Chapter 13 #4
“Good to know my Rosie’s not the only one,” the male that strode past Daisy and right up to me joked.
Turning to Daisy’s mates as they rushed to her rescue, the male waved them off with a grin.
“I was just kidding. Growl all you want but we both know you can’t kill me.
I’m Mama’s second favorite son and my Rosie’s favorite. ”
“Fat headed No-yell only talk big, think ‘fraid Rosie mates, No-yell bapas,” one of Daisy’s carbon copy mates grumbled at him.
“I don’t know why,” Daisy sniffled out, “Dorothy is scarier than all of them when she gets cross.”
I’m not surprised Daisy sees it that way. It made me wonder if it was just that she’s intimidated by Dorothy.
“Or Joanie,” she added with a shudder.
“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Joanie was solid in my book. We’ve only met a few times but from what I saw she’s honest. Eccentric in a fun way, blunt in a way that’s not to be an asshole but to spill that truth, and she prefers to mostly keep to herself.
Dorothy has only ever been kind to me. She visits Doogie’s all the time and stops to chat with me.
After that day in front of her place, she never said a word about Dace.
Dorothy’s distant but polite to her, civil.
Considering Mina is her daughter-in-law, I get it.
What Dace did was fucked. She knows that, lives with it every day. She accepts the anger towards her.
All that given, I don’t have to sit there while people try to “educate” me like I’m an idiot. Maybe I am. Leave me be. Lump me in with her and let me go.
What Daisy is doing is going out of her way trying to poison the well. I’m about ready to throw her down one if she doesn’t stop.
“I’m fine,” I lied to this No-yell that is apparently one of Rosie, Joanie’s cousin’s mates.
Daisy tried to start in with her nonsense but No-yell looked at her sharply and softly rumbled out, “Enough.”
That shut her up quick.
“I’m fine,” I insisted.
“Say you fell down?” he asked.
“I stumbled.” Waving him off, I tried to thank him for his time and move along but Daisy sold me down the river.
I supposed a part of me should be thanking her for it from the way No-yell was frowning worriedly.
“Kehl’s mate, yes?” he asked.
Debating on how to answer that, I blurted as I realized I was just staring at him with a blank stare, “It’s complicated.”
“It’s not so complicated if he won’t sell to me because he says I was bad to you,” she snifflingly mumbled.
“For fuck’s sake! What do you want, a fucking note? Please sell shit to this goblin of a human being so she’ll leave me the fuck alone?” I snarled. That shut her up.
After the longest moment, No-yell’s gaze ping-ponging back and forth, Daisy mumbled, “Would that help?”
Don’t roar. She’ll just cry more. Don’t thump her into the ground— her two males might jump in and I’m no match for that.
Glaring at her, I bit out with a short look No-yell’s way, “Got something to write on and a pencil or something? A knife to slit my wrist and write it out in my own blood?”
No-yell produced a piece of home made looking paper and one of their charcoal looking writing implements.
“What- What are you doing?” Daisy leaned in curiously to have a look-see.
Turning the paper away from her, I cut it in half and tried to recreate the key Sunny had given me off of memory.
I got pretty far down before I realized I had an avid audience.
“You write Lo denaii?” Daisy blurted.
Glancing her way, I snarked sweetly, “You mean your special skills don’t include that?”
“No,” she admitted slowly, like I wasn’t being a jerk to her for pulling this shit with me.
Was Kehl really refusing to sell to her because of me?
Irked at this whole thing, the further upheaval to my already shit existence, I wrote what I felt.
“Let the bunny acquire,” I wrote out carefully using the symbols, adding the symbol that was an equivalent to a market.
There was no PS, or symbols for kiss or ass, so I settled for signing off with my name and a note below that told him to eat my fruit, with an added angry face doodle. Hopefully he figures it out.
“Here. Give this to Kehlro,” I grumbled. Folding it in half, I handed it over to her.
A bark of a laugh left No-yell at Kehlor’s butchered name.
Daisy took the note, happily, but had yet to make herself scarce.
I was in the middle of trying to convince No-yell, actual name Noyel, that I was just fine and dandy besides the grumbles dealing with idiots gave me, lying my generous rump off, when Dace came scrambling down the path.
“Berkie said he heard you growling!” Dace squeaked out worriedly.
“Berkr,” the male grumbled out as he followed closely behind her.
He was her shadow the second she left the hut, if he wasn’t on a hunt or the millions of other things the village beasts do to feed and protect us all.
Daisy’s instant frown, the almost hurt look on her face, were my first clue.
