Chapter 1
Khawla
Moving back and forth in front of my home, I tried to ease the restlessness that had sunk deep into my bones.
The winter had been fierce, hard, but not impossibly long.
It felt like it had lasted forever, but that might have just felt that way after being cooped up indoors with three younglings for days on end.
Nisha did not handle the cold well, but she did not want to wear her coat or tail warmer.
Daois and Rasho got into arguments and tussled every five minutes, begging me to go hunting with them in between bouts.
I was ready for a break that lasted more than a few hours, when one of my brothers would watch the unruly lot.
“I heard the new Queen has a job for you, Scout,” Reshar said, coming around the side of my home on silent scales.
There was still a thin layer of snow on the ground that had muffled his approach, but he also kept his scales oiled and smooth to avoid any hint of a whisper.
Reshar might act the lazy former prince from time to time, but he was a ruler through and through.
It did not sit well with him that a new Queen meant he’d lost all previous status.
No longer was he a prince; now he was just another of the hunters.
I shrugged. She had not formally called for me yet, but the hunters at the campfires had all been whispering about it.
It would not be long. While I had just been thinking of needing a long break from my noisy children, I did not actually want to leave—let alone scout the skyship wreck on the border of our territory, where it bordered on Sun Fang Clan land.
Not that we had issues with our neighbors; the archer Clan kept to themselves and their hunting ground beyond their village.
I used to love vanishing into the forest or the plains, becoming one with nature for a while and not thinking about the future or responsibilities.
That had been especially true when Kusha was alive.
Once, when we were young, she had been my very best friend.
That’s why, when we got a little older, we decided to perpetuate a lie that would ensure I’d never lose my place in the village.
Once, that had been what Kusha feared most—losing her strongest protector and staunchest ally.
Reshar was waiting for an answer, but he was a patient male.
His sleek, azure body was propped against the side of my wood-and-clay home, draped casually.
As a concession against the cold, he’d pulled on a long-sleeved tunic lined with fur and a hat that covered his ears and brow.
He’d still made sure to leave his long, pale-blue hair free about his shoulders, and the open collar at his throat exposed the glint of azure scales.
In every way, Reshar was the ideal standard of what a Thunder Rock male should look like. I was not that.
The truth was, Kusha had been right all those years ago.
Without her, without pledging my full loyalty to her life, I would have been without a home, without a Clan, and without my sweet, beautiful children.
The Queen then, Reshar’s mother, would have seen me cast out far sooner than any other male because of my deviating appearance.
Kusha’s plan had worked; she’d kept me safe, and in return, I’d endeavored all this time to do the same for her—and I had failed.
The black cloud of grief—but mostly guilt—threatened to swallow me then.
I touched the scars that weren’t there but should have been along my chest. Artek the Shaman had done too good a job healing me.
Then I fingered the strap of leather across my face, which covered my damaged right eye.
The orb had been saved, but not the vision, and scarring had turned it milky white.
Not only had I failed to protect Kusha from death; my failure had deprived my children of their mother.
The guilt of that was ready to eat me alive.
“Hey,” Reshar said, but it wasn’t because he’d run out of patience.
The younger male had a hint of command to his voice that most of his peers—even the older hunters—responded to with alacrity.
He reined that in now, though not to anything particularly soft or full of pity, which I appreciated.
He’d straightened, and now he said firmly, “It is not your fault. Females take the biggest risks in their lives when a Queen position is up. They were the ones who chose to travel through Bitter Storm territory to find and fight Sazzie. They were the ones who could not wait or accept her vow that she was stepping down.”
Sazzie was Reshar’s sister, but as far as I knew, the two had never been close.
Not the way Zathar and Sazzie had been when they were little.
The former crown prince and now leader of Haven had received several stern lectures from his father—when he was alive—and from other older hunters, urging him to stop protecting his sister.
It was not doing her any favors. Having a young daughter myself now, I wondered, though…
Kusha had changed after Nisha was born; I’d seen it with my own eyes.
She’d nursed sweetly and doted on both our boys, but Nisha had barely received enough milk to thrive.
I had been forced to supplement on many occasions with milk from nursing Vakarsa or Arazal.
After Nisha, Kusha had withdrawn from parenting entirely, almost rejecting her children, even the boys.
She had become more ambitious and cruel too, threatening on more than one occasion to expose our secret if I did not do as she wished.
“Tell that to my sons,” I said firmly to Reshar.
“I will take whatever mission the new Queen gives me, as is my duty.” I did not bow to him or dip my horns to my throat in respect, as I might have in the past. The former princeling’s mouth tightened, but he said nothing.
With him, you could not be sure if that was because he was annoyed by the slight, the reminder of his change in status, or if something else was running through his too-clever brain.
“So you will, and so you should,” Reshar agreed with me.
He straightened away from the wall of my home and slithered closer to where I’d halted at the sound of his first words.
He paused at my side and looked out over the village, turning his head left and right to observe the many empty homes.
Often, females had their own place, and almost a dozen had died or vanished after the fights for succession had started.
Now we had a Queen, one who’d risen suddenly from the groups of lower-ranking females.
A weak Queen, everyone thought, because our strongest, fittest, most suited females had all perished thanks to Bitter Storm’s interference.
This Queen had already made changes all over the village to leave her mark and cement her power.
She’d suspended all boys from learning our ancient script to start with, and made it clear there was no treaty with Haven now that Zathar’s mother was dead.
It was open season on humans. If there was one thing I knew, it was that Reshar did not agree with that.
He was fascinated by the choice his brother and sister had made, and, the truth was, he was not the only hunter who felt that way.
I didn’t know where I stood on the matter, but I wasn’t one to kill or shun others just because they were different.
I was different, my younglings were different, and they were already struggling to make friends because of it.
Daois had my purple eyes, Rasho had begun to lose the luster on his scales, going as muted as mine were.
And Nisha? She was most strikingly mine, and it got her bullied by her peers, turning her fragile confidence to dust.
I eyed the male next to me and realized he’d dropped his gaze from the village to glance over his shoulder at the door to my home, his thoughts pensive.
“When you are away, I will watch out for them. But don’t stay gone too long, Khawla.
I have a bad feeling.” Then he darted away, moving smoothly over the wooden walkway above the mud and snow to wind back to one of the bachelor campfires.
His words left me with a sense of horrible unease in my gut, a disquiet I could not shake.
I wanted to leave even less now, and forget about a break for some quiet time.
I needed to stay here and keep Nisha and her brothers safe.
The sound of voices rising inside my home forced me to turn back and go inside so I could break up the fight.
Of course, Daois and Rasho had gotten into it again, but from the sound of it, Nisha was the one caught in the middle this time.
My hand was on the door just as my brother, Arosha, showed up.
His expression was harried, his dark hair a little messy and tangled, and at least three stains decorated the front of his tunic.
That was probably not his fault; he just had a household full of younglings.
His place, by default, the daycare epicenter for all hunters to bring their children when they went out to hunt that day.
Arosha was a bit clumsy and a terrible hunter, but we all valued him for what he did bring to the village, his role was vital.
For him to show up meant he had to have found someone to watch the brood currently in his home.
Whatever he had to say was important, very important.
He’d probably overheard that I was about to be summoned by the new Queen.
Kind heart that he had, he was here to take charge of my younglings so I would be free to go.