CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
The humans were growing ever more comfortable in their surroundings.
Since the appearance of the Yautja hunters months earlier, the attacks from the bugs had become fewer and farther between. With more time to rest, camp, and even settle in to a location, slowly something that felt like a normal life, even home was beginning to develop.
The group, once dwindling in numbers down to just a handful, had rebounded and grown in the months since the Yautja arrived. Over just the last few days alone spots of new survivors, in bands of two or five had joined forces. The blended groups became one, and with the addition of a few young children, the group suddenly felt like a large family.
K'Shai watched the sun and moon dance idly around each other as one day turned to two then three and continued on until seven sunrises had occurred and yet there was still no sign of R'chnt or any other Yautja.
She kept herself pointedly away from the human group, only keeping company with Lewis and Carlos who seemed to pass their time by eyeing her in silent wonder, clearly acknowledging her quiet look of concern but not knowing what to say or do about it.
Young Kelly seemed to be the only other one of the group who readily accepted K'Shai's unusual relationship and inquired about R'chnt without judgement or apprehension. The rest of the group, as K'Shai was well aware, murmured and gossiped and scoffed and glared at her with more scrutinizing than even any of the Yautja aboard the jag'd'atoll had.
As K'Shai put her growing training to use in hunting down fresh meat for the group to eat, even those actions, despite their benefit to the others, caused strife and fear.
K'Shai, just the night before, killed a deer for the group to feast up, from easily fifty yards, with nothing more than the very knife that had been once impaled into her thigh. It was a useful trophy, and R'chnt had been teaching her well to hunt from a distance, for her own safety as well as teaching her hand to hand fighting.
She could have shot the deer easily with the plasma caster mounted around her waist belt, but the damaging shot would have ruined too much meat and with ammunition running low for the group, there was no need to waste a precious bullet.
Ensuring that the group had enough food for everyone, K'Shai launched her blade and struck the animal through the throat. It bled out quickly leaving a short and easily tracked trail in the setting sun.
While the group encircled a large fire, savored the smell of the finely smoking venison, and enjoyed their meal, none of that seemed to stop them from commenting about K'Shai's relationship with the aliens, the kill she had made, the mark on her head or the longing and separated look in her eyes she held for the missing R'chnt. She was used to the Yautja being gone for days, and slowly, she had noticed that the duration of their time between returning for rest had been slowly growing longer.
Now, though, it was different. She kept her lamentations to herself, but it was not unobvious to her onlookers, so she remained mostly away from the group, silently scanning the streets and the horizon from various rooftops until she could no longer keep her eyes open into the night, watchful for a shimmer, a glowing blue flicker.
As the clouds played across the moon once more, K'Shai ignored the gentle rain and kept her weary eyes on the horizon for as long as she could, thoughts of the vision she had experienced with R'chnt running wild through her mind until she could no longer keep herself sitting up.
She returned to the apartment she claimed for herself on the uppermost floor. In the still darkness of the night, with a dead city all around them, echoing voices of people talking and children running and laughing resounded up through the building's hallways and stairwells. The entire group had made a home two floors below. K'Shai laid in the bed and pulled the sheets up over her as she groaned softly, feeling dizzy, nauseous and stressed as the rain gently ticked the window.
When morning light met her eyes and she squinted into awareness, she was not completely sure when she had even fallen asleep or how much rest she got. The only things she became immediately aware of was that R'chnt had not returned to her during the night and she had a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach that made her leap up in an instant and force her to double over the toilet in a moment.
K'Shai slipped down to the floor and rested before she stood and cleaned herself up. She took her time cleaning her body and washing her hair in the sink from a gallon of collected boiled rain water.
She studied her reflection in the mirror. Her thoughts were drifting into a hundred different directions and the more she tried to focus them, the more they slipped away to exactly the thoughts she was trying to quell.
She vaguely thought about eating, but felt too nauseous to even walk down the stairs and had little interest in joining the group. As she sat in the open window to the fire escape and watched the streets and rooftops around her, she could already here the group stirring into activity and wisps of smoke rose up past her nostrils as a fire was stoked.
The hours passed slowly, and K'Shai, feeling dizzy and lightheaded every time she moved, remained mostly motionless until the sun was well above her shining as brightly as any November day would allow it.
She did not hear the knock on the door on the other end of the apartment and she did not realize Lewis and Carlos had entered until they startled her.
"Hey, Cassy?"
With a tense jump, she looked about and eyed her friends silently.
She caught their concerned glances that were clearly mixed with a confused uncertainty about what to even say. It was obvious they were straining for even the basics and K'Shai said nothing.
"You alright?" Lewis asked finally.
She turned her head back to the rooftops one final time before crawling through the open window back into the apartment.
Carlos kept his eye on her, while Lewis seemed to nervously scan the buildings.
"Cassy, you look exhausted." Carlos said. "Are you sleeping alright?"
She remained silent, her jaw clenched.
"When was the last time you had anything to eat?" He prompted again.
"Cassy? What's wrong?" Lewis urged stepping into her as he reached out and squeezed her arm then
yanked it away as though he was concerned over his own safety for doing so.
"Sit down please," K'Shai said to them, gesturing to the table nearby.
She spoke in barely over a whisper, sounding both distant and worried as well as tired.
Lewis and Carlos did as directed and K'Shai paced softly near the end of the table, pressing her hands nervously together as she tried to form words while Lewis and Carlos eyed her looking halfway alarmed by what she might have to say.
"When I was on the ship with R'chnt…" she began softly. "Something happened, and I don't know what to make of it."
Both men shot each other a sort of look that screamed 'I told you so', as if they presumed the whole relationship with R'chnt was a bad idea. They stayed silent and glanced back to her.
"We…engaged in this ritual. It's not something terribly common for his people. We drank each others' blood…" She paused and her lips formed a small smile as Lewis and Carlos squirmed just a little bit.
"Well it was in a chalice, it's not like we sucked it out of each others' necks…"
She smiled half-heartedly and continued on.
"Anyway, it was a blood bonding ceremony. We declared our paths as one and bonded ourselves to one another until we die." She spoke slowly, softly, but took a breath to continue on.
"Wait a minute…" Lewis held a palm up and eyed her widely.
"Are you telling me you two got married?"
K'Shai stopped and stared between Lewis and Carlos for a moment.
"Well, I guess you could call it that, yea."
She shook her hands and moved on to the point she was wanting to bring up. "But that's not it. After we did the ritual, we touched hands, and something happened."
She told them about the shared experience they both had, of the same vision from their own perspective and told Lewis and Carlos of what she saw.
"I saw his death."
"Did you tell him what you saw?" Lewis asked.
She shook her head slowly as a tear ran down her cheek. "I couldn't."
K'Shai stood trembling on the spot while Carlos and Lewis silently tried to process the overwhelming events they were being told.
She could see a look of disbelief on their faces and for a moment, she did not know what they found more unbelievable – the vision, or the whole scope of the idea that she had married a seven-foot-four alien hunter that in another time and situation would most likely have readily removed all of their spines for a trophy on his wall.
"Listen, I know it sounds crazy. Impossible, right?" She sighed heavily.
"A year ago, I was going to be a fashion designer and aliens didn't exist. I know what we experienced. Something is just… different between us."
"What do you mean exactly?" Lewis asked quietly.
"I don't know… it's hard to define. It's…" she stammered and sighed as her thoughts drifted. "Even Neh'rti said it a couple times to me when I was with her.
"Who?" Carlos asked.
"She is the leader of the clan that R'chnt.. well, and I… belong."
Lewis huffed and K'Shai glanced at him.
"I guess I just thought R'chnt was the leader." He said quickly.
K'Shai nodded. "He is a leader. He's a hunt leader and a spiritual leader. Females rule the clan."
"Any…anyway, Neh'rti even said it herself. There is a bond between R'chnt and I that is hard to explain or understand. I know what we saw, even if I don't fully understand it."
She slunk into a seat next to Carlos and sobbed. Her stomach churned and she felt sick as she wept profusely.
