Fragile Bond Read online

  This alien represented the first successful subduing short of lethal injury. Hamm wondered if it were male or female. Its voice had a soft, genteel quality, which made him suspect it was female. His nose told him a different story, the pheromones conflicting.

  Maybe it wasn’t male or female. Maybe none of the aliens were.

  Hamm rubbed at his jaw where it had slammed the weapon into his face. A dull ache, more annoying than painful. He sniffed his hand, then, and growled. Its scent was all over him. There was something tangy in the thing’s musk. Reminded him of ’nip. Maybe the alien had trod through a patch of the stuff somewhere. But still, it irritated him that he wanted to bury his face in the thing’s strange pelt and inhale. He should not be having that kind of reaction. He didn’t want to.

  Had none of the others considered implementing pheromones? Not that he’d done it consciously; the thought hadn’t occurred to him. It was a weapon restricted to dominance displays. For position, hierarchy disputes, and heated domestic squabbles. Not deadly combat. His chemistry had shifted to match the alien’s strong scent all on its own. That disturbed him a great deal.

  As though he weren’t disturbed enough. The thing had just slaughtered his entire squad back there. He’d watched, unable to stop it from killing Erri and Kail. Not close enough.

  The hiss of the weapon. The foreign odor burning his nose. The sun-warmed rocks beneath his fingers as he’d flexed his claws, testing his balance and grip as he coiled to pounce. He’d been too slow, too late. Picked off one by one by this tiny excuse for a warrior and its death stick.

  His vision tripped over into thermal. Hunt, kill. The world around him became a landscape of blues and greens, his prisoner a bright beacon of reds and yellows that pulsed and shifted. He flexed his hands, claws unsheathing to their full length, lips curling back to expose his fangs.

  He wanted blood. But more than that, he wanted answers. A submissive thing like this, prone to grinding against its death stick instead of firing it, he could work with that. He wouldn’t assume the alien lacked a vicious streak. That would be a mistake. No, he was counting on that warrior belligerence resurfacing. The alien’s resistance would give him a little of what he needed—a fight, some kind of struggle, a reason to vent.

  He clamped a hand on the prisoner’s shoulder, claws snagging on the material and straps. His own lack of forward movement was enough to make it jerk to a halt and spin around so suddenly that there was no opportunity for resistance before Hamm got a good grip on the weapon.

  The alien made a sound resembling a kit’s attempt at a snarl—high-pitched, gargled, throaty and all wrong—as it tried to pull back. Hamm tightened his grip on prisoner and weapon, weighing the odds on which would explode first as he created distance between them with steady, implacable force. He wasn’t deliberately looking to inflict injury. Just yet.

  Without warning, the thing moved toward him. Into, instead of away from, the pressure. It vented a string of unintelligible, harsh language as the thicker length along the dangerous end of the weapon pressed into Hamm, digging into the tender flesh where thigh met groin.

  He knew what this innocuous cylinder of metal could do. It didn’t take much effort to force the weapon toward a harmless target. And then, while the alien made hilarious, futile attempts to extricate the death stick from his grip, Hamm took a deep breath.

  It gave him a tasty mouthful of the thing’s still-thick, ’nip-tainted pheromones. Oh. Hamm couldn’t resist the urge to inhale again, more deeply, felt the triggers tripping as his body immediately responded in kind. He hated that it felt so good, yet at the same time he was counting on that breakdown of his own self-control. The alien had demonstrated a consistent vulnerability. Hamm intended to make good use of it.

  Who’s the alpha now, you scrawny little thing.

  Had another furr witnessed this, his lack of self-control would’ve weakened his position irrevocably. Thankfully, they were all back at headquarters, waiting for him and his squad to return.

  His squad.

  Anger flared up again; sight that had been fading back into normal ranges shifted back toward thermal. Hamm inhaled again, gaping his mouth to encourage the scent response in his own pheromones. Even a weakness could be a weapon if used the right way.

