Chapter 5
What your mother has is a warrior. Martha left Shanelle alone as they traveled the long winding road leading up to Sha-Ka-Ra, but those words wouldn’t. What your mother has is a warrior.
Well, no one could deny it, and that particular warrior happened to love. But he was the sole exception. Only Tedra didn’t think so.
“It’s a fallacy,” she had once told Shanelle, “that warriors don’t feel love.
They just think they don’t. It’s that damn calmness they pride themselves on, a warrior’s control.
And they certainly have that. They never shout, never argue, never get upset the way normal people do.
It’s like they have no feelings at all—but you know they do.
You see the humor, the caring, even the anger if you know what to look for.
Your father wouldn’t admit it until he thought I was dying, and that tore him up.
He cried, Shani. He shouted to the heavens.
He knew right then that he loved, and so did I. ”
That supposition was easy for Tedra to make.
She had a warrior who admitted he loved her.
But no other warrior would admit it. Even Challen’s friend Tamiron, who cared deeply for his lifemate, staunchly maintained that warriors didn’t feel the strong emotions their women did.
Shanelle’s own brother said the same thing.
“Women experience love, warriors do not. Warriors give protection and caring, no more, no less.” She’d thrown a pillow at him. He hadn’t even raised a brow.
She hated their calm. And it stood to reason that anyone that calm couldn’t experience anything as wildly passionate as love. Was she supposed to put a warrior through hell to shake him loose from that calm? And even if she could, would that do any good?
No, Tedra was wrong in this instance, and Martha wasn’t helping matters by siding with Tedra as she always did and pushing Shanelle in the wrong direction.
Martha meant well, of course. She knew Tedra would be hurt if Shanelle moved off-planet permanently, and so Martha would do anything to prevent that.
But Shanelle wasn’t going to beat her head against a wall trying to squeeze a few drops of emotion out of a man.
It didn’t matter that she loved the look of warriors, that she could think of a half dozen right now whom she could probably come to love if she let herself.
She wasn’t even going to try. She was going to put her energy into finding a man with normal emotions, one who would love her and admit it, and one who did not know beforehand who she was. But she had so little time…
“If you don’t get out of those dumps you’ve slumped into, your mother’s going to think I’ve been browbeating you and pull my plug.” Martha’s voice drifted into her thoughts.
“Well, haven’t you?” Shanelle said somewhat resentfully.
“Not even a little. It’s called pearly-gems-of-wisdom.
Browbeating is when I pull out the big guns and mention probables for the future, like a family devastated, a daughter who can’t come home because she defied her father, a mother never forgiving her lifemate because her daughter can’t come home, a father who—”
“I’m going to pull your plug, you miserable loose-screw!” Shanelle hissed.
“That’s my girl,” Martha crowed. “Put some color back in those cheeks, and none too soon, or haven’t you noticed where you are?”
Shanelle hadn’t, and where they were was in the city already, with the park just up ahead.
It no longer looked like a park, however.
Covering the smooth green lawns were pavilions and tents of every color and size, and arenas roped off and crowded around by spectators watching the competitors test their skills against one another.
Merchants of the city had set up stalls for food and drink; hataari were corralled everywhere.
And Shanelle saw more warriors than she had ever seen gathered in one place before—and more visitors.
It was so unusual seeing hair and eye colors other than shades of golden-to-brown in her city.
Every other color imaginable was here now, making visitors easy to spot, even though the males had gotten into the spirit of local competition by donning the black zaalskin bracs of the Kan-is-Tran warriors,—at least those who were competing in the arenas did, some even wearing swords.
Shanelle glanced back to see how her friends were holding up, and couldn’t blame them for all looking a bit apprehensive.
To the Kystrani, warriors were considered giants.
The average warrior was a little more than six and a half feet tall, some reached seven feet, some even more, and here were hundreds of them milling about, bare-chested, all muscle and brawn.
Caris and Cira were probably having second thoughts about sex-sharing right now. Shanelle wasn’t. She was seeing a great many visitors who actually had the look of a warrior about them, maybe not so tall, but definitely well made.
“It didn’t take long for your interest to start perking.” Martha chuckled. “All those bare chests, huh?”
