Page 131 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lorna

T here’s a lot of commotion around Rachel’s return to the village. Vantos takes her straight to the healer’s hut, and she doesn’t reemerge, though Grace assures us she’s not hurt, that she’s going to be fine.

It would be more convincing if she didn’t exchange hushed words with Liv immediately afterward, but before any of us can ask anymore questions, there are rumblings amongst the raskarrans, and Liv and Sally are called away to attend some sort of meeting.

The raskarrans don’t all go - most of them remaining around the fire.

The elders gaze in the direction of Gregar’s hut, curiosity in their expressions, but that’s as far as any of them go to find out what’s going on.

We sit up later than we normally would, watching for any signs of Rachel or any of the others.

I’m struggling to keep my eyes open, exhausted from the long walk back to the village.

And everything that happened immediately before that.

When Grace tells Molly it’s time they went to bed, and Molly’s jaw hardens, I stand up, yawning theatrically.

“Time for me to go to bed, too,” I say.

Khadija follows my lead. “Time for all of us to go to bed, I think.”

Whatever protest Molly was about to make dies in her throat and with only a small huff, she gets up and follows after Grace.

As I leave the fire, the elders start shutting things down for the night, banking the fire and tidying away the last few things around it.

As I’m walking back to my hut, I see Vantos leaving Gregar’s hut with a face like a storm cloud.

But he often looks like that - it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s had bad news.

I wonder again what’s going on, especially when Liv emerges and intercepts Khadija on her way to her hut, talking to her briefly before they both head off in the direction of the healer’s hut together.

I wonder if Rachel will be spending the night in the healer’s hut, but in case she doesn’t, I have a quick tidy round of our hut, taming the laundry pile and making up her bed for her.

I’ve taken to sleeping in the adult room while she’s been gone, spreading out on the bigger bed.

But when we first moved in, we slept together in the kids’ room, on the two smaller beds.

I shift my stuff back in there, in case she does come back and needs company.

I’m dozing when I hear the door open, soft footsteps approaching the bedroom.

In my half-asleep state, I almost expect it to be Shemza, come to curl his big body around mine so we can fall asleep together.

It’s a deliciously appealing thought, and I feel bad for being almost disappointed that it’s Rachel.

“You’re back,” I say to her, because it’s far too late to open with ‘what the fuck is going on?’

“I’m back.”

She sounds sad. Exhausted. She reminds me of how I used to sound when people congratulated me on my engagement.

Yes. It’s wonderful. I’m so happy.

“Did you have a good trip?”

I hope it’s an innocuous enough question. An invitation to talk if she wants to, without sounding like I’m digging for information.

“It was… a lot.”

I give her a moment to elaborate, but she doesn’t.

“Glad to be home?” I ask.

She hesitates before answering.

“Yes.”

So much conflict packed into that single syllable. I want to tell her she can trust me, that she can talk to me. But I think of the secrets I’m carrying, the lies I tell every day. Telling her she can trust me would be yet another one.

So I roll back over, try to go back to sleep.

When I wake in the morning, Rachel’s bed is empty, her covers tossed aside, the bed unmade. I straighten them for her, then straighten mine. She’s a lot tidier than I am. I know she likes things kept neat.

There’s no knock on my door from Shemza to change the water. Probably because Rachel’s back now and can do it for me. Or because he got what he wanted yesterday, and now he’s no longer interested.

It’s a thought that shouldn’t sting as much as it does.

For starters, I don’t think it’s true. Sure, this thing with him will probably run its course.

Most relationships that aren’t between goddess-chosen mates do.

But for now, he’s sweet and earnest and he built me a wildlife shelter.

That’s not the behaviour of someone who wants one quick hit and then to drop you.

Still, it’s like my brain can’t quite trust happiness. I’m going to be looking for the shoe until it drops.

I leave the sink and head for the fire instead.

I can probably manage it myself now anyway, but I can always ask one of the other girls to help me sort it out later if I can’t.

I want to find Rachel first, make sure she’s okay.

That should have been my first thought, not disappointment that Shemza wouldn’t be dropping by.