  He growled, a sound so low it was more chest vibration than audible noise. His mane hackled, hair standing on end all along the length of his spine groove. Arousal swamped him hard and fast, happily coexisting with his other emotions. His pheromones released so quickly the oily musk clung heavy to his skin and weighed his mane down like a drenching from a sudden winter cloudburst.

  Sure enough, within seconds the alien’s eyes glazed and it swayed, all resistance diffusing.

  Hamm tightened his grip on the death stick and gave a none-too-gentle tug.

  The warrior still didn’t let go. As though physically attached to the weapon, it moved forward. Stumbled forward, really, to check its momentum against Hamm’s body, the weapon trapped between them. Hamm encircled its shoulders with his arm and tried again. Determined to separate soldier from weapon. Not willing to risk any more furrs to its prowess.

  He had to consciously count the number of shafts he could feel between himself and the alien. Either the alien had another weapon, which wasn’t entirely impossible, or it was a male. A very generously endowed male, considering its relative stature.

  The ragged rise and fall of the male’s chest pushed against his arm, each breath a warm puff of moist air ruffling the edge of his mane where it tapered over his pectoral, and the sensitive hairs hackled to attention at the stimulation. The sensation made him shudder, and the desire to purr felt like a stone trapped in his throat. A very large stone. Obviously it had been much too long since he’d indulged in some recreational rutting.

  Marc resisted the tawny’s constricting embrace but couldn’t find a fraction of play no matter how he struggled. He desperately needed to escape.

  Escape the heat radiating from the alien’s form.

  The thick taste of soil coating his tongue with every breath.

  The tingling sensation pooling in his gut, the pulse pounding in his cock, his erection pressing along Mat’s length with every twitch.

  The heavy length of alloy, trapped between them almost deliberately.

  He couldn’t think through the surge of arousal that strengthened with each inhale. The tawny’s scent was maddening in a way he didn’t understand. Weakness in his legs, his muscles rubbery. Only his groin retained any tension, and the painful edge of sensation made him moan, rotate his hips in search of counterpressure.

  The barrel offered a modicum of relief.

  Anything to think straight for a second. A half second, even. More than enough to squeeze the trigger.

  The mantle of coarse shaggy hair tickled his cheek and jaw as he struggled, sent a tingle prickling over his skin.

  Sound rumbled from deep in the tawny’s chest. He could feel it, the vibration traveling into his arm, shoulder, chest, down through his body. Resonating with the hum of arousal, heightening it further. Marc shifted his hand from the barrel to the hairless expanse of toned stomach.

  His eyes slid half shut, the world blurring. All his brainpower focused on the relief from the rifle’s pressure against his cock. Anchor, grounding. He rolled his hips forward again and groaned at the diffusion of sensation as a wave of almost-orgasm flooded through his entire body.

  Another rumble of sound, this time with an edge, as though to communicate a message Marc wasn’t receiving. The tawny’s grip persisted, implacable, and Marc’s body overrode the disarray in his mind. He relaxed into the tawny’s solid warmth and let the scent of musk drown his senses as the larger body enveloped him.

  Sun-heated silken fur and sweat-slick, warm skin beneath his palm and fingertips. Marc could taste the sweat and skin on each breath, entrancing and intoxicating.

  It was too much, the press of the weapon against his cock. The thick, pervasive scent. The tawny m
oved its hips in rhythm with his and Marc took it for encouragement. He had no idea what was going on. Knew nothing beyond the arousal, built up so far there was no diffusing it short of orgasm.

  The musk became so heavy it was the flavor of soil on his tongue and lips. Like the earth found deep in the heart of some untouched wilderness. He’d rarely encountered those types of places, that scent, but fuck if it didn’t push him over the edge into one of the most intense orgasms he’d ever had. Every muscle in his body tensing, ramrod stiff in the creature’s embrace, as wave after wave of pleasure flooded along his nerve endings until finally, gasping raggedly, he came. Hard. Head falling back, spiking climax, he screamed in relief.

  In the aftermath of that intensity, he couldn’t move. He let his body struggle to breathe, closed his eyes against the blurry world that took too much effort to focus on.

