Chapter Six
From the moment he lost sight of her, Thanred’s pulse quickened. The reaction was unusual for him. Things didn’t normally... faze him in that way. His stomach hollowed, an empty feeling settling inside him.
As the time grew longer, he began pacing, beating back the panic that kept crawling through him. Questions began to fill his mind. Why had he trusted her? What if she didn’t return? Would he really be able to find her?
He trusted his scent. It was what had led him to her in the first place. But that had been a pleasant coincidence. She’d been offered there. Perhaps not for him, but for the Dranark. He had known there would be something there. Her scent had only helped him narrow in on her.
Now that he had left her to the wide, wild woods, she would be able to run wherever she pleased.
His palms began to sweat. He cursed himself for letting her out of his sight. If he couldn’t find her, if she was lost to him, the hunger would consume him, and he would...
His shoulders sagged as he saw her emerging from the forest, her arms filled with twigs and a few larger branches. The air left his lungs in a loud, undignified-sounding sigh. He collected himself just as she knelt before him, laying the firewood at his feet.
“I’m sorry I was gone so long, Master,” she said, bowing her head.
His cock lurched at her submission. He watched as she began arranging the twigs, scattering dry leaves beneath them.
He’d heard stories of how the humans controlled fire, how they’d sent arrows of fire sailing through the air during the Cramick Wars. That was before they’d been defeated and forced to hole up inside their palisades. His grandfather had told many a story.
He continued to watch her as she took a clump of dry grass, arranged it on a log, picked up a sharp stick and began twisting it against the wood. His eyes roamed her body, his fascination with her growing as smoke began to waft from the tip of the stick.
Something flickered.
Thanred took a step back as embers began to lick up from the grass.
Royla deftly crouched over the grass and blew a gentle breath, giving life into the fire.
His eyes widened at how adept she was.
Picking up more grass, she covered what was already burning.
That caught fire next. Moving the log, she transferred the crackling, sparking grass onto the pile of sticks.
Flames licked at the wood, some of them catching, crawling up until they were dancing from the top of the heap.
Soon the whole pyramid was engulfed, a gentle fire roaring between them.
She looked up at him and smiled.
Something softened inside him. Of all the stories about humans he’d heard, never had anyone told him they could be this clever.
“Does it please you, Master?” she asked quietly.
He answered with a single nod.
She reached behind him and picked up the rabbit he’d killed. Picking up a rock, she began to chop at it.
He watched, puzzled as the creature’s fur came off, exposing the meat underneath. She worked quickly, and this made him more curious, how she could be so skilled. He’d never seen a human female be anything but a vessel for Dranark seed.
It wasn’t long before the rabbit had been skinned, a stick pierced through it, and Royla was holding it above the fire.
His lust became stronger. He wanted to take her then and there, claim her, spill his seed onto her beautiful breasts and mark her as his. But he knew she was hungry and desperate to eat.
So, he waited, watching the meat cook until it began to fall off the bone. When the outside was ever so slightly charred, Royla pulled it away from the fire.
She brought the meat up to her mouth to take a bite, then paused. Glancing at him, she offered him the stick.
A pang of something, something so foreign he couldn’t name it, gripped his chest and wouldn’t let go. That something softened the anger and betrayal that had been brewing since his humiliating exile. His throat tightened. He breathed deeply, trying to suppress the emotions that welled from within.
“Please,” she said quietly. “Try some.”
Taking the stick from her, Thanred had to steel his nerves to keep his hand from shaking. Suddenly she was so much more than just a vessel. She was another living, breathing thing, offering him her sustenance despite how hungry she must have been.
He raised the stick and sniffed. The smell of the cooked meat was overpowering. It smelled delicious. He ripped off a strip and handed the stick back to Royla as he began to chew. The tender meat melted over his tongue.
As soon as she’d grabbed the skewered rabbit, she tore into it like an animal. She ripped strip after strip of it off, barely chewing and swallowing like a hungry animal.
Thanred watched her, trying to separate the confusing emotions that had twined together inside him.
She finished the meal in almost no time and let the skewer fall onto the forest floor. Her eyelids grew heavy as her body began to digest the food. When she turned to gaze into his eyes, something inside him cracked. “Thank you, Master,” she whispered.
