Huntsman (The Hunted Kingdom #1)

Eshe

BEFORE …

I slowly blink, sleep clinging to me, for a moment refusing to release me. But then my mother’s voice penetrates the thick gray fog blanketing my mind, and just as she grips my shoulder and shakes me, I’m already rolling over and sitting up.

“Ma, what’s wrong?” Throwing back the bedcovers, I swing my legs over the side of the mattress. The last wisps of sleep vanish, and I’m alert, ready, as she’s taught me to be over the past five years since I turned eleven. Fighting age. Killing age. “Where’re you going?”

And somebody’s about to die.

As the queen, or the oba, of the Mwuaji family, she’s not above getting her hands dirty. But she also has plenty of people under her to handle that. So, if Aisha Diallo is making a personal appearance, best believe somebody’s going to bleed. A lot.

Excitement churns in my gut, but so does anxiety.

So does fear. And I hate the nasty taste of that.

Hate that I can’t get rid of it no matter how hard I’ve convinced myself I’m better than that, I’m stronger than that.

Fear doesn’t give a fuck about my damn-near-hourly mantras.

It’s been sticking to my ass like a fucking penicillin-resistant STD.

The shame crawling behind that knowledge has me launching from the bed, almost running across the room to my closet for my own clothes.

I don’t want to leave my mother’s side, to be left behind.

Part of me bitterly acknowledges it’s because I’m scared of what will happen—again—if I am.

If I’m out of her sight once more. Staring into the closet full of clothes, I’m suddenly a little girl clinging to her mother’s shirttails instead of a nearly grown, scarred young woman who’s been through hell and back.

“What’re you doing?” she asks, just as my hand closes around the neck of a shirt that’s identical to hers. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“With you.” I jerk the shirt off the hanger and quickly tug it on, shoving my arms into the sleeves and yanking it down over my tank top.

I’m reaching for a pair of pants when her flat but firm “no, not this time” halts me.

The fuck?

Frowning, I lower my arm and turn around to face her.

Immediately, an insecurity I’d never experienced prior to three weeks ago floods into my chest, threatening to drown me in doubt and uncertainty.

My fingers curl and straighten in a reflexive motion, and I welcome the flash of pain in my barely healed hand.

The stitches around the place where my right pinkie finger used to be were removed a week ago, but the physical and mental ache haven’t gone anywhere.

I’m betting they won’t for a while. Especially the mental.

Giving my head a small shake to try and rid myself of useless and agonizing thoughts, I look back at my ma standing at the foot of my bed, arms crossed over her chest, her long, slim legs spread slightly apart.

“You think I’m weak now,” I whisper.

Fuck, I wish that hadn’t come out sounding so … soft. So scared.

“Weaker, yes.”

My belly bottoms out, then seizes in a cramp.

Her thick eyebrows furrow over narrowed hazel eyes, both of which she passed down to me along with her wide, full mouth.

But my thicker, shorter frame, dark auburn hair, and strong, almost-too-sharp features come from the father I barely remember since he died nearly a decade ago.

I can’t help but compare us. Maybe if I were taller, leaner, fucking stronger, I wouldn’t have been taken.

Tortured.

Broken.

Maybe she wouldn’t believe the same thing.

“I’m not,” I object on a telling rasp.

“Don’t be silly or prideful. Both will get you fucked up, Eshe.

” Her harsh words aren’t softened by a tender or gentle tone.

There’s nothing tender or gentle about the reigning queen of the Mwuaji.

And yet I’ve never doubted her love for me.

Not even in this moment when she’s emotionally eviscerating my confidence.

“You were kidnapped, held hostage, beaten, and mutilated. That would fuck up anyone’s mental even if their body were fully healed.

And you’re not healed. Not in any way. So, yeah, you’re weaker than you were before. ”

I swallow hard, dipping my head so I don’t have to see the disappointment in her eyes. Disappointment where there used to be only pride.

“Look at me, baby girl.” The order comes just a second before two fingers grip my chin and tilt my head up.

“It also means you’ll get stronger, faster, sharper, wiser.

You’re going to be a gotdamn force to be reckoned with and a better oba than me and your grandmother.

Any good leader and ruler must know weakness in order to burn it from her body.

She must experience brokenness in order to be pieced back together and forged into something unbreakable.

Leaders who haven’t been through hell won’t have the strength or cunning to not only avoid going through it again but to do anything in their power to save their people from it.

So don’t despise being weak, Eshe. Embrace it.