  That had felt too good to fight away.

  His body jostled; Mat’s strap slid down his arm. Judging from the form of shifting muscle and bone that pushed into his stomach shortly thereafter, the tawny had slung him over his shoulder.

  Marc opened his eyes a fraction, blinked a few times. His brain’s reboot sequence felt like slogging through a knee-deep swamp the consistency of half-cooled porridge, but he determined two things immediately:

  Mat was a prisoner as well. The tawny’s fingers wrapped around the stock and hefted the weapon with obvious ease. Marc felt a surge of gratitude that Mat hadn’t been destroyed and left as twisted scrap somewhere. His captor wouldn’t have any difficulty doing that, judging by the large hands and heavily muscled arms.

  The other thing—if the blood hadn’t already been rushing to his face thanks to his inverted position, Marc figured he’d be blushing furiously. Nothing quite like shooting at a target to make a first impression . . . except shooting on the target.

  The inside of his leg was warm and wet. Soaked would be more accurate. If he’d not experienced the last few minutes, he’d have sworn he’d pissed himself. He was probably really lucky that the tawny hadn’t ripped his throat out and left him dead in the valley back there. As embarrassing as the prospect sounded, he’d settle for having offered a measure of amusement or entertainment, if it kept him alive.

  Marc went limp in the male’s grip. “How the fuck do I get myself into situations like this?”

  Granted, he’d never been in one this bad.

  The male rumbled something in cadence again. He wished like fuck he had some idea of what the tawny had said. It wasn’t threatening, judging from the way the male butted his head against Marc’s hipbone, rubbed his face there, and inhaled.

  “Enjoyed that, did you?” A chill running along Marc’s spine made him shiver. “In that case, I’m just royally fucked.” He grumbled and glared at his rifle.

  “Any other forward scout would have their ass handed to them and book it back to the battalion. But no, Mat, not us. That’s too simple. We find the one random predator on this arse of a planet that decides we’ll make an interesting plaything. Toy with your food much, tawny?”

  The alien eyed him strangely when he started laughing, but he couldn’t stop.

  Soma, mother of soil and life, preserve him. If he’d thought the male’s scent was strong before, it bordered on irresistible now. Hamm knew the urge to lick its skin was borne of arousal and his own pent-up frustrations. He had nobody to blame for that but himself. Not even his prisoner. Never mind that the male reeked of ’nip like he’d bathed in the stuff.

  Carrying his now-pliant prisoner back to the base camp reminded him of hauling a load of ’nip back to the kitchens as a kit-pup. After a long day of forest harvesting, the temptation to stop and taste—or gorge—was oftentimes too much to resist.

  Hamm’s stride faltered more than once. He eased the urge with a few long, deep breaths, burying his face in the alien’s flank. Those overtly forward invasions of personal space garnered a string of cryptic speech, and Hamm hoped their linguistics sergeant had been successful with her deciphering efforts.

  Before leaving on this risky foray, he’d tasked Sergeant Dehna with working out a translation. Tackling such a feat had required a number of very costly forays of its own with sound-capture and mimic devices. She’d assured him the scouts had gathered enough samples to begin constructing the proper subroutines. If anyone possessed the linguistic prowess to do it, it was Dehna.

  Hamm couldn’t understand the strange, melodic language, but he could translate tone easily enough. Emotion seemed to be a constant. And the creature’s oddity reminded him of the way the eastern furr tribes spoke. Not the high-pitched chitter-twirps of the feathers, thankfully—he couldn’t stand to be around them for any length of time, it made his head pound—but the small alien definitely lacked the rumbles and growls, the deep-chest register, that Hamm’s fefa dialect employed.

  His prisoner fell quiet and still for a good while, though. It irritated him to think he might have damaged their best chance at making some headway against these invaders.

