The Dancer (Men of the North Book 7)

by Elin Peer

  Willow was holding on to my wet t-shirt. “Come on, Solo, let’s just back away.”

  “We won’t survive out here without that backpack.”

  “We won’t survive if she kills us.”

  With the way the bear was growling and roaring at us I was getting nervous too.

  “Okay, let’s back up.”

  We only took a few steps before the mother bear started at us again, this time only stopping three feet away, her mouth wide open displaying all her large sharp teeth and her claws out as she swept a paw through the air at us.

  I pushed Willow backward.

  “We can’t back up more. The waterfall is right behind us,” Willow cried and clung to my shirt.

  In a quick movement I looked over my shoulder and saw that she was right. The waterfall wasn’t as tall as I’d feared. At my last school we’d played around in a waterfall this size. “We’ll jump then.” Hopefully the river was deep at the bottom and we could jump to safety from the angry bear.

  “Willow, do you trust me?” I asked, knowing that it would take a lot for her to make a twenty-foot jump like that. “There’s only forward or backward.”

  She was crying with hysteria and couldn’t answer me.

  The large bear chose that moment to swing her head from side to side, warning us that she was going to attack again.

  “Jump, Willow, jump.” I turned around and for the second time today I took her hand and jumped for safety.

  She screamed all the way down and then my head went underwater where only muffled sounds from the waterfall came through. As soon as I reemerged, I called for Willow, pushing away small twigs and larger branches floating in the water.

  “Willooow.”

  Her body popped up close to a large log but she wasn’t gasping for air like me. She was face down with only her head, shoulders, and backside visible. Her long hair was spread out like an eerie halo around her and I screamed her name in a panic as the current carried her away from me.

  “Willooow.” Swimming as fast as I could, I struggled to breathe and when I finally reached her and turned her around, her head dangled against my collarbone. She was unconscious and I knew instantly she had hit something that had knocked her out. “Willow,” I called and shook her body. There was no reaction.

  I used the rescue technique I’d learned in swimming classes years ago and got her out of the water. Placing her gently on the ground, I looked her over and saw a large cut on her neck that was bleeding hard.

  “Fuck… Willow.” The last thing we needed was to attract more wild animals with the smell of blood. Ripping off my t-shirt, I tied it around her wound to stop the bleeding.

  “Willow… wake up, Willow, come on.” My chest felt like I was still underwater, unable to breathe right. I was scared to death that she’d broken her neck and died.

  Feeling for a pulse was hard with my own pulse racing out of control. “Willow.” I kept shaking her and stroking her chin. “Wake up.”

  There was no reaction and with her lips turning blue, I lifted her eyelids, hating how dead her eyes looked.

  “Willow, come on baby.” I leaned down to listen to her mouth, but the sounds from the river made it impossible to hear her breath.

  What if she’s dead? With my hands shaking, I started CPR with frantic movements pushing down on her chest. “Willow, don’t you fucking die on me.”

  Her limb body was the scariest sight I’d ever seen and I could hardly focus on counting with the tears welling up in my eyes.

  Nothing.

  I blew into her nose and shook her shoulders, calling her name with raw desperation.

  Again!

  I pushed at her chest, counting out loud like Archer had taught me years ago. “Four, five, six, seven…”

  The cough that erupted from Willow released a loud cry of relief from me. She rolled onto her side and threw up water in a violent burst of coughing.

  “That’s it babe, get it all out.”

  When the worst was over, I pulled her up and stroked her back. “Take deep breaths. That’s right. Through your nose. Again. Yes, that’s it.” I kissed her forehead. “Are you okay?”

  “No. Everything hurts and I’m seeing four of you.”

  Concussion.

  I pulled her close to my chest. “I’m so sorry, Willow. I’m so sorry.”

  “Argh.” She made a groan of pain. “My arm.”

  “What’s wrong? Can you lift it?” I supported her arm when she tried to raise it, but it hurt too much and she had to give up. “I think it’s broken.”

  With her large green eyes wet from tears, Willow looked up at me. “What do we do?”

  “It’s over. We can’t run without gear. We won’t make it and you need a doctor.”

  “No, I’m fine.” She had only just said it when she threw up again.

  I caressed her back and waited for her to get it all out.

  “It’s just because I swallowed water.” She coughed and used the back of her hand to wipe her mouth.

  “You have a concussion, and the last thing you need is to run. The Huntsmen will know how to get you to a medical facility fast.” The awful feeling of being backed against a wall with nowhere to go made my voice thick with emotion. “They are trained paramedics. I’ll make a fire and lead them here.”

  “No.” Willow shook her head but that gave her more pain and she whimpered.

  “Keep your head still.” My nose itched from the tears that were pressing.

  “They’ll kill you, Solo. We have to keep running,” Willow pleaded and held on to my arm.

  I looked down, not wanting her to see how my eyes were tearing up again. “I’m sorry, Willow. I know I promised that everything would be fine, but…” My voice broke. “I’m not risking your life.”

  “But what about your life?”

  She sniffled and I raised my head to look deep into her beautiful eyes, sending her a silent message that my mind was made up.

