Page 150 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

CHAPTER ONE

Carrie

D arran’s tribe arrives late in the afternoon.

The first we know of it is a commotion of sound, raskarran voices shouting.

Every one of us girls goes tense, our bodies freezing in place.

We’re sitting in what was the storage hut - now empty of spare furniture and supplies and renamed the ‘gathering hut’ - Lorna perched on a table at the front of the room, her slate in hand, halfway through a demonstration of a lower case ‘r’, the rest of us with our chalks poised over our slates.

“That’s Anghar,” Ellie says, her voice low, as another raskarran calls something out. “He doesn’t sound tense.”

It doesn’t reassure anyone. We all remember how cheerfully Rardek spoke with the Cliff Top tribe on the day they ambushed us just outside the village - as if they weren’t aiming their spears at all of us.

“Can you hear what’s being said?” Liv says, turning to Jassal.

Poor little thing looks as spooked as I feel, and she shakes her head. I’m not surprised she can’t - we’re right on the edge of the village here, the voices muffled by all the huts between us and them.

“Sorry,” Jassal says, her voice quiet, frightened.

“That’s okay,” Liv says, keeping her voice low, but her reassuring tone clear. “I’ll just go take a look instead.”

“Not without me, you won’t,” Khadija says, rising from her seat, checking the large knife at her belt.

It’s one of the smaller ones the hunters use, mostly for skinning their kills once they’ve carried them back to the village.

But raskarrans are bigger than humans, and a small knife to them looks pretty threatening when strapped to Khadija’s slender hips.

“It’s going to be Darran’s tribe,” Liv says.

“Of course it is,” Khadija says, but she pulls out her knife, adjusting her grip until it sits comfortably in her hand.

“Back in a minute,” Liv says, glancing round at the rest of us.

I watch them to the doorway of the gathering hut, tracking them until they’re out of sight. The rest of us remain silent, listening to the tone of the raskarran voices we can hear. Trying to interpret the mood of their words.

“It is going to be Darran’s tribe, right?” Hannah says, her voice shaky.

“There would be more shouting if it wasn’t,” Ellie says. “Anghar might try to be diplomatic, but do you really think Vantos would?”

We all glance over at Rachel, who blushes a shade to match her hair, even as she gives a dazzling smile. Ellie’s right, there’s no way Vantos would be calm if the village had unwelcome visitors. Not with a pregnant mate to protect.

Still, we all wait in silence, barely breathing, until Liv and Khadija return. As soon as they come to the doorway, I can tell there’s nothing to worry about. They’re both relaxed, smiling. It is just Darran’s tribe, just as we knew it would be.

But for me, the easing fear is only replaced by a different kind of tension.

I glance across at Hannah, Mattie, Grace.

Grace looks paler than usual, the dusting of freckles across her nose not enough to hide the pallor of her skin.

Hannah’s lips press into a thin line and Mattie looks a little green.

Only Khadija out of the other unmated girls looks calm, unfazed.

But then, I don’t think there’s much that gets under her skin.

I wonder how I look. Mirrors are no more a thing in a raskarran village than they were in my bottom tier apartment - I have to rely on seeing my reflection in the water in my sink.

But at least here there’s time to actually spend getting ready in the morning.

Rather than just pulling on a jumpsuit in a half-asleep stupor, I can take care with my appearance.

I’ve grown more familiar with myself - the wave and bounce of my hair around my face, the bow shape of my lips, the slant of my cheekbones.

The yellow-brown colour of my eyes. I know what I look like normally, but what do I look like now?

Are my shoulders bunched tight? Does the colour drain out of my cheeks?

The only thing I’m aware of is the only thing I’m always aware of these days.

The vice grip that something has on my throat.

I try to swallow past it. Try taking long, slow breaths.

“They’re gathering at the northern edge of the village,” Liv says. “We should go over there and introduce ourselves.”

She’s gentle in the way she says it, but at the same time, there’s no room for argument. When no one moves or speaks, she gives a sympathetic smile.

“I know it’s weird,” she says.

Weird is the word. More weird than last time, somehow.