  “I do hope you aren’t dead or comatose. I’ve questions I want answers to.” That was the reason for taking him alive, going through all the calculated effort of baiting the sniper into shooting, and tracking down its roost. It would’ve been much simpler, and so much more gratifying, to dispatch the alien when he’d finally sniffed him down. It’s what they’d done with the others in the valley as they’d pushed toward the pass. They’d been a breeze to locate, literally and figuratively. Their scents stood out, easily distinguished. But not this one. If it hadn’t been so difficult to determine the warrior’s perch, some of his team might still be alive.

  This warrior had taken out ten members of the best squad Hamm had ever assembled, half of them veterans of skirmishes against the aliens. Such a waste, not an equal trade. No matter how he weighed it.

  Those thoughts, the flashes of memory still fresh in his mind, were enough to trip his vision back into thermal and kill any inappropriate mood. The world around him became a landscape of shades of gray, sun-heated boulders glowing with faint blue-gold hues. It also staved off the euphoric effect of the ’nip scent saturating the prisoner. By the time he’d worked his way down into the next valley, he only felt a dull aching throb, easily ignored. He’d had splinters that hurt worse. He took his time, choosing an indirect route back to the headquarters location just so he could get his temper, his emotions, and the polarity of his reactions under some control.

  And then he felt the inexplicable urge to tilt his head and take another sniff.

  He’d give a couple locks of his mane to know what in Soma’s name the alien was doing to him. It was like any trace of restraint he’d possessed had dissolved away.

  The breeze coming off the southern ridgeline dissipated its scent some. The robust aroma of the older trees on the valley floor helped as well. He needed to have a clear head going back into headquarters.

  Halfway up the south face of the valley’s northern ridgeline, Hamm heard the growl-warning of the scout on guard. A little closer to the grotto’s entrance than he cared for, but the unusually low register of the challenge gave him pause.

  The male, who’d been content to dangle limply until now, tensed. Hamm felt as though he had a tree trunk balanced on his shoulder. He rumbled a soft sound and chafed his cheek against the harsh rasp of cloth. Communicating through the language barrier wasn’t as difficult as he’d expected. At least not when the male listened. Hamm’s efforts to reassure him that he wasn’t being thrown into the center of a free-for-all made the male relax a fraction, although he held his head up and looked around.

  Hamm couldn’t guarantee the alien wouldn’t come to harm. In fact, if the warrior became uncooperative during his attempts to extract information, it would deteriorate into a bloody mess. And though Hamm would feel a twinge of regret, he’d do it. The awareness that he would experience regret brought him up short. The alien fascinated him, sure. This went beyond that, though. He didn’t understand the shift in his emotional response
enough to identify what had changed.

  It wouldn’t stop him from doing his duty, though. He wouldn’t let it.

  While the edge of rage and anger, of loss and pain, still lingered, it didn’t feel as unbearably sharp or vicious as it had earlier. More like something he could survive with his sanity, his self-respect, intact.

  “It’s Commander Hamm. Stand down.” Though he didn’t continue his approach, he called out in a matching register so the young greenhorn scout wouldn’t feel at liberty to challenge further.

  A few moments of silence. A faint chuffing sound. The guard emerged from behind the generous girth of a tree with an easy, open smile, an expression of relief, until the rest of the squad’s absence registered. “Commander? What happened?”

  “I will not debrief in the middle of the woods, private. As you were.”

  She ducked her chin in salute and gave a precisely measured bow, then retreated out of sight. Hopefully back to watching the surrounding woodlands, and not staring at the burden on Hamm’s shoulder. There was no hiding the nature of his prisoner.

  Private Ardena was only one of many who thought nothing could be gained from communication unless it involved lethal strokes at one’s adversary. She wasn’t the only one to attempt a confrontation with him, either, just the first of many.

  The fear for his prisoner’s safety was a very real one, the subliminal threats no less dangerous, so he didn’t hesitate to head straight for where they’d have the most privacy. Only the deep respect of his subordinates got him—and his prisoner—through to the more secure area where his office and quarters were, with only a bit of pheromone molestation and a couple scathing glances. His fellow furrs trusted him to keep their best interests at heart, and he wouldn’t betray that. Some of them had seen too much in the past months. He couldn’t trust they would react rationally to the scent and sight of the enemy.