Page 135 of Hunted By Fae

Samick doesn’t look over at them. The constant ice of his stare frosts over Dare’s face. “Some are evate.”

Dare runs his hands down his tired thighs, firm, as though trying to push out any tension in his muscles.

The patter of boots on the frosted grass draws nearer. The man rushes back to them, two bowls full of a mixture of food.

Dare takes both.

The kuri hesitates, as if fighting the urge to glance at Samick, to get reassurance from him that Dare is allowed to take both servings, but he knows better than to actually look at Samick—then he’s turning on his heels and scrambling back to his end of camp, where he is somewhat safe. Safer than out in the open, mixing with the fae.

Dare sets down a bowl on the ground between his boots. “You’re not going to sit?”

Samick doesn’t respond with words.

The soft leather of his thin-soled boot whispers the faintest creak as he plants it on a boulder. His weight leans onto that one hiked knee as he stares out there, into darkness, into nothing.

He doesn’t sit.

Dare steals the fork into his grip, then shovels it into the mush.

“Have you wondered about that?” he asks between slow, unwilling bites. The food in the human lands is flavourless, bland and sometimes slimy. Like each time before, Dare has to force is down with a hard swallow.

Icy strands of hair fall out of place and drift over the arch of Samick’s eyebrow. “What?”

“Wondered why dark males are suddenly having evate with all these humans?”

“It isn’t the first time a dokkalf has bonded with a human. Soul mateships don’t know those bounds.”

Dare shakes his head. “Not in these numbers. Have you ever been in a unit with your fellow warriors—and so many of them find their evate in one mission?”

The harshness of the light washes out his pallor, even the pink of his lips that move around his slightly annoyed words, “What are you saying?”

Dare shrugs, “I have a theory.”

Samick runs his distasteful stare over Dare’s mouth, the reddish sauce stains on his lips, the food trolling around his mouth.

“Explain it between bites,” Samick drones.

Dare throws a dull look up at him, then makes sure to give a bloody grin, but the blood smearing his teeth is just a red sauce.

“I think Mother is saving them through Fate,” Dare says. “Perhaps the individual souls themselves, or a group of the species.”

Samick considers it for a moment. “The humans are her children as much as the fae are, and so, yes, perhaps she saves their kind through evate bonds. Perhaps those soul tethers existed before we came here.”

“Do you think it has meaning?”

Samick looks into the darkness as though he can see home itself, not Dorcha, not the dark lands, not even the Midlands, but rather, the mountains he descends from, the ice mountains forever white and wisped in mist, of icein the air, of magic in the bones, on an isle far off the mainland.

“I find it best to never question Mother or attempt to understand Her,” the icy male says. “Mother’s ways must only be accepted. And,” he turns a cold look on Dare, “as much as it brings me relief to see you alive, I do wonder why you were brought here.”

Dare trades the empty bowl for the full one.

Samick doesn’t allow his hesitation, his delay. Frost trickles along his voice, a voice that steels the strongest of bones, “Why did you leave your unit?”

“Bee.”

A heartbeat passes before, “The kinta?”

“The very one.”