Grave

by L H Whitlock

  Little things she had done now made sense. The protective way she would hold her arms over her stomach, or that faraway look in her eye when she touched her belly. His heart tightened with worry. He couldn’t believe he had thrown her as he did, and she was pregnant at that. Hurting her had been inexcusable, but if he had hurt the baby… He didn’t know if he could live with himself.

  Nora released a breath. “Back on Yunnika, I was Mighton’s twenty-eighth wife.”

  “What!” Grave said in a much louder voice then he intended.

  “Oh!” Miss Yulle jumped and dropped the wand. “Oh, dear. Haha. Sorry about that. Let me just wash this, and then we’ll get back to work.”

  Uncertainty clouded Nora’s deep blue eyes. Grave smoothed his hand over her hair in reassurance.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound angry. I’m just…I can’t handle the thought of that fucking man putting his hands on you.” Grave clenched his teeth, and he felt the familiar rage begin to overtake him.

  Nora placed a soft hand on his arm. It broke him out of the downward spiral.

  “I know,” she said. “I was at the market one day, and I saw him wandering the shops. He wasn’t buying anything, but that would have been strange if he was, wouldn’t it? I lived in a small farming town, so we didn’t have anything a king would want for trade. We sold basic supplies and crafts.” She winced when Miss Yulle pressed the wand deep into her stomach.

  “Sorry, Dear. I just want to check on the position of the cord and the sack. It can be a bit hard to see based on position.”

  Nora nodded. “The next day, a few of his guards came to the house and took me. They had a royal order from the king, and resistance would have meant death for my family. He forced me to marry him immediately.”

  She laughed in the way someone laughs at a painful memory. “He skipped the big show he had put on for the first few wives. The ceremony was completed with only Hayme present. Then he… Then he…”

  Nora’s eyes watered and Grave kissed her forehead. “You don’t need to tell this story, Nora. It’s the past.”

  Nora shook her head. “You told me your pain; I want to tell you mine.”

  Miss Yulle choked back a cry but tried to look as though she weren’t listening. Grave allowed her the show.

  “He raped me whenever he was physically able to perform. He did it over and over until Hayme verified I was pregnant. Then, several months later, they said I was to be put through the gender ceremony.”

  Grave couldn’t control his growl. If Nora had gone through the ceremony, she would have been cast out as a dirty disgrace, and her baby wouldn’t be alive. Hayme would have seen to that, he had plans, and neither Nora nor the little life inside her were part of that. She would have been killed after Hayme mixed up his concoction and declared she was having a girl, as Grave was sure the phony priest would have done.

  “I knew if I stayed, my baby would die, and I couldn’t handle the thought of another little life being taken away just because the priest said it was the wrong gender.”

  Nora pressed a hand to the top of her stomach, well out of the way of Miss Yulle’s examination. “One of the castle maids who I made friends with told me there was a shuttle leaving for Morala that night and she said I had to get on it. But when I got there, there were two ships.”

  Nora laughed. “I only know a little of the different dialects, and I couldn’t read which one was which in the dark, so I got on the closest one and ended up here instead.”

  Grave’s face tensed. His demons roared their demand for him to be silent, but he couldn’t. “We can get you to Morala.”

  Nora studied him for a moment. “I don’t want to go to Morala. I want to be here.”

  Miss Yulle came to Nora’s side before Grave could defend his logic. “Oh, Dear! You couldn’t leave even if you wanted to. Space travel is very dangerous for you and your child. Besides, don’t you listen to Grave. We’ll take good care of you here.”

  Grave pressed his lips into a fine line. He had a lot of respect for Miss Yulle, and she had never backed down from him before, for that he honored her. Miss Yulle had joined Helic, Rikar and himself only a few months into building the sanctuary. She had come from Morala and simply for the reason that she had a son who had been killed when a woman in the sanctuary claimed rape. He had been a guard and back then rape in an all-woman village was a death sentence. They threw him out into the void, aimed to collide with Vivid Flor, the star that provided their system with light. The grieving woman put that pain to work and built some of the first houses by hand before they developed their first natural printer.

