Page 21 of Feral Tamed

Our work was only hindered by Snarl, who’d growl or outright put his body between Jakar and me if he thought the young male got too close. I would be annoyed with that if I thought that Fierce had put him up to it on purpose, but I’d been there in the room with Fierce the entire time. I hadn’t heard him say a thing to the hound, I was fairly certain this was his own way of meddling.

Once we’d gotten the not-wisteria planted, and samples prepped for me to analyze in a lab, which Jakar assured me there was, I helped the young male pick out suitable seeds to start planting in the hydroponic pods for food growing. It had been a long time since I’d last worked with my hands in the dirt this much, for something as basic as growing food. I found it soothing and fun, and Jakar and I worked well together. I found myself teaching him things I knew, which he eagerly absorbed.

A few hours in I was starting to get both hungry and exhausted, and I had seen no sign of Fierce yet. That surprised me, I thought he wouldn’t be able to keep away, that he’d follow me here. I knew I’d reacted oddly when the Doc had mentioned a mating drive, but I hadn’t meant it as rejection. It just drove home our differences, that for him this was much more tangible than for me. I’d just gone through a massive change in my life, thinking I’d died, and finding myself in an entirely different quadrant of the universe as it turned out. Abby had explained that part to me on the way up from Serant.

When I mentioned being hungry, Jakar started to profusely apologize, rushing to lead me to the mess hall. As soon as we got close, I could already smell many different kinds of food, with mouthwatering scents filling up the corridors. The mess hall was a rowdy, noisy place, already filled with most of the gladiators aboard the ship, and the other ladies.

My eyes immediately searched for Fierce’s familiar shape, in any human-filled mess hall he’d have stood out, due to his close to seven feet height and his color. Here… Not as much, because both Ziame and Sunder were even bigger. My eyes snagged on the green-scaled, horned captain and Abigail at the head of the table, their heads bent close together as they talked. Abby’s eyes glittered happily.

I spotted the pilot, the red-headed human-looking guy, with a young woman with her blonde hair in a choppy haircut, the strands waving around her face in pixie-like disarray. Then the pilot grinned, shook his head, and his entire body morphed into something alien, it might have been the same species as the grumpy Da’vi I’d met earlier.

The woman touched his face, stroked the horns on his forehead, and proclaimed something, and then the pilot was back to looking just like any other ordinary guy. Da’vi was yelling some kind of criticism at the pilot from across the table, rating the shapeshifter’s ability to shift into a Kertinal, which I assumed was what Da’vi was.

In all that chaos, it wasn’t surprising that it took me a moment to spot Fierce in a corner sitting quietly with a baby in his arms. A pink and blue baby. My breath stalled for a moment, what the hell? He had a kid? He could have mentioned that the moment we could finally understand each other. I wasn’t sure at all what to think now. If he already had a kid, did that mating drive even mean anything? Had I misunderstood him down on the planet? I was so sure he was claiming me with the way he’d marked me, the way he’d talked in his gruff and growly language.

With how hurt I felt over such a huge secret, I knew I was in far deeper with him than I had expected myself to be. It was a bit of a wake-up call. Had I really already ended up having feelings for him? This quickly? That was nothing like me, I was always the rational scientist, so much so that I’d been called a cold fish by more than a few dates.

I’d forgotten he was next to me, but when Jakar leaned in closer, and Snarl rumbled a warning, I realized the young alien had noticed where my eyes had lingered. “Fierce often watches Novalee for Tori when she cooks,” he said, undeterred by the nasty sound Snarl was making. “Tori makes the best food but she’s all alone with her kid, I’m glad he helps out. But then that’s Fierce, he’s always been good with animals and fragile things.”

For the first time, he said something that made me realize that Jakar knew Fierce, better maybe than some of the other males aboard this ship. I looked at him in question, my heart racing a little at the implications in his words, that that baby was not Fierce’s but that he was just helping… “You have a history with him?” I asked instead of the more urgent question on that baby’s parentage.

Jakar eyed Snarl who’d fallen silent and was watching him with a very intent stare, then he darted a look over his shoulder at Fierce. He was still tucked in the corner, baby curled against his chest. Now I spotted the fluffy, porcupine/badger mixture in his lap. It was a ball of white and black fur, the transparent but firm cast on his broken front paw sticking out at a slightly awkward angle.

“Yeah, Fierce and I have pretty much been slaves our entire lives. We’ve been in the same stables at many different times. I can still recall the way he’d always save a bit of food to share with whatever stray animal he’d discovered, even if he risked getting punished if it were discovered.” Jakar’s eyes turned a little distant as he recalled some other memory, “Fierce used to look out for me too.”

My heart warred with emotions, sad at what kind of horrible, difficult lives these males had endured. But I felt warmth and pride too, at hearing about Fierce’s kindness. For a male so wild and feral, who liked to eat his meat raw, and crunch through bones like they were matchsticks, he was such a good man.

