Page 21 of Argurma Warrior (The Argurma Chronicles #1)

One week later

M eg grabbed one side of the heavy strip of metal siding that Kaylar detached from the wall and grunted under its weight. They had been at this for the greater part of a week, and it didn’t get any easier physically though she was more capable of helping him search for what he needed as they slowly made their way systematically, moving from room to room, through the sprawling network of labs beneath the main floors. Of course, it would go even faster if he allowed her to continue to scavenge without him while he left the building to hunt.

He had begun to do so the very next day after he suggested it—causing her to restlessly pace with anxiety until he returned, bringing in birds and small animals that he managed to kill with electric bolts from his weapon. The singed feathers and fur stunk a bit when he returned with the game, but he stepped up to remove the innards and prepped the animals for cooking in quick order before officially relinquishing them to her. She wasn’t squeamish by any stretch of the imagination, and could have struggled through it herself, but she was touched that he did it every time for her without being asked. In turn, she worked hard to turn them into meals… as much as she could with her limited cooking abilities. To her relief, he never complained again since banishing the canned meat from their diet and ate everything down with a shocking appetite.

Of course, he was a big male.

Very big in ways that she had never seen among even the largest of men. Few of the Reapers had been what she considered small, certainly not Dale, but none of them came even close to Kaylar in sheer size. Not even Terri’s alien was as big, and she felt a certain little thrill at watching his every powerful movement when his attention was elsewhere.

Meg glanced briefly at him from beneath her eyelashes and tightened her lips against a smile that threatened to pop out at the sight of his supple, scaled muscles bulging, especially those rippling along his abs, as he worked lifting up piece by piece of metal and inspecting it. Now that she was becoming accustomed to his appearance, she acknowledged that there was a sensuality to him and raw power that fueled more than one fantasy when she was alone in her room at the end of the day. A fantasy that felt forbidden and undeserving given her past.

One that she prayed he never found out about. She would hate it if he suddenly began treating her like everyone else. And how could he not? She hated what she had become in the Red Reaper camp.

Sometimes, however, she wished that Kaylar knew exactly what effect he had on her so that he might take the matter entirely out of her hands and decide to push things to the next level. And at other times she was mortified that he might already know and was politely trying to ignore her obvious interest. Especially if he somehow worked out why her past would haunt her as it did to the point that she felt it necessary to leave the company of those who knew her. Aside from murder, there wasn’t a lot, other than intense shame, that would have that strong of a reaction among humans who were social by nature.

Would he turn in disgust from her if the full sordid facts came out? Was he already? He certainly seemed to avoid sharing more intimate enclosed spaces with her outside of sharing meals in the kitchen with her and working in different parts of the labs salvaging supplies.

How much of his behavior was simply coincidence?

On the one hand, she knew that he had a very sensitive sense of smell. On the other hand, he also avoided coming to her room anymore, choosing to meet her in the main lobby after he sent an announcement up through the intercom that he was ready to begin as if he were trying to maintain a formal distance between them. Perhaps he didn’t want to be aware of her interest or wished to pretend that it wasn’t present, regardless of whether he had discovered her secret.

As far as Meg was concerned, that was a hopeless cause. She certainly wasn’t oblivious to the physique that his suit clung to more than hid or the spicy scent of him that made her think of spiced apples that her mother once found for their midwinter meal when Meg was a child. He certainly was stimulating her in more ways than one, but how much he was aware of that while they worked throughout the day was a mystery to her. She couldn’t deny that she was curious to explore this thing between them. Just being around him made her feel happy despite their strange situation and a monster on the loose in the forests beyond the laboratory.

Perhaps if she—

“I process that I have developed an appreciation for my cousin’s occupation,” Kaylar commented casually, his voice causing her train of thought to siderail into an explosive inferno as he stood and stretched before picking up a long sheet of metal to examine it. “Veral would have been pleased to reap the rewards of this particular salvage opportunity.”

Meg shook her head in confusion as she attempted to catch up to the sudden direction of conversation. “I don’t get it,” she said after a moment as she watched him cast the rusted metal aside and pick up another sheet. “I know Terri said that he was on Earth salvaging with her but with all of the technology you have at your fingertips, why would you need to do it at all?”

He glanced up at her archly. “Does your Earth have such limitless resources that humanity could freely use them with impunity?”

