Chapter 2 Thaleo
THALEO
“Welcome to the vaklok,” I said.
My tribe, the red Bitter Sea male Grim, and the new women stared back from their places on the benches. The green of Nazreen’s sight stars, deeper than their usual piercing shade in the dawn-dim glow, was all I could focus on. She was seated near the front, towards the end of the second bench.
“The vaklok,” I continued, “is a Deep Sky tradition wherein the unmated males of our tribe may participate in feats of strength and skill. We are honoured to not only have our mated tribe members and their children here to watch, but also the new women.”
Perhaps it was disingenuous of me to welcome the new women when I only looked at Nazreen. I did welcome all of them. I truly did.
But I only cared to look at her.
She met my gaze steadily with those sight stars of shadow and green.
Elegant brows were composed above her eyes, her lips drawn into something that was not quite a frown.
Her hair, thick and dark and curling in a way that made me want to reach out and stroke it, to rub the strands between my fingers and my thumb, tumbled luxuriously about her shoulders, not yet hidden by the hood of her cloak.
It was bewildering, how features so foreign, so entirely strange in every shape and stroke, could come together in such a way as to make a man’s claws curl into fists.
Otherworldly. That was what she was. Beauty like the unknown darkness between stars.
She was watching. Waiting.
They all were.
Gahn of this place and leader of the vaklok, I went on.
“The first round of the vaklok will be an archery competition. The second round will be a braxilk-riding race. The third round, after we break for a ceremonial morning meal, will be hand-to-hand combat.”
The Sea Sand men shifted behind me as I spoke. It was unlikely any of them would fare well against my men in either archery or braxilk riding. But perhaps, in combat, they believed they had a chance.
“Warrek,” I called to my closest warrior, “you may set up the targets for the first round of events.”
Warrek jumped to heed my commands immediately, stringing up the targets for the archery competition. I watched him for a moment before turning back towards the benches. There were many empty places among my people. Too many.
There were not enough of us.
There was little I could do about that right now. I’d already done what I could to ensure that the new women spent more time here. The rest would be up to the Vrika. For now, all I needed to do was sit and observe the vaklok.
Sit in an empty space.
So many choices.
And only one I wanted.
It was not often that I flaunted my title. I was not Gahn Errok.
But now…
Now, I found myself striding forward, telling myself that I was Gahn, and the Gahn could sit anywhere he so pleased.
And so, I sat down. Right next to Nazreen.
I did not touch her. The narrow space between us beat like a heart.
Even slightly apart from her as I was, I was cuttingly aware of her soft intake of breath, the tension that entered her small frame.
“I thought all unmated males participated in the vaklok,” she said.
Her tone was very smooth and even mildly curious, not betraying any other sort of emotion.
If she wished for me to sit somewhere else, she did not express it.
I was not sure if this was good or not. Good, that she would tolerate me beside her…
Or bad, because she hid her true desires from me. Even if those desires were for my absence.
“Not the Gahn,” I explained to her. “It is already established that the Gahn should be the strongest, that he excels physically over the men in his tribe. It is unnecessary to compete, even if unmated, just to prove what is already known.”
Strangely, this was the first time since taking my title that I nearly wished I could compete. My tribe knew me, knew my strengths. They did not need to see it.
But Nazreen did not know me. What would she think, to see my arrows shoot true, to see my braxilk fly hard, to see me send male after male to the ground? To see me, Gahn, warrior, Thaleo, the man who conquered all?
Would she turn the obliterating loveliness of those green sight stars on me with something other than her usual guarded wariness?
Would she smile for me? Would she cheer and call me champion?
Likely not. And I was more painfully foolish than I’d realized to even contemplate such a thing.
Even now, Nazreen held some sort of sign bearing the face of the Sea Sand man Zoren in her hands.
All the new women had them. But only Nazreen’s bothered me.
I watched her lovely, clawless fingers on the sign, fighting the throttling urge to snatch it from her and tear it into bits.
Was this jealousy? If it was, I could not name it for certain.
Nor did I know what to do with it. My uncle, when he’d been Gahn, had always warned me against the disastrous selfishness of hoarding my emotions for myself.
He’d dragged his own knife down my face when I was but a cub, gouging deep from hairline to cheekbone.
