Chapter 26 Kojo
KOJO
Amir snaps his fingers and clothing appears on both of us, a black tunic for him and a simple shirt and pants for me, the shirt already torn at the back to accommodate my ridge. He clasps his hands behind his back and walks toward the water, his bare feet leaving no prints on the wet ground.
“Sit with me,” he says, and it is not a request. It is not quite a command either.
I sit beside him on the cold ground. The lake stretches out before us, the surface catching fragments of starlight and scattering them across the dark water. Amir’s pointed ears twitch once, and he settles into a stillness that carries more weight than any words I have heard from him.
“My Bouda rarely comes out.” He speaks without looking at me, his gold eyes fixed on the water. “But I suppose I have the privilege of seeing him more now.”
His ears twitch again and his gaze moves to my neck, then to the place where my scent has changed. He can smell it. Every shifter on Wintermoon will be able to smell it.
“You have claimed your mate.” He says it simply. His gold eyes find mine and hold them. “I am glad for you, Kojo. Truly.”
I bow my head. “I did not plan the bite. My Bouda took control during...” I stop. I do not know how to explain it to a king, and my ears burn with the closest thing to embarrassment I have felt in a thousand years.
“I know how the claiming works.” The corner of his mouth lifts and his ears twitch with amusement. “You do not need to explain the mechanics to me. I have been alive long enough to witness a few.”
The silence returns, but it is an easy one. Water laps at the shore in a rhythm that sounds like breathing.
“I wished to speak with you about something.” He rests his palms in his lap.
“When Kade, Damon, and Leah first brought the supernatural species together on this land, I believed the old ways would hold. The customs, the hierarchies, the traditions that had governed our kind. I was wrong.” He pauses, and the weight of the pause tells me this is something he has carried for a long time.
“The old ways were built for a world that no longer exists. I had to learn that the hard way, through losing people who refused to change, through watching customs destroy what they were designed to protect.”
His ears flatten briefly, then rise. “My mate, Anora, is a witch, but she lived a human life for many years. She does not understand why I clasp my hands behind my back or why I bow my head to queens before they bow to me. The hierarchies mean nothing to her. She was not raised in them. And for a long time, I tried to teach her our ways instead of learning hers.” He turns to me. “That was my failure. Not hers.”
I listen. Amir is not finished, and a king does not pause for interruption.
“Kendra is not Bouda.” His voice carries no judgment. “She will not lead your clan the way your Matriarch did. She will lead it the way Kendra does, and if you try to shape her into something she is not, you will lose the very thing that makes her extraordinary.”
“I do not wish to shape her,” I say, and Amir does not flinch.
“Not with malice. With love. But the effect is the same. When you bow your head to her, every time you call her queen before she has decided to carry that title, you are placing a crown on a woman who is still learning how to hold it. Meet her where she is, Kojo. Walk beside her, not behind her.”
The words settle into me. I feel the ripples move through my chest, disturbing things I thought were fixed, rearranging beliefs I have held since my Matriarch first placed her hand on my head and told me my purpose was to serve.
“I am feeling something I do not have a word for.” The admission comes out rough. I look at the water instead of at him — the vulnerability of it almost more than I can manage.
Amir’s ears twitch forward. “You do have a word for it. You have simply never needed it before.”
“Love.” I say the word and it sounds foreign in my mouth, a human word for a human feeling that my Bouda has no framework for.
The mate bond is primal, a frequency locked to a frequency.
But this is different. This is choosing her — not from what Mother Fate wrote into my blood, but from watching her cry and laugh and fight and lead and forgive, and wanting to stand beside her for every version of herself she has not yet become.
“The mate bond is strong,” Amir says. “But love is what makes it last. The bond will keep you near her. Love will make you worthy of her.” He grips my shoulder. “Your Matriarch would be proud of who you are becoming. Not who you were on the highlands. Who you are now.”
I bow my head. I cannot speak. The grief and the gratitude and the new unnamed thing in my chest are all pressing against my ribs at the same time, and if I open my mouth I do not trust what will come out.
Amir rises to his feet and extends his hand to me. “Come. I want to show you something.”
I take his hand and fear hits me before the magic does, every instinct in my body screaming against what is about to happen.
Shifters do not teleport. Teleportation shuts us down, forces unconsciousness, and my Bouda is already thrashing inside my head in protest. But you do not refuse a king.
Before I can brace myself Amir’s free palm presses flat against my chest and a warmth spreads outward from his palm, a golden shimmer that wraps around my body.
The shield settles over me, my Bouda’s thrashing quiets to a rumble, and the world folds.
The magic is instant, the forest and the water and the stars collapsing into a tunnel of gold light that deposits us somewhere else entirely before I can draw a breath.
My bare feet hit soft earth, the shield dissolves from my skin like mist burning off in morning heat, and the air smells different here, warmer, richer, carrying the scent of old pines and untouched soil.
I open my eyes to open land. A wide clearing surrounded by mature forest, the trees old enough that their canopy creates a natural ceiling high above, the ground beneath them soft with fallen needles.
A stream runs through the eastern edge, the water clear and fast. The clearing is large enough for a village, for buildings and paths and gardens, for cubs to run and hunters to train, and the morning light is just beginning to touch the tops of the trees, turning everything gold.
