The Lawgivers: Gabriel (9 page)

That circumstance puzzled her, but it
was enough to prompt her to remember she’d planned to escape at the
first opportunity. With that thought in mind, she worked her way to
the edge of the herd as the group bottlenecked at the gate. Waiting
until everyone else had squeezed through, she followed and then
halted abruptly when she saw that Gabriel had ‘appeared’ outside.
She jolted to a halt, gaping at him for a moment in stunned
disbelief and then glancing back the way she’d come, wondering if
there was more than one of them.

He looked downright amused when she
looked at him again—and knowing, as if he’d guessed what she had
planned.

Or knew because he’d read her
mind.

He pointed toward the rest of the
group—which was once again running although the necessity of
slowing to exit the city had temporarily tamped their
panic.

With Gabriel now directly on her heels,
Lexa hurried to catch up to the others, too unnerved to feel much
in the way of resentment that he’d once again foiled her plans to
part company with him. When everyone tired enough to begin to slow
again, Gabriel moved forward to adjust their course.

Thoroughly winded from their panicked
flight out of the village, everyone dropped from a run to a trot
and then to a walk and finally to trudging at a snail’s pace. He
waited until they reached a point of making very little progress at
all and then called a halt for a short rest. There was nothing to
shade them from the blistering sun overhead, but no one argued.
Most of them simply dropped where they were, panting.

Lexa was fairly desperate for a drink
of water by that time, but she waited until she’d caught her breath
before unearthing a bottle from her supplies and taking a small
sip, swishing the water around in her mouth before she
swallowed.

“You’d be wise to conserve your water,”
Gabriel announced to the group. “It will be two days before we
reach a safe water supply—assuming, of course, that we make good
time—longer if we don’t.”

The announcement was enough to make
everyone examine their water somewhat fearfully. As accustomed as
Lexa was to taking very great care of her own supply, she felt her
heart sink. She had a very bad feeling that Gabriel’s estimate of
the time it would take was optimistic and that it might take far
longer. After all, he could fly and she doubted it would take him
nearly as long as it would everyone else.

He had flown. That was the only thing
that made any sense at all as an explanation for how he’d managed
to get in front of them when they’d all run off and left him
standing in the street.

Of course, he had wings and she’d heard
the angels could fly, but she didn’t think she’d actually believed
they could before.

Mentally assessing the water she still
had, she took a couple more smallish sips, capped the bottle
carefully, and returned it to her pack. She didn’t want to run out
anymore than anyone else, but it wouldn’t do her any good to have
it if she passed out before she ran out. Someone would just take
what she had and leave her with none at all.

The sun had moved about half past its
zenith before the angel allowed them to stop again, but then it had
been well upward in the sky before they’d even started out. This
time, he suggested they eat and not simply rest and
drink.

Lexa scanned their surroundings and
finally spied an outcropping of rock that offered a little shade.
As tired as she was, she hurried over to it to claim it before
anyone else could. Unfortunately, she wasn’t fast enough. She
arrived at the shelter only just before one of the village men.
Before she could plant her ass in the little bit of shade it
offered, he gave her a shove that sent her sprawling.

More than half expecting him to
punctuate his claiming of the spot by kicking her a few times for
good measure, Lexa scrambled to get to her feet even as she hit the
dirt, ignoring the burning scrapes to her palms and the bruising of
her knees. She slipped on the pebbles strewn across the hard packed
ground, however, and before she could do more than roll to her back
to face the threat she expected, a dark shadow fell over
her.

Gabriel caught the man by the front of
his shirt, snatching him clean off the ground and shaking him. His
expression was frightening as he pushed his face close to the man’s
and snarled. “Savage!”

Resisting the urge to plant his fist in
the middle of the man’s face, Gah-re-al shook the man again and
then tossed him toward the ground. Turning, he saw he had the full
attention of the entire group. “You may consider that a warning.
The strong will not be allowed to prey upon the weak. They will not
be allowed to take what they want from those weaker than they are.
This is not civilized behavior and it is against the laws of the
udai. The punishment for such unacceptable behavior will be swift.
Is that clear?”

Lexa didn’t know about the others, but
she was so stunned it was many moments before that sank in—and it
wasn’t terribly clear when it did. She felt a mixture of emotions
as she struggled with what had happened and what he’d said.
Resentment, embarrassment, and shame that Gabriel saw her as weak
were the dominant emotions, making it difficult to assess the
others. She also found that she was distinctly uneasy about someone
else fighting her battles for her, though, since she didn’t
understand his motive for doing it.

She had more to worry about, she
discovered, when she saw the reactions on the faces of the
villagers. There was accusation in the expressions of every man,
woman, and child as they stared at her. She was an outsider and,
because of her, one of their group had been attacked and
humiliated.

Gabriel compounded their resentment by
gesturing for her to take the place she’d tried to claim and then
sitting down near enough to make it appear that he was guarding
her.

To their minds, she knew, he’d just
claimed her as his woman. She was fairly certain that he didn’t
realize that. She didn’t believe that that was why he’d done it
because he’d had plenty of time since he’d caught her the night
before to rut her if that was what he had in mind, but she knew
that was what the others were thinking and she didn’t think that
would be a good thing for her.

* * * *

Gah-re-al thought, at first, that the
hostility he saw in the faces of the humans bold enough to show it
and sensed even in those too timid to display it, was merely fear
and hatred of the udai in general and him in particular since he
was the only representative close enough to focus on. There had
certainly been no show of appreciation for the fact that he’d
eliminated the gang that had been terrorizing them, he thought
wryly—not that he’d expected it—far from it.

