Jessica woke up as dawn stretched the horizon. Her blood felt languid and her mind calm. It was the well rested feeling that she rarely felt anymore. It was the feeling of the hive surrounding her in safety and comfort of close kindred. That feeling made her sleep soundly when little else now a days could manage it.

Omega had climbed up on the bed in the night and it's tail was twinned with Alpha Dog's around her legs. The little one had also clutched her carefully around her shoulder, while Alpha Dog's long fingered hand was neatly wrapped around the meaty part of her upper arm. She was not scared or nervous like she normally was upon awaking. It felt so strange yet so great to be without fear and a lingering bad taste in her mouth from dreamed of memories of darkness that held nothing but pain.

She opened herself carefully. She had so few mental defenses, but the ones the hive had helped her build that were meant to keep napping ones from being awakened by wakeful ones who decided to get up early did exist. They had gone up around her mind like they had not lain so long without use. The touch of her alert mind wakened Alpha Dog first and he nudged awake little Omega.

Up now!

The little one was so cheerful first thing. It reminded her of Tune, who was of the Hive of the East. It was very similar to Omega. It also had no gender whatsoever and a cheerful nature. Tune was one whom Jessica had missed with a deep despairing after she left the hive. Tune had been her hunting and gathering companion and the person upon whom she tried anything she found that might be edible. Very few things had disgusted it and the Hive's diet had increased exponentially because of their efforts together.

She carefully washed both Xenomorphs, and then coated their hides and especially their feet with her herbal oil. After her own bath and coating of her hair, knees and elbows, She joined them in eating breakfast. They ate their chicken eggs raw, and had three apiece along with their bread and apple. She cooked her eggs over easy, and toasted her bread to eat with butter. Like she had learned when with the Eastern Hive, she ate all of her apple but the seeds and stem, just as the two Xenomorphs did.

The work for the hive's foodstuff gathering had begun this morning at dawn. She knew of an old apple orchard that had not died out despite being untended for a century or more. The trees were big and knotted in their trunks. The apples were good though and crisp this time of the year. So many were gathered up that she had bushel baskets full stacked to the ceiling of her shed and her little living room.

A couple of those baskets were hers to preserve and make applesauce and such for her own pantry. The Queen did have the concept of payment for services rendered down pat. She was also very kind, and would not risk Jessica's survival through the winter months to get more food for her own hive. Well not unless there was no other way.

Other vegetation and growing things randomly appeared in her sitting room to be analyzed to see if it was something you could put in a jar. She informed the Queen that she could even can fish when they were caught, so the hive started capturing fish. The traps they made were ingenious and worked very well. Soon they had plenty of fish on their shelves as well as fruits and vegetables.

A month had passed since she delivered the last of the jars to the Hive. Her neighbors came to visit frequently until the cold had snapped and snapped hard the previous week. It had gone from forties at night and fifties and sixties during the day depending on if there was rain, to twenties or teens at night if it wasn't busy snowing and rarely getting up above freezing during the day. She was missing her new friend Omega and wondering what to do about not being able to reach him or Alpha Dog from here.

The animals were coming out not at all today despite the clear weather. That meant the winds were going to shift and it was going to freeze deep and hard tonight with the clear sky above everything. It stayed so much warmer here when it stayed cloudy. Despite that fact she heard the skritching noise of a Xenomorph claw on her door frame, which was their way of knocking and asking for entry into her chambers.

"Come in friend!"

Cold cold cold cold cold. Please can I wear a fuzzy thing?

"You mean please can I use a blanket. Yes Omega you can use a blanket. I will get you one from the kettle next to the hot water heater."

The heavy metal kettle she left with three blankets in it all winter long. Brushing up against the big unit that heated her water made the kettle like an oven the whole day. That meant that the blanket was warm as if it had come out of an electric clothes dryer like they had back East when she was little. She took this blanket and wrapped Omega up in its folds on the guest bed.

It was still shaking after half an hour so she climbed in with it and made it drink hot soup. Xenomorphs do not learn table manners as a matter of course being mostly predatory beings, but Omega logically concluded she would not want any drips on her bedding or the borrowed blanket. Once it had, carefully for it, consumed the hot soup it started to feel warm again.

She had been feeling hive touches from it since it entered the door. Jessica loved the hive mind caresses it shared with her. The touches of fondness from it felt like family giving you hugs only in your mind instead of around your torso. The distant memory of having people who hugged you tightly every single day and night made a sad sound come out of her mouth.

