Aehako presses a hand to his chest. “I do not know if my heart is beating fast with excitement or if it is resonance.”
I clap him on the shoulder. “You will know when you see your female’s face. Until then, do not worry.”
“I have longed for a mate all my years,” he says. “Now I cannot stop wondering if it is one of the human females. To think of having a family after so long.” There is an ache in his voice I well understand. Before my Georgie, I felt the same. Now my life feels almost complete.
When she takes the khui and her life is no longer in jeopardy, I will know total contentment.
“When can we look upon them?” he asks.
“Soon,” I tell Aehako. “The humans are scared. This is all new, and we are strange to them. Give them a bit more time to adjust.”
“It is difficult to be patient,” Rokan says. He seems to be calmer than Aehako, but the hands that grip his spear are white-knuckled. “To know that there are mate-able females so close by . . .”
I nod, but my gaze is on the men in the distance. The hunters are returning, and there is haste in their steps. I watch them approach, and when Raahosh arrives at the head of the hunting party, he is out of breath but jubilant. “A sa-kohtsk is near. A large one.”
I nod. “Then we will bring our humans to it in the morning.” My own blood thrums with excitement. The sa-kohtsk are lone wanderers. To find one so close to the human encampment is a sign. I decide it’s time to sit back no longer. Entering the human cave, I ignore the startled looks the new humans send my way and call Georgie to my side.
She comes, all kisses and smiles. I suspect that’s for my benefit as much as the wary humans’。 “Hi,” she says in a cheery voice. She looks tired, though. All of the humans do.
I take her hand in mine to kiss her palm again, and she gives me another tiny sigh of pleasure. I can smell her arousal bloom at my touch, and it’s making my khui hum in my chest. But I cannot take her tonight. She needs her rest. “Tomorrow, we leave here.”
“To go to your caves?”
“To go hunt the sa-kohtsk. We seek khui for you and the women.”
She flinches a little but nods. “If we must, we must.”
“We need more time,” the mouthy one called Liz says. She looks weaker than the rest, thin and wan. But she’s got a stubborn set to her flat mouth. “Not all of us are sold on the idea.” She puts an arm around a new human’s shoulders, and the woman trembles and leans into Liz’s caress.
“You may not have much more time,” I begin, but I’m interrupted by a high pitched whine. In the background, Kira claps a hand to her ear and collapses. Georgie claps a hand to her own arm, wincing.
“What? What is that?” I ask.
Her mouth opens in pain, and she pulls her hand away from her arm even as the whine dies down. There’s a light blinking in her arm, just under the skin, an angry, glaring red.
“The aliens are coming back,” she tells me. “We need to leave.”
GEORGIE
We’re a sad, sad little party as we set out from the cargo bay a short time later. The new girls are weeping and confused. They want more furs than we have to go around. They want better shoes. They’re hungry, cold, and tired. Maybe it’s exhaustion, but I’m frustrated with them because we’re doing the best we can and they just keep crying. I know this is new and scary for them, but I find myself wishing they’d catch up and get with the program already.
The women also want to avoid the men, who are giving them longing looks. Someone keeps purring, though no one will step up and admit things. It’s probably for the best, because I’m guessing that the girls can’t handle the thought of taking on an alien boyfriend right now. Not with everything else going on.
My upper arm throbs. It’s freshly bandaged, but it still stings like the dickens. Once the sensors went off, we set into action, readying to leave the camp. Before we did, though, we had to take care of matters. If the sensors were trackers, we had to get rid of them, and fast.
Out came the knives, and five minutes—and a lot of tears—later, the trackers had been removed. Pashov had been sent to dump them into the nearest metlak cave. Let the little green men take them if they want captives.
Now, the rest of us trudge through the snowy dusk, except for Josie, who is carried by a big male called Haeden. We’re trying to ignore the bitter cold, in search of something Vektal called a sa-kohtsk. It would have the khui we needed, and it, he told me, would save us.