The Tracker

The ship was cold, and the room in which she stayed was even colder. Nix didn’t think she had stopped shaking since the second day.

Nix shivered and drew the thick furs around her person, the steam vents and temperature controls doing nothing for her. The predators had their scant netting. She had the regret of boarding the damn ship altogether.

Apparently, she had been more knowing of her fate than her new friends had been. The moment she set foot on the large craft, she was assaulted by roars that rattled her very bones. She had even been hit so hard that she was out cold for five days, and that was when she woke in the small room with something she assumed was a toilet, and nothing else.

Nix had survived in worse conditions before. This was cake.

She had not seen Blade since entering the massive ship. The only Predator she had seen so far had been what could only be a female of the species. Several feet taller than Blade or the other males Nix had seen, her thighs looked powerful enough to crush a human head between them, and that was what Nix was eyelevel with when the Huntress entered. The rest of her was lean and muscular, her skin a bright white with the faintest of off-white mottling. The strange dreadlocks were also a pure white, decorated with golden-copper rings. The creature’s breasts were heavy and secured by armor similar to what the three in the jungle had been wearing, though it was white as the rest of her. Nix could honestly say that the creature was beautiful for being an alien.

The female came to Nix’s little room once. She had stood silently, watching the much smaller female through the pale gold lenses of her mask. Then, as if she had decided something silently, she nodded briefly, dropped the pile of furs onto the floor from an unseen pack of some sort Nix had not seen, turned and left the room, the door sliding shut behind her with a quiet hiss.

Nix was on the pile before the door was completely closed.

Now, Nix was bundled back in her corner, her stomach growling. It had been giving her grief since she woke. She was offered nothing to drink or to eat, and though Nix could say she had indeed been through worse, at least she had been able to scavenge something. The room held nothing but bare, cool wall and floor, and she wasn’t quite desperate enough to try the hides that served as her only warmth.

Sighing, she lay back, staring at the black ceiling, watching the red lights flicker darkly against the wall.

She heard the sound of the door and looked up, half expecting the female.

The shorter of the two younger Predators. She didn’t know his name. Nix stood, dumping the furs from her person.

“Hey! Where’s Blade? Or Zazin?” she asked, her voice slightly rasping from the dryness. In her haste, a wave of vertigo hit, and she closed her eyes to gain balance.

She felt a hand grab her bad shoulder and it shot with pain, overloading her already frayed strength and control.

Nix sank to her knees and dry retched, one hand clasping the wound.

When her body stopped its spasms, Nix heard a soft trilling above her.

She glanced up at the clawed hand offered, and with slight hesitation and embarrassment at her weakness, took it.

The Predator pulled her to her feet and patted her back as gently as he could. Nix glared up at him.

He ignored the look and wound his arm around her waist, pulling her along at his pace, wary of another reaction.

The human woman tried to pull away and regain some dignity, her body trembling from cold most likely, but Li’ct-ha held her too tightly. He voiced an irritated click at her, and shook his head once. He was doing a dangerous thing right now, something that could very well cause him to be banished if he was discovered by the wrong person. Well, it could very well get him and Zazin banished. Ch’hkt-a would have nothing to do with the human woman they took into the clan.

From the moment they began boarding the ship, the slightly older Yautja had kept his distance, growling in irritation. When questions of the human’s presence began rising, the young blood had stepped even further back, claiming he had been against it the entire time. He insisted that he had tried to be the voice of reason, and that despite his suggestions to kill the weaker creature; he had been put to the wayside and ignored by Zazin. Though the Elder had not believed him at first, Zazin vouched that his story was true. If the Nix creature was not accepted by the clan and he was exiled for bringing and marking prey, he would not drag the younger Yautja down with him. Li’ct-ha, however, had stayed loyally at Zazin’s side, throwing his lot in with them.

He liked the human female, even if she was an ugly creature. Besides, it was only her face that made him falter. The rest of her looked like a Yautja female that hadn’t grown into her height yet. If you put a mask on her, she would look no different then them.

The young blood looked down at the woman. Deep shadows lingered under her amber eyes, and the hollow of her cheeks were more prominent in the week in a half she had been secluded. He briefly wondered at the furs he had seen. He knew for certain that it had been neither he nor Zazin that brought them to her.

The two of them had been in counsel meetings the entire time, trying to convince them of Nix’s worthiness to bear the mark of honor.

He rounded a corner and punched in a code, waiting for the door to slide open.

“Where are we going? Am I going to die now?” the little female asked, her voice cracking from lack of use. Li’ct-ha glanced down at her, trying to find the right words, but he didn’t know her language well enough. He remained silent instead.

When the door finally opened, he pulled her quickly inside and let go of her. Nix stumbled a little and steadied, glaring balefully over her shoulder at him.

“Nix…”

Nix looked back at the Predator who spoke her name. Red-orange eyes studied her carefully from a corner of the room, and Nix started forward.

“Blade.” She breathed, a look of relief on her face. If this Predator was here, her chances at staying alive were better.

“Eat, Nix. Need to eat.” He pointed at her and then gestured towards a bowl atop a slab of metal, filled with something that looked like raw meat. Never one to pass up food when she had had none, cooked or not, Nix had the bowl in a flash, a perfect cube of marbled, red flesh disappearing into her mouth.

The meat had a tangy taste to it, almost spicy, but it was tender and practically melted in her mouth the moment she began to chew. She wiped a drop of bright blood from the corner of her mouth and took another chunk from the bowl.

