Page 40 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

She does not laugh, but I think I spy a twitch on the corners of her lips, as if a smile were close to shaping them. Certainly, some of the tension in her shoulders starts to soften, her grip on the spear relaxing a little.

“Well, you can stay deflated, thank you very much.”

“I make no promises on that front. I can only control my body’s response so far, and you are every bit as beautiful as I ever dared to dream. More so.”

She scowls at me, her grip tightening again. I hold up a placating hand.

“I may not control my body’s responses, but I do control my actions. I will not come closer without your permission, linasha.”

“Ellie,” she snaps.

“Yes?” I frown in confusion.

“My name. It’s not ‘linasha’, it’s Ellie.”

“I know that.”

“Then why are you calling me that other name?”

“Because that is what you are - my linasha.”

“I’m not your anything,” she says, her voice sharp as my hunting knives.

“You are my linasha,” I say. “It means ‘chosen by Lina’. She chose you for me, and me for you. That is what the dreamspace is, my Ellie. When a male and a female come together in the dreamspace, it shows they are mates.”

“I don’t suppose you mean that in the sense of like ‘friends’?” she says, her tone cold.

I frown. “Friendship between mates is important. I would not wish to have younglings with a female who I did not admire.”

She makes a strange sort of noise. “But you are talking about making babies?”

I am confused. “Not all mates have younglings, though most wish for them. Do you not wish for them, linasha?”

It occurs to me then that she may not be able to bear young. Not all females are able, and though I will be sad to learn that my linasha and I will never know the joy of younglings, it would not diminish my joy in her.

“My linasha,” I say, trying to be gentle and sincere. “If you are trying to say…”

“I’m trying to say that this-” she gestures around us with the spear “-this is ridiculous. We can’t have children. We are two completely different species. Look at you. You, you… You have a tail!”

“And you do not,” I say, grinning, enjoying the spark in her eyes.

The fire in her spirit has burned away her fear, and I am heartened to see it.

“What is strange for its presence to you is strange for its absence to me. But tails play no part in the seeding of younglings, linasha. Did your elders not teach you the ways of mating?”

She makes another strange sound in the back of her throat, then shakes her head sharply.

“I need to wake up,” she says. “The crash has obviously scrambled my brain. Or I’ve got food poisoning.”

“Poison?” I almost lurch towards her in my sudden fear, but catch myself in time before I come in range of her spear. “You are poisoned?”

She scowls at me, and my fear abates. She does not seem frightened, so I will not worry. Perhaps her words once again have different meanings to the ones I understand.

She closes her eyes, tipping her head back as if gazing up at the sky, and takes two deep, slow breaths.

She is trying to calm herself, I think, to master her headspace and her senses.

And though I do not think she would appreciate it, I cannot help but drink her in with my eyes, studying her every detail, trying to fix them in my mind - an image to conjure while I am running in the morning.

She is truly perfect - from her muscular arms and shoulders to the feminine curve of her hips and breasts.

She is made for both hunting and for pleasure and I cannot wait to test her skill in the hunt by day and worship her body by night.

But I think it will take some time to get to that point.

Right now, my linasha’s headspace is a long way from a place where she is ready to accept the pleasures I wish to offer her.

It goes against everything I know about the dreamspace.

I am supposed to spend my time here between my linasha’s thighs, tasting her cunt.

But nothing my linasha has said or done shows she has any desire for this.

She does not know raskarran ways and I… I do not know what I should do instead.

“Linasha,” I say, intending to ask her. But as I go to speak further, my Ellie’s head snaps round, looking at something I cannot see. And then the dreamspace shatters and I am back in my waking body, lying on the forest floor.

I sit up, and though my interactions in the dreamspace were far from regular, it strikes me fresh that I am blessed.

A beautiful mate of my own. My headspace lingers on the memory of her face, the lean strength of her body.

A body that will be mine to touch, to tease, to taste - once I have earned her trust, her desire.

My cock stirs at the thought of her asking me to touch her, of her accepting me into her heartspace as her mate.

It fills me with a yearning so strong I feel I might burst from it.

“You too,” Gregar says, and I am filled with joy anew that my tribe brother has also been blessed.

We continue our journey with renewed energy, running towards the strange egg that fell from the sky, cutting a burning path to the horizon.

Any new occurrence in our forests needs to be investigated.

Nothing changes fast here - the trees as old as Lina herself.

It is a slow pace of life, working with the land around us.

At least it was. Until seventeen rainy seasons ago, when the sickness struck the raskarran tribes, killing elders, younglings and females.

All the females. Why the sickness affected them worse is not known.

Sicknesses take the very old, the very young.

This is the normal way of things. Sicknesses do not target males or females more strongly than the other.

Except this one did. It took all our females, and with them our hope for a future.

But Lina has seen that hope returned to our tribe.

In granting myself and Gregar a linasha, she grants us the possibility of younglings, of family.

So when my legs ache from running, when my breath burns in my chest, I do not slow.

Instead, I distract my headspace from the pain and tiredness by thinking of my Ellie.

The way her eyes flashed when she spoke to me, revealing her fierce spirit.

The little smile I managed to coax out of her, giving me hope I can bring our headspaces and heart spaces into alignment.

No male would not prefer an easy mating, I think, but I will not let my Ellie’s reluctance send me into despair.

Better to spend my energies doing everything I can to show my Ellie that my whole spirit is dedicated to her happiness.

That I will be the best mate to her if she will allow me.

Lina has blessed me with a beautiful, perfect mate. I will do whatever it takes to prove myself worthy of that blessing.