Her cheeks heated as she returned her attention toward hefting the weight of the metal under her arm. “No. Although our civilization fell long before I was born, I know that wasn’t the case since my grandparents made certain to teach me to read. They were the real survivors of the fall and remembered what the world was like before. But I’ve seen some old newspapers and books in houses I’ve crawled through looking for food with headlines regarding fuel and food shortages that occurred toward the end.”

Kaylar’s chin dipped as he picked up another scrap of metal and peered down at it. “Technology does not eliminate our need to discover ways of renewing resources. Salvaging can provide essential metals when processed that can be reutilized. Everything that the replicator makes draws on specific material stores for food, textiles and inorganic materials. It is operated by the AI, but it does not create from nothing.”

He glanced over at her, a ghost of a smile that she had begun to see more of in recent days appearing at the corners of his mouth. “Give it the correct raw material loaded into its storage unit, however, and it can provide what you need from the available material. It makes our lives convenient since it is compressed in such a way that it takes up little storage space and so we require only so much carried on board at a given time, but it is not inexhaustible.”

Shouldering the much larger piece of metal effortlessly, he turned fully toward her. “Because of this there are systems in place among the united intergalactic planets and species that permit us to make the best use of our resources. Farming worlds not only create their own raw food but from it also provide essential nutrient pastes that can be recombined through the replicator. Then there are also other methods of acquiring organic, metal, and metal supplies. What my cousin does, specifically, is look for the raw metals that can be smelted down and returned usable matter.”

“And that was why he was here,” she murmured. “Because what else would Earth look like to an alien but a mass graveyard full of metal salvage just ripe for plucking.”

It was a depressing thought that humanity meant so little in the bigger picture that their absence wouldn’t have even registered beyond supplying plentiful salvage to aliens looking to profit off it. The tendrils on his head lifted toward her slightly as if sensing her mood as he moved closer to her with his burden, and she bit back a smile.

“For all your advancements, you don’t seem to have quite the control that you may like to think you have. For instance, your tendrils are wandering,” she pointed out in an attempt to turn the conversation in a lighter direction. In a direction she wanted… toward what was between them.

Rather than rebuff her random teasing as he usually did or act upon it as he would in her daydreams, to her surprise, he froze, his eyes snapping toward her as his body stiffened and his mandibles widened with an expression close to menace. Enough so that, though she was not necessarily wary of him anymore, she shuffled back to give him a little bit of space . Crap. She must have really stuck her foot in her mouth.

“I’m sorry, was that really rude for me to point out?” she asked as she winced apologetically.

He drew in a sharp breath through his nose, but his tendrils and mandibles relaxed. “Not rude,” he rumbled, turning away from her to proceed back toward the entrance to the lab with his chunk of metal. His eyes cut to her briefly just in front of the doorway. “But a dangerous observation.”

Now it was her to turn stiffen. “Dangerous? How?”

A dry humorless chuff escaped him, and he shook his head and the tension slowly drained from his body. “Not so dangerous for you. For me—it could mean incalculable trouble. Not now, but eventually.”

Meg frowned and hurried toward him, half-dragging her own piece of metal, her bag of wires slapping against her side uncomfortably with her gate. She had to admit that she was relieved that it was not dangerous to her, but she was uncomfortable with the fact that such a sweet gesture could have far-reaching consequences for him. “What do you mean?”

He huffed, a look of reluctance crossing his face, but she wasn’t going to let it go that easily. If there was something happening that she wasn’t aware of that was putting him in danger, she needed to know about it. The last thing she wanted was to be responsible for someone’s suffering when she might have been able to help prevent it. Especially him when he had done so much more than anyone else had ever done to make her feel accepted just as she was.

“Is there anything I’ve done… or can do?” she pressed, and he sighed, his tendrils flickering around his head with a soft, rattling hiss.

“My vibrissae… tendrils, as you call them… should not react to you,” he muttered with a returning stiffness that made her reactively bristle in insult.

“And why not? What’s wrong with me?” she returned, hotly, her worst fears rushing to the fore. “Is it because I’m human or because you’ve somehow deduced that part of the reason why I left that City is due to how unclean everyone sees me. Because why else would I be an outcast when I’m clearly too damn weak to murder someone?”