“Thank you.” She said gratefully, looking at Blade as she shoved the second piece into her mouth. She ignored the eyes of the younger Yautja as she ate, who was watching her with fascination. She could just think of the questions that were going through his mind. After a second, she stopped and looked at the slab for anything she might have missed, like an eating utensil. She found nothing and continued on with her hands, deciding that she didn’t care if she looked uncivilized.

When the bowl of meat was empty, she set it back on the slab-table and looked at Blade expectantly.

“So, am I going to die? Are they going to drop me off on Earth? Or am I accepted?” she highly doubted that she was accepted, and if she wasn’t, she doubted even more still that they would just release her and be done with it. She watched the large Predator’s chest rise and fall in a sigh, his mandibles seeming to twitch in frustration.

“Our fate is unsure. Elders are still talking.” He answered, running a clawed finger down the side of her face. Nix turned her head in the slightest move, an unspoken rejection of his touch.

“You said that other clans had adopted humans into their ranks before. Did it take this long with them too?” she wondered. She was beginning to feel strength come back to her body already.

“Longer.” Blade answered. He shifted the shirt over her shoulder carefully. It was the same shirt she had worn boarding the ship, with Semper Fi across the front of it. Blade smelled the odor of sweat and dirt on it, oils from her body that had gone sour in the time she had been locked up, along with a sickly bittersweet stench from her wound and an underlying smell that was centered at the juncture of her legs. Heady and potent, he imagined it would be close to irresistible if she were in heat. The scent, however, had blended badly with the others. She desperately needed to bathe.

He took in the sight of the crudely healed hole where the Kiande Amedha had impaled her. The skin around it was bright red and shining, and the center of the patched flesh was slightly green under the violently red skin. Infected, the cause of the bitter-sweetness he had scented.

“The wound is infected. It will need to be taken care of immediately before it gets worse.”

The Yautja watched Nix’s eyes widen and she looked down. He donned his mask and switched the sights to get a better look at her insides. An abscess the size of his fist was barely two of the human’s millimeters from the skin. There was also internal bleeding around the area, not to mention gangrene, and the infection was close to her lungs. If left to continue, she could quite possibly die very soon.

Unfortunately, the healer on the ship was a proud female who despised the thought of prey sullying the ship she called her home. There was no way that Vonre would help Nix.

Blade started. The human woman was staring off into nothing, her eyes glazed and her lip trembling in time with the rest of her body. Her eyes were dry, so she was not crying. Blade would guess that she was in shock.

“Who was the female that visited me?” she asked softly. Blade frowned, his lower mandibles flaring slightly. Someone had visited her?

“What female? I know of no one that has been cleared to see you. Not even we are allowed. If they catch us here, or find your room empty, you will be killed and we will be exiled. What did she look like?”

Nix looked at the floor, her eyes clearing.

“She was beautiful. Her skin and armor was white. Her dreadlocks were as well. She had spots like these,” she paused and indicated with her good arm the pattern upon Blade’s skin, “but they were just slightly darker a white then the rest of her. Her mask has gold lenses in them, instead of red, and instead of silver rings like yours, they were golden-copper. She didn’t say anything. She just stood there staring at me for a long while, gave me some furs to keep me warm, and left the room.”

Blade froze. He saw out of the corner of his eye that Li’ct-ha had as well. She could not possibly be speaking of who she was describing. No female had ever been born of pure white coloring, except for one. One female, and she was the one they prayed to. She was Paya, alongside Cetanu the Black God, and her appearance was known to every suckling pup from their birth to their death. How could this Human female know of her and describe her so well?

“Are you sure you saw what you saw?” If she did, then it could change the entire situation. Though, whether it was for the good or for the worse, Blade did not know.

Nix looked indignantly up at him, her hand covering her shoulder.

“Of course, I’m sure. I may have been starving, exhausted and in shock, but I’m pretty fucking sure I saw what I said I saw.”

Blade stared at her, deadpanned. Li’ct-ha stepped forward, looking anxiously at the door.

He motioned behind him and spoke, though Nix didn’t understand a word.

“We need to get her back before the meeting adjourns. If I’m careful, I may be able to treat wound later with your help when the ship quiets, but we must go now.”

Blade nodded.

“Time to go.” He pulled the sleeve down again and picked her up, tucking her carefully into his chest. Nix stiffened, fists clenched, jaw set. She hated being touched.


Li’ct-ha watched his mentor scoop the human up. A sudden feeling stabbed at his insides and he quickly stifled a growl at the sight. Confused he searched inwardly, trying to figure it out.

Jealousy. Why? His mandibles twitched irritably as they had when she had fought him in the beginning of the sneak-escape. She had fought him just for putting his arm around her to keep her steady. Now, as Zazin was actually holding her in what the young blood considered a nearly intimate way, all she did was stiffen and remain silent.

The young Yautja found himself wishing that she would accept him just as mildly. In fact, his mind even went further into the wish. He wished that if he were to hold her to him like that, she would actually wind her arms around him and hold back.

Despite the large wave of shame that welled in him at this revelation, and the confusion of its source, he found himself feeling resentment of Zazin for the first time in his life.

He also decided that he needed some help. He should not feel jealous of the forming bond between the older Hunter and what should have been Prey.

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A/n: Sorry it took me so long, everyone. The next update will be much sooner, I promise. I don’t know if anyone saw, but just to let you know, I’ve created a Blog that will have story updates on it. I will post status updates every week, along with a date that I will be expecting to update. I will also be posting there if something gets delayed/advanced, and how many days it will be delayed/advanced.

http://firesblood.blogspot.com/

Is it getting interesting enough for y’all? I hope so. Let me know what you think! Thanks for reading!