Thanred found himself utterly captivated by her bright blue eyes. He fought the urge to reach out, grab her and cradle her in his arms, whispering that she would never be in danger again, that he would take care of her and make sure she was safe. “You were hungry,” he said instead.
“I was,” she said, a smile curling the corners of her mouth.
“We Dranark do not need to feed as often as you.” The admission, or perhaps the need he felt to make it, surprised him.
Her eyes widened at what he’d said. “That is what you are?” she asked, an urgency to her voice that had been absent until then. “Dranark?”
Thanred nodded.
Royla began to shake her head. Her smile had faded, replaced by worry and... was it fear?
“What is it?” Thanred asked. Something was stabbing at his gut, telling him to reach out to her, to comfort her, to try to soothe whatever was worrying her.
But surely that would be weak? A Dranark warrior comforting a human female, a female there only for the purpose of relieving the pressure in his loins?
A tear pooled at the corner of her eye, then rolled down her cheek.
Thanred’s instincts screamed at him to comfort her. His mind, his upbringing, his very self resisted. “What is it?” he demanded.
Her eyes glazed, focusing on some spot far away. She sniffled, then wiped her nose with the back of her finger. “I’m sorry, Master,” she whispered, her voice shaking.
This, finally, did him in. Unable to resist, he stretched out his arm and put his palm on her shoulder. “You don’t...” He couldn’t bring himself to utter the words.
You have nothing to fear from me.
She winced at his touch, almost made to retreat, but caught herself.
Instead, she sat higher and prouder. “I am Royla,” she said, more tears running down her cheeks.
“Royla, eighteen summers long and from the fifth palisade. When Barnisha came to me, told me to go into the forest to collect berries for the Sowing Song...” Her voice cracked.
The muscles in her throat tightened. She took a deep breath, trying to sweep the emotion aside.
“When Barnisha told me to go to the forest, she wasn’t asking for my help.
She was sending me to be... the offering. ” She locked eyes with him.
Thanred thought that seeing her come to the realization might crush him.
She was so soft and innocent and sweet and.
.. so much more than he’d thought humans could be.
Once again, the urge to cradle her, shelter her from the harsh reality she’d stumbled onto, welled from within.
A muscle in his face twitched. “Yes,” he said quietly.
“I believe that is what she meant to do.”
He didn’t know who Barnisha was, or what the customs of the palisade were. But he knew that this thing, this... girl, had pieced it all together.
She had been turned out into the wild, betrayed by her tribe in the same way his tribe had betrayed him.
When her shoulders shook, and her chin fell to her chest, he didn’t know what to do.
Dranark women didn’t display their feelings in front of the males.
Seeing her sorrow tore his insides. Just when he thought it might break him, all that was roiling within, he leaned closer and wrapped his arm around her shoulder to pull her close.
Her body was warm. Her tears fell hot on his chest.
Thanred took a deep breath to try to clear the tightness in his own throat to no avail. It wasn’t until her tears had stopped, until she’d dried them with her finger and looked up to gaze into his eyes that he got some relief from the tension.
“Thank you, Master,” she said.
He wanted to tell her his name. Thanred. He was still her master and always would be, but he craved the closeness hearing her speak his given name would bring. He wanted to tell her they were kin, in experience if not in blood.
But Dranark pride kept his mouth shut. So instead, he held her until the sun crested high overhead and began its descent to the west. Then he rose above her and offered her a hand. “We should keep moving,” he said.
She took his hand and let him help her up. “Why, Master?” she asked.
“We must go deeper into the forest. We’ll be safer there.”
Her brow furrowed. “Don’t you... don’t you have a tribe?” she asked. “Aren’t we going there?”
Thanred clenched his jaw at the question. “No.” It was the only answer he could bring himself to give.
Royla still seemed puzzled but didn’t pry further. She beat out the last embers of the fire with a stick, then turned, her head held high and offered her hands, wrists pressed together. “So you may bind me again,” she explained.
It made his head spin. How he wanted to tie her wrists to ankles and force his cock into her again. But they needed to move. He shook his head. “You will not run,” he said simply.
Royla’s expression softened. She shook her head back at him. “I will not run.”
Thanred nodded. “Then let us walk together.”