Sad? Why sad? Not happy to be with/near/close to me?

"That's not it love. I just wish my mother and father had not died of that sickness back in those days. I miss them holding me and hugging me tight every single day."

Hug? What is...? Ah!

Omega managed to hug her. The shoulder structure of a being meant to mostly run on four feet made it difficult. It still managed anyways. The wind began to howl again and she reached out through Omega's much tighter connection to his Hive and Queen and gained the permission. Omega was going to stay for the day and night since it was unsafe to travel the cold outdoors. The queen was a good mother and did not want her favorite joyful youngling to lose toes or fingers in the cold. Jessica was very confused as to why the Queen was giggling, but that too was familiar. The Queen of the East always saw things five fold ahead of the others perceptions. When things became clearer to her that others could not see she would often laugh but never tell.

Alpha Dog came also to stay in her household often, when she asked him if he could really be spared from his normal tasks the mental amusement had been loud enough to make her laugh in response without knowing the joke.

My Great Queen only wants me for what you call 'sex' during the wintertime when she has shed her laying apparatus. She is still enamored of Alpha 'Bird Brain' right now so does not want to be reminded she once had to settle for me and me alone.

"Basically she told you not to come back till Spring?"

That seemed to be her wish at the time yes. Her moods can shift with alarming speed and the slightest things can make a good mood of hers go sour without much warning. Only the little bit of joy seems immune to this and I know not why she sent it here as well.

"I got the impression it was a prediction path of some sort. The Queen of the East would do that all the time. She would laugh at us and tell us that our futures showed many things but certain elements were fixed. Its not like its a psychic power to really see the whole future though. It's just an ability to use very advanced logic. What ever your Queen saw she thought was funny and it had to do with you, me, and Omega."

My Queen does indeed perceive when others do not. It is the way of Queens. Once I had another Queen far to the South who sent me here for this queen as a gift. My Mother the South Hive's Queen did the very same thing.

"Queens are Queens I'd guess, and if we were better off knowing these future funnies they would surely tell us."

Perhaps.

Alpha Dog and Omega were in the house all the time now. Their connection to the hive and its wonderful feeling of closeness made for deep and dreamless sleep on her part and Jessica reveled in having a well rested body and mind. She ran through the woods, the snowfall not deep or troublesome once you were past the treeline, and gathered wood and other useful burnables to add to her pile. It was already huge because of Alpha Dog's ability to drag huge dead falls to her door, but more was good. The predictions in the elder bones and in computer systems were for a brutal winter. It was best to listen to them and be ready for worse then you probably would get, or so Jessica thought.

The week ended with a blizzard the likes of which Jessica had not seen in a handful of years. Alpha Dog and Omega were inside and she intended to stay there until such a time as it was safe to dig out of her house. The wind came from all directions or at least seemed that way to her. It was going to even block up her exit in the back that was normally protected by her home's being embedded in the hillside.

Only MacGillecuttie knew about her back door and it's location for certain. When the pounding came at her portal she thought it was him, stuck outside for some reason unknown to her, and thus asking for shelter from the storm. What Jessica found when she opened the door, was not her neighbor, but instead a towering yautja hunter.

The woman and the hunter stared at one another then Jessica stepped aside.

"You try to hurt my other guests and I will kill you. I hope I am clear on that."

"Very Ooman."

Dinner table conversation was out of the question. She sat a plate of stew in front of the hunter along with a roll then carried her plate and the ones for Alpha Dog and Omega over to sit on the rug by her fireplace. They had been nesting there among a pile of blankets and pillows and cushions for the last week in any case. Because it was simply to cold in the other rooms, Jessica normally shut them tight for the winter anyway.

The hunter's bed roll was fairly dry. He took a spot far to the left of them and did not speak one word as he sat out on the unrolled bedding. He seemed to be meditating from what Jessica knew of the practice. Now was a good time for prayers, once she thought about it. She prayed silently to the spirits of her family, to god, and to the spirit of Inky Shadows, the first Queen of the Xenomorphs. Then, feeling weary, she settled in between Alpha Dog and Omega and fell asleep.

She woke feeling cranky and generally disturbed. The scent of blood was in the nostrils of the two Xenomorphs and they asked her about it. So that was why! Disgusted but prepared for it in any case, Jessica bathed thoroughly, then with proper measures taken sat back down to eat her breakfast. The Blizzard was going to last for a good six days before it would be safe to get out of the house again. She informed the hunter of this and received only a grunt in reply.

