by Zoey Draven
Her words gutted me even as I growled, “Then at the very least, believe that I do not want you here. In this place. There are those in the horde that care for you deeply. You think they want you to suffer? To be hungry, cold, unprotected? Nik.”
“This was my decision to make, not yours, not anyone’s,” she replied. “Being in the horde with you…”
“Neffar?” I asked when she trailed off.
“It would destroy me,” she whispered after a lengthy pause. “This is the only way, Seerin.”
My chest ached—my whole body ached at her words.
And it will destroy me if you are not there, rei thissie, I thought to myself.
“I want you as my Morakkari, Nelle,” I told her softly. “You were always meant to be my Morakkari.”
She stilled.
“You told me once that all you wanted was to not be alone,” I said, my voice coming out roughened and dark from the cutting emotions swirling within me. Her eyes flickered with recognition as mine flickered to her dark hair. “You told me you didn’t want your hair to turn grey and find that you were alone.”
That crack in her expression showed again.
“The horde is your true home, thissie. You will never be alone there. You were happy there,” I rasped. “Then I hurt you. I knowingly hurt the one person in my life who I only ever wanted to protect and cherish. And I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I will spend the rest of my life showing that I love you. Until you never have to question it. Until you would never think of questioning it.”
She shook her head. She was wary, I could see that, but I didn’t care how long it would take to erase the doubt in her mind.
“I will not give you up,” I told her. “I will not fail you or disappoint you again. I promise you that.”
“I’m tired, Seerin,” she whispered.
I was getting nowhere with her that night.
Blowing out a long breath, I switched tactics. I asked softly, “Have you been eating, thissie?”
There were dark circles under her eyes and the hollow of her cheeks seemed more pronounced. Her eyes flickered to a travel sack of hide wedged into the corner of her small home. I went to it, peeled back the flap, and saw there were dried meats and kuveri loaves inside. It was a small relief to know she’d had something to sustain herself. But by the looks of it, it was already half gone and would barely get her through the cold season.
It wasn’t enough. Not nearly. Knowing her, she’d been eating as little as possible to stretch out the rations.
When I straightened, I simply looked at her. After two and half weeks of not seeing her, of not speaking with her, all I wanted to do was go to her and wrap her in my arms. But even I knew she would not welcome my touch. Not anymore.
She was so beautiful to me that it made my chest physically ache.
“Nothing I say,” I said quietly, “will change what I did. But it doesn’t change how I feel about you either. I saw Kakkari’s guiding light in your eyes the last time we were in this village together.” Her brow furrowed slightly. “I saw strength and hope and connection in you. I knew that you were going to change my life from that very moment…and you have. You will continue to change it. You were always meant to be mine, Nelle. I was always meant to be yours. Kakkari knew that. I know that. I’m just sorry—so terribly sorry—that it took me this long to realize that.”
Hesitation flickered in her eyes. Only for a brief moment…but it told me that she heard me. At the very least, she heard me.
“I will hunt and bring you rikcrun in the morning so you can have fresh meat,” I murmured, deciding it was best to give her time to her thoughts. My eyes went to the dagger in her hand and the broken chair on the floor. “And do not fear, rei thissie, no one will dare to come near you. I will make sure of that.”
She looked down to the floor of her home, her fingers beginning to tap on her thigh. A familiar habit of hers. One that told me she hadn’t completely locked herself away.
“Veekor, kalles,” I murmured.
Sleep, female.
They were words I’d often whispered in her ear after we had exhausted ourselves with mating, with my seed leaking down her inner thighs. Words I’d said to her when I curled her in my arms and she pressed her cheek against my chest. She’d told me she liked to listen to my heart, that counting the beats brought comfort to her as she dozed off into sleep.
In those moments, I’d known true peace. As if my singular purpose in the universe was simply to hold her, protect her, love her. As if I’d finally found my calling in life.
She remembered those words well and the memories that surrounded them. Her expression changed, her brows lifting ever so slightly, her nostrils flaring.
Longing. Finally, there was something recognizable in her features. It gave me hope that the love she had for me wasn’t completely lost after all, that some part of her still wanted me.
I promised, “I will return in the morning.”
Chapter Forty
Three days later, Seerin still hadn’t left and my hardened determination had already begun to waver. Every morning, he came to my door, bringing with him skewers of cooked rikcrun and a fresh skin of water. The smell made my stomach heave in protest, though I’d always managed to hold down my nausea in his presence, but I could only eat very little.
At first, I told myself it didn’t matter if Seerin was in the village. It didn’t matter that I spent some moments with him. I had a plan to leave, my time in the village was only temporary, and I was numb enough to his words and his actions that it didn’t matter if he was near.
At least that was what I’d told myself. But I’d somehow forgotten that Seerin had always had a way of finding his way inside.
During the day, he stayed away, as if he knew I needed space. He told me he was sleeping in the Dark Forest with Lokkas, so I assumed that was where he went. The forest had a good view of the village, even a good view of my dwelling. I refused to acknowledge the wiggling ache of guilt, knowing he slept in the icy cold and snow when there was a relatively clean floor in my home. The forest might protect him from the wind during the night, but it certainly didn’t keep the wet sludge and chill away.
