Chapter 17 - Taz
Dargo was dragging his damn feet. Or hooves, whatever. I'd woken up just as the sun was setting, feeling almost back to normal and eager to head out after Penny. My would-be mate, however, kept trying to delay our rescue mission until the morning.
On one hand, I didn't really want to be roaming around in the dark with the percers. I'd played that game, I had the T-shirt and the blisters to prove it. But I couldn't go back to sleep knowing Penny was out there.
The camp was buzzing with activity, the bonfire was roaring, and as soon as we stepped out of the tent, we were swarmed by turochs. Dargo seemed pretty popular. Several males greeted him by name, and we couldn't make it two steps without stopping so he could catch up with his alien bros.
It was pissing me off, and it took all my self control not to charge off into the night without him.
But I'd promised I wouldn't, and more importantly, I was scared shitless to run into another percer without Dargo at my side.
Who was I kidding, I wouldn't feel good about running into a percer if I had a rocket launcher.
"Dargo!" Yet another turoch headed our way and I groaned. We were never getting out of here.
"There's a feast in the main tent, join us!" A chorus of encouraging yells followed the statement and I leveled a glare at my alien that told him exactly what I thought about that suggestion.
He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me against his side.
"We'll walk in, grab some meat for the journey and leave," he wheedled in a low voice.
"I wouldn't have agreed to be your mate if I knew you were so popular," I grumbled, even as my tortured stomach perked up at the offer of food.
He chuckled, and I felt every female part of me shiver at the seductive sound.
Dargo led me toward the massive tent that had appeared yesterday and my jaw dropped as we walked through the giant opening.
The tent was wall to wall turochs. There was so much naked, red skin it looked like the inside of a chili pepper.
Most of the males were sprawled out on blankets with platters of steaming meat beside them. In the center of the tent, several spitted carcasses were propped up on stakes, and turochs were ripping chunks of roasted meat off like it was a freaking pig roast.
"Wow." Looking around the packed tent, I remembered sitting up on that hill, planning to sneak into this camp and look for my friends. There was no way I would have pulled it off.
"This will be the biggest band in turoch history," Dargo said, sounding like a proud father. "Once we have an unchallenged chief, this will be a force to be reckoned with."
It already looked like a force to be reckoned with. I couldn't find a single scrawny turoch. Every male was over six feet, half of them were over seven feet tall, and there was enough combined muscle to move a mountain.
"Taz?" A voice I hadn't heard in days broke through the clamor and I turned in a daze. Standing near the wall of the tent, her arm around the waist of a blond turoch, was Hope.
"Hope?" I winced at the pitch of my voice. For all my assurances to Penny, I'd been certain Hope was dead. But here she was, all cozy with an alien and looking no worse for wear.
"Penny!" Hope yelled across the tent. "Taz is here!"
I stumbled toward her in a daze, not even caring that I was bumping into turochs left and right. By the time I reached her side, Penny had appeared from the crush of aliens, her curly hair in a giant frizzy mess, looking like the best thing I’d ever seen.
"You're alive!" Penny screeched, grabbing me in a hug that almost cracked my spine. "Adak said he sent his friend to find you but you never showed up!"
Relief at finding both my friends alive almost knocked me to my knees, and I searched both their faces, feeling like it had been years instead of days since we'd been separated.
“Sorry, I got delayed,” I muttered, struggling with a wave of affection for my friends. I’d never been a people person, but just having them in front of me was the best present I’d ever gotten.
"It's been days," Penny said, looking as exhausted as I felt. "Where were you?"
"I was looking for you," I said. Her words penetrated my shocked relief. "Wait? Days? You've been here the whole time?"
Penny nodded. "Three days, Hope showed up this morning."
I felt rage eat through my relief and I pivoted to face my lurking mate.
"She was here and you made me promise to be your mate to go find her?" I demanded.
Looking cornered, Dargo held up his hands. "I didn't know that when we made our deal."
I stepped into his space and jabbed my finger into his ribs.
"But you knew the whole time I was trying to get out of here, didn't you?"
A sheepish smile crossed his face and I itched to get my hands on my lost cattle prod.
"I promised your friend was safe."
"You asshole," I hissed. "I thought she was dead. You tricked me."
His ears flicked nervously as he eyed me.
"Our deal is still valid. I helped you find your friend, you didn't even want to come into the tent."
