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  Henmop took the broken front leg and with a quick jerk and twist, snapped the bone back into position with a grisly sounding pop. The animal shrieked in pain and defecated all over me as she kicked and struggled. I held on and the animal slowly quieted. I’d been defecated on so many times in the past thirteen weeks I didn’t even mind anymore.

  “There, there,” Henmop said as she stroked the animal, then looked at me. “Will you get me a splint?”

  I slowly released the animal’s legs and then rose to hurry to the rack of supplies Henmop kept for sick and injured animals. I picked up three splits that looked to be about the right size and returned to them to Henmop, along with the straps to hold them in place.

  “Thanks,” she said, taking the items. “Okay, girl, let’s see if we can get you back on your feet.”

  I watched as Henmop quickly braced the huyarah’s leg with the splints. Once the leg was protected, she moved to look at the wound in the animal’s side. She hissed. “It’s becoming infected.”

  I knew without being asked what she needed and returned in a moment with a spray what would kill the infection and seal the wound so that it could heal. I watched as Henmop trimmed away the fur around the wound. Finished, she held the wound closed.

  “Treat it,” she ordered.

  I liberally sprayed the wound and the area immediately around it. As the foam began to harden, forming a tough protective barrier, Henmop carefully removed her hands and took the spray from me, spraying the area where her fingers had been.

  She rose to her feet and watched the animal for a moment. “I don’t like the way she’s panting. She may have internal injuries.”

  She moved to the basin and carefully cleaned her hands with a sterilizer. Once her hands were clean, she picked up the portable scanner and returned to the animal. She handed me the screen then placed the scanner against the animal. As I held the screen so she could see it, Henmop slowly moved the palm-size device over the animal, a picture of the inside of the animal forming on the screen.

  “I see a lot of bruising and swelling, but no bleeding and nothing appears to be broken.” She paused as she zoomed in on an area and then smiled. “She’s pregnant.”

  “I thought huyarah’s only got pregnant in the spring.”

  “Normally that’s true, but you can see for yourself.”

  I looked at the screen, but I could have been looking at the inside of me for all I could tell. “She’s a mewu, so this is her first broot. It happens. She’ll skip a year, then the next year, she’ll become fertile with the rest of her herd,” Henmop explained.

  “So you saved two lives today.”

  She smiled at me. “Yes I did. I should charge Giup Butherat double.” Henmop continued to pass the scanner over the animal. “I see a lot of trauma, but nothing life threating. She’d going to be as sore as a stomped squiyt for a few days, but I think she’s going to live.” She looked me over. “She’s going to be groggy for a couple of hours more. Why don’t you go get cleaned up? You’re a mess.”

  I looked at myself and grimaced. “Yes I am.”

  She smiled at me then stepped in close. “You showed up just in time, and despite being covered in feces, you’re still the sexiest man in the stable,” she breathed.

  “I’m the only man in the stable,” I pointed out.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said as she rose to her toes to kiss me. “Now go,” she breathed as she pulled back from the kiss. “I’m not sitting at the same table as you with you smelling like that. You can bathe while I prepare our meal.”

  Late Evening

  I’d bathed and changed into a clean set of clothes. I trotted down the stone steps and stepped in behind Henmop and nuzzled her neck. “Better?”

  She gave the thick cyruh stew a stir then turned in my arms. “Much.” She pulled my lips down into a kiss. “Thank you for your help earlier. She was going to be a handful had you not been there.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t try to do stuff like that by yourself. What if you’d gotten kicked?”

  “I’ve been kicked before, and I’m sure I’ll get kicked again. Getting kicked and bitten is part of it. I saw you get kicked, but you’re not injured.”

  I grunted. The spot I’d been kicked was starting to get sore, and I was going to have a bruise, but I’d live. “Still. You should have had one of the Butherats stay and help. It’s their animal after all. What if I hadn’t arrived when I did?”

  “I would have managed without you. I was about to stick her when you came in, but with you helping I didn’t have to worry about breaking the needle off in her.”

  “I still worry about you being out here alone with no help.”

  “I can take care of myself, and help is only a portal away if I need it.”

  She turned back to give the stew another stir. We’d had this conversation before. I wasn’t used to the wide-open spaces of Peraginisis. On Firaspatciti most of the population was clustered in the cities with vast dry tracts of land between them. What crops we grew were clustered near the poles where the weather was cooler and wetter, with ranching a bit further away from the poles where growing plants was difficult, but animals thrived.

  Peragin was different. It had no ocean, but millions of lakes that contained its water. It was green, and cool, but so mountainous and rocky that growing crops would be problematic at best. The Peragins were semi-nomadic, traveling vast distances as they followed their herds, living in one of their many homes dotted across their vast land holdings.

  I shook it off. The Peragins knew how to take care of themselves. But as I was becoming closer to Henmop, it was increasingly difficult to not worry about her well-being when I was away.

  “I know,” I finally said.

  “You’re far more likely to be hurt than I am,” she said, picking up the pot of stew and moving to the table. “Don’t forget, you’re the one that nearly died, not me.”

