Chapter 4 Thaleo
THALEO
After the conclusion of the vaklok, during the final meal, I watched as the new woman Fiona took the Sea Sand male Dalk back with her into my mountain.
She led him by the hand.
There could be no doubt as to their intentions. After they’d returned to the vaklok earlier today, he’d smelled like freshly ejaculated male seed and some other, foreign musk I could only guess was related to a human female’s arousal.
It made me wonder what Nazreen smelled like. Between her legs.
I hurled myself away from that question, because I rather felt like it would somehow break me.
So instead, I concentrated on the question of Dalk and Fiona, unmated, but clearly growing closer.
The entire reason Fiona was here, in my mountain, was that she was technically unmated and could end up as mate to any of my men.
If a male of my tribe had a mate vision of her while she was thus entangled with Dalk…
It would not go down peaceably.
I was prepared to spill blood to defend the rights of my men to have access to mates of the Vrika’s choosing.
I would fight, and fight hard, for any one of my tribe if it meant safeguarding their future.
But I knew that the new women, with their strange ship and their weapons and their ways so different than ours, would not understand this.
They would fight back. And more might be lost than just one man’s chance at a mate.
Sometimes our alliance with the new women, and by extension, Gahn Errok’s tribe, felt as if it were balanced on the edge of a Deep Sky cliff.
The wind that made it shudder, that threatened to send it sailing over the edge and into disaster, was merely my own breathing.
I did not know how to exist around this yet.
Movement beyond the gathered group outside drew my sight stars to its source.
Nazreen was alone, drifting along the edge of the stony clearing.
Her cloak was on, but its hood was down.
The shells she’d spent much of the day wearing over her eyes were gone.
The light of the moons sent silver spearing down the thick, wavy locks of her hair, spangling across her nose, her cheeks, her chin.
She paused at the short valley that led to the waterfall where Dalk had had his ceremonial bath and healing with Fiona.
Then, she took a step into it. Then another.
Shadows engulfed her.
Her own people did not even see her go.
It was not a long valley. She would barely be out of earshot. It was unlikely any mountain predator would approach with the sounds of all my warriors eating here together.
But she was alone. And that my heartbeat feel strangely like a hammer’s blow.
I reached the shadowed valley, prowling through it, before I even told my feet to move. I found her in the clearing, observing the shining clatter and fall of the water.
“You shouldn’t be here alone.” There was a hard edge to my voice I hadn’t anticipated when I spoke. Nazreen, who was standing with her back to me, tensed, then turned. Her eyes flashed, like starlight slicing over deep water.
“It isn’t allowed?”
“It isn’t safe.”
She watched me with something like wariness. Wariness that was not quite fear.
No, not fear at all. Not when she held my gaze like that. I’d startled her. But she was not afraid.
“I didn’t go far,” she said. Her breath misted in the cool air.
“You went far enough. And you went alone.”
Why alone? I wondered. What are you doing out here, strange creature, on your own in the dark of my mountains?
She may have held the depiction of Zoren’s face in her hands for the duration of the vaklok, but she had not brought him here as either a chaperone or friend.
She did not have a deep attachment to him, or to Oxriel, as Fiona did to Dalk.
It was nearly alarming, the dark satisfaction I felt at this.
That even if she had not chosen me to walk with her, she had not chosen any other male of her acquaintance, either.
“I wouldn’t have gone any further than this,” she said, a little more softly now, some of the challenge ebbing from her eyes. “I just wanted to see the water.”
Again, a darkly silken satisfaction slid through me. Unlike the Sea Sand men, she and the other new women liked water. Just like my people did. For some reason, this felt right to me.
“If there is anything in my mountains that you wish to see,” I found myself saying, “you need merely ask. And I will show you myself.”
The elegant arches of her brows rose at this.
“You’re the Gahn,” she replied. “Don’t you have other things you need to do than tour me around?”
“You are my priority.”
