2
Gleb
“You aren’t my leader.”
Of all the phrases I could have used to ruin my life, I chose to turn my back on the singular Chuchunya who loved me when I was orphaned.
However, the female nestled in my furs is my new family.
She’s my fated mate, I know it.
My body knows it. The sweet smile that plays on her lips as she sleeps is for me—even if we haven’t truly met yet. Fate led me to her days before she needed a Chuchunya to rescue her from the Arctic Ocean, so I could pull her from the frigid water and warm her back to life.
I survived my lonely childhood to belong to her.
Undoubtedly, without Sergei, I wouldn’t have made it to adulthood.
So why did I have to choose between him and my mate? Sergei is about twenty years older and raised me when our parents died in a cave collapse.
I lived in his dyla weturanya when I was too young to fend for myself. He taught me to hunt, fish, harness wild reindeer, butcher, dry fruit, and make necessities like soap.
If I had to pick a father, I’d say Sergei was mine.
When it was time for me to claim my own three dyla weturanya across our territory, he didn’t judge me for claiming my parent’s homes.
The rest of the clan was horrified that I wasn’t too upset to live in their abandoned caverns.
They didn’t understand I was too young when they died to remember my family.
I can’t hear their voices in my head or remember the seasons we spent together. They are fairytale characters everyone says I should know.
Sergei admits he raised me because of his admiration for my older brother.
Pyar was that great.
I guess the guy could do everything but walk on water…but I can’t picture his face.
Sergei said he was honored to step into Pyar’s shoes and become my mentor. He made sure I knew all about my perfect brother’s adventures. In my mind, Sergei’s as accomplished as Pyar’s legend—more so since he didn’t die before siring a kit. Maybe Sergei thought I would grow into someone great.
Did I prove him wrong or what ?
Something shifted in me when I held my fated mate in my arms.
I don’t know her name, but I’d know her energy anywhere.
My heart nearly leaped from my body when I saw her drifting out to sea on an ice sheet.
Sergei’s orders, the secrets of the Chuchunya, and my common sense shattered on the icy coast as I dove into the Arctic Ocean. My fur kept me insulated until I could rescue her and the baby she clutched to her chest. I learned the pigeon-faced older woman she traveled with was the baby’s mother, but I was willing to risk freezing to death for them…
The human male who claimed her before me…not so much… I ended that Svolch before he could lay another hand on her…
I blow the fiery anger from my insides with a deep breath toward the ceiling.
She’s in my dyla weturanya , asleep in my furs, with a belly full of the broth I made because I spooned the liquid into her lips.
Her former pleasure mate is squid food at the bottom of the ocean…or at least sank toward it when I left him behind.
She’s better off with me. I don’t know how, but dushevnayasvyaz is never wrong.
Now that I have mine, I’ll never let her go.
It’s Chuchunya clan tradition…even if I had to trade my place in the clan to have her.
Sergei and the others will never forgive me for stealing her when she was too in jured to consent, separating her from the other humans in her travel group, and what I did to her chosen male.
All those charges were before I directly disobeyed Sergei’s orders and abandoned the rescue mission to kidnap her.
“Madison!”
She screams for the hundredth time in her sleep, kicking her blankets to the floor.
She bolts upright as if struck by lightning.
“Shush, shush, svet kamina ,”
I say, urging her shoulders onto the warm bedding.
Wide brown eyes stare at me without seeing, half in dreams and half awake.
If she were fully awake, she’d shriek at my appearance.
“The baby is safe in her cradle with her mother. You needn’t worry about Madison.”
“Her mother? Her mother hired me to take care of her,”
she whines.
Tiny fists grind the sleep from her eyes and smooth down her fiery locks of hair.
I like them spreading across my pillows like a forest fire.
“Last thing I remember is the bus rocking violently…”
“There was an accident.
Madison’s mother is taking her home—”
“Jack took us outside.
I forced him to go back for Ms.
Greene while I held Madison.
