Forest Whispers by Kaitlyn O'Connor Page A

she generally avoided even casual sex. Mostly, when she did
indulge her needs, she tried to be sure she’d settled on someone
she wasn’t likely to get too attached to, or vice versa.
    She saw now that she’d made a serious error
in judgment with Corin. She should’ve been paying more attention—or
just kept her distance. Clearly, the people, or at least the
warriors, of Ata Prime considered displays of emotion unacceptable,
but that didn’t mean they didn’t feel anything.
    Not that she thought there was much chance
that she was going to cause Corin any significant wounds when she
left, but she was beginning to think she might not come off
completely unscathed herself, and she didn’t like to think she
might wound him even a little.
    Finally, she dismissed it. There wasn’t much
point in dwelling on things you couldn’t do anything about.
    Despite the fact that they only stopped a
few times and even then for only a few minutes, the sun had already
dipped below the trees by the time they came upon the clearing
around Lianal’s cabin. By Lana’s guesstimate, and considering the
season, she figured they had two to three hours of light left, but
she knew that was probably stretching it. Much of that time, the
light would be very limited.
    They saw Lianal going about his evening
chores.
    Lana faced a moment of indecision. Either
Sadin hadn’t arrived yet, or he’d found a position to wait and
watch just as they had.
    Of course, there was also the third
possibility that she’d picked the wrong cabin altogether.
    If that was the case, then the only problem
was that they’d lost time they couldn’t afford to lose. If either
of the first two were a possibility, however, Lianal could be in
danger.
    Finally, they decided that Corin would
circle back and catch the cart trail to approach Lianal and speak
to him. That way they ran the least risk of arousing Sadin’s
suspicions, and they would have a chance to discover if Sadin had
been seen and to warn Lianal if he hadn’t.
    Lana wasn’t completely happy with the
solution, but Sadin knew her. She couldn’t afford to show her face
if there was even a remote possibility that Sadin was in the
vicinity.
    As Corin approached Lianal, she surveyed the
area as far as she could see in either direction. Seeing no sign of
Sadin on the trail, or in the fringes of the forest, she returned
her attention to Corin.
    The two men approached each other as if they
were well known to one another, possibly even friends, and she
wondered if Lianal had been living in the cabin long. She couldn’t
see him that well from the distance that separated them, but he
looked nearly as old as the man she’d met on the farm a few days
earlier—old enough that it seemed more likely that it had been a
while since he’d seen service. The homestead, or fifen, also looked
well worked and she didn’t think the improvements were anything
that might have been done in a very short period of time.
    They talked longer than she’d expected. As
tense as she’d been since they had arrived, her nerves tightened
even more the longer Lianal and Corin stood in front of the cabin
talking. She glanced toward the sun, gauging the time, and then
looked along the trail once more.
    She was so focused on what was transpiring
in the clearing before her that she didn’t sense the presence
behind her until it was far too late.
     

Chapter Six
    As well honed as Lana’s instincts were, she
realized belatedly that she’d allowed herself to be too distracted
by Corin for her reflexes to save her. Even as she leapt to her
feet and whirled to face the threat, drawing her weapon in almost
the same motion, something slammed into her head so hard blackness
erupted around her almost instantaneously. Distantly, she felt a
second blow to her gun hand, but she was barely conscious and the
sensation of falling only vaguely reached her dulled senses.
    She thought she might have blacked out
completely for a handful of seconds. The next