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Brady startled her from her thoughts when he flopped down beside her. Though he’d rolled his pants, they were wet up to his knees. Water beaded on the sparse, dark hair covering his calves and sand stuck to his feet.

He poured fresh water from the water bag so it covered the crabs. He nudged the shell close to the small fire. “Finally we’ll get to eat.”

“Can’t you think of anything but your damned stomach?”

His gaze turned wary. “Aren’t you hungry?”

What a dunderhead! “How can you even think of eating after seeing … that?”

“That?” He turned his gaze back to the simmering crabs and shrugged. “We saw a lone female Savage and her baby.”

“A dirty Savage nursing the next generation of animals.”

His brow crinkled but he kept his gaze on the crabs. “Did you look close at the female?

She looked … cleaner somehow. Did you notice her gentle way with the baby? She acted like any human mother.”

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“What are you talking about?” Even the lowliest of animals cared for their young. Such behavior didn’t indicate human tendencies. “We should go back and….”

“And what?” Brady looked at her with his eyes ablaze. “Kill her? Are we going to kill the baby too? I mean are you? Because I can tell you I won’t. If we kill only her, are you going to take care of the baby or let it starve?”

Her arms lifted unwillingly to cover her flat chest. They were nearly starving themselves.

Even if she were so inclined, she wouldn’t be able to take care of a baby of any kind.

“We have no way of knowing where the female came from, but there has to be at least one male around. Maybe there’s an entire pack of them.”

“So what do you think we should do?” Her nerves untwisted from the tight knot seeing the Savage had caused. They weren’t going to confront it tonight or even the next morning.

How did an encounter with one Savage distress her so? Thank goodness there was no one here to notice except Brady and he seemed oblivious of her anxiety.

Brady tugged the shell away from the fire and tipped it to drain off the water. He pulled his knife and speared one of the boiled creatures. He frowned at it with hunger and dreary acceptance.

“I think we should eat our dinner and then make our way back to the trees. At first light, we’ll follow this female’s back trail and see what we find. How far could she have traveled with a baby? It looked not a month old.”

How far indeed? He made sense. How often had Juston Steele reminded her to act with logic instead of heated emotion?

“We could come upon a party hunting for the female.” How many different packs hid in these mountains? Would there be a human settlement also or had this band of Savages killed off all their civilized relatives?

He tossed the remains of his first crab toward the waves. “Eat something. We might have to skip food tomorrow.”

Again he was right. Once the first bite of meat crossed her tongue, her stomach remembered how long the hours had been since her last meal. And her belly didn’t care it was crab again.

They ate in silence until all the crabs were gone. Brady brushed the dried sand from his feet and pulled his boots on with a sigh.

“So do you agree? Make our way north and see what we can find?”

She paused in cleaning her knife. Warmth spread in her chest where a cold hand had been lingering since first seeing the smoke hours ago. Brady constantly surprised her with his kind, generous nature. He possessed the confidence that made him a good leader without being overbearing or bossy. “It sounds like a good plan.”

“Could be dangerous.” He grinned. “We might have to confront something tougher than women and babies.”

Her mouth curved without her permission. How did he make it do that? “I’ve heard there’s nothing more dangerous than babies.”

“We’re in agreement there. But there’s also nothing more important. We’ll see what we can see and then figure out what to do about it.”

“Guess our search of the cliff front is on hold.” It seemed like they’d been marooned for months instead of days.

He shrugged. “We might stumble on something. It’ll be daylight soon. Let’s go.”

He kicked sand over the cooking fire and stuffed their cooking shell into his pack.

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The sky lightened to the east as they made the cover of the trees. The smudged footprints of the Savage were easy to find. The female knew little about covering her trail. If anyone or thing searched for her, she wouldn’t be difficult to find.

Brady took the lead and jogged at times when the sign was easy to follow. The female had traveled as close to the base of the cliff as the terrain and trees allowed. They found a spot where she’d stopped to rest and eat. There was little to tell except the sign indicated she’d spread her hides and perhaps napped for a while. But when they took up the trail going north again, they discovered a second set of tracks. This set led back north.

“Another Savage.” Brady squatted and traced the wide tread with his finger. “It’s small too, probably another female. What the hell are they about?”

Cara had no answer. The behavior of the females seemed quite bizarre for their kind.

Curiosity warred with a slowly growing dread at what lay ahead of them. They had no real choice but to go forward.

* * * *

Brady frowned at the deepening purple of twilight edging out from the cliff. The forest had changed from oaks, aspens and wild cherry trees to mostly pines and very little underbrush.

Fewer birds and small animals flittered and crept along the dark floor. Decades of fallen needles carpeted the floor but he still heard Cara’s footfalls behind him. He always knew where she was.

Each night he struggled to sleep when she took her turn at watch and he wrapped himself in the blankets still warm with her scent. Being near her was driving him crazy. And that was only his mind. The suffering of his body threatened to fell him. His cock hardened before he even saw her.

“Getting too dark,” she said quietly. “We might miss something.”

“Quit reading my mind.” If she knew all of his thoughts she’d run him through with her sword. But after days of alternating leading and searching out the trail while they watched for any path up the cliff side, they were working together as if they’d scouted as partners for years.

“Read your mind?” She snorted in a delicate female way that tightened his guts and other things a bit lower on his body. “Only a few paragraphs there.”

Her dry humor never ceased to intrigue him. He’d enjoyed her wit when they first met, but she’d lost her sense of humor when he’d tried to deepen that relationship.

“Guess we should rest up for the night.” He wanted to press on, but ever since they’d seen the female Savage, Cara had insisted on caution above and beyond what the situation called for them to use. But something in her eyes, some desperate wariness, prompted him to indulge her. He knew her well enough to not ask.

