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“We will have to stop,” he says. “You should have told me you were in pain.”
“I didn’t want to inconvenience you.”
“Leaving a trail of blood for predators to follow inconveniences me,” he says in return. “Sit down.”
I feel so fucking guilty. Tears start to prick my eyes, and as he starts to work on re-bandaging the wound on my side, they start to flow. I do my best to keep them silent and contained, but tears have a way of bursting their banks, and this is what these ones do, cascading down my cheeks and turning to sobs.
His hands still. He looks at me in confusion, or perhaps, with suspicion.
“Why are you crying? You did not cry when you were injured, or when you followed me through the bush, when I growled at you to leave me alone… why cry now?”
His way of phrasing the question is harsh, but I think he really wants to know.
“I feel bad. I know you want to move, and you told me… I had to stay close, and I can’t. I can barely keep up with you. I’m disappointing you.”
Kail
She cries because she feels she has let me down. Those tears are as sweet as they are unnecessary.
“You can’t let me down, Tarni,” I tell her. “I have no expectations of you. You’re small and weak, and…” I search for another word to aptly describe her innate lack of survival skills. “Human.”
She looks at me, and then she laughs, a smile breaking through the tears, making them stop.
“You, sir, are no diplomat.”
At least she is not crying any more. I do not like her tears. They make me feel a strange blend of angry and soft. Angry at whatever has made her cry. Soft toward her. I cannot afford these kinds of emotions. They do not belong to humans. They belong to family.
“Tell me if you are in pain,” I order. “I will not drag you through the forest.”
I cannot ask her to walk, and yet I want to keep moving. I want to get to Alpha Colony as much as she does, but for very different reasons. I want to show her the wreckage of her world. I want to make an example of her. I want to…
There is only one thing for it.
“I am going to carry you on my back,” I say, already swinging her around. Her arms wrap around my neck and shoulders, even as she protests.
“I’m too heavy!”
“You barely weigh anything.”
There’s a pause from her as I start walking. I can feel she has something else to say. Humans always have something to say.
“Uhm, sir?”
“What?”
“What is your name?”
I hesitate before giving it.
“Kail.”
4
Tarni
I feel his powerful body moving beneath me. We are making much better time now, and as he predicted, my weight seems to make no difference to him at all.
He is dangerous. I know that. He can save my life, or he can end it, and it is at his whim. I have to watch myself, my every word, my every thought. If he so much as catches a wisp of something he does not like, he could easily turn from rescuer to destroyer.
