The boys each take turns hugging her, though Titus simply shakes her hand. I’m grateful for him being mindful of me, but I wasn’t so lucky with Caylen.
“Come back and visit me when you get the chance.” I hear Dee quietly whisper to him. I know that she was disappointed that he chose to sleep with us downstairs, even though they were both tipsy from the preel. That had warmed me only slightly, but now those feelings have cooled. Zavid has a small pack full of dried meat slung over his shoulders. Dee said that that should be enough to get us most of the way to Kor. Zavid believes it’ll be enough to get us all the way if we ration it. My stomach growls just at the thought of what he considers “rations”.
I don’t catch what Caylen says in return, but whatever it was, Dee’s frown shows that she didn’t like his answer.
We leave the village on the partially cleared path. The suns are shining brightly and the snow has stopped falling. I glance up at the Ancestor’s sun and do a double take.
“Guys… is the purple sun a little bigger today?” I ask.
All three of the boys look up at the sky for a couple seconds before facing back to the path. I wait for them to agree with my assessment, but they don’t say anything.
“Uh, guys? Does it look bigger to you or not?”
“Looks the same to me,” Zavid brusquely responds. He walks passed me and takes up his position at the head of our group. Ok, cool. I didn’t expect much of a response from him anyway. I look to Caylen and Titus, but they simply shrug their shoulders and keep walking.
What the hell is going on? Titus has been acting like his old self towards me ever since we woke up this morning, and I don’t know what’s gotten into him. I would have thought that after everything, he’d be a little more talkative and open with me.
“Pussy doesn’t buy privileges,” Sheya says.
“I don’t expect him to just tell me all of his dark secrets or anything. But I didn’t think that he would go back to giving me the silent treatment.”
“Maybe he has a lot on his mind.”
“Like what?”
“Shit, I don’t know. Figure it out,” they say.
I grab Titus’ hand and slow him down so that Caylen and Zavid could trudge ahead of us. Caylen raises his eyebrow as he keeps walking, but doesn’t say anything.
“What’s wrong?” I whisper to Titus when the boys get a good enough distance ahead of us.
“What do you mean?” he asks, but he doesn’t turn to look at me. Instead he keeps his eyes glued ahead as if his brothers’ backs were the most interesting thing in the world.
“You’re closed off to me like you were before we got here. I just thought that after last night…,” I trail off, a little embarrassed with how pathetic I sound. I thought after last night, what? That he’d be skipping through the forest with me and we sing along to a tune that only he and I can hear? That the animals would skip out like a Disney film and sing with us?
Sadly, that’s precisely what I thought would happen.
He finally turns his head to me and his eyes soften as he takes in my dejected expression. He pulls us to a halt as Caylen and Zavid keeps walking ahead. For some reason, I know that they know what happened between us. Caylen’s words come back to me as he tells me that there aren’t any secrets between him and his brothers. That would explain why Caylen has been acting a little aloof, but it doesn’t explain why Titus is acting like this.
“I’m sorry, Renee. I’ve been a little preoccupied. We’re heading to Kor and it’s not like we’re walking into somewhere with fond memories for us. I’m just trying to prepare myself.” He places a quick kiss on my lips. “Last night was important to me, too, Renee. I don’t want you to feel like I’m shrugging it off or that it was just a fling. Please don’t take my silence as me shrugging it off.”
I exhale the breath I didn’t know I was holding. Ok, so maybe losing my virginity made me a tad bit oversensitive. I place another kiss on his lips and we continued walking. “Sorry. I don’t know why I keep second guessing everything now.”
“Because you lost your virginity and you’re feeling a little insecure as if it wasn’t as good for me because I’ve had sex with other women,” he surmises. I stop dead in my tracks again, mouth hung open as I stare at his smirking face. “By that reaction, I’m guessing that I’m right.”
“Well… yeah,” I lamely say.
He tugs my hand to get me walking again before he responds. “There’s not much else that I can say to you that will make you believe how much I enjoyed being inside of you, Renee. You’ll just have to believe me.” My stomach clenches with his words, and I can't help but yearn for the next time we’re together.
“You’re right. From here on out, I won’t second guess you at all. No matter what it is,” I say as I smile up at him.
His smile takes on a hard edge, but he nods his head and softly kisses the knuckles on my hand that’s entwined with his. We quickly catch up to Caylen and Zavid, and I can’t help but feel a little sad about the distance between Caylen and I. I want to bridge that gap, but I wasn’t the one that was going out of their way to flirt with our host. So I don’t say anything,
We make good distance through the forest, and that’s probably due to the fact that this path is cleared out. We haven’t come across any passengers, and it leaves me to believe that not many people travel between this village and the one that Dee told us about.
The suns are beginning to set and there isn’t a clear place for us to sleep for the night. Hunger is knocking on my door and I’m afraid we’ll have to sleep outside and starve if we leave it up to Zavid. The temperature begins to drop slowly but surely. Even though my resistance against the cold has gotten a lot better since my joining with Titus, for reasons unknown to me, I’m not completely immune against the biting cold.
