Page 220 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

CHAPTER TWENTY

Dazzik

Six Weeks Later

I t does not escape me that the big rains are on the shorter side this season, that perhaps I would have survived in my cave quite comfortably after all.

The first day that the rains stop, my Sam insists on going outside, turning her face up to the weak sunshine as it filters through the lingering clouds.

The ground is muddy, soaked from the constant deluge, and dangerous to walk over.

Our boots sink deep into the ground, but my Sam is so happy that the air has cleared, that she can be outside without fear of sickness, that she does not care.

She throws her hands up to the sky and calls out her happiness, and I am smiling because my linasha is good for my spirit this way.

She feels everything so fully. It reminds me that I can feel happiness at this also.

But my main feeling is one of anxiousness.

My Sam is eager to return to her people, and I understand that fully.

They will likely think her dead, and that causes her much hurt, and she misses them.

For all I have tried to be everything she needs, I know that my company and my cock alone cannot sustain her.

And nor can her company alone sustain me. The thought of having brothers once more, warriors to patrol with - it itches at me, hope bright and brittle filling my chest. I want to go to her people. Want to as much as I am afraid to.

For what if they turn me away? What if this hope is just another thing of mine that will be shattered?

My Sam insists that I will be accepted, and I have to trust in her. She knows her tribe, she knows her people. But even after the blessing of her in my dreams, I still find it hard to believe that good things might come to me.

We have eaten well from the human foods my Sam found in the cold crates. Both of us have gained much strength, my Sam’s curves growing fuller and ever more pleasing under my hands, while my own body has lost its wiry hardness.

My Sam has stopped eating the pellets for her cough and it has not returned, and we are both much relieved at that.

She told me of her father, how he did not take his pellets to the end, giving them to another out of kindness of his spirit.

How that is what made his cough come back to claim him.

Dying of his own kindness is a cruel thing, but another bright side in this is that my Sam knew exactly which of the pellets she needed to eat, and how she needed to keep eating them.

Her father’s death has saved her life, and I am ever grateful for this, sending prayers to Lina to guard his spirit if she is able.

If she can reach across the stars to my Sam’s cold grey world.

We wait another few days after the rains stop before we leave, giving the ground time to harden.

I have made a travel tent from the pelts left by Basran’s tribe.

It is not a pretty thing, or particularly well made, but it will be enough to get us through as we walk the distance to my Sam’s tribe.

I am unsure how far they are, but I intend to carry my Sam for most of it, anyway.

The ground is still treacherous underfoot, and I would not have her fall as she did so many times on her way to this place with Jortan and the others.

I am just packing some food supplies that my Sam has made for us into my pack when I find the offering I gathered at the bottom of it. The stones and shells that I collected from the river. Forgotten with everything else that had happened since.

“What’ve you got there?” my Sam asks, appearing at my side with the covers from our bed rolled in her arms.

We have been joined in dreams long enough now that I can understand her almost as well in the waking world as I do when we are sleeping, though I still hear her musical nonsense words underneath if I listen for it.

“A foolish thing,” I say. “An offering. Before you were taken, I thought to appease Walset with gifts for you and the other females.”

I chuckle to myself. It seems so ridiculous now, to think that a few stones and shells might have made him look past my scars, when my Sam would have vouched for me without pause, without doubt.

Even then, before she knew what she was defending me from, before she had seen the darkest bits of my past and raised me up from them.

“An offering, hmm?” My Sam’s gaze is playful, curious. “What were you going to give me?”

I feel heat rising in my cheeks. A few stones. I am a foolish male to think that such a gift could come close to being what my wonderful linasha deserves.

“Do not judge me too harshly,” I say, holding the bag out to her. “Remember, I was a male with nothing. A desperate, hangry male with nothing.”

My Sam laughs, but when she spreads my bag open, peering in at the contents, she goes quiet.

A tension grips my stomach, and though I am confident in my Sam’s affection, still the fear can rock me sometimes that one day she will open her eyes, see what she has been burdened with, and wish no more to do with me.

