Page 196 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

CHAPTER SIX

Dazzik

S omeone has been on my territory.

I feel a creeping sense of unease throughout the day as I tend to my chores, but I think at first it is just the memory of the dream lingering.

The abruptness of my waking, just as I hit the floor in the dream, has left me feeling unsettled, as has everything that came before that.

Sam appearing once more, talking with her of the moons.

Her little elbow poking at my side, so familiar and teasing.

The jolt of heat the touch sent straight to my cock…

There is plenty from my dream to feel uneasy about. It is not until I find my traps all broken that I know it has been something else tickling at the back of my neck.

They are not broken as if some creature has stumbled through them, knocking them out of place without becoming caught itself.

No, the traps are not simply dislodged or triggered around nothing.

They are broken. Snapped, twisted, ripped.

As if someone has very deliberately picked them up and made sure they cannot be used again.

I know of no creature in this forest that could do such a thing besides another raskarran.

Immediately, I take to the trees, searching in my pack for the knife I always carry with me.

It is a tired old knife, but the bone blade is still sharp enough.

A little too small for hunting or fighting, but it is what I have.

Then I sit very still, look for the signs of where this intruder might have gone.

I am a warrior trained, not a hunter. Tracking is not my greatest skill, but my intruder does not seek to cover their tracks. They are just one, I think, and I am glad for that. I would not wish to defend my home from several.

As I follow, I wonder who this intruder might be.

I chose this place as my territory because it is not close to any other.

I think this area would once have been Walset’s, but in the days following the sickness, all the tribes pulled back, shrinking the areas they laid claim to.

They had not the numbers or the need to maintain such large spaces.

They could get by on smaller hunting grounds, with less forage, because there were less of them.

A problem that only became larger as the seasons passed and more and more of our number passed into Lina’s embrace.

When I first settled here, I worried often that one of Walset’s brothers would stumble across me, but it is not a worry I have had for many seasons after going undisturbed for so long.

Still, someone has wandered through here. And with Walset’s tribe travelling along the river towards…

I stop the thought as it forms. That is what Sam, my little nightmare, said that Walset’s tribe were doing.

Not what they are doing in fact. I scowl.

It is so easy to take her words as truth - for all she speaks many of them, she always seems sincere.

She is a sweet little thing, full of smiles and happiness, and in this my headspace has invented a good female as mate for me.

It has been so long since someone has had smiles for me, and I find I crave them.

I think of last night, how she stumbled away from the edge of the platform and ended up sprawled in my lap.

The soft heat of her pressing into me for a long, sweet moment, before she scrambled off me, talking of her fears of being high.

So ill suited to the forest, so in need of protection.

It rouses my warrior’s instincts, a clawing need rising in me to scoop her into my arms and promise to keep her safe from all things that might threaten her.

But it is not truth, none of it is truth. There is no dreamspace because there are no female raskarrans left. My headspace knows this - it invents me a strange female from some far off land. Fallen from the sky. Such things are not possible.

If there are males yet living who only desire other males, I hope they have found happiness in their dreamspaces together, but for the rest of us, there is no hope of a mate, a future. I can dream myself one up all I like, but it does not make it truth.

My scars do not follow me into these strange dreams, so that is how I can be certain they are not truth.

My face still heats at the memory of it now. When Sam trailed her fingers across my cheek, I turned my head away, thinking it was my scar she saw. For all I knew she was imagined, I found I did not like the thought of her seeing such ugliness on me. I wished that I was whole, unmarked.

And the dream heeded my wish, smoothing out my cheeks until I looked as I would have done if I had never been outcast. I have shown Sam a lie, and it is possible only because she is a lie also. A fake female in a fake dreamspace.

But oh, how good the touch felt. She sets a fire in my blood, my little nightmare.

I have given much thought to what might have happened had I not stepped from the platform to wake myself up.

