Her steps slowed. She shifted the spear in her hand for a better grip, hoping it was just Melmie as she cautiously cleared the last outcropping of rocks and…
“Zoark?”
He was sitting on the ground with his back to her stone pit, his bad leg bent at the knee. He was munching on something.
“You know,” he said around a mouthful, “you need to work on your foraging skills. You’ve been gone forever, and that’s all you’ve brought back?” He pointed at her sack.
Taken aback by his criticism, Addie took the sack off her back and let it drop on the ground. “All? It’s a lot of stuff.”
“I bet it’s those disgusting tubers.” He screwed up his already ugly face in a mask of distaste.
“As a matter of fact, it is. I have special dietary needs, Zoark, and anyway, none of it should concern you. Save your opinion for those who want to hear it.”
He didn’t respond, busy picking his teeth.
Addie’s eyes sharpened. “What are you eating?”
“Jerky.”
“What?” She was flabbergasted. “How… Where did you get it?”
“From a bowl. In your tent,” he said, a matter of fact.
“You went into my tent?” she sputtered. “Who gave you the right to snoop?”
“Who was going to stop me?” He popped another piece in his mouth.
Addie saw red. “It’smyjerky! I was saving it for the girls. How much did you eat?” She strode to her teepee and angrily yanked the flap open nearly bringing the entire structure down.
“A little,” he replied to her back.
Peering into the bowl, she evaluated its diminished contents. “Zoark!”
“It’s a very good jerky, I have to admit. You can cook, who would’ve thought. You should make more.”
Rounding up on him, Addie propped her fists on her hips. He was sitting down, and it made Addie taller than him.
“And how do you propose I make more? Conjure it out of thin air?”
“The same way you made this batch,” he replied with maddening logic. “By killing the animal and cutting up its meat. And then by doing whatever it is you womenfolk do to make it tasty.”
What an oaf. “It was one time!” she whined, genuinely distraught. “This Tek showed up here all by itself! Where will I find another one? They’re fast, I can’t hunt them like you do.”
He stared back at her, silent, and then surged to his feet, agile despite having to work around his bad knee.
Her temporary height advantage vanishing, Addie took an involuntary step back. She didn’t run, but he noticed her reflexive retreat.
“Why do you react like a cornered Truned every time I come near?” His eyes were intense. He searched her face for something.
It took an effort for Addie not to take another step back. “I’m not afraid of you if that’s what you think.”
“You say the words, but your actions tell a different story.”
The shirt he wore concealed the swell of his muscles but left his thick, chiseled arms bare. She could hear him breathe like a large animal he was, his lungs pushing the air out with a slight whoosh. The double-ringed irises of his large rounded eyes stared at her, calculating and predatory.
He wasn’t human. And to even think that the women… that they had found it acceptable to lay with him… that some might have found pleasure…
She did take that other step back. “Okay, fine. I don’t like tall men.”
