Chapter 3
THREE
“We’re leaving,” I say as soon as I enter the small kitchen.
The short Human female currently scrubbing cupboards that were already mysteriously clean, in a cabin mysteriously free of dust, droppings, with linens clean and mysteriously put away, stops.
“Kya Kya,” Maezii speaks in her quick, Outland accented voice. We’ve spoken Uthilsuven on the road so she could practice, but she slips into her native Gaithean dialect when worried. “We just arrived. You said we’d stay off the roads for at least a month. It’s Sorting season and the vultures are out.”
“If we could go unnoticed or get work.” I hadn’t even had a chance to ask around about the midwifery situation in town and the outlying farms.
“What happened?”
I worry at one of the beads in a braid hanging over my shoulder. “My ex complication is complicating. ”
“Sounds complicated.”
She said that with a straight face.
Ignoring her, I leave the kitchen and enter the living room, eyeballing our already unpacked belongings set on the sturdy wood frame couch. The cushions are freshly stuffed and clean, of fabric I know has to come from a City. At least we don’t have much, so packing won’t take long.
A day. They kept saying Rath would be home tomorrow. But I know them. . .they were probably lying. Stalling. He’s already here. Maybe.
Maezii follows me. “To the Sorting then?”
“We need work and protection. The towns and settlements are crawling with slavers.” Though I hadn’t seen evidence of slavers here. “We’ll be captured sooner or later.”
“So maybe staying here and dealing with bullies is safer. You say Orcs won’t kill.”
I blink. I’ll need to qualify that statement if that’s what I’d said. “Iloni was worried about her mother.”
She scrunches up her face. “Fiiine, Kya. But can we at least stay the night before we head out to sell our souls? I don’t think it will work out as well as you think it will work out. Sorting. Slavers. Same same.”
I cross my arms. “It’s based on a contract.”
“Oh, spirits of my ancestors, I didn’t know you were still this naive.”
“I’m not naive. We’ll hold out for an offer we like.”
Maezii paces the room, tugging on her woven prayer necklace. “No problem. Except when you enter the Sorting, you can’t leave without a contract in hand. All anyone has to do is wait and offer terms based on your increasing desperation. Immortals smell desperation.”
“We’re midwives, and we’re young. We’ll get competitive terms. There will be a bidding war.”
“I said I’d follow you and I will, but I think Plan S needs a Plan BCD.”
“It’ll work out.”
“That’s why the mothers like you. Your breezy optimism.” She grimaces, letting go of the necklace. “Then we go to the Sorting. I just don't think we're going to find better options there versus sticking it out here.”
I can't bring myself to tell her I’m afraid of Rathhur, not his parents. She sees me as strong, competent, decisive. I was none of those things growing up and as soon as I see him again, everything I’ve built myself into will crumble now that I know he’s. . .waited for me.
Knowing he’s waited, didn’t repudiate our oath, has changed everything.
Knowing he considers me his by my willing oath removes every leash a Uthilsen male is forced to wear when dealing with any female. If submitting to his torture was bad before, now that we’re adults and he’s feels justified to enforce his claim?
It will be worse.
I force myself to believe it will be worse.
“I’m afraid he’ll hurt me,” I hear myself say, “but that this time, I won’t have the strength to run away. ”
She throws her arms around my waist and cuddles against me. “Then we go.”
I send Maezii off for a nap while I finish repacking, not that there’s much to pack, but I want to go through Da’s belongings and write up a deed for whoever finds it first, giving over rights to the cabin. After, we need to sneak into town and replenish our supplies, see if there are any overpriced charms to be had. We’ve survived the roads this long, and it’s been some time since we’ve had to fight off anything more ominous than a Human slaver, but life and carelessness aren’t compatible.
I step outside to take in the evening air, resigned, staring up through the trees.
Da hadn’t protected me. He’d barely been able to take care of himself. If I’d been a good daughter, I would have stayed. Practically speaking, I couldn’t have saved him. He’d been lost even before my mother’s death, succumbing to whatever demons plagued him.
He’d tried to be a good father.
I take a deep breath, and let my guilt go.
A twig cracks and I stiffen, whipping my blade out as I step back, prepared to defend my cabin and my apprentice sleeping inside.
It's a vague outline in the darkness, but the outline is tall, broad, too still to be honest.
“Who's there?” I growl in guttural Uthilsuven. “Turn away or meet my blade.”
“That’s the greeting you’d give an enemy,” a rough, masculine voice purrs. “Not a husband. I suppose I approve.”
I should have taken Maezii and left. I straighten, lowering my blade. It won’t do anything but piss him off; he won’t be caught off guard a second time.
“Have you learned how to use your nail file yet, Kyona Lethergen, or are you still tripping over your own feet and almost slicing your throat open?”
“The last time we saw each other, it was your guts sliced open.”
Hells, I shouldn’t be flirting with him.
He chuckles. I tense, but don’t move. Running would be worse than stupid, and I don’t have a pure blooded Human’s instinct to offer myself as prey.
Rathhur steps out of the shadows, pace steady, moonlight through the trees briefly highlighting his face. “What have I told you about pointing a knife at an enemy if you don't plan to follow through?”
“What makes you think I won’t follow through?”
“You sheathed it.”
Because I don’t want him to disarm me and refuse to give it back.
He's an arm’s length from me now, the first step on the porch creaking under his weight, and there's no light from inside the cabin to illuminate his features even a little. My night vision isn't as sharp as a full Uthilsen.
