Page 105 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Rachel

I ’m mostly cried out by the time Liv appears in the healer’s hut, Khadija at her back. I’m probably red and blotchy - my skin tone is very unforgiving - but I try to take a deep breath, square my shoulders and look a little bit put together.

Liv’s lips are pressed thin as she looks at me. And it’s okay. I was expecting this. She has the whole tribe to think about, and I’m making life harder for them. And that’s before anyone finds out about my dalliance with Vantos.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Liv says. “I never would have let you go charging off into the forest if I’d known.”

Her voice is softer than I was expecting, edged with regret. She steps closer to me, and before I can sort out enough words to form a coherent answer, she wraps me in her arms, drawing me into an utterly unexpected hug.

“Shemza says you’re okay. I’m so glad you’re okay.”

This unanticipated softness smashes through my defences, and I burst into ugly tears again. I feel all over the place, and I know that kind of comes with the territory with pregnancy, but it’s more than just that. It’s everything that’s happened over the last few days.

“You are okay, aren’t you?” Liv asks, drawing back from me.

“I’m okay.”

“Good,” she says, with a hint of the hardness I tend to expect from her. “Because if anything had happened to you or the baby, I would never have forgiven myself.”

That just makes me cry harder, and Liv does her best to awkwardly comfort me, while Khadija watches, looking glad she doesn’t have to deal with me.

“I thought,” I manage to squeeze out between sobs, “that people wouldn’t be happy about the baby.”

Khadija’s eyebrows raise at my words, and Liv looks at me like I’ve gone mad.

“Why the hell would you think that?” she says, hands on her hips as she looks down at me.

“The hunters are working so hard to feed everyone. And I’m just an extra burden. I was afraid I’d be kicked out.”

Liv’s demeanour softens. “Rachel. This isn’t the bottom tier.

The raskarrans aren’t Mercenia. They do things a little different.

No one is going to be kicked out. No one.

If the hunters have to work a little harder, that’s what they’ll do, and they’ll do it gladly.

In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s not exactly an abundance of new life around here.

Every baby born to this tribe is going to be a blessing. ”

“Even one that’s not half raskarran?” I say, my voice coming out like a whisper.

Liv’s answer is to fold me into her arms again.

“I’m sorry, Rachel,” she says after a moment. “I’ve let you down.”

Confusion startles me out of my sadness.

“Why?”

“Because I’m your chief-ess. Chieftess?.”

“Lady chief?” Khadija suggests with a grin.

“I’m in charge,” Liv says. “And you didn’t feel like you could come to me with your worries.

So I’ve let you down. You should have been able to trust me, but you couldn’t, and that’s my fault.

I’ll do better from now on, I promise. If ever you need anything, if ever you’re worried about anything, you can tell me about it, okay?

I’ll always listen, and I’ll always do my best to do something about it. ”

“How successful she’ll be will depend on how much the solution relies on smacking people upside the head,” Khadija says with a grin.

Liv shoots her a look, but grins. “It’s true, I’m much better at kicking ass than I am at empathising.” She grimaces. “I think maybe that’s why you’ve worried about all this on your own instead of coming to me.”

“I was just scared,” I say.

“I know. It’s scary.” Her hand goes to her stomach, where her own child grows - only a few days old at the moment. Probably not even making her mouth taste of metal yet. “But whatever fears we have, we both know that our babies are going to be better off here than if we had them back home.”

She takes a seat beside me.

“I want to ask you a few questions,” she says, taking my hand in hers and giving it a squeeze. “Feel up to giving me some answers? We can wait til tomorrow if you’re tired.”

“No, it’s fine,” I say. I’ll only worry if I don’t hear her questions now.

“Okay. First up, how is this even possible? Was it one of the guys on our transport? They didn’t force you into anything, did they?”

There’s anger in her eyes, but I’m starting to understand Liv a little better, I think. The rage isn’t for me, it’s for the people who might have hurt me.

“No,” I say. “My boss back home. Jeremy. He’s the father.”

Liv nods. “That’s… less terrible, I suppose?”

I shrug.

“Did he know?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t know for sure until I got here.

I’d been feeling sickly on the transport, but I figured it was motion sickness or something.

And then on the beach I was hungry enough that I didn’t feel sick anymore.

