Chapter Nine

The creature pushed his pain to the back of his mind. His leg throbbed and the strips of bark holding his wound closed were digging into his raw flesh, but this was the best he could do for now. In the darkness, the creature scanned the trees for any signs of life. His shrieks would have shook the dead to life again, and he surely had revealed his whereabouts to the others...

Using only his back muscles, he pushed himself off of the tree he was braced against, and stepped onto his injured leg. Pain coursed through his body, thrilling and torturous all at once. His infrared showed no signs of life. The forest was quiet.

He allowed his thoughts to wander back to the female he had encountered by the river. The one he could smell even now.

He growled softly to himself and activated his cloak. Then with the ease and grace of a jungle cat, the creature crouched to the ground, then using his legs, sprang up onto a branch with a single swift movement. He steadied himself with one arm against the tree trunk, then continued to crouch and leap, crouch and leap, higher and higher up into the tree tops until he emerged above the canopy. Scanning and zooming once again, he could see no movement, no heat signatures.

However, he did notice the faintest thin streak of smoke rising out of the air a great distance out in front of him. It was the camp where he had seen her.

The thought of having an encounter with her again thrilled him. It was unlike any thrill he had felt while hunting...back when he was permitted the title of Hunter...

Once again, he let his thoughts wander...

They called him Jehdin H'dlak; the Feared One.

It had been years since he was dropped onto the prison planet to die like a lowly animal. Before his incarceration, he was a great leader and hero among his kind. After his birth, he immediately began to show signs of superiority among the young sucklings. It was said widely throughout his clan that he would grow to be a legendary hunter. At a young age, he was hunting and killing prey that was reserved for the Honoured Caste; some thought this was blasphemy, others, the sign of a great leader.

Years later, he had been chosen to lead the kainde amedha chiva; the Hard Meat Trial for the Unblooded young of his clan's Elder. It was an honour of honours. The chance to train the future leader of his clan was a gift he would never be able to repay.

As events unfolded, it turned out to be a disaster he could never atone for.

In his zeal to impress his legendary master, the Unblooded youngling had slipped silently from Jehdin's ship and onto the uncharted planet it was orbiting on the day before the hunt was to begin. When Jehdin awoke and found his student missing, he feared the worst.

Using a tracking device to find the Unblooded child, Jehdin came across not one, but two Queens, fighting for territorial dominance; his student stupidly trying to hunt and destroy them both. Jehdin pursued his student and tried in vain to mount a rescue.

Jehdin H'dlak watched as the Unblooded youngling was ripped apart by the Queens like an insect. His noble blood coated the ground, and sealed the fate of his clan. Without a future clan leader, the clan would come under chaos and uncertainty.

Jehdin tried to reclaim most of the student's body to return to his father, but it was foolish to try and take on two Queens. He had no choice but to return to the clan and try and explain the outcome of the kainde amedha chiva.

When he arrived home without the Future Leader, Jehdin was immediately branded a murderer. His clanmates accused him of trying to usurp power from the Elders. They even accused him of being a cannibal and eating the remains of his student to hide his crime. Try as he did to explain himself, he was nonetheless caste out of the clan. For years he was kept prisoner on the clanship, tortured and mutilated by the Elder as punishment for his "crime".

Until one day, the clanship received a visitor.

Hulij was known throughout his kind for being the most hostile and blood-thirsty female ever born. She was also taller than any Yautja female he had even encountered; dwarfing the hardiest and tallest of the males. She was an expert hunter, not unlike himself, but she had a reputation for playing dirty. She would kill anything and everything, breaking even the most honoured rules of the hunt. Pregnant creatures, unarmed creatures, most things that bring no satisfaction to his race when hunted, Hulij took them all without hesitation.

No one dared call her a Bad Blood. No one wanted to be another of her trophies.

So imagine his surprise when she arrived on his clan ship, offering to the Elder to relieve him of his unclean prisoners.

Apparently, she and a chosen few of her female allies had wiped out an entire sentient species on a nearby planet, in which she had turned into her own private hunting grounds.

She was now after the most heinous, dishonoured, repugnant abominations of her species that she could find to populate her new holding. It wasn't long before Jehdin was taken by Hulij and dumped onto this planet; a sentence that only prolonged the death he wished would have come to him the second he shamefully returned to his clan.

When he had arrived, he was stripped of his Sat-com, or wrist computer. He was allowed to keep only his Plasma Caster, his mask, his cloak, and his wrist blades. Unfortunately, one of the blades was broken off during a fight with Hulij he had started only a few seconds after his bonds were cut when they reached Hulij's preserve. Even his medkit was taken, though he managed to hunt a kill a few of his fellow inmates and pillaged their goods.

In the beginning, it seemed as if Hulij was just building up a collection of Bad Bloods. He had seen many outcasts and criminals dumped onto her preserve. Most deserved to be there. Some did not. The planet boasted very few large creatures, so after the majority of them were tracked down and killed, hunting became a bore. There was no way to channel the urge to hunt. Many of the captives began to hunt each other in order to quench their bloodlust. But soon their numbers dwindled, and it seemed as if Hulij was biding her time, watching the few that were left.

The one thing he hadn't counted on was what Hulij had in her sick, twisted mind all along: she was counting down to mating season. After the Yautjua prisoners began to dwindle in numbers, the few that remained began coming across newly dumped creatures: unknown random female creatures. They were all unarmed, all repulsive, some weren't even sentient. But it didn't take long for Jehdin to realize their purpose.

Hulij knew that when the time came, the others would grow wild with carnal hunger. A Yautja deprived of a mate was worse than a horde of starving beasts. She knew they would be desperate; that if it came down to it, the prisoners would probably settle for sexual release in the belly of a corpse in order to relieve their overpowering hormonal desire to breed.

This act; this deed of mating with anything other than a female of the Yautja species was a dishonour as bad as being cast out of a clan. To spread his seed and sire new hunters was a driving force for all male Yautja, but only if it could produce a suckling from the womb of a Yautja female. To expel his seed into a female other than Yautja was an unforgivable disgrace. Not only would Hulij torture her prisoners, she would starve their loins and humiliate them by forcing them to fornicate with inferior, vulgar females until their last breath.

Pure entertainment for Hulij, the sadistic female barbarian.

Jehdin had been strong. He had made it through the first mating season without tossing his dignity aside. He had watched as other males copulated with random forest beasts, sometimes even performing the s'yuit-de ki its-pa, the Cowardly Spear where a male would work his length with his own hand until he spilled his seed upon the ground, an act which was forbidden in Yautja society and considered to be a sign of utter and complete worthlessness. He admitted to himself that he had been tempted to commit this act in order to relieve the horrid amount of pent-up stress and frustration, but had found the strength within him to hold on to his honor.

But now he was overcome with the smell of a different kind of female. In his mind was burned the curve and shape of the delicate female creature he had encountered in the forest and at the riverbank. He remembered the way the closeness of her body warmed his own. He remembered the way she had stood perfectly still, despite the fear he smell on her. It made his loins quiver. He thrust his large hand over his groin, desperately trying to stop the flood of hormones now coursing through his body.

Just then he heard an unusual scream. A blended scream.

He had heard the lustful mating screams of two male Yautja.

His mind zapped out of his fantasy. He calculated that the screams had come from around the area of the great waterfall, in the opposite direction of the smoke.

Jehdin had to make a choice. He could return to the camp to see if the female was still there, but by this time, she might not even be there anymore. The screaming Yautja could have her right now...

Without another thought, he bounded down the tree and bolted like a predator through the forest in the direction of the waterfall.