Gratitude should have been a given
under the circumstances—with any species of intelligence. He’d been
around humans enough, however, to see that they weren’t inclined to
look upon anything the udai did for them with even a modicum of
appreciation—which was the main reason he was inclined to discount
the possibility of a higher understanding among them. They were not
only not cowed or inspired to feel awe for the beings who walked
among them, displaying superior abilities and weaponry, such
displays of power only seemed to increase their
hostility.

It wasn’t reasonable. It made no sense
to him, at any rate.

Logically, they should have been joyous
and relieved at the very least to have the monsters that had been
preying upon them removed. Even if they were fearful of the beings
who removed them and/or the way it was done, it seemed unreasonable
to look upon their saviors with hate and distrust.

He supposed, knowing that, he shouldn’t
have been surprised at their reaction to his punitive action
against the male that had assaulted Lexa, but he was. He thought he
understood why the males had been resentful. They were accustomed
to doing as they pleased when it came to anyone weaker than they
were—the women and children and any male they were able to
dominate. The reactions of the women and children thoroughly
confused him.

Instead of simply shrugging it off as a
sign of low intelligence as he had in the past, however, he began
to wonder if there was a reason behind it—at least as far as they
were concerned—that simply escaped his understanding.

Maybe they weren’t simply too stupid to
grasp that he’d improved their lot?

Because he couldn’t see that Lexa’s
attitude differed a great deal from the others and he’d judged her
to be intelligent.

There was no real reason why he needed
to understand the humans. The social workers had taken that task
upon themselves when they had decided to rehabilitate them and it
was no part of his job as lawgiver. And yet it rankled that Lexa’s
distrust seemed to deepen with everything that he did.

Truthfully, he’d seen a look of awe and
admiration in her eyes before—or thought he had—and the fact that
that seemed to have vanished bothered him far more than it should
have.

And angered him.

It was completely irrational and
unreasonable that his protecting her seemed to have diminished him
in her eyes!

Her explanation only baffled and
angered him more. It didn’t bring enlightenment.

“Would you care to explain why you are
angry that I protected you?” he asked, having fallen back to walk
beside her as the group got up to resume their trek.

“No.”

Surprised at her curt response, he sent
her a startled glance. Anger very quickly replaced his surprise. He
tamped it with an effort and summoned patience. “Explain anyway,”
he ground out after a long moment spent wrestling with his
temper.

Lexa rolled her eyes heavenward. “It
was my fight.”

“One you had already lost,” he pointed
out tightly. “And could not have won.”

“You don’t know that!” she said
indignantly.

“I do and what’s more you should. There
is bravery and there is stupidity.”

Lexa flicked a glare in his direction
and then stared at the back of the woman in front of them,
wondering if she was close enough to hear the conversation. Her
attitude, the way her head was cocked slightly to one side, said
that she was straining to whether she actually could or not. “You
don’t understand at all,” she muttered. “And why should
you?”

“And how can I when you refuse to
explain,” Gah-re-al retorted tartly.

“I’m an outsider and you made me more
one.”

Gah-re-al was startled and then
annoyed. “How so? By preventing that male from beating you half to
death?”

“They think I’m your woman now!” Lexa
hissed.

That accusation so startled Gah-re-al
that he halted in his tracks. Of all the unreasonable assumptions
for them to make, that seemed the most unbelievable! “What?” he
demanded, wondering if he’d heard her wrong.

She didn’t answer, slow down, or turn
around and Gah-re-al strode forward to catch up. “What?” he asked
again, although he thought her bright red cheeks was evidence
enough that she had heard him. “Why would they leap to that
conclusion—assuming they did? Why do you think they
did?”

Lexa’s lips tightened. “Men guard their
possessions,” she retorted tightly.

Gah-re-al stared at her in disbelief.
“But I’m not a man. I’m udai!”

“Which only makes it worse!”

Gah-re-al didn’t bother to ask her to
explain that. It was clear enough that it infuriated him. He
stalked to the front of the group. He would’ve liked nothing better
than to have simply abandoned the lot of them—if only long enough
to get his temper under control—but he didn’t trust the bastards
not to scatter the moment his back was turned and he’d already
informed the council that he would be delivering the first batch of
primitives in ten days.

Which might have been a very
conservative estimate now that he thought of it considering the
children in the group.

He dismissed that problem for the
moment, too angry to worry with the logistics of his proposed
delivery date.

He wasn’t certain what part of his
discovery made him angrier.

The udai were superior to humans in
every way! How dare they … shun Lexa because they thought she might
be his woman!

How dare she consider it shamed her for
them to think it?

Clearly she did and that was the reason
she’d turned so red, the reason she was angry!

He was the one who should, by rights,
be insulted! As if he would stoop to take a primitive as his woman!
It was ludicrous!

Then again, maybe it was all in her
mind? He certainly hadn’t heard any comments to that effect and it
was completely unreasonable for them to jump to such a conclusion
merely because he’d protected her.

Granted, he didn’t find her repulsive
as he did humans in general ….

Unwelcome, honesty intruded as it
flickered through his mind that he’d thought Lexa surprisingly
attractive … for a human.

But that was nothing more than the fact
that he found her unusual coloring had piqued his interest. He
wasn’t actually attracted to her per se.