Page 5 of Fated to the Hunter (Xarc’n Warriors #13)

It took way too long to extricate myself from the group of chatty females and their barrage of never-ending questions.

I’d tried to keep my answers short, but that hadn’t worked.

And when I finally reached my limit, I’d made my escape by simply leaping over all of them and making a run for it.

By then, Kiera was long gone. I’d followed her scent as it meandered through the marketplace.

But now that I knew how to recognize it, I smelled it everywhere, probably because she’d had a hand in setting up the market and had touched everything. With so many other humans around, their individual scents mixed in with the aroma of cooking meats and frying dough, I’d lost her trail.

I had just spotted her tiny form, her bright orange-red hair a beacon of fire on an endless sea, when the alarm started going off.

Krux! A centicreep.

I hated dealing with those, despite my innate love for fighting. There was losing myself in the battle and feeling as one with my twin swords as I hacked scuttlers, lungers, and spitters into pieces, and then there was dealing with this Earth-based scourge abomination.

The scourge often took genetic material from local fauna and made special mutations that gave them an edge on each planet. Here on Earth, they’d chosen a creature the humans called the common house centipede.

The creature’s superior design gave the resulting fusion, the centicreep, the upper hand, especially when moving through narrow corridors of the tall buildings in Earth’s many cities and towns. It scaled the buildings easily too, clinging onto edges with its many feet.

It was fast as well, and hard to fight. We hadn’t had to deal with such a lethal mutation for a very long time.

The communicator attached to my belt buzzed, and I checked it to see that the approximate location of the abomination had been sent to every hunter in the vicinity.

It was coming in fast from the south. All hunters not currently in their shuttles were to report outside the settlement’s walls.

Did that include me? I was supposed to be on my break.

Most likely, our shuttles would take care of the centicreep before it arrived. But usually, large hordes of scuttlers followed it and those would need killing.

With one last look at the door my fiery-headed female had gone through, I turned and started toward the exit closest to the rendezvous point.

There was no such thing as breaks when it came to fighting the scourge.

Instinct and fealty to the ultimate cause of eliminating the infernal creatures once and for all demanded I join the fight.

I’d find Kiera later.

“Be careful, hunter,” yelled the male human keeper of the gate as I stepped through. “There are multiple spitters detected.”

Spitters I could handle, as long as the other hunters I worked with communicated well. While the centicreeps were the hardest to fight, it was the spitters’ acid that claimed the most Xarc’n lives.

Kaj’k and Cov’k, two hunters who lived in New Franklin permanently with their mates, were already there, their weapons drawn and ready.

I was a little disappointed not seeing Jorg’k here.

We saw the blaster fire from our shuttles before we saw the creature.

But as I surmised, it never made it to us. It fell a few buildings over.

With the centicreep no longer a threat, our shuttles focused their energies back on the flyers, which were getting thick in the sky. There were so many that it was hard to believe the nearby nest had already been destroyed.

These scourge had come a long way. The gathering of so many humans was irresistible.

“Here they come!” I shouted as the first scuttler, with its beady eyes and large blade-like claws, rounded the corner and came into view.

The fight was quick and brutal. And we were soon the only living things standing on the street. A pool of spitter acid bubbled away on the sidewalk. We’d won. But we also stank. Scourge guts weren’t just smelly, they were deadly.

When we got back to the gate, the human there hosed us down with clean water. They also had a decontaminator from one of the destroyed shuttles at the entrance of the market.

By the time I got inside the building I’d seen Kiera step into, she was already gone.

I didn’t even understand why I was looking for her. I was here not for the females but to fight the scourge. But the moment I’d overheard the male expressing his wish to feed Kiera played in my head again.

I knew what a date was. Humans did not have mate bonds. They formed feelings of love with those they chose to partner with instead. Many of these partnerships started with “dates,” but just as many dates ended up as nothing. Did this nomad male covet Kiera?

A strange and irrational feeling of animosity formed in my chest, and I imagined myself picking Kiera up and stealing her away so that no other males could lay eyes on her. It tasted bitter and unfamiliar. I didn’t like it.

Unlike some of the other hunters who planned to stay on the planet even after our job here was done, my plan was to follow my original mission: fight the scourge until there were none left. It was a simple directive. A worthy one.

I understood why the hunters who had found their mates would stay here.

Earth was beautiful, despite being marred by the presence of our mortal enemies.

The promise of a future where our kind wouldn’t be slowly destroyed by clonal decay and the lack of new genetics was very tempting.

But the thought of the scourge still existing somewhere in the universe urged me to keep fighting.

It had been my goal, the only reason I was alive, for so long that it was difficult to release.

A female would complicate that.

Sure, I’d spent plenty of nights alone in my shuttle, wondering what it’d be like to have a female in my sleeping nook. I wanted to experience that once or twice, maybe more if I liked it, before I left Earth.

It didn’t have to mean a mate bond or attachment. One hunter in Europe did it often, sampling females from different groups, though it stirred tension with the humans he worked with. They called him “Lothario” behind his back.

I wasn’t interested in sampling many, however.

And I still planned on leaving eventually, so I couldn’t have a mate.

