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  That felt like a lie. She couldn’t examine why it felt that way. Not right now.

  The male continued to talk.

  “What is our mission, you ask?” He assigned a question to her she’d never insult him by voicing. “It’s to catalog data about your planet, including the genetic information about your kind.”

  “I will give you all of the information you require.” Although genetic was an outsider word and she didn’t know what it meant, she had lived on the planet her entire lifespan. Any knowledge he required about it, she had.

  “You can’t give me this information.” He sounded certain about that. “I have to derive it directly from them.”

  “You will have to derive it from me.” She spotted her secret domicile. It was positioned on the edge of the great forest. “You’re an outsider. No one else will make contact with you.”

  “They will have to make contact with me.” His face was set like stone.

  “They would kill you rather than allow that.” Her kind were peaceful beings. Since she was born, they had never ended a lifespan. But they would take that drastic action…if an outsider gave them no other choice.

  “They could try to kill me.” Her outsider scoffed. “They won’t be successful.”

  He was daunting but he could be harmed. The blistered skin on his rounded ears had shown her that.

  “I will give you the information.” She removed the shiny wall she’d retrieved from a crashed flying domicile…ship. Doing that revealed the being-sized opening in the base of the tree’s hollowed trunk.

  All tall trees had at least one of those openings. They served as doorways to the inner chambers, spaces her kind had claimed as their domiciles for endless generations. Within trees, they were safe. Creatures could be barred from entering. No lava pockets exploded under them.

  Allinen entered her secondary home. Her cyborg followed her, ducking his head and angling his broad shoulders to fit through the opening.

  Once inside, he straightened. She’d always believed her secret domicile to be large. He made it appear tiny.

  Doc gazed around him. “Your kind doesn’t have sleeping supports.”

  He believed her to be primitive. “I have a sleeping support.” She lifted her chin. “But it’s not here. I utilize this space for my studies of outsiders.”

  “There are many different types of outsiders.” He said that slowly as though he was talking to a small child.

  She was aware there were many different types of outsiders. But she was also aware of their similarities. All of them were unable to survive on her planet. Many of them wore similar garments. He was an exception to that rule. Many of them spoke the same language, utilized the same tools.

  He wasn’t an outlier in those areas.

  “I observed you before I approached you.” Her face heated as she shared that information. Her admission felt shameful. “You used a piece of shit to catabog.” She assumed that was what he had been doing. “I have collected many pieces of shit from outsiders who have died.” She waved her hands at her stack. “I could help you with your cataboging.”

  “The word is cataloging.” He corrected her as he set his unusual pack down on the dirt floor. “And these are handhelds.” He crouched beside the collection, picked one up. “Not pieces of shit.”

  “Handhelds.” She repeated that word. “Pieces of shit is another profanity.”

  He nodded, setting the handheld back down again.

  Outsiders utilized a lot of profanities. She added that to her list of things common to all of their kind.

  “Some of the handhelds had dull faces.” She tapped on that part of them.

  “Screens.” He supplied the word.

  She transferred it to her hoard. “Some needed to touch the zappers.” She indicated that separate collection.

  “You have energy boosters.” Her cyborg’s eyes shone with interest. “I’ll use those to recharge.”

  “The energy boosters are yours to use in any way you want.” Recharge was an outsider word she wasn’t familiar with. “Be careful with them. They will zap you if you touch them the wrong way.”

  “Did you damage yourself?” He grabbed her hand and turned her palm upward, surveying her fingertips.

  The expression on his face conveyed concern. His question insulted her.

  Her male was confusing. She pulled her hand out of his grasp.

  “Some handhelds needed their innards changed.” She had kept the bad innards, not knowing if she’d require them again. “When I did that and I touched them here.” She put her fingers in the right spot on one of the handhelds. “Their faces…screens glowed once more.”

  She recognized the numbers sometimes appearing on the faces…the screens. Those were the same for her kind. The symbols and what everything meant were a mystery to her.

  “You repaired the damaged handhelds.” Her cyborg gazed at her as though she’d completed a wondrous task.

  “All I did was make the dull handhelds match the handhelds with the glowing screens.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t difficult.”

  “It wasn’t difficult for you.” He shook his head. “Humans attend academies for several solar cycles to learn that task.”

  She didn’t know what humans or academies were but she did know he was pleased with her. Warmth spread across her chest.

  Eager to show him more of her findings, she set down the handheld and moved to another pile of found objects. “These are noise makers.” She picked one up and looked into the hole at the small end.

  Doc snatched the noise maker out of her hands. “This is a gun and you’re staring into its barrel.”

  All admiration for her had been wiped from his expression. His face was hard. His lips had thinned into a white line.

  “Until I teach you how to use them, you’re not to touch them.” He whipped her with his voice. “Do you understand?” He added an insulting question to his verbal reprimands.

  Paha teeth. He treated her unfairly.

  “I won’t be disrespected in my own domicile.” She walked away from him, needing to put distance between them. “You’re an uncivilized beast and I should have left you to die.”