I’d meant to say that cultivating a relationship with the new women was one of my priorities.
I’d invited them to stay in my mountains specifically to show them that our tribe could provide for them.
That we had comforts to offer, should the Vrika choose one – or all – of them for my men.
If they wished to see more of my territory, I would of course grant such a request.
But that is not what I said.
I said, “You are my priority.” And my voice took on an oddly husky quality I had not ever heard from myself before.
She did not answer this. Merely watched me for a moment, then turned back to face the water.
She approached the edge of the rippling pool, then crouched, dipping her small, clawless fingers in.
She gave a small gasp. The sound went straight down my spine.
All at once, I was imagining her making that same, little sound before me, but without her cloak. Without any of her clothes at all.
“It’s cold!” She whipped her hand back from the water, shook it until water droplets went spattering through the night. Then, after a slight hesitation, she plunged her hand back in. My body gave a start, as if to stop her. But I didn’t, feeling my sight stars tighten as I observed her from behind.
“If it is too cold,” I said as she put her other hand in as well, “then why are you still touching it?”
“I said it’s cold,” she reiterated, “not that it’s too cold.” Letting her hands drift back and forth, she made new ripples in the pool. Then, she withdrew her hands and swiftly stood. “OK. Now it’s too cold.”
She turned to face me once more, her hands cupped against her mouth. She breathed out onto them, then rubbed them together.
This seemed an incredibly inefficient way to warm her hands. Without a fire nearby, it would have made more sense to put her hands into her clothing and use some of her own body heat.
Or mine.
My cock felt heavy and hot beneath my loincloth. It throbbed violently at the thought of cold, trembling fingers seeking warmth against it. As if to distract myself from the intensity of this savage and sudden desire, I did something else nearly as unthinkable.
I closed the distance between us and took her hands in mine.
They were so small. Delicate bones beneath thin, vulnerable hide, soft as the brush of a braxilk’s wing. And very cold against the heat of my palms. I enveloped her entirely.
Nazreen went utterly still. The darkest, central points of her sight stars had bloomed into black moons, no more green visible. I would have thought that she’d stopped breathing if I could not hear the newly quickened, shallow sound of it.
“What are you doing?”
I was doing too many things at once to come up with an answer for her right away.
I was warming her hands. I was touching her, for the very first time.
I was giving in to one instinctive desire to shove away another, more depraved one.
I was stroking the incredible, rapid rhythm of the heartbeat at her wrists.
I was breathing deeply of her alien, human scent.
I was wondering if anyone had noticed, by now, that we were both gone. Wondering how long we’d stay like this.
How long she’d let me.
She hadn’t tried to pull her hands away. But neither did she relax. Her hands were closed fists within my own.
“Do I offend you?”
“Right now?” she asked on a gust, like she’d barely held back an exclamation of surprise, or a bitter laugh. “Or in general?”
“Either. Both.”
She tipped her head slightly, her expression guarded.
“Do you want an honest answer to that question?”
“Always.” Soft vehemence surrounded the word. “I want nothing but your truth.”
“You said something like that once before,” she replied. “When we first met. Dalk said he wouldn’t raise his tail to show you a sign of respect, and you said that was good. Because you didn’t want fake shows of fealty. You said something like, ‘give me what’s real, or give me nothing.’”
So she remembered those moments, when I’d first encountered her among her friends in neutral territory below the Vrika’s peak.
It had been the first time I’d met that many new women at once.
Before that, I had only met Priya, Chapman, and Valeria.
But that night, I had Nazreen, Valeria, Fiona, Tilly, Taylor, and Gahn Errok’s mate Zuh-Tephanie before me.
Only Nazreen’s face had captivated me. Had caught my sight stars upon it as surely as fabric snagging on the tip of an arrow.
The high, arching bridge of her nose. The agonizingly pretty shape of her mouth.
Those large eyes with their strange and singular sight stars, shadowed by a thick fringe of lashes and shadowed further by a reserved and vigilant watchfulness.