“Not anymore?” I asked, my eyes going back to Snarl who’d settled down on his haunches. He was no longer protesting Jakar’s nearness as if he understood that what the male was saying was doing Fierce favors.

“Not since I stopped needing it,” Jakar answered, his four arms crossing over his chest, puffing it up a little with pride. “Not in a long time,” he added to be sure I understood he was badass in his own way. I smirked, noticing the long glance Fierce sent my way when he thought I wouldn’t notice. Then he got up, two tiny bundles in his arms, the two kept carefully apart so the now awake baby couldn’t yank on the poor little man’s fur.

Fierce walked across the mess hall, meeting up with a tiny blonde haired female, barely out of her teens she looked so young to already be a mom. She was thin and small, with dark circles beneath her eyes, but she smiled radiantly at the tiny baby when she took it from him. Though I could tell, even from a distance, that she probably thanked Fierce, she never even looked at him.

A moment later Fierce strode along the table and plunked himself into a chair, one wedged between the Kertinal, Da’vi, and Luka, the Doc. That left no room for me to sit down next to him, and I wondered if just the fact that I’d been startled at hearing about his mating drive, meant he was now keeping his distance. Or was something else at play?

“Hey Jakar, who’s Novalee’s dad?” I asked, hating how nosy that sounded but needing to make absolutely sure. He confirmed what I already figured out, it wasn’t Fierce; it wasn’t anyone in fact. Poor Tori had apparently woken up from stasis a few months ago, already heavily pregnant. The Doc had confirmed it was a test lab baby, with many different genes combined with her own.

Feeling bad about having leaped to conclusions, I searched for an empty seat, finding one next to Abby, and hurriedly sat down. I tried to do my best to remember everyone’s names as they introduced themselves, then I tried to just quietly enjoy Tori’s fantastic food. my eyes just wanted to keep straying to Fierce who sat quietly between two of his brothers, hunched over his food but barely touching it.

Compared to the raw meat and bones he’d eaten down on the planet… A plate of cooked vegetables and some kind of alien potato, along with a big roast, from what might very well be the animal Fierce had killed on the planet… It just didn’t seem like the kind of food he preferred.

He didn’t talk either, and no one tried to engage him in conversation. If not for the little rodent he’d rescued, tucked in his lap, that I watched him feed bites of veg, I would have thought he’d completely disengaged. And if not for Fluffy in my own lap, begging for her own scraps, I would have gotten up right then and there and tried to talk to him.

Abby was doing her best to engage me, to help me navigate the rowdy bunch at the table. I liked seeing the camaraderie and enjoyed the big family vibe. It would have been even better if it didn’t feel like Fierce was checking out completely, withdrawing himself. I even felt a little angry on his behalf that no one was trying to talk to him. Was this normal behavior for Fierce? Was he just not the talking type?

I didn’t know for sure, because down on the planet we hadn’t been able to talk much at all. I wanted to find out though, this didn’t seem like it was entirely normal, not even for Fierce. Halfway through the meal, with his plate still nearly full, he just suddenly got up and stalked from the mess hall. No one commented though I saw several people stare after his retreating form.

Ziame included, the huge, intimidating male who sat at the head of the table next to Abby. I nudged Abby, interrupting what she was about to say. “Why is nobody talking to Fierce? Are they upset with him?”

Abby’s eyes went to the door Fierce had just left through before she settled them back on me with a sigh. “Look, I know he rescued you, that you feel a bond with him. But… Fierce is a secretive male, he’s often quiet and withdrawn. He’s been through a lot, so that’s not strange.” This didn’t explain anything, those were all things I already knew.

When I gestured at her to continue it was Ziame that offered the explanation. “This ship belonged to pirates, they tried to take on one of Drameil’s ships. Drameil is the crimelord that previously owned us. They lost, but they damaged Drameil’s ship, so we ended up being transported on this one, only we rebelled and took over.” I struggled to understand the exact logistics but I understood the most important part, this was a pirate vessel once, and now the gladiators owned it.

From the soft way Abigail and Ziame shared a look, I had a feeling that part of their story was how they’d gotten together. “A few weeks after we took over the ship, we discovered the body of one of the pirates. He’d died after we’d freed ourselves, which meant he’d hidden on the ship somewhere.” Ziame’s flexible ears drooped a little as if his next words were harder for him to say. I was grateful for those expressive ears because the expressions on his scaly face were otherwise pretty hard to read.

“We didn’t know Fierce could camouflage, he’d hidden the ability, just like he hid the Riho,” he gestured at Fluffy in my lap. “While Thorin had actually tasked him to find the animal. When you two came back from the planet he admitted it was him that killed the pirate. We’re a little upset that he’s been keeping all these secrets.”

“You didn’t know he could camouflage?” I asked in shock, how had they not known? He’d shifted his skin tone at the drop of a hat down on the planet. For the longest time, I hadn’t even been certain what his actual skin tone looked like. Then again, if you could make your skin look like anything, did you even have a base color? Maybe he just liked being blue, or that happened to be the color he’d had when they’d captured him and he’d stuck with it.