, empty nothingness that feels like a slow, endless death.”
Victoria was surprised at how poetic he sounded. His tone was full of dread and he shuddered. “You hate it,” she surmised.
“I only remember being in the Void during the moments when we win and return from war, after I die during combat, or when I’m reawakened for the next conflict,” he said.
“There’s no sense of time passing, yet I feel the crushing weight of eons passing during my eternal lifetime while I’m in stasis anyway. ”
“Becoming bonded to me will mean you won’t have to vanish into the ether rather than returning to the Void, since Order decided to sideline you all,” Victoria said, recalling what Amaros had told her. “Is that the only reason why you want to bond with me?”
Camriel startled her by moving to stand in front of her. She halted and stared up into his eyes. “I want to bond with you because you were made for me, female,” he told her. “We’ve been destined to become mates since Order first created me. I just had to wait a very long time to finally meet you.”
Her heart stuttered at the intensity of his longing. “You only just found out about the deal Fate made,” she pointed out.
“I always knew something was missing,” he insisted. “You are the other half of my soul, Victoria Tudor. We belong together.”
His certainty unnerved her, yet thrilled her at the same time. “Don’t push me into something I’m not ready for, Camriel,” she warned him. “I’ve never even been in love before. Now you want me to commit myself to you for however long we both shall live.”
“You’re a virgin?” he asked, shocked and apparently pleased at the idea.
“Of course not,” she scoffed, shoving him to get him moving again.
“Why would you give yourself to someone you’re not in love with?” he asked in a disapproving tone, falling into step beside her again.
“Did you love every woman you’ve ever fudged?” she pointed out. “No, of course not,” she said with an eyeroll at his guilty expression. “Nice double standards you’ve got going there,” she added.
“Do you desire children?” he asked next and she almost stumbled in surprise.
“Sure,” she replied cautiously. “I love kids. At least the ones who don’t stab me in the face with a scalpel anyway.”
He gave her a scorching look that made her toes curl even though he wasn’t touching her. “If you agreed to bond with me, I could impregnate you right now,” he told her.
It took a few seconds for Vic to drag her eyes away from his cocky smile to focus on what he’d just said. “How can you be so sure?” she asked skeptically. “Do you aliens all have super sperm or something?”
“The Knights of Order have never procreated before,” he told her. “We’ve been very careful not to create any cambions of our own after seeing the offspring of our enemies running amok.”
“I’ll run amok on you if you don’t get to the fudging point,” she grumbled.
Cam chuckled, then explained further. “We can tell when females are fertile,” he said in a casual tone.
“You can do what now?” she asked, halting in her tracks.
“We can sense when you’re ready to have a child,” he repeated.
Vic felt her face go red from anger and embarrassment. “So, that’s why you’ve been pestering me to bond with you,” she said accusingly. “You want to make me your concubine and knock me up so you can increase the size of your army.”
“What?” the knight asked in total confusion. “That’s not what I said,” he denied.
Victoria snatched the hotplate and propane bottles from him, absolutely livid at being played. “I can read between the lines,” she said and strode off. “Don’t follow me!” she snarled.
“I’ve got some rope for you to use as your clothesline,” Cam said to her back. “If you still want it,” he added dejectedly.
Turning to face him, she felt bad for her outburst when she saw his crushed expression. “How can you be billions of years old and have no clue how to deal with women?” she asked, genuinely interested in his answer.
“I’ve never talked to females much before,” he said sheepishly, taking a coil of thin rope out of his jacket. “Usually, they just need to look at me and I can coax them into bed.”
Victoria struggled with herself, hating it that she’d obviously jumped to the wrong conclusion. “Come on,” she ordered with a scowl. “You can hang the line in the cabin, but then you’ll need to leave.”
“Yes, mate,” he said submissively, hurrying to reach her side.
“Don’t speak to me,” she said, increasing her pace. He bobbed his head agreeably, back to being cheerful again.