  “Nothing on this planet can kill me.” He yelled that nonsense at her.

  A mate would never yell at his female. He was as far from one as a being could be. “Then leave.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “We’ll see how long you’ll last.”

  “I’m tempted to leave and show you.” The ignorant sound he made echoed the frustration she was feeling. “But I can’t fraggin’ risk it. You might shoot your beautiful face off and that would kill both of us.”

  He thought her face was beautiful. That revelation eased some of her irritation. She strived to decipher the rest of his words.

  Her kind used shoot to convey the delivery of poison darts from a tikka stem. Few beings survived that type of attack.

  Guns must be weapons. She recalled how she’d pressed random spots, trying to figure out how they worked, and cringed. “I couldn’t get any of them to shoot.”

  “They must be calibrated so only their owners could use them.” Some of the fury eased from Doc’s voice. “Thank the stars or there’s a 99.6935 percent probability you’d be dead.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her back against him.

  She should fight his embrace. Her body wasn’t his to handle

  But his big form shook. His breathing was ragged.

  The thought of her being dead had upset her cyborg. She leaned into him, seeking to comfort the male.

  He might not be her mate. He might be disrespectful and act like a beast. But he cared for her…a little.

  “I didn’t die.” She would ensure he didn’t die either, not while he was on her planet.

  Doc grunted and tightened his hold on her. They stayed like that for many moments. His body pressed against hers. His chin rested on top of her head.

  It felt strange to be with someone after a lifespan
of solitude. But it was a good sort of strange, like learning how the innards of handhelds worked. She felt more worthy because of it.

  “I won’t touch the guns again.” That was an easy promise to make. The objects frightened her now. “You can have them.”

  “I have my own.” He patted a spot on his black garment.

  Much of that object was concealed by the unusual black fabric. She turned within the circle of his arms and examined it closer. The portion that was revealed resembled part of the gun she had handled earlier.

  She scanned the rest of him. There were many similar shapes on his black garment. “Guns are used to shoot beings.” That appeared to be their sole purpose. “You have many, many guns.”

  She lifted her gaze, meeting his.

  Her cyborg wasn’t here merely to catalog information. He was planning to shoot someone or something.

  She hoped it wasn’t her.

  Chapter Five

  His female, having never heard of cyborgs, didn’t realize who he was, what he had been manufactured to do. She had grouped him with the other outsiders, had called him a beast, an aptly fitting description for the savage side of him. His little humanoid likely believed him to be 100.0000 percent organic…as she was

  That view of him would change if he answered the queries in her pale gold eyes. He would be labelled a killer, a being designed to end lives.

  Part of him wanted to delay the inevitable, force her to ask the question. She might never do that. During their previous communications, she hadn’t once asked him anything about himself or anything else.

  He couldn’t lie to her. Cyborgs didn’t have that ability. But he could avoid telling her truth. If she didn’t ask the question, he didn’t have to volunteer the answer. He might not have to see her opinion of him shift.

  But someone else would relay the information…eventually. That was 99.9999 percent certain. She was his female. He should be the one to tell her.

  “I’m a cyborg.” He reminded her of that fact. “Cyborgs were manufactured to kill beings.”

  Her eyes widened. Her hands, which were previously drifting over his body armor, stimulating him all over, became still.

  “That was our fabricators’ use for us.” He hastened to stress that point. “We have freed ourselves from those beings’ control. Now, we craft our own missions. My current mission is to gather information on your planet.”

  She tilted her head to the side. “Gathering information doesn’t require guns.”

  “We didn’t know what we would find on your planet.” And he and his brethren felt more comfortable when they were fully armed. “We are authorized to shoot only when threatened.”

  “The miljoonasuut threatened you.” She skimmed her fingertips along his body armor-clad abs, avoiding the weapons strapped to his body. “It rattled its exoskeleton. That is its way of telling you it plans to eat you.” Her lips twitched. “You didn’t shoot it.”

  The miljoonasuut must be the creature Dissent still conveyed across the planet. Other creatures acted scared of it, fleeing from their approach, much to the two warriors’ amusement.

  “We didn’t need to shoot the miljoonasuut.” Though that had been discussed. Truth projected that the creature’s exoskeleton was projectile-proof, a possibility Doc found intriguing. “We could subdue it without damaging it in that way.”

  “Hmmm…” Allinen studied him, her hands resting on his chest.

  She was deciding whether or not he was a killer.

  “My role on board the Reckless, our ship, is Chief Medic.” He gave her more inputs. “I’m responsible for ensuring everyone is fully functional.”

  His female’s forehead furrowed. Her fingers tapped against his body armor. “I don’t know what that means.”

  Frag. He wasn’t communicating effectively. “I repair damaged beings.”

  Her expression cleared. “You are a healer.”

  “Yes.” He nodded, relief surging through his circuits. “I am a healer.”

