Still, he didn’t move. He continued to hug the wall.
“Do you want to go back down?”
His lips quivered before he wiped at his eyes. “You promise I won’t die?”
“On my own life.”
He drew a ragged breath before he returned to his belay position. “Sumi?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, baby. Just breathe easy. I promise I won’t let you fall.”
He paused to meet her gaze. “I know why Dancer loves you…” He smiled at her. “I love you, too.”
Her own tears welled as those words touched her heart. “I love you, sweetie.”
With a tenuous smile for her, he fed her slack to climb. Sumi watched as he grew more confident right before her eyes. It was incredible to see the boy taking these first steps into adulthood. No wonder Andarions did this for their young. She totally understood it now.
But it broke her heart that Dancer’s journey had been ruined. That he hadn’t been allowed to grow up slowly. Rather it’d been shoved down his throat.
Like hers.
Not wanting to think about it, she stayed focused on Darice and their climb until they finally reached a small nest. She let Darice take lead for the last forty feet so that he’d reach the nest first.
On top of the small gendarme that was barely large enough for the two of them, he stood, looking out on the world so far below. By the time she joined him there, he was as exuberant as anyone she’d ever seen.
“I am emperor of the climb!” he shouted, his voice echoing off the canyon walls. “Fear me, bitches!”
Sumi laughed. “Remember, we still have to get back down.”
“Oh.” He peered over the edge. When he looked back at her, he stroked his chin and spoke in a faux professor-like tone. “Perhaps I spoke prematurely.”
Still laughing, she hugged him against her. “So where’s this nest?”
He pointed to a small crevice that was thankfully empty, except for the remnants of a nest that contained a handful of white feathers and two small bones.
His expression ebullient, Darice picked them up and tucked them into his pouch. “We did it!”
“Yep. Ready to head down?”
He looked over the edge again and cringed. “I think I liked climbing up better.”
Smiling, she tugged playfully at his ponytail that peeked out from under his helmet. “You’ll be fine. Look how far you’ve come.”
“We did, didn’t we?” He reached into his pouch and pulled a feather out. Then he held it toward her. “This is for you. You’re an Andarion now.”
She touched her hand over her heart and lowered her head to him. “I’m very honored. Thank you, mi tana.” She tucked the feather into her own pouch.
He smiled, until he looked down again. Suddenly, he turned a little green around his gills. “All right. Let’s slowly get this over with.”
Sumi had a bad feeling before they even reached the bottom. Something wasn’t right. She could feel it in her gut. As soon as they were on the ground, she unhooked herself and removed her helmet.
Darice dropped his on the ground and unbuckled his harness. “Where is everyone?”
“Not sure.”
He went running toward base camp to show off his feathers. Sumi had just started packing up their gear when she heard him screaming her name.
Pulling out her small blaster, she ran to him. He was kneeling over Thia.
“Dancer!” she called. “Bastien!”
No one answered.
Her heart pounding, she ran to Thia, who slowly blinked her eyes open.
“Stop yelling, Darice,” Thia snapped as she sat up. “My head’s killing me.”
“What happened?” Sumi asked.
At first, Thia appeared confused. Then she gasped and looked around with wild panic. “We were attacked.”
“Where are the guys?”
Wide-eyed, Thia panted as she tried to calm herself. “Oh my God, they must have been taken!”
Sumi flinched at the last words she wanted to hear. She quickly searched the area and found impressions in the ground where someone had dragged their unconscious bodies away from here to some kind of wheeled transport.
It vanished into the desert.
She heard a faint whine coming from where they’d slept. Hoping against odds it might be Dancer, she ran to find Illyse limping and sniffing at the blanket they’d slept on. Their gear was strewn about and the tracker for the device in Dancer’s back was near the blanket. “Easy, girl,” she said, stroking the lorina’s fur to calm her.
The lorina licked her chin, then nuzzled her.
And with every heartbeat, Sumi became more and more furious. “Dancer!” she screamed out again, knowing it was useless.
Someone had taken him.
Fear, worry, and grief tangled inside her. But instead of reducing her to tears, it stoked a rage the likes of which she’d never felt before.
How dare they!
And with that fury came the training she’d mastered over these last three years. She wasn’t a woman right now.
She was a feral assassin.
“You better not have harmed a single molecule on his body.” If Dancer had so much as shed a single skin cell while in their custody, she was going to take it out of their entrails.
CHAPTER 21
Hauk winced as he woke up to a splitting headache. The light burned his eyes. Frowning, he found himself inside a steel cage with Bastien and two other men. He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead while he sat up to get his bearings.
“Do you speak Universal?” the guy on his right asked.
Hauk nodded then scowled as he checked Bastien to make sure he was unconscious and not dead. Thankfully, he was still breathing.
“Good. Just do what they say and don’t argue.”
Hauk turned an are-you-serious sneer at the man that caused him to gasp and scamper to the other side of the cage where the other man stared at him as if he terrified him.
“What the hell are you?” the man who’d been talking to him asked.
“Pissed. Off.” Hauk rose slowly into a feral crouch. While the human men could stand inside the cage, he couldn’t.
This was bullshit!
Ready for war, he got up and went to the door to examine the biolock. He kicked it in anger.
A woman gasped then fired a blaster at him. He ducked the charge and hissed, exposing his fangs.
“Pheara! You gotta come see this. Fast!”
He wouldn’t call the woman’s gait hurried as she came around the side of a wheeled transport to eye him. An inch or two shorter than Sumi, she was well muscled with short, dyed red hair and the swagger of a woman used to fighting for what she wanted.
The instant her dark brown eyes focused on him, she froze. “What the hell are you?”
He ran his tongue over his fangs, emphasizing the fact that he wasn’t human. “Let me out of here.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She pressed a button on the cuff at her wrist. Pain shot through him instantly.
But he wasn’t human. Instead of weakening him, it sent a charge of adrenaline through his body. Furious, he kicked at the door again, hard enough to bend part of it.
Both women backed up.
“What the hell?” Pheara breathed.
“He’s an Andarion.”
Hauk cut his glare to another woman who joined the first two. Tiny and petite, with short blond hair, she was dressed in animal skins.
“I thought he was human when we stunned him. No wonder it took so many darts to take him down.”
“Yeah,” the blond snorted. “You’re lucky you got him down at all. They are a savage breed and don’t react to stimuli the same way we do.” She hit the cage with a prod that sent electricity through it.