She isn’t wearing a snowsuit! How will she survive the cold without her snowsuit? I should’ve dressed her, but I was so scared. Too scared. I’m scared of everything. Jack says it’s a problem. I shouldn’t be in the wilderness because I’m always scared. ”
“But you had a right to be scared,”
I whisper gently.
She grabs my forearms and pleads with glassy eyes filled with terror.
“The ice sheet where you stood broke off and floated to sea.
Do you remember swimming to shore? Madison would never have made it to safety without your strength and bravery. You carried her the whole way.”
“I carried her to safety? Where was Jack? Why didn’t he carry her?”
The confusion swimming in her deep brown eyes breaks my heart.
I want to be blunt and say her chosen Svolch would have drowned the baby if nobody was watching…but I can’t hurt her even in a verbal thrashing of my opponent for her heart.
“He refused.
You were engaged in a heated argument when I swam out to the ice sheet.”
I shouldn’t feel so smug about crushing her opinion of her former lover, but I do.
She’s mine.
I knew it the moment I laid eyes on her.
The human male with hair as black as his heart didn’t deserve her. He didn’t deserve the quiet, noble death I gave him.
“You swam out to sea to save us?”
“Of course,”
I say with a shrug, as if I hadn’t almost lost my life too.
Nightmares of black waves, numbing limbs, and the crying kit haunt my sleep.
High seas at night made the swim much different from when we dive for narwhals during the flat calm of the day.
“I carried your Ms. Greene while you carried Madison. Our arms were linked until we reached the shore and my clan brother, Serik, pulled you free. His mate, Kaitlyn, rushed Madison to another bus—”
“Where am I?”
Her question interrupts my practiced explanation.
She’s woken several times in the last sun cycle, asking for Madison, but never this alert.
I hope she remembers what I’ve said this time, so we don’t have to repeat this conversation…who am I kidding? I’d repeat this same day, every day, for the rest of my life, if it meant she was safe and content in my furs.
I pinch my lips together to hide my fangs as I smile at her.
This is the beginning of the rest of our lives together.
This moment.
She’s looking at me for the first time… I hope my fangs are hidden. Serik’s mate screamed and hid from his fangs for the first week they were together—although Serik’s fangs are exceptionally ugly.
My fangs are modest, but my mate is small and delicate, like Artyom’s Vera.
I hope her shape means her temperament is closer to Vera’s sweetness, too.
I don’t know if I could handle a female like Serik’s mean mate or Sergei’s fierce mate.
Even tiny Sveta who cries all the time scares the hell out of me. Mating her would be torture because I doubt she’s ever happy.
In all the trauma of the ice breaking into the Arctic Ocean, her bus sliding into the sea, swimming to the shore while protecting a kit who isn’t hers, and her rescue by Chuchunya snow monsters, my pretty mate has yet to shed a tear.
She has a brave heart in her skinny body.
It makes me want to wrap her in furs and protect her from the world.
“Accident? Am I in the hospital?”
She pushes against my hands, and I allow her to sit up.
Her long, red hair falls over her shoulders with the grace of feathers.
She twists the hem of the fur covering her lap, pausing to tuck her hair behind her ear.
The dozen silver fittings rimming her ear remind me of the nose ring Serik’s mate wears. I hope it isn’t an omen.
“Not a hospital.
Those are several days’ rides away,”
I say, shrinking into the shadows.
Her eyes bounce as she takes in her surroundings—too intelligent to miss my thick, fuzzy thighs on her bedside.
“I took you to my home to get out of the weather.
It’s snowing again.”
I hope she likes my northern home.
It’s different from the other Chuchunya homes.
I have a door that opens to the sea, the constant roaring of the ocean in the background, and two hot pools—one with salt water.
She may hate climbing through the rocky maze that shields my door from passing sailors, but I would happily carry her through it.
I don’t have a fire pit inside my entrance, so I boil water sparingly.
Until my dushevnayasvyaz instincts changed my scent, females said my home stunk of fish.