  Grave heard that Helic was trying to get another after the first was destroyed during the war. They were incredibly expensive and rare, but they could build a colony in a mere solar month.

  “How far along am I?” Nora asked, propping herself up on her elbows as Miss Yulle began to wipe the jell off of her stomach.

  “First, I need you to realize how lucky you are that Hayme is a fucking idiot.”

  Grave grinned at the fitting description and Nora’s face flushed.

  Miss Yulle continued. “He didn’t realize you were pregnant for quite a while. I’m not sure how you managed not to show being so small, but it’s a blessing from the God of the scrolls.”

  Grave rolled down Nora’s shirt and fixed the hem of her pants. His fingers slid over her stomach, sneaking a feel. He then helped her sit up and offered her a glass of water.

  She took it and gulped it down while Miss Yulle continued her diagnostic. “A standard pregnancy is forty-eight weeks. you’re thirty-fiveish weeks along.”

  “Oh!” Nora gasped. “I thought I was in the twenties for sure!”

  “I thought you were from your size as well. The child looks okay, but he’s behind in growth. Functionally his organs are looking good, and his brain and heart seem to be healthy, but his weight is down. I expect you to have a small child anyway because of your size. And with Mighton being so old, well, I expect that to affect the growth of the child, too, so I’m not too worried, but we need you to put on some weight and for this baby to be getting some extra nutrients.”

  Nora nodded. “I can do that.”

  “I’ll make sure she does,” Grave promised.

  “I also want you to try and take it easy. Pregnancy is hard on the body, and with everything you have been through emotionally and physically, you could have your little one early. We need him to stay inside as long as possible.”

  Nora nodded, her teeth gnawing at her lip. Grave wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him and smiled.

  “If you can, please check in with me every two weeks. We’ll have more frequent appointments as we get closer.”

  Nora nodded. “Thank you so much, Miss Yulle. You have no idea what this all means to me. I never imagined I would get to see him before he was born.”

  Grave kissed the top of Nora’s head, and Miss Yulle beamed at him, giving him a look that would go over Nora’s understanding, but he knew what she was saying to him. She was happy for him, glad that he had found happiness. Grave nodded his thanks.

  He was about to suggest that Nora come back to his house for the night so she could sleep until he repaired her doors when his communication device buzzed. Grave pulled out the tablet and pressed the button, Rikar’s face appeared on the screen.

  “Sorry to disrupt you, Grave, but we have a problem. Several of the citizens went on a mother fucking camping trip, and are being attacked by a wuglor.”

  “I’ll be there.” He hung up and stood, flipping his hood back up in the process.

  “Miss Yulle, can you escort Nora to my house, I have to deal with something.”

  “Oh, seven moons, Grave, you guys warn people to stay within the walls for this very reason. You don’t need to go running out there and risking yourself and your freedom for a few idiots. Survival of the fittest, right?”

  Grave chuckled. While he lived by those rules, survival of the fit
test was the law of the arena. This place was his home now, and these people, even if they didn’t like him or refused to look at him, were his family, and he had sworn to protect them.

  “Duty calls, Miss Yulle. Nora, please get some rest. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

  She looked at him with wide eyes. “What’s a wuglor? It sounds dangerous.”

  Grave shrugged his shoulders. “It’s nothing I haven’t handled before.” With that, he was out into the cold night, the clouds above him thickened and rolled together, a storm quickly approaching.

  24

  Grave rode through the pouring rain on Shade. Mud flung into the air as the animal expertly dodged trees, jumped over fallen logs and sloshed through massive puddles as Grave guided it toward the location of the red dot blinking on his map. He had put his t-glasses on which showed the navigations and information on the lens instead of having to carry the bulky tablet with him.

  His cloak thrashed in the violent wind, made even more so by the speed of the gallop.

