Chapter 11 #3
My mate is high off the ground now, at least twenty feet above us. The birds are riled, their angry cawing turning deafening. Some are starting to take to the air, and one swoops at Pashov’s back, which elicits a laugh from Harrec and Farli, and a horrified gasp from me.
I suddenly don’t want eggs anymore. This doesn’t feel safe. I just want Pashov back on the ground so he can put his arm around my waist and I can touch him and smile at him. Nothing else matters.
“Higher!” Harrec calls. I want to smack him.
Pashov reaches the next empty nest, and his shoulders move a little. He holds something aloft in the air, and it’s large, rounded, and a delicate speckled brown. An egg.
“Great, now just come down,” I whisper. He has to be thirty feet up by now. I’m tired of this. I don’t like it.
As I watch fearfully, Pashov tucks the egg into the front of his tunic.
He pries the nest off the ridge and tosses it to Farli below.
Instead of coming down, though, he moves his feet along a ridge of rock, climbing sideways instead of down.
He’s moving to a nearby empty nest. He reaches into it, and then brandishes another egg high into the air with a flourish.
My lips twitch with amusement at that. Show-off.
A bird swoops in from above. It attacks his upraised hand, knocking the egg away. I watch with slow-motion clarity as Pashov leans outward, trying to catch the egg—
—Only to lose his grip on the wall entirely.
Then he falls backward onto the canyon floor, and I’m screaming. This is my worst nightmare come to life, all over again.
I can’t lose him again, can I? Please, no.
Farli, Harrec, and I all rush forward, but we won’t be in time. Pashov lands on his back with a sickening crash, and then lies still.
A sob escapes my throat, and I fling myself to his side. “Pashov! Pashov!” I run a hand over his face. His eyes are closed, his body still, and my world feels like it’s ending all over again. I grab the front of his tunic and shake him, terrified. “Pashov!”
His eyes open.
Pashov gives me a slow smile and cups my face, pulling my mouth to his for a kiss.
What. The. Fuck.
I rear back, both relieved and shocked, even as Farli and Harrec break into laughter. Pashov grins, too. “It is not so big a fall,” he tells me.
My fear gives way to blinding fury. He thinks this is fucking funny? I curl my fingers into a fist and punch him in the shoulder.
He shrugs it off, grinning. “Do not be mad, Stay-see—”
Not be mad? He just risked his fucking life for a fucking egg and I nearly lost my mate again and everyone’s laughing and this is funny to them?
I punch him again, and then I can’t seem to stop hitting him.
They’re not hard hits—my hands are small and my strength is crap—but I need to get it out of my system before I start screaming and grab a knife and castrate him for being such a dick in this moment.
“Stay-see,” Pashov soothes again. “It is all right.”
“It is not fucking all right,” I say, punctuating my words with slaps. “You’re an asshole.” I jerk to my feet and turn my accusing stare on Farli and Harrec, who are still laughing. “All of you are assholes!”
Chompy belches at me.
That does it. I am out of here. I feel frustrated and terrified and full of anxiety and I don’t see the humor in this at all. I’m about to start crying, actually, and the last thing I want to do is get all blubbery in their faces. So I turn on my heel and leave.
“Remember to keep your fingers on the right-hand wall to find your way home,” Harrec calls after me, amused.
I shoot him the bird and continue marching away.
“Stay-see?” Pashov jogs after me and grabs at my arm.
I shrug his touch away. “Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
“You are mad?”
Oh, understatement of the year. “I am fucking furious.”
PASHOV
My mate has used the human curse word more times in the last few minutes than she ever has since I met her. I know this ‘fuck’ word. It is a very angry one. She has only used it a few times in the past—once when she sliced open her finger while dicing roots, and once when Pacy was being born.
I…I remember that. Delighted, I jog after my mate. I want to share this with her.
But Stay-see is marching away, her little back stiff with anger. Her shoulders are shivering—no, wait. That is not shivering. She is crying. She is hurting.
I turn back to Harrec and Farli, who are equally mystified. “What did I do?”
Farli shrugs, the nests in her arms. “She is worried you hurt yourself.”
“Pfft. Over that small drop?” It left me winded and made my ribs creak, but I have fallen from much worse. It is nothing to panic over…
And yet Stay-see is upset. Very upset. I have never seen her so furious. Mystified, I stare after her as she marches out of the canyon.
“Well?” my sister prompts.
