Chapter 16
Keandra
The morning after Kaiven explains the camp to me, I start to understand that knowledge does not make belonging easier.
Knowing that Oshara studies before she accepts does not soften her eyes when I step out of the king’s tent after washing and dressing.
Knowing that the women are waiting to see whether I can remain standing does not lighten their attention when they glance at my hands, my posture, my hair, the wrap over my shoulders, or the place I stand in relation to Kaiven.
Knowing that I am protected does not make me feel settled.
If anything, it makes me more aware of how little of this life is casual.
Nothing in the horde seems casual. Not meals.
Not labor. Not the way people speak. Not the way they move around one another.
Not the way women keep children close while still working with quick, sure hands.
Not the way men carry weapons even when they look relaxed.
Not the way everyone seems to know where they belong without needing it spoken aloud.
I do not understand any of it naturally. That is the problem.
Breakfast is not taken in Kaiven’s tent this time.
Oshara sends for me and expects me at one of the morning fire circles, where several women are already working.
Roots are being cleaned. Meat cut. Grain ground.
A younger girl kneels near one side, feeding small sticks into the edge of the fire while a baby tied to her chest sleeps through smoke and heat.
Bundles of drying herbs hang from a nearby line, and the whole space smells of wood smoke, fresh-cut roots, rendered fat, and bitter leaves I cannot name.
I stop a few steps away, unsure whether to sit, speak, or wait.
Oshara does not look up right away. When she does, she says only, “Come.”
I obey.
One of the women shifts a basket toward me. Thick roots, dirt still clinging in places, and a short blade for scraping the skins. I sit where there is room and take the knife. No one asks whether I know how to do it. They simply watch long enough to see if I can.
That, at least, I can.
Not perfectly. Not as fast as they do. But well enough that the first woman to glance over at my hands does not click her tongue or take the basket away. The silence around that small success feels heavier than praise would have.
For a while, the work itself steadies me.
Scrape. Turn. Cut away the rough parts. Drop the cleaned pieces into the bowl.
The morning air is cool, but the fire warms my knees and shins.
The smoke is richer than Mars smoke ever was, carrying herbs and meat and real wood.
The women speak around me in Tigris, too quickly for me to catch more than a scattered word here and there.
Sometimes one of them translates enough for me to understand the task being discussed. Most of the time, they do not.
I am beginning to understand that they are not cruel by default. They simply do not bend every part of life around my understanding. That may be harder in its own way.
After a while, one of the older women across the fire asks Oshara something in Tigris that includes a glance toward me.
Oshara answers without looking at me. Another woman says something else.
The word for child comes up. That much I catch because I have already heard it twice in Kaiven’s explanations and once from Marat.
Child.
Then again.
And again.
My fingers tighten slightly on the blade.
One of the younger women notices. She switches awkwardly into English.
“We speak of the spring birthing.”
I look up. “For the animals?”
A few of the women go quiet for one beat too long.
Then Oshara says, “And the women.”
The words land straight in the center of my chest. There is nothing mocking in them.
Nothing especially pointed. That is what makes them worse.
Oshara says it the way someone on Mars might say rain comes in winter or food has to be stored before the cold.
A fact. A rhythm. A practical piece of life.
The younger woman, perhaps trying to be useful, adds, “Three women carry now. One hopes for a daughter. Another says son. Oshara says healthy is better than both.”
One or two of the women make sounds of agreement.
I look back down at the roots in my hands because suddenly I can feel all of myself too clearly.
My hips against the low stool. The softness beneath the dress.
The shoulder where Kaiven bit me. The simple fact of my body sitting there among women speaking of children and pregnancy and future births as though they are discussing weather, meat stores, or pack repairs.
No one says anything to me directly. No one needs to.
I am the king’s new wife. The human female matched for pheromones, fertility, and biology. The body already discussed in offices, files, and private conversations before I ever set foot in this camp.
That thought makes the root in my hand blur for one ugly second.
Oshara notices before anyone else.
