Chapter 15 #2
“We create light around us,” I said. “We’ve got lamps and flashlights and streetlights. There are headlights on cars so we can drive. Even my phone has a light in it.”
“The artificial light doesn’t hurt your eyes?”
“No, of course not,” I answered breezily before realizing they would hurt his. “I know to you my senses seem dull, but they fit the world I was born into. If you were dropped down in the middle of any city, you’d be overwhelmed by all the lights and loud noises.”
“Maybe,” the alpha reluctantly grumbled.
But there was no maybe about it. Two minutes in Times Square would be enough to make any ferus as frazzled as I was now.
After another quarter of an hour of silent hiking, I finally spotted the flash of flickering fire in the distance.
Next to me, Tauren stiffened slightly.
“Stay at my side,” he commanded as we drew closer, his voice even tighter than usual. “No matter what happens tonight, don’t get separated.”
Yeah…that wasn’t going to be a problem.
The closer we got to the village, the brighter the firelight grew and the louder the raucous male voices and laughter became. There was music—the pounding rhythm of drums and melodic strings. I laced my fingers with Tauren’s and gripped his hand tight.
The first structure we passed on the edge of the village was a log cabin similar in style to Tauren’s but with simple brick chimneys running up the side. There was another just like it a little farther in…and another after that…and another.
“Does everyone here live like this?” The simple shelters were a tight fit, even for a single alpha. Trying to fit a couple or a whole family in one would be miserable.
“No,” Kyre answered. “This is just the area set aside for unmated alphas like me. Families live closer to the center of the village.”
After walking through the thickening ring of one-room huts for a couple more minutes, I started to realize the enormity of the problem Calindra had tried to explain to me. There were a lot of shacks here. Too many. Each one of them representing an alpha without much hope for the future.
But what I didn’t understand was why they were forced to live in such shabby conditions.
The question only grew in my mind when the ramshackle neighborhood gave way to one that was a little nicer. Simple shelters turned into real homes. And the deeper into the village we walked, the grander and more varied the houses became.
The simple wooden style gave way to homes that looked like they’d been ripped out of the pages of a storybook with thatched roofs and arched doorways. Others were fully built into the hillsides, like full-on hobbit holes. I was awed by the variety.
But it was at the dead center of the town where the truly grand houses were.
With multiple stories and intricate woodwork, these structures were built on larger lots.
They had yards encircled by fences and gates.
Vines grew up the exterior walls on trellises, most with blossoms or berries of some kind.
Clearly, the closer to the heart of the village someone lived, the more important they were, with the families living in the circle around the large, open bonfire area being the highest on the social ladder.
I should have brought my camera with me. Not just to capture the stunning beauty of some of these houses, but also to document the disparity between the homes at the center of town and those on the fringes.
I wanted to ask Tauren why things were this way, but the question would have to wait until we returned back home...which, now that we were in the middle of the festivities, I prayed would be soon.
There had to be five hundred people out here—all of them massive.
And all of them staring right at me.
I squeezed Tauren’s hand even tighter and pushed back the instinct to run as a thousand ferus eyes fixed on my face.
The music stopped. The crowd around the towering bonfire had gone silent. For a few excruciatingly long seconds, the only sound came from the crackle and pop of flames.
Then a whisper started to run through the crowd. A low murmur, punctuated by an angry grumble here or a disbelieving sputter there. But beyond a blanket sense of shock, the vibe of the crowd was hard to read.
Sure, some of the alphas and ferus women were obviously angry at my presence.
They didn’t bother hiding their reddening faces or scowls.
But there were other, less extreme, reactions as well.
Some expressions were more skeptical than upset.
Others looked genuinely curious. A few even seemed pleased with smiles teasing the edges of their lips.
But I also spotted one familiar face.
In the back of the crowd, Calindra made quick eye contact with the three of us before gliding off into the empty village. No one in the crowd seemed to notice her departure.
Well, that part of the plan had been a success.
Now we just needed to survive our portion of it.
After another few seconds of torturous silence, I couldn’t take any more. I leaned against Tauren and whispered, “All right, what do we do now?”
I shouldn’t have asked.
Because in the very next breath, a brawny alpha with salt-and-pepper hair pushed his way to the front of the crowd and stared at me with the coldest dark eyes I’d ever seen.
I must have flinched at the sight of his simmering glower because the next thing I knew, Tauren’s arm was around my waist, holding me tight and keeping me from running like hell down the path we’d come in on.
My knees started to tremble as the older alpha curled his lip up in a snarl, his frigid gaze sweeping up the length of me.
“Now, my little trespassing kirre, you deal with me.”