I turn to look at her. “Well what?”
“Are you going to go apologize?” She juggles the two nests in her arms, twisting away before Chompy can grab at one with his teeth.
Am I? I pull the frozen egg out of my tunic.
It is still whole, rock hard and frozen solid in the frigid weather.
Stay-see will be pleased…I think. I got this for her.
All I wanted to do was make my mate smile.
Make her say Yes, Pashov, I want to be your mate again.
Please come back to my furs. But those were not the words she said.
I am fucking furious.
I do not want her upset. I want her smiling and hungry for my kisses.
Harrec scoops something off the ground and offers it to me. It is the other frozen egg. “Go after your mate,” he tells me. “Quit being a fool.”
“I am being a fool?” I echo, surprised.
“Are you not? You are here, talking to us, when you should be kissing your mate.” He takes one of the nests from Farli’s hands, drops the egg into it, then offers both to me with a grin.
“Go and tell her that you miss her and wish to take her to your furs. Everyone in the hunter cave is tired of your snoring. You should return to your mate.”
“If she will have me,” I say, dubious.
Farli rolls her eyes. “Do not be stupid, brother. Stay-see is upset because she worries over you. If she did not care, she would not worry so much. Go chase after her.” My sister thinks for a moment and quickly adds, “And tell her that she is pretty.”
“Pretty?”
“A female likes to be told she is attractive,” my sister lectures me as if she is the expert. “When was the last time you told Stay-see you thought she was pretty?”
I think…and I do not remember if I have told her that at all lately. I grunt acknowledgment; maybe Farli is right. I put the two frozen eggs in the nest and tuck it under my arm. “But what—”
Farli points at me. “You are thinking too much. Just go!”
I do. I turn and jog down the canyon after Stay-see. She is now out of sight, which means she is likely walking fast—storming—back to the vee-lage.
It takes a few moments, but eventually I can see her stiff little back as she marches through the valley alone.
She looks very small and lost, my mate. I feel a sense of unhappiness that she is so alone.
I should be there at her side, comforting her.
Stay-see is obviously scared and unhappy about something, and it is my fault.
I want to make her smile again.
She is also going in the wrong direction to get back to the vee-lage.
The thought makes me smile, because my mate is so sheltered and protected that she cannot even find her way around in a canyon.
In that moment, I vow that she will always be cared for enough that she will never have to worry about hunting, or hiking, or getting lost. I will protect her from the world.
But first, I must get her to stop crying.
I think for a minute, then begin to creep up behind her, my steps slow and silent.
There is not much snow here in the gorge—strange, since most of the valleys in our land fill up quickly with snow.
But this one is protected by the high lip that keeps the worst of the wind and snow out, and today I am thankful for it.
The lack of snow on the rocky ground means that I can move silently without my footsteps crunching.
I sneak up on her and watch her swaying backside as she moves.
And then I grab it.
Stay-see emits a shriek so loud that it echoes in the canyon. She jumps around and gives me an incredulous look. “What the fuck, Pashov!?”
Oh, the fuck word again. She is very angry. Perhaps that was a mistake. I shrug, trying to play my actions off. “I cannot help myself. I am fascinated by your lack of a tail.”
Her expression changes, softening. She swipes angrily at her cheeks. “I’m very mad at you right now. Don’t even try to be cute.”
Am I being cute? She starts to walk away again, and I follow her. “Tell me why you are angry, Stay-see.”
She ignores me, still trying to push past.
“Will you not speak to me?” I entreat again. “Tell me what I did wrong so I may fix it?”
“I don’t want to talk right now,” Stay-see says, a husky note in her throat, as if she is about to start crying again.
It tears at me, her unhappiness. It also frustrates me, because how can I know how to fix what I am doing wrong if she never tells me? Is she trying to push me away? To make me seek out another mate? So she can be with someone else…
Someone like Harrec?
Jealousy gnaws at me, hard and brutal in its intensity. “It will not work,” I declare, suddenly furious. “I will wait for you.”
She spins around again. “Wait for me? What are you talking about?”
“You will not invite me to your bed. You will not let me be your mate. You push me away. It does not matter.” I make a slashing motion in the air with my hands.
“You wait for my memories to come back, but they do not change who I am. They do not change that I am the mate that loves you. They do not change how I feel when I look at you.”
Stay-see stares at me. “And how do you feel when you look at me?”