  “No.” Her eyes expanded and large drops of tears streamed down her cheeks. “No, Solo. We can’t give up. They’ll split us apart. I don’t want to live without you. If they kill you, I’ll kill myself.”

  My own tears were blinding me now, and I sniffled too. “I don’t want to live without you either, baby, but you have to promise me that you’ll live no matter what.”

  Willow was clinging to my shoulder. “No, Solo. Don’t do it,” she begged when I dried my nose and placed her back on the ground.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  I collected twigs and branches to create a fire and found two stones by the riverbank. Everything was wet and wouldn’t burn, but I’d been trained for this and kept going until finally I got a spark. I was going for smoke rather than fire anyway and once the smoke rose up like a beacon telling the Huntsmen where to find us, I returned to sit close with Willow, thinking to myself that these would be my last minutes on earth.

  “At least I’ll die as your husband,” I whispered into her ear. “What more could I ask for?”

  Willow clung to me. “You’re not going to die. I won’t let them kill you.”

  We curled up close with her on my lap and cried together while whispering about memories from our past.

  “Remember that time Archer sent me to bed without dinner because I had rolled my eyes at Kya?” I gave Willow a sad smile. “I was so angry at the world, and then there was a small tap on the window and you stood outside, giving me part of your dinner that you had smuggled out for me.”

  Willow’s eyes were wet from crying. “Because I knew how hungry you had to be. You always ate enough for three normal people and you’d been out running for hours that day.”

  “I was starving!” I squeezed her closer. “You’ve always had my back when no one else did.”

  “You would have done the same for me.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I would have.”

  We rocked back and forth, Willow crying with her head on my shoulder.

  “We’ll be togeth
er again when we’re older.” Her eyes were pleading. “Won’t we?”

  I didn’t think I’d get older and it was hard to speak from the sobbing I was holding back. “I don’t know.”

  “They’re going to take me back to the Motherlands but as soon as I’m twenty-one and we can marry, I’ll come back here to be with you.”

  I leaned my head against hers, crying over the unfairness of not having a free choice because of our young age. “You know they’ll turn you against me. Motlanders don’t like Nmen.”

  “I won’t let them. I’ll never let anyone come between us. Just promise me that you’ll wait for me to turn twenty-one.”

  My answer was swallowed by the sobbing that I could no longer control.

  Willow was squeezing my hands, her breathing shallow and her chest trembling from her own sobbing. “Promise me, Solo.”

  “I pro… promise…” I managed to get out.

  “You can’t marry anyone else. We’re already married.” She held up her hand but the ring of grass had fallen off her finger like a foreboding of the tragic ending to our attempt at a life together.

  “There will only ever be you, Willow. You are my soulmate.”

  When we heard the first shouts from the Huntsmen, Willow called out to them, “If you kill Solo, I’ll kill myself, do you hear me?”

  One by one, the three solemn-looking men appeared on the other side of the river.

  “Stay where you are,” one of them shouted and pointed his gun straight at me.

  “Willow is hurt. She needs medical assistance.”

  “We’ll take care of that. You just step away from her.”

  “Don’t you dare.” Willow clung to me, her wet green eyes looking straight into mine. “Until they tear us apart, we stay together, do you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise me?” Her words were muffled from her crying.

  “I promise.”

  “We called for a drone. It will be here in a few minutes. Just stay right where you are.” One of the Huntsmen climbed a tree and shot a line across the river. It drilled deep into a large cottonwood tree close to us and after securing the line to the tree he was in, he ziplined across, followed by the two others.

  When the last Huntsman arrived on our side of the river, the situation was heated, with Willow and me on our feet with two guns pointing at me.

  “Lower your guns.” Willow stepped in front of me, her face contorted with tears and anger at the men. “Solo didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Kidnapping a woman is cause for the death penalty.”

  “Solo didn’t kidnap me! I wanted to be with him,” Willow argued in a pleading voice. I was in awe of my woman standing up to the fiercest warriors in the world. They had to be scary to her with their dark green uniforms, painted faces, and weapons, but like a wounded lioness she faced them with raw indignation that they would threaten me.

  I was scared of them too. They were here to kill me and I had no weapons to defend myself. Still, I couldn’t risk Willow’s getting caught between us and there was no way in hell I’d let her take a bullet for me. It should be the other way around. Although she protested, I pushed her behind me.

  “Don’t, Solo. They’ll kill you.”

  I kept my eyes on the biggest of the warriors, who seemed to be the leader of the three.

  Willow moved up close behind me and spoke, “If you shoot Solo, your bullet might go through him and kill me too.”

  The Huntsman tilted his head as if he couldn’t believe a woman would be this protective of a male, but he adjusted his gun and pointed it at my head instead. With our difference in height, there was no chance of his shooting Willow if he put a bullet in my forehead.

  Lifting both palms, I pleaded with him. “Willow is hurt. She has a large cut, a broken arm, and a concussion.”

  The men exchanged glances and made sounds of anger as if I had hurt her myself so I hurried to explain, “We ran into an angry bear and had to jump to safety.”

  “I’ve got this.” One of the men kneeled down and pulled his backpack off. I knew that part of their skill set included medical training and when he fished out equipment to treat Willow, I sighed with relief.