His tendrils… vibrissae… puffed out around him as his gaze sharpened on her. “Of what do you speak?” he demanded.

She blinked, and blinked again, her mouth gaping in horror. He hadn’t known and she just spilled it like pus from a festering wound. “Oh, fuck,” she whispered.

“Do not try to distract me with talk of coitus,” he growled. “I wish to process what it is you speak of. How do the humans process you as unclean?”

Heat rushed into her face as tears blurred her vision. She didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to see disgust on the face of the first male she actually began to want again. She’d had a lot of time to heal after Dale but Kaylar was the only one she had wanted and now she felt like it was all slipping through her fingers.

She scrubbed a hand angrily across her face and glared at him, hating that he was making her tell him but also needing to just come clean and get her terrible secret out there, finally.

“I was a camp whore,” she snapped. “I belonged to a man… a human male… who talked me into accepting the gang’s protection. Accepting his protection,” she scoffed angrily. “I was stuck there, believing that no matter what degradation I suffered that it was worth the price of safety. To be fed and protected and have a warm place to sleep. I was even fucking grateful to Dale! And then once I was free, I couldn’t get clean of it. I was still the worthless camp whore, good for nothing better than scavenging a bit of food and spreading my legs.”

Kaylar cocked his head, the tension in his body easing slightly as he regarded her with his accustomed expression of curiosity. She both hated how flat and emotionless it was and celebrated that he wasn’t looking at her with any kind of contempt. And her confused feelings over that made her even angrier.

“You mated poorly for security,” he observed.

“Mating suggests it was something meaningful,” she retorted bitterly. “It certainly wasn’t the case when he was passing me around whenever he was ordered to or when he was offered something worthwhile in trade.”

“Where is this male. I will kill him and avenge your honor. His skull will be presented to you to ease your wounds.” His vibrissae twitched. “Once Degarath is restored,” he amended.

She stared at him in shock and then her lips twitched as amusement bubbled out of nowhere. “You would kill him… just like that? Just to avenge my honor?”

“Of course. You did what was logical. You accepted a mate that you believed to be strong enough to protect you. It was faulty reasoning but logical under pressing circumstances. You are not a warrior,” he pointed out. “The male was unworthy and an insult to you and your mother-line. If you had been Argurma and failed to kill him, the males of your mother-line would have done so on your behalf. His skull is a worthy sacrifice to mend your honor.”

Meg squinted at him, not quite able to believe him. “And you don’t think that I’m unclean and tainted for being fucked by probably dozens of men?”

He hesitated, his vibrissae puffing around him even larger with his discomfort and her heart sank.

“Yeah, I understand,” she murmured, trying her best to smile as if it were nothing and her heart wasn’t crumbling just a little for losing something she hadn’t quite had. “You don’t have to answer that. Avenging is good and all, but some things are just impossible to get past.”

His vibrissae flattened as his eyes narrowed. “Inaccurate. I do not process what is meant by unclean. Although Argurma’s have life-long and deep bonds with our mates we do not consider any sexual act by its nature to be either clean or unclean. It is instinct and nature, as much as the Argurma society would prefer to not claim such things and separate ourselves from them in our makeup. I process no judgment for your actions.”

He stepped closer, peering down at her—through her. “But my words and actions can do little if you feel that you are unclean. Do you designate yourself as such?”

She stared up at him, at a loss. “I… I don’t know,” she whispered.

He dropped his chin, a soft purr rumbling from him. “Then that is for you to determine. As for this male, Dale and his unworthy head….”

A burst of laughter escaped her. “I think you would have to dig in the ruins of the camp for it. I believe Terri’s alien—Veral—killed him and nearly every male in that damned camp.”

Kaylar’s vibrissae snapped in irritation. “Unfortunate,” he rumbled as he stalked back toward the door with his load. “Come, Meg. There is still much to do.”

A smile slowly creeped across her face as she shouldered the weight of her own chunk of metal and hurried after him. He was right, she was going to have to come to terms with her own sense of worth and cleanliness. Clearly sheering away her hair and scrubbing herself clean, while it had done a lot, had not removed the deeper scars. Those she would have to vanquish on her own, but Kaylar gave her a ridiculous sense of hope for the future and it was because of that she was certain she just might follow him anywhere. Unlike Dale, Kaylar just might be the one being worthy of her trust.