Her flat out scowl at Dace calling Berkr Berkie was my second.
A small, shocked laugh left me. “You asked him to join your harem and he told you no, didn’t he?” I was too out of it to keep this a quiet thought. My gaze darted from Daisy and her males, who seemed uncomfortable with the question, Daisy’s spluttering, red face, back to Dace and Berkr.
Berkr didn’t make a face but the grunt he let out said he was surprised I knew this.
“Berkie- Uh- Berkr only wants one mate. He says it all the time. Daisy has a lot of mates.” Dace laughed off the whole thing like it was silly. She meant no ill will. It sounded preposterous given that.
“That’s why you hate her,” I murmured.
“She really did hurt herself,” Daisy huffed and puffed.
No-yell sighed and gave up trying to convince me to get looked over in favor of packing up his bag to get the hell out of here before crap blew up. A wise choice.
“Who did? Are they okay?” Dace’s gaze darted around. “I just got some healing herbs from my garden. What happened?” Dace’s gaze fell to me. “Was it from the bread? You have to wait ‘til it cools or it’ll get you good. Carrie tried warning me but I didn’t listen the first time, either.”
“Is that what you told her?” Daisy bit out.
Dace blinked at the bite in Daisy’s words. Leaning in closer to me, she whispered, “What’s she talking about? I don’t understand.”
“She’s trying to imply you self harmed for attention using fire? Burning yourself? Or something of the like,” I surmised.
Dace held out her hands and tugged up her sleeves, exposing very well healed burn scars. With a little sigh that would have been much louder had it come from me, Dace murmured, “I was saving something from the fire.”
“What?” I asked, as Daisy blurted the same. Our tones varied wildly.
It had to have been important for her to reach into a fire for it and risk burning herself like that.
“My favorite book,” my closest friend in this whole godforsaken village whispered anxiously. She was fidgeting, awkward. That wasn’t all there was to the story.
“How did it get in the fire in the first place?” Daisy questioned.
My gaze darted from Dace to Berkr. He made a noise that told me he knew, and I had a feeling from the pained look that slipped it wasn’t Dace that had committed the act of tossing her book in the fire.
Dace has briefly mentioned they had a very complicated whatever it was because she didn’t even know.
When I tried to ask her about it, she started crying saying their kiss didn’t count but she wished it did.
I got nothing else out of her after that and am not nosy enough to pry more.
She loved him. I had no idea how or why, but Berkr and that Sorak she called Sorry had a piece of Dace’s heart.
Neither of them were deserving of it, if the things I’ve been told by everyone but Dace are true.
Dace’s gaze darted around helplessly, struggling to come up with an answer that suited Daisy. “I didn’t do it,” Dace blurted.
“Truth,” one of Daisy’s mates rumbled.
Daisy looked surprised by the fact. “Who would throw your favorite book in the fire?”
“Doesn’t matter. You have your answers,” I bit out sharply. “Dace never hurt herself intentionally so cut that shit out. It ends now. You want to hate her, fine, but check your facts before you go spouting off with your poisonous nonsense.”
“I didn’t hurt myself on purpose,” Dace blurted quietly, for only my ears.
“I know. It doesn’t matter. She’s just mad that Berkr didn’t want her.
She thinks he wants you and she doesn’t like you so she’s trying to punish you.
I have no use for someone that petty.” Motioning for us to leave, I moved past her.
Dace followed, her gaze darting from me to the group behind us. I didn’t need to look to see.
Berkr was still standing there, frowning at Daisy so hard I hoped she felt it.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” Dace admitted.
“Don’t have to say anything,” I said simply.
Daisy’s nonsense said it all. She’d pulled a Candy, to borrow from Dace’s old persona’s bologna.
There’d been a lot. She wasn’t proud of any of it but I think it gave her a sense of release to tell me it all, in all of its ugly glory.
She got it all out there tearfully, regretfully.
I wouldn’t have liked Dace when she went by Candy, her old life, the old her.
“I like that plan.” Dace nodded and we quietly made our way back to our hut.
With Doogie’s help we’ve not only learned some new skills but had plans to make the hut big enough to comfortably fit two people and a mess of pinky-sworn-to-secrecy tebbimenk.
It’s been a cram-packed crash course in village life since I got the wherewithal to get this all going and get to it.
It was a nice distraction but short lived. Too much time spent in my head, with my thoughts, was eating at me.
I missed the hell out of Kehl. I hated myself for admitting it. A part of me was pleased he’d given Daisy what-for, but it came at a price directed at me, however unintentional that may have been.