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“Yes, silly.” Han’zir reaches out to push some hair away from her eyes, but she slaps at his hand. He looks at me with confusion when she backs away from him.
“I’m your pet?” she asks in a hoarse whisper.
Ice fills my veins. “No, no,” I tell her. “Esme. You’re Esme, of course.”
I scoot towards her on the floor, but again, Esme backs away. She shakes her head, fists clenched tight, and gets up to her feet.
“You have called me this since...” She searches for the word. “Since the beginning.” Horror creeps across her face. “The first day. You called me this.”
I follow her. “It was a nickname,” Han’zir says in a calming voice. “Because you are?—”
“Because I am your dog?!” Her words come out sharp and venomous. I didn’t know she had this sort of anger in her, not until now. Her eyes are blazing, the whites turned red with unshed tears.
“You aren’t,” I tell her, taking her arm in my hand. “You aren’t a dog. I promise.” In response, she yanks it back.
“Then why you call me this?” The hurt in her eyes is unbearable. “You call me your dog. You keep me in the barn, and...” I can see how hard she’s fighting not to cry.
“That was before,” I say, hearing the desperation in my own voice.
“Before?” she says, keeping a greater and greater distance between us as I follow her away from the fire. “Before all of this? Before fucking me? Before telling me you?—”
“Puppy,” Han’zir says reflexively, “please.”
It’s like the blade of a sword has gone through her chest, the expression she makes.
“Whelps,” she says, with a sort of sadness I’ve never heard before. “You want to use me. I am your toy.”
“Esme. You’re our mate.” I try once more to stop her retreat, but instead, my reaching hand triggers something in her. Her entire body tenses, and that’s when I know what she’s going to do. “No!”
She takes off at a run, faster than I can blink, the paper flying into the air. Her legs move as quick as the wind, but immediately I’m running after her.
I can’t let her go like this. I can’t have her run from us.
But Esme’s legs, while shorter, are also powerful, and her flight instinct is too strong. She races down the line of dying vegetable stalks and leaps over a fence like it’s not there. I’m bigger, and I should be able to keep up with her—and catch her, like I absolutely must do, before she flees from here into enemy territory—but instead, I find myself falling behind as I climb over the fence, and her yellow dress weaves into the grass beyond the farm.
“Esme!” I shout, blazing after her through the meadow. She’s headed straight for the trees.
She intends to lose me. She is not just upset. She is leaving us.
I call her name again, louder, trying to keep pace. She darts up the hill and then, I know that I’ve failed. She spends all her time foraging in these woods, and she can easily navigate them. Ahead of me, Esme slips between two trunks and vanishes into the darkened trees like a ghost.
“Please, Esme!” I’m gasping for air when I reach the top of the hill. It’s dark enough now that I can’t make out anything inside the tree cover. “Don’t go!” I run headlong into the branches, but there’s no sound ahead of me, not even her feet crunching leaves and twigs.
There’s nothing but my own heavy breathing and my aching chest.
Chapter 13
Esme
Keva.
That’s what they’ve been calling me, all along.
Their dog. Their little pet human. Their plaything. It feels like I’m being stabbed in the chest, over and over again.
Keva.
I’m deep in the woods now, and the sun set a while back. I remember the last time I slept in the forest, when I ran from the war. Nothing’s really changed since then.
