Fragile Bond Read online

  Halfway across the room to the corner where he intended to stash his prisoner, a flash of honey amber mane on an intruding furr caught him unprepared. He flinched so hard into a crouch, every muscle tensing as he braced for attack, that the male draped over his shoulder grunted. The sound wasn’t a happy one. Reccin, his second-in-command, immediately backed up and lowered his gaze. He rumbled an apology as he rolled his shoulders and turned away just enough that he wasn’t presenting head-on.

  “Hamm, where in the—”

  He cut him off with a sharp, deep-register bark that didn’t nearly resemble anything civilized. “Find me Dehna. Bring her. It’s urgent.”

  Reccin blanked his face and nodded before darting off down the hall.

  Hamm eased the male off his shoulder onto the packed soil floor. He used the same gentle caution he would with an injured peer, struck with a twinge of concern that he might inadvertently inflict some kind of harm.

  Utter nonsense. The alien hadn’t been harmed to begin with, and they had yet to find anything that could penetrate their armor-plating. Except pheromones.

  The male pushed up onto his elbows. He spared a longing glance at his weapon in Hamm’s grip, then stared at him, but made no effort to move. Hamm crouched beside him and studied the soldier’s form, not sure if he was trying to ascertain if there were any wounds, or if, as he inhaled again deeply, his curiosity was more physical. He wondered what the long limbs and fragile, lean body would look like stripped of the bulky protection. He’d gotten an idea, a vague impression, when the male had stopped fighting and pushed against him instead. Quite an experience, watching him writhe in pleasure.

  He couldn’t recall having seen something so erotic before.

  The problem was, he shouldn’t. Shouldn’t have enjoyed it quite as much as he did, the sensation of the male shuddering with orgasm, the wet heat and intoxicating musk-scent of his cum. Shouldn’t have enjoyed feeling it running down the male’s leg, only the impenetrable material of the strange pelt keeping it from marking his skin as well.

  This alien was the enemy. More importantly, this enemy was an alien. This was just wrong, wasn’t it? The male didn’t behave in a fashion resembling anything familiar. Mannerisms, language, and the distinct lack of visible hair short-circuited whatever objections Hamm might’ve employed under any other circumstances. As leader, he couldn’t engage in an intimate relationship with another furr or acknowledge a potential mate; to do so would compromise his lack of bias in the eyes of the clans. The soldier, though, was quite definitely not a furr. Not even if he squinted.

  “No.” He growled it in hopes that hearing it would help drive the point home. “He killed your squad. His clan dropped in without so much as a by-your-leave and systematically obliterated an entire village. There is no way to justify being aroused by a hostile alien.”

  He watched the male watching him. Despite the edge of wariness in the tense lines of his body, his eyes were steady, his expression open. Just thinking about it caused his pheromones to swamp the air again. His skin tingled, fine hairs hackling up, as blood flushed back toward his groin.

  Hamm growled in frustration and carded fingers into his mane, unsheathing claws to rake against his scalp. Sensory distraction, stimulating his own erogenous zone.

  “Soma save us all, Commander. As you lead us, turn that off.”

  Sergeant Dehna’s request sent his mane into full bristle. He twisted, leaning to shield his prisoner as he bared fangs and rumbled a deep-chested growl of warning. None of which had any place here. Not that he’d given it even a moment’s thought. The linguist was likely just objecting to the scent in the room in general, but she wasn’t so obtuse as to not know what she smelled. She’d likely known halfway down the hall.

  “Interesting.” Chief Reccin leaned in to peer over the sergeant’s shoulder. His voice lacked inflection, unlike his expression. He didn’t snuffle—he was too discreet for that—but his nostrils flared. Reccin jutted his jaw toward Hamm as he addressed Dehna. “Though I doubt it’s your concern, linguist.”

  “Never smelled anything quite like it. Very potent.” The linguist coughed, clearing her lungs and nose, and Hamm knew she was struggling to be polite. In her own sarcastic way.