I guess it’s nature’s way of keeping them from my mate’s place.
“Thank you,”
she says, hugging her middle.
What did she pull from her pocket, a leaf? “I can pay you for your hospitality.
This is all I have with me, but I can reimburse you as soon as I can use a phone.
Can I use your phone to call Ms. Greene?”
“I don’t have a phone.”
She tries to hand me the crumpled piece of greenery, but I won’t touch it.
There’s no way I’ll accept payment for taking what’s mine and cherishing her.
The thought of it shrivels my honor to a dried berry.
I just wish I knew what she was offering. What makes this leaf so valuable?
“I know it’s American money, but my Canadian money sank with the bus.
The exchange rate isn’t great, but it’s a start,”
she says, shaking the leaf at me.
“Canadian or American, I have no need for your last bit of moon,”
I stammer, not knowing whether to call it an herb or not.
“I house you because you need me, not for payment.”
“I guess I should introduce myself since I’m hogging your bed.
I’m Hannah.”
More finger twisting until her digits turn purple with decreased blood flow.
“Hannah, I’m Gleb, and there’s no way you’re anything like a boar.
They smell terrible, gore anything that moves with their nose tusks—”
I pause to lean over to mock examining her nose “—nope, no tusks for goring.
I may not be the best hunter, but there’s no way I’d put a hog in my furs.”
My chuckle dies in my throat when she doesn’t laugh along.
What did I do to widen her eyes into a look of horror?
I leaned into the light.
“Hannah, I can explain.”
“No need,”
she says, placing a palm on my chest.
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath to steady herself.
I find myself breathing with her.
She rests her other hand over her heart as if connecting us.
My fists clench to rein in my desire.
Could she be a doctor who studies cryptids like Vera? She called herself a nanny in her sleep, but I don’t know what that is.
“I’m part of the ComicCon community and we welcome furries as well as their human counterparts.
If you question whether you can interact with me in your human form, know I’m a safe person.
Do you have a handler who lives with you?”
“I live alone,”
I murmur.
What’s a ComicCon, furry, and a safe person? Why would I think her dangerous? Because I joked about her calling herself a hog? Why does she think I need a parent or handler? Do I look like a kit? I’m one of the smaller Chuchunya but I’m four times her size!
“If you get too hot in your suit, you don’t have to stay in your fursona—especially in your own house.
Whatever makes you comfortable—”
She doesn’t have to ask me twice.
The other mated pairs wasted months, misreading clues, not listening to one another, and fighting.
I throw back the covers and climb in next to Hannah.
The little ‘ oops ’ and ‘ omfs ’ she emits are adorable. She scoots against the wall to accommodate my larger frame. I don’t have to ask if she’s happy with my body curled around her because she says “okay, okay”
repeatedly.
With me taking up most of the bed and my cock pressing her hip, she can’t deny her male is large…and definitely not a kit.
“Well, this is…cozy,”
she says, shifting closer to the rocky wall.
She jumps and clutches my arm when her shoulder hits the ice.
“Oh, that’s cold.”
“Best not lean upon the ice, not when my body heats itself to warm you.
We are over three kilometers under the permafrost, so the cavern is warmer than outside, but the walls are frozen rock.”
“Then how are you so warm? Oh, the suit.
Your furry suit must be a key to your survival out here.
The next time I dare to travel the Arctic, I’ll wear a fluffy bunny or snow fox fursona.
For now, I’ll steal your body heat as long as you offer…if yo u don’t mind.”
“Please,”
I exhale as she snuggles against my arm.
As her eyelids drift closed, and her lashes fan over her cheeks, my heart fills with love.
She trusts me to keep her safe and warm…or has run out of coherent thoughts due to her panicked state.
Whatever makes her coil her limbs around me like a berry vine, I am grateful.
If we could stop time and erase everyone else in the world, life would be perfect.
But each time her nightmares wake her, she’s quicker, and one of these times, she will sift through my flowery words and realize she cuddles her pleasure mate’s murderer.