Chapter 22 Kojo
KOJO
The reality of this land has not fully hit me until now.
Kendra moves through the market stalls like she has lived here for years, not days.
She stops at a produce stand, asks the vendor about the cantaloupe, and within a minute they are talking like old friends.
Then she turns and introduces me, and I watch the vendor’s gaze travel from my face to the ridge visible through my shirt and back again without flinching.
“This is Kojo,” Kendra says. “He’s Bouda.”
“Welcome to Wintermoon, Bouda,” the vendor says, and the word sounds like something she has said a hundred times to a hundred different shifters. Simple acknowledgment.
Easy, Alemayehu, my Bouda says, pressing forward behind my eyes. You stand too rigid. These are not enemies. Calm yourself before you embarrass us in front of the cantaloupe woman.
I am not rigid. I am adjusting, but my Bouda disagrees. You are rigid. Your ridge is doing that thing where it cannot decide whether to spike or flatten. Pick one. I press it flat and follow Kendra deeper into the market.
She moves from stall to stall collecting things I did not know she needed. Soap that smells of coconut. A set of hair ties. A jar of something called shea butter that she opens, sniffs, and clutches to her chest like it is sacred.
A pair of lionesses pass us on the main path, their tails swaying behind them as they carry woven baskets on their hips.
I smile and dip my chin, and they return the gesture, their eyes lingering on me for a moment before moving on.
When a male lion shifter rounds the corner from the butcher stall, I press my fist to my chest and dip my chin.
He stops, studies me, then mirrors the gesture, his mane shifting across his broad shoulders.
“Bouda,” he says.
“Lion,” I reply. He nods once and keeps walking.
They know who we are, my Bouda observes.
And they treat it like a fact instead of a problem.
He pauses, and when he speaks again the sarcasm is gone from his voice.
This is what the Matriarch wanted, what she fought for, why she chose to stay on our land rather than flee to safety.
She believed our people could build this without leaving.
She was wrong about the method but right about the dream.
Something in me saddens at that. I stop walking in the middle of the path and my hand loosens from Kendra’s.
I miss her too, Alemayehu. I miss her every day. I breathe through it and keep moving.
Inside a retail building near the east end of the market, Kendra fills a basket ---a thermal blanket, two pairs of thick socks, a set of kitchen towels, and a ceramic mug with a chipped handle that she turns over twice before dropping it in on top of everything else.
I do not understand why the mug appeals to her, but my Bouda says it does not matter and to carry the basket when it gets heavy.
She gravitates toward a human woman near the clothing racks, and within thirty seconds they are laughing.
The woman holds up a dress and Kendra waves it off with a grin, then holds up a sweater and they both nod like they have settled a dispute.
I stand near the entrance and watch. The Matriarch’s compound had this.
Women gathering, sharing, sorting through fabrics and provisions while the men stood at the edges and waited.
Not because we were excluded but because this was their domain, and we understood our role within it.
I had forgotten what it looked like. Watching Kendra in this store, basket in hand, laughing with a stranger, I remember.
My scent shifts before my mind registers the cause. The fur along my back stiffens into the precursor of a blade.
Ah, my Bouda says, snapping to attention. Meekah. He is close. I can smell the musk from here.
Kendra notices the change in me before I can smooth it. The basket swings against her hip as she crosses the store and stops in front of me, her brow creased. “What’s wrong?” She tilts her head, scanning my face. “If this is too much, we can go back. I just wanted to get out for a little while.”
I smile at her and reach for the basket, pulling it from her hand. “No, Kendra. Everything is fine.”
“Your ridge is acting weird again.”
“There is a scent nearby that I recognize. Another shifter I knew before Wintermoon.”
Her eyes widen. “Is it another Bouda?”
I shake my head. Her first instinct is to check whether I am safe rather than whether she should be worried, and it does something to me that I cannot hold at a distance. I want to kiss her again. So I do.
She gasps when I grab her arm and pull her close. I plant a kiss on her forehead, and when I pull back she looks up at me with wide eyes.
You are finally going against our customs, Alemayehu. A male does not initiate intimacy in public before the claiming. The Matriarch would have---
“I do not care,” I say out loud.
Kendra blinks. “Don’t care about what?”
“I am speaking to my Bouda.”