“This is yours,” Amir says, his hands clasped behind his back, his gold eyes watching my face. “This is where your people, the Bouda, will rise again.”
I turn in a slow circle, taking in the land, the trees, the water, the size of it, and my ridge vibrates along my back in a frequency I do not recognize. Not alarm or aggression or submission. Something my body has never needed to produce before.
“Levi of House of Zorah will be visiting soon to discuss the build.” Amir’s ears twitch and his mouth curves — he has been waiting to deliver this particular gift. “I expect you will want input on the design. The Bouda have specific needs that the wolves and lions do not.”
The stream, my Bouda says immediately, his voice cracking with an urgency I have never heard from him.
Alemayehu, do you see the stream? The cubs will need fresh water.
And the tree line is a natural barrier for defense, we would not need to build walls on three sides.
The fourth side, the southern opening, we fortify with a watchtower.
Two, actually. And a fire pit at the center of the village for the Matriarch to hold court, the way our queen held court on the highlands.
The earth here is soft enough to dig foundations.
I can smell the clay beneath the topsoil, it will hold structures.
This land is perfect, Alemayehu. It is perfect and I am not being dramatic for once in my entire existence.
I face Amir and this time, I do not bow my head. I place my fist against my chest — the old greeting, the one I gave Meekah in the market — but I hold it longer than custom requires.
“Thank you, Amir.” I use his name without the title. He asked me to, and I did not honor that until now. “I will build something here that my Matriarch would recognize. And I will build something she would not — my queen is not Bouda, and she will need a home that belongs to both of us.”
Amir smiles. “Good,” he says. “That is the right answer.”
He clasps his hands behind his back and walks toward the treeline. At the edge of the clearing he turns, and gives me one last look that carries the full weight of a king who has waited centuries to give a Bouda male something worth staying for.
Amir teleports away in a blink.
We are alone, my Bouda says, and the joy in his voice is so raw. We are standing on our land, Alemayehu. Our land. Not borrowed territory. This is ours.
I breathe in and the air fills my lungs with pine and clean water.
I have changed my mind about the layout, my Bouda continues, already pacing inside my head.
We need fourteen rooms, not twelve. Zaki will want her own wing.
She will complain about noise from the cubs and she will say it is beneath her to share walls with lesser Bouda, and then she will spend every night sleeping in the nursery because she cannot stand to be away from them. I know my sister.
I laugh out loud, alone on the land, the sound carrying across the clearing and bouncing off the trees. My Bouda is not wrong about Zaki and we both know it.
Also, the fire pit must face east. Toward the sunrise.
Our Matriarch always held court facing the sunrise because she said a queen should never turn her back on a new day.
Kendra will not know this tradition yet, but she will learn it, and when she sits at that fire pit for the first time she will feel what our Matriarch felt. Purpose. Belonging. Home.
“We need to get back to her,” I say. “She should not wake alone after last night.”
Then let me run, Alemayehu. Let me run home to our queen on our land.
I surrender the reins and the shift takes me, bones cracking and reforming, my Bouda’s paws hitting the soft earth with a force that sends pine needles scattering.
He takes off through the trees, running south toward the community lands, and his stride is different this time.
No urgency in it, no flight, no fear. The land beneath his paws is his.
The woman waiting at the end of his run is his.
The community lands come into view through the thinning trees and my Bouda slows to a trot, then a walk, his breathing steady, his ridge flat and content.
He stops at the treeline near the cabin and yields the reins without resistance, and the shift carries me back to my human form.
I stand naked in the cold air for a moment, steam rising from my skin, looking at the cabin where my mate is sleeping.
I walk up the steps and through the front door and up the stairs to the bedroom. She has turned onto her side, the blanket pulled tight around her shoulders, her face peaceful. The mark on her neck is darker now, settling into the skin, becoming part of her.
I go into the bathroom and close the door behind me, turning the shower on and letting the water heat before I step under it.
The blood from the hunt has dried on my forearms and between my fingers, and I scrub it off with soap, working the lather across my skin until the water running off me is clear.
I rinse, turn the water off, and step out onto the mat.
The towel is rough and warm from the heated rack and I drag it over my body, across my shoulders, down my arms, through the ridge along my back where pine needles have lodged between the blades.
I brush my teeth at the sink, the mint sharp and clean against the lingering taste of elk, and I study my face in the mirror for a moment.
I hang the towel and walk back into the bedroom.
She has not moved. I slide into bed behind her and pull her against my chest, my arm wrapping around her waist, my face pressing into her hair.
She makes a sound in her sleep and pushes back into my warmth, her body recognizing mine before her mind wakes.
Fourteen rooms, my Bouda whispers. And a garden. Kendra will want a garden.
I close my eyes and hold her, and I think about the land and the stream and the fire pit facing east. Levi coming to help build.
Zaki returning with more of our people. The cubs my Bouda has already named in his head without consulting me.
And the word I said out loud for the first time at the water’s edge, still sitting in my mouth like something I swallowed that was too large for my throat.
Love. I am in love with my mate. And I do not know how to tell her yet, but I will learn, as I am learning everything else in this new world.