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“Oh, please, spare me the gibbering warnings,” I snapped, fury and humiliation curdling. I hated this. All of this. These men and this place and the sudden new tempest inside me. A storm with battering winds that echoed with the sweetest voice I’d ever heard uttering three terrible words.You are unworthy.
Slowly, cautiously, Buroudei and Fallo took their idiotic hands off of me. I rose instantly, my lips curling away from my fangs. But I made no other move. I would give them no reason to put their claws on me again this night.
“Though you have insulted us at every turn, technically you are still our ally. We offer our meat and fire to you tonight,” Gahn Buroudei said. I scoffed at him, wanting nothing more than to punch the look of beleaguered, noble forbearance right off of his face.
“I need nothing from you,” I growled.
The only thing I needed was not theirs to give.
It was hers.
I turned from them, from all of them, and stalked through the settlement until I’d reached the open sands.
Togo trotted over to me from where I’d left him. He blinked his six eyes at me and cawed in confusion. He knew why we’d been coming here. He knew that my mate should have been with me now.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I snapped. I began to pace, my feet shifting in the sand. I was vaguely aware of the guards at the edge of the tents watching me warily, and it took everything in my power not to make them scatter with a volley of well-aimed arrows.
That would just make the obnoxious Gahns come back and grab me again. I shook my hands vigorously, skin crawling at the thought of those other men holding me back, holding me down.They have no right!
My mind turned from them quickly, settling into much darker territory. Her perfect face loomed in my thoughts, her little pink mouth turned downwards in unhappiness. Perhaps even indisdain.
“How do I move on from this?” I blurted, stopping my pacing and staring at Togo.
He opened and shut his beak and then tossed his head.
I sighed grimly. “Why am I asking you? All you had to do to win your mate was bring her a shiny rock.”
Togo reared back and looked rather offended. I jerked my tail placatingly.
“Yes, I know. It was a very nice shiny rock.”
Maybe I needed to give her something? I’d travelled light and had nothing impressive with me now, save for my weapons.If she would only come back with me, I could provide her with every gift and luxury the Deep Sky mountains have to offer...
But she had already walked away from me once. The chances that she’d agree to come back to my mountains seemed to dwindle every moment. For some blasted, unknown reason, shelikedit here.
I seethed, realizing that I probably needed...Advice.I did not usually take advice. Not willingly at least. At times, I would listen to my right-hand man, Zakkar, because he was quiet yet wise. Doubly wise because he never dispensed advice when he could tell I did not wish to hear it. I could not say the same for my Aunt Tilka who commanded me as if I were her own cub and not the Gahn of our tribe. Even before I’d left on the journey here, she’d ordered me to drop some of my ego, my pride, on the flight.
Of course, I had done no such thing.
But obviously, everything I’d done had not worked. And the only men I knew who’d claimed their strange new mates were the insufferable men at this settlement.
Or my equally insufferable little brother.
The thought of asking any of the Gahns here, or trudging back to my smug, mated brother for help, made me want to rip out my hair with my own claws.
I will not do it.
I was strong. I was clever.
I could figure out the enigma of my torturously beautiful mate on my own.
Even if it killed me.