I think of how bleak and exhausted she sounded last night and guilt rushes through me.

I should have come running out here after her the moment I realised she was gone.

I look for Rachel around the fire, but her distinctive red hair is nowhere to be seen.

“Rachel still sleeping?” Liv says when she sees me.

“No… I thought she’d be out here.”

Where else would she go? Back to the healer’s hut? But Shemza and Grace are both at the fire. Rachel’s been training to be a healer, but surely if something was wrong, she’d have gone to them for help. Fear prickles in my stomach and I glance at the trees at the edge of the village.

I remember talking to Rachel before she left about how the forest creeps me out.

My walks with Shemza have made me less nervous of the trees, but as I look at them now, they seem forbidding again.

Tall and dark, and easy for one small human to get lost among.

She wouldn’t have left the village, would she? She wouldn’t have run.

Liv’s brows dip, concern filling her eyes, but she doesn’t look to the trees or anywhere outside of the village.

She looks in the direction of Vantos’ hut, her lip pressing together.

I can’t tell if she’s annoyed or just exasperated, but she doesn’t look afraid, much to my relief.

I think of all the toing and froing that happened last night. The hushed conversations taking place.

“What’s going on?” I say.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Liv says, heading over to her sister.

A moment later, Sally comes to me with Ahnjas in her arms. “Mind taking him for a moment?”

But before she can even hand him over, Rachel and Vantos appear. She’s wearing her nightgown, her feet hastily stuffed into boots. He’s dressed, but has a proprietary arm around her shoulder. And a look of beaming happiness on his normally stern face.

“Rachel?” Liv says, her tone almost managing to be neutral.

“Liv, it’s okay,” Rachel says, and she’s beaming, too. Glowing with delight. “Last night, the dreamspace formed for us. Vantos is my mate.”

Liv’s expression shifts from wariness to a huge smile, and she draws Rachel into a hug.

“I thought that wasn’t how it worked?” I say to Sally, my stomach sinking slowly downward as I watch Rachel and Vantos together, both of them gazing at each other with such love and adoration.

“It’s not,” Sally says. “For raskarrans, anyway. The dreamspace forms the first time you are close to your mate and both of age, as long as you’re not badly injured or ill. But…”

“But?”

Sally mistakes my apprehension for longing.

“I wouldn’t want to make any promises, Lorna.

But the dreamspace never should have formed for me and Jaskry.

Nor for Liv and Gregar, or Ellie and Anghar.

We were all too far away from each other.

Raskarrans used to travel between the villages regularly before the sickness.

It was a way for mating age males and females to meet one another, for mating bonds to be forged.

Before the sickness, raskarrans from Darran’s tribe wouldn’t have been able to mate to raskarrans of Gregar’s tribe without traveling to each other’s village.

It’s much less far to Darran’s village than it is to the beach.

It should have been impossible for Liv to dream of Gregar when she was on the beach and he was here. ”

“But it wasn’t.”

“Thank god for that, you’d have all died if he hadn’t been racing to find her.

But we’ve changed the rules. We’re not raskarran.

For whatever reason, we’re compatible with them.

We can join the dreamspace as they do. But we’re not the same.

We evolved on an entirely different world.

So I’m surprised, but also not surprised this has happened.

If we can break the rules about distance, why not break the rules about time? ”

My stomach is somewhere on the floor, but I have to ask. I have to know.

“So you think that any one of us could just mate to any one of them? At any time?”

“Well, there are some other factors at play with Rachel. She’s pregnant. I don’t know how much that will have had an impact on the delay in her mating with Vantos. But, in theory, yes.”

Vaguely, I register the news that Rachel is pregnant, but my mind fixates on those last three words, playing them over and over again.

In theory, yes.

In theory, yes.

In theory, yes.

I look round to where the raskarrans have gathered, watching their brother with a mix of confusion and delight.

I feel Shemza’s gaze on me before I locate him, a prickling at the back of my neck that sends a shiver through me.

It’s always been a good shiver before, the kind that lights up my nerve endings in anticipation of his touch. Now, it only makes me feel ill.

Because alongside the want and need in his gaze is something new. Something dangerous.

Hope.