Would she have lingered on my face? Or would she have traced down the curve of my neck, moved downwards over my chest…

My cock stirs in my leathers and I shut the thoughts down.

It is a distraction, nothing more. A pleasant one while I sleep.

If it could stay in dreams, then perhaps I would be tempted to explore it, but it does not.

Thoughts of my little nightmare break into the waking world, twist my headspace around, make me think things that are not truth.

And I have someone on my territory. Someone who broke my traps.

If it is one of Walset’s brothers, that is their right - this is their territory in truth.

If they find my cave, I will have to beg to be allowed to remain during the rains, promise to leave as soon as they are over.

It makes my jaw grow tight to think of stooping to begging for scraps when I have done nothing to truly deserve this punishment of mine, but I would do it, and I think Walset’s brothers are honourable and generous enough that they would agree.

But if it is some other wanderer, then they have disturbed my traps out of malice. They could take my supplies, leave me for dead.

You will not need it.

Fear rises up my spine, as Nelsah’s prediction echoes in my ears, and I drop from the trees, rushing back to my cave. I am certain I will find it pillaged, my baskets smashed, my foods taken, my spare pelts ground into the dirt. But it is untouched, the space around it undisturbed.

I find a sturdy branch, break it from its tree. Then I sit at the mouth of my cave, carving the end of it into a sharp point, watching the treeline closely.

By nightfall, I am cursing myself for wasting a good day of forage.

Whoever has passed through my territory, they have not found my cave, and they do not come for my supplies.

Instead of sitting here, gripped by fear and anger, I could have been adding to my stores, increasing the comfort in which I could pass the big rains.

To teach myself a lesson for bad judgement, I do not eat an evening meal before I go to my furs. My stomach growls and cramps in protest, but I hold fast. I will be extra driven to find good forage tomorrow if I start the day hungering.

My hungering follows me into my dreams, so when I spy my little nightmare rising out of the bed in the travel tent of our first evening together, it does not lift my spirits.

I am in no mood for strange dreaming antics this night.

She smiles at me, and I scowl at her. Watching her expression drop for a moment before she rallies, fixing her smile in place once more, only makes me feel worse.

“Good evening,” she says, sauntering over to my side.

Does she deliberately put that sway into her step so that my eyes are drawn to her hips, her rounded bottom?

For all she is small, she has ample roundness where it is pleasing to the eye, and my mind wanders away from the hunger in my belly to a different sort of hunger.

How would that roundness of hers feel gripped in my palms as I tugged her hips towards my face, her cunt bared before me, ready to taste…

I snarl at these visions she draws out of me, wishing I could scratch them out of my headspace. I think of Nelsah, hollowed out by the sickness, her skin tight over her bones. That is how a female made my mate would become, because I have not the supplies to feed her.

“Not a good evening, clearly,” Sam says, taking a step back. And for all I am angry that her presence is such a torment, I recoil at the thought that I have scared her.

She is not real. She cannot be real.

But repeating the words does not help my heartspace to remember this as she draws closer to me once again, her feminine scent tickling at my nose.

With great slowness, she reaches a hand out to me, bringing it to rest on my chest, right above where my heartspace beats.

Her warmth is a balm, and my heartspace responds, all my anger leaching out of it.

“What’s wrong?” my little nightmare asks, and her voice is so soft. We think of hard things as that which will break us, but in that moment it is her softness that rends me.

“I am a fool and a failure, and I would be a poor mate to you if you were real, little nightmare.”

She blinks, taken aback by my honesty, or perhaps the venom in my voice.

Then, to my great surprise, she punches my arm.

She has little hands, and no strength to her at all. It does not hurt. But still, I yelp in surprise, jolting backwards. I snarl at her, embarrassment driving me more than discomfort.

She just folds her arms and glowers at me. So tiny and fierce, but far too adorable to be truly intimidating.

“I won’t hear you talk about my mate that way,” she says.

I frown. “You say that I am your mate?”