Best Friends (New Species #15)(107)

Lapis reached up and touched his blue stone pendant. “She was old. Frail. Doc Sue feared me. She brought this to show me the stone was like my eyes, and to make me agree to clean my wound. I didn’t believe her until she’d brought a mirror to let me look at my eyes. I liked it enough to trade.”

Footsteps drew Lash’s attention, and he turned, expecting to face off against another curious male. Torrent stomped out from behind some tall bushes instead. He wore only sweatpants and strange shoes that looked like feet. Lash scowled, staring at them.

“Don’t,” Torrent snapped. “They are human shoes with toes. They are very comfortable, and I don’t have to scrub my feet before I get into bed after running around barefoot. I like them.” He pulled out his cell phone from his back pocket and advanced. “I don’t have much time. What part of Oak’s home did you want to see or is it all of it? I have like forty pictures.”

“His new mate doesn’t like Lash’s platform bed. She wants something on the floor. You can see how that would be a problem for our friend here.” Jaded jerked his head toward Lash.

Torrent nodded. “Right. You feel safer high off the ground.” Torrent messed with his phone and then turned the screen. “This is his bedroom.”

Lash frowned. The picture featured a tall rock wall with an opening for a door, but the walls didn’t extend upward all the way to the ceiling, showing off a large space of what looked like a cave behind it. There, a few ropes attached to the ceiling. He could see a large bed on the floor inside the room, under those ropes, through the open doorway.

Torrent moved closer and changed the picture. “The walls are fifteen feet high and start angling outward at about nine feet up, so they are difficult to climb from the outside.”

The male flipped to another picture. There was a door sealing the opening into the room in this one. It looked metal and appeared to be solid. “It’s a slide door. It locks into place from the inside.”

“Bulletproof?” Lash glanced at Torrent.

“Of course. The walls are three feet thick, including a foot of stone, and reinforced concrete with rebar. That’s thick metal bars.” Torrent looked at him. “Oak loves ropes. You like platforms. We could do it. The door is four inches thick, I think, but because it’s on wheels, it should be easy enough for a human to slide open and to close it. I’m not a builder, but I’ve learned a lot from supervising the human crews we had out here building homes for the residents.”

“I want that,” Lash decided.

Torrent put away his phone and turned to Jaded. “The teams we used for Oak’s home are in my files. There were four companies. We didn’t want any one group of humans to see all of it. Look up who designed his bedroom and call them. I have all the specifications and details in those folders. We didn’t allow the humans to keep copies. I can handle it after I return from Homeland if you don’t want to.”

“I want it done now.”

Both males looked at Lash.

Jaded was the one who spoke. “Of course you do.”

“Brass has access to my office, and so does Bestial.” Then Torrent noticed Lapis. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“I heard,” the male grumbled. “I’m not hurt and I won’t go to Medical.” He shoved out his chin, glaring defiantly at Torrent.

“I want to get back to Mary.” Lash was ready to leave.

“Wait,” Torrent ordered. “The males are seeking you out. Why don’t you help me find some of the more difficult ones? I’d appreciate it, Lash.” Then he looked at Lapis. “Lash got a human mate. He goes to Medical.”

“I do not.”

Torrent snarled at Lash. “Work with me.”

“I don’t want a human mate,” Lapis hissed.

Jaded shook his head and sighed. “You make this more difficult than it needs to be. Watch and learn, Torrent.” Then he studied Lapis. “I’ll make a deal with you, and all the other Wild Zone males. Go to Medical when you’re told, and I’ll ask every Species female at Reservation to be there to help Chimes give you all exams with the human doctors. You remember her, don’t you?”

Lapis nodded. “She’s sexy.”

“Yes, she is. Spread the word. When Torrent asks you to go in, there will be Species females there to help you deal with the human doctors. Do you think that would motivate you and the others to go?”

Lapis nodded.

Jaded grinned. “Go tell them, and please ask them to stop hiding from Torrent. He’ll write down the name of the females your males want to get close to the most and give that list to me, so I can arrange for them to be there. That means they’ll have to talk to him.”

Lapis nodded again, before he spun and leapt into a nearby tree. The feline male took off through the branches.

“Bribery? Really?”

Jaded chuckled, addressing Torrent. “It works. Now the males will seek you out, and you won’t have to track and tranquilize them to haul their asses to Medical. They’ll come willingly.”

“The females are going to pissed at you. The males will only come hoping to impress them enough to agree to share sex.”

“They won’t be mad. Those males are difficult to handle. I have faith in our females to deal with Wild Zone residents better than our male officers do. Not only that, but we love competition. The females will agree just to show the officers how it’s done without bloodshed.”