She reaches a hand into the bag, drawing out one of the stones. And though it is only a stone, it is still a lovely thing. My Sam holds it up to the tube lights overhead, turning it in her fingers so it glitters.

Then she is laughing, laughing with such amusement that I cannot feel sore about it. And then I notice she is crying alongside her laughter.

“What is it?” I say, concern rising in my chest, as she half giggles, half sobs.

“Can we take them with us?” she says. “I know it’s more to carry, and we’ve got a lot to take with us as it is, but can we? Please?”

“For you, my little nightmare,” I say. “Anything.”

It is a bright, cool day when we at last set out.

My Sam insists on walking at first, and beneath the trees, whose thirsty roots have soaked up much of the water from the ground, it is fine.

But when we come to more clear spaces, my Sam is quick to climb into my arms, to let me carry her across the thick mud.

The first night we huddle together for warmth, the cold of the mud underneath us seeping up through the floor of our tent. It is not utterly miserable - I am warm enough to stave off the worst of it for her, but I am grateful when the second night we find a rocky place to set our camp.

The days settle into a rhythm that gives me little time to fret over the confrontation to come. We wake and eat a small meal, walk for many hours, before breaking for a midday snack. We eat heartily only in the evening, when my Sam cooks for us over a fire.

The further we go, the easier the walking becomes.

We eat through our supplies so our packs are lighter, and every day of sunshine and little rainfall dries the ground further.

By the time we are come close to my Sam’s village, the ground is hard beneath our feet once more, our nights no longer cold from the mud.

I spy the warriors before they spy me only because they are focused on the female with them.

A female like my Sam but not, her skin brown in tone, her hair long and dark.

I am so surprised by the sight of her, despite knowing my Sam all these sunsets, that I stare at her also, allowing the warriors chance to spot us approaching through the trees.

Immediately, their spears are in hand, and the bigger of the two pushes the female behind him. She makes a sound of protest, stepping round him. I see the moment she spies my Sam, how her eyes go round with shock and joy also.

“Sam?” she calls, and there is a question and hope in her tone.

My Sam waves back, and then the two of them are running towards each other, meeting in a fierce embrace, talking so rapidly, I can no longer understand the words my linasha says.

“ Ohmigodeyemissedyooguyssomuch.”

“Wethortyooweredead. Wehadafyooneralaneverything.”

They are both doing the laugh cry that my Sam has done before, gripping each other as if they are certain the other will disappear if they let go. I approach them slowly, careful to keep my hands in front of me so the other males might see that I mean them no harm.

“ Anhoosethis? ” the brown female asks, looking up at me, arching one of her brows in question.

She is quite lovely, I see, with fierce, proud features.

Taller and broader than my Sam, but not by much.

She wears raskarran female clothes, adjusted to better fit her smaller frame, and it cuts at some soft place in my heartspace to see such clothes worn again.

My Sam I have only ever seen in a muddied nightgown and the clothes she has foraged from the forgotten bedrooms her old tribe Mercenia built.

“This is Dazzik, my mate,” my Sam says, beaming at me, pride radiating from every part of her. I cannot help but stand a little straighter on seeing it. “Dazzik, this is Khadija.”

“Hello,” Khadija says, using raskarran words. “ Mate, huh? Yoobeenbusywyleyoovebeengon.”

My Sam laughs at this. “He’s been keeping me safe.”

I incline my head in greeting to the female, but my attention is on the males that approach now, wariness all over their faces.

“You’ve brought the female back to us,” the smaller of the two males says. One of Walset’s brothers, if I am not mistaken. His face is familiar to me, as if I have glimpsed it a few times before in the trees. “You have our greatest gratitude for this. We had thought her taken. Dead.”

“She was taken,” I say. “I took her back.”

“We searched many days through the trees for her trail. But the rains…”

Washed everything away. If they had not been on top of Jortan and his males as I was, they would have had no chance of following after her.

I see their eyes lingering on my scars, but they look to my hand on my Sam’s shoulder, how she has her own hand interlinked with mine. She is smiling and chatty, as she so often is, and they can see this. Can see that she is happy with me.

“Sam is your linasha?” Walset’s brother says. It is a question, and it is not.