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reticence, but he would not locate Anika if he did not inquire. “I am looking for someone,” he admitted. “A female.”
    “They are skittish and hard to catch.” Hoari’s ribald bark hinted he was not averse to bending Protocol and slaking his lust with an available female.
    Icor did not join in the humor, but picked up an unsually small knife and stabbed it into the fowl carcass, which they’d picked clean.
    “Who is this female you seek?” Hoari asked.
    “I had purchased a breeder, but she escaped before I could take possession.” Urazi assembled a story, avoiding mention of Anika’s link to Ilian or Marlix in case his camp mates’ loyalties resided with the Qalin-Artom bloc.
    “How long has she been missing?”
    “About a month.”
    Hoari drew his brows together in a pensive frown. “About three weeks ago, we captured a female for our use, but I do not think she is the one you seek.”
    “Female drakor .” Icor spat.
    Do not let it be Anika. I would prefer to not find her than to think she encountered these alphas. “ And why is that? Was her appearance so unseemly that she would produce ugly offspring?” He faked a casual, humorous tone.
    “She was not unattractive for a female,” Hoari replied. “She had a bounty of hair and amber eyes. She wore the oddest footwear. Terran, I suspect.”
    Urazi’s blood chilled. What had they done to her? “What happened?”
    “She attacked Icor and escaped.” Hoari motioned toward his wounded companion.
    Urazi closed his eyes in thankfulness. He sucked in a surreptitious breath of relief, but rage began to build. He opened his eyes. The answer to the next question would determine whether Icor and Hoari lived or died.
    He twisted his mouth into a semblance of a grin and stroked the blade of his knife. “Did you at least get to use her before she fled?”
     
    * * * *
     
    “Hold steady. Grip the stock from below with your left hand. Do not get in the way of the bolt.” Grogan stepped so close, his hardened manhood prodded Anika’s left flank. She gritted her teeth, and considered dropping her trigger finger to reach into her boot for Tara’s knitting needle.
    Yes. Hold steady now, Grogan .
    “Line your target between the crosshairs.”
    Target in sight . Anika closed her left eye and peered through the scope with her right at the life-size outline of a male sketched in soot on an unrolled parchment scroll tacked to a tree fifty meters away. Focused on the round smudge, center torso.
    Grogan pressed his stiffened manhood into the crease of her buttocks. “ Squeeze …the trigger.”
    Anika superimposed her instructor’s likeness onto the faceless target and discharged the bolt. The string recoiled with a pop and released the arrow. With satisfying thunk, it embedded in the target. Lowering her weapon, Anika stepped out of range of the alpha and strode to examine the result.
    Right through the heart.
    “Fair. For a female,” Grogan judged.
    She compared her results—dead center—with Grogan’s. He’d missed the middle completely, hitting outside the outline. Perhaps the weight of his erection had unbalanced his shot.
    She marched to the starting line with Grogan dogging her heels, flinging advice as wild as his aim. She shot better than every male of the Resistance, but walked a precarious path, awakening each morn to wonder if this would be the day she would fall prey to her compatriots. To Grogan, who had singled her out for special training .
    But joining the Guerilla Resistance against Qalin and Artom was preferable to facing what lay outside the camp. Anika shuddered.
    After leaving Marlix’s abode, she’d roamed the countryside for a week before she’d straggled into the militia group attempting to defeat Qalin and Artom. Their secret weapon?
    Breeders. No one would suspect a female of being an armed fighter.
    But her instructor saw no reason to abandon the old use for females. Thus far she’d dodged him, but her luck and his patience