  “You’re right. I know you’re right. But it’s so…empty…here. I enjoy the solitude a great deal when I’m here with you, but my imagination stalks me when I’m gone. Like tonight. What if you’d been kicked in the head or something?”

  “Then I would have had a headache, and maybe a scar, and a lesson about being more careful.” She smiled at me. “It’s endearing that you worry about me, but you needn’t. It’s you I worry about. As much as I admire Lady Catherina for what she’s doing, and grateful to her I am for bringing us together, I don’t like the idea that you will take a long blade thrust meant for her.”

  “It’s my duty.”

  “And caring for these animals is mine. We both have to accept what we do and the dangers we may have to face…or we’ll have to acknowledge that can’t accept them and go our own ways.”

  I took her hand. “Never.”

  She smiled at me. “And I’m the same. I trust you to do your duty and come home to me after each cycle. Trust me to know what I’m doing and not take any unnecessary risks so I can be here when you return.”

  I nodded. “Be patient with me. It’s difficult sometimes to embrace our differences.”

  She softened. “No more for you than for me. You think I like the thought of you standing between Catherina and death?”

  “No. But she would like you to visit. That part I know for sure.”

  She nodded as she ignored my statement about a visit. “You’re right, I don’t. But I know that’s who you are, my mate. It makes you the man I care for.”

  She smiled then pointed with her spoon. “Now eat, before the kulth gets cold. Then I’d like to have your help getting the huyarah up on her feet.”

  I nodded, giving the thick stew a stir to help cool it. Embrace our differences. That was what Lady Catherina was always saying. I smiled as I took a small bite of the stew.

  The Peragins ate mostly meat laden stews with various local tubers mixed in, sometimes ladled over a thick slice of bread. Henmop said it was because the meal could be left simmering for hours while work was being done and it
would taste as good if eaten immediately or hours after it was prepared. On Firaspatciti, we didn’t mix our foods in this way, and I’d initially found the appearance unappetizing. I hadn’t wanted to offend her when she’d made it for the first time, so I’d tried it, and found it to be very tasty indeed. By mixing in different tubers, meats, and spices, what appeared to be the same dish had many different flavors and textures. It was hearty and filling, and I beginning to prefer it in some ways to the flame seared meats typical in the Firaspatciti diet.

  After we’d eaten, we returned to the stable. The huyarah was still on her side, but it was obvious she had been struggling to get up as she had managed to turn herself crosswise in the stall and get herself stuck. Huyarahs were known for their soft fur and tasty meat, not their intelligence. The animal began to kick and trash as we stepped into the stall, its high pitched shriek of terror heart breaking and deafening at the same time.

  “Easy, girl,” Henmop murmured as she knelt and stroked the animal’s head. The animal stopped thrashing, but its eyes were still rolled back in its head in fear. The huyarah knew that in the wild, if it didn’t get up so it could run, it was dead.

  “Are you ready?” Henmop asked.

  I nodded as I stepped behind the animal. I’d done this before, too. Henmop and I changed places. Since it was a front leg that was broken, the front is where the huyarah would need the most assistance, and since I was bigger and stronger, that is where I could be the most useful.

  “Easy little sister,” I whispered, rubbing the animal on the head between its eyes as Henmop did to calm it. “We’re going to get you up, okay?”

  I looked at my mate. She nodded and we lifted. Huyarahs were big animals, easily twice as heavy as I was. I grunted with the effort to get the animal up enough that it could get its good leg under her. The huyarah began kicking and thrashing, realizing she was almost on her feet, fighting to help. She stepped hard on my foot and I bit off the cry of pain. It would do no good and would only frighten the animal. Having my foot under her eight-toed foot allowed her toes to grab my foot as if it were a rock, giving her secure footing to get upright. The minute she was on her feet, I shoved her hard off my foot.

  “Get off my foot you overweight sack of dung!”

  As Henmop laughed at me, the huyarah stumbled then regained her balance, staring at me before she shrilled out her call in indication. I didn’t care if my shove made her hurt her damaged leg, she was breaking my foot.

  Henmop stepped around to the front of the animal and offered her a tuber, a favorite treat for any huyarah. The animal limped forward and took it, crunching it loudly before looking Henmop to see if she was going to offer her another one. Henmop produced another and the animal took it greedily.

  “Can you put some feed in the trough for her?” Henmop asked.

  I poured a scoop of feed into the feed trough. As the obviously ravenous animal began to devour it, Henmop knelt and checked the splint and then made a small adjustment.

  “That’s all I can do for her,” she said as she rose. “The bone is aligned. Now it just needs to heal. In a couple of days I’ll turn her out in the pasture during the day to let her walk around on it to speed the healing.”

  I nodded like I agreed with the treatment, but in reality, I had no idea. I drew the beast some water, let her drink her fill from the container, and then refilled it. I refilled the food trough, but the huyarah seemed content at the moment.

  Henmop nodded in satisfaction then smiled at me. “Thank you. How’s your foot?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Are you sure? You don’t need me to…tend to you tonight? Perhaps I can think of something to take your mind off the discomfort.”

  I smiled at her. “Perhaps.”

  She smiled back. “Perhaps we should comfort each other?”

