Tribe Outsider, page 12
part #2 of Chosen Series
“Lily,” she repeated, moving her mouth with exaggerated slowness.
“Leelee ,” he growled.
He straightened back up and rumbled in pleasure, sure he had gotten it correct that time. She squinted her eyes then shrugged her shoulders before nodding, smiling up at him.
“What does it mean?”
“My name,” she answered, surprising him again with not just her understanding and use of his language, but at what the sound meant .
He blinked, pleased to discover she had tried to share her name with him and opened his mouth to tell her his, but she beat him to it saying, “You Drrak.”
She smiled again before turning away to speak to her mates while he stood still, staring at her. His name on her lips, the strange, softly lilting way she pronounced it, did strange things to his tail, made it feel both tight and light as a srrk leaf.
Drrak crouched down, forcing himself to take his gaze off the female, so he was not just standing there staring at her like a besotted frrtlk, and called to the kit. It eyed him warily but did not come closer, staying beside the Pasha, until he began to dig.
He slowly scooped the dirt out, peeking up when the kit crept closer, then purposefully stopped digging before he reached the water under the surface, earning him a displeased growl. Ignoring its annoyance, he settled back on his heels then motioned the animal closer, scratching his fingers across the dirt to show it what he wanted.
It kept its eyes on him as it reached out to swipe its foreleg over the shallow hole. Drrak rumbled in encouragement, quietly at first, then louder when the kit moved closer and began to dig.
When the hole was deep enough, Drrak brought his tail around and poked the center, ignoring the unpleasant zing the impact on his mangled appendage sent up his spine. He watched as the kit copied him. He smiled in approval as it stiffened the end of its tail until it was as straight as a spear then stabbed it into the center.
It yanked its tail back out, trilling happily when water bubbled to the surface and lowered its head to lap up the liquid as quickly as it rose. Drrak grunted in satisfaction and stood, pleased to know he would not have to worry about the kit dying of water sickness. When he looked up, he found the female staring at him, smiling softly, her expression clearly approving.
Arruk spoke, drawing his attention away from her. He turned to his brother, then blinked, realizing he hadn’t heard what he had said.
“Eh?”
“I asked if you would travel with us,” Arruk repeated, smirking knowingly.
Drrak narrowed his eyes at his twin, unsure he liked the smugness present on his face but nodded in agreement anyway. He knew they would be going to greet the tribe and, despite the fact that that was something he usually avoided, he wanted to be there with them.
He was not ready to leave his brothers when he had just found them, but beyond that, he felt the need to be with them in case the tribe reacted badly to the tiny female's presence. He did not truly believe they would attack her, but he found he was unwilling to take the chance. He felt protective toward her in a way he could not remember feeling toward anyone before.
He walked next to Frrar, following Arruk, Tor, and the Pasha, Lily, as they made their way to the trees surrounding the clearing. He mouthed her name again as he watched her smile up at his twin, still trying to make his tongue cooperate.
“It was hard for us at first as well,” Frrar said next to him, clapping him on the shoulder while a quiet rumble of amusement emanated from his chest. “You will get used to it.”
A glance at the other male’s face showed he was referring to more than just her strange and hard to pronounce name.
Chapter 16
L ily waved at the pantari cub—which she now knew was a boy from when it had climbed into her lap—where it was standing over the pile of food they had left it before Arruk picked her up and leapt into the branches above. She felt better about leaving it on the ground now that it knew how to get water, and she knew it was following them.
Tor was already waiting above with Frrar and Arruk’s twin, Drrak, jumping up behind them. They climbed higher, until the broad white leaves and thick black limbs of the trees blocked her view of the forest floor before setting off, swinging smoothly through the trees in a group.
She was trying to keep her sneak peeks at the big guy swinging next to her and Arruk down to a minimum, not wanting to get caught, but she had a feeling everyone knew, despite her efforts. She was just having a hell of a time trying to figure him out. His dangerous appearance, the intensity in his eyes, and the wildness she could sense under the surface were in direct contrast with the gentle, patient way he treated the cub and the hesitance he showed about getting too close to her.
She was also trying to get a grip on her attraction to him. An attraction she wasn’t sure she could blame on the fact that he looked like Arruk. He was too different from her big, quiet teddy bear for that to be a viable excuse.
She had the weird feeling that her guys wanted her to like him… and not in the friendly, family-member-of-a-spouse kind of way either. There was something in the hopeful way they watched her interactions with Drrak, especially Frrar and Arruk. They’d held almost eager expressions; their eyes a little too wide, their ears angled toward her, and their tails unnaturally still in a way that felt watchful and anticipatory.
Lily knew her men well enough that she felt confident in her assessment of their reactions. She just didn’t know if she truly understood their reasoning and definitely wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Her immediate reaction was to balk.
She was in a relationship with three men—aliens—but that had happened all at once and under vastly different circumstances. She was shocked when she figured out what the gift giving meant, when she realized they were all trying to woo her and all three wanted to be with her, and, yet, it had felt natural at the same time. Almost as soon as she understood their intent, she hadn’t even considered choosing only one.
