Chapter 11 Thaleo
THALEO
I’d spent much of the day on braxilk-back, monitoring the borog’s burrowing.
I had not yet seen the thing in person. Nor did it seem to be burrowing closer to my mountain.
So this gave me some relief. But still, things were heavy upon me as I flew back.
As I approached my mountain, flying over the lake where Linnet kept the brolka, I suddenly tightened my thighs and urged Yeralk to turn around in the air.
The new women were down there.
I saw two of them – Tilly and Fiona – wading around in the water with Zaria and Arton while their Sea Sand escorts watched them from the shore, unwilling to get wet.
Where was Nazreen?
Ah. There. She was seated near the shore, with what appeared to be a small brolka with its grey body laid across her lap.
Without even thinking about it, I directed Yeralk to land. Nazreen must have somehow sensed me coming. She suddenly tilted her head back to watch my descent. Even from a great distance, I found her sight stars seared me.
I did not land too close, not wanting to startle the brolka that had apparently made Nazreen’s lap its home. Once on the ground, I dismounted, letting Yeralk do as he pleased for the moment. He walked to the edge of the gently lapping water, dipping his head towards it to drink.
“Good morning, Gahn Thaleo,” Nazreen said, watching me.
One of her hands was planted beside and just behind her hip on the ground as she leaned back slightly.
Her other hand was idly stroking the wool of the brolka that had claimed her legs.
The thing was entirely draped over Nazreen’s thighs, limp with bliss.
I had a stunning desire to replace the brolka there.
To experience the quietly burning ecstasy of something as simple as laying my head in Nazreen’s lap on a sunny day.
I shook off the urge immediately. Then I approached her, standing in front of her, my claws a mere breath away from the strange, flat bottoms of the shells she wore upon her feet.
“You can sit down, if you like,” she said, tipping her head to the side to indicate the place beside her. “But I suppose you know that. You’re the Gahn. You don’t need an invitation to sit down somewhere in your own territory.”
She was right, of course. It was the very thing I’d made note of myself during the vaklok. That I had the right to sit anywhere, with anyone. And I had chosen the place beside hers.
But still…
Still, the invitation made something inside me hitch. Just a few days ago, I was not sure Nazreen would have ever offered me such a thing. I took a moment to brace myself against the gravity of her. So powerful that if I seated myself beside her now, I might not ever get back up again.
“I spent all morning and this portion of the afternoon sitting on Yeralk’s back. I will stand for now,” I told her.
She blinked, her gaze going down to the brolka, the fine wool she fingered.
“Suit yourself,” she said.
I suppose she expected me to move on from her after that, for she did not speak again.
In the warm quiet, sounds of splashing and laughter from the others drifted to us.
Dappled light dusted Nazreen with silver and gold and green – her sight stars so dark when she looked down that way, but blazing when she looked up, and the sun hit them.
“You have passed your morning pleasantly?”
Her head jerked up. I was correct. She had expected me to leave her and say no more. I should have, in all honesty. I had many things to do. But I did not find myself capable of it quite yet. It had been such a long day already. And being here with her made everything feel suddenly so much…
Not easier, precisely, because nothing that I felt for or around this new woman was easy.
Not even better, really.
Suddenly, it hit me with the force on arrow through my arm.
When I was with her, I did not feel like a Gahn.
I was merely a man. And there was such a wildly terrifying comfort in that. It was a strangely heady sensation. One I sometimes caught whispers of when leaping onto Yeralk’s back for a free fall into the aching sky. A feeling of weightless exhilaration. Of freedom.
But with her, it was not a whisper. It was a driving wind that, now I’d named it, I had no power to escape.
“Yes, we have,” Nazreen said, blithely unaware of the tempests raging through my insides. “Linnet’s around here somewhere. I really enjoyed chatting with her.”
“Did you?” I asked, feeling surprised by this. I had great respect for Linnet. But she could not ever be called a genial conversationalist, even by the most generous of judges.
“Yes, I did,” Nazreen said, her eyes on mine once more, as if challenging me not to believe her. “She had lots of good things to say about you, you know.”
Now I was even more surprised. That Nazreen had enjoyed speaking with Linnet. And that such an enjoyable subject had been, at least for some of the time, myself.