  “Even better.”

  She stepped in close. “When do you return to duty?”

  “I report on the evening of the third day.”

  She sighed. “Well, if that’s all the time we have, I don’t want to waste a moment of it.”

  I lowered my lips to hers and took her in a long, slow kiss. I couldn’t have agreed with her more.

  Book 1 in the Hot Dating Series…

  Chapter One

  Catherina

  Ten years ago, things were great. Fucking fantastic. I came up with this concept, I was fresh out of school and desperate to date. Just like so many of the other girls in my class. Setting up a dating agency with some hot Vikings felt like a great concept. Especially when my business partner hooked up with me.

  We were Catherina and Amy. The route to find love. Until Amy found love and everyone else found other means such as apps, speed dating and all the other crazy ideas that I should have adapted to make my business more successful.

  When Steavn Roots called and said that he had a business proposal. That my business was one of the top dating means of it’s century. I had to lie. Another bill had come in and once again I couldn’t pay it. A business that had allowed me to buy a brand new car, an apartment in the most expensive part of town. Couldn’t even pay my phone bill anymore. When I saw the email from Stevan I thought that it was a hoax until he said the one thing that held my interest.

  A business partnership.

  An opportunity not to be missed.

  I was about to shut up shop, I only had one employee left. No longer fifty when it was at the peak and even then I didn’t know how i was going to pay her this month. I looked in the mirror once again, before my meeting with Stevan. He was coming in twenty minutes. Luckily, I had rented out the rest of the office space to a fashion magazine, no one would know that they were spaces that were used by my agency. No one would care, because if this thing didn’t work out with Stevan then this would be my last week walking through these doors. I took a deep breath as I walked out of the bathroom into my office. I wasn't expecting Stevan to be sitting there. I had asked Carol to be my receptionist for the day. She was hesitant at first until I told her that if she wanted the two month’s wages that I owed her this month, then she better pretend.

  I was never like this.

  But frustration and bankruptcy and the one opportunity that could turn everything around made me this way and I wasn’t beating around the bush anymore. I was being direct. She was blind if she didn’t see what was happening to the company and plain stupid if she believed that things were going to get better without any intervention. Stevan was the intervention that was needed and I wasn’t going to make it easy for him, but I wasn’t going to try and play hard ball. Not like before.

  “Hello!”

  He shouted as soon as I walked into my office. I planned to look the part as soon as he walked in, pretend that I was too busy and that he was taking up my time. Make out that I was a successful business, the way that I used to be. Not so long ago.

  “Sorry, Catherina, I never meant to startle you. Carol, your secretary said that I could come in.” She was hovering at the door, she winked and then left. I told her that today was important. It meant that I would be out of the red into the black or I would have to sell my laptop, the most expensive item I owned and my phone just to give her something before the debtors took over.

  “Yes, it’s not a problem,” I looked above the door where my antique clock used to hang before I sold it and then I realized that it wasn’t there, so I picked up my phone and said, “You’re just early that’s all.”

  He sighed as his red eyes froze on me. I didn’t realize that I could get lost in his eyes, they were a fiery orange color. They seemed to make me feel warm inside, which was more than the room was doing right now. I planned to use the portable fan heater to warm it up before he arrived. There was no money to top up the gas meter. The electricity was the only one I used from time-to-time, which wasn’t often.

  He was so big, he had to crouch a bit, before he sat down in the chair opposite me. He must have been nearly seven feet and as he sat down in the leather chair the most
expensive item in the office. I had never seen a man of such height. As he sat down and I felt as I was hot all of a sudden. The room no longer felt cold. I took of my jacket and studied the man before me. It was as if I was hypnotized.

  “Catherina,” he asked as he looked over my basic office. There was nothing in it apart from the certificate at the top of the wall behind me which I had won as entreprenuar of the year with Amy. The mahongy desk which most likely would be gone tomorrow and the matching leather chair that he sat on. If he had entered a few weeks ago, he would have seen plants. Even a few more paintings on the wall. Every week had been a struggle. I had sold nearly everything, but I had a feeling that was about to change.

  “Yes,” I nodded as I tried to focus.

  “Okay, so can I get you something to drink, maybe a coffee or a tea?” That was all I could offer, because I didn’t have anything else to give him.

  He shook his head, “Should we get down to business?”

  Once again, i found myself speechless in his presence. It was a if he put a spell on me or something? I was mesmerized by his eyes. His physique was absolutely amazing, I could only assume that underneath his fur coat was pure muscle. The type of man that could lift me up with one arm and not even break into a sweat. I tried to sit comfortably in my chair and focus on the task, but with his long dark hair and fiery eyes. The only thing on my mind was him.

  “Yes,” I whispered in a voice which was foreign even to me. It was so faint that the business lady that entered the room had left and a child had replaced her.

  “I need you to build something like what you have here for me.”

  I wanted to laugh and ask him if he meant a business that was going bust. I could build that anytime. I kept my composure and replied, “I thought that you were looking to expand as you said in your email?”

  He shook his head, “That is what I thought was needed, but it isn’t realistic. I need you come to my land. Build what you have here. There needs to be a change.”