She wouldn’t chalk-up her relationship with her guys to just survival instinct because it had been more than that, but she was sure it had played a big part in why she accepted such a strange arrangement with very little hesitancy.
She wasn’t in an immediate survival situation now, and even if she was, she was sure she would still be uncomfortable. Regardless of how the guys apparently felt about it, just the idea felt like cheating to her, which was exactly why she was trying to get a handle on her attraction.
Drrak was talking with her guys as he swung next to her, so she used his distraction as an opportunity to observe him.
Maybe I’m worrying over nothing. Surely if he was attracted to me, he wouldn’t have been so wary, wouldn’t have moved back when I got too close.
Yet, that reasoning didn’t completely dispel her concerns. She could pretend otherwise, but under the curiosity and caution, she had seen his interest .
While she kind of liked the idea of pretending she couldn’t read her guys and didn’t suspect they were eager for her to get closer to Drrak, she had never been the type of person to bury her head in the sand. Grams had taught her to face her problems head-on; rationally and pragmatically.
She just didn’t know how to do that in her current situation. Rationality and pragmatism both told her that having another mate to protect her in this dangerous world wasn’t a bad thing.
They traveled until early evening, the trees getting impossibly bigger the deeper they went into the forest. Lily spent the time alternating between thinking about meeting the tribe to avoid looking at Drrak and watching him to avoid worrying about meeting the tribe, until she felt like a nervous wreck.
He didn’t stay with them the whole time, disappearing for short stretches before he would reappear from above, often free-falling through the branches. He always caught himself, transitioning smoothly from falling to swinging, but it damn near gave her a heart attack every time and did absolutely nothing to calm her already strung-tight nerves .
As if her just thinking about it prompted him, he did it again. She glanced up when she heard rustling only to suck in a sharp breath when she saw Drrak let go of the branch he was holding onto, dropping at least thirty feet before he reached out to grab the thick limb above her… only to miss.
Her heart leapt into her throat as visions of Arruk falling immediately flooded her mind.
He fell another ten feet in a split second before he managed to halt his descent by grabbing the branch on which she and Arruk were hanging. He went back to swinging with them as if nothing happened, and other than a quiet grumble and a bit of tensing from Arruk, nobody reacted. It was like her guys were used to Drrak treating the two-hundred-foot tall trees like a jungle gym.
Lily felt her eye twitch and gritted her teeth but couldn’t hold back the admonition on the tip of her tongue.
“Could you please stop doing that?!” she hissed.
Drrak glanced at her in surprise, looking both taken aback and confused. She grumbled under her breath, realizing he couldn’t understand her words, and reminded herself she needed to remember to use their language. She had gotten used to the mishmash she and the guys used to communicate, but that wouldn’t do her any good when they got to the tribe .
“Na uk frrn! Rrukt mer, ” she growled haltingly, using what she knew of their language to demand he not do that again, telling him that it scared her.
Drrak blinked at her before a sparkle entered his bright eyes, and an unmistakably challenging smirk tipped his scarred, grey lips. Lily narrowed her gaze at him, knowing exactly what he was thinking. Arruk groaned in her ear, wordlessly confirming she had correctly interpreted Drrak’s expression.
“Don’t even think abo—,” she started to warn him, but he let go of the branch he was holding onto before she could finish.
She sucked in a sharp breath and whipped her head down, trying to follow him with her eyes, but he was swallowed by the dense foliage before she could. Straining her ears, she listened for the crack of breaking branches or the rustle of disturbed leaves. There was nothing but the quiet creak of the limbs as her guys continued swinging through the trees, not even pausing in response to Drrak’s abrupt disappearance.
Seconds passed with no sign or sound of him. Just as she was starting to really worry, her heart beginning to pound in her chest, opening her mouth to tell her guys to stop and go after him, he fell from above, grabbing the branch next to her and Arruk, startling the shit out of her.
He glanced over when she gasped, his expression cocky as he swung in time with them, effortlessly gliding through the trees as if nothing had happened. Lily narrowed her eyes and growled at his playful, arrogant expression. He responded with an irritatingly smug and unreasonably sexy smirk, showing just a hint of his double fangs… right before he swung into a thin branch. It hit him directly on the nose, making him grunt in surprise and pain. His smooth swinging faltered for a second before he caught back up to them.
Lily chuckled sadistically as she watched him reach up to rub the injured appendage with a lower hand. She was glad he wasn’t really hurt, beyond thankful the big daredevil hadn’t fucking died pulling that falling stunt, but felt no qualms about taking a little satisfaction that karma had promptly bit him on the ass.
Or nose, in this case.
“Booped your snoot, didn’t ya?” she purred tauntingly.
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, so she adopted a moue of fake sympathy before she smirked at him.
“Serves you right, you oversized wildling,” she quipped, cocking her brow before turning away, listening while Tor rumbled in amusement and Frrar berated him for upsetting her.
She heard Drrak mumble something to Arruk and listened while Arruk explained why horsing around in the trees bothered her. He told Drrak about when he had fallen, how her citris had died, and that he had been badly hurt.
