Chapter 2 #3
A guard near a fire straightens as I pass, smiling too quickly, too hopefully, like my presence is a signal rather than just movement. I nod once and keep going.
I tell myself I am overreacting. Korr’ax is trying to hold the tribe together.
Bryar is trying to reduce tension. The girls are trying to help.
All of it makes sense when I line it up cleanly in my head.
That’s what makes it feel so wrong. Understanding it doesn’t stop it from feeling like I am being steered through it, towards something I really don’t want.
I pass the forges, where iron hisses and sparks drift up into the heat. The sight pulls the iron disk back into my mind, the polished surface, the absurd sincerity of it.
I put one hand into a side pocket in my dress and rub my finger against it. A mirror as protection. A chair as a gift. Every gesture carefully aimed at a problem I never agreed to be.
The pressure returns. The sense that this will eventually narrow into a decision everyone expects me to make.
I slow near the outer edge of the village where the palisade gives way to jungle shadow. Beyond it, the smoke from the campfires from the waiting cavemen rises. More now than before. The men from other tribes keep coming. What happens when there are thousands of them and their patience runs out?
I should go back. I should stop thinking. Instead I just stand there, caught between directions I don’t want. And then, against my will, I think of him. The dragon.
That’s what makes me start walking again. A perfect view. You can see every place you can’t go. I hate how deeply those words lodged themselves in my head. I hate that after seeing me for less than a minute, he somehow understood exactly how trapped I feel.
Most of all, I hate that some tiny, deeply questionable part of me wants to see him again.
“Stay cool,” I mutter to myself.
The storage hut is near the outer edge of the settlement, shaded by the tall palisades and thick climbing plants. Finally, somewhere quiet and dark.
I duck inside. Cool air brushes against my skin, and I let out a slow breath.
Nobody’s going to come here today. This is where the tribe stores big leather sheets and furs and bones and such from dinosaurs, all boiled clean and not too smelly.
It’s like a warehouse, wide and so deep I can’t see the other end of it.
The stacks of dinosaur leather are soft and inviting and out of sight from the door. I plop down on the lowest one and lean back on another.
Maybe I just need a few hours alone. Maybe afterward I can apologize to the girls for melting down.
The sound behind me registers too late.
A hand clamps hard over my mouth.
I jerk violently.
“Quiet,” a rough voice hisses near my ear.
Panic tears through me so quickly that for one blank second I cannot think.
A man presses close behind me, one arm locked around my waist. Yellow stripes.
Tretter tribe. He is smaller than most Borok warriors, lean rather than broad, with sharp features and frantic eyes.
I vaguely recognize him from around the village.
One of the visiting warriors. Here because of the unmarried woman.
“You come,” he whispers urgently in cavemannish. “We leave now.”
Shock crashes into understanding. Fuck. This is actually happening.
I twist hard, trying to wrench free, but his grip only tightens.
“You’ll understand later,” he says. “You’ll like me after.”
The sheer desperation in his voice frightens me almost as much as the situation itself. He sounds like a man who has convinced himself this makes sense.
“No!” I bite hard into his palm.
He swears and jerks his hand back.
I suck in a breath. “Help!”
His face changes instantly. Fear flashes across it. Because he knows exactly what happens if Borok warriors catch him trying to steal me.
“Quiet!” he snaps, grabbing both my wrists. He starts dragging me toward the entrance.
My heart pounds so hard it hurts.
The village suddenly feels impossibly far away. Nobody is coming. Nobody—
Something moves. Fast.
The Tretter warrior freezes.
A tall figure stands in the doorway as if he has always been there, blocking the daylight with his massive bulk.
Dark skin veined with gold catches the sun in thin molten lines. Silvery-gold eyes gleam with icy intelligence.
Vyrathion the dragon.
He glances at me once before shifting his attention to the warrior holding my wrists. For a moment, his expression turns faintly curious. “You’re stealing a woman,” he says in that smooth, impossibly calm voice. “How creative.”
The warrior shoves me partly behind him and yanks out a knife with visibly shaking hands.
“She’s mine!” he blurts.
Vyrathion tilts his head slightly, as though considering an unusual insect. “Oh?” he says softly. “I have reason to believe that she isn’t. Are you his, little female?”
“No!” I manage as something cold slips through me. I would have expected a snarl. But the dragon doesn’t sound angry at all. He sounds mildly entertained. Like someone who has stumbled across an unexpectedly amusing problem.
And standing there in front of us, radiating power and calm and sheer confidence, he somehow feels much more dangerous than the man who just tried to drag me into the jungle.
“‘No,’” he echoes thoughtfully. “That was the word I thought I heard.”