by R. Lee Smith
And what could Nona say to that? The fact that it wasn’t right didn’t make it any less true. She would have thought she’d already learned this particular lesson, but since coming to this world, Nona was learning all the finer points of how life wasn’t fair. So all she did was nod and go into the cave.
Like Nakaroth’s, it had a flat floor and a high ceiling, although it was smaller, and seemed even more so given that four people were presently sharing its limited space. In the present cold, that might actually be welcome. To judge by the way the leather mats and sleeping furs were arranged, the lycan were huddling together at night. Heather probably slept where she was sitting at the moment, against the opposite wall. The only lit candle was beside and above her, illuminating her unbrushed hair, the line of her nose, the shine of tears on her cheek, and not much else.
“You okay?” Nona asked, knowing it was a dumb question, but hey, she had to start somewhere. Social habits were the hardest ones to break.
“More or less.” Heather swiped a hand across her face. “They’re waiting on me, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.”
“Is…Is Vru still out there?”
Nona hesitated, then avoided the question with a brusque, “Everyone’s out there. Kruin called the whole pack.”
“But is Vru—”
“It doesn’t matter. No, it doesn’t,” she said as Heather started to speak. “You don’t even have to look at him.”
“But if I don’t pick him—”
“Stop,” Nona said firmly. “Just stop right there. You have a choice. Granted, unless it was your life’s ambition to marry a werewolf on another planet, then your choices suck, but you still have one. Yes, Vru is out there, but—look at me, Heather—but he doesn’t ‘get’ you just because he’s the biggest and the loudest.”
Heather uttered a mournful yelp of laughter. “Nona…why am I even bothering to try and explain this to you? You can’t possibly understand. I’m afraid of him!”
“Good,” said Nona. “You should be. Seriously. Be afraid of him. Be aware of him. But don’t marry the son of a bitch just because he scares you! No