Great.
It wasn’t as difficult as I thought, although when the hovercraft jerked forward, I beamed, O’Rrin swore, and N’Ashtar went pale. I shoved the guilt back down, because I didn’t have time for it. Maybe Erica could do something with the hovercraft. Even if the N’Akron didn’t have much access to metal, it could at least give us an idea of the Caterri’s abilities.
That, and Squire. If he was as good as I thought he was, he would give us the information we needed.
I turned to talk to the N’Akron, a little giddy with success, and stopped when I saw N’Ashtar’s look. It was a strange one, like his heart was breaking as he watched me, like sadness was going to swamp him and drag him to a place I could never reach. Shit. I froze where I was, desperately trying to decide what to do. Had I broken some sort of custom? Did he hate me? Was he scared of me?
I hated when I didn’t have answers.
13
N’Ashtar
How could she be acting so happy? My Dana was strong. No matter how she had been violated by the Caterri, she was going through their camp, taking their things. I was pleased that we had taken out a camp of Caterri—most of a camp of Caterri—and now I had many ideas to share with my tribe on how to attack their larger forces. But I hadn’t wanted any of that to be at the cost of my mate.
Then there’d been watching Dana take the strange Caterri down by herself. She had quickly disarmed him, taking control of the weapon, except she hadn’t killed him. No, she wanted to keep him, and she didn’t seem to mean like a pet. Not that Caterri were pets, but they weren’t friends, either. Caterri were the enemy. It was as simple as that.
At the same time, I wanted to make Dana happy, and she had made it more than clear that killing the Caterri she had…adopted would have made her very unhappy. I didn’t want to do that to her. Instead, I stood and watched like a useless youngling while she pulled out strange weapons and food and other things I didn’t recognize from the strange metal beast.
I didn’t want that with us either, but Dana’s happiness mattered more. I was surprised she wanted a symbol of her assault to come with us, but maybe humans were different and that was how she dealt with things. Maybe the assaults had not taken place on the hovercraft. I had not witnessed them, after all.
Just thinking about what Dana had gone through made me want to break things. While I had finally rescued her, I had failed her in a significant way. My Dana had suffered and it was all my fault.
The bloody rag flashed through my mind, and my eyes closed as a sharp hiss escaped me. I couldn’t think about it. If I did, I would have grabbed onto Dana and just not let go.
“Let’s load this up, then we can go to O’Rrin’s cave.” Dana sounded satisfied, clapping her small, smooth hands together. There was a pleased glint to her eyes, like she had whatever she wanted.
“I thought I was the leader here,” I said, although there was amusement in my voice. A future chief needed a strong mate, and Dana was more than enough. Guilt flashed through me and I tried to keep it off my face. Was I going to be a leader? Was I still the future chief of my people, or had my father discarded me like he had promised?
“I wear the pants in this relationship,” Dana retorted.
I blinked, looking at O’Rrin in the hopes that he had any idea what she meant by that. “But…we are both wearing pants.”
Dana snorted. “I’ll ask Hetta to explain it to you, O’Rrin, and I’ll explain it to you, honey snookums, later,” she informed me.
O’Rrin and I exchanged another look. Humans were both pleasing and incredibly strange. “What is a honey snookums?” I asked.
Dana waved a hand at me, her attention on Squire as he helped finish packing the stuff. “O’Rrin, we’re ready.” She beamed as she straightened up, stretching. “I’m so looking forward to a good walk.”
I immediately was by her side. “You should ride in the…metal thing.”
Dana shot me a look. “I’ve ridden in that stupid thing for god knows how many days,” she retorted. “I have no desire to ride in it when I can stretch my legs instead.”
I tried to think of a way to tell her that she needed the rest, that I had witnessed some of the aftermath of what the Caterri had done to her, but I didn’t want to reveal her personal business in front of O’Rrin. No matter how close I was with him, this was something to be between mates. “Fine.” I couldn’t think of a way to convince her, and from what I had learned, Dana was stubborn and would do what she wanted, when she wanted.
“Good boy.” She patted the top of my head, then cackled at my expression. O’Rrin shrugged, and both of us seemed to be baffled.
Maybe I would ask Hetta or Jackie later. Or the human Erica. They understood technology, maybe they could tell me if the strange translators were working incorrectly and not translating what Dana said in her weird language.
By the time we got near the cave O’Rrin had staked out, we had stopped to bind Squire up in a nearby cave (much to Dana’s displeasure) and the moons were rising in the sky, giving us enough light to work with.
“I still don’t like it,” Dana grumbled.
“It is a safety measure,” I said evenly. “You, and my tribe, are my highest priorities. I would let nothing happen to