  Hamm cleared his throat but didn’t bother shifting his position or lowering his guard. Too proud, on the one hand, to risk it seeming as though he were in any way ashamed of his instinctive response. And on the other . . . it appeared more and more a wise move with each passing moment. “The chief has a point, Sergeant. It isn’t why I asked you here. And as it isn’t affecting you, you can deal with the stench or borrow a plug for your nose. In the meantime, I need you to program a translator subroutine.”

  “With what? For whom?”

  “For him.” He shifted back a fraction, enough to let her see it wasn’t a furr on the ground behind him. “I imagine it won’t take more than a few recording samples to refine the subroutine for a bio-processor?”

  “The question isn’t a matter of my ability, Commander, but this alien’s compatibility. I have the subroutines all but complete.” When he just stared at her, she hurriedly continued. “I’ve no idea whether a bio-processor will interface successfully.”

  The various furr clans interfaced with the devices just fine. Even some of the far-flung feather clans used them successfully. But this male hailed from another planet. Soma only knew how the bio-processor would respond to such unfamiliar genetic makeup and chemistry.

  The soldier inhaled, swaying toward him as though unaware of his reaction to Hamm’s pheromones. He moaned softly, hummed, and the next breath Hamm took was thick with the scent of its arousal. Again.

  It made him light-headed, made his skin tingle and his blood rush south.

  “If my pheromones can interface with this male, I see no reason why the bio-processor wouldn’t be able to.” He put a hand on the smaller male’s shoulder to steady his swaying before the soldier fell sideways into him. When he looked up at Sergeant Dehna, she furrowed her brow and bared a fang with a twisted curl of her lip.

  “You call that interfacing? It smells like you floundered through a patch of stinkweed. How do you stand it?”

  “More importantly, how did you even manage a successful interface?” Reccin gave her a concerned glance before focusing on Hamm. “It must’ve taken a great deal of effort.”

  Hamm took another deep lungful of the soldier’s persistent musk. To him, it resembled ’nip. That Dehna said otherwise gave him pause. He wasn’t about to tell them the truth, that it had happened subconsciously the moment he’d tracked close enough to catch a whiff. Just . . . no. He was in no way ready for the shitstorm of issues that would fling everywhere.

  “I think that’s intel I’ll keep to myself for the time being.” A nonanswer would suffice. For now. Until he’d had a chance to drill the male and get some answers of his own. “You claimed they fought dishonorably when they killed your mate.” Dehna’s hackles rose, and he raised his free hand to stay her. “I witnessed nothing dishonorable in his method or technique.”

  “Didn’t you.” She still hackled, eyes narrowed, not entirely in control.

  “No.”

  “How many did he kill?” Reccin’s curiosity was thick.

  “Or was he the one in back, with all the squawk boxes? The scouting party said there was an entire battalion headed this way. Are they still coming?” Dehna glanced toward the corridor as she asked her final question, and every inch of her looked ready to wield fang and claw against the invading force.

  “You think I would return unsuccessful?” Doubt from one who’d accused him of doubting presented an interesting play of forces, but more than that, Dehna’s tone led Hamm to suspect she wasn’t coping with her losses in the healthiest manner. He’d have to mention it to Reccin later—though as her littermate, he was most likely already aware. “The team and I took out half the battalion before they turned back.”

  “Where are the others?” Reccin posed the quest
ion in a soft voice, crouching down to his level near the captive soldier’s heavily shod feet.

  “With Soma.” His voice felt rough and sounded lower than usual. The squad had known that patrol was likely a suicide mission. They’d discussed it in detail. He still felt his chest constrict, painfully tight with grief. He’d almost managed to bring them all back alive and hale. He was their commander, they were his responsibility. They should have come back. He growled and pushed the emotions away until he had the privacy to engage them fully.

  “This soldier took out the entire team, one at a time.” Hamm shifted his gaze to the sergeant. “There is nothing dishonorable in using stealth and knowledge of surroundings, terrain, and adversary to your advantage. We use the same techniques as often as we can.”

  Though Reccin’s grunt of surprise disturbed him, nothing could have prepared him for Dehna’s reaction as her gaze slipped toward the prisoner, her stance shifting from passive tension into hostile intent. Her hands flexed, claws dropping down, balance shifted, weight on the balls of her feet.