  The campers had the right idea by backing themselves up against the mountains, so they only had one area to keep watch for the beasts, but the night was cold, and they had built a fire, a grave mistake as the wuglors were driven toward the heat.

  The roar of the wuglor pierced the night, shuddering the trees with its power. No animals scurried about as they all had run at the first sign of the beast’s presence.

  Digging his heels in, Grave urged Shade forward, then the top of the wuglor’s head came into view over the treetops. It tilted its face toward the sky, its scales and fur doused with rain and briefly illuminated by the light from strikes of lightning.

  Its giant reptilian head had the jowls of a feline with two long incisors that jetted out of its mouth. From what Grave could tell, the fur was orange with hundreds of yellow spots, and its large hind legs made it stand awkwardly when on all fours. Grave pulled up on the buchin’s mane and skidded to a stop in the mud.

  Grave slid off the side and patted its long neck. “Wait here.” Shade nuzzled him lovingly and huddled beneath a tree for cover. His faithful buchin would wait for him to return, despite the natural instinct to run from a larger predator.

  Grave ran through the dense forest until the trees broke into a rocky clearing. The wuglor had the group of campers trapped against a rocky wall. Rikar and two other men shot at the beast with laser guns, but the weapons didn’t seem to be having much effect.

  Grave pulled out his flogs sword from its holster on his back and pressed on the fingerprint sensor to activate the plasma feature. The long steel sword emitted a golden glow and Grave raced to Rikar’s side.

  “Hit it with the harpoons,” Grave ordered.

  The two guards on either side of Rikar shot a harpoon from their handguns. They shot through the night air, one colliding with the beast’s shoulder, the other lodging in its back. It roared, the pain diverting its attention away from the campers.

  The wuglor stood on its hind legs, raising itself above the trees. The rope from the harpoon guns released automatically, a safety feature so the men wouldn’t be flung into the air along with the blast. Rikar used a plasma gun to shoot rays of energy at the beast, then immediately dropped down. Grave raced forward, dodged a large paw and thrust his sword into the beast’s leg.

  The wuglor bent to take a bite out of Grave but he pulled his knife out and thrust it into the beast’s jaw.

  Another ear-piercing roar followed and had Grave retrieving his weapon with speed. Diving to the side, he sliced along the beast’s underbelly. It reared up, stumbled, and fell to the side.

  Grave followed, piercing the soft skin in the wuglor‘s chest. It had taken him several battles to find the weak spots of the large beasts, but now he knew them. The rib cage was separated in this small spot, and if you angled just right, you hit its heart.

  The beast mewled its last dying breaths, and Grave stood at its mouth, staring at the feline’s dead eyes. If the citizens hadn’t come out here into its territory, this creature would still be alive. It was only acting on instinct, finding weaker prey.

  Rikar joined Grave and grasped his shoulder. “I’m sorry, my friend. I will make sure he goes to good use. We will have people out here in the morning to skin and butcher.”

  “It’s a shame. The beast was only finding food.”

  The campers hadn’t joined them yet, they knew they shouldn’t have been out past dark, and they knew these woods didn’t belong to them. The sanctuary was a compromise between man and beast.

  Grave flipped his hood down, enjoying the sobering rain on his face. He turned to the campers, who stood alert and rigid. Grave never removed his hood, and they didn’t know how to translate that.

  Grave thought of Nora, and of her graciousness. He knew she would morn a beast like the wuglor, but she would also value the lives of the campers, and he tried to filter that into his reasoning.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice carrying over the rain.

  The men looked from one to the other before one grew brave enough to step forward and respond. “Yes. Grave, we are so sorry. I–we know we shouldn’t have been out at night. We just needed some space. It gets hard being kept behind the walls. We didn’t mean for anything like this to happen.”

  “You could have gotten someone killed, if not yourselves, then those coming to your rescue.”

  None of the men responded to his reprimand. They all expected to be exiled as was a common punishment.