“Oh.” She looks up at me, narrowing her eyes. “Did he tell you it was wrong to kiss me?”
I do not answer. She studies my face, reads the truth there, and her look sharpens. “Hmmm.” She crosses her arms. “I think I need to have a few words with him.”
No she does not, my Bouda says immediately. Tell her she does not need to speak with me. We are fine. Everything is fine. There is no need for the queen to address me directly.
I know how the Bouda responds to the authority of a matriarch.
The frequency that Zaki uses to drop me to my knees is the external version, but the internal version, where the queen simply decides to discipline the beast directly, is worse.
My Bouda would fold. He knows it, and the knowledge has him pacing inside my head with the nervous energy of a creature who has just realized the queen can reach him wherever he hides.
I press my lips together to keep from laughing.
“He says there is no need,” I tell her.
She looks unconvinced. “Mm-hmm.”
I grab her basket and gesture toward the counter. “Is this all? Would you like me to carry another basket for you?”
She sighs, taking one last look at the clothing racks. “I guess this will do for now.” She walks beside me toward the front of the store and bumps her shoulder against my arm. “Thank you for letting me get out of the cabin for a few hours.”
“You thank me for nothing, Kendra.”
I set the basket on the counter and open my mouth to introduce myself, but the clerk---a young woman with freckles and an easy grin---smiles before I can speak.
“I know who you are, Bouda. Welcome to Wintermoon.” She begins pulling items from the basket and folding them into bags.
“I’m Tasha. I’ll get this bagged up for you. ”
She bags my queen’s things and sets them aside with a smile, and I stand there long enough for my Bouda to notice.
This is a good land for our cubs, my Bouda says. They will grow up surrounded by people who know their name and do not run from it. But we must meet with Meekah. He waits outside.
I nod to Tasha. “Thank you. I must step out for a moment.”
“I’ll set your bags to the side,” she says. “They aren’t going anywhere.”
I grab Kendra’s hand and pull her toward the door. She looks over her shoulder at the clerk, who waves, and then back at me. “What are you doing?”
“I want you to meet someone.”
We walk out of the store and Kendra gasps.
Meekah stands several feet from the entrance, arms crossed over a chest that rivals a small building.
He is exactly as I remember him---enormous, with a thick mane of dark hair flowing past his shoulders, golden eyes that burn with irritation, and a tail that sways behind him in slow arcs.
He wears simple clothing, no shoes, and the feline features of his face are sharper than they were the last time I saw him at the border.
I approach with my fist pressed to my chest and bow my head. He watches me come, his face hard and assessing. Then he mirrors the gesture, his massive fist against his chest, and the acknowledgment passes between us. Kendra is not paying attention to the ritual. She is too busy staring at his tail.
“Your clan has finally decided to migrate to Wintermoon?” He asks. He unfolds his arms and looks between us, smiling smugly “Good. These shifters get on my nerves, and they smell funny too.”
If there comes a day when Meekah delivers a compliment without an insult wrapped around it, my Bouda says, I will suspect Mother Fate has finally lost her mind.
“We are not here because we want to be,” I tell him. “We are here because we have to.”
The hardness in Meekah’s face shifts---a loosening around his jaw, a drop in the tension across his shoulders. He has lost things too. Perhaps not a village, but a thousand years of waiting for a mate while watching his pride stagnate around him. He knows what it is to carry an empty future.
A wolf shifter walking the path behind Kendra drifts too close, his shoulder angling toward her.
Before I can move, Meekah’s tail whips out and shoves the shifter sideways off the path.
The wolf stumbles and turns with a snarl building on his lips, but Meekah’s roar cuts it dead.
The wolf glares, jaw tight, and backs down.
Kendra yelps at the noise and presses closer to me, but Meekah has already turned his attention to her, his face doing something I have only seen twice in all the years I have known him. It softens. “Mother Fate has blessed you. She is beautiful, Alemayehu.”
He used our birth name, my Bouda says. With respect. In front of our queen.
Kendra gives a nervous smile, her fingers tightening on my arm. Meekah bows his head to her, low and slow, his mane falling forward. “I am Meekah of Zohar Pride. It is an honor to meet you.”
I take Kendra’s hand in mine. “This is my Kendra.” Ours, my Bouda corrects. I straighten my shoulders and give Meekah the words I know he will understand. “She is also our queen.”