I couldn't believe that was the first thing to come out of his mouth.
"I-you..." I was going to kill him. "Fuck you!
" I finally choked out. "I can't believe you seriously think this counts.
I'm not going to be your mate because you made me walk ten feet off course, when you knew she was in here!
" I was yelling so loud my throat hurt but I couldn't seem to stop.
To think I'd been having warm and fuzzy feelings about this manipulative asshole just a few hours ago.
"Um, Taz?" Penny's soothing voice broke through my rage attack and she tugged me away from the turoch I was about to strangle.
"What?" I snapped.
"Why don't you come back to my tent? You can take a bath, have a snack, maybe calm down?" She was eyeing me like I was a bomb and it was pissing me off.
"Don't tell me to calm down." I closed my eyes and tried to reign in my temper. This wasn't Penny's fault, I’d just found her again, I didn’t need to ruin our reunion with a temper tantrum. "You know what? A bath sounds great."
***
My friends were silent as they led me out of the big tent and through the crowded maze of camp. Most of the horned aliens were at the feast, and I could hear the raucous laughter rising behind us as we walked through the tent village that had sprung up while I slept off my near death experince.
Remembering that Dargo had saved me from the percer barely took the edge off my anger, and I ground my teeth. The least he could have done was tell me my friends were alive.
"Here we are," Penny announced, stopping at a tent nearly twice the size of the others we'd passed.
She ducked inside and I reluctantly followed her.
The last thing I wanted to do was sit inside another stuffy tent.
I needed to walk, pace off some of my frustration.
But I also wanted to reassure myself that Penny and Hope were okay.
The inside of the tent was nicer than I expected. The center pole was twice as tall as me, and the floor was covered in a thick mat of fiber that reminded me of steel wool. A pile of blankets took up one whole corner and a thin curtain of fabric half concealed the simple sleeping area.
I turned in a circle, taking in the massive ax resting on the floor and the big metal bowl filled with glowing coals that lit up the space.
"Are you two bunking together?" I asked, pretty sure I knew the answer. There was only one bed and Hope had looked pretty comfortable with the blond turoch from the party.
Hope let out a nervous chuckle and her face turned a dull red.
"No, I have a tent with Aeko." She pointed at the side of the tent. "We're the last ones in this row."
I raised an eyebrow, daring her to ignore the elephant in the room.
She didn't. "I guess you're curious about the Aeko thing?"
"Curious?" I countered. "I'm on the edge of my seat."
Hope settled herself cross legged on the floor, scooping her blonde hair up on top of her head and puffing out her cheeks.
"Yeah, so I'm dating an alien."
I followed her lead and sat down, surprised to find the fiber mat scratchy but not uncomfortable.
"Dating? As in consensually and on a trial basis?" It had been barely a week since Hope went missing, and now she was 'dating' an alien. I had so many questions and absolutely every single one was inappropriate. Good thing I had no filter.
Hope rolled her eyes.
"So we're not dating, he's my mate. But please don't make me spell it out for you because it's still weird for me, too."
"Wow." I leaned back on my hands and grimaced when the motion tugged at my burned arm. "I thought you were single for life."
She shrugged, a dazed smile spreading across her face.
"Apparently, I needed to get swept off my feet by an alien."
"Literally," Penny muttered.
I zeroed in on my best friend. She looked terrible, dark circles ringed her eyes, she was thinner and there was a defensive curl to her shoulders I didn’t like. But I wasn't the kind of person that danced around a touchy subject.
"What about you?" I waved a hand at the spacious tent and nodded at the bed that was way too big for one human woman. "Are you sleeping with an alien, too? Am I the only one that kept her pants on when the world ended?"
"Taz," Hope's tone was warning but I kept my gaze firmly on Penny's face. Dargo had sworn up and down that his buddy was honorable, but I didn't like the look on my friend’s face right now. If she needed out of this situation, I was getting her the fuck out.
Penny's shoulders climbed to her ears the longer I stared at her until she looked wound tight enough to snap.
"It's complicated," she mumbled, picking at the woven floor.
"If he's doing things to you, or keeping you here against your will-"
"He's not!" Her head snapped up and a spark of something like anger lit up her dark eyes. "Adak wouldn't hurt me, I swear."
I held up a hand. "I believe you, I just had to check."