“Well,” Fiona said with a big sigh, flopping onto her back on the bed, forcing Tilly and I to look down at her. “You could be in my position instead. Where you’ve chosen who to love, but you don’t know if that will be enough.”
“Do you love him?” I asked her softly.
She winced, like I’d asked her to admit something deeply painful. Or humiliating.
“I dooo,” she moaned, drawing out the syllable and smacking her hands over her face, covering her eyes. “I love that big, grumpy dope.”
“Then have a little faith in him,” Tilly said kindly but also somewhat brusquely, like she was lovingly readying Fiona to step out into an unavoidable cold wind. “That he, too, will make his choice, and return to you when he can.”
“I think he has made his choice,” Fiona said from behind her hands. “Did I mention that he said he’d murder any other man who tried to claim me?”
Tilly snorted. Our eyes met over Fiona’s sprawled form.
“You did,” I reminded her, stroking the top of her head. “And I don’t think a man with that kind of determination is going to let anything get in his way, Fiona. Not even the Lavrika.”
But it wasn’t thoughts of Dalk or the Lavrika that stayed with me when I finally left Fiona – all cried out and asleep in the big bed she shared with Tilly – and returned to my own deeper cave. It was thoughts of Gahn Thaleo. Fiona was right. If he’d had a mate vision of me, I’d know about it by now. He’d never let me leave his mountain. Not if he could stop me, anyway.
He didn’t think I was his mate and he didn’t want to be my friend. Despite whatever Tilly said about the way he stared at me(which I knew he did, because it was impossible to be ignorant of the constant vigilance of his attention on me.) But where Dalk stared at Fiona with a mute and stormy sort of longing, Gahn Thaleo watched me with unnerving stillness and unknowable intentions. I could just as easily believe that he actively disliked me over something like an interest or attraction towards me.
But he held your hands when you complained that they were cold.
My fingers clenched into involuntary fists. The same frozen fists Gahn Thaleo had entirely enveloped in his own. Even now, I could vividly recall the heat that had throbbed from him. It had shocked me. It had seemed so at odds with the cool control of his demeanour. Some part of me must have expected his skin to be as cold as his sight stars.
He’d been gentle, too. Cradling my hands like they were breakable – which to him, they probably were. That had also been unexpected.
I didn’t like when he surprised me. It made him into even more of an enigma.
At least he was an enigma I’d only have to deal with for a week before we got a break and went back to Gahn Errok’s. Hopefully, it would be a week spent without seeing him too much.
With that in mind, I finally got into bed.
6
THALEO
Irose before the sun the morning after the vaklok. I’d not slept well, plagued with dreams of green sight stars that I offended and cold, fragile fingers that I protected. More than once I’d half-woken, reaching for hands that were not there. My claws closed upon nothing.
I was a large male. My bed was an appropriate size. It had never felt so oddly empty before.
Until now.
It was an unnerving sensation that I tried and mostly failed to shake off as I left that bed behind for the day. My sleeping cave was one of the smaller ones. I washed with cold water, as my cave did not have a hot spring of its own. As Gahn, I would be more than entitled to such a thing. I had no doubt that Gahn Errok maintained the most lavish sets of caves in his mountain for himself and his Gahnala. No one would question me if I were to claim a better cave for myself.
But I had no need for such a thing. No desires of my own.
Gahn Seerak – Uncle Seerak – had ensured it. And I was grateful to him for it.
I always had been. He’d died in service of his people.
Compared to that, sleeping in a sparse, small cave so that others in my tribe had access to better luxuries was nothing at all to me.
My hair dripped, sodden after washing as I ran a comb of carved bone through it. I put on a fresh loincloth, strapped a single blade to my back, and was just reaching for my quiver of arrows and my bow – a bow which had once been Gahn Seerak’s – when I heard hurried footsteps from beyond my cave.
“My Gahn!” Warrek’s voice sounded strained. This was unlike him. I beat down a wing of panic, my mind flashing to the new women. To Nazreen.
“Enter,” I said, looping the quiver over my shoulder and holding my bow at my side. Warrek did so at once, his sight stars bright in the gloom.
“Arton and Jael have returned from their patrol. They bring news of a borog trail in the new territories.”