"I can't lose him."
"You don't know where he is right now?"
"He's been gone for a week." She said as she shook her head. "I just … I just can't lose him. I don't know what to do."
Carlos patted her shoulder lightly. "Well," he said thoughtfully. "If this….vision… is in any way accurate, then you would be together if this happens."
She eyed him considerately. She hadn't thought of that.
"You're right."
Lewis added in his thoughts. "Plus, you don't know when this vision might really take place. Maybe not at all."
She shook her head quickly, absolutely certain of one thing. "No. We saw this to show us what is imminent in our future. It was the Gods' work. They showed us how our path together ends."
"Well, what about the voice?" Carlos questioned trying to break down the vision piece by piece. "Who's voice was it? What did it mean?"
K'Shai shook her head. "I don't know. I don't know who's voice it was. But the name K'Shai… it means strong heart."
Lewis and Carlos exchanged wary glances in silence as K'Shai wiped away continued tears from her eyes. She locked her jaw up tightly for a moment trying to shove her distress out of mind, but her thoughts filled with the full reason for it.
"I'm pregnant."
She blurted out quickly and slowly, ensuring her words were not misunderstood. Clearly they were not, judging by the stark expressions her friends cast her. She remained silent as they processed her words before she turned her head to look between them both.
Carlos sighed deeply, with all the emphasis of a concerned father. He reached for his stethoscope and leaned towards her.
"Let me listen, Cassandra."
He looked her over and listened to her chest quickly before he dropped the stethoscope to her stomach and paused. He held his breath for a moment before he huffed and cracked a soft smile.
"Yes you are."
Lewis squeeze his eyes shut for a moment and shook his head. "Did you find this out during that ritual, too?"
K'Shai shook her head slowly.
"I haven't been feeling well the last few days. Tired, sick. I took a pregnancy test this morning."
Her words were soft, barely audible. Carlos presented her with the end of the stethoscope and she took a listen to her own womb, hearing something that sounded like a fast purr in her belly.
"Is that a heartbeat?"
Carlos raised his eyebrows. "It's the sound of two heart beats, not beating in synch. When I listened to R'chnt, that was the first thing I noticed. Doubled heart beats."
"Wait? Is she having twins?" Lewis asked, looking more alarmed.
Carlos shook his head and glanced to Lewis. "No. R'chnt has two hearts."
K'Shai nodded silently, verifying that as true.
"Well, we need to get food in you. There is no telling what kind of strain that growing fetus is putting on your body. Not eating will do you absolutely no good."
Carlos commanded and rose to his feet, helping K'Shai by the arm out of the chair.
She spent the remainder of the day with the group, but said very little. The three of them did not speak of her condition, but as evening fell and the orange fire danced across their faces, Nancy leaned in to her and whispered a congratulations and words of support in her ear.
K'Shai shot a startled look to Nancy.
"I know that look." Nancy smiled softly and glanced to her daughter Kelly who was playing nearby with another child. "It's going to be alright. I've never seen two people more in love."
She cast a soft smile and quick glance to the mark burned into K'Shai's forehead and gently squeezed her shoulder for a moment. K'Shai pressed her lips together and smiled, then cast her gaze back to the flickering fire as the moon rose higher and higher into crisp, cloudless sky.
K'Shai leaned over towards Lewis and clapped her hand on his shoulder. "I'm tired. I'm going back to bed."
"Whoa!" Someone exclaimed from group and his surprised exclamation was quickly echoed by several others as heads turned to a point somewhere in the dark distance behind K'Shai.
K'Shai turned and her eyes caught movement in the darkness. There were several large forms taking shape far down the street. The group around her murmured in awestruck amazement as the massive bodies of twelve tremendous horses appeared out of the darkness, each one mounted by a Yautja hunter; R'chnt in the lead.
Her face lit up immediately, her jaw gaped, and a smile wider perhaps more so than any other smile she had ever smiled took control of her face.
K'Shai pulled herself to her feet and stepped lightly forward away from the group as the Yautja all came to a halt, and only R'chnt rode quickly forward. He removed his helmet and locked it into place over his left thigh.
His armor glistened in the moonlight, and the sheen of his skin caught up the bright moon's beams. The metal and jeweled beads in his long gray locks glimmered, the horse snorted.
The animal was massive, easily the largest horse K'Shai had ever seen. It was gray. Its feet were bigger than a dinner plate. It had no saddle, no reins, yet it did R'chnt's bidding and stopped squarely as he greeted her by name and extended his mighty arm towards her.
Without hesitation, K'Shai stepped close to R'chnt and the horse and gripped his arm. He pulled her single handedly off her feet on onto the back of the horse.
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and nudged her head into his hair and squeezed her eyes shut as she whispered her greeting into his ear. He urged the horse forward and the massive animal quickly clapped away to rejoin the halted group at the other end of the block.
"Well, ok then. Good bye." Lewis mumbled as he watched Cassandra disappear into the darkness with R'chnt.
"My K'Shai, you are with child." R'chnt said with interest as soon as she was settled behind him.
"How…" she started to say, but stopped and merely held him tighter.
"Well, I was going to surprise you, but I guess not!" She laughed and kissed him lightly behind his ear.
It wasn't until morning when she returned to the human group and promptly informed them they needed to move on. The hunters were already headed towards the next hive, having cleared out the immediate radius.
The human group, with limited grumbling did pack up and they were all soon walking eastwardly along a grassy ridge next to a highway that had closely parked cars long abandoned in the lane. Some of the doors had been left open, some were ripped off.
Cassandra walked quietly at the head of the group, Lewis tailing just behind her by only a few inches. Carlos walked farther behind helping some of the injured along. The group walked in mostly silence throughout the morning. There was no sign of the Yautja anywhere.
"So, what's the plan, now?" K'Shai could hear whispered behind her.
"I guess we're just running off into danger because that's what the hunters are doing."
Several of the men at the fore of the group whispered amongst themselves.
"This is crazy. We need to come up with a real plan for survival."
"We should take a break, let's stop." Lewis spoke up quickly, and K'Shai halted, glanced about for any signs of the Yautja as she waited with the humans while they rested and discussed the future.
"Hey, Cassy," one of the men in the group said to her after a short while. "Why don't you just get your friends to take us all into their spaceships?"
"Yea, they can have this world and we can go find somewhere else to live."
"Right, we can go to their home."
"Screw that, I don't want to go to their planet."
K'Shai listened to the conversation and said nothing. She remained some distance away from the rest of them, only Lewis and Carlos sat near her. She was not sure if the others thought she could not hear their whispers or didn't care.
"I mean, where are we going? What's the plan?" The whispering continued.
"Some crazy chick decides to have sex with an alien and now we're all just supposed to follow her?"
Lewis glanced to her to gauge her reaction. K'Shai clenched her jaw tightly closed and looked at him.
"We're going to move on the next town, and set up camp."
Lewis said promptly, with an irritated tone in his voice that immediately caught the attention of the whispering men, making it clear that he and K'Shai had overheard their conversation. They glanced to him and when their eyes met K'Shai's, they all suddenly found something else to look at, from damaged cars to litter in the street a quarter mile away.
K'Shai remained quiet throughout the rest of the day.
She felt slightly queasy, but slowly her body was adjusting to its new condition as the two week hybrid fetus inside her grew. She walked on as long as she could, staying warily away from the rest of the group.
She no longer felt part of them at all.
Thoughts of the vision she harbored of his death ran rampant in her mind and compelled her to say nothing to stay with him as long as possible. R'chnt kept quite close to the group now, only disappearing for short distances to ensure the area was secure.
Although there was no doubt that the bug numbers were dwindling as attacks grew more sparse and the hunters had been gone longer and longer on each hunt to seek out their foe, K'Shai knew it was only a matter of time before he made her leave the group and Earth all together.
Females did not hunt when in child, and only hunted rarely even after taking a mate.
