by Zoey Draven
Her mate didn’t choose to leave her. He was taken.
Seerin, on the other hand, had willingly chosen this.
I hadn’t cried since I left his voliki earlier that morning. It was nearing evening and I simply felt…as detached as Seerin had seemed.
“I will return to my village with or without your help, Odrii,” I said softly, looking down at my hands. They were smooth and soft now, even during the cold season, probably because I’d been Seerin’s alukkiri, spreading on his oils every night.
A sharp pinch in my chest made me squeeze my fists hard and I looked up at Odrii. The warrior male was looking at me with a thunderous expression, as if angry with me.
“You do not know the way,” he growled.
“I know,” I said. “But I will still leave.”
He cursed under his breath, looking to his sister, who’d still said nothing.
“You just need rest, Nelle,” he argued. “Your perspective will change in the morning.”
“And if it doesn’t,” I started, “will you be my guide back?”
“She will not change her mind, Odrii,” Avuli finally called out softly. “You will take her back, brother, if she does not wish to stay. You would rather her leave by herself? Nik. It is safer this way.”
Odrii cursed again, looking away from us both.
Silence permeated the voliki. I’d never questioned whether this was the right decision because in my eyes, it was the only decision. I simply could not stay.
“I’m sorry to ask this of you,” I whispered, looking at all of them. It was then that grief slithered its way up my chest, tightening my throat. “You know how much I care for you. All of you. And it breaks me even more that I have to leave you. But if I stay…I’m worried that—that it will take everything that’s left of me, everything that he hasn’t taken already. I would be a shell. Nothing more.”
I’d begun to envision my life in the horde with Seerin. I’d thought we had a future together because how could we not?
Had he known all along that this would be the outcome? Every single night, as I lay in his arms, had he known that he would have to break me apart like this?
I thought he’d loved me. But now, I could see that I was a fool for believing that in the first place.
He was cruel, if he’d known all along.
“Please,” I whispered, looking at Odrii. “I-I need your help. I have to leave.”
I would never see Seerin again. I would never touch him, or see his smile, or taste his lips, or look deep into those consuming eyes again. I craved him as much as I hated him. My heart wanted two very different things at once, so it was easier to not feel anything at all.
Once, I’d been afraid of this happening. When I’d been back at my village, I’d feared becoming so emotionally distant from everything around me that I would simply float away. I thought that I would simply cease to exist if that happened.
But right then, it felt like a blessing.
Odrii finally nodded, but he looked at me as if I were hurting him. “We will leave in the morning. At dawn.”
Relief pierced that numbness with startling sharpness. Relief and grief.
“Thank you,” I whispered, tears finally falling again.
Odrii met me at the entrance to the encampment a little before dawn. Avuli was with him, but Arlah wasn’t.
I’d taken only what I needed for the journey home, which consisted of my warmest clothes. After some internal debate, I’d decided to keep Blue’s pendant, but had taken off the blue jewel necklace Seerin had gifted me a couple mornings before and left it on my bed. The only thing I regretted not being able to bring with me was the rock that Arlah had given me, which sat in Seerin’s voliki. And I wouldn’t dare go there now to retrieve it.
Everything else I didn’t need. I’d survived for years on much, much less.
I didn’t feel the chill as I approached Odrii on his pyroki. Avuli embraced me when I reached her and I squeezed my eyes shut as I wrapped my arms around her, letting her warmth seep into me one last time.
“Please tell your father ‘thank you,’” I told her softly. She pulled back and looked at me. “I regret that I didn’t say goodbye.”
She nodded.
“Arlah?” I asked hesitantly.
She shook her head and I felt a prick of sadness and guilt. When I’d left their voliki the night before, Arlah had finally understood that I was leaving permanently and he’d barely looked at me, turning his face into his mother’s dress when I’d tried to embrace him.
“I am sorry,” she whispered. “He did not want to come.”
I nodded, swallowing the thick lump in my throat. Avuli reached out and patted a heavy-looking sack attached to the seat of Odrii’s pyroki.
“Dried kinnu and kuveri,” she explained. “I went to the bikku’s voliki last night and took as much as I could fit. It should last you through the cold season.”
My throat tightened at her foresight. “Thank you.”
“I packed an extra fur,” she said. “And a blade. Just in case.”
I nodded, thinking of the dagger Seerin had given me, which was in his voliki next to Arlah’s rock. Back in my village, I’d always slept with an arrow close by, especially after Kier’s attack.
Odrii made a sound on his pyroki, a growl. He didn’t like this. He couldn’t understand why I needed to do this, but Avuli seemed to understand.
“Nelle,” he said softly. “Please reconsider. Stay. This is madness.”
His pyroki stomped its claws into the earth, as if agreeing with his master’s words.
Pressing my lips together, I reached out to squeeze Avuli’s hand.
“Thank you,” I whispered, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “For everything.”
She gave me a watery smile, her eyes shimmering in the low light of the morning. “Lik Kakkari srimea tei kirtja.”
May Kakkari watch over you.
I reached my hand up towards Odrii and he sighed, his shoulders sagging, taking it as my final answer, my final decision. He pulled me up easily, settling me in front of him, his thighs encasing my own.
Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed movement between two volikis. When I turned my head to look, praying to Kakkari that it wasn’t Seerin, I saw his pujerak instead. I’d barely seen him since that night, over a month ago, when he’d confronted me in the training grounds. Now, the Dakkari male stood, watching us with narrowed eyes and a frown.
When his gaze turned to me, I looked at him for one brief moment.
You got what you wanted, I thought quietly. I’m leaving.
His lips pressed together in answer, but instead of smug victory on his face, there was only…relief.
I looked away, giving him no more of my time or my thoughts, looking down at Avuli one last time before setting my gaze out towards the plains that I saw beyond the gate of the encampment. I didn’t look back as Odrii’s pyroki led us away. I didn’t look back at the training grounds where I’d spent many nights with my bow, or my mitri’s weapons tent, where I’d finally perfected my arrows, or the maze of volikis that I could navigate in my sleep. And I most certainly didn’t look up the small incline at the back of the camp at the voliki where I’d spent some of the happiest moments of my life.
I would never see him again.
I would never see him again.
The sudden realization almost broke me completely. It was that crushing.
“Ready?” Odrii asked me. We were just outside the gates now, a blanket of snow and ice in front of us, stretching as far as I could see over the plains of Dakkar.
Never. I would never be ready.
“Yes,” I said, as tears drenched my cheeks. “I am.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Vorakkar.”
I blinked and focused my attention on my head warrior. When I looked at him, I couldn’t help but notice that the rest of the elders’ eyes and Vodan’s eyes were on me as well. I wondered how long he’d been trying to get my at
tention.
“Neffar?” I rasped.
“The Hitri pass,” the warrior said slowly. “The northern pass, specifically.”
“What about it?” I asked, straightening.
Ujak looked across the table at Vodan. My pujerak said, “It will be the most dangerous to navigate on our journey. We need to formulate a plan on how best to cross it. The wagons may be too large.”
He said it in a way that told me they’d already been speaking of this. Possibly for some time. And I hadn’t noticed. Not at all.
“With all due respect, Vorakkar,” one of the elders said, “we have been in discussions about our journey for almost two weeks now. And we are nowhere near as prepared as we should be.”
“You have been distracted as of late, Vorakkar,” another elder said quietly. “For the sake of the horde, we need your full attention if we want to be ahead of the thaw.”
When I said nothing, it was Vodan that spoke.
“Let us call the meeting for tonight. The hour is late,” Vodan said to the council. “We will reconvene tomorrow morning.”
The fire burning in the basin crackled loudly at my pujerak’s words. I felt a twisting bitterness in my chest for only a moment before I pushed it down. Deeper and deeper down, as I had done for the last two weeks.
“Lysi,” I murmured. “Enough for tonight.”
I didn’t miss the look the elders exchanged among one another. Nor did I acknowledge Ujak when he inclined his head and said his goodbye for the evening. The elders shuffled out after him, after pulling on their pelts, but I remained standing at the high table, staring down at the map of Dakkar, left alone with Vodan.
“Seerin.”
Turning away from the table, I pulled on my pelt. I didn’t want to return to my voliki, where I still smelled her on my furs, but I certainly didn’t want to be alone with my pujerak either.
“Seerin, I have never seen you like this,” Vodan said quietly, rooted in his place. “When will it end?”
It will not end, I thought, knowing it was the truth. I believed this was permanent. It certainly felt permanent…this numbness. Except for brief flashes of emotion, I was simply existing.
“Seerin!” Vodan growled.
Piercing and sharp, I felt another flash and turned around to face him.
“What do you want from me, Vodan?” I rasped.
“I want you to act like the Vorakkar you are! This cannot go on.”
“I have done everything you wanted,” I told him. “If you are unhappy with the outcome—”
“I did not ask for you to act like this,” he growled. With my fists clenching at my sides, I struggled to push my anger down now. Already, the emotions were packed too tightly, one on top of the other. Another would make me burst wide open, like a festering, unhealed wound. “It has been two weeks, Seerin. I thought that perhaps this obsession with the vekkiri would pass already.”
“Obsession?” I repeated softly.
He knew it was the wrong word to pick. Anger bled from me, thickening the air in the tent until it was almost suffocating. In the last two weeks, this was the first time I’d felt such raw, aching, fierce emotion. I could suppress it no longer.
“I love her,” I growled, though it was something he already knew. How could he not know? He knew me better than anyone. He knew I would not be this swayed by an ‘obsession.’
“Seerin—”
I took a step closer to him. “After I took her from her village, you asked me something. You asked me what she’d said to me. You asked me what she’d said to make me take her away.”
Vodan remembered that moment well. Nelle had been passed out from the pain, bleeding. He’d helped me clean her wounds.
“It wasn’t what she said,” I told him, holding his gaze. “It was what I saw. It was what Kakkari showed me through her. In her eyes.”
Vodan’s lips pressed together.
“I’ve felt Kakkari in me for a long time. I felt her when I first saw you. I know why she led me to you…because we created this. We built this horde together, as we were always meant to. She knew you would be a good and loyal friend to me,” I said, though my lips twisted as I said the words. “And I to you.”