  “Willow, you have to let him treat you,” I urged her, but she refused to leave my side.

  “No. Not until they promise not to kill you.”

  In the end the three men each gave her a solemn promise that they wouldn’t kill me, and I looked on as she was treated and her wound closed. Willow screamed in pain when the soldier applied blood blocker gel to close up her wound. I knew from experience that it burned. Her screams of pain tore at my heart. I had promised to protect her and here she was with broken bones and great pain.

  “You lost a lot of blood, I’m going to give you some of mine,” the Huntsman treating her said and brought out a small donor unit.

  “No. I want Solo’s blood.”

  “Yeah, well, we don’t always get what we want.” The large man grunted and pinned her arm down.

  Willow was weak from her blood loss and her concussion but she screamed and bucked her body. It instantly made the two other Huntsmen step closer.

  “What the fuck, don’t hurt her!”

  “She won’t lie still,” he defended himself.

  “She will if you let me give her my blood,” I argued, stepping closer too.

  Still pointing a gun at me, the largest man made a decision. “You’ll give her the blood and that’s it. No talking, no touching. Do you understand?”

  I nodded and sank to my knees beside Willow, our eyes locking and filling up with tears again. I didn’t care that three soldiers were seeing me crying. This would most likely be the last time I ever saw her. The men would break their promise not to kill me as soon as she was gone. How could they not? I’d broken so many of our country’s laws.

  The Huntsman set up the donor unit between us. “Do you know your blood type?” he asked me. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. She only needs one unit and it can convert that from any blood type.”

  For a few minutes, I watched my blood run into the converter and then continue through a tube down to the needle in Willow’s arm.

  Willow reached for me and I wanted so badly to take her hand. One look at the large Huntsman, who shook his head, made me keep my hand in my lap. I leaned closer so she could touch me. “I’ll always love you, Willow.”

  Willow looked tired, her eyes struggling to stay open. She lowered her hand and closed her eyes, her head falling to one side.

  “Willow?” I called, but she didn’t respond.

  “She’s out.” The man treating her turned to the leader. “I estimate we have three hours before she wakes up.”

  “You drugged her?” My voice was accusatory but there was no regret in their eyes.

  Without a word the leader of the Huntsmen walked over and kicked me to the ground. I tried to get up, but I was still hooked to the donor unit.

  “Stay down,” he hissed at me and the last thing I remember was his planting another boot in my face.

  CHAPTER 12

  The First Show

  Year 2447

  Willow

  I looked on from the side of the stage as the Floral Choral entertained the hundreds of Nmen in the audience.

  The ten women were dressed in flowery outfits and smiling brightly in between their songs about… well, I wasn’t really sure what their songs were about because I hadn’t been paying attention.

  I had just warmed up and was now rolling my ankles while Salma distracted me with her nervous chatter that made it hard to concentrate.

  Zasquash’s eyes shone with curiosity and he followed the interactions around him, casting me and Salma smiles once in a while. Solo, on the other hand, stood brooding against the wall and didn’t look at me once.

  Maybe he wondered if I’d told Salma to get rid of him like I’d said I would.

  I hadn’t. After my confrontation with Solo, I’d cooled down and realized tha
t I didn’t want to involve her in my messy affairs. Salma was already pressed far out of her comfort zone. The last thing she needed was to be involved in my drama.

  Loud applause was followed by the members of the choir coming off the scene with bursts of laughter and high energy. They had just sang their three a cappella songs, but later they would go on stage again with the orchestra and do another song before Salma would join them and end the night as the highlight.

  “You’re on.” Salma touched my shoulder and I nodded, took a deep breath, and waited for the sound of raindrops to start. The stage was pitch black and I got ready to make my entrance.

  The sound and light show was designed to simulate a thunderstorm, dramatized by the specks of light simulating rain that quickly evolved into hail before thunder rolled in. I counted down from the rumbling sound of thunder. My entrance had to be timed to the second in order for me to be right in the spotlight when the flash hit the scene.

  3. 2. 1. Go – I sprinted forward in the darkness, and jumped up high, making for a dramatic entrance with me leaping through the air doing a full split just as the lightning struck and lit up the stage.

  The sounds of thunder died down, replaced by birds singing as the air cleared and the light came up a little.

  A circle of light from a projector lit up the stage for the second time and found me lying on the floor, stretching and yawning, pretending it was a new dawn, and then I got up in one smooth rolling movement that only someone with my core muscles could muster. My outfit was tight with my arms bare. I danced across the scene, twirling, jumping, stretching my arms and legs in a melodic, beautifully choreographed dance, that showed off my agility and strength.

  As always, the bright spotlights made it hard to see the faces of all the people watching me, but I knew they were there because I heard them gasping and commenting although their words escaped me.

  When my dance ended, the audience of Nmen erupted in loud cheers and shouts. I bowed, waved, and walked offstage to the sound of their applause.

  “Mother Nature, that was phenomenal.” Salma was jumping up and down with excitement backstage and when she hugged me, I couldn’t help a look in Solo’s direction. Had he seen me dance?