“You scrape slower when your mind runs foolish,” she says.
I blink and force my focus back to the knife. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” Oshara’s voice stays even. “You are distracted. Sorry does not clean roots.”
Heat rises into my face. I return to the task and keep my mouth shut.
The work goes on. Water is brought. More baskets appear.
One woman rises to nurse the baby that had been sleeping against her chest and keeps talking through it without breaking the rhythm of the conversation.
Another sends a boy off to fetch something from a supply cart with one sharp phrase.
Life here does not pause for softness. It folds everything into itself and keeps moving.
That may be what frightens me most. How practical it all is. How little room there seems to be for a woman to break apart if she is scared or uncertain. How quickly even the most intimate things become work, duty, expectation, and season.
At midday, Oshara takes me with two of the other women to a storage tent where dried goods, cloth, herbs, and preserved food are kept.
I am shown how things are stacked. What stays dry.
What is sealed against pests. What is used first. What is saved.
The instructions come in pieces, some from Oshara, some from the younger women, all of it delivered with the calm expectation that I will remember because forgetting in this world has consequences.
As we work, one of the women asks in English, “Did the king like the mating?”
The question is so blunt I almost drop the wrapped bundle in my hands.
The woman asking it does not look malicious. Only curious in the open practical way of the horde.
Another woman, younger and bolder, says before I can answer, “He marked you quickly. That says enough.”
Oshara does not stop them. That may be the worst part. Because it tells me this is not indecent here. Not private in the same way. Not something women whisper about behind closed doors with embarrassed faces. It is part of life. Part of marriage. Part of household expectation.
My throat goes dry. “I don’t know what to say.”
The bolder younger woman shrugs. “You need not say much. We see.”
See what.
The mark. The scent. The fact that Kaiven took me to bed the first night before the horde.
One of the older women ties off a storage bundle and says, almost absently, “If the bond settles strong, maybe a child comes fast.”
No one laughs. No one hushes her. No one acts as though she crossed a line.
I stand very still with the folded cloth in my hands.
That old cold feeling comes back. The one that started in the testing room on Mars. The one that sharpened in the shuttle when Marat said children are expected. The one that grew teeth in the night when Kaiven spoke of mate and scent and body truth.
Not because I hate the idea of children. Because I cannot stop feeling how much my body means in this world before my feelings do. A female shortage. A king’s line. Heirs. Daughters. Healthy births. A practical spring discussion near the fire.
I want to say I am more than that. But the words stay stuck because I am not yet sure who here would understand the complaint.
By the time I return to Kaiven’s tent later in the day, I am tired in a way food and sleep have not fixed. Not just physically. The kind of tiredness that settles behind my ribs when too many thoughts have had nowhere to go all day.
The tent is quiet when I step inside. For one moment, I simply stand there, grateful for the walls, the shade, the temporary stillness.
Then I notice one of the blankets has been shaken out and folded differently.
A freshwater basin has been set in place.
The fruit bowl near the brazier holds something new, cut open in bright slices.
Small changes. Practical changes. The kind that have already begun appearing around me whenever Kaiven passed through before I did.
I should not notice them so much. I notice all of them.
I set down the bundle Oshara told me to bring and sink onto the edge of the bedding for one long breath.
This is the dangerous part. Not the monsters beyond camp.
Not the weather. Not even Kaiven’s size, scent, and overwhelming physical presence.
The dangerous part is that his tent is starting to feel easier than the camp.
Easier than the women. Easier than the practical talk of wombs and children and spring birth.
That dependence presses against my pride until it hurts.
When Kaiven enters not long after, he notices immediately that something is wrong. He closes the tent flap behind him and studies me once from the doorway, taking in the untouched fruit, the way I am sitting, the fact that I do not rise at once.
“Who spoke?” he asks.
The question is so direct it almost startles a laugh out of me. Not because it is funny. Because it is so very him to go straight to the center of it.
I shake my head. “No one said anything wrong.”