It’s his decision, I reminded myself. I told him to go and he will not.
Still, a treacherous part of me had a difficult time falling asleep at night, knowing he slept out there, unprotected, with Lokkas. He had barely come with any provisions at all, giving further proof to his story that he’d journeyed straight here after learning I had left. He had no furs, no food or water—though he hunted easily.
But he gives most of his food to you, a voice whispered in my mind.
At night, he would return again with more skewers of rikcrun. I wondered how the villagers felt about him coming and going with fresh, cooked food to my door. He’d mentioned on the second day that he’d given my uneaten morning portions to ‘the older male next to you.’ I assumed he’d meant Bard, my neighbor, and a part of my chilled heart warmed slightly at the prospect.
What worried me, however, was that at night, Seerin talked. He would watch me eat while he spoke of things that made me hate him and remember why I’d fallen in love with him in the first place. He spoke of things that made me remember my life back at the horde. It was only three weeks that I’d been gone, but it felt like much, much longer.
That night, he told me what had transpired in the last few weeks. That it was the pyrokis’ mating time, that a few of the nests in the enclosure had been accidentally destroyed and rebuilt because of it. That the mitri was receiving more requests for Dakkari steel bows from the warriors, even from a couple children. That a child had been born, that the mother was one of the bikkus and the father was a warrior.
“It is good to hear a baby’s cry in the horde again,” he murmured, sitting on the floor across from me, his back to one of the creaking walls. I’d said nothing to him since he’d appeared at my door that night, though I was ravenous and had eaten th
e rikcrun he’d brought me. All of it. “Most are born after the thaw.”
Because during the cold season, locked in close quarters, naturally keeping one another warm, what else was there to do but mate? I thought, pressing my lips together. It only served to remind me that I hadn’t told Seerin about the pregnancy. Not yet. Everything seemed like a constant reminder. We’d never spoken about children. Did he even want them?
“And once the thaws come, there will be a celebration. Much like the frost feast, though there will be no fresh meat. Just mostly fermented wine.” His eyes were steady, his voice even as he said, “For that reason alone, we will wait to celebrate our tassimara until we journey to the southlands.”
My brow furrowed. Tassimara?
“Our joining ceremony,” he murmured, seeing my confusion, and I swallowed loudly at his words. “We will track a hebrikki herd and make our new home close by. We will have the first of the fresh meat at our tassimara, in our new encampment, in a place that will grow warm and lush after the thaw. I know you will like it there.”
“Stop,” I whispered, closing my heart off to his words when it pumped too strongly with longing and desire. “There will be no tassimara.”
Though it was the first time I’d spoken to him all day, he didn’t hesitate as he said, “Then we will wait. Perhaps by the blue solstice, you will feel differently.”
Later that night, after he left to return to the Dark Forest, I lay underneath my fur and stared up at the dark ceiling, my hand on my belly. My back ached from sleeping on the hard floor and I marveled at how I’d slept in this very place for almost my entire life. When Jana had been alive, there had been a bed stuffed with cloth, but Grigg had offered to pay me twenty credits for it shortly after she died. I’d been in no position to refuse and in the back of my mind, I wondered if he still slept on that very bed. I wondered if he knew that was where Jana had drawn her last breath.
My fingers traced the growing curve of my stomach underneath my belly button. I wondered why I had not told Seerin yet. It was not something that I could keep to myself now that he was here. Before, I’d never expected to see him again. Now, he was insisting on bringing me back to the horde and talking of things like tassimaras.
A small breath escaped me in the darkness. I knew how determined and stubborn he could be. He truly meant it when he said he wouldn’t return without me. He would sleep in the Dark Forest until he turned to ice. Only the thaw would save him then.
I didn’t dare believe in his perfect, pretty words. I didn’t dare believe that he loved me after all, that he wanted to make me his Morakkari, his wife, his queen, especially after he’d told me it could never be me. If I believed in him again and then he pushed me away…I wouldn’t come back from it. I wondered if this was how my mother felt after my father died. This heartache, this seemingly never-ending sadness.
But I was not like my mother. I was having a child and I would never abandon my baby like she’d abandoned me. I had to be strong. I had to do anything and everything in my power to protect him or her, to keep them safe.
I could find another horde, but even if I found one, there was always a possibility they would turn me away. Finding another horde was an uncertainty, yet Rath Tuviri was a certain thing. Seerin was here right now. He was demanding that I return with him. It would be so easy to give in…and yet, it would be the most difficult choice I would have to make.
This isn’t about me, I realized. It wasn’t even about us, about Seerin and I. It was about our child.
The baby deserved to know their father. They deserved to know their Dakkari blood, their culture, their people. They deserved to grow up in an environment that was safe, protected, and caring.
I know what I have to do, but I’m afraid to do it, I confessed to myself. Tears welled up in my eyes and leaked down my temples as I stared up at the ceiling. Wind whistled through the holes in the wood, as if in answer to my thoughts.