She knew he would want her leave the world and go to the jag'd'atoll with the other child-laden females. She would be required to wait safely in the stars while he hunted far below. It was not what she wanted, yet at the same time, she did not want to put the child in danger, either.
She quietly feared death from the bugs as well as problems amongst the rest of the human group if they found out about her condition.
She needed to eat more frequently than she had before, and soon, she knew it would not go unnoticed. She was able to get meat from R'chnt and his group whenever they killed prey so she did not have to consume as much of the human group's food supplies.
She felt a rush of relief when the group came to a halt before a luxury condominium building at the edge of a town, just before dark.
She was ready to rest, but she wanted to wait for R'chnt and his group to return all the same. Once the area was deemed safe and clear, the human group made themselves at home in the building, lighting a fire just outside the back door of the main lobby, in what would have once been a stone courtyard.
The in-ground pool was black and filled with algae, emanating a stench that the warm fire just barely covered up.
K'Shai paced slowly around the courtyard, eyeing the surroundings for R'chnt and it was not long before darkness had set in on the group completely.
She settled down with a bite of food from the meal that had been created by a variety of canned goods, jerky, and other non-perishables acquired from the condominiums. It was a good stock piling of food; easily enough to feed the whole group for several days.
It was reasonable that they could camp here for a while, and depending on what other supplies would be found the following day, it seemed as though the human group would be able to turn the area into a home for weeks, even months; at least, that was where the conversation for the evening had turned.
"I thought we were going to keep walking," Kelly asked as the idea of making a long-term camp turned up.
"We need to find a place to make into home. Somewhere to restart, regroup. If we keep following the hunters because of her," one of the men in the group said pointing a finger at K'Shai, with a stern voice, "we're just going to keep getting into danger, and for what?"
"Why are they here anyway?" He said abruptly stopping one train of thought and jumping to another. "We can't keep following them for no reason, putting ourselves in danger."
K'Shai said nothing. Others jumped in to both sides of the conversation.
"They've been helping us. Protecting us." One said.
"Cassandra is the only reason we've had that kind of help."
"Bah!" One of the men exclaimed dismissively.
"Didn't they free you when you were tied up with a gang member's shot gun to your head?" Someone snapped at him.
Lewis stayed quiet but looked between the murmuring group and silent K'Shai.
"Hey, you know," he whispered to her. "It's fall, the days are going to get colder, they're getting shorter. We got through one winter huddling down and holding out. We probably do need to think about doing that again."
K'Shai looked at him for a moment, but pressed her lips together. People were looking to her for answers that she simply did not have. R'chnt was not there to protect them.
It was true that he had only kept his group close to theirs because she had reached out to him with curiosity and friendship which caught his attention, but he was still on a mission and had a job to complete. It was not a job that involved the humans.
The Yautja army on Earth was making more and more clear zones, working in a massive connecting network of triangle shaped zones to eliminate the kaindhe amheda drones and their queens and eggs.
The humans needed to stay in those safe zones, but the Yautja needed to continue on to finish the fight. A divergence was coming and K'Shai knew where she needed to be, where she could no longer be, and where she did not want to be.
She suddenly caught sight of a familiar shimmer in the dark distance and smiled as R'chnt's body appeared from out of his cloak, catching the moonlight as he did.
"I must go with him, Lewis." She said quietly to him and Carlos as she stepped away towards R'chnt far from the group. "But I will see what the options are for the rest of you."
He nodded and watched her leave.
K'Shai greeted R'chnt with a beaming smile and they and the rest of the Yautja headed away from the building with the human encampment. The Yautja were soon settled into their own camp out of sight from the humans, and K'Shai and R'chnt headed off further still, walking over a distance of nearly a mile.
"Oh, look at this! Apples!"
K'Shai said excitedly as she noticed a grove of apple trees near a pond just beyond the entrance to a park. She walked down the driveway entrance and R'chnt followed. K'Shai walked past the picnic shelter near the pond and picked a perfectly ripened apple from the nearest branch, savoring the taste of the fruit before she turned to R'chnt.
"Would you like one?" She asked but he gestured with his hand dismissively.
"Rest here, K'Shai, I will get us some meat. Make a fire. Stay warm. You will be safe, there are no kainde amedha in the area."
"I've got to talk to you about that. After dinner. I'll be here," she said with a simple smile and bit another chunk of apple as R'chnt walked away.
K'Shai took her back pack and filled it with some of the fruits to bring back to the group when she returned before she collected sticks and kindling and got a fire going between the picnic shelter and the pond as the clouds whisked past the moon.
She scanned the skies looking for any ships, spotted just a handful hovering and one streaking across the blackness. R'chnt soon returned with two rabbits dangling in his powerful grip.
In no time, he had the animals skinned, carved and over the fire. He sat down and K'Shai tucked in close
to his warm body whispering to him quietly. They ate their meal and K'Shai hopped up, walking just out of sight around the other side of the picnic shelter.
"I'm going to hold you to that!" She called to R'chnt with a laugh, finishing the conversation.
R'chnt walked to the edge of the pond, knelt down and dipped his wrist blades into the water, washing the blood off of them. He ran the targeting laser from his helmet over them quickly to thoroughly clean them and sharpen them for the next kill and stood up at the water's edge.
"I am looking forward to it, really." K'Shai laughed again, calling to R'chnt from out of sight. She rounded the picnic shelter and stopped, eyeing R'chnt carefully, as the smile on her face faded a little and she bit her lip.
"It will be amazing to see your world. I can't wait for us to go there together."
R'chnt turned fully towards her and slowly approached, retracting his wrist blades just before she had gotten within an arm's reach.
"I need you to make sure you take me to your world, and all the others that you've told me about." She whispered as she placed her palm on his chest and groped his body.
He stroked her face gently and whispered her name as she looked up to him and met his gaze with her eyes.
"I will, K'Shai. We will walk our path as one for as long as the Gods allow. And when the Gods call for my soul, I will wait for you to join me in the afterlife."
"Oh no, R'chnt. No. I will not live an hour past you. Not one hour." She whispered strongly and reached to him.
He lifted her up and she wrapped her arms around his neck, whispering in his ear.
"I need you with me always. And I will wait for you in the afterlife for all eternity. You don't have my permission to go first. You can't, do you hear me?"
She spoke tearfully in barely a whisper, brushing his long beaded dreadlocks aside with one hand as she kissed his jaw and caressed him feverishly.
R'chnt dropped to his knees cradling her and K'Shai straddled him, pressing her body against his as she stroked his shoulders and kissed his cheek.
He rubbed his hands from her back to her breasts, under her shirt, pulling up her bra and stroking back down along her abdomen and around her hips, squeezing gently as he grew more and more aroused.
K'Shai unclipped the buckles to his chest armor and pulled off his arm gauntlets in a few feverish strokes.
She moaned quietly and gasped deeply as her body churned wildly as he slid her clothes off. She could feel herself wetting up and she knew by the tone in R'chnt's heated growl that his erection was quickly getting uncomfortable behind a restrictive metal cod piece.
K'Shai helped him free of the restriction and slipped off his lap just enough to get her boots and jeans off.
She hung her jaw and licked her lips as she felt R'chnt's fullness of his erection between her tense hands and panted more, kneeling in front of him and turning away from him as he growled and guided her into a kneeling position before him.
He slid his hands from her shoulders to her breasts and down to her hips, pulling them up into just the right angle as he introduced his massive, dripping erection into her.
He knelt behind her and thrust his hips forward slowly, making K'Shai howl and shriek loudly with excitement, pleasure, and anticipation. R'chnt rounded his body over hers, his powerful forearms fully engulfing her shoulders, his long and thick dreadlocked hair dangling over her back.
He lowered his jaws to the nape of her neck, brushing some of her long black hair beside with his chin and tusks as he tickled her skin with his upper mandibles, growling a pleasured and deep purr as he pumped himself slowly in and out of her, thoroughly coating himself with her lubricating juices.
K'Shai succumbed to the flood of sensations and the power of R'chnt's strong body. She moaned and shut her eyes as she panted and felt him thrust faster and faster into her.
