Stolen (Tribes #2) - Milana Jacks Page 0,2
alpha into our games. It rubbed some of our males all wrong, and a subtribe formed, intent on killing my brother.
During our last war, Ark, the Ra tribal Alpha, killed more of our males than I have of his, and that’s saying something. Despite that, my brother let him compete and even let him win.
Rain pelts the weapons strapped around my waist, drops hitting the hilt of my dagger and ringing in my ears. I rest a hand on the hilt and wipe water off my face. It accumulates again, and I shake my head, annoyed I’m getting wet. Mas secures his hair at the back of his head and shakes off his body. We’re predators, hunters, and we dislike standing in the rain.
The Ra males start growling.
Everyone’s getting irritated because Gur’s taking forever to bring out the prize. It’s on purpose, I’m sure, to get us all worked up and agitated. If he’s not competing, then he’s watching the games and monitoring with Feli, sitting right near the prize, guarding her so nobody steals her. I snort. As if any male would stoop so low as to steal a prize instead of winning her fair and square.
Between the grunts and growls, I hear the males on the other side of the podium cheering, so something’s coming. The crowd parts, revealing a moving green feather. Gur’s easy to spot as he’s always got this green decoration on top of his head. He thinks his mother was descended from Herea, goddess of the hunt, so he wears the bird’s feathers.
Gur climbs the platform, wheezing a bit over his bulging gut. He’s been eating well, slowing down. He couldn’t compete even if he wanted to. Fitness is everything in the games, and the female will take notice of mine. Naturally. I’m fucking fit.
“Where’s the girl?” I growl, then stare, needing no answer because Gur’s climbing up the stage holding a leash attached to a female who’s crawling behind him.
Silence falls over the camp. Even Mas adjusts his erection. A female on a leash teases our darkest fantasies, the ones I believe every male in the lands harbors since a very young age. We just haven’t ever seen it play out in front of our eyes.
“Don’t even think about competing for real,” I hiss into Mas’s ear.
He purses his lips, eyes twinkling with lust.
“I mean it.”
“Quiet while I work out what I’m seeing. I can’t believe he brought her out this way. It’s so wrong.”
“They’re gonna want her bad.”
“More reason for you to figure out how to kill Gur now and not compete at all.”
“Yeah, let me just arrowhead him from here and walk away.”
Mas chuckles.
We are so fucked. And not only because Gur is practically unkillable now. Ever since I found the underpants, I knew I wanted to sniff where the smell came from again. It’s a breeding instinct, nothing more, nothing less. And I expected the same sort of female as my brother’s female. But this one is smaller, thinner, with long black hair that’s dragging in the mud left from Feli’s boots over the platform. She’s wearing blue pants like my brother’s female, and a white shirt.
As she climbs the chair and sits with her head down, instinctively I move toward her. Mas grabs my wrist. Turning toward Mas, I snarl when Feli shouts, “The prize!”
His shout breaks through some of the fantasy fog in my brain and brings me back to reality where we are two males against two hundred, not to mention the other two hundred spread out between the camp and the village.
“We need to stay alive,” Mas hisses, then releases my wrist. “Get it together.”
I roll my shoulders and return to my place beside him. “Maybe she’s ugly.”
He snorts.
Yeah. If she’s anything like my brother’s mate—small, cute, submissive, with round colored eyes and a perky nose—I’m fucked. Huddled in on herself, wet black hair shielding her face, she rubs her arms, looking lost and alone on a chair large enough to fit a grown hunter. Gur tucks a claw under her chin and forces her to lift her face. She slaps his hand away and leans as far as she can away from him. Which isn’t very far.
He tries again, and she leans away more. At this rate, she’ll fall off the chair. Gur grabs her by the throat and moves her hair away from her face, then steps back.
Pale face. Small nose. Pretty plush lips, colored blue-gray unlike red as I’ve seen on other humans.