The sight of her had been like a blow to the head. Like a knife dragged down the side of my face. For a moment, I’d nearly wondered, Am I bleeding?
No, Gahn. I do not bleed.
“Nothing has changed since that night.” I told her. “I am only interested in the truth.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“And yet you don’t afford us that same courtesy,” she pointed out archly.
“You invited us to be guests in your mountain that very night, but in reality you were using us – specifically Stephanie – as pawns to lure Gahn Errok into a taklok so you could kill him. Even though we’d already brokered an alliance between you. Even though it should have been safe.”
I bristled at foul Gahn Errok’s name in her mouth.
“And, look, I’m no big fan of Errok, either,” she went on. “I think he can be an arrogant ass, and I know he’s done you and your people wrong. But you did us wrong that night, too. And at least with Errok, we always know where we stand with him. He’s brash and obnoxious, but he’s honest. But you?”
Her sight stars swept critically over me, coming to settle on our joined hands.
“You’re like that pool I just put my hands into. Cold to the point of numbing. Too deep and dark to see the bottom. You manipulate and you use people without showing your true intentions. So yes, Gahn Thaleo, you offend me.”
Just like that pool, she said. The same one she’d plunged both hands into anyway. Even knowing that it was deep and dark and cold and that she could not see the bottom.
I had no defence against her words. I had no wish to defend myself.
Everything she’d said was correct. I’d been taught, trained, moulded to the point of scarring in childhood.
My very bones were fused with the fact that it was my responsibility to do anything, everything – noble or not, honest or not – to protect my people.
Including killing Gahn Errok in the taklok.
Which I’d nearly done. It was only the affronted reaction of the new women, the fact I could lose the alliance, that had forced me to allow Gahn Errok access to my stores of Vrika’s blood.
Even now, that memory was an acrid one. I’d left him in his mate Zuh-Tephanie’s hands.
I had not let a single one of my healers touch him.
What would I have done if Nazreen had touched him?
Despite my offensiveness in her eyes, she still had not pulled her hands from mine.
But then again, I was so much bigger than she was.
So much stronger. Her wrists were narrow to the point of absurdity.
So poignantly breakable. For the first time, I realized just how truly vulnerable she was in this world.
How vulnerable she likely realized she was with me.
Perhaps she worried that if she tried to pull away, and I did not let her go, that I would hurt her in the process.
This realization had me dropping her hands at once. A mere heartbeat later, footsteps in the valley behind me echoed – stone crunching, pebbles rolling. Then, Valeria’s voice.
“Nasrin? Oh! Gahn Thaleo.”
I turned to face Valeria, at the same time stepping aside so that she could see Nazreen was here with me. Safe. Uninjured by me or by anything else. My palms prickled with awareness, the ghosting memory of her little hands.
“There you are,” Valeria said to Nazreen, her sight stars bouncing curiously between us. “Have you seen Fiona? Or Dalk? Oxriel said he saw them together earlier, but I can’t find them.”
Nazreen shook her head. “No. Why?”
Valeria’s mouth twisted. “I’ve just had a message from Chapman back in the Sea Sands. Dalk’s uncle, Taraken, is dying. I need to let him know and see if he wants me to take him back there with the shuttle.”
And suddenly another uncle was dying – my own – and naming me Gahn, with Warrek as his witness. I blinked the memory away.
“Shit,” Nazreen said. Her brows furrowed with worry that I wanted to press away with the pad of my thumb. “I have no idea where-”
“They returned to the mountain,” I said. “Dalk and Fiona both. I saw them head that way some time ago.”
“Oh,” Valeria said. Once again, her gaze – which had always been an observant and intelligent one – sliding between Nazreen and me.
As if taking measure of the distance between us.
“Alright, then. I’d better go look for them there.
” Then, more quietly, as if more to herself than anyone else, she added, “Let’s hope I’m not interrupting anything. ”