R'chnt straightened his back and body behind her, allowing him to thrust into her more fully. He pumped himself into her powerfully right down to the skin on his abdomen, his scrotum swinging freely slapping into K'Shai with each aroused force forward.
She was a powerless slave to R'chnt's thrusts as he growled and groaned loudly while his body glistened in the moonlight from a layer of sweat beading on his skin.
He pressed hard into her, his body trembling almost as much as hers. K'Shai moaned and squealed and she could tell, from the tension she felt through his highly aroused body that he was trying to hold back just a little longer.
It was quite like trying to stop a volcano from erupting by squeezing the tip closed. R'chnt howled loudly as he could no longer prevent the pressure growing in him from shooting forth.
He filled K'Shai with his juice and his body shook with satisfied pleasure as he released himself fully into her while she panted and groaned and slowly quelled her breathing.
R'chnt held still in her for a few moments longer as he continued to empty the sap from his rod into K'Shai and felt her aroused body relax its grip ever so slightly from around his erection. He pulled back slowly, causing K'Shai to moan one more long time as he withdrew his shaft from her throbbing tract.
The pair stretched out on the cool grass, looked up at the sky for a while longer and caressed each other's skin slowly.
Sometime later, K'Shai leaned over into R'chnt and gazed into his eyes as she stroked his cheek slowly, with a soft smile on her face. She kissed him gently and curled into him, quickly finding sleep in the warm comfort of his arms.
Despite being so far south, the chill of the fall still crept its way into the night and K'Shai and R'chnt stayed warm with no coverings on through each other's bodies.
The morning light barely cracked the sky and a heavy fog had moved in, blanketing them both in a startling sight a bit too reminiscent of the vision K'shai had for her liking. She found herself immediately glancing over R'chnt, ensuring herself that he was just sleeping soundly and there was no sign of blood or injury.
She suddenly had the terrible thought that perhaps they both had been attacked while they slept by face huggers. She glanced around them but saw no spidery carcasses next to them. R'chnt did assure her the area had been thoroughly cleared, but K'Shai still found herself haunted by her vision.
She reached for his bio helmet and connected it to the computer system in the pile of armor next to him.
She held the oversized helmet upon her head and scanned through the various visual settings to look into R'chnt's own chest, just to reconfirm to herself that he was fine. He woke from his deep and satisfied slumber just then and smiled halfway with an upper mandible.
"You will get your own soon, that one is a little big for you." He said gently as he stroked her shoulder with his hand.
K'Shai pulled the helmet off and smiled widely. She leaned into him and kissed him passionately across his cheek, jaw, and down his neck to his shoulder and down to his collar bone and chest muscles.
"Did you sleep alright?"
He purred softly. "I never seem more rested than when I am with you."
K'Shai laughed. "Oh. Is that because I wear you out first?"
"Wear me out?" R'chnt laughed. "Is that the goal?"
Brimming from ear to ear with a sultry smile, K'Shai caressed his powerful body as he breathed heavily below her and his chest rose and fell.
"Sure. I think I can make that happen." She whispered to him between gentle kisses.
In minutes, K'Shai had worked her mouth, lips, and hands around his penis and scrotum and R'chnt was howling at her pleasure, a slave to the sensations she was creating like he had never experienced before he came to know a human female's touch.
As he growled and churned under her while she straddled his thighs, R'chnt's erection dripped, ready for more and K'Shai raised herself to her knees and lowered her body atop him.
He howled wildly and moaned with delight and pleasure as he began to pump and thrust upwards into her while she rocked against him, slowly at first, and then quickly building to powerful and passionate fury.
K'Shai moaned loudly and as she rose and fell atop R'chnt's powerful, massive rod, she arched her back and stretched her shoulders back and ran her fingers through her own hair and down her own shoulders, a wide, pleasured smile on her face.
R'chnt roared with delight as he released himself in to her. K'Shai squealed and panted and slowly stopped moving.
She held still for a moment just feeling the powerful throb of R'chnt's hard erection exploding inside her and her hands fell from gripping her shoulders, dragging slightly over her breasts before landing on his abdomen.
R'chnt sat up, still in her, making her groan a little from the position of his shaft as he flexed his abdomen and rocked her slightly backwards. He gripped around her body with his large, strong hands and as he caressed her delicate skin gently, his clawed talons dragged across her back, tickling her skin.
She leaned in to him and kissed him gently before she slowly pulled herself off of him, moaning as she did.
"Ohh," she groaned softly. "Do we have to go back to the group?"
"They would be Leaderless."
"W'rsa's got it covered for today." She smiled.
R'chnt looked sharply at her.
"Kidding! Just joking." She reassured him. "I know. I know."
She pulled herself reluctantly away from him and wandered off behind the solid wall of the picnic shelter before returned towards R'chnt and began dressing. R'chnt was almost finished getting his chest and leg armor on before she had even finished getting her boots back on.
She leaned over him, distracting him from his armor as she wrapped her arms around his neck and smiled again, kissing him as the morning fog began to clear.
"Uh. Oh. Hello."
She mumbled as she pulled away from R'chnt, eyes focused on a moving form coming through the fog.
With a growl, R'chnt stood and aimed his shoulder cannon as K'Shai stepped forward. The red laser beams found their target a few dozen meters away; the chest of an old man, holding a stick with a white T-shirt swinging off it.
"It's alright, R'chnt," K'Shai whispered, extending her palm towards him as she slowly approached the old man who eyed them both with wide eyes that said he had to try, but he made peace with God should he not live through the experience.
"Hello. It's Ok. We won't hurt you." She spoke to the man that approached.
"I.. uhh.." the man stammered, clearly terrified.
"I'm sorry," his raspy voice was soft, and somewhat defeated, desperate sounding. "I was hoping maybe you could help us."
K'Shai's eyes scanned the surroundings as the sun rose up and the fog lifted nearly completely.
"Us?"
"Uhh…" the man tried again to come up with words, eyes locked on R'chnt.
Suddenly, a quiet buzzing noise echoed through the still darkness and K'Shai and R'chnt both turned back to his armor.
The computer gauntlet, still laying on the ground behind them, was beeping and R'chnt, growling in annoyance, stalked away. K'Shai turned back to the old man with a little smile at R'chnt's sudden crankiness on her face and noticed that the man looked more than a bit relieved to have some extra distance between him and the giant, armed alien.
"It's alright." She said to him in a soft whisper. "What's your name?"
"Russ. Russel." He introduced himself with a last name almost as difficult to pronounce as some Yautja names she had heard.
"I didn't mean to… uh…interrupt." He said grittily, clearly his throat uncomfortably as he did. "I just hoped maybe you could help, and I didn't want to you disappear."
"I see. I can't help but wonder exactly how long you were out there?" K'Shai said flatly.
Russel grunted half-heartedly and cast a wary glance towards his toes, clearly giving his answer without saying a word.
"K'Shai," R'chnt called to her. "You should hear this."
She grinned curiously and stepped away from Russel to listen the communication coming through the computer.
The old man clearly turned an ear towards them, but did not dare move an inch closer, especially as R'chnt made quite the point to don the rest of his armor as K'Shai held the gauntlet and listened closely, an excited smile widely spreading across her face as she glanced to the old man as if the news directly concerned him.
She turned her gaze to R'chnt again, who retrieved the gauntlet from her and slid it into place on his arm.
"This is it, R'chnt!" She said to him eagerly. "This is what we need."
R'chnt nodded clearly and Russel obviously tried to decipher just what was going on as K'Shai approached him.
"You should get your people, Russel. We have a group, and you will be safe."
With a questioning, but eager glance, Russel turned and headed up a the slightly rolling hillside away from the pond and towards the line of the woods where he stepped onto a narrow path and disappeared as K'Shai and R'chnt gathered themselves together and walked casually along a short while later.
K'Shai stopped before they reached the edge of the woods and smiled at R'chnt as she reached towards him and gently touched his elbow.