I was only when I’d had a few good meals in the village and the sickness didn’t go away that I started to wonder. ”

Liv nods. “Do you have any idea how you got pregnant?”

“I think we all know how it works,” Khadija says. “Don’t embarrass the poor girl.”

Liv rolls her eyes, but their teasing makes me feel a little lighter.

“I know the mechanics of the act,” Liv says, making a crude gesture with her hands. “I meant, there was birth control in our food. How did you manage to get pregnant despite that?”

“He liked to cook for me,” I say. “I doubt his higher tier food had the same drugs in it that ours did.”

Liv nods. “Eating meals at his place, don’t get your recommended doses. Makes sense.” Her smile turns gentle. “He liked to cook for you, huh?”

I can sense that she’s leading into asking me if I’m okay, if I miss him, if I need support. I head her off before she can get started down that track.

“He was an asshole. When I went to him crying because I’d won the lottery and it meant being taken away from him, he told me I was too attached and I should go, that he didn’t want anything to do with me anymore.

I found out later that he had more than one girl on the go - always did, the entire time we were together.

I thought he loved me, and I was just a body to use to him. ”

It doesn’t hurt me anymore, not really, but I still feel a pinch in my heart, tears stinging in the corners of my eyes. Mostly for that poor, sad version of myself that didn’t know what real love was.

“Forget about that fucker then,” Liv says, venom in her voice. “Be glad he’ll never even know about his child.”

“It’s not his child,” I say, a sudden certainty coming over me. I wrap my arms around my stomach, sheltering it. “It’s mine.”

I’ve never really thought about the baby this way before. As a real thing. A person. For the first time, my heart fills with a love so bright, so brilliant, that it almost makes me forget about everything else.

Liv bursts my happy bubble with her next words.

“I need to talk to you about Vantos.”

All the security I’d been feeling about my place in the tribe evaporates. Pregnant? That’s fine. Broke the moral codes of the tribe? I swallow past my suddenly dry throat and force myself to ask.

“What about him?”

Liv chews on her bottom lip. “He… You have to understand that the raskarrans find it quite difficult to understand our world. I’ve been able to show it to Gregar in the dreamspace, so I think he gets it better than most, but it’s still so alien to him.

” A hint of a wry grin flashes on her face, before her expression reverts to serious.

“They don’t understand the tiers, or Mercenia, or anything.

It’s incomprehensible to them that people in a society could be abused the way we were.

That the ‘tribe leaders’ wouldn’t look after everyone.

They don’t get it. And they don’t understand that we don’t have goddesses and mates and all of that, either.

Vantos… he thinks because you are pregnant that Jeremy was your mate, chosen for you the way mates are chosen for raskarrans.

That it’s some kind of undeniable bond and Jeremy was the only person who could have got you pregnant.

Basically, he thinks it works exactly the same for humans as it does for raskarrans. ”

“Okay?” I say, wondering why this is an issue.

“And because he thinks you have already had a mate, he thinks you won’t get another. So he’s asked Gregar for permission to ask you to live with him as mates would, even though you aren’t mates.”

White noise rings in my ears, shock switching my senses off.

“What?” I manage, the word sounding distant to my ears.

“It’s unheard of among the raskarrans,” Liv says. “None of them have casual relationships. They want their mate and no other will do. But Vantos was quite adamant. He knows he won’t mate with any of the other girls because, as he put it, none of them are you.”

It’s as if my heart has stopped completely. And then it starts beating again, hard and fast, my head feeling light and dizzy as emotion pours through me.

“He really said that?” The words come out in a rush of breath, high and excited.

All this time I’ve been thinking our interactions didn’t mean the same to him as they did to me. Was he really wrestling with the same longing, the same need, that I was?

“He really did,” Liv says.

There’s something flat about her tone. It cuts through the swelling joy I’m feeling, my heart suddenly plummeting to the floor.

“Gregar will give him permission, right? There’s surely no reason why he wouldn’t?”

Liv is quiet for a long moment. “Rachel, you know you don’t need Vantos on your side?”

I do. I need him like air, but I don’t think that’s what Liv means.

“I know?” I say.

“Your position in the tribe is secure. You don’t need a raskarran fighting your corner to keep your place.”

“I know?” I’m confused. I don’t understand what she’s trying to ask, only that it feels like a trick question.