I wiped the blood from my face with a hiss and flicked it away to splatter the wall. But more only trickled into my eye and all I could do was flex my mandibles and wait.

I had been correct. There was blood and it had been drawn before the hunt. At the least, there had been no death and the hunt would go on. This was some relief, though none at all to my humiliated ego.

The waiting had become too much for the hot tempers of so many adolescent Yautja to bear, and when I had entered the kehrite this day it had been to a challenge from Vk'leita the refusal of which would have equaled my death. As it was, I'd needed to hold myself back from venting my rage on my opponent, and Vk'leita's hands had been around my neck when Yeyinde had pulled us apart and thrown Vk'leita across the room.

It was some satisfaction Vk'leita had ended in a pile of blunted training spears, on his knees, begging Yeyinde for his worthless life. Such utter submission would rankle worse than my abused ego was complaining at having had to hold back. I would have liked to have drawn Vk'leita's blood, but I could wait. Wait even while I determined if I could learn anything of the other male's fighting style from this act of stupidity.

"Dhi'ki-de."

The quiet word brought my eyes up to Yeyinde, the blooded warrior who served just below the Leader. Finished with Vk'leita, who now sulked uneasily in the opposite corner of the kehrite, the ship's second had now come to deal with me. And this was not something I minded.

Yeyinde was one of the few things that made the intolerable waiting bearable. She had been assigned to oversee me in the interim between leaving Prime and the beginning of the Crucible Hunt, and something in me was glad for that despite the snickers it brought on. It was a rare female who left Prime to be a warrior. Females had their own ways and it was a foolhardy male who tried to interfere or understand. But there were some females who chose the way of the hunt, chose the Path, over the secrets of their sisters. Yeyinde was one of those.

But the simple fact she was an unusual female wasn't why I had found myself gravitating toward her from the first moment we'd met. Yeyinde and I were alike in one way, a singular way, which made us different from all others on the Ne'dtesei. I'd first understood it when I realized every male on the ship, aside from 'Aseigan, muttered derogatory things about her behind her back. They wisely shut their mouths when Yeyinde entered a room, knowing full well even a fully armored warrior was only just barely a match for an unarmed, untrained female. No male alive would wish to infuriate a warrior female.

And that was just the annoyance for all the males. Every male on the ship wanted to mate her and Yeyinde wanted nothing to do with any of them. Yeyinde was here to impress the other females. She, like myself, was what Yautja called a Different Blade. The gods had called her to walk a different Path, a harder Path, but an honorable one. Yeyinde considered herself female, but chose a male name for herself and wore it like a badge of honor the way warriors wore scars. She chose to mate only other females, her one regret she could not sire sucklings.

This was a regret we both dealt with. The desire to spread your progeny far was one all Yautja shared, but Different Blades found this difficult as we only desired to mate the same reproductive sex. Yeyinde wanted females, I wanted males. We were different than those around us and it was no secret.

Lost to my thoughts I did not respond to Yeyinde's first attempt to garner my attention and her second was less friendly. "Dhi'ki-de," she repeated, slapping me hard enough I nearly lost my footing and fell. Likely she hadn't meant her reproach to be so heavy, but Yeyinde was larger than I was. She was larger than any of the males on the Ne'dtesei, except 'Aseigan, and she was still growing.

Currently I barely came up to the center of her breast bone, and though I was still growing as well I would never equal her height or girth. Females were naturally larger than males. It made the business of reproductive mating interesting, I was told.

But I had no more time for considerations now. Yeyinde wasn't known for her patience any more than a male Yautja, and while dhi'ki-de wasn't my name it was as close as I had now. Dhi'ki-de was what hunters called the state of unconsciousness that often precluded death. Nameless youngbloods on their way to the Crucible were called this because they were practically dead while they were alive. Vk'leita and I were both dhi'ki-de now.

I acknowledged Yeyinde with a light, subservient growl and she shoved me against the wall with one hand. "Foolish, dhi'ki-de," she hissed in my face. "Maybe next time I leave you to create your own worthless death."

My mandibles flared in challenge, but Yeyinde was already stroking a finger down my face, collecting my blood in the process. She held it before my eyes and pressed her forearm to my throat, lifting me from my feet and pinning me in place as though I were nothing more than a suckling that'd been picked up by an adult. "This is all you have left, dhi'ki-de. Do not waste it before your hunt."

Then she was gone, all but dropping me back to my feet. I wanted to snarl after her, but thought better of it, instead reaching up to smear more of my trickling blood over my fingers. Bright and hot it glistened on my clawed digits. Like a promise. Vk'leita had made me bleed. He had sought to further grow his following of supporting un-blooded by showing I was weak and afraid. That I would not fight him.

But to fight before the Crucible was forbidden, and if one of us killed the other both of us would die.

I flicked my blood away and went to stand in my usual place of meditation.

So Vk'leita had made me bleed. It did not further his place in the hunt to come, no matter how many of my once companions favored him.

I would wait. I could wait.

It would not be long now. The prey had already had several rotations to recover. No matter if the seemingly endless waiting was a part of the test of the Crucible or not it could not last much longer now. Soon we would enter the Dance of Fallen Gods together, and then Vk'leita would see what my skill truly was.

I would have from him every drop of blood he had made me shed.