His gaze does not move. “That is not the same as saying nothing was said.”
I look down at my hands. There is a tiny rough place on one finger where the root knife rubbed the skin wrong earlier. Such a small thing. Easier to stare at than him.
“The women talk about children,” I say finally.
I keep going because once I start, the words feel like they have been waiting all day for somewhere to land.
“They talk about it like it’s nothing. Like the weather.
Like food stores.” I press my lips together for a second, then force the rest out before I can stop.
“I know children are expected. I know what the contract said. I know what Marat said. I know what you said. I’m not stupid.
But sometimes it feels like that is the first thing anyone here sees when they look at me. ”
His face does not change.
That should help. It doesn’t.
So I say the ugliest part too.
“Like I mattered because I could carry children before I ever mattered because I was me.”
The words hang there between us.
For one terrible second, I think he will answer with practical truth again. Yes, children matter. Yes, that is how the horde survives. Some version of reality so blunt it cracks something inside me for good.
Instead, Kaiven crosses the space slowly and lowers himself into a crouch in front of me. Bringing himself down until his eyes are level with mine. The movement alone hits somewhere vulnerable in me that I do not want touched.
“You think I do not see you,” he says.
My throat tightens. “I think everyone sees what my body can do first.”
His jaw shifts once. “The horde speaks of children because children are life. They speak of food because food is life. They speak of the weather because the weather decides life. This is not an insult.”
“That doesn’t make it feel better.”
“No,” he says quietly. “I know.”
That knocks some of the breath out of me.
He knows. Not that he agrees with the fear. Not that he thinks I am right. But that he knows it hurts.
His gaze stays fixed on my face. “You are female in a horde. Wife to a king. Mate. Children will be spoken of. Often.” He pauses. “But if you think that is all I see, then I have failed to show you otherwise.”
Failed.
The word lands strangely. I had not expected him to place any of this on himself.
I look at him fully now. This close, I can see the small scar through one brow.
The hard line of his jaw. The dark marks on his throat.
The steadiness in him. He is still frightening in some ways.
Still too large. Too male. Too sure. But right now, none of that is aimed at swallowing me.
It is aimed at holding still long enough for me to hear him.
He reaches up, very slowly, and touches one finger beneath my chin.
“I wanted your body before I understood anything else,” he says.
The bluntness sends heat through my face.
He sees it and keeps going anyway.
“That is the truth. My kind knows much through body and scent first.” His finger slides away, but his gaze does not.
“But I looked at you in the capital and saw hunger. I saw fear held too tight. I saw a female standing straight when easier things would have bent others. I saw you leave one world for another and not break in the crossing.” His voice lowers. “I see all of that still.”
I cannot speak for a moment.
He adds, quieter now, “If you were only a womb to me, I would not care whether you were frightened.”
That one almost hurts. Because it is so simple. Because it is true.
I blink once too fast and look away despite myself.
His hand does not chase my face this time. It settles instead over one of mine, where it sits clenched in my lap. Huge hand. Warm. Heavy. Careful.
“I do not know how human women need to hear these things yet,” he says after a moment. “But I will learn.”
That may be the softest thing he has said to me since I arrived. It does more damage than the harder things.
I let out a breath I had not realized I was holding. Outside the tent, the camp keeps moving. Voices. Steps. A child shouting somewhere before being hushed. Life is not pausing.
Inside, the quiet changes.
I look down at his hand over mine and then back up at him. “I don’t need lies.”
“Good.”
A weak almost-laugh slips out of me then, despite everything. “You really don’t know how to give those anyway.”
This time, the change in his mouth is more visible. Brief. Small. But there.
“No.”
He rises after that and brings the cut fruit from the tray. Sets it closer. Pushes one of the cups toward me. Small practical things again. Not words alone.
“Eat,” he says.
It should feel like a command. Instead, it feels like care in the only shape he knows.
I take the fruit. And for the first time since the women began speaking around the fire, the tightness in my chest eases enough for me to breathe all the way through it.