"How do you think the rest of your people are going to react to this baby?" She said with a soft whisper as she unconsciously stroked her abdomen.
"He will be part of our clan as both of his parents are. He will be an honored hunter someday."
K'Shai smiled widely. It was hard to argue with his confident sense of absoluteness, except she protested on only one point.
"She…"
He stopped and gazed at her quizzically.
"How can you this?"
With a shrug and simple smile, K'Shai responded merely, "Motherly instinct."
R'chnt huffed softly and spread his upper tusks into a brimming smile, leaned in towards her without a word and picked her up off the ground, arms wrapped fully around her body. She smiled and laughed lightly and tightly encircled his shoulders with her arms, pressing her head against his cheek.
He lowered her back to the ground, gently touching her face with his long, clawed fingers, although his glance shifted from her towards the woods at that moment and she cast a still smiling gaze towards the people approaching.
Russell emerged from the woods, followed closely by another adult man who could have been his son. A short distance behind them approached a woman and two young children.
The man looked between K'Shai and R'chnt with only a halfway uncomfortable gaze. Russel eyed K'Shai and read her like a book.
"Well, congratulations, I suppose." He said heartily and K'Shai shot him a stunned gaze.
"Young lady, I've been a father three times, a grandfather four times. I know the look in a woman's face when she finds out she's having a baby."
K'Shai pulled her cheeks into a rosy smile but said nothing, merely glancing to R'chnt and back towards the woods again as an excited young boy, not even into his teens yet, bounded out quickly.
"Whoa!" He said with a start as soon as he rounded out from the trees and behind his grandfather. "Bad ass!"
"Tyler!" Russel said with a harsh tone.
The boy, fearless and curious strutted forward towards R'chnt. "Look at that sword!"
K'Shai, halfway amused, hearing R'chnt growling in displeasure, stepped towards the boy and gripped his shoulders.
"Ah. Ah. Maybe let's just stay right here, ok?" She said lightly as Russel and the two other adults all stepped towards the boy.
"I'm K'Shai."
Russel indicated to the others in his small group and introduced them.
K'Shai smiled thinly. "You'll be safe. We have a group not far away. Let's go."
She turned and walked only inches away from R'chnt, her shoulder barely reaching his elbow. They strode forward only a short distance when they realized the group behind them was not coming at all and they stopped.
K'Shai watched the group trying to urge the young girl out of her spot. She had stood silent the entire time, mostly hiding behind her grandfather and now would not move.
K'Shai walked forward to her and knelt down while R'chnt lingered some distance away, ever watchful, distrusting, and ready to fire his shoulder cannon if needed, although he deferred to K'Shai's judgement when it came to interacting with humans.
"Hi, Tracy. It's OK. How old are you, nine? Ten?"
"Nine." The little girl reluctantly answered.
K'Shai smiled pleasantly. "Well, there's a little girl in my group, her name's Kelly. She's ten. She's been through a lot and is my friend. I think you two will get along great. I can't wait to introduce you to her. Would you like an apple?"
She reached into her bag and offered the scared child an apple and she took it reluctantly, but her eyes warily shifted towards the lingering giant alien thirty feet away.
"That is my very good friend, R'chnt. He's not going to hurt you." K'Shai added and the girl smiled and seemed more at ease.
She stood up and offered the others an apple, and whether they wanted one or not, they all took one, with stunned, reluctant, and slightly fearful looks on their faces.
K'Shai turned and headed back to R'chnt and the group walked on behind them. She bit into an apple and offered one to R'chnt who took it curiously.
"I don't know if you'll like that. Just don't eat the core."
"Why?" He asked and K'Shai paused and thought about it.
"You know… I actually have no idea. You just don't."
She smiled and laughed, gently nudging her body towards him and he extended his powerful, clawed hand towards her and draped his fingers across the back of her shoulders, her long pony tail bobbing gently as she moved on.
As they neared the city streets, R'chnt split off and returned to his group for a moment while K'Shai showed the new additions towards the group and introduced them. After a few minutes, K'Shai whispered to Lewis.
"There's something everyone needs to hear. Get them gathered."
He looked at her curiously but did as she asked. She had headed off to get R'chnt and returned with him a short while later. They walked together through the nervous crowd who quickly spread apart to make room.
"What's all this about?" Someone mumbled to Lewis who shrugged in return.
"Is she announcing that she's pregnant and they're getting married?" Someone else snapped sarcastically while a couple others stifled an amused laugh. Lewis and Carlos nearly choked.
"This morning…" K'Shai announced, glancing curiously between Lewis and Carlos and the men around them. "The Yautja came across a transmission. I thought you would all want to hear."
She turned to R'chnt who pressed a button on his computer console on the left arm and the nearly three dozen people around them fell completely silent as all eyes turned towards the towering alien. After a moment of static, a voice filled their ears.
"…welcome and safe. This is where the world starts over. I repeat. This is the city of New
Haven. We are over 4,000 strong. We are fortified. We have a secure perimeter over 15 kilometers wide.
We have food and medical resources. All are welcome and safe."
Eyes lit up as the repeating message sank in. A hearty and excited murmur filled the listening
crowd, quickly followed by hissed out hushes.
"Is this a recording?" Lewis asked of Cassandra, who shook her head.
"It's live. I thought you would like to be the first to respond." She said softly.
Lewis brimmed with eagerness and leaned in closer to R'chnt who pressed another button. The
crowd cheered and howled when the voice responded to Lewis.
Smiles filled the entire camp as the coordinates were mapped out and a plan was laid down. People prepped their
belongings and in just a few hours, the group was ready to head off on what would easily be a ten day journey to the
start of the new world.
"Lewis, Carlos," K'Shai said softly to them as the human group gathered at the end of a street,
looking on in the direction they needed to go.
Lewis and Carlos glanced to her and cast their eyes quickly
towards R'chnt towering not too far behind her.
"We will take you to the safe city. The area around it is mostly clear. There should not be any
major trouble getting there. And after that, I'll uhh.."
Her voice was soft but focused. She spoke delicately, and it was clear she was trying to say her
words in as easy a way as possible. Lewis finished the thought for her.
"You're leaving."
K'Shai nodded silently.
Soon, the human group headed along the streets, somewhere both behind and between the Yautja
hunters as R'chnt and the others both lead the humans and spread out to the perimeters around them.
It was not very often at all that the Yautja were even with the human group, but when they were somewhere
within a close distance, it was most typical for them to be far off, often out of sight, surveying the
perimeters.
This time, though, things were a little different, as R'chnt was not willing to leave the human
group totally abandoned until they were at their destination because K'Shai wanted to ensure that her
friends reached safety.
For days, the two groups walked on. They trudged through rain, and walked until night fall stopped them.
They rested quietly and briefly as they needed, and resupplied whenever they passed a town, a mall, or any other useful building they could find necessities.
They found more survivors along the way and took them into the fold of their group as they went, spreading the word about the safety of the city they were headed and infusing all of the new survivors with hope.
K'Shai and the others had gotten more used to the wide eyed looks on each newcomer's face every time they saw the Yautja.
She found it a little amusing, especially when it became clear by the looks she received that each new person had been informed through the gossip vine about she and R'chnt.
Whenever they were on the move, K'Shai remained near the human group. Whenever they rested, K'Shai remained as tightly close to R'chnt as possible and disappeared completely out of sight with him whenever she could.
The journey would be long, and it was tiresome. Not everyone was used to putting in the sheer amount of miles every day as they now were, and K'Shai found it increasingly easier to fatigue as they reached the halfway point after five days.
She remained silent while the group sat and rested in the middle of a road between shops and strip malls and long empty gas stations, eating heated up beans and Spaghettios that had been turned up from one of the stores.
She scanned her surroundings, not immediately seeing R'chnt or any of the other Yautja. She assumed that they had fanned out into a wider perimeter.
Once the group got walking again, they barely made it to the edge of town before people at the back gasped with fright and all heads turned as some called out.
"Oh! Cassandra!"