  Any moment now she’d launch herself, and his pristine office, this bastion of solitude and peace—albeit a very tiny one—would be bathed in blood. Unless he did something.

  Right now.

  He was so screwed. He desperately wanted the reassurance of Mat in his hands, the weight of the rifle dragging at his arms and shoulders, the solid steel indifferent to his grip. The luring pliant sensation of the trigger begging for a squeeze. The lack made his hands twitch; his muscles felt strange. He felt incomplete, amputated.

  It would’ve been humane, more civilized, for this large male to kill him instead of taking him captive. Was that what had happened to the rest of Sierra-Red? Marc pushed away thoughts of his squad mates, all fellow sniper scouts. He couldn’t afford the distraction; they were alive out there, retreating back to the battalion. He glanced between the three tawnies, aware of his very poor strategic spot.

  One resembled his captor, sporting a shaggier, slightly darker mane, a shade of rich caramel. In comparison, the other had little mane to speak of, almost black, shorter and thinner. Closer to a human, in fact, in terms of build and height. Svelte, but no less intimidating or less dangerous.

  Different subspecies, or different gender? He had no idea.

  Its body language shifted, the hair bristling up to stand on end.

  Through the sparser mane, he could see the cording tendons in the neck, pulse hammering madly, shoulders and arms and chest distended with strain.

  Mat was within reach, but locked in the large male’s grip. And with those vicious claws fully extended, Marc had as much a chance of regaining his rifle as he did of being served tea and crumpets in the next few minutes. That tawny was in a full rage and a breath from launching at him. No way could he defend against a direct attack, even if he pulled his knife. One blade against ten. Close quarters combat would end in the tawny’s favor, swiftly. He needed Mat.

  He drew his legs in and shifted his weight, heels digging into the packed soil, ready to move, just as the other male stepped in and restrained the raging tawny. Marc waited, coiled and tense, listening to a murmured litany of growls. The male leaned in just enough to counter any advance, muscles cording in his arms.

  The angry one curled its lips, baring the tips of its wicked-looking teeth. The expression degenerated into a gape-jawed, snarling hiss, something happening to the eyes—they shifted, refracting eyeshine in a strange hue of turquoise.

  His captor growled, equal measures threat and warning. A heartbeat too late, it registered that the tawny had directed the noise at him. The male grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and pulled him close. Marc found his face all but smothered against his chest. Muscle shifted beneath the feathered dusting of hair, chafing his face. The tawny held him, as immobile as a trigger with the safety on.

  Diverting his gaze? Its response to a challenge seemed rather intense, if that’s what it assumed his attentive observation was. Okay, yeah, he’d been staring. But shit, up until this he’d assumed the predators picking off forward scouts and leading battalions were just that. Predators, native creatures looking for some easy meat in a vitriolic ecosystem.

  Even the behavior patterns he’d seen thus far reinforced that. Something primal had twanged in his captor’s behavior earlier, when the other two had appeared in the doorway. Talk about nonverbal communication. He’d recognized that pattern—a predator defending his kill from scavengers. A display intended to intimidate in the face of challenge.

  He tried to hold his breath against the swamping scent of musk and soil coming from the tawny. That didn’t work. Tried breathing through his mouth, shallow sips of air. He would not lose himself in another cloud of arousal. He had to get away from the pheromones.

  No way would he just disregard his safety for the urge to rub one out. He wasn’t completely certain what had happened earlier. Never got so turned on he lost his head and couldn’t squeeze the trigger when he needed to.

  If he lost himself again, he might not be so lucky. Obviously not every tawny was as receptive and indulgent as his captor. And wasn’t that baffling as all fuck.

  Why had this particular tawny decided to indulge him? When chewing his head off at the shoulders was obviously the better solution?

  A sneaking suspicion formed in the corner of his mind. It whispered that these indigenous predators were a sapient race. So he’d been staring, yeah. Intently. And now that he thought about it, he hoped this spat was only a misunderstanding. He knew nothing of these indigenes or their nature or culture, so he hoped that’s all this was. He’d stared at his captor with similar intensity and it hadn’t had an ounce of effect. At least, not like that.

