Chapter 26
I dug through the pile of scavenged clothes in front of me and almost flashed a boob to the whole camp. The blanket toga I'd been rocking since yesterday was not working for me, and I was still pissed that Dargo had dumped me in our tent in nothing but my shredded jeans.
When I'd finally given up on him returning, I'd resorted to wrapping myself in a blanket and emerged to see the big communal tent in flames and half the camp licking their wounds.
Dargo hadn't been chatty about what happened and I'd been stuck in the blanket until Penny found me this morning and offered to share her horde of clothes.
"Where'd you get all this?" I asked, holding up a pair of sweatpants big enough to double as a tent.
"Hope and Aeko brought a bunch of human supplies with them." Penny started folding the pile of clothes I'd discarded. Couldn't have wrinkled clothes, what would the neighbors think?
Her hair had been twisted into two complicated looking braids, and a few errant curls had sprang out around her temples. It was a good look for her, but I'd never seen her do anything so fancy to her hair.
"You look nice," I said.
She stroked one braid absently.
"Adak did it."
"Really?" I couldn't imagine the hulking, one eyed warrior carefully arranging Penny's curls. Then again, I hadn't spoken to him since I'd come to camp, maybe he dreamed of being a stylist.
She shrugged. "He likes my hair."
I combed my fingers through my own short strands and wondered what Dargo thought of my pixie cut. I'd never been one to fuss over my appearance, I liked things simple and not having to brush my hair in the morning suited me just fine.
Did he wish I had long hair?
I dropped my hand and frowned. It shouldn't matter, he'd wanted me the way I was, and I wasn't going to change my whole style just to look more like Penny and Hope.
"How are things between you two?" I asked.
She shrugged, her eyes on the growing pile of folded clothes.
"Good, I guess."
"You guess?" It bothered me that Penny was so set on staying when she didn't seem happy.
Hope, I understood. She was all over Aeko, all the time, she couldn't shut up about how great he was.
But Penny seemed to be going along with this 'mating' thing out of some weird sense of duty, and I didn't like it.
"Taz," she huffed and looked up at me. "Can you please just leave it alone?"
"I just don't want you doing anything you don't want to." I picked up an oversized T-shirt and fumbled it over my head, doing my best to keep the blanket in place with one hand.
"I don't want to have this conversation."
"Okay, fine." I shimmied out of my toga and into a pair of off-teal drawstring shorts. Hope had not been shopping in the cute section when she picked out these clothes.
"Just," Penny sighed. "Things are fine. He's really good to me, and I wish you'd stop picking at everything I say."
"I'll stop. I promise. But I want you to know that no matter what, I've got your back." It was killing me to see the lost look in her eyes, but I couldn't force her to talk to me.
"I know." She stacked up the last of the clothes and gave me a considering look. "Adak said you accepted Dargo’s gentling. How was that?"
"Oh, so now we're poking into my sex life?" I laughed. "It was good, I saw fireworks, so no complaints."
She pursed her lips and pinned me with one of her patented 'you worry me' looks.
"That's it? The sex was good and that's that?"
I shrugged. "Is there supposed to be more?" Turnabout was fair play, but now I was regretting poking my nose in Penny's business. I still didn't know how I felt about yesterday. In the moment I hadn't been thinking about the big picture when I told Dargo to fuck me.
That was my fault. He'd asked if I was sure and I'd steamrolled right past the lifelong commitment part of the deal. But now, a day later and with no haze of lust to distract me, I was feeling conflicted.
"Gentling is supposed to be hugely intimate. You're binding yourself to your lifelong mate."
"It was intimate," I defended.
"I didn't mean sexually, Taz."
I threw up my hands. "I'm sorry I'm not a romantic like you and Hope. I agreed to be his mate and we had sex. Am I supposed to fall madly in love with him in a few days?"
"I just don't want you to shut yourself off from the possibility of love."
From anyone else, I would have been disgusted by the sappiness of that statement. But Penny truly believed everyone had a soulmate. Her parents had a great marriage and a bunch of kids, and Penny had emerged from the womb ready for her happily ever after.
She was the sort of person that cried during Hallmark movies and weddings. I was not. How we became friends, I still did not understand.
“Ughh.” I picked at a loose thread on my shorts and tried to find a way to phrase my thoughts. “I’m just not good at the whole interpersonal thing, okay? This mate thing is a lot, and I feel like I’m going to fuck it up and let everyone down.”
Penny didn’t say anything and I looked up at her.
“You’re not going to tell me everything will be fine and to stop overthinking?”
My best friend sighed and carefully placed a folded shirt on the stack of clothes.
“Honestly Taz? I’m not in a position to lecture you about overthinking.”
I wanted to unpack that cryptic statement, but Dargo appeared beside me and handed me an ax. I looked at the weapon and then at him.
“Is this your way of surrendering to my judgment?” I asked.
“What?” He gave me a confused look. “I was going to take you on patrol with me.”
I weighed the ax and eyed him, still resentful of my nude parade through camp.
“You stranded me, naked. I’m still mad.”
Dargo grabbed my free hand and hauled me to my feet.
“I give you permission to kill me after our patrol is over.” Looking pretty confident I wouldn’t behead him, he dragged me away from Penny and toward the edge of camp. I stumbled after him and gave my friend an awkward wave with my ax.