K'Shai turned to see three Yautja decloaking just feet away from the scattering humans, weapons at the ready, though they were clearly surveying the travelling band of people. They were hunters she did not recognize.
Two were obviously following their leader's direction. The leader was an elder for sure, but not quite as aged as R'chnt.
The startled people had moved away and cleared a path for K'Shai as all heads turned to her looking for direction as she approached the three hunters warily and spoke to them in their own language.
"You are K'Shai?" The Leader said with a bit of a chuckled surprise. "I have heard of you. Not quite what I was expecting."
"Someone taller, perhaps?" K'Shai asked with amusement.
She could not help but to smile as she watched the reactions of both humans and Yautja at the discovery of her unusual situation.
The elder Leader clicked idly and introduced himself, gripping her shoulder tightly in a Yautja version of a handshake.
"So, where is that old fool R'chnt?"
K'Shai tipped her head sideways and stared at the Leader who would dare to insult R'chnt conveniently enough while he was not around. He obviously understood her glare because he immediately pulled away dismissively.
"I mean no offense, K'Shai. R'chnt is my brother by the same father."
Her face lightened and she nodded graciously just a R'chnt appeared on the other side of the human group, and again, all heads turned towards him as he roared an elated greeting and strode readily through the parting crowd of surprised onlookers, greeting his kin readily with a firm clamp on the shoulder with one hand and placing the other on K'Shai's shoulder.
"I thought you had been killed," R'chnt said.
"It will take more than a few angry Queens to kill me, brother."
"K'Shai, I once watched him get dragged into a pit fifty feet below ground with two massive tjrd'itz and I thought for sure he was being torn apart. All of a sudden, he pops out, with barely a scratch and climbs out of the pit with one head on a spear and the other tied by its tendrils around his waist." R'chnt said informed her.
She smiled, not knowing what a tjrd'itz was, but it clearly was enough to impress R'chnt. The group returned on their journey, and R'chnt filled his brother and his small group about the plan.
"I'm still amazed that a hybrid offspring could even be conceived," he said to K'Shai in wonder as she sat next to R'chnt eating under the moonlight late at night while the humans rested in a building across the street for the night, watching the aliens lingering outside.
"You mate with him and still keep at his side," he started curiously. "How unusual."
"There are some differences between how humans do things and Yautja." K'Shai said.
R'chnt grunted as he pulled her in a bit closer to him. "Enjoyable differences."
K'Shai was certain she could feel her face flush and wondered if the Yautja recognized the response.
The following day, the group continued on as much as they could through a gentle rain, but as the weather turned more severe, the decision was made to stop the journey for the day, despite knowing that it would add more time before they reached their destination.
They headed to a nearby subdivision and most of the group started finding their way into homes for a dry place to sleep and any extra supplies they could find when suddenly the Yautja, alarmed, moved off with haste.
"Where are they going?" Lewis asked as K'Shai's eyes followed the backs of the hunters disappearing at the edge of the subdivision.
She shrugged and continued walking with he and Carlos as a few others scanned the next house and made an entry when suddenly they heard intense howls from beyond the edge of the once well-manicured entrance to the gated community.
By the time K'Shai and any of the others rounded the corner of one of the homes and looked through the steady rain, they were amazed as what they saw.
R'chnt, full on angry, paced with flared tusks before three young, heavily armored Yautja, the headstrong leader of which clearly was torn between bow-headed obedience and giving respect that the proven Elder deserved and killing him when his back was turned.
R'chnt struck the leader of the young group hard, slamming him down to the muddy ground in the rain while he howled again over him. The rest of the Yautja were encircled, watching in silence, and K'Shai took a clue from and stayed well away, giving plenty of space to the at-odds Yautja.
The young leader jumped up furiously and charged at R'chnt, clearly trying to topple him down, but sorely missing the mark as R'chnt moved aside and slammed his gauntlet down into the hunter's back, slamming him face first into the mud once again.
The young hunter screamed in frustration and pulled his tusks out of the mud, clumps of dirt falling off them as he did so. He flipped over, though still on the ground, it was obvious he was thinking about aiming his shoulder cannon at R'chnt, although he clearly hesitated, which gave R'chnt more micro seconds than he even needed to thrust his sword into the throat of the would-be leader with a howl.
K'Shai had seen R'chnt killing kainde amedha. She had seen him furious at the vile queens of the hard meat and she had seen him killing the drone bugs with nothing more than his wrist blades.
She had seen him at his peak of full on battle, and at his most gentle as he carefully mated with her. She had never seen him so enraged as he was then, puffing out and making a prominent display as he demanded respect and obedience from the young new comers.
R'chnt did not make the killing blow. Instead, he did something worse in the eyes of the Yautja. His voice resounded and K'Shai heard the words easily. R'chnt demanded respect from the youngsters and allowed them to follow his lead without question.
"All are needed in this fight," he said to the grounded young hunter. "Do not question me!"
The youngsters, with their longer faces, longer heads, and armor so heavy it almost made them look robotic compared to the sparse armor and leather R'chnt and the others wore, were clearly unhappy with the idea of exactly who was in charge, but after the display, it seemed at least for the moment, R'chnt's leadership was uncontested.
He left the young hunters to their own devices and moved past his group until he came to a stop between them and where K'Shai stood.
As K'Shai clearly paced on the spot obviously wanting to join him but unsure if she should or not, he turned a straight-fingered palm towards her, obviously stopping her and she turned and left the area with Lewis and Carlos quickly behind her.
"What was all that about?" Carlos questioned quickly. "A challenge on his authority?"
K'Shai nodded to him.
"Have to be a fool to challenge R'chnt," Lewis added in and K'Shai smiled softly at him.
R'chnt rounded the corner and K'Shai quickly joined him, disappearing with him soon after into one of the houses far removed from all the others, at the far end of the subdivision down a couple adjacent lanes.
"Everything alright now?" She asked him once they were inside the home. She started rustling through the closets and kitchen for useful items and towels to dry off while R'chnt slowly paced behind her through the rooms.
"They are of the M'jon Clan," he said ominously.
"I want you to stay well clear of them. Do not go near them. If they take have problems, they must come to me and I will kill them."
She nodded readily, clearly understanding that he was concerned for her safety.
"Why did you let that one live?" She asked simply, patting her hair dry.
"They are capable fighters and have done nothing wrong."
"He challenged you?!" She said surprised.
"He is young, impulsive, the strongest of his group and survived when his leader did not."
"And he thinks he will be able to challenge you?"
R'chnt tipped his head and clicked his upper mandibles together, but said nothing.
K'Shai smiled and approached him, placing her palm on his chest. "So you just tossed him around so he reconsiders challenging you before he even does?"
R'chnt nodded. "Yes."
"Just stay away from him," he repeated.
"I will. Come on," she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him along behind her as she bounded out of the kitchen, through the living room and turned up the stairs.
Part way up the stairs R'chnt grabbed K'Shai by the hips and she turned towards him; a rare moment that she was eye to eye with him, as he stood three steps down and leaned into her. She reached to him, immediately gasping lightly, kissing him along his cheek as he growled a deep, pleased purr and they both collapsed onto the stairs.
R'chnt ran his hands under K'Shai's garments and pulled off her shirt hurriedly while she unclipped his chest armor to the sound of his aroused growls.
She feverishly unlaced her boots and crawled backwards up the stairs, removing her pants, socks, and underwear quickly as she did, while R'chnt unclipped his belt and removed his armor that covered his thighs and loins and let his growing erection hang loose as he too crawled up the stairs, hovering over K'Shai.
They reached the top of the stairs, the master bedroom was only a dozen or so feet away, but K'Shai stretched her body onto the landing while her feet dangled down the stair case and R'chnt climbed fully on top of her, aroused and worked up, panting and growling.
She spread her legs to accommodate his massive erection as her body wetted itself in excited anticipation of penetration.
R'chnt groped her with his large hands, long tusks and talons and hovered over her so closely she could feel the dripping tip of his shaft rubbing against her lower abdomen. She gripped his bare arms tightly and felt his body tremble, aroused both from the recent fight and the drive to mate.