When we arrived back at Gregar’s village, we were so worn out from the travelling, still in a state of shock from the Cliff Top tribe’s attack, that we didn’t really have space in our heads to think about what Liv had told us about the dreamspace and mates.

I remember falling asleep the moment I lay down in my new bed, dead to the world until late the next morning, when Grace finally came to check if I was okay.

Now, there’s no exhaustion, no shock to keep the reality of the situation at bay. Tonight, we could go to sleep and find a raskarran waiting in our dreams for us.

“Let’s go,” Grace says, her voice cracking. She clears her throat before she speaks again. “No point standing here feeling nervous about it.”

That’s how the throat is supposed to work. A crack, a stick, words snagging on something made of nerves or fear. A quick cough is meant to clear it, allow the words to flow.

I rub my hand over my neck. Sometimes it helps.

We file out of the gathering hut after Liv and Khadija.

Rachel skips to the front, and Grace goes with her, squaring her shoulders.

She’s a bit older than we are, in her thirties rather than her twenties.

She’s taken on being a mother to Molly, but in little ways like this, I think she tries to be a mother to all of us.

I expect Lorna to move to the front as well. She’s mated to Shemza, and has no need to worry about the arrival of the new tribe. But instead, she comes up beside me, bumping her shoulder against mine and giving me a reassuring smile.

My heart thumps as we walk towards the northern edge of the village. I can hear raskarran voices, the excitement in their tones obvious now. I don’t know much of the raskarran language, but I do hear one word I recognise, said over and over again.

Vo’shashkan, vo’shashkan, vo’shashkan.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

I should be welcoming them, too. They’re here to help protect us from the Cliff Top tribe, those rogue raskarrans who’ve abandoned the peaceful ways of their goddess.

Warriors from a faraway village come to defend the helpless maidens…

It sounds like one of the fairytales my mother used to whisper to me at bedtime.

Stories of adventurers who did battle against dragons.

Or children that outsmarted evil witches.

But mostly, stories about handsome princes who met downtrodden young girls and fell madly in love with them at first sight.

Once upon a time…

Everything I know about love, I learned from those stories.

As a little girl, I loved every part of them.

I saw so much of myself in Cinderella - the girl forced to do all the work while other people got to have all the fun.

Ms Isserman, the humourless owner of the dressmakers where we worked, made for a perfect wicked stepmother.

It seemed all too easy to believe that there could be a handsome prince waiting for me somewhere.

Someone who could pluck me and Mom from our miserable bottom tier lives.

“But how will I know?” I remember saying to Mom once, when I can’t have been more than five or six years old.

“Know what?” she’d said, stroking her fingers over my hair.

“That he’s my handsome prince? What if I miss him?”

Mom leaned closer to me, smiling in a way that made her eyes glitter. They used to glitter so much back then, before the milky patches in them started to grow and spread, gradually robbing her of her vision.

“Impossible,” she said. “A princess always knows when she meets her prince.”

“But how will I know?”

Mom grinned. “Because he’ll give you butterflies.”

She put a hand to my stomach, wiggling her fingers against it, making me giggle. Then, in a burst of good mood, she swept me up into her arms and danced me round the room until she set me down in bed.

“Did my daddy give you butterflies?” I asked.

Thinking about it now, I can imagine the slight pause, the way her eyes would have shuttered for a second, before her smile returned and she leaned down to kiss me goodnight.

She tried so hard to protect me from the terrible reality of our life under Mercenia.

To wrap me up in the safe and lovely fantasy world of the fairytales.

Of course, reality started to bleed through.

I grew up, the same way all bottom tier kids do - too fast. I realised the stories were just that.

Stories. That even if I somehow managed to meet someone between my exhausting shifts at the dressmakers, Mercenia had outlawed marriage for bottom tier citizens.

That there was a reason Mom never spoke about my father, and the best I could hope for in life was that someone like him didn’t happen to me.

But I’m not so far removed from that little girl that I can’t remember how it felt to believe in it all. To daydream about meeting my handsome prince while I sewed buttons on to dresses at work. To look out for him in the streets as we walked home at night.