  Grave allowed the rain to cool his fire. “You will all be back here at the first ray of light to skin, butcher and grind the bones. Then you will dispose of the guts at the edge of the wood to keep the beasts far from the camp.”

  The campers’ gazes shifted between each other before they nodded in response.

  “Of course, Grave,” the same camper replied. “It is the least we can do.” The other men eagerly nodded their agreement. Several stared at him, trying to make out the details of his face in the dark and the rain, others chose not to look at him at all. But oddly enough, the two men beside Rikar who had helped with security and in defeating the wuglor didn’t do either. They looked at him, dare he say, normal?

  Grave turned his attention back to the campers. “Get back to your camp. If you don’t check in at the front gate in twenty minutes, you will be exiled.”

  The campers didn’t waste any time; they gathered their gear and rubbish and began hiking toward the gate.

  Grave whistled between his fingers, and his buchin arrived a few moments later. Grave turned back to Rikar and the two men whose names he couldn’t quite remember. Charles and Flak, if he wasn’t mistaken.

  Apparently, the two sensed his hesitation because they instantly stepped forward and reintroduced themselves, confirming his guess was correct.

  “Shit, man,” Charles said. “We’re glad you came when you did. That thing was getting vicious.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Flak. “You were awesome. Take a tooth for yourself; I can help you pull it. You can make it into a weapon. I would be honored to make it for you.”

  Grave nodded to the men. “Get back to camp and get some rest.”

  The men nodded and said their goodbyes.

  Grave stared at the massive beast’s face and eyed the large canine. He had never been much for trophies and usually left the teeth for the crafters who carved them into tools and weapons, but a thought crossed his mind. He wanted to make something for Nora and for the baby. He just wasn’t sure what. He silently thanked the beast for its sacrifice and meat and what the large furs would do for the citizens in the winter. Then he sliced the canine out and tucked it under his arm.

  The heavy ivory sunk him into the mud and his buchin huffed in protest when Gray pulled himself onto Shade’s back, but Grave stroked his main, and the creature settled down.

  “Ah,” Rikar said, pulling up next to him atop his own buchin, a steer named Ruby. “Finally taking a bit for yourself. I bet you want to brag to Nora.”
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br />   Grave was thankful for the night as it masked his embarrassment. “I just want to make something for her and the baby.”

  “The baby!”

  Grave inwardly groaned. “Nora is pregnant. And further along than she realized.”

  The questions ran across Rikar’s face, but thankfully, he didn’t ask them. “Well, I’m glad to see you finally enjoying something.” Rikar bid his farewell and Grave made his way back to town.

  He was used to staying up all night, and if he made it back to his house in time, he might be able to share the sunrise with Nora. He dug his heels into the buchin’s sides and raced for home.

  25

  Miss Yulle walked Nora to Grave’s house; a gorgeous log-sided home tucked into the woods with vines spiraling around the posts of the front porch and intricate rockers facing the mountains. Miss Yulle told her that Grave had cut each log himself and carved the trim with his own knife. The details looked tedious and beautiful.

  The interior of his home was no different. It was simple, yet all the furniture was original, and it had a simple coziness to it. Hide rugs covered the floors and blanketed the sofa and bed.

  Grave’s bed was nearly double the size of hers with a massive headboard dominating the far wall. At first, she felt awkward being in his house alone, but once she nestled into the sheets, the feeling fled, and Nora fell into a blissful sleep.

  Her dreams turned hot and heavy, and her body flushed as feather-light touches trailed up her sides, lifting her shirt and caressing her. Hands covered her breasts, the rough skin teasing her sensitive skin, making her nipples peak. Her breasts already felt swollen and enlarged from being pregnant. Now, they were highly sensitive to even the gentlest of touches, and it made her toss and turn with desire.

  The more Nora focused on the hands on her body, on how they stroked her, the more she tried to stay within the dream, not wanting her lover’s hands to leave. His name slipped out from between her lips because it could only be one person her subconscious desired. “Grave.”