She frowned when Arruk left out that his falling had been her fault and winced when he went on to brag about her healing abilities. He told Drrak that without her fixing his fingers he wouldn’t have been able to swing, would’ve had to be left behind. At that comment, she couldn’t stay silent.
“Na , Arruk. We would never have left you behind,” she whispered adamantly in his ear, tightening her arms around his neck.
He purred, squeezing his lower arms around her in return before he rubbed his cheek against the top of her head, comforting her even while talking about how he had nearly died.
When he finished telling Drrak what had happened, Drrak was silent for a long moment before he appeared behind them, swinging in her line of sight. He grunted at her, but she kept her face turned away, half concerned he would know it was her fault and half still irritated with him.
He apparently didn’t like being ignored because she sensed him moving closer.
She felt his breath on her cheek, heard his growl right in her ear, and whipped her head around to find him uncomfortably close to her, close enough she was shocked he wasn’t crashing into Arruk. His nose was an inch from hers, his vibrant eyes locked onto hers, pinning her with the weight of his stare.
Wow, this guy apparently does not understand personal space!
“What are you—” she breathed, staring at him wide-eyed, but he cut her off by talking over her.
“Shh kun mek arri ,” he rumbled quietly, his voice like gravel as he gazed directly into her eyes.
He reached out with an upper hand and grasped Arruk’s shoulder, pulling him to a stop before he switched his grip to cup the back of her head. He repeated the phrase, which sounded like the most intense words of gratitude she had ever heard, even if she could only understand half of it, before he slowly leaned toward her.
Lily stayed very still, unsure what he was about to do but believing he wouldn’t hurt her.
Other than one quick, wary glance at her mouth, he kept his eyes locked on hers as he leaned closer and closer. He appeared nervous, seemed to be bracing himself, but steadily closed the small distance between them until their foreheads were pressed together. She relaxed slightly, thinking that was all he was going to do… until sh e heard him suck in a quick breath and felt his lips touch hers.
She heard her guys gasp, Arruk in her ear and Frrar and Tor directly behind her, but was frozen, too caught off guard to react.
It took a long second for her brain to kick in and tell her he wasn’t kissing her, was just pressing his mouth to hers without moving… exactly like her guys had when they’d first met.
They had explained what the not-kiss meant ages ago, that it was a male’s way of showing a female they trusted her by putting his face and throat so close to her bigger teeth. Logically, she understood that Drrak was trying to show her his gratitude for saving his twin, as well as his newfound trust in her, but that didn’t make what was happening feel any less like a kiss to her. Even without either of them moving their lips, it felt intense… sensual.
He pulled back after a minute and smiled at her, a quiet, barely-there smile, but the most genuinely happy one she’d seen from him. He appeared relaxed, now, seemed to have lost the wary tension he’d held since meeting her, as if the not-kiss had changed everything and he no longer felt the need to be cautious of her.
She felt his strong fingers comb through her hair as she blinked at him in stunned surprise;, saw his expression turn curious as he flicked a look at her long brown strands, still loose to dry after her puddle bath, before he went back to staring at her while slowly retracting his hand from the back of her head.
The moment felt intimate. Too intimate.
The not-kiss, his closeness, him stroking her hair, all of it had her heart beating too hard and her breathing too fast until she was fighting the ridiculous urge to run away from him.
She was filled with a confusing tangle of emotions she couldn’t even begin to sort through, but predominate among them was the feeling things were moving too fast and she was losing control of the situation. She felt like she was driving too quickly, the scenery blurring in her peripheral vision, anxiety tightening her chest, screaming the need to slow things down.
How the hell does he make me feel so out of control with just a chaste peck on the lips?
When Drrak moved back to a slightly more comfortable distance, she threw a wide-eyed glance at, first, Arruk, then over her shoulder at Tor and Frrar. They, too, seemed to have lost some of the tension they had been carrying, appeared happy and hopeful instead of watchful and nervous, which did nothing to make her feel better.
She wanted to question them, wanted to understand why they apparently wanted this. She understood it was their people’s way, but there had to be more to it than that. Why all of a sudden did they seem to want her to have another mate?
Or was it sudden?
They had never mentioned anything about it beyond telling her their females always had multiple mates, that they added to their collection of males regularly, and that healers in particular always had larger groups than most.
Thinking back on that conversation, she realized their expressions had been pointed, as if they had been trying to imply more than what they were saying. She hadn’t noticed then, or if she had, she’d dismissed it, not understanding what they were suggesting. She saw deeper meaning in that conversation, now, but still didn’t really understand why it was important to them. Did they know something she didn’t? Had they kept something from her? Or, was it simply that they didn’t want their friend, Arruk’s twin, to be alone?
She had no way of knowing at that moment, but resolved to find out the second they had some privacy.
Chapter 17
L ily felt like all the tension Drrak and her guys had let go of settled in the muscles of her shoulders until she had to constantly remind herself to relax, before she ended up giving herself a headache.
She was staring off into space as she clung to Arruk, making a mental list of all the questions she wanted to grill them with when Arruk stopped swinging, jarring her out of her introspection.