Perhaps Nazreen now realized what she’d just admitted to. Soft colour suffused her cheeks, a blooming warmth that made my claws twitch and, rather shamefully, my cock thicken with hot need.
“I didn’t mean that I was having fun gossiping about you or anything,” she said quickly. “Most of our chat was about other stuff. Like the brolka. And the fact that Linnet named her own braxilk after herself, which is both hilarious and impressive to me.”
“But she also spoke of me.”
“Yes. She said you’re a great Gahn. I don’t think she likes a lot of people, but I get the impression she certainly likes you.
Probably more than her own grandson, in all honesty.
” I felt suddenly grateful to Linnet, because I could tell that Nazreen put great stock in the old woman’s opinions – even the opinions about me.
“And she talked a lot about how strictly you follow traditions around things like the Vrika,” Nazreen added.
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
My scar ached. You are nothing but your tribe.
“Do you ever run into any problems with that, though?” she asked, her hand stilling on the brolka’s side. “Like, what happens if someone falls in love, then the Vrika chooses someone else?”
Falls in love. I’d never heard the term before. I pictured someone – a man, and one who rather looked like me – falling from a cliff.
“It has never happened in my lifetime,” I said.
“That you know of,” Nazreen countered. “Sometimes feelings are secret.”
There was no one on this mountain who knew such a thing better than me.
“There has never come a time,” I clarified, feeling an odd tension build between my shoulder blades, “that a man in my tribe has refused the Vrika’s call in order to choose someone else. It simply is not done.”
“But what would you do if it did happen?”
I suspected she would not like my answers. There was a warily suspicious look in the tightness around her eyes. Like she wanted to find fault with me, and knew she would if she only pressed this far enough.
“Why do you ask about scenarios that have not come to pass, and likely will not?” I asked her.
“I guess I’m just…Trying to get the measure of you.”
“Surely,” I said dryly, “you new women have better tools of measurement than this.”
Her pretty mouth dropped open.
“Was…Was that a joke?”
I twitched my tail.
And, great peaks of the Deep Sky, she laughed then, and maybe she was laughing at me, but I found I did not care.
Did not care for anything besides the bright, melodic sound she made, and the resounding answer I felt to my deepest core.
My body surged like a braxilk leaping to answer the call of its rider.
My chest felt full of light. An impossible thing – to have something like the sun inside your body.
But her laugh made me feel that way.
I’d never experienced such a thing before. Or, if I had, I could not remember when.
“See, this is what I mean!” she said, still laughing, but more quietly now.
“I never would have thought you capable of making a joke.” She tilted her head as she observed me.
Her hood was down, and this bared the side of her throat, bared the thrum of her pulse, a place I could perfectly imagine stroking with my knuckles. Or my tongues.
And just like that, I wanted to give her anything, even an honest answer to what she’d asked. Even if it made her laughter vanish and that guarded look come back into her eyes.
“To answer your question,” I said, once I found the power of my voice restored to me, because for a moment I had been struck entirely dumb by her, “I would not be able to allow anyone to ignore the Vrika’s call.”
She sighed, as if I’d confirmed what she already knew, and in the process had greatly disappointed her.
“You sound like Gahn Errok.”
I did not consider myself a prideful man. My ego had been largely cut down the day my uncle had cut my face. But I could not deny that this remark affected me, made my spine stiffen. A comparison to Gahn Errok was an insult of the highest order.
“Explain,” I said between clenched fangs.
“He’s the same way. He sent his own brother into exile for ignoring the Vrika’s summons.”
I did not like admitting that Gahn Errok was ever reasonable, but in this, I agreed with him.
“I recall that. A judicious choice,” I replied tightly. “I cannot say that I would do any differently.”
“Yeah. I had a feeling.”
“Clearly, you do not approve.” I had no idea why I said it. It did not matter if she approved or not. The Vrika’s mate bond was sacred and had to be protected at all costs. It kept us alive.
“I just…What about freedom? What about choice?” she asked. And I did not think she meant to infuriate me, or that she enjoyed arguing, but that that these questions were simply boiling inside her, and had to be let out.
“No single person’s freedom is worth the future of our entire tribe,” I said. “It is difficult, if not impossible, to produce children outside of a mate bond. My people know this.”