It wouldn’t be fair to leave her if I did, and I doubted a human female would ever be willing to leave Earth to hunt the scourge through the stars with me.

She might not even be able to survive on other next planets.

I scanned the sea of humans as they filed into the community center for their “lunchtime intermission,” but Kiera wasn’t among them. There were several long and very boring presentations, so I returned to my shuttle to rest.

It wasn’t until the evening meal that I finally found her, much to my surprise, sitting at the table reserved for the Tech Wizards.

Was Kiera a Tech Wizard? Why hadn’t Roger introduced her as such?

Tech Wizards were highly ranked in the Xarc’n military, and up until we’d found Earth, the positions had remained unfulfilled, since we hunters, genetically modified to fight, were the only ones left of our race.

We’d been on our own since Xarc had fallen to the scourge.

I squinted at the intricate map in front of her.

Was that why she’d said she hadn’t gotten her map when I’d chased the nomad away from the information booth earlier? She must’ve found him after. Did they share a meal? What else did they share?

That strange sensation coiled tight in my chest again, sharper this time and harder to ignore. I did not understand it. My kind were bred for battles, not feelings. This… this made me feel weak. Vulnerable. I rubbed my palm over my chest, trying to calm the strange ache.

It wasn’t rage; I knew rage. And it wasn’t sorrow. I’d experienced that plenty with every fallen brother. This was something else.

Jealousy.

But it made no sense. She wasn’t mine.

The male was nowhere near her now. So perhaps their interest in each other had simply been because of the map the Tech Wizards now crowded around.

“S’cuze me.” A human female holding a tray containing the evening meal bumped into me, and I realized I was standing in the middle of a busy walkway, making everyone walk around me.

I backed up awkwardly, then found the end of the line for the food. Unlike the first meal of the day, which Roger had referred to as “fend for yourself,” the evening meal was provided for everyone attending this gathering. I never said no to food, so I got in line.

But my awareness didn’t stray from the Tech Wizard table where Kiera was talking animatedly. I caught several keywords: semiconductors, nomads, and payment, amongst them. Each person at the table took turns looking at the map.

By the time I was at the front of the line and a bowl of something rich and savory was placed in my hands since I’d forgotten to grab a platter, the whole table was talking excitedly.

“Hey, careful there.”

I turned to see Roger with his mate and offspring.

“You look lost, Bael’k.”

Before I could reply, Small Roger tugged on the hem of my loincloth. “Are you looking for someone to sit with? You can sit with us.”

I accepted the offer and let the tiny human, sometimes called Roger and other times called Junior, lead me to a table where Mo and Kat already sat. They were from the camp I currently worked with.

I’d just set my bowl down when Kiera stood, slapping her hand on the table.

All of a sudden, my entire awareness was on her, even though my dinner companions didn’t even notice at all.

“We won’t know if we don’t ask,” she said, as she scanned the cafeteria, before marching straight toward a rough-looking group of nomads.

I could tell they were nomads by the way they were dressed. The male from earlier was not amongst them, but the entire group was male, and as Kiera approached their table, their eyes sparked with interest.

She didn’t approach them alone, though. Sam and Lenny, the Tech Wizards from our camp, followed behind her. Sam and Lenny had once lived here in Franklin, and they seemed to know Kiera well.

It was Lenny who spoke first, stepping forward to introduce them.

Roger and Mo had stopped eating now, having followed my gaze to the action. They listened intently despite their inferior human ears as Kiera took over the conversation, explaining what she needed.

Apparently, the map in Kiera’s hands was supposed to lead to top-secret technology, lost after the scourge arrived.

It was something the Tech Wizards all wanted.

But there was a catch: the map could be fake.

Still, the Tech Wizards were willing to take the risk and pull together the resources to pay this group of nomads to help Kiera retrieve it.

This must be the group of mercenaries I heard about. It was an interesting life, choosing to do missions for other people for pay. One I might have been interested in, did I not already have the most worthwhile and important life mission.

“Good ear, Bael’k,” Mo said softly. “Always listen if something's interesting enough to get a hunter to ignore his food.”

I just grunted, my ear still on the conversation at the other table.

It wasn’t just Kiera’s presence that interested me now. A search for lost and important technology was a noble and worthy quest, especially if the Tech Wizards all seemed to agree.

But I did not like the idea of Kiera leaving with an entire group of strong, capable males. What if one of them coveted her?

But it was clear that the band of human warriors was not interested in her plight or her pay. One of them was blunt and rude before the leader took over. But the answer was still the same. They would not help her.

I was relieved that she would not be going on an extended quest with these males until I saw her disappointment. It hung in the air so thick it felt like I could touch it with my hands. Her gaze turned downward to her feet, and she slumped like she was wilting in the summer sun.

I felt it before I could understand it, a tightness in my chest like something was grabbing hold of me from the inside, shaking me, and demanding I do anything in my power to fix this.

This surge of protectiveness was so different from what I’d ever felt.

There were no scourge to fight. No blades or bullets to block.

I could not step between her and danger. None of my training was useful here.

But I knew I had to do something.

I found myself marching toward their table.

“I will take you, Kiera of the fiery hair,” I announced, surprising even myself. “I will take you on this noble quest to find lost technology.”