Page 7 of Kian
Kian, she thought to herself, turning the name over in her mind.
“A pleasure,” the sheriff said, tipping his hat to her. “And don’t you worry, little lady. You’ll have your pick of beaus out here, a pretty young thing like you.”
She repressed a shudder of revulsion and suddenly realized how lucky she was to have a guard for the next twenty years.
While she would love to have a husband and a large family one day, the sheriff was hardly what she would consider a desirable romantic partner. He looked old enough to be her father, and that fastidiously kept uniform wouldn’t mesh well with the fishing lifestyle.
“She’s going to be focused on her daughter,” Kian growled.
The sheriff laughed as if the growl of a real Invicta dragon was no threat to him, and waved over a Bergalian man in a similar uniform.
“This is Deputy Chigum,” he said. “We’re in charge of this convoy.”
“Pleasure,” Chigum said, then shut his mouth.
He and Kian would get along just fine, Kinsley decided. Neither of them wanted to spare a word.
Kian nodded to the fur covered Bergalian, and just as Kinsley had suspected, neither of them had anything else to say.
“Those two out there are your hands,” Sheriff Barr said. “Hank and Bill. They were hired to work for you once you make it to your property.”
He was pointing at a young Terran kid with pale hair and even paler blue eyes, and an older Terran man with a pair of faded dungarees and a cigarillo hanging from his lips.
From behind the sheriff, someone streaked toward them across the field.
Kinsley gasped, but no one else even flinched.
A moment later, the creature stopped beside them, and she could see that he was of a race she didn’t recognize. He seemed to be a sort of cat-man, with beautiful white fur.
“We should get moving,” he told the sheriff in a low purr. “We’re a day ahead of the snow, two at most.”
The deputy nodded to him.
“You’ll meet the rest when we get to the first checkpoint,” the sheriff said to Kinsley. “Ready?”
“Sure,” she said, looking to Kian, who nodded.
Barr and the deputy headed back to their sled as Kinsley scanned the rest of their party.
A rover droid tightened the straps on the biggest sled that pulled an absolutely massive load.
The large creature she’d seen from a distance turned out to be a tundra-bear. It was enormous, and it seemed to be irritated by the rover droid messing with its load.
Each time the droid tried to tighten the strap it had to roll backward immediately, just to stay out of reach of the furious creature’s paws.
A very large woman with gray skin and a fiery cloud of red hair cracked her whip without touching the bear. It snarled, but calmed slightly.
In the dogsled beside hers, another huge woman with stone-colored skin and bright hair let her head fall back in helpless laughter.
Then Kian was shouting to the team again, and they were moving, finding a place in formation behind the sheriff and in front of the stone-skinned women.
The two Terran hands fell in beside them and she looked over and gave them a friendly wave, which they returned.
When she turned back to Kian, he scowled at her, then fixed his eyes back on the dogs.
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KIAN