He looked to the ground as I felt everything I’d dampened for the past two weeks emerge in one startling rush. All the grief and anger and loss and betrayal and longing. All the guilt for hurting her. All the self-hatred for betraying her trust.
At night, all I saw was the realization in her eyes the moment she knew I was pushing her away. And it haunted me to the point where I’d barely slept. It gutted me, watching her confusion, her disbelief, her heartbreak. She’d always been so expressive. I could read her so easily…and I’d seen everything. Every painful, disturbing detail.
“But Kakkari guided me to you. Back at the village, Kakkari guided her to me, as if Kakkari knew I would need her, as if I only needed help finding her. And what I found was a pure being, one who still believed in hope, though every last person in her life had failed her.”
Including myself, I thought, my chest squeezing so tight I could barely breathe.
“I found strength with her. I found happiness with her,” I said, swallowing. “And I pushed her away. I hurt her. For the horde, for you. Because I thought it was the right thing to do. Because if you were threatening to leave the horde, to leave me after everything we have been through, then surely I was blind to something you could see. I have always trusted you before.”
“Seerin, it was the right decision for the horde,” he said, shaking his head.
“Why do you look so hesitant then?” I rasped. “Why do I feel that it was the biggest mistake of my life?”
He went quiet.
“This will not simply pass, pujerak,” I told him, my shoulders slumping, hearing the truth in my words. I felt the emptiness of them, the stretching emptiness that would only grow as the days passed. Because my soul had left me and all I had left was hers. I was tired. So damned tired. “I do not know how long I can do this.”
Two weeks. Two weeks of staying away from her voliki, though every time I passed it, it was a new challenge to my already-crumbling will. Two weeks of avoiding the training grounds because I knew she worked with the mitri in the mornings. Two weeks of looking for her everywhere, of hoping to simply catch a glimpse of her, only to be denied. Two weeks of not seeing her, not touching her, not speaking with her…and it felt like an eternity.
She had not sought me out either. She had avoided me like a plague around the encampment and every day that passed made my need to see her grow and grow.
I had chosen my horde over my thissie. It was a hard thought to stomach, but it was the truth. She would likely never forgive me for it. I knew I would never forgive myself for it, but I’d seen no other way.
Arokan of Rath Kitala had, my mind whispered. He took his chosen Morakkari with no regard to his council or pujerak. He did it because he is the Vorakkar of his horde. He answers to no one but himself.
I was Vorakkar of Rath Tuviri, so why did it feel like I was not? Why was I allowing myself to be controlled by my council, by the elders, by my own pujerak?
I growled, looking away from Vodan. They’d threatened to leave me. If they left, it was very likely the horde would fall. But did it matter? Without my female, did anything matter? I thought it was the right decision, but now, seeing a future without her in it, all I saw was emptiness. Bleakness.
I need to see her, I thought, my chest burning with the need. Now that the numbness had lifted, letting harsh, biting, sharp emotions rise in its absence, I could not stop them. They consumed me, eating at me, punishing me.
Was my own failing that I didn’t believe I could run this horde on my own? Was my own failing that I didn’t believe I was worthy to? Because I wasn’t from an ancient family, because I wasn’t raised a certain way, because I believed I was only a Vorakkar because of my mother?
Nik, I thought, my fists squeezing at my sides.
I
was a Vorakkar because I had survived the Trials. I was a Vorakkar because I’d taken a hundred lashes over my flesh, more than any other Vorakkar in history. I was a Vorakkar because I was the right leader for this horde, because I kept them safe, because I defended them when they were in danger, because I had the determination and the will and the strength to do so.
My heart was pounding out a fierce rhythm in my chest as I stared at Vodan.
“I should never have let her go,” I rasped, feeling weakened by the words. It was something I already knew. And I could blame it on the council, on Vodan, but in truth, it was I that had ended it. It had been my choice.
Just as it was my choice to risk the horde falling, in favor of my thissie. Because it was nothing less than she deserved.
“I have to see her,” I said. “I have to…”
Fix this? She wouldn’t want to see me. Not after what I’d done.
It didn’t matter. I had to try.
I turned to leave the voliki, turning my back on my pujerak, my heart pumping strong in my chest—
“She’s gone,” Vodan said, so quietly that I almost didn’t hear him.
My brows furrowed and I whipped around. “Neffar?”
“She left,” he said, his voice strengthening.
I froze, disbelief spreading through me.
“What are you saying?” I asked slowly. “That she’s not among the horde?”
“I thought you sent her away,” he rasped. “I thought…”
Dread and panic made the voliki sway. “Nik. When? Where did she go?”
“Two weeks ago. She left at dawn with a warrior. The seamstress was—”
I was already striding through the entrance of the voliki, my heart pounding in my throat, before running towards the back of the encampment, towards Nelle’s voliki.
Nik, nik, nik, I thought. Vodan was mistaken. He had to be.
When I reached her voliki, I pushed inside, praying to Kakkari that she within.
But the moment the cold touched my skin, the moment my eyes adjusted to the darkness inside, I knew Vodan spoke the truth. There was no fire, no warmth, no light.