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Ravnar had to admire the young ukkur’s devotion to their little human mate. Were it necessary, Ravnar would willingly make the same sacrifice. But it was not necessary.

“No,” Ravnar growled. “There’s another way.”

Jale’s eyes went to Ravnar’s grip on his arm and seemed to notice for the first time the dark stain of copper-based nith blood that was smudged there.

“Just take care of the woman for a little longer. I will bring back meat.”

CHAPTER 18

The smell of cooking flesh brought Alyx out of her feverish dreams, dragged her back into the here and now.

But where was here?

And when was now?

Disoriented as she was, it took Alyx a long moment to realize that low ceiling of dense cloud overhead was actually solid stone. Those orange streaks of light were not the beams of the sun going down, but the radiating light of a fire. And the way the voices around her echoed and reverberated, that was no hallucination but a real effect of the enclosed space.

A cave.

They were in a cave.

At some point—Alyx did not remember when—the ukkur had moved her inside this cavity in the mountain. The gear was there, heaped along one wall, and even the skriks, crouched on their haunches like featherless birds in the shuddering shadows of the fire.

There was a small hole in the naturally domed ceiling which acted as a flue for the smoke, but the smell of the burning wood still permeated the air. And the other smell was even stronger.

“Meat,” she groaned in nith.

“Come,” Jale said. He was beside her, cradling her body protectively against his. “Meat come.”

And come it did. Only a moment later, Ravnar came scrabbling over bearing a wooden platter heaped with steaming meat from the fire. He lifted it to Alyx’s face. A dark, sizzling lump cut into thick slices. An organ of some kind.

“Heart,” Jale said, using another word Alyx had learned.

And indeed it was some animal’s heart. She could see that now, the empty chambers in the middle that had once pumped the creature’s blood.

Part of her was repulsed.

Eating another living creature. Devouring its dead flesh as sustenance for her own body. It was something that she hadn’t done since she was a child, ever since she had wandered accidentally into her father’s slaughterhouse and seen where meat came from.

But her repulsion was outweighed by her need.

That deep, agonizing hunger that gnawed at her guts. Her child’s hunger too. The little carnivore baby in her belly demanded meat.

Alyx reached with her bare finger and grabbed a slice of the cooked heart. She tore at it with her teeth. The meat was a bit tough, but it was juicy, brimming with flavor. The salty, coppery taste of alien blood saturated her tongue. She swallowed it down and grabbed another slice, another.

She ate ravenously, snarling as she chewed.

Jale held a wineskin for her, tipped it when she needed something to wash down the mouthfuls of meat. When she finished the platter, Ravnar rushed back to the fire where Krogg was slaving away preparing more.

Alyx paused to catch her breath, and something by the wall caught her attention. Something she had not seen before in the throes of her hunger.

It was the shadow that she noticed first, a huge silhouette cast by the flickering orange light. A long, narrow snout, alligator-like jaws open in a wide V. Rows of saw-like fangs.

A nith!

Alyx started in fear, but Jale caught her, whispering to her soothingly. And as Alyx shivered in his embrace, the pieces all came together in her head.

That nith was dead, lying sprawled out on its back on the cavern floor. It was butchered.