I couldn’t stay. The safest, smartest decision would be to return to the horde of Rath Tuviri with Seerin. It might even be the only decision at this point.
If my guess was correct, I was almost two months into the pregnancy. It was very likely Seerin had gotten me pregnant the night he’d returned from Dothik. I knew nothing about delivering and caring for a baby. I didn’t even know how long I would be pregnant for. I was scared and heartbroken and alone.
Except I didn’t have to be alone. I had friends in Rath Tuviri. They could help me if I needed it.
The next morning, before the sun even rose, I packed up the travel sack Avuli had given me. I rolled up the fur, deposited the dagger within, and carried it over my shoulder. It was significantly lighter than it’d been before, considering I’d eaten almost three weeks of rations from it.
I didn’t look back at my home as I closed the door behind me. At Bard’s door, I left the sack, knowing I wouldn’t need it, and then I turned and left.
It was still dark, the sky just beginning to lighten in the distance, and the village road that led to the gates was empty and quiet. My footsteps crunched into the snow, the sound loud against the hush. I marveled at how much had changed in the last three months as I walked from the village for the last time.
Once I was past the gates, I turned towards the Dark Forest. I knew it like the back of my hand and had explored every inch in my lifetime. I knew where Seerin would make his base because it had the best view of the village and of my little house. My instinct told me he would be there.
And he was. After I climbed the short incline of the ridge and weaved through the first layer of trees that stood like ancient guardians at the forest’s edge, I spied him propped up against a blackened trunk, Lokkas curled close beside him.
He was sleeping. Both of them were. In sleep, with those intense grey eyes closed to the world, Seerin looked less intimidating and almost peaceful.
Agony burst in me and stayed for a long moment as I looked at him. I held still and silent as tears blurred my vision.
Why did I have to fall in love with you? I asked silently. Why couldn’t it have been anyone else? Perhaps it would’ve been easier if it had been no one at all and then this aching sadness would disappear. I wished that three weeks could’ve erased the love that he’d built in my heart, but something told me it wasn’t as simple as that.
I hated that he slept out here. I hated that I couldn’t bring myself to offer my home, hated that being in his presence for too long brought worry and fear and longing into my heart. It was not long ago when I’d craved being with him. It wasn’t too long ago when I’d missed him even when he was still near.
My morning sickness rose, but the icy chill on my face helped distract me from the nausea. I walked towards Seerin and my movements roused Lokkas, who turned his eyes towards me. Seerin had always been a light sleeper. He woke at the smallest sound, so when I approached and he didn’t stir, it made me realize how exhausted he must truly be.
Guilt ate at me. He’d been sleeping out here for four nights now. He hadn’t eaten nearly as much food as his body needed. And he had no shelter, no protection out here from the elements.
When I neared Lokkas, I reached my hand out to stroke his snout. He pushed his scaled nose into my palm and made a chirring sound. It was that sound that woke Seerin, whose eyes flashed open. When he sensed someone near, he stilled, his hand going to his sheathed sword at his side.
When he saw it was me, standing there in the Dark Forest at dawn, he murmured, still drowsy from sleep, “Kassikari, what are you doing out here?”
I wondered what kassikari meant. He’d called me it before, many times. Another name he had for me that made my chest pull with memory.
Seerin had always woken easily, yet slowly. How many times had I watched him wake, how many times had his bleary eyes come to me immediately as he rasped something out in Dakkari, his words husky and warm? How many times had I teased him about his love for long mornings in our bed? How many times had he silenced me with his drugging, mind-s
pinning kisses?
“Nelle,” he murmured, trying to catch my attention.
“I’m pregnant, Seerin,” I said, my voice soft but tormented from wonderful memory and my thoughts.
Air whistled through his nostrils as he inhaled a sharp breath. His eyes flared and he pushed up from the blackened trunk until he was standing within arm’s reach of me. Lokkas stood with his master until I was small again beside them both.
“I will return with you for the sake of the child,” I said, craning my head to look up at him. “I was not planning to stay here regardless but now that you’re here…I know it’s the right choice.”
“Were you ever going to tell me?” he rasped, his eyes like flint. “I have been here four days and you tell me this now?”
His anger stemmed from his own past, I knew. He’d never known his father and I knew from our past conversations, though he’d never said it outright, that he’d wanted to. The knowledge that I was pregnant, that I had kept it to myself until now, resurfaced old wounds within him. I knew that, but I was not afraid of his anger.
“I never thought I would see you again,” I told him truthfully, “and certainly not here.”
“Did you know you were pregnant when you left?” he asked.
“No,” I said. Even as hurt as I’d been, I wouldn’t have left if I’d known I was pregnant then.
He went quiet, looking past me towards the village, trying to process what I’d just revealed to him. When he brought a hand up to rake through his tangled, damp hair, I saw that it shook. A sharp pang went through me at the sight.
“It is why you would not eat in the mornings,” he said. “Because you were sick.”
He cursed under his breath and Lokkas shifted beside me, sensing his master’s emotions.
“What do you mean you were not planning to stay here?” he growled out next. “What were you planning to do exactly?”