Chapter 10 #2
"I mean it." The ration bar turned to paste in my mouth. "For now, we need to stay quiet and hidden. But tomorrow, things will get easier."
I prayed to whatever gods might be listening that I wasn't lying.
Darkness descended on the mountains, swallowing the landscape beyond our shelter. I'd just begun to believe we'd slipped through Persico's net when Starfield's ears locked forward, her muscles coiling tight as wire.
The voices reached me a heartbeat later—rough, male, and far too close.
My finger flew to my lips. Chloe's eyes went wide as moons, but she nodded, her face bleaching pale in the gathering gloom. We moved as one toward the cave mouth, our bodies low, our footfalls silent.
Behind the scrub brush I'd hastily arranged as camouflage, we crouched and listened.
"—tracks just vanished," a voice growled, frustration thick as blood. "Like they vanished into thin air."
"Maybe the Welati took them." The second voice trembled with barely suppressed terror.
"There'd be more blood," the first male countered. "The Welati don't clean up after themselves."
"They went higher." A third voice, harder than the others. "Only place left to go."
"Then you climb after them. Persico wants that female bad enough, he can come get her himself."
A sharp laugh cut through the darkness. "You volunteering to tell him that? Because I'd pay good coin to watch."
Boots scraped against stone. Leather creaked. I could smell them now—sweat and smoke and the metallic tang of weapons.
"The Welati don't come down this far," the gruff voice insisted, though doubt crept through the words like rot.
"Don't they?" The laugh came again, cruel and cutting. "Tell that to the prisoner they dragged in last month. What was left of him, anyway. They'd peeled his skin off in strips, and he was still screaming when—"
"Enough." The command cracked like a whip. "We're not going higher. Not for one human slut."
"Persico will have our heads."
"He's got enough females warming his bed to keep him distracted. We tell him she's dead. Fell off a cliff, got torn apart by something with teeth—doesn't matter which story we pick. She's not worth getting flayed alive by those mountain savages."
My pulse thundered in my ears. Beside me, Chloe shook like a leaf in a storm, and every instinct screamed at me to pull her close, to shield her.
"What about the Aljani?" someone asked.
"Dead too, probably. Tried to play hero. Makes the story better—Persico might even respect him for it."
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the group, followed by the blessed sound of retreat—boots crunching gravel, voices fading into the wind.
"Let's get back before full dark. I don't fancy meeting whatever hunts these rocks after sunset."
Their voices dissolved into the mountain wind. I remained frozen, every sense straining, until I was certain they'd truly gone. Only then did I let myself breathe.
We retreated deeper into the cave's belly, where shadows swallowed us whole. The moment we were far enough from the entrance, Chloe's fingers found my arm, her grip tight enough to leave marks.
"Nansar." The whisper barely carried, but the tremor in it spoke volumes. "What they said about the Welati—the skin peeling. Is that real, or were they just trying to scare each other?"
I held her gaze, weighing comfort against truth. She'd earned honesty.
"It's real," I said, keeping my voice low and steady. "The Welati don't take kindly to trespassers. Their methods of... discouragement are effective."
Her nails dug deeper into my arm. "And we're heading straight into their territory?"
"Skirting the edges of it." I covered her hand with mine. "We'll keep to the borderlands, well away from their settlements. We should be able to make it to the rendezvous point without them ever knowing we passed through." The words came out more certain than I felt.
"A few days of careful travel," she repeated, her tone flat.
"A few days of successful travel," I amended, injecting confidence I didn't entirely possess.
She searched my face, looking for the lie. After a long moment, her grip loosened and she stepped back. But doubt still clouded her eyes.
I shared it, truth be told. At least Persico's hunters had abandoned the chase. One threat eliminated from an ever-growing list.
Night claimed the mountain with ruthless efficiency. The temperature plummeted, turning each breath into visible proof of the cold's bite. Chloe hunched into herself, arms wrapped tight, trying to trap warmth that kept slipping away.
My gaze snagged on the damage to her clothes—the sleeve torn clean through, exposing pale skin to the merciless air. The hem of her pants hung in tatters where thorns and branches had shredded it during our flight.
I would have given anything to wrap her in something whole and warm. A proper cloak, thick enough to keep out the mountain's teeth. But on Palaydium, such luxuries were as rare as rain in the desert.
"A fire would be heaven right now," she said through chattering teeth.
"Too dangerous. The Welati have eyes everywhere, and I don't trust that Persico's men won't double back." I glanced at Starfield, her massive silhouette a comforting presence in the gloom. "Come here, girl."
The kuda lowered herself with a contented rumble, heat radiating from her like a living furnace. I motioned to Chloe. "Better than any campfire."
She didn't hesitate. Chloe melted against Starfield's flank, and I watched the tension drain from her frame as warmth enveloped her.
Then her eyes found mine, still standing apart. "And you?"
"I'll manage." I didn't feel the cold as brutally as her frail human skin, but it did register.
"Nansar." She held out her hand to me, her expression brooking no argument. "You'll turn into an icicle. Get over here."
I wavered. The proper thing would be to keep my distance, to maintain the boundaries that shouldn't be crossed. But the cold was already working its way into my bones, and pragmatism won out over propriety.
I approached slowly, making each movement deliberate and visible.
She'd come so far—no longer flinching at shadows, no longer freezing when I entered her space.
But I'd caught those moments when her breath would hitch, when something dark would flicker behind her eyes before she wrestled herself back to the present.
Progress, yes. But healing was a journey, not a destination.
I maintained a respectful distance as I settled against Starfield's radiating warmth, leaving enough space between us that Chloe wouldn't feel crowded. The fragile trust we'd built was too precious to risk.
Except Chloe had other ideas. She shifted closer without a moment's hesitation, her body pressing against my side as naturally as breathing. One final shiver rippled through her before the combined heat—Starfield's and mine—melted the cold away.
That's when my horns began to itch.
Not the faint prickle I'd experienced before. This was a searing, relentless burn that made my teeth clench and my fingers curl into fists. Every nerve ending in those cursed protrusions screamed for relief, demanding I rake them against stone until the sensation stopped.
By the ancestors, no.
I locked my muscles in place, forcing my breathing to remain steady even as instinct howled at me to turn, to pull her closer, to eliminate the scant inches still separating us.
This wasn't random. Wasn't stress or exhaustion or the bitter cold playing tricks on my mind. I knew this sensation the way I knew my own heartbeat.
The unmistakable sign of finding one's fated mate.
My lungs constricted. I fixed my gaze on the cave entrance, cataloging shadows and wind patterns, anything to avoid the realization settling over me like a weight.
Chloe was my mate.
The universe had a cruel sense of humor.
Her breathing had already evened out against my side, soft and trusting in a way that made something crack inside me.
This woman had survived horrors that would have shattered most beings.
She'd been brutalized, traumatized, stripped of everything—and now fate thought it wise to shackle her to me?
A disgraced royal. An exile. A prisoner.
She deserved better. Deserved someone unmarred by scandal and shame.
Not this. Not me.
I would see her to safety. Complete this gods-forsaken mission. And then I would disappear from her life, mate bond be damned. She would never have to know.
The itching flared hotter, as though my own biology was rebelling against the decision.
I gritted my teeth and ignored it.
Chloe murmured something unintelligible in her sleep, burrowing closer. Her scent wrapped around me—that intoxicating blend of human sweetness beneath layers of dust and exertion—and my horns blazed with an fervor that bordered on agony.
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to review the topographical map in my mind. Distances. Terrain features. Estimated travel times. Anything to drown out the warmth blooming traitorously in my chest.
It was utterly useless.