Despite those changes designed to fool onlookers into thinking she was someone else, I knew her instantly.
I was still frozen in place, drinking in the sight of her, when the bounty hunters closed in.
My mate was no fool, I was glad to see—she immediately ducked through a nearby doorway, confusingly labeled Females, according to my visual translator. I hadn’t realized any form of gender discrimination was still allowed on Earth.
I burst into motion a half-second behind the bounty hunters, who followed her without pausing.
Screams erupted from the Females room, and several human females burst through the open doorway, forcing me to pause or risk mowing them down.
By the time I got inside the strangely elongated space with several small doors to boxed-in spaces, the bounty hunters had surrounded her like a pack of Lorishi canine predators. One of them held her by the arm as she struggled to free herself. He turned to his leader with a lascivious grin and said, “When we get her up to the ship, can we use her?”
That same primal part of me sent a deep growl crawling up my throat. “She’s mine.”
The leader, a red Khanavai male with no battle honors on his traditional vandenoi leather strap, threw his head back and laughed. “We got here first, groom.” The last word came out with a sneer. “You’ll have to wait to claim her on the station. After we claim the prize money.” He turned to the blue male who held her. “And after, as Jole said, we have a little fun.”
I took a threatening step forward, my voice rising. “That’s my mate you’re talking about.”
A mate who had continued to fight against her captor the whole time we were speaking. Good girl, I thought as I nodded at her, hoping she could sense my approval.
“She’s not your mate yet, splavot,” the leader spat out at me, using the most derogatory term he could come up with—one for a mateless male.
A purple haze of rage colored my vision, and I took another step toward them, my weaponless hands curling into claws. “Let me save you from these animals,” I said to Amelia, holding out my hand.
She shrank away from my offer, her eyes wide, terror rolling off her in palpable waves.
Oh, Zagrodnian hells. Right. She had removed her tracker, which also served as a translator. She had no idea what any of us were saying.
I couldn’t imagine she would trust me any more than she would trust any of these monsters—especially since all she’d seen was another Khanavai male barging into this…what? Sacred feminine space? And then I’d growled and thundered. No wonder she was frightened.
Still, a tiny part of me wailed inside at the realization that my mate had not recognized me as instantly as I had recognized her.
Deal with it later, Zont, I admonished myself.
Digging deep into my memory, I pulled out a few words of the dominant Earther language for this zone—something I had learned when I was studying to apply to be stationed on Earth, even though it wasn’t strictly necessary, since universal chipping for humans was a requisite part of the Bride Alliance.
At this moment, I was glad I had taken the time to do the extra work.
I stretched my hand out toward her again, giving it a little bounce. “I save…” I scrambled for the correct pronoun for a human female. “Her. I save her.”
For the first time since I’d entered the Females room, Amelia stopped struggling for a brief moment, her brows creasing in confusion. “What?”
“I save her. I save Amelia.”
“You’ll save me?”
You. That was the pronoun I’d been searching for.
A vague recollection from a class on human body language prompted me to shake my head from side to side as I said, “Yes.”
“Well, which is it? Yes or no?” Amelia redoubled her struggles.
This time I held my head perfectly still. “Yes. I save you.”
By now, the three bounty hunters had drawn their bladed weapons—the Bride Alliance did not allow any other weapons to be brought to Earth—and pointed them at me.
I hadn’t thought Amelia’s eyes could grow any larger, but her realization that the other three Khanavai males were arrayed against me proved me wrong.
I managed to dredge up one more Earther word to shout at Amelia as I sprang into motion, sweeping the legs out from under the blue male who gripped her arm.
“Run!”
My move to free her from her captor’s grasp exposed my right side, leaving it unprotected as I came up and drew my own sword in one smooth motion, and the leader of the group swung at me, hitting my side and sliding his sword along one rib. Pain, bright and sharp, flashed through me.
The third hunter took a jab at me as I spun away from the one who had managed to open up a slice in my side.
Grabbing the wound, I pressed against it, pushing hard in case it was deep. The exhilaration of the fight kept me from feeling the pain of it too much, though. With one booted foot, I smashed the original attacker’s sword hand, crushing his fingers under my heel with a satisfying crunch.
I glanced up at the door long enough to see Amelia Rivers pause to glance back at me worriedly. Then she was gone, and I was left behind fighting the two remaining bounty hunters while the third pulled up to a sitting position and cradled his hand, tears running out of his eyes.
These males were not warriors. They had no sense of how to carry on fighting when injured. As soon as I realized they were amateur fighters, I knew it wouldn’t take me long to beat them.
Then one of the remaining two—the green one, not the red leader—realized that Amelia had disappeared. Without a word, he spun toward the door and raced out, chasing her.
I don’t have time for this.
With that thought, I spun my