Zavid marches us on for another two hours before he stops. “This is a good place to rest,” he says. I look around, a little annoyed because this place looks exactly like every area we’ve passed since we started walking this morning. I hold back a groan as we walk off the path and into the trees. “Uh, Renee?” he says awkwardly, as if he wasn’t used to saying my name.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think that you and Sheya can build us a shelter?” he asks. The whole time he’s talking to me, he’s not facing me. “It doesn’t have to be as elaborate as the first one.”
“Tell him to face us and ask us properly,” Sheya snaps.
“Sheya said to face us and ask us properly,” I repeat while crossing my arms and adding as much sass as possible into my tone. Titus is smirking beside me and Caylen is covering his mouth to hide his smile. Zavid’s shoulders rise and fall as he takes deep breaths to probably calm himself down. After waiting several long moments, he turns around to look at me.
“Renee, can you and Sheya build a small shelter for us?”
“Please?” I say, not needing Sheya to coach me on that.
His jaw clenches and unclenches as he works to push down his rage. We have a staring contest as he debates whether or not a shelter is something that he would really like.
“Please,” he grounds out between clenched teeth. Caylen barks out a laugh at his brother’s discomfort, and his goofiness causes me to want to laugh along with him.
“No problem, Zay! We’d love to,” I sweetly say. His shoulders grow rigid at the sound of my pet name, and I hope it pisses him off because I’ll be calling him that from now on.
“Wanna do this together now that I’m conscious?” I ask.
“Sure, why not?”
I close my eyes and drop my barriers. The energy of the realm flows over me as if it were waiting for me to invite it in. Sheya and I merge together seamlessly and we take a big breath. We open our eyes and Titus takes a small step away from us. We smile at him as we walks away to find an area that would be good enough for us.
“Wow, Zavid,” we say, a weak echo following our words. “We never thought you’d ask us for help.”
“Probably should have thought of that before you had us walking a lot further than we needed. If we would’ve stopped a few hours ago, we would’ve had enough time to set up camp the old fashioned way. It’s almost as if you were banking on us to take care of this.” We circle around him in a slow amble, but he doesn’t turn around as we go. Oh boo. That takes the fun out of things.
“I wanted to cover more ground before we stopped,” he simply says.
“What’s the rush?” we ask as we stop in front of him. “It’s almost as if you’re trying to make a deadline or something?”
“What? Where did that come from?” I ask.
“Something’s off. I just don’t know what,” Sheya responds.
“No, I just want to get this trip over with so that we can collect our pay and I won’t have to deal with you ever again,” he snaps. Luckily, we’re bonded at the moment, so the sting of his words are dulled by our connection.
“As much as I hear the truth in your words, I feel like there’s more. And you best believe we’ll find out, Zay Zay.” We smirk at him as we make our way over to a small clearing. It’s not as big as the area by the river, but it’ll be big enough for us to sleep in. We may be on top of each other, but who cares? We surely don’t.
We quickly chop down lumber and easily assemble them into a small shelter. We expend very little of our own personal energy, thanks to the help of the realm. Once we finish, we take a step back to admire our handiwork. Damn we’re good. A small shack stands before us with a finished door and flat roof. We buff our nails on our shirt and turn around to look at the stunned faces of the boys.
“What? Never seen a bad bitch work?” we ask them. “We built the stupid shelter, now it’s your turn to gather the fire wood. Oh, and don’t forget to grab those leaves that we like, they were comfortable as hell.” We walk into the shelter and there’s enough room in here for us to lay out comfortably. I walk into the middle and dig out a nice hole for the fire pit.
“We need a chimney or something,” I say.
We look up at the flat roof and it does occur to us that we’d have smoke inhalation issues if we don’t solve this problem. How do we solve this?
“Just put a hole in the damn roof,” Sheya suggest.
We concentrate on the spot right above the fire pit, chipping away at the wood until there’s a hole the size of our fist. That should be good enough. Big enough for the smoke to get out, but small enough to not suck too much of our eat away.
Once everything is perfectly done, we drop the bond and separate from each other.
I crack my neck from side to side, feeling the effects of building this shelter. Even though Zavid said that we didn’t have to make a big one, we made one almost the same size as the other one.
I step outside of the shelter at the same time that Caylen and Titus are about to walk in. Caylen has a handful of wood and Titus has an armful of the willow-like leaves. I step to the side as they walk inside and finish setting up our temporary home. I’m starting to get used to being around them. Camping with them, arguing with them. It’s like we’re our own ragtag family.
“Barf.”
“Shut up,” I respond.
Twilight is in full swing and I’m ready to get some rest. We’ve walked for over twelve hours and my feet are killing me.
“Hey, uh, Ren. Can I talk to you for a second?” Caylen says from the doorway. There’s a light behind him and I’m itching to tell him that I would much rather curl up against Titus by the fire.
“Yeah, what’s up?” I say instead. His brown hair is disheveled on top of his head as if he’s been running his fingers through them.
He walks a little ways away from the shelter, passing Zavid as he makes his way into the shack. I follow him closely as we walk a little deeper into the woods.
