Chapter Ten
Torr was inclined to think, when he became convinced that he understood what the Ert people were saying, that their woman, Belle, had flatly rejected their interest in her becoming their hearth woman.
Before his disappointment reached a point where anger took over and eradicated brain function, however, it occurred to him that she had chosen to stay with them when they had gathered with all of the others to eat.
She had not made any excuse to leave or attempted to find a place with anyone else.
Then he wondered if he had completely misunderstood.
“What are you thinking?” Ryne asked quietly in their tongue.
Torr frowned, trying to formulate a concise response, since it would hardly be discrete to discuss the subject at length.
They might not understand, but they would certainly all grasp that they were discussing something they did not want anyone else--in their camp--to understand.
Or at least did not want to share their thoughts with Belle.
“She seems content to stay with us,” he finally responded neutrally.
“And I would not think she would be if she had flatly rejected our interest.”
Surprise flickered in Ryne’s eyes. After a moment, though, he nodded and seemed to relax.
Not that either of them actually were--relaxed.
They were surrounded by Ert people who seemed as tense as they all were and might or might not feel hostile toward them.
Mostly likely did despite their efforts to behave as if they welcomed the Izun.
Beyond that, he did not think that he had felt relaxed since he had first spotted Belle.
It was for damned certain his cock had scarcely relaxed.
And every time the bastard leapt up, his balls filled with more seed and got heavier until the wind drag of them had begun to interfere with flight, he thought wryly--and that was only after he reached the point of having to empty them at least once a day to keep them from exploding.
Sad to say, the waiting was only going to become more hellish before there was a chance of things getting better.
And they had no guarantee at any point of a happy outcome … unfortunately.
* * * *
Only half a day spent digging in the garden, a full belly, and at least some relief from the anxieties that had been dogging her for more than a week, and Belle felt herself slipping toward coma long before anyone else seemed relaxed to that point.
Mostly, she thought she was just relieved that there wasn’t any sort of blow up.
Ryne and Torr either hadn’t caught on to the broad hints every bastard close enough was dropping or they weren’t concerned about it anyway.
And she didn’t particularly care, she told herself, one way or the other, as long as she didn’t have to deal with unpleasantness.
She’d actually enjoyed sitting with Ryne and Torr, she realized with a touch of surprise. It had felt … companionable.
She was still wired.
Because she hadn’t magically stopped finding them both, especially Ryne, extremely attractive, but it dropped to a low roar when she was able to relax a little and she was scarcely even aware of it until or unless either of them leaned close enough to stir her up again.
When word finally trickled through the group that the visitors would spend the night because an excursion into the forest was planned for the following morning, everyone began to get up and wander off toward their habs.
Belle, feeling almost like she’d run a marathon and could finally stop to catch her breath, struggled to get up and follow the others off.
She was stiff from sitting so long she discovered, embarrassed.
By the time Ryne had helped her to her feet, she discovered Connor had joined them.
Belle smiled at him a little uneasily. “Well! Good night all!” she managed in a credibly cheerful voice. “I’m going to hit the showers--been crawling around in the dirt half the day.”
“We walk you,” Ryne said.
“I’ll walk you,” Connor said almost in sync.
Then the three men shared challenging looks.
Belle got in a big hurry to evacuate.
Thankfully, she’d regained full use of her body in that time.
She didn’t outrun them, though.
All three of them walked her to the shower.
Thankfully, it wasn’t full to bursting. Belle managed to scrape them loose and head inside.
She was tempted to stay until she was run off by the shower nazi--the AI in control of the water. Instead, she bathed quickly, dried, and then had to put on the clothes she’d been wearing because she hadn’t had enough sense to grab a change of clothes.
And Connor, Ryne, and Torr were waiting outside--all three of them bristling at one another like cur dogs--when she emerged.
Dismay inundated Belle, but she managed a cheerful monologue all the way from the showers to the hab she shared.
There were two guards stationed at the entrance to the hab.
Belle found it unnerving, to say the least, but the guys didn’t linger. They bid her goodnight at the entrance.
Everyone was pretending to be asleep when she went inside and found her way to her bunk.
Or either actually asleep or they decided not to say anything because they thought it might be overheard by the guards.
Whatever the case, Belle was able to fully relax for the first time since she’d been assigned to a group hab and passed out almost before she managed to find a comfortable position on the miserable cot she’d been issued.
* * * *
The sun wasn’t even up when everyone was summoned for the work day.
Belle, for one, felt like she’d barely closed her eyes and it took an effort to pry her eyelids up high enough to navigate her way out of the hab and find the facilities.
Which was when she discovered the sun hadn’t even risen yet.
Breakfast was being served however and it seemed pretty obvious that the whole camp was turning out.
Belle was inclined to skip the breakfast and sleep more, but Connor, Ryne, and Torr arrived to collect her and walk her to the commissary and she was in no condition to fight them even though she wanted to.
Afterwards she discovered, to her dismay, that she was designated to join the group heading out into the alien jungle to learn how to hunt.
One of three groups, actually. Each group was broken down into two women and four men plus two natives.
Ryne and Torr was leading her group--which included Connor and John Clancy--both of whom were soldiers--and two men she didn’t know by name whom she barely recognized.
The other woman in her group was named Leanne.
And Belle recognized her as being one of Connor’s former lovers.
Oh joy!
Of course, she had doubts there were a lot of women who hadn’t been or hadn’t at least aspired to be if they hadn’t been.
But she was able to focus completely on fear fairly quickly--searching the ground before she picked up or put down a foot and the brush on either side of them as they walked and above her head. She was so dizzy in short order she had added a vague sense of nausea to her other discomfort.