“Under one of these big pines?” Cara pointed at one of the towering trees.

The ancient evergreens’ boughs swept low and many of them touched the ground. He shook his head. “Too many damned bugs under there. Look up the cliff here. I think there’s a bench up there wide enough for the both of us, and no one can surprise us. We can see both directions on the trail and what would notice us up there above their heads?”

“Boost me up.”

He made a step with his hands. Her foot was tiny and she was ridiculously light. He lifted her with little effort until she could get a hand hold. With the strength of a warrior, she used a patch of stubborn grass as another hand hold and scrambled up further.

He lost sight of her for a moment as she moved away from the edge, but her head appeared in a moment. “It’s even bigger than it looks and relatively flat. Toss the packs up.”

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He took his hook and line out of his pack before slinging it up to her. She caught it and the others and set them aside.

“Do you need a hand?” She reached down as if she could pull his weight up.

“I’m going to jog back to that stream we passed a half mile back and see if I can catch some fish. Why don’t you clear a spot for a fire?”

“We can’t do that. For all we know there could be a pack of Savages through the next stand of trees.”

“Maybe, but we need to eat.” He took off before she could argue. She was already so thin he worried about her strength and stamina holding out. They’d been eating only one meal a day and that one was seldom filling.

He followed the stream away from the cliff where the long shadows of the cliff had yet to reach it. The rushing water still glinted with sunshine and in one spot it widened into a slower moving pool. After a quick search, he found an ugly brown crayfish to use as bait.

Fish were plentiful in the cool, clean waters but it still took him over an hour to catch four of a size to keep. One moon rose with the setting of the sun and along with it came the chirping of insects and tree frogs. He retraced the path to their camp, hoping he wasn’t leaving too obvious a trail. His boots crushed much of the new green spring growth along the stream.

The scents of parsley and even some mint caught his attention. He scooped up some handfuls and stuffed it in his pockets. A little treat.

He paused at the base of the cliff and listened. No sound and not a sight of her. Good.

“Cara?”

She came to the edge, her face and hair pale and shining against the background of dark rocks. “Is that you, idiot?”

Not happy. Now what, damn it. “I’m going to toss up some firewood.” He gathered some sticks as wide as his fingers and a few the size of his wrist. Not much heat was needed to cook fish. He couldn’t tell if she caught the wood, but at least she didn’t throw it back down at him.

He’d strung his line through the gills of the fish and now tied it around his wrist.

Hopefully they wouldn’t drip on his shirt and make it smell like fish. There was no offer of a hand to help him this time, but he didn’t need it.

The first moon threw some light into their little refuge. Cara had pulled up some of the wiry grass and exposed the thin layer of soil beneath their shallow roots. She fixed the small pile of firewood in the rough fire pit and quite effectively ignored him.

“You might have helped me up. What if I’d fallen and cracked my head?”

“I’m sure it’s much too hard to damage. The river proved that when we landed here.”

He didn’t want to get into an argument so went to work undoing the line from his wrist.

The cliff walls rose in sheer impossibility from this ledge like so many other routes they’d investigated. But there was a good line of sight to the north and south.

Cara lit a match to the kindling and coaxed the flames into a steady fire that reflected off the cliff face. He recovered his metal plate from his pack and set two fish upon it. It wouldn’t hold all four but it wouldn’t take them long to fry. The parsley he crushed on top of the catch would have been better dried but any flavor was a luxury. He set a flat rock against the flame and set the plate on it. He felt her glare on him.

“What?”

“You shouldn’t go off by yourself. We should stay together.”

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“We have to eat. Especially you.” He snapped his mouth shut but the words were already out.

“Especially

me?”

How could a whisper sound like a shout? “I didn’t mean you ….”

“Do you think I’m weaker than you?”

“You are.” What kind of silly conversation was this? “Any woman is weaker than a man.”

Her eyes glinted darkly in the firelight. “How could you believe such a thing? Are you not a comrade and friend of Claudia Turan?”

“Claudia Celebria,” he corrected but she paid him no heed.

“And have you not fought beside Juston Steele? He holds no such prejudice against women. I’d thought you more intelligent, but you’re the same as every other thick-headed oaf

….”

“That’s enough, Cara.” He used his knife to flip the fish over. He knew himself to be a person of even temperament, but she was stoking his temper.

“Enough? You hear a truth you’d rather deny so you want to end the discussion?”

“Discussion? All I hear is you spouting off at me about something so asinine it can’t be considered.”

“Spouting? Asinine?” She stood up and loomed over him. “You think me a silly, weak woman? I’m a warrior.”

She planted her hands on her hips, pulling her shirt tight across her small breasts and emphasizing how tiny her waist and how narrow her hips were. His damned cock didn’t care that he was angry. The ache in his balls only added frustration to his temper.

“Sit down and lower your voice. Sound carries a long way on a clear night like this.”

“Now you’re going to order me to shut up?” She poked his shoulder. Hard.

He’d been squatting on his heels and her firm shove spilled him back on his butt. “What the hell? Settle yourself, girl.”

“Girl?” She leaped on top of him. Her knee hit his thigh dangerously close to a sensitive spot. “I’ll show you what a girl can do.”

Her fist connected with his ear. Damn, but it hurt. He grabbed her shoulders but his anger wilted when his fingers closed on her fragile bones. Didn’t she realize he could crush her?

Wisps of her hair flew free about her face and her braid whipped over his shoulder as she attacked him. One of her callused hands slapped him across the face.

He lifted one of his arms to protect his head. She plunked her sharp-boned butt down on his hips and rained blows on his chest. What caused her to lose control and turn into this harridan?