AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The Harkurian frowns, never quite looking at her. “Trade?”
“Yes. You’re leaving with my pillow and you obviously like making bargains. What will you trade me for it?” Krista grins up at him sleepily, mostly joking. It’s absurd to trade someone for their own bag, but she wants to see what Thon does with the challenge. Men back home never liked strong-willed women. They’d have backhanded her across the tent for such blatant disobedience.
But Thon thinks it over for a moment, his eyes finding her face at last. He meets her gaze. Thinks a bit more. And then he begins to shrug out of his coat.
“Wait.” Krista straightens abruptly, clutching the pelt a little tighter to her chest. Surely he doesn’t intend to—but then, there’s her scent in the air, incriminating her, and she just mouthed off to him. “What are you doing?”
“Trading,” Thon grunts. He doesn’t reach for his pants next, though. Instead, he rolls up the overcoat and offers it to her with both hands. “This will suit your needs better than my pack. My pack will suit my needs better than my coat. It’s a good trade.”
Krista stares up at it for a beat too long, her mouth open like a fish. She's too sleepy to self-regulate. “But. Won’t you be cold?”
“No.”
Well, shit. She hadn’t meant for him to roam around half-naked in the woods for this. She has just about decided to protest when he reaches around her to exchange the pack, sucking in a sharp breath as he lays eyes on her bare back.
It’s. Extremely inappropriate. Krista forgets immediately what she was planning to say next.
“Also,” Thon adds as he draws away. His eyes have gone hot and primal as he lowers his voice to growl, “I am eager to see how you use my coat while I’m gone.”
He’s out of the tent before Krista’s mortified blush even has a chance to manifest, which is good because it’s a mighty one.
“We are leaving one of the hounds with you,” Thon calls from outside the tent. “He responds to ‘Veli.’”
Krista’s reply is delayed. “U-uh. Okay.” They had hounds this whole time? Wow, she never stood a chance at escape if things had gone differently.
Several minutes pass before she can coordinate enough of her muscles to put the rolled-up coat behind her and lie back down. It takes a while after that to get back to sleep, even as exhausted as she is. She’s sore to her bones from her previous day on the road and she’s fairly certain that her ankles are still swollen. She has blisters on her blisters, which she knows because she takes the time to stick each leg out and check while she’s lying there desperate for more rest. Finally, she rolls onto her side and buries her face in the coat and, confirming that it, too, smells like Thon, she is finally able to drift off.
What iswrongwith her?
When she wakes again, the rain has stopped. The air hasn’t warmed much and her clothes are still slightly damp, so she bundles up in Thon’s coat and carries everything outside to lay it out by the stove. Someone was kind enough to leave it on for her, which she appreciates because she has never operated such a thing before and does not wish to set herself on fire. There is also an enormous gray dog-tiger thing curled up beneath a tree, staring at her with its head on its paws. Paws the size of her head.
“Veli?” She asks cautiously. Gods, she hopes that’s Veli.
The enormous head doesn’t lift, but his ears prick forward. Veli. It makes sense, she supposes—big Harkurian, big dog—but this is just excessive.
“What did they breed you down from? An Epicyon?”
Veli doesn’t answer, of course. He just watches stoically as she lays her wet clothing out on the logs. Krista considers for a moment that they will reek of smoke when they’re done, but a closer look at the stove confirms that no, it isn’t producing any. There is a little fuel canister at the base and the flames seem to be coming from its fat iron belly, radiating heat and light, but no smell. Fascinating. Krista wonders if it was expensive. It looks expensive.
She can’t immediately tell if the Harkurians left breakfast for her and she’s too concerned about the monster dog to go looking, so she returns to the tent to break off a piece of hard cheese from the lump in her bag. Carrying it back out to the fire, she wraps the coat more tightly around herself and settles in to think the bargain over in the cold light of dawn.
Even here, with no distracting Harkurians around and her body too exhausted to be horny, Krista doesn’t hate the terms of their bargain. Examined from every conceivable angle, she discovers that shelikesit. Pregnancy would be long and uncomfortable, but she suspects that she will like the process of getting there and she knows she likes the thought of what comes after.
The galaxy.
She releases a slow, steadying breath. It’s decided then. She doesn’t even have to put much thought into which Harkurian she will choose.
6
Thon
“Doyouthinkshewill be there?”Pel voices what they have all been wondering.
“She is long gone,”Noss grunts beneath the buck draped across his shoulders. They had a good hunt—found a pair of males fighting over territory and took them both. A few of their snares were also successful and Pel carries a full brace of rabbits on his belt.
“You are quiet, Thon,”Pel notes, a hint of something teasing in his tone.“No bet to place?”
“She will be there.”