She jolted reflexively with every unidentified sound, expecting momentarily for something with a lot of long, sharp teeth to leap out at her.
Or maybe just to clamp down on her and eat her without her ever seeing what had gotten her.
Leanne gave into nervous chatter almost as soon as they entered the woods, muttering to herself every time she tripped over something or blundered into bushes and cussing.
The men kept glancing back.
First one and then another shushed her--to no avail.
Finally, Connor turned and plowed his way to the back, glared at her tightly for a long moment and then leaned closer and spoke in a low voice. “You’re scaring the game off. I’m going to gag you if you don’t stop rattling your tongue. Are we clear?”
She glared at him, but she clamped her lips together.
He glared back at her for a long moment and finally flicked a look at her as if he was thinking about saying something. Belle stared back at him wide eyed and after a long moment he merely turned and moved back to the front of their line.
“I noticed the bastard didn’t threaten you,” Leanne growled in a perfectly audible voice.
Belle gaped at her, trying to think of a response.
So she was still staring at the woman with bulging eyes, slack jawed, when Connor stalked to the back again and gagged her with a strip of cloth--then grabbed her arm and hauled her to the front.
Torr moved to the back and walked beside Belle.
She glanced at him uneasily a couple of times, but he didn’t say anything and she was finally able to completely focus on the boogery woods again and her search for monsters great and small.
And she still didn’t see the thing Torr plucked from a vine above her head, threw to the ground and stomped.
She barely had time to suck in a sharp breath before it was so ground under his heel it was no longer recognizable.
“Poison,” he said on a breath of sound.
Belle thought for several moments that she was just going to pass out. Weakness sucked at her and threatened to buckle her knees.
Not only had the fucking thing been almost directly over her head, but he’d mangled it beyond recognition!
How was she going to identify it next time?
“I didn’t see it,” she said breathlessly.
He seemed to catch her meaning instantly. “I show next time.”
She smiled at him weakly, trying to convince herself that wasn’t likely to happen.
Because surely they were extremely rare?
They’d been walking long enough she’d managed to recover enough to throw off the weakness when they halted. Then she discovered they’d reached some sort of waterway.
Ryne, in the lead with Connor, crouched down and pointed something out to those closest, speaking so low that, between the volume and his thick accent, Belle didn’t have a clue of what it was all about.
Fortunately, this was a teaching exercise, not merely a hunt, and he motioned for them to move aside after a few moments and the others to move closer.
She was still at the back and shorter than the men so she still couldn’t really see, but she discovered he was explaining the tracks he’d found that indicated beasts coming to drink. And that they had been following a game trail.
She hadn’t even noticed the ‘path’ was well traveled.
Because she was at the tail end and she’d thought everybody in front had trampled the vegetation down.
When he motioned the others to take up watch positions, he summoned her and pointed out the tracks and she did, finally get the chance to look.
Not that she thought it was going to be that helpful. The prints were in mud and all looked pretty much the same to her--some large and some fairly small, but not a lot of difference in the shape.
They moved away from the trail they’d followed after a moment, traveling parallel to the waterway and finally settled again when Ryne pointed out another trail.
Then they waited.
And waited.
Just about the time Belle’s nerves settled almost to normal as boredom began to outstrip instincts, all hell broke loose. The silence was shattered by bellows, gun discharges, and animal screams.
And then silence and the grunts of men struggling to drag something heavy.
Everyone was summoned.
Belle stared at the bloody thing prickling with arrows with wide eyed horror while Ryne, Connor, and Torr crouched around it--and the other men moved as close as they could to observe and listen as Ryne instructed them on butchering it.
Belle had watched training vids. She’d always thought they were unnecessarily brutal and gory and that she’d long since gotten so used to it that it hardly fazed her.
This was way different and it went beyond the fact that the beast was unrecognizable.
It was clear that it took muscle to do what needed to be done.
Every muscle in both of Ryne’s arms was bulging with the strain as he worked his blade down the center of the beast’s belly and disemboweled it.
In the chill morning air, steam actually rose up from the heat of the beast’s innards.
Leanne hauled off and puked, spattering the beast and the men closest to it.
To be fair, she made an attempt to prevent it by leaping away and falling into the stream and at least one of the men gagged and she damned near puked herself when Leanne did.
But the guys that got spattered were pissed off.
And that included Ryne and Connor.
Sloughing it off with hands already coated in blood and guts, they returned to the job of dismembering their kill, rinsed the meat and themselves in the stream, and then divided up the parts and headed back.
Thankfully, there were enough men to carry the pieces Belle didn’t have to carry any--that time--but it was clear that was going to become a fact of life on the planet and she wasn’t very happy about it.
Leanne bitched all the way back, but they were hunting and everyone ignored her the best they could.
She led the way to the showers while the hunters prepared a fire to cook the meat and spitted the pieces to hang them above the blaze.
Belle really wanted to race the men to the showers with Leanne, but she wasn’t especially tempted to join Leanne and it seemed ‘wrong’ to fight the guys for first dibs at the showers when she hadn’t done that much herself.
So she really didn’t need the bath as badly as those who’d butchered and carried.
Connor ‘detached’ her from Ryne and Torr and sent her in to bathe first.
She didn’t argue. She raced inside and scrubbed frantically--quickly--and headed out again, escaping back to the hab for fresh clothing.
Thankfully, Leanne wasn’t one of her roommates.
She made the rounds with all of her complaints, however, before anybody managed to escape the commissary at lunch.