Sit in it. Learn from it. Then do what it takes—steal whoever’s life it takes—to eradicate it. ”

Her gaze burns into mine for several seconds as if she can brand her words into my brain; then she releases me and, pivoting on her heel, stalks toward my bedroom door.

The sharp, hurried movements snap me from my temporary paralysis, and I turn back to the closet to snatch down the pants.

Swiftly, I drag them over my sleep shorts.

You’re going to be a gotdamn force to be reckoned with and a better oba than me and your grandmother.

Her words rev and race in my head like the engine of her favorite Dodge Challenger. I can’t believe or accept that promise in this moment. Mainly because it would mean losing my mother. For me to be oba, she would have to die.

I want no parts of that shit.

“No, Eshe. I meant what I said. You’re not coming with me. Not this time,” Ma snaps.

“Okay,” I say, my voice even while I zip my pants and fasten the button.

I’m not arguing. Since I was fourteen, I’ve been right by her side as she ran our family. She hasn’t excluded me from anything—not a meeting with the family kapteni or a negotiation with an arms dealer, not a killing of a betrayer to the Mwuaji.

Blood before belief.

The Mwuaji creed.

Meaning family before everything, including faith.

I’ve been spoon-fed that creed since before I was old enough to understand its power.

And though I love this family, I’d slit every one of their throats and watch them slowly bleed out while eating a bag of Funyuns before turning my back on Aisha Diallo.

She’s not just my queen; she’s my mom—my everything.

Which is why if she thinks I’m letting her leave without me, she’s been hitting that good shit we sell. Broken or not, I’m going to be by her side.

Yeah, and you need to prove that you’re not a liability. That you’re still worthy to be by her side.

“Eshe, I’m not telling you this as your mother but as your oba: Stay. Here.”

I freeze again.

Dammit. Gotdammit.

“That’s not fair,” I breathe.

My mother, I could disobey. But my queen? I can’t. And she knows that.

Damn her.

She gives a soft snort. “Pretty much nothing in life is fair, baby girl. You’ll find that out on your own. And, as the future oba of this family, it’s your place, your duty, to make that shit balance out as much as possible. Remember that, Eshe.”

Future oba. There she goes again. What the fuck? Does she know something I don’t? Fear whistles through me. Is she … is she sick and hasn’t told me?

“What’s with this teachable moment, Ma? Where you going?”

“Business meeting.”

“Then why can’t I go?” I demand, frowning. “I’ve been able to before. What’s so different with this one?”

“Because I said so, Eshe. I’m not doing this with you. Now wait here until either I get back or Zuri comes for you. Me or Zuri, baby girl. No one else. And do not go back to the obodo. You understand me?”

She doesn’t want me to go home, to the Mwuaji compound? Why? And why wouldn’t she return for me? Yeah, Zuri is her right hand, the person she trusts most besides me. But why…?

An ugly, grimy feeling winds its way up from my churning stomach to coil around my ribs. What the fuck is going on?

“Eshe? Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Ma,” I murmur, my mind whirling.

“Good.” She nods and reaches for the door handle, but she hesitates, her hand hovering above it. For a second, her head bows, her shoulders drop. Shock ripples through me like a tidal wave. I’ve never seen my mother look … tired.

Defeated.

But just as I move toward her, that head lifts, her chin raised in the proud, stubborn tilt I’m used to. Her shoulders rise, pulling back as if drawn by a bow. When she looks at me, a fierce light seems to glow in those eyes, all golden brown and green.

“Remember who you are, Eshe. Remember whose you are. Never forget that.”

Before I can loose the questions piling up in the back of my throat, she gives me a firm nod and exits the room, not once looking back.

I remain standing there, frozen, for long moments, possibly minutes. Long enough to hear the muffled purring of her engine start and fade. It isn’t until the deafening silence crowds in on me that I snap into motion.

“Nah, fuck this.”

I whip around to the closet and grab my boots, then drop to the bed. Quickly, I stuff my feet into them and jerk the laces tight. After shooting to my feet, I stride across my bedroom and out the door. Instead of heading for the front door, I cut a left for the kitchen and the rear door.

Since we’re at our cottage—the place we retreat to every summer for a couple of weeks—I don’t have to worry about avoiding a security detail.

Ma doesn’t ever bring one with us. And as I open the rear door and step out in the crisp autumn night, I’m reminded why we came here in mid-October instead of July.

Like I’m a damaged animal, I was brought here to lick my wounds.