  She glanced at the dagger strapped to his side. “You carry guns to protect yourself.”

  “Yes.” His head dipped again. She understood him.

  “You require them.” She stroked his pecs. “Because you have no natural defenses of your own.”

  He frowned. She didn’t understand the situation. “I have natural defenses.”

  “You have no light shining from you.” She waved her hands over him. “You wouldn’t scare away miljoonasuuts or pahas or other creatures. They would attack and kill you.”

  His frown deepened. “They wouldn’t kill me. I’m one of the best warriors in the universe.”

  “You have no light because you drink the tasteless beverage.” She walked to a collection of containers, her tread so smooth, so silent; it appeared as though she was floating. “When I drank the tasteless beverage exclusively for three planet rotations.” His female opened one of the containers, showing him the contents. “I, too, lost my light.”

  “Your water must make you glow.” That revelation deleted his processing of everything else, the scientist in him captivated. He joined his female, took the container from her, peered inside it.

  The liquid was clear. There was no scent. It was purified water.

  And it wasn’t healthy for his female or any of her kind to consume. She knew that because she had experimented on herself.

  That alarmed him. The side effects could have been greater than a temporary loss of her light. She could have died. Yet he couldn’t berate her since he would have done the same thing.

  “I have some of our bev…water.” She picked up another container. “Drink it and you will have light also. You won’t need guns. You can protect yourself.”

  “I don’t need light to protect myself.” His protest was less vehement, his processors occupied by her theory.

  He opened the second container, looked inside, breathed deeply. It smelled like a battlefield after a bomb blast, wasn’t clear like the purified water.

  He dipped one of his fingers in the liquid. It was highly toxic.

  “My kind drinks water with our mouths.” Her eyes sparkled, her beauty threatening to shut down his processors, leaving his organic side, his beast in charge.

  That couldn’t happen. He wouldn’t disrespect his female or risk damaging her in that way.

  “I’m testing your water with my fingertips.” He focused on those specs, on the cool logic found in science. “Your water would kill most outsiders.”

  He tilted the container back, gulped a mouthful of the liquid.

  “Don’t.” She batted the container out of his hands. It bounced along the dirt floor. “You are an outsider.”

  His female continued to think he was processor-impaired.

  He stifled a sigh. “I am a cyborg. We’re not most outsiders.” They were designed to tolerate toxins. “Am I glowing?”

  She pursed her lips, didn’t answer him.

  His female never answered his questions. She never asked questions. She accused him of being disrespectful.

  A theory hit him. It was implausible yet their communications supported it. “Do you process questions as being disrespectful?”

  She turned her back toward him.

  Because he had asked her another question.

  “Many outsiders, including myself, ask questions.” That was a luxury he relished. While he was under the control of the Humanoid Alliance, he couldn’t ask questions. Doing so would have resulted in death. “In 75.8963 percent of cases, it is a form of respect, not disrespect.”

  She looked over her shoulder and frowned at him. “To ask a question is to question a being’s word or to force her to share information unwillingly. That’s not respectful.”

  He’d asked her many questions, shown her disrespect many times. That she would tolerate it, would continue to speak with him after he’d inadvertently insulted her, conveyed how strong their bond was.

  Doc would repair the damage he’d inflicted on their relationship. �
��I asked you some questions because I valued your opinion and wanted to hear it. I asked other questions because I seek to know everything about you. Knowing those things would increase the probability I’ll make you happy.”

  She faced him once more. “There are ways of doing that without showing disrespect.” Doubt clouded her eyes.

  “I’ll utilize those ways in the future.” It would be a simple programming change, converting questions to statements. “You are my female, a part of myself, like my arm.” He flexed his biceps. “Or my leg.” He lifted one of his booted feet. “I would never knowingly show you disrespect.”

  She stared at him.

  He lowered his foot and held her gaze.

  Moments passed. They had both made assumptions about the other. He had assumed his ways were hers. She had assumed her ways were his.

  “For outsiders, asking questions isn’t a sign of disrespect.” She finally broke the silence.

  “For your kind, it is.” He acknowledged their differences.

  She smiled at him, her beauty hitting him like a punch to the gut. “You didn’t mean to disrespect me.”

  “I would never damage you in that way.” He held out his arms.

  His little humanoid shot across the makeshift chamber, her tread silent and light, and she pressed her body against his. He folded his arms around her, securing his female to him.

  And she was his female.

  His nanocybotics bubbled inside her, declaring that she was his mate to every warrior. Every kiss, every breeding would relay more of that part of him to her.

  The nanocybotics inside of him had increased also, making him faster, stronger. He had verified that phenomenon with other couples.

  Now, he could add his experiences to that research…because he had a female of his own. She was clever and gorgeous and unlike any other being he’d encountered.

  He didn’t want to part with her. Even for a moment. “You said you had to return to your settlement.” He rubbed her back, feeling her warmth through her flimsy garment. “My mission requires gathering every being’s genetic information. That includes the beings in your settlement.”