“Look, I want to apologize,” he finally says. He stops and turns to face me, and the pained expression in his eyes draws me up short. “I know it was childish to try and make you jealous with Dee. At first it was just a joke, ya know? But then you started giving me the cold shoulder and I felt like it was too late to fix it. We’re getting closer and closer to Kor, and I don’t want to go there with you hating me.”
“What is it about Kor that has you guys so up in arms?” I ask him.
“We just have a lot of demons there that we have to deal with when we get there. We won’t be around you when we get there, so I wanted to fix this now.”
“What do you mean you won’t be around me? You’re introducing me to my family, and then you’ll take me home, right?”
“Yeah,” he swallows. “I’m just saying that we’ll be a little occupied as we handle our business.”
“Ok…,” I say. “So, why were you trying to make me jealous?”
“Because I was jealous,” he says with a wry smile.
“Jealous for what?” I ask, a little confused by his admission.
“Jealous of the bond you have with Titus. I don’t care that you and him are building something. I just feel left out.”
“Oh.” Was all that I was able to say to him. He looks so uncomfortable and embarrassed that I kind of feel bad for him.
“Oh?” he asks. “Do you… do you care about me, too?”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. His face turns red with indignation and he takes a quick step away from me. “Oh, my bad. I didn’t know that you having feelings for me is such a hilarious notion,” he snaps, attempting to brush passed me and back to the shelter. I grab his arm to stop him.
“That’s not it,” I say between chuckles. “I’m laughing because I can’t believe you even have to ask that. Of course I care about you, too.”
“Then… why haven’t you been getting cozy with me as you’ve been doing with Titus?” The absolute look of confusion on his face makes me want to laugh out loud again, but since that wasn’t received well the first time, I refrain from doing so. I’m just so happy that he has feelings for me like I do.
“Because you haven’t been getting cozy with me.” He stares at me as he tries to process my words.
“That’s all?” he asks incredulously.
“Yeah, that’s all.”
“Fuck.” He closes the gap between us, grabbing my face and slamming his lips against mine. The air is knocked out of me as he wraps one of his arms around my side and dragging me against him. He parts my lip with his tongue and delves into my mouth. He bites my bottom lip and then soothes the sting of his bite with his tongue. “I should have done this a long time ago,” he groans against my lips.
I didn’t have time to respond to him as he presses his lips back to mine. My head becomes a little light as I struggle to breathe. I pull my mouth away from his as I gasp for air. He trails his hot lips down my throat and I press my hands against hard stomach. A loud howl in the distance causes us to break apart, steam billowing from our mouth in puffs. Caylen braces his forehead against mine and we stand that way for a few minutes.
“Are you telling me that that’s all I had to do this entire time?” he asks into the silence.
“Yeah,” I breathe. “I’ve been waiting for this the whole time.”
“I’m sorry I made you wait,” he jokes while placing the cutest kisses on my lips. “I’m sleeping with you tonight.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I confess.
We walk back to the shelter hand and hand, and I almost feel complete.
“Almost? What more could you want?” Sheya asks.
“Uh, I don’t know.”
“You can’t tell me that you want that asshole, too?”
“No!”
“You sure?” they ask.
“Positive.”
“Mhmm.”
We get to the shelter and Caylen places a soft kiss on my lips before opening the door. The floor is covered in the soft willow-like leaves and a nice fire is roaring in the middle of
the room. Titus is sprawled out on the left side of the room, using my bag as a pillow, and Zavid is sitting with his back against the wall, facing the door, on the left side. He notes my hand being held by Caylen, but his face doesn’t change.
A small smirk pulls at Titus’ lips and he holds up a piece of dried meat. I release Caylen’s hand and hurriedly make my way over to the dangling food. They chuckle as I flop down next Titus, biting into the meat as I kick off my shoes. Caylen walks over to Zavid to get his own food before he walks over and flops down on my left side. We all eat in silence until we’re all finished.
“We leave at dawn,” Zavid grumbles from his lonely side of the shelter. I lie down between my two boys, full and happy. I lean over to kiss Titus before turning to kiss Caylen.
“Goodnight, Ren,” Caylen murmurs as he wraps his arm around my waist, dragging me until my back is against his chest. I reach out to pull Titus close to me. Once he’s moved to where I want him, I throw my leg over his hips and use his shoulder as a pillow. He laces my fingers with his using the arm that I’m lying on. I’ve never felt so happy and safe before in my life.
“Goodnight, Caylen. Goodnight, Titus.” After a long pause and much deliberation, I call out, “Goodnight, Zay.” I’m met with silence from the other side of the fire, but I don’t care. There’s nothing he can do that will ruin my night.
A soft kiss on my forehead from Titus is the last thing I’m aware of before I’m pulled into another dream.
27
Renee
My mother paces back and forth as Aunty Ariese pulls and twists my waist length hair. My mother mutters to herself, looking frantic and just a tad bit crazy.
“Mother, you’re making me nervous with all of that pacing,” I say.
“At least one of us should feel nervous. Don’t you think so, dear?” she counters.
“No. I’d much rather for all of us to be calm.”
The Inner Self: The Prophecy Page 20