“My mood has improved, and I can see my father’s pavilion already, so do us both a favor and forget you have a voice, Martha.”
Blissful silence, until another voice was heard from at her back. “The Martha’s feelings have been hurt.”
Shanelle snorted. “You’re way off the mark, Corth.
The Martha is sitting back gloating because she’s got my life all mapped out and I haven’t made any detours yet.
” And Shanelle wasn’t going to say a single word to the contrary when Martha was listening to every word and monitoring her emotions with the Rover’s scanning sensors.
“Your mother has seen you,” Corth said next.
“Where is she?” But Shanelle saw her almost immediately, a flash of blue running through the crowds toward her. “Oh, Stars, I think I’m going to cry,” she whispered as she slid off the hataar.
“Shanelle, wait!” Corth ordered.
“I can’t!” she called back.
She was running, too, unmindful of the crowds, dodging, weaving, and she was crying.
And then her mother was before her, folding her in her arms, crushing her with the strength of her emotion.
Shanelle didn’t care. She was hugging back just as strongly, and laughing, and still dropping those silly tears.
It felt so good to be back in the embrace of this kind of love, where nothing could go wrong because her mother wouldn’t let it.
“Oh, baby, never again.” Tedra leaned back to clasp Shanelle’s face, her aqua eyes devouring her as if she had never expected to see her again.
“Twenty times I almost came to drag you home. I drove your father crazy. I drove myself up a wall worrying.” She laughed then.
“But you’re here, you’re all right—you are all right, aren’t you? ”
Shanelle laughed, too. “Yes.”
Tedra gathered her close again. “And you’ll stay that way.
And you’ll stay here. No,” she whispered at Shanelle’s ear when she felt her stiffen.
“You aren’t to worry. If I have to let you go, I will.
I’ll even keep Martha on the Rover so she can take you out of here if necessary.
But I will do everything in my power to ensure that it isn’t necessary. ”
“Even if it isn’t a Sha-Ka’ani that I want?” Shanelle asked hesitantly.
Tedra leaned back again with a sigh. “You’ve made your choice, then? You’ve already met the one you want?”
“No.”
“Then we will worry about who he is after you’ve found him. Your father isn’t entirely closed-minded about this. He wants your happiness just as much as I do. But we’ll talk about this when we have more time.”
That comment drew Shanelle back to the fact that they weren’t alone, that they were in the middle of a crowd on a lane between arenas, and just now the center of attention. “Why is everyone staring at us?”
Tedra chuckled. “Well, for one thing, Corth charged right after you on that hataar you two were riding, knocking people every which way. You know you’re not supposed to leave his sight.”
Shanelle glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough, Corth had caught up to her and was standing right behind them. “I guess I wasn’t thinking.”
“And for another thing,” Tedra continued, giving her another squeeze, “I think I can safely say we’ve just made a complete spectacle of ourselves. Let’s hope this doesn’t get back to your father, or I’m going to be in trouble for running off without an escort.”
It was Shanelle’s turn to chuckle as she looked over her mother’s shoulder and saw who else had just arrived. “Too late.”
Tedra groaned and said, “Farden hell,” before she glanced back to say defensively to her lifemate, “I was not about to wait for her to reach me once I had spotted her, Challen. It would be totally unreasonable for you to expect me to after her nine months’ absence.”
“Best you remember whose idea it was for her to absent herself,” Challen told her.
“That’s right, run it into the ground, why don’t you,” Tedra snapped back.
“Woman, you are coming very close to challenge for no reason.”
“I am?” Tedra said with some surprise. “Then you aren’t angry with me?”
“Not when your impulsiveness is understandable. Now do you release her so I may greet my daughter properly.”
Properly was not to hug in public, and Challen began by merely looking Shanelle over from head to foot, lifting her face and studying it as Tedra had done.
Then, to her immense surprise, she was drawn forward and engulfed in a warrior’s arms. Challen didn’t squeeze her, but she felt surrounded by his strength—and his love.
“Your mother has missed you,” he told her formally, but with feeling.
She grinned widely. You had to read between the lines with a Sha-Ka’ani male. It was rarely “I,” usually “a warrior,” or in Challen’s case, “your mother.” But she knew he was speaking for himself, and he knew she knew, and his own smile was incredibly beautiful.