I clench down on the urge to run, holding my ground. Everything in me shrieks that a predator approaches, not the merely dangerous boy I knew.
“I’m leaving in the morning,” I say. “I’ve written out a deed to the cabin and its contents, and the rights to the pond. Take it if you think I owe you something and let any debt between us be settled.”
“I don’t need a deed to claim what’s already ours, Ky’a. I’ve kept it maintained. Da died clean and well fed in his bed.”
It’s not a good death to an Orc warrior, but to me—tears prick my eyes. “Thank you.”
“You never need to thank me.”
His soft voice, the caress in it, doesn’t fool me. It’s the voice he learned to use when we were youths and Rath didn’t want his drunk, vicious father to know that half our daydreams were about sneaking into his bedroom at night and slitting his throat before he could beat Rath again, or order him to show me that same kindness.
Poor Rathhur, torn between the parents he loved, the community he felt responsible for, and the halfling used by his mother to vent her hatred of anything Human.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Want, Ky’a?”
His voice is even, quiet. He still hasn’t moved but as the seconds tick by it’s as if his shadow stretches out and looms over me.
My skin crawls from the tension. He’s learned control. Before, he would have already had me pinned against the door, his tusks scraping my neck or his hand around my throat. An endless cycle of kindness and cruelty, depending on who was watching .
“I want my wife to fulfill the oath we made, in blood, before witnesses. I want to leave this hell of a half life.” His voice deepens. “I want more than to return home to be told she plans to flee me again.”
“I came back to settle Da’s affairs.”
“That’s how little our oath means to you? Maybe my parents are right about Humans.”
It shouldn’t hurt me. I shouldn’t let it hurt me. “Maybe they are. Is that all?”
If he was still before, now the lack of motion raises hair along my arms and neck. Three soft breaths before he speaks again.
“I understand why you left. I’m not angry. Stay awhile, that’s all I ask. I miss you, Ky’a.”
“Hmm. What do your parents have to say about my return?”
The faint outline of his head tilts, beads in the braids woven throughout his hair clattering gently against each other. The clattering tells me he’s grown it out, maybe to his waist.
“I will protect you from my parents. No one will disrespect you here ever again. I am not the boy you left behind.”
I need to see his eyes. He can lie with his voice—he could never lie with his dark, cold, feral eyes.
I snort.
“I understand you don’t believe me. You shouldn’t. Stay. Let me prove my words with deeds. When you left you broke me, Ky’a. I had to remake myself into a male worthy of you.”
My heart stops for a second at those words. No raging, no snarling, no using his greater strength to dominate me into submission. I’m completely off balance .
He takes another step up. I want to shout at him to get on with it, charge me, pin me against the door, savage me, but stop this slow stalking.
“Ky’a.” Suddenly he’s in front of me, his heat, his greater height. Not quite touching.
My voice trembles. “You can’t have what you want from me, Rath.”
His talons skim my braids. “Accept our marriage. I want you happy, dripping in my come and fat with my babies. I want my best friend back, the lover I let my weakness take from me.”
His fingers slip into my hair and close into a fist at my nape.
“I’m not going to forgive you ever,” I say, “and I’m not going to forget.”
“I’ve seen marriages based on worse.”
“Rath—”
He tugs, and I refuse to gasp when my chest hits his. It’s bare, hard muscle against my nose flexing as I turn my head, my mouth inadvertently brushing his warm skin.
I try not to swallow. “You. . .uhhv. . .gotten big.”
“Everywhere, Ky’a.” He lowers his head, lips pressing against my cheek. “And I’m starving.”
Thinking straight is an overrated skill, but I persevere. I’ve had practice. “You’re hungry? I mean, did you eat, for food?”
None of the words coming from my mouth are coherent.
He chuckles again. “The only thing I want to eat is between your thighs. Twenty years, Kyona.”
Heat rises up my core, floods my stomach and I press my thighs together to keep from releasing the scent .
He inhales.
In a flash, he’s my old Rath again. Cold, vicious, his hand in my hair painful. “Abstinent while waiting for my wife. Can you say the same?”
I know better than to go for my blade. He’s even bigger than Hatthar.
“I don’t want anyone. I don’t want you.”
Rath lowers his head and inhales; a long, slow, deliberate breath. “Lie. I smell your hunger. You tremble to keep from throwing yourself into my arms to ease your heat.”
I hiss, not quite embarrassed, but aggravated my body betrays me. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
He makes a thoughtful noise. “Should I throw you on the ground, strip you down and plunge my fingers into your dripping pussy and taste how much it doesn’t mean? ”
“Fuck you, Rathhur!”
He’s rigid, his breath coming too fast. The fist tightens, tightens, then he releases me.
“I don’t think so. Not tonight. I’m going to let you run. I have enough control for that. You’ll have a day’s head start because I am so angry that if I fuck you now I’m afraid I’ll tear you apart. I would feast on your insides. But that’s what you want and you deserve to suffer a little.”
“More.”
“What?”
“A little more. I’ve already suffered, Rath.”
His mouth takes mine in a kiss so swift, so savage, that I don’t have time to freeze or fight before it’s over and he steps back.
“Run, Ky’a. If you can escape me, I’ll let you go. But if you don’t. . . ”
I’m shaking, with fear, with anger, with unwilling desire. All it took was one kiss. “If I don’t escape?”
“You’ll be chained to my bed until you birth our first young.” His voice is gentle. “I know you won’t leave me then.”
I don’t need to see his eyes.