"I need you in me, R'chnt. I want to feel you …" K'Shai barely whispered through panting breaths as she shut her eyes as listened to him groan.
He lowered his hips into just the right angle and K'Shai squealed as she felt the tip of his shaft find its way through her hairs and between her skin folds and into her opening. R'chnt penetrated into her carefully and thrust his massive erection completely inside her as she groaned her readiness for him to take her.
Immediately, he began pumping, pulling almost fully out and driving himself deep into her in rhythm with their panted breaths and K'Shai's pleasure filled moans.
R'chnt howled, aroused completely, as he pumped into his mate faster and faster, pounding his hips forward harder as she groaned for him to do so. To the accompaniment of her squeals, R'chnt growled and ejaculated forcefully, filling her inside completely with his warm load as K'Shai tipped her head and smiled widely at him.
R'chnt panted and held himself still over her, still depositing his load into her as his penis throbbed with satisfaction. He braced himself up and she moaned with delight, gripping her small hands around his powerful forearms while he nudged her gently with his tusks.
They caught their breath and K'Shai whispered to R'chnt.
"Let's go to the bedroom."
They rested quietly for a few hours before R'chnt left K'Shai in the house for safety and rejoined the rest of the hunters outside for several hours until he returned to her with meat and drink.
"Thank you!" She said with a smile and after eating her fill she stretched backwards along the bed, arching her back, thrusting her breasts forward as she stretched her shoulders and yawned lightly.
R'chnt leaned over her, one arm on each side of her body and smiled at her.
"What's happening out there? Still raining, I hear." She whispered.
R'chnt nodded. "Mostly everyone is resting."
"Where are the three new M'jon hunters?"
"I have them scouring a perimeter ten miles wide."
K'Shai laughed loudly and wrapped her arms him.
She shifted her body and rolled herself on top of him, forcing him onto his back below her and she leaned into him, kissing him delicately, exploring his body fully with her mouth as she licked rain water from his thick skin and pressed her body into the warmth of him, listening to the sound of his breath.
He ticked his mandibles together lightly, clicking with delight as K'Shai tongued the quills along his chin and temple and groped his chest with her hands while straddling his abdomen.
R'chnt slid his hands along her body and caressed her belly, eyeing her abdomen carefully, with all the curiousness that any man might look at the womb of his growing child. She sat back and encouraged him to do so, resting her palms along the back of his hands as he slid his fingers back and forth along her belly.
She was still learning about the differences in Yautja couples and families over humans, but she knew enough to understand that males had nothing to do with their children short of conceiving them, until they were of an age to begin to learn to fight, hunt, and prepare for their coming of age blooding hunt. Even then, it was only typical that sons hunted with their fathers, and daughters learned all that they needed from their mothers.
She knew that bloodlines were everything to a Yautja, and who mated with who was important, with the goal of producing the best bloodlines.
Family, as far as heritage extended, was greatly important to the Yautja, but she had come to figure out at least, that males were not around to watch their own children grow in the mother's womb, nor see them born. As R'chnt curiously tickled her belly with the ends of his talons, she knew he was watching his unborn child grow for probably the first time in his life.
After a short silence, K'Shai leaned forward into him, kissing his chest while he caressed her sides and hips and ran his fingers between her thighs, groping her crotch, arousing her, making her wet.
She slid her mouth further down his abdomen, her hands gently caressing the length of his now full erection and the balls below as R'chnt howled delightfully.
She could feel the tension in his body slowly ease as she pleasured him with her lips and mouth, offering him sensations unlike anything he could experience with a female Yautja.
She gaped her jaw and inserted his dripping shaft between her lips and teeth and tongue and R'chnt arched his back and tipped his head back and growled excitedly, thrusting his hips forward slightly as her hands groped him fully while she moaned lightly and sucked forcefully on his most sensitive part.
She slid her hands along his shaft matching the rhythm of his arousal and felt him finally release much of the tension he was carrying, seconds before he released an entire load of warm juices into her mouth.
K'Shai eased her grip, swallowed and shut her eyes, listening to R'chnt moan below her, fully satisfied for the second time that evening and she groped his warm, heaving body lightly with her hands.
She fell asleep curled into his body shortly after cleaning herself up, and awoke in the morning to find R'chnt still resting heavily next to her.
She barely moved, not wanting to disturb him, and listened to him breathing for a few minutes before he stirred and she greeted him with a wide smile and a groan about even having to get up from the bed to return to the group.
He assured her they would have more laid back days as soon as they could.
"Oh, I'm holding you to that." She said with a smile as she lightly teased him while they headed down the stairs.
He grabbed her and pulled her close to him as he touched the bottom floor and K'Shai wrapped her legs around his abdomen and her arms around his neck.
She kissed him repeatedly, groping his jaw with her tongue and fondling his long thick hair with both hands around him.
"We still have some time, right?" She whispered to him through panted breath as her body churned.
R'chnt growled a deep laugh and turned his head towards her, clearly calculating just that very thing for a moment. She smiled eagerly and he spread his upper tusks into a thin smile.
K'Shai kissed his tusks and chin and ran her tongue into his mouth as he opened his jaws to accommodate her. She tightened her thighs around his abdomen as he shifted his grip between her thighs and she ran her hands along his shoulders.
She nodded towards the sofa and they both toppled over on a corner of it as R'chnt laid on top of her. Brimming with a flood of arousing sensations, K'Shai kicked her clothes off quickly and helped R'chnt out of the restricting confines of his armor belt.
He clicked his mandibles together in aroused excitement as K'Shai groped his groin and made him grow to meet her.
Wet and ready, K'Shai spread her legs, feeling the tense dripping dip of R'chnt's penis finding its way into her without delay.
She leaned back along the sofa, halfway draped over the leather chaise end section and stretched her body across the next seat.
R'chnt knelt awkwardly halfway on the floor and halfway on the end of the sofa to get just the right angle as he pressed himself into her and made her moan again and again. K'Shai's delighted moans were echoed perfectly by R'chnt's own chuffing and moaning as he pumped ever harder and harder into her as she beckoned him to
Surging with excitement and aroused to the peak, R'chnt growled loudly and held his body still, hovering, only slightly awkwardly over K'Shai as he came fully inside of her to her satiated quiet moans, while both their heated sweat bodies heaved and throbbed.
R'chnt lowered his jaws against K'Shai's heaving chest, caressing her breasts gently as he spread his mandibles clean across both sides of her body and groped her with his mouth while he huffed and caught his breath.
"Maybe you will wear me out, K'Shai." He said lightly.
She laughed solidly and huffed, trying to bring her breathing back to normal.
"Oh, see!"
"It must be the hormones from the baby. I feel so good… powerful. Thank you." She said, sitting upright and pressing herself into him again with a wide smile.
R'chnt slumped back on the floor, against the sofa and K'Shai slid down into him, straddling him softly as he finally slowed his own breathing back down.
She kissed him passionately several times and paused, holding her breath.
"Do you hear that?" She said, sure she had hear a high pitched squeal emanating from somewhere outside, perhaps on the other side of the house.
"It's the ooman children," R'chnt said.
"Oh, nuts." K'Shai said, pulling herself off of him and quickly dressing. "I don't know why they're all the way over here. I don't want them so far from the group. I better get them back."
She scurried out of the front of the house leaving R'chnt to finish re-dressing and hustled the children away from the Yautja end of the subdivision.
They walked down the street and cut a corner through a large shared yard between several of the homes, K'Shai answering some of the more awkward questions the children asked about just what she was doing with R'chnt as vaguely as possible when movement caught her eye approaching her and the three young children, Kelly, Tyler, and Tracy, from between some adjacent homes.
K'Shai eyed the approaching hunters from the M'jor clan and her smile quickly turned to a lock jawed glare as the pompous young would-be leader spat with a growl. The children came a terrified stop.
