Chapter 26
“Well this is awkward,” an amused, feminine voice called.
“Holy-” I yelped, diving for my discarded uniform. My knee landed on Carn’s inner thigh and he twitched, his hands shielding his dick defensively as I scrambled away from him. There was chaos for a few seconds as we untangled ourselves and I yanked my clothes on.
“Just a second,” I panted, flipping my hair out of the back of my uniform.
“Oh, no hurry,” the stranger answered. “I’d hate to interrupt a honeymoon.”
Carn stood up and nearly decapitated me with a rogue elbow and I huffed and just crawled to the exit. I poked my head outside and clambered upright, snagging my crutches on the way up.
“Hey,” I said, taking in the blonde women smirking at me. She was holding a basket stuffed to the brim with snacks and clothes, a large turoch stood behind her, hair nearly the same golden color as hers.
“Hey,” she chuckled. “Someone looks like they had a good reunion.”
I didn’t know how to reply to that blatantly obvious yet equally bold statement, so I just shrugged.
“I’m Naomi,” I introduced myself and jerked a thumb over my shoulder as Carn ducked outside. “And this is my mate, Carn.”
“Hope,” she said, tilting her head toward the only blond turoch I’d seen yet. “And Aeko.”
Aeko’s fuzzy yellow ears were pricked and he tilted his head as he stared over my shoulder. I braced myself for a bitter comment or a threat but all he did was nod.
“Butcher.”
“Quered,” Carn rumbled from behind me. He didn’t sound offended, if anything he sounded wary. I peered over my shoulder and saw that his eyes were locked with Aeko’s.
“Is everything okay?” I asked cautiously.
Hope snorted. “Our mates have a bit of history.”
“Oh?” I didn’t know how that was possible since I’d been told a dozen times that Carn killed everyone he fought and Aeko looked pretty alive.
“I was thrown into the Pit as a punishment,” Aeko said. “Carn refused to kill me because I was cursed.”
I bit my lip as I glanced between the two staring males.
“Um, okay.” This was so awkward and I really didn’t understand why.
“I took it as proof that even the raging butcher could see how unlucky I was,” Aeko said, casting a mischievous look at Hope. “Now I wish to thank you for sparing me. If you’d killed me, I never would have met my nightmare of a mate.”
Hope’s green eyes flashed with rage and she whirled so fast she almost dumped out her basket.
“Would you stop it with that shit?” she demanded. “People are going to think you hate me.”
Aeko’s mouth curled into a smirk.
“Never. You are the most beautiful hag I’ve ever seen. I’m the luckiest of males to call you mine.”
I snuck a look over my shoulder and found Carn staring at the couple with something like awe on his face.
“I do not remember sparing you, but I’m glad I did,” he said. It made my heart hurt for him. No part of Carn wanted to hurt his people, he’d been lost for a very long time, turned into a monster by his captors.
I wanted a chance to replace all those awful years with something sweeter. Maybe it was ridiculous to feel so protective of a male that everyone was terrified of, but I was. He may be made of pure muscle with horns on top, but my mate’s heart was as soft as marshmallow and just as defenseless.
Hope hadn’t come alone. The tiny campsite was getting crowded. Two other couples had come with her. Two other human women mated to turochs.
Amy and Penny introduced themselves and neither of them blinked an eye at Carn. I loved them a little bit for accepting him so easily. Penny’s mate, Adak, was the male that Carn had teamed up with to start the uprising.
He was missing an eye and his face was a twisted mess of scar tissue. He looked gigantic next to Penny, who was almost a full head shorter than me. Amy’s mate looked like he’d gone several rounds with a punching bag that could fight back and barely made it out alive.
He was also the skinniest turoch I’d seen so far. Still huge by human standards, but his ribs were visible and I wondered what he’d gone through that left him looking so rough.
The women offered me a change of clothes and I’d never been so happy to see leggings in my life. After reassuring myself that Carn wasn’t going to get attacked by any of the new males, I ducked back into the tent to change and all three of the women followed me inside.
“Before anyone asks, I’m happy to be Carn’s mate,” I started before anyone could say anything.
Hope laughed. “Oh, we believe you, we caught the tail end of what was happening in here.”
I refused to look at the spot Carn and I had just had sex and focused on getting dressed.
“Just as long as we’re on the same page. I think Kalhu was trying to convince me to ditch Carn.”
“Your mate has a reputation. And the males in camp are all eager to have mates of their own. He was probably hoping you wanted an upgrade.” Penny offered me a smile.
Her dark hair was twined up into a complicated braided crown, several dark curls falling around her face.
In comparison, I felt like a stray cat that had just crawled out of a trash can.
“I thought they mated for life,” I argued, shimmying into a butter soft shirt. “Doesn’t that make ‘upgrading’ a little taboo?” I frowned at the idea that anyone was preferable to Carn.
“If they thought they were saving you from an abusive male, it might be different,” Amy said with a shrug. “I think being stranded on a new planet after years of slavery has made the rules seem a little... flexy.”
“Well, I’m happy where I am.”
Hope’s expression faltered.
“That’s good, because you might have a fight on your hands if you two try to join the band.”
The little optimism I’d held onto disappeared. I wasn’t dying to join the little town of turochs, but I knew Carn had wanted the safety of numbers. Plus, just seeing other humans again had made me feel steadier.
I didn’t know what we were going to do if they banished us completely.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I plopped down on the ground and sighed.
Penny settled next to me. “Adak promised he’d accept Carn if he made it here. No one would bother you, but I don’t think they’d be friendly, no matter what Adak does.”
“I understand, it just sucks for Carn.”
“We found a new place to live,” Hope offered. “It’s too exposed out in the middle of nowhere, and the guys have had to travel farther and farther to find supplies, so we’re moving the whole camp to a strip mall on the edge of town. You guys don’t have to live with us, but...”
“You could live nearby,” Penny jumped in. “It would be safer than being totally alone and we could all visit.”
I mulled that over. It wasn’t as safe as being part of the band, but at the same time, having some space sounded nice. None of that mattered if everyone was going to treat us like lepers though.
“I don’t want to cause problems,” I hesitated.
Amy frowned, one hand fell to a small hatchet on her belt and the other went to her flat belly.
The motion raised a flag in my brain and I wondered if Gigi had been right about turochs and humans being compatible.
As if the apocalypse hadn’t been complicated enough, we might have a bunch of hybrid babies running around.
“Kes and I have been on our own since the invasion. It’s not easy. There are still sytos everywhere, and the percers are already breeding. In a few months, there’s going to be alien monsters everywhere.”
“Carn found signs of percers at a gas station.” I bit my lip and tried to picture an animal scary enough to make Carn nervous. I was confident he could arm wrestle a grizzly bear and I had no idea what a percer looked like. “Are they really that dangerous?”
Hope looked a little nauseous.
“They are legitimately the worst thing I’ve ever seen. No horror movie could have prepared me,” she said.
“Not to mention the human survivors we came across were not turoch friendly. Kes and I barely got away from the last group. If we hadn’t found these guys a few days ago, I don’t know what would have happened.”
That settled it for me.
“If Carn’s okay with it, I think we might hang around. At a distance.”
Penny pulled me into a one-armed hug, her round face filled with optimism.
“Hopefully the rest of the band will warm up to him,eventually.”