Page 26 of The Sorcerer's Alpha

Sycamore gave him a look weighted with incredulity. “Bothtimes? You have multiple children? You’re a man of many surprises.”

“They aren’t my children. They’re Purya’s and Diya’s. I go to see them when I’m in Banuri and take them gifts. They look just like Purya.” Light-skinned, clever Purya, quick to smile, who had resisted all efforts to sequester him into the priesthood and was now the proud master of a bustling household. He and Marut had nothing in common anymore, but they had been unruly temple brats together, and Marut was content to visit him once or twice a year and enjoy an afternoon in his warm, busy life before gratefully returning to his own much quieter life.

“Well. This is a lot for me to take in,” the wizard said dryly. He looked down at his plate, then set it aside, mostly untouched. “You wouldn’t—object, then, to…”

“No. If you would have me, I would be—” Marut swallowed. “Honored.”

Sycamore groaned and pulled the hood of his cloak over his head. “Don’t say these things to me.”

Marut knew him well enough by now to see that he was pleased instead of offended. He said, “Why is it that you can’t bond?”

“Hm. My loyalty is first and always to the king. If I bonded, my loyalty would be divided. Sorcerers don’t marry or raise children. We devote our lives to the kingdom.” He made a lumpy sort of gesture beneath his cloak. “If I were to bond, that person would be sent away from me. What an agonizing way to go about the rest of my life. I’d rather not chance it.”

That seemed sensible enough to Marut. Scouts sometimes married, but Marut didn’t see the point in marrying someone you might see for a few days or weeks each year and would likely leave widowed by dying inconveniently young, as scouts tended to. Better to limit himself to a friendly hand from a fellow scout and leave the rest of it to people who didn’t spend most of their lives in the woods.

He said, “I’ve heard that bonding isn’t as likely without—with no—penetration.”

“I’ve heard that as well.” Sycamore turned his head to regard Marut from beneath the deep hood of his cloak. “Do you censor yourself in some effort to preserve my chastity? I can assure you I have none.”

“You—but you said,” Marut said, “that you’ve never—”

“I said nothing about my activities outside of heat,” Sycamore said, then added, with no apparent shame, “It’s true that I’ve never been knotted.”

Then I will be the first, said some part of Marut. The great epics of Chedi were full of tales of alphas driven to desperate lengths by desire for or devotion to an omega, but there were so few omegas now that Marut had never considered himself as someone whose nature might stir him to recklessness. But he felt wholly reckless now.

“I’ll sleep outside,” he said. “By the fire. I’ll be warm enough.”

“I won’t,” Sycamore said. “Marut, stop trying to manage this situation. Let me worry about it. Maybe in heat Iwillfind you repellent and it won’t be a problem at all. Go kill us another deer to keep yourself occupied.”

Marut snorted. “Finish your breakfast, then, if we’re giving each other orders.”

“Fine,” Sycamore said, and picked up his plate.

* * *

The weather decided for them.Clouds crept over the sun as the morning progressed. The wind picked up as the temperature dropped, and before long, a light snow began to fall. By noon, the snowfall was heavy enough that Marut rousted the wizard from his meditation on the rock surface and asked him to help gather their belongings. He had done his own exploring on foot and wanted to move the tent to sit beside a rock face he had found, where it would be sheltered on at least one side from the wind. Sycamore blinked up at him in a daze, then rubbed at his face and said, “All right. All right, I’m coming.”

Marut didn’t bother to pack and wrap the tent. He dragged the leather and stakes across the ground, leaving a trail through the accumulating snow. The wind bit at his face and lashed through his clothing. There was nothing to be done but weather out the storm.

He hammered the tent stakes into the frozen ground with the butt of his hatchet, then blanketed and tethered the horses so they wouldn’t wander off and lose their way in the storm. By the time that was done, Sycamore had gone into the tent. Marut crouched for a moment at the tent flap and tried to prepare himself for whatever was going to happen, but there was no preparing for it. He would have to live through it and see.

Sycamore had already bedded down with the blankets pulled up past his chin. Marut set the saddlebags down and sat back on his heels, not sure what to do. Sleeping curled together every night had already been fraught and awkward, and now, with Sycamore going into heat, crawling beneath the blankets with him was more than Marut could stomach.

“I’m cold,” Sycamore said, in the tone of someone expecting something to be done about this predicament.

All right. Marut steeled himself and raised the blankets. A waft of Sycamore’s scent drifted out, musky and mouth-watering. He lay down and willed himself to turn into a stone. The wind blew outside in strong, steady gusts.

“It’s too early to sleep,” Sycamore said, after a few minutes of silence.

“Yes,” Marut said, and then, to avert any attempts at personal conversation, “Will you tell me what you know of the Sarnoy?”

“Hm. Less than I would like.” Sycamore shifted beneath the blankets, and his elbow brushed against Marut’s. “Culturally, they have many things in common with the Mountain Kingdoms. They have a similar religion and they share many customs, although their languages are unrelated. Those are relics of their old empire, of course. They ruled over the Mountain Kingdoms, and did try to invade Chedi. But all of that ended when their emperor died, and now they have their scattered villages and only tell tales about their past glory. But I’m sure you know all of this.”

“No,” Marut said. “I know they live in round tents, and I know they follow their herds around throughout the year. Past that, I know hardly anything.”

“They herd reindeer or sheep, I suppose depending on where they live,” Sycamore said. “They drink fermented milk in place of tea. They eat almost nothing but meat and cheese.”

“How do you know these things?” Marut asked. He had received a thorough education in the temple and could even read and write, but he had learned nothing about the Sarnoy beyond the simple fact of their existence.