Page 15 of Devin (Warriors of Etlon #5)

Devin

" I believe that I have made myself very clear," Kave said as he held his hands up in the air.

"If you want her gone, you're going to have to take her yourself.

I am not going to face Athen to tell him that you are making the same mistake that he nearly made.

You are going to have to do that yourself.

It is for the best. Perhaps, you will accept his word that sending your mate off to give her to another warrior is simply untenable. "

"I don't have time in the schedule to-"

"Either make time to speak to Athen, or she stays."

Devin bristled. Kave surely thought he was going to back down. A large delivery was slated to arrive in the next few days and if they lowered it from orbit without guidance, the entire project could be set back a week or more. Devin was not going to get behind unless there was no helping it.

He stormed out of the command center. There was no more to be said.

He would have to risk taking the trip while the Terran females plotted to make his mate.

.. no, his un-mate... no, that wasn't right either.

.. the female assigned to him. While they figured out a way to let her stay.

No, it was better to make a clean break now rather than wait any longer into the build schedule.

It was only going to get busier from here on out.

He walked over to his cabin. Val was standing in the doorway. She smiled at him. He did not smile back.

"Get your things. I'm taking you to the main camp. From there, you'll take a larger ship to Etlon or wherever you want to go."

Her smile faded, but she didn't argue. She got her pitiful bag of things, all of which had been given to her since her arrival, and followed after him.

Devin had expected to run into resistance from Jane or Zenik, but everyone was absent from around the shuttle.

He climbed up into the back and motioned for her to follow.

Devin sat in the cockpit chair and began the warm up sequence.

"Where do I sit?" Val said.

Devin looked around. There was a chair beside him and benches on either side of the craft. For his sanity, it would be better if she didn't sit beside him but he didn’t want to tell her that.

"Wherever you want."

She put her bag down and joined him up front. Devin ignored his hardon as her scent began to close in on him. This was going to be a very long flight. Even the flight home was going to smell of her.

"I'm sorry I'm not what you wanted," she said, quietly. "It's not like I had much of a choice either. It was either take a chance in space or probably die in a day or two back home. And believe it or not, I want to live."

Devin sighed and maneuvered the craft into the air.

Val stared at the ground through the windscreen.

She was naturally curious about what the jungle looked like from above.

It wasn't surprising that she'd want to see the alien vegetation so different from her home.

Devin remembered his first trip in a shuttle, though he'd been a child at the time.

He'd practically glued his nose to the window pane.

"You are not... objectionable. But marriage is not what I want. I just don't want any mate right now," Devin explained.

"I get that. I really do. But everyone back at that camp keeps telling me that you'll change your mind. It's unnatural for you to not want me," she countered.

Oh, he wanted her all right. That was the problem. If he could just ignore her, then they wouldn't be flying to get her as far away as possible right now. But she was too fragile, too Terran to fit in with his mother's people, and he could not always keep her by his side while creating his city.

"My mother has always told me that I was too stubborn for my own good, but in this case, I believe I have made the right choice for all involved. If you stay with me, there is a high chance you will end up dead. Neither of us want that," he told her.

With that, the shuttle fell into silence. That silence was broken a half hour later, as practically every warning light on the dash began to blink.

"What's that mean?" Val asked frantically.

"I- I don't-" Devin started before being interrupted as the shuttle began to descend rapidly. He guided it down as gently as possible, but they were in the midst of dense jungle and there really weren't any clearings to land.

"Hold on!"

He really hadn't needed to say it. Val was grasping at the sides of the chair anyway, trying to avoid anything that looked like panic.

Devin had to give her that. Some of the Terrans would have been screaming all the way down.

She was nearly holding on until her knuckles turned white but was still more composed.

He brought the craft down with a jarring thunk, but hopefully not hard enough to break anything that couldn't be repaired on the fly. He sighed, loudly, and realized that his sigh was much too audible. The engines had completely cut. All the panels had gone dead. The ship itself was silent.

“Is it over?” Val said from behind him. Devin immediately flew into a panic. He jumped up and pulled Val into his arms.

“Are you injured? Can you move? Where does it hurt?” he asked her rapidly.

“I’m fine, I’m just- Are you okay?” she asked him.

Devin just looked back at her. She was right on his lap pressed against him with her lips just begging for a kiss.

The fire in him took over and he pulled her down for a kiss. She came willingly with just as much heat as he gave. His tattoos burned where she touched them and the ache to fill her right there and then was nearly too much.

Nearly. He would have, but the ground whined beneath them and shuddered slightly.

It was enough to prompt Devin to set her aside and open the hatch manually.

All the electronics were burnt out. Devin wasn’t sure how that was possible, but he wasn’t an engineer or a pilot.

He was an architect. It would take some investigation before he could figure out how stranded they were exactly but the ship did not look salvageable.

The immediate cause of concern, however, was whatever they had landed on.

Devin pulled out his knife and turned to Val. She was still sitting on the floor where he had unceremoniously dumped her with a look of astonishment on her face.

“Stay here,” he ordered.

They’d landed on some sort of uneven slope which meant that he had to hop down a foot and a half before hitting the jungle floor. There was a dense carpet of moss below them, which had probably helped to soften their fall.

The whimpering, he quickly discovered, was from about a dozen little furry balls all huddled together just under a strut.

While they looked uninjured, he could see that the ship had partially caved in their den.

A few of them came out of the huddle and began to explore.

They were about six inches in diameter and had varied coats of browns and greens.

It looked as if each was made of ten or twelve furry legs that rolled along the ground.

They were too small to be a threat and too skinny to be a possibly good meal.

What bothered Devin was the opening of the den.

It was many times larger than these creatures. These were babies.

Devin picked one up. It squirmed and let out a little whine.

He gave it a few strokes and it relaxed, letting out a coo.

He found a mouth and three blinking eyeballs.

It settled into his arms and yawned, revealing what Devin was afraid of.

The thing had very carnivorous teeth. Why the hell did this planet like its tentacled, many-armed things so much? And where was its mother?

His arms were busy cradling the napping little one when a shrill cry sounded through the forest and a blinding ball of green hurtled down from the tree above. The mother attacked with the ferocity that Devin had come to expect from one protecting her young.

He threw up his arm to protect his body from the blow, but each of her tentacles seemed to have a tiny set of claws attached.

They dug into his arm and clung fiercely while he tried to shake it off without throwing the baby into the wind.

The mother bit his wrist and held her bite, shaking him back and forth like she was trying to kill small prey.

The little one woke up and expressed his outrage with a cry that seemed to spur the mother on further.

Devin rolled back onto the hatch ramp, setting the baby beside him and used his now free arm to pry the mother off.

He grabbed her by a leg and when she went for his face, he flung her off into the tree.

With all the strength he had left, Devin closed the ramp, locking it closed, and slumped down onto the floor.

He was a bloody mess, but that was not much of a problem.

His Mahdfel DNA was already sealing and clotting the wounds.

No, the real problem was the absolute tiredness that was creeping through his body.

The mom had released some sort of toxin or paralytic into his blood and his body was shutting down in order to repair itself and filter away the poisons. That would leave Val undefended.

Val, for her part, was crouched beside him, trying to staunch his wounds. He imagined that some Terrans would be completely abhorrent of such a situation, but no, not his.

“Val,” he managed to utter.

“I’m here, sweetie, don’t worry, I’ll patch you up right as rain.”

“Don’t open the door. I’ll be out, ten, twelve hours, but don’t open the door.” With that warning, the world around him faded and he closed his eyes into sleep.