The Deep Beyond Author:C. J. Cherryh CUCKOO'S EGG: The Shonunin called him Thorn. And although he was so very different, they told him he was of their people. He knew he was ugly in their eyes, strange: sleek-skinned instead of furred, clawless, other. Yet he had been raised as part of the Shonunin's power class, an elite caste that was compromised of judge-warriors, fighters, defe... more »nders. And Thorn knew that his differentness was of huge import for there were murderous conspiracies against him, his protector, even his caste-conspiracies that threatened the peace of his world. But when Thorn finally learned what his true role in life was to be -- that on his shoulders would rest the fate of two worlds, and two very different species -- he had to stand alone to justify his very existence.
SERPENTS'S REACH: The constellation of Hydri, alo called the Serpent, became an undesirable destination during the era of huamiity's most prolific interstellar colonization. For Hydri was under strict quarantine because it harbored an intelligent and dangerous alien race, the insectoid majat. Yet human colonies redating the quarantine did exist in their own kind, they had their own inbred culture and special relationships with the alien majat. Raen was the only survivor of the massecred Sul family, and she had made a pledge to devote her life to seeking vengeance for her slain clan. Her thrist for revenge would take her not only across the worlds of the Reach, but into the very center of an alien webwork that knit the stars of the forbidden constellation into a complex of interbred alien hives that no outsider could hope to unravel, and where most of humanity dared not go.
This is 2 books in one: "Cuckoo's Egg" and "Serpent's Reach" they are not short stories, but 2 stand-alone novels. both are really great sci fi/fantasy novels.