It is how they are. They do not require complexity in conversation. That was all the acknowledgment another hunter would receive, and all that his peers would even think to require.

"If you are sure."

Yes.

When the third day came her newest guest finally spoke to her. The nature of his inquiry was not surprising. It was what anyone who did not know about her past and current circumstances would ask.

"Why do you associate freely with the hard meats Ooman?"

"I lived in the great hive of the East from the time I lost both my parents when I was seven until about four years back when I came here to the North West. As long as you know what to expect and how to behave they are actually easier to get along with then my fellow humans."

"You speak to them and they answer back. I had not known this was possible let alone common."

"It's probably not common. You have to be able to either let down your mental barriers or be like me and have practically no barriers to begin with to receive their mental speech. It's much lower frequency then the telepathic voices of humans or your people, or so the Queen of the East says anyways."

"Their Queen would know such things I suppose Ooman."

"One has to suppose it is so hunter."

Their discussions got more involved as the days passed. They discussed science, mostly biology and a few assumptions about the Xenomorphs that she could say were really not true by having lived in their hive for so long. The hunter, who turned out was more concerned with sciences then even the hunting his people did, even taught her to make a variety of spiced bread favored by the hunters of his clan.

The clan of the star was looking for their missing member. Snow did not impede them once the wind stopped using it to obscure vision and cause a person to freeze to death. They also had the gear needed to survive out doors in a blizzard of any strength. The guest in her house had not had such gear because he had not respected the weather. Jessica chastised him gently before waving farewell from the door. He had bowed his head and made a chittering purring noise at her that she guessed meant he liked her more now then he had before. Then he and his brethren cloaked themselves and left the area.

"Even I get the impression that we will see Long Knives again some day in our future and that is nothing but a certainty."

I agree. That much is obvious. They purr at the females they think pretty and desirable in that very same way after all!

"ALPHA! For shame Alpha!"

Hahaha! You have to catch me first, to make good on the threat your posture conveys!

"What makes you think I can't?"

Jessica scampered across the snowy landscape after Alpha Dog laughing in between dire threats that she only half of half meant. She finally dropped to all fours and began scampering along like her before-hive mates often did. Due to practice of doing this she could increase her speed over thirty percent by going on all fours versus her running on two feet. Jessica shot off the top of a snowbank and tackled Alpha Dog.

"EAT SNOW!"

The momentum of her fall allowed her to grab hold of a shoulder and fling Alpha Dog with all her weight and the strength of her arms into another snow bank hard enough to make a good sized hole in the bank. He came out of the hole, shook off, and gave a playful growl. In an instant he had pounced her and thrown them both into yet another bank. Back and forth they mock battled with all the seriousness of a couple of human toddlers. Jessica was laughing so hard she could hardly breathe and the last tussle had stunned her a bit.

Panting next to her, Alpha Dog lifted his head and a mental sigh came across her thoughts.

Fun.

"Yeah, so why are you sad about it?"

For the same reason all fun things bring me so little joy. They are over way too soon.

"Only because the gods made the universe that way so we would rest before trying to have fun again."

My opportunities to enjoy life are few and far between...Jessica...I am thinking that soon as the weather turns the Queen will call us back. I will miss you then.

"That will be months from now. Winter will be long this year. Who knows what will come before then."

Wisdom is normally not something you think on or share with others.

"I can think once I stop doing long enough to take the time. Others may think I am completely vacant, but I would not have lived the four years since I left the hive and survived on my own had I been that very foolish and childish."

Truth that.

Jessica followed Alpha Dog back the way they had come, wondering still how she gave off such an impression of being stupid or foolish. She could not figure it out but she supposed that those who underestimated her would be less of a threat then those who didn't.

Omega scampered out to them and they were all playing cheerfully in the snow when a sudden pain in her shoulder made Jessica drop to a crouch in the snow drifts. Both Xenomorphs shrieked aloud and turned towards the threat but not in time. Darts sank into their shoulders and they too dropped down to avoid any further ordinance.

"Guys I'm sorry this is...my...fault"

Then Jessica fell and the world went black.

{A/N: 3090 before the note and a small adjustment to make it make a bit more sense. Here is the second chapter of part one of the Alpha Dog Chronicles. Enjoy and review my sweeties, even if it is just to say "Yay!" or "Still reading this one." Let me know you are here and are in!}