Then, he’d stood there watching me to make sure I did not whimper or weaken or reach for the Vrika’s blood.
“You will be Gahn,” he’d told me, my blood dripping from his blade, “and when you are Gahn, you will disappear. There will be no hunger but your people’s hunger.
There will be no pain but that which your people feel.
You have no wants. No needs. There is nothing but the tribe. You are nothing but your tribe.”
He’d crouched down in front of me then, his sight stars vivid in the gloom of the mountain cave. “Do you bleed, Thaleo?”
“No, Gahn,” I’d replied, so much blood coursing down my face that I could not see from my left eye.
“Do you need Vrika’s blood?”
“No, Gahn.”
And I didn’t. I healed on my own, if slowly.
And even if the scar still ached to this day.
But the ache did not matter. It was hardly even real. There is no pain but the pain of my people.
I had not felt anything for myself for so long.
And what I felt now for the strange, high-nosed, dark-haired new woman beside me…
It seemed to belong only to me. It was cut off from my people. Had nothing to do with them at all, this throb of unshakeable fixation for a woman not of my tribe.
A woman not even of my world.
But she was in my world now. In my mountains, at my vaklok, so close beside me that I could catch the soft shell of her low ear between my fangs if I only bent and tilted my head the right way.
So close that it hurt.
But this hurt was only mine, too, and it was not my people’s and therefore it was not real. There would be no healing for it.
So I would simply sit there beside her and feel it and pretend that I didn’t.
I would blink fresh blood from my eye and say, “No, Gahn. I do not bleed.”
“The first two events of the vaklok are concluded,” I announced, standing up from where I’d been seated beside Nazreen. “The ceremonial meal will now begin.”
It was harder to say the words than I would have anticipated.
I was not looking forward to this aspect of the vaklok.
My Deep Sky men all sat, knowing what was to come.
The Sea Sand men did not. The brash one, Dalk – who’d caused so much trouble when I’d once taken him prisoner – began striding towards the food laid out in the shade.
“No,” I called, halting him. “The competitors do not fetch their own food during the vaklok. The traditional meal is to be brought to them…” My throat tightened. The words seemed stuck as I looked down at Nazreen, who stared carefully ahead. “…by the new women.”
“How can this be tradition if the new women have never even been here for a vaklok until this one?” Dalk asked, his sight stars, an odd, deep orange sort of tint, like late-day sun glinting on dark stone, fixed pointedly on me.
I returned his gaze calmly, masking the fact that I was likely just as perturbed about this part of the vaklok as he was.
“The tradition is that the unmated women of the tribe bring the food to the vaklok’s competitors,” I explained.
Nazreen shifted slightly in her place beside me, drawing every one of my senses towards her.
My ears strained without moving. My tail just barely twitched as I restrained it from reaching for her.
“They are not of your tribe,” snapped Dalk.
“No, they are not,” I conceded. But with any luck and the Vrika’s will on our side…
They soon would be.
“Why can’t everyone help bring the food?
” asked the new woman with the dark flowers on her skin, Fiona.
“There are twenty hungry guys down there and only three of us. Give some of those kids a job; they’ve got the energy to spare.
” She gestured her tiny, clawless thumb towards the cubs seated with their parents on the benches behind.
Before I could explain why such a thing would be considered a horrific perversion of the tradition, Zaria responded.
“That would be highly inappropriate! The delivery of the food is symbolic. Symbolic of a potential, future mate bond. By handing over the ceremonial meal, you are handing over a small piece of your future, acknowledging that any one of them might be your mate.”
And therein lay my own discomfort. Discomfort about watching Nazreen distribute little pieces of herself among my men…
And not to me.
“Alright, fair. I see why that would be extremely weird for a kid to do,” Fiona replied.
“Or a mated woman,” Zaria added. She smiled at Fiona. “You have no idea how glad I am that you are here. At the last vaklok, I was the only unmated woman. I had to hand-deliver each meal to the men.”
“I mean, we’re glad to help, of course,” the new woman with the black puff of curly hair, Tilly, said. “But I don’t know about this whole symbolic ‘you could be my mate’ thing.”
Nazreen said nothing. Why had she said nothing?
“I understand that this may feel foreign to you,” Zaria replied, “but the truth of the matter is that if you do not bring food to them, they will not eat.”