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“That’s probably why he thinks you need help. His kind hunt at least once a day.”
“So you’re saying I need to explain to him what a cooling unit is and why I don’t need to get fresh meat every day? Great. I’ll toss his feathery ass inside it tonight and he can discover what beings with opposable thumbs instead of wings can accomplish.”
The relationship between Axe and Amun was very different from the one she had with Hera. She suspected it had to do with the hawks’ psychic abilities. From what little data she had, either the birds adapted their personality to match their companions, or they choose companions who were already compatible. She’d need more information before she could confirm anything.
She pursed her lips and pretended to consider his threat. “If you do that, he’ll probably eat everything in the cooler.”
“Good point. He can find his own dinner.” Axe glanced up at the sky. She couldn’t see the birds from this distance, but the cyborg could. She’d had no idea how many enhancements the corporations had made to their former creations until she’d met Axe. He hadn’t said much, but what little she learned helped her understand why he didn’t think of himself as human anymore.
The group of them walked through the woods to the boundary Axe had pointed out to them the first morning.
“I’ll take it from here, boys,” he told the two men acting as her security detail.
“See you at the usual time,” she added. The two would return to camp for a few hours before returning to collect her for the midday meal.
It was one of Lt. Douglas’s petty new rules. She wasn’t supposed to leave the area around the meadow. She had to return to camp to eat and transfer all the new recordings and notes. Most annoying, he hadn’t backed down from his edict that she couldn’t bring all the hawks with her on any excursion for “security reasons.” Hera could accompany her, but two of the remaining subjects had to stay behind.
This morning she had Subjects Two and Five with her. After lunch, she’d bring out Four and Six. It was the best solution she could come up with.
Once they were alone, Axe warmed up quickly. He pointed out various animals that lived in the woods and instructed her on potential dangers.
Yesterday, he’d shown her a bark spider. After that, she’d been tempted to run back to camp and hide in her habi-pod. The flattened, plate-sized nightmare fodder had a horrifying number of legs and fangs filled with venom. As a bonus, the damned things were perfectly camouflaged to match the bark of the trees they lived on while waiting to ambush prey… or anything they thought might be edible. Apparently, that included humans.
After that discovery, she kept her hands at her sides and made a concerted effort not to walk too close to anything that could house one of the creatures.
Thoughts of the local wildlife inevitably led her back to her favorite topic—the psy-hawks.
“It’s interesting this area has no winged predators. It’s an ideal location for the hawks because there’s no competition,” she mused.
Hera sent her a quick reminder that she was a winged predator and she was here, so that wasn’t true anymore.
“I know, Hera. But we’re not staying. Remember?” She continued her habit of talking out loud to her companion. Axe understood and seemed to enjoy hearing her side of the conversation.
The hawk sent her a flash of disappointment and sorrow followed by an image of Amun flying nearby.
“Everything okay?” Axe asked. “You stopped smiling.”
“I did?” Part of her was surprised he noticed. The rest of her was still caught up in the emotions Hera had sent. She felt the same way as her companion. Leaving Amun here alone didn’t sit well with her. She didn’t like the thought of never seeing Axe again, either. But that was a different issue.
“Not different. Same. Same.” Hera’s thoughts came through with surprising clarity and the feelings that accompanied the message were… romantic? At least that’s how she interpreted them. For the love of gravity, was her bird falling for Amun the same way she was falling for Axe?
Rin slammed the brakes hard on that entire line of thinking.
“What stole your smile?” Axe asked in a surprisingly soft tone that launched a flurry of butterflies in her stomach.
“Hera.” She tapped her temple. “She told me she’ll be sad when we leave. I think she’ll miss this place and Amun.”
They were still a few minutes away from the meadow, but Axe stopped walking and turned to look at her. “What about you? Will you miss this place?”
They stood so close together she had to crane her neck to look at him properly. The smart thing to do was obvious—make some vague comment about Haven being a beautiful place she’d remember forever.
She didn’t do the smart thing. Her brain wasn’t involved in her next words at all. They came from out of nowhere and shoved her off a proverbial cliff. “I will. This planet is still wild and mostly untouched. There’s so much I could learn here. But that’s not what I’ll miss the most.”
It seemed as if the entire forest held its collective breath as they stared at each other.
Her heart slammed against her rib cage, she couldn’t catch her breath, and her inner voice bombarded her with fragmented thoughts and fears.
Please don’t ask if you don’t want to hear the answer.
