“What?”
“That you’d tolerate sexual harassment from a man.”
His answering deep, throaty laugh did the strangest things to her stomach. “He’s a Phrixian male, not a man, and I take a lot of shite in stride from all my brothers.”
She paused to consider that shocking revelation. “Phrixian and he’s gay? How did he ever manage to live to adulthood?”
“He’s one of the fiercest warriors I’ve ever had at my back.”
He’d have to be. Phrixians were the only race she’d run up against the Andarions for cold-blooded brutality and adherence to some rather savage laws.
Sumi fell silent as she remembered seeing a burgundy Phrixian uniform in the group that had attacked the prison. If that was Mari, Hauk was right. That male could fight. And he could take a beating without flinching.
Yeah, Mari was fierce indeed.
Hauk scowled as he noted the hot salad she’d made for him. “What is this?”
“Botanist, remember? Plants are good for you. You should try making friends with them sometime. Vary that heavy carnivorous diet of yours.”
He made a face similar to the one Darice had when she’d insisted he try it. But unlike his nephew, he sampled it without audible bitching. With an adorable astonished expression, he met her gaze and smiled. “It’s good.”
“Best of all, it doesn’t run or try to kill you when you go after it.”
He laughed again. “I like the danger.”
“I’m sure you do.”
Licking his lips, he finished his food in silence.
Once he was done, Sumi took the plate to wash it off while he went to attend his morning needs. It’d been a strange day so far. She’d awakened unsettled and couldn’t figure out why. Just a gut feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
Hauk had been barely lucid when she’d approached him earlier with the blanket, but she had no doubt that had she done something he perceived as a threat, he’d have shot up like he did a few minutes ago. Ready and willing to kill.
The poor, exhausted baby had fallen asleep before she’d finished tucking the blanket around him. Knowing he needed the rest, she and the kids had tiptoed around and left him to it.
Rubbing at her neck, she scanned the terrain, looking for the source of her discomfort.
What is wrong with me?
She was anxious and jittery. Unsettled. Like someone was watching her.
Not wanting to be alone, she started for the caves, then changed course to see if Hauk was okay. The kids had the lorina with them and Darice could scream loud enough to be heard for miles if they came under threat.
Hauk should have returned by now.
Sumi made her way to the small pond that was between the oasis and the caves, where a shirtless Hauk sat sideways to her. He was already washed, with his damp hair pulled back from his face. When he picked up his knife, she thought he was going to shave with it.
Until he used it to cauterize a wound in the side she couldn’t see.
“Oh my God,” she breathed, rushing forward.
He drew on her, then lowered the blaster as he recognized her.
Aghast, she gaped at him. “You’re wounded?”
Grinding his teeth, he returned to cauterizing the vicious knife wound across his lower left rib. “They didn’t all miss last night.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
He shrugged.
“Dancer!” she snapped at him. “You could have bled out.”
The expression on his face said that she was the one overreacting…
As if!
“I stopped the bleeding before we left. It didn’t reopen until I carried Darice.”
And he hadn’t said a word about it. To anyone. She stared at him in total disbelief. “Son, you can’t just walk around bleeding and not say something. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that?”
“No,” he said simply.
Astonished, she shook her head. How hard had everyone leaned on him in his life that he accepted this without flinching? To him, this was normal.
Really?
Suddenly, the TAM label wasn’t amusing to her. It seriously pissed her off. He wasn’t some invincible armored tactical vehicle to carry and cover them. He was a flesh-and-blood male.
One who’d been injured protecting them.
Wanting to help him, she moved closer so that she could examine the wound he’d sealed. Alone. Without even thinking to ask for help. That said it all about how others treated him.
She winced at the sight of his injuries. The raw, jagged flesh was next to another scar from a knife wound where someone had practically gutted him.
Was that the injury from Dariana when he’d told her Keris was dead?
He frowned at her. “Why are you so angry?”
“Because you’re wounded!”
“Then shouldn’t I be the one who’s pissed off?”
She sat back to glare at him. “Yes. Yes, you should.”
And still he appeared baffled by her anger on his behalf. “I’m not. So why are you?”
“I don’t know.” That was the truth. If it didn’t bother him, it shouldn’t bother her, and yet it did. “Were you injured anywhere else?”
He twisted at the waist to show her the knife wound on his lower back that had narrowly missed his lung and kidney. From the depth and precision, it must have come from the Partini. “I can’t quite reach that one.”
She pulled his medical pack closer so that she could clean it. “How did you walk so far, like this?”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “It wasn’t safe to stop.”
Oh. Okay. That made all the sense in the Nine Worlds…
To a minsid lunatic.
Sighing, she knew better than to try and talk sense into someone insane. “You know, you really shouldn’t say shit like that to me when I have a knife nearby.”
His fierce features softened to that adorable expression that made her melt.
“What are you doing!”
She ground her teeth at Darice’s outraged snarl as he stormed toward them. Her own fury snapping at his, she glared at him. “Your uncle is badly wounded and I’m trying to tend it.”
Coming up behind Darice, Thia gasped at the sight of the jagged, awful cut Sumi was cleaning. “What do you need me to do?”
“Keep Darice back so that I don’t kill him.”
Darice refused to budge. Instead, he stalked forward to confront his uncle. “She shouldn’t be touching you like that, Dancer. It’s indecent.”
His uncle glared at him as a fierce tic beat in his jaw.
“Can you treat a wound?” Thia asked him.
“No.”
“Then shut up, Darice.”
He pouted like a toddler. “You should tend him, Thia. It’s your place, not hers.”
Thia’s expression called him a complete idiot. “All I know about field medicine is to call Uncle Syn or my dad or look it up… none of which I can do here.”
“Then he should be left to bleed.”
Stunned, Sumi gaped at the little snot. He would really rather leave his uncle here, bleeding, than allow an unrelated woman to tend him?
Unbelievable.
When Darice moved to sit in front of Hauk, he bared his fangs at his nephew. “Do you really think so little of me that you have to document and observe my treatment? You are your father’s son.” He sucked his breath in sharply as Sumi poured antiseptic over the deep wound. His breathing ragged, he glared at Darice. “Get out of my sight before I hurt you.”
Darice looked as if Hauk had slapped him. Rising to his feet, he kicked dirt at Hauk in what she was beginning to suspect must be some kind of Andarion insult in and of itself. “You’re not my father!”
Hauk let out a ferocious growl that had to have come from the deepest, angriest part of his soul. “You’re damn right I’m not your father! If I were, I’d be so high right now I wouldn’t feel shit, and I’d have beat you and made you walk naked here last night, after you whined like a little bitch whelp.” His entire body trembling in rage and pain, he started to rise.