"I knew there was something not right about R'chnt." He said. "I can smell you all over him!"
He laughed loudly and turned slightly back to his two followers, who looked mostly reluctant to approach at all.
"Look, she even has a blooding mark! What fools! The whole Kaunte Dareen clan has lost its mind! And here…" he sneered, "… I thought it was only R'chnt that was insane."
Kelly yanked on K'Shai's shirt sleeve and K'Shai flinched, almost forgetting the children were even there. She turned to them quickly and whispered and harsh warning.
"Kids, go ahead back to the group. Now. Run. Go. OK?"
The children backed off, but K'Shai did not notice them run as she had told. She turned her gaze back to the approaching hunter, who extended a lengthy blade from the underside of his gauntlet and growled.
"Well, now, if you are supposed to be a Yautja," he howled delightfully, "prove it!"
He charged at K'Shai with a loud growl and the children shrieked in fright from somewhere behind her. K'Shai dodged the blow and the Yautja turned on her and struck again and again. K'Shai reached for her own dagger as the relentless Yautja charged again and again like a raging bull, more angry every time she evaded his blows.
He moved quickly, but she stayed slightly faster, using fear-driven agility to avoid his deadly blows. She was barely aware of the shrieking children or the shouts of the human group as they ran into the scene and aimed weapons.
The young brazen hunter struck again with his fist and managed to knock K'Shai to the ground. He quickly delivered a cutting blow and K'Shai howled in pain as his gauntlet blade streaked across her collar bone and sliced deep.
Dazed by the pain K'Shai remained motionless for just a split second, which was all the young would be leader needed to get his hands on her. He grappled her by the head and dragged her across the ground backwards, yanking her up against him, clenching her chest so tightly with his powerful arm she could barely breathe.
He was crushing her ribs slightly, pressing her between his unrelenting grip of his armor gauntlet and the plating over his chest.
K'Shai howled, her hand still clenching the blade that had once been lodged into her thigh.
"Let her go!" Lewis howled as half a dozen men aimed their guns.
The young Yautja was unimpressed, but readied his shoulder cannon all them same as he growled and tasted the air in his mouth.
"An abomination grows in you!" He said to her with surprise.
She howled forcefully, kicking her legs wildly against his him and slammed her dagger into the side of his abdomen. He growled in surprise and pain and dropped K'Shai to the ground just as a loud roar filled the air followed by a brief, but sudden silence.
K'Shai, bleeding profusely from the gaping wound in her shoulder and hunkered on the ground, barely perceived R'chnt charging onto the scene with the savage challenge of death, but she heard his body collide into her attacker's with a tremendous thud like two cars hitting each other at fifty miles an hour.
For a few moments, everything happened quickly and K'Shai tried to keep up with events through a daze. W'rsa approached her quickly as Lewis and Carlos both jogged close, but stopped abruptly as W'rsa yanked K'Shai to her feet and out of the way of the fight.
R'chnt bellowed a deadly call and slammed the young hunter again and again with his fists and armor gauntlets, hitting him repetitively until the youngster could barely stand and his mandibles has been broken, his skull cracked.
R'chnt circled wildly, drawing out a sword from his belt and watched the young wishful leader crawling away from him.
Enraged and disgusted by the action, R'chnt howled again and slammed his sword through the hunter's thigh, withdrew and impaled him again through the other thigh, urging him to at least face his death with some amount of dignity.
W'rsa urged K'Shai clear of the situation and tried to move her behind the watching pack, but she stood her ground in the front of the group just beyond his arm length while Lewis and Carlos and the rest of the human onlookers stared in awestruck terrified wonder between her and R'chnt, who rounded again on the fallen alien.
With a start, the young hunter flipped over and attempted to dislodge R'chnt's footing. He missed his mark. R'chnt jumped clear to one side, and the youth suddenly scrambled away from him, halfway falling flat on his face as he did.
In a fraction of a second, his attack was clear. He was headed for K'Shai and R'chnt jumped towards him as K'Shai, still holding her dagger in a trembling left hand, shouted in pure rage with the most Yautja-esque howl her lungs could manage.
She lunged forward as the cursing and wounded hunter darted forward, howling some insult of which K'Shai only heard to word "disgrace".
R'chnt, wielding his sword and howling, ready to make the striking blow jumped towards the hunter's back, but K'Shai, seeing red had already lunged beyond W'rsa's reach and towards the charging attacker.
She thrust her dagger forward with all her might and felt the hunter's skin pop and the blade grit against bone as she drove it upwards through his chin and towards the back of his head, using the inertia of his own charge to help push the blade deeper into his skull than she could have on her own.
The attack stopped and for a moment no one, including R'chnt moved or even appeared to breathe.
K'Shai's blade had been so deeply rooted inside the skull of her would-be killer that her fingers went right inside the freshly made cavity through his chin, into the back of his throat.
The Yautja gurgled on his own blood and collapsed, ripping her grip loose on the slippery blade handle.
Her left arm was glowing fluorescent green with his blood and as her body trembled, her right arm and entire right side of her body was covered with fresh, dark red blood from her own wound.
She dropped to the ground with a gasp and R'chnt hopped to her side, scooping her up with alarm and without a word, he carried her through the still-stunned Yautja onlookers and out of view of the silent human group.
He carried her back down the street, covering the distance back to the house they had spent the night in quickly.
Without delay, R'chnt brought K'Shai inside and delicately placed her on the sofa, tending to her wounds as she struggled to remain conscious. W'rsa and two others entered and kept a careful eye on the situation.
"What about the other two, R'chnt?" W'rsa asked.
"I'll deal with them later," he growled sharply as he tended to K'Shai.
She did not remember passing out and was not aware of how much time had passed once she woke up, but when she opened her eyes, she was alone in the house, though through the window she could see R'chnt just beyond the front porch of the house, a few other hunters further away.
K'Shai stiffly stretched and winced with pain from her shoulder injury, then stood and headed outside.
"What's going on?" She whispered with alarm as she approached R'chnt wide-eyed, staring between him and Lewis, just feet before him.
All heads turned towards her and suddenly, though it was obvious R'chnt and Lewis were conversing before she approached, a silence fell and for a moment, no one responded.
"Your friends are…concerned for you." R'chnt said as he approached the porch, on the other side of the railing.
K'Shai glanced appreciatively to Lewis. "Lewis, I'm fine. I'll be fine."
He gritted his teeth and glanced to R'chnt, almost as if silently gauging if it would be alright to talk to her.
"You almost got killed!"
K'Shai held her palm up. "Lewis. I'll be alright."
She walked towards them both, stopping at R'chnt's shoulder.
"I will protect her." R'chnt said.
"That doesn't do a hell of a lot of good if you're not around!" Lewis snapped.
"Lewis!" K'Shai hissed.
"She's carrying your baby." He growled angrily at R'chnt. "What happens if you die?"
R'chnt glared at the small human and growled, stepping towards him. "K'Shai is part of my clan. She will be protected. And she will be returning to the ship."
"No!" K'Shai protested immediately.
"You must." R'chnt commanded plainly.
"I won't leave. Not now." She stared at R'chnt, unwavering. "Not until my friends are safe."
Lewis shook his head, clearly trying to figure out what to say next while Carlos and Russell stared between the three of them in stunned silence.
"Cassandra, you have to go. So you can be safe." Lewis repeated.
"I am not leaving R'chnt." K'Shai growled again.
"You didn't tell him, did you?" Lewis said suddenly, realizing that her refusal to leave him was more prompted by her certainty that she had foreseen his death.
"Tell me what?" R'chnt questioned with a deep voice.
Before she could stop him, Lewis had abruptly informed R'chnt of the details of their shared vision that she had not. R'chnt turned to K'Shai and gently caressed her face as she stepped closer to him. He reached to her and picked her up, pulling her over the railing of the front porch, and holding her tightly.
In a language Lewis and the others could not understand, R'chnt spoke to K'Shai of his Path.
"It is with you, but not even I know where it ends."
"I am not leaving." She whispered simply to him.