“See you later, I guess,” I called.
Penny cracked a smile when I tripped over a rock and wondered why everyone got a kick out of my suffering.
“Have fun, you two,” she laughed, her expression saying she didn’t expect us to get much ‘patrolling’ done.
***
An hour later I realized Penny had seriously overestimated how horny my mate was.
All we’d done was walk, peer suspiciously into the distance and walk some more. Dargo hadn’t said one inappropriate thing or tried to get in my pants. He hadn’t said anything. I was confused and very bored.
I paused to poke at a dusty, crumbled beer can, and wondered if the person who left their trash out here had survived the invasion. When I looked up Dargo was several yards ahead of me. Still not talking. Something was up with him.
I trudged after him, swinging my ax like a baton. The sun was blinding, and I wished I had a pair of sunglasses.
"Why do you pester your friend about her mating?" Dargo asked.
I glanced at him in confusion. Almost an hour of dead silence and that's the first thing he says?
"Why do you care?" I asked, doing my best to strangle the thread of hurt I felt that he hadn't said a single thing about yesterday.
"Your words are bothering Adak. He fears you'll try and take his female away from him."
I stopped walking.
"First of all, his female is my friend. Her name is Penny and she is more than just his mate. I'm not trying to take her away, I'm trying to make sure she's happy."
"Has she said she isn't?"
"No." I rolled my tongue over my teeth and glared at him. "But she's been acting weird about everything, and I get to worry about her."
"Have you thought that it isn't your concern?"
"Excuse me?" Was he really telling me to butt out? "What about you? You're worried about your friend and you're scolding me about worrying about mine."
Dargo dragged his hand through his mohawk. "I'm not scolding you, I was just asking that you not plant seeds of discontent between two mates."
"So I should just watch Penny be quiet and sad, and not ask if she's okay? What if she isn't happy and she's scared to say something?"
His brows lowered and he glared at me. "Are you saying Adak is threatening her?"
"No, I'm saying she's not acting like herself.
I don't know your friend, but Penny isn't happy and I'm not going to stand around and pretend I can't tell.
" I could feel my blood pressure rising the longer we argued and part of me was itching for a real fight.
If I could get good and pissed at him, I wouldn't have to keep thinking about all the doubts I was having about yesterday.
"You're meddling in their mating-"
"Penny is the most important person in my life," I snapped. An almost comforting wave of anger washed over me. This was an emotion I could handle. "If she needs me I'm going to be there for her."
Dargo's eyes flashed. "And what of your mate? I cannot ask this one thing of you?"
I set my jaw and bit back the urge to scream in frustration.
"You're asking for something I won't give."
His tail lashed behind him and for a moment I worried I'd pushed him too far. He let out a furious snarl and stalked away from me.
"Oh, now you're running away?" I yelled after him. "Can't think of a good argument, so you just give up?"
"You're testing me, female," he called over his shoulder.
I watched him move farther away and my irritation faded until all I was left with was a vague sense of nausea.
Fighting with Dargo wasn't what I wanted, but I was such a mess of confusion about him that I couldn't figure out how to fix this.
I couldn't ignore my concerns about Penny, she was the only person who'd stuck by me and I'd be damned if I let her down.
But wasn't that what Dargo was doing for Adak? Watching his back and trying to protect his friend? It wasn't his fault that we were on opposing sides on this.
I sighed and rested my oversized hatchet on my shoulder, reluctantly following after him.
We didn't speak as Dargo made a wide circle around camp, scanning the horizon with a watchful eye as we walked.
I knew spotting the ship yesterday had spooked him, but the fact that he and Adak felt the need to do patrols was alarming.
Somehow in the last few days, I'd been lulled into a false sense of security. All the anxiety I'd felt when the first ships had appeared in the sky had been overshadowed, first by my need to find Penny and then by the growing relationship with Dargo.
But Earth had been invaded, and even if some of the aliens weren't so bad, the sytos that had destroyed our world were still out there. Hope and Penny had brought me up to date on their habit of decimating planets and leaving them in ruins.
Earth wasn’t in good shape, but it didn’t seem like the sytos were done with us yet.
I was starting to sweat through my new clothes when Dargo swerved off our path and jogged away from camp.
Hurrying after him, I spotted a collection of shallow pits scratched into the dirt. The ground around the divots was covered in massive tracks, ruts that looked a lot like claw marks peppered the space and the sight made the hair stand up on my arms.
Dargo kicked at the indentations, still not meeting my eyes.
"These are percer nests," he muttered. "Yet another threat right outside the camp."
"They're breeding?" I shuddered at the thought of the monstrous beasts making mini-mes. Just one was too many.
"This is going to be a problem." Dargo dropped his ax and whipped his loincloth to the side.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Pissing," he said matter of factly as he did just that. I averted my eyes, wondering if I'd ever get used to his casual relationship with nudity. I wasn't a prude, but I wasn't going to pee in front of him, ever.
"Why?" From the corner of my eye, I could see him shuffling around until he'd watered every nest.
"Percer boars are nest defensive. If they can smell a predator nearby, they won't bring a female here to lay her eggs. Hopefully, this buys us a little time if the pack has to choose a new breeding ground."
Planet invading aliens, relationship woes and now extraterrestrial monsters making babies; this apocalypse really had it all.