Now I’m living in a world where handsome princes really do exist. They’re green, with fangs and tails, but the raskarrans are still incredibly attractive, and they’re kind and honourable - exactly as a fairytale prince should be.

I feel like I should be ready to dive headfirst into this future I always dreamed of.

Instead, I struggle to get words out. Every day, my voice retreats a little further down into my chest, my throat grows a little more tight, a little more jagged.

A little more resistant to letting any sound out.

It’s been getting worse and worse, ever since we left the beach - and any chance of Mercenia ever coming back for us - behind.

I lower my hand from my neck, tracing my fingers along the chain that hangs around it.

A thin, fragile chain with a locket at the end of it.

An old family heirloom. Not an expensive thing, but the perfect storage space for a data chip containing credits.

Every penny Mom scrimped and saved over the years from every extra commission she ever took.

All that money on the chip inside this locket.

Mom’s voice echoes in the back of my mind, the words she’d spoken while Mercenia’s agents were knocking on our door, ready to collect me.

This is your chance, my Carrie, my darling girl. The opportunities you’ll have - far better than the ones you have here.

And then the words I’d spoken to her just before I left with them.

I’ll make the most of this. I’ll work hard. I’ll save up and bring you out to join me. I promise.

I promise.

I promise.

I promise.

My voice rings in my head, the only place it gets heard these days.

I was supposed to put the money on the chip towards a ticket for her.

A one-way ticket to Alpha Colony, where she could have the same chances that I’d won.

Freedom, proper medical care. Maybe even love.

I had no idea how much a ticket would cost, but whatever the shortfall was, I was going to work my butt off to earn on my small holding.

I’d spent the weeks of space flight thinking about it, planning whatever I could with the scant information Mercenia provided.

Scant because they were never actually planning on giving us our freedom. My promise to Mom was destined to be broken from the moment I made it.

I keep hoping there will come a time when I can think about it - think about her - without it hurting. Without the vice grip on my throat tightening another notch.

But it’s definitely not today.

We round the last corner, emerging from between a cluster of huts.

Immediately ahead of us, Anghar is gripping the shoulder of another raskarran male, the two of them engaged in an enthusiastic conversation.

Shemza is off to the side, talking with an extremely elderly raskarran, who must be Darran’s healer.

The old male leans heavily on a walking stick, his body heavy with exhaustion, but his eyes bright and alert.

Gregar talks to another older male, though this one doesn’t look old enough to be an elder.

He has thick, grey hair that falls to the middle of his back, but his shoulders are broad and strong, his body thick with muscle.

I’d put him at the same age as Anghar’s father, Harton, but unlike Harton, who’s unassuming, this male radiates raw power and command.

It’s similar to how Gregar is, and I figure this must be Darran.

I look for any sign of tension, of competition between the two tribe leaders, but they’re both smiling, only looking glad to see one another.

In all the noise and activity, it takes a moment before we’re noticed. But then one of the newcomers looks our way. He nudges the raskarran next to him, and like a wave going through the group, they all start turning toward us, a silence falling over the clearing.

I’d forgotten just how big raskarrans are.

Knowing Gregar’s tribe as well as we do, their size doesn’t have the same impact as these towering giants staring at us, their eyes growing wider and wider.

I feel like I’m shrinking into the floor as I look up at them, the weight of their stares combined with the tilt of my head leaving me feeling a little dizzy.

Liv steps forward, inclining her head in greeting before walking slowly to Gregar’s side.

She can be a little cutting sometimes, but in this moment, I’m grateful for every sharp edge of her.

She’s tiny, barely coming up to Gregar’s chest as she steps up next to him, but she oozes strength and power, every bit a chieftess.

Gregar has his usual broad grin in place, but as he looks down at her, there’s no mistaking the pride in his expression.

“Vehn flar nhi Liv,” Gregar says, that beaming grin of his only growing wider.

Darran bends to greet Liv, taking her arm in his hand in the more formal raskarran greeting. He’s enormous next to her, but so very gentle.

“Vo’shashkan, Darran,” Liv says.