Page 46 of Meat

He and Krogg caught her, one on each arm, and saved her from falling over. Carefully, the two ukkur laid her back on a soft thatch of mountain weeds. Alyx squirmed and writhed feverishly. Her skin was clammy, her pulse stuttering. She whined in famished agony.

Jale grimaced at the sight of his mate in pain.

“Alyx, what?” he hissed through his teeth. “What bad? What bad?”

She clasped his lean, muscled arm in one hand and Krogg’s even sturdier arm with the other. Her lips moved, but the only sounds that came out were her groans of agony. She was struggling to match a word with this feeling—to name the terrible craving that ached in the tautened fiber of her muscles, in the marrow of her bones.

Krogg’s eyes were on her, wide and frantic with fear. In the short time she had known him, she had seen many emotions in those eyes, but never fear. She saw it now.

“What is?” Jale growled desperately. “Alyx what bad?”

The sudden surge of hunger that swept over Alyx’s body was intense. Not only localized in her stomach, but screaming in every cell of her being. It told her exactly what she needed, what her body needed.

What her baby needed.

“Meat!” She used the nith word that Jale had taught her. Her voice was a ragged sob. “Need…meat!”

CHAPTER 17

Ravnar rushed up the stony slope of the mountain, his hunter’s feet silent as a whisper on the naked rock. The sun was low, a vibrant speck of blood melting into the horizon. Its dying rays sketched long, dark shadows from the crags and scrubby plants through which Ravnar zig-zagged skillfully.

His heart thundered in his chest. His hands were stained with greenish-black blood from hunting, but he carried no quarry home.

The mountains were hard hunting. Not like the forests where game was plentiful and easily trapped. The creatures here were elusive.

That was fine. He and his ukkur pack brothers were accustomed to fasting while crossing the mountains. Two or three days without food was good for the system. Cleansing.

This time, however, they had the woman with them, and now she had a little ukkur in her belly. That’s what she had told them last night. Ravnar could hardly believe such a thing, but when he pressed his hand to the fullness of her belly, he could feel the creature moving inside her. When he pressed his ear there he could hear its beating heart.

The sight of her like that, round and ripe, breasts full and leaking white tears—that sight made his cock as hard as the stones of the mountain and his balls ached like a bruise.

She was his. His mate.

And they had plenty of food for her as well. Krogg had collected a surplus of fruits and vegetables for her to eat during the passage through the mountains. Ravnar himself could not stomach such food. He would fast before he ate that stuff. But it pleased him that his pregnant mate would be full and sated.

But there was a problem.

He ran hard, leaping over low boulders and wide chasms in the rock without missing a step or slowing his stride. He had to get back to camp as fast as possible to warn Krogg and the others.

When Ravnar had gone out this afternoon, his intention had been scouting. After the run-in with the nith a few days before, he had been worried that more of those rotted fuckers might be around.

He had been right.

And so, his scouting expedition had turned into a hunt.

He had spotted the nith patrol from a mile away. Three of the leathery-skinned bastards in one of their hovering contraptions. They never even saw him coming. Two died by the stones of his sling. The third he finished with his knife, so close he smelled the creep’s last rotten breath.

Nith. Ravnar despised the nith.

His hatred for them burned like fire in the whip-scars that knit his back.

Ravnar was not afraid of the nith. He would gladly face them down and kill them any day, but now there was another factor to consider. Two more factors, actually.

The woman and the little ukkur in her belly.

Ravnar would defend them both with his life. But more important, he needed to make sure they were never put at risk.

There could be more nith patrolling these mountains, and if there were, they would spot Krogg’s fire. Ravnar needed to get back to camp to warn Krogg to extinguish it. Then they would seek shelter inside one of the mountain’s many hidden cavities just to be safe.