  “Please, don’t let me have killed a sibling or lover or child or something. Oh shit, fuck me running.” He focused on the sound of his own voice, the quality of it, instead of the damp-dark soil scent trying to crawl into his brain. His hands shook, fingers scrabbling against the dirt floor as he tried to escape, disengage, push away. He put his legs into it, coiling his feet beneath him and flexing with every ounce of energy he could muster.

  The alien’s grip proved unbreakable. The tawny didn’t even need to flex a muscle to keep him pinned. Just rumbled something, the vibration of sound resonating through Marc. Soothing away his panic within moments, easing the strain in his mind to a level less likely to create fissures in his mental state.

  Language required structure. Structure meant intellect, reason. The pieces shifted around and slid into place, registering with the impact of a well-placed glider round. It blasted through every assumption he’d made and every piece of intel he’d received.

  He’d never killed anything but animals before. Some unusual predators in Mat’s scope over the years, but never any sapient creatures. Every single shot he’d taken this afternoon began playing through his mind. In slow motion, from first moment in the scope to the flare of pink mist.

  “Oh gods help me, I didn’t know.” He closed his eyes and tried to think of something else, anything else. Those damned stupid-looking fuchsia rodents on that one planet. With curly fur, huge floppy ears, and fangs—the squads had nicknamed them vampire bunnies. They’d found the name had unexpected accuracy while they’d scrambled to take shots at the things. Persistent buggers. Especially with those wings. How’d he forgotten the wings? Freaky leathery-black appendages that snapped in the air. Not large enough to carry the vicious bloodsuckers very far, just enough to be annoying. And jump frighteningly high.

  Silence. The grip relaxed on his shoulder, but didn’t withdraw. Seeing as how the tawny was holding him captive, that touch shouldn’t feel reassuring. But it did.

  Marc risked a glance at the rest of the room, only to discover the angry tawny still present. He could see the tension still. Feel it. The black-maned one glanced at him. Its gaze flicked over his form, swift, dismissive, and impatient. It aimed a throaty snarl at his captor. The tawny’s large hand, strangely human if he ignored the sheer s
ize of palm and fingers, slid up Marc’s neck to cradle his head and turn Marc’s attention back to him.

  The single thing that most baffled the hardened soldier in Marc was the gentle touch in that hand. A light, almost-caress from the callused, warm hands of a male who had, not moments before, held him in a viselike grip.

  “Why the sudden change, buddy?” Marc knew the tawny couldn’t understand the words, but he wasn’t about to discount the ability to translate tone. “Worried you’ll break me?”

  The tawny growled as though reprimanding him, but the moment Marc dared lift his head and met the male’s gaze, the harshness gave way to something else. A crooning purr. Encouragement, perhaps? His irises were a fascinating blend of amber and molasses, with veins of gold bleeding through. No hostility in his features.

  “Probably wondering how the fuck I managed to kill so many of your buddies, aren’t you?”

  The tawny furrowed his brows.

  “Because I’ve acted like a completely brainless idiot around you, I mean.”

  He rumbled, but it sounded noncommittal to Marc.

  “What did you do to me? And how do you do it, for that matter? These two here don’t do it, never seen any other of your sort do it either.”

  Not that the tawny could answer any of his questions. He might as well be addressing them to the wall for all the good it did. Marc could spill every military secret he was privy to at this point, and it wouldn’t matter a whit.

  Which made him wonder why the tawny had bothered sparing him. Why he’d hauled him back here in the first place. It wasn’t like they could torture him for intel.

  The tawny rapped him on the chest with his knuckles, hand heavy against the Kevlar vest. He chuffed once, a curt sound. Marc looked back at him, raised a brow in question. It took some effort to suppress his instinctive response. He wanted to slap the tawny’s hand away and roll into a defensive crouch. To regain possession of Mat, now lying on the floor on the far side of his captor’s leg. At least the male hadn’t tossed the rifle around like so much worthless junk. A sure sign of higher intellect. And he knew to keep it out of Marc’s immediate reach. Definitely wasn’t stupid.