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But Finnen tried to choke me for trying to touch and Taj is suspicious of me, and Ariadne… what am I to do with her?
“I’ll stay with you.” I sit up and lift a hand when Ariadne smiles and starts talking. “For a while. To get to know you. To understand.”
Her smile falls and she valiantly fights to get it back. “Good. That’s great. It’s…”
“It’s something,” Taj says. “It’s a chance.”
“A chance,” I whisper.
“I also want to get to know you.” Taj reaches down, and after a moment I realize he’s giving me a hand up. “I mean, I don’t think you’re a bad person. You did save our lives out there, when you killed that jaguar. But why were you in that shelter the other day? Why did you attack me?”
“I followed… her scent.” I decide to accept his help, and I let him haul me to my feet. “I never smelled anything… so good… in my life.”
“I feel that, my man. I know what you mean.”
She steps closer, takes my other hand. “For what it’s worth, you smell good, too, Kia.”
“Like an animal,” I mutter.
A soft snicker escapes her. “Like a man. Like an alpha.”
“If he’s staying with us,” Finnen says, coming to place a hand on my arm, “he has to be taught some manners.”
“Manners?” Their touch is disconcerting, disorienting… disarming.
“I think Finnen means… no groping without permission,” Ariadne says. “That’s a good general rule out there, you know.”
“But you have to learn to read the other person,” Taj says. “See if they say no but mean yes.”
“Permission,” I breathe. “So I have to ask every time he wants my touch? Even if I can see he does?”
“You…” Finnen growls softly.
“We can work it out together,” Taj interrupts him. “Now come get some rest.” He grabs my forearm and I let him drag me back up the slope I rolled down on. “Believe it or not, this is a lot to take for all of us.”
10
ARIADNE
Kiaran is coming with us.
This turn of events makes me want to smile. Even if he keeps apart when we lie down again to sleep, and keeps a few feet apart when we walk, usually stalking ahead of us, it’s such a relief.
I have three of my mates with me, and although I wish we were locked up in a nice, warm house to get to know each other better, in every sense of the word, I can’t deny that something inside of me has relaxed.
It’s not enough, though. The ache in my belly has returned, and with it flashes of alternating heat and cold that have me sweating one moment and shivering the next. The men insisted I ride on Taj’s horse—found uneaten and unharmed, thankfully—and I can’t deny it’s a huge relief. As we wend our way through the plain, keeping close to the hills and away from the main road leading to the Summer Capital and the south, exhaustion drags on all of us. We haven’t had food in days, though at least we got water from streams running through the plain, and the cold is closing in on us.
Kiaran went and brought furs from his cave before we left his area of the hills, as well as jerky. Fortified thus, wearing mismatched furry shawls, we wend our way into Winter and the unknown.
We’ll need food before we drop and end our journey right here, among the rocky outcrops and thorny bushes with nothing to show for our big decisions and repeated, daring escapes from the claws of death.
When Kiaran hurries back to us a few mornings later, even lifting my head is an effort. He’s wearing a short mantle made from a jaguar skin, a sort of short leather skirt and short boots, and has pulled his pale shoulder-length locks into a low tail.
But it’s his expression that alerts me something’s up.
“What is it, Kia?” I look down at him as he falls into step beside the horse and places a hand on my calf. He likes doing that, coming close and touching me, as if that gives him comfort. I know it does, for me. “What did you see?”
“Houses,” he says, his voice soft with some unnamed emotion. “Houses together.”
