“Agreed.” Ryker was in full second-in-command mode. “You go, move as fast as you need to. Drop markers along the way so the team can follow. They’ll be two steps behind. I need to report what’s happened to the commander and deal with our flesh-and-blood ghost situation before he becomes more of a problem. If you find out more about this potential threat, send someone back. If not…” he shrugged. “Whether you find her in time or not, you’ll need the full extraction team to get the missing females out. This situation can’t be handled alone.”
He hated to admit it, but Ryker was right. “Makes sense.”
He’d make damn sure, though, that he found Nayla first.
“She better not have ruined everything,” snarled Malin. “If she has, I don’t care what kind of hard-on you’ve got for her, she’s going down.”
He shoved past the other male.
Stay safe, Nayla. I’m coming for you.
Skin and tendon gave under the snap of the sluglike walrhinot’s jaw.
Agony ripped through Nayla’s calf. She stifled the scream, forcing herself to remain limp. Playing dead was the only option with walrhinots in heat.
Dissatisfied and aggressive, the beast shook her leg once more. The back of her head banged against the rocks, and sharp edges scraped her spine.
Determination roared through her.
She would not die. Her captor might have broken her down, but he’d also shown her she was stronger than she’d realized.
She could still choose to make a difference.
She could still fix what she had done.
She would develop a new goal to sustain her. A worthy goal.
Trading with the bad Others had been a mistake. Taking the females as slaves an even worse one.
She had created an escalating confrontation that would only end in bloodshed if she did nothing to change it.
She could not allow that to happen. The pack was mostly hardworking, frightened people confronting starvation and the end of their old way of life, looking for a way to save themselves and their children, following a leader who told them he had the solution. And Grif…well, he was not the terrible savage she’d once believed, either.
None of them deserved to die because of her mistake or Talg’s bitterness.
So, a new plan was forming. She would return to pack land and sneak into the encampment where she had left the missing females, She would free them, leading them to safe territory where they would be easily found by Grif and the Others.
She would end the confrontation she had set in motion, erasing Grif’s main justification for war. She would save her people and prove her worth—to herself.
It was a new goal. A better goal. Honest. Unburdened by secret longings that could never be.
Perhaps the Ancients had known what they were doing when they put her in her captor’s path, after all.
Her fingers inched toward the nearest rock.
With a chittering set of outraged squeaks, the creature shook her harder. Its six large silver eyes, each one as big as four of her hands, blinked in unison as it released her ankle—and lunged for her throat.
Surging upward, she swung her weapon toward its closest eye.
Where are you, wild thing?
Grif peered from beneath the overhang, surveying the empty stretch of barren, desertlike land spread out in front of him. Nothing but caked sand, cracked crimson mud, and the occasional bit of scrub brush as far as the eye could see.
The suns dip below the horizon, setting the sky aflame with vibrant purple, orange, and pink hues. It was beautiful, but he really didn’t give a shit.
For three rotations, he’d tracked Nayla. For three rotations, she’d eluded him.
He’d always suspected she was clever and resourceful, but she’d exceeded his expectations.
Meanwhile, his worry grew.
When he’d found dried blood splattered on the rocks near the base of the cliff and followed it back to a torn piece of one of his old shirts stuck on a jagged rock, he’d wanted to sink to his knees and cry like a fucking baby. The proof that she really had made it out of that tunnel rocking him to his core.
The few footprints he’d found since indicated she was limping, but he had no idea the extent of her injury. Still, it hadn’t slowed her down too much. She’d managed to stay one step ahead all this time.
Except she was still out there, unprotected, on her own, and it was killing him.
He’d tracked her, then lost her again—he suspected she’d slipped back into one of those water tunnel networks—then found her trail on land in a whole different section, suggesting that the underground networks she was using were not continuous.
If he had any chance of catching her, it would be before she slipped back underground. He needed to do so soon.
The rest of the hunting party was only a little of the way behind.
He scoured the darkening landscape, the urgent need to find her clawing at him, a brutal beast that shredded his insides and gave him no rest.
He sensed she was close.
But not close enough.
On a slow, deep inhale, he wrestled his feelings back under control.
Once he found her, he’d make things right.
As long as one of his crew or some other danger didn’t find her first.
25
Hands planted on her thighs, Nayla leaned over and sucked down a long, slow breath, debating whether she had it in her to keep going or find a hideout for the night.
The back of her neck prickled. Just as it had for these past rotations.
Someone was on her trail. Likely Grif.
Gathering her energy, she crept forward, scanning her surroundings. She’d long ago passed the jagged cliffs and entered the terrain with flatter rolling sand hills. The open expanses made it easier to spot predators, but also harder for her to hide. Right now, though, with the moons covered by dust clouds, everything was in shadow.
Still, she didn’t like traveling above ground. But the underground currents only carried her so far before they disappeared where even her kind could not follow. When that happened, the best bet was to return to the surface and head to the next access point. She was only a rotation or two’s walk from the next water tunnel entrance now.
Lips pressed flat with resolve, she hobbled on. Her injured calf, while better after repeated treatment from the taldish paste she’d made from plants found along the way, still stung with each footfall.
No matter. She would endure.
“Look what we’ve got here.” A dark form separated from the hillside. Flat, gray eyes glittered in the moons’ lights. A necklace of finger bones jangled from around the big male’s throat.
Icy fear slid down her spine. She’d thought she’d sensed Grif close at hand. She’d been wrong.
This was an altogether different kind of Other, the violence and depravity that oozed from his form thicker than the red dust coating his body and face.
“Let me see what we got.” Another flat-toothed head popped up over the shoulder of the first male, his body even wider and taller than the first. “Holy hells.” He eyed her up and down, making her feel as if the cloth wrapped around her hips wasn’t even there. “Look at her.”
She forced herself to show no fear. “Stay back.”
She slid the spear she’d fashioned from the picked-clean rib bone of a thigose off her back and eased it around to her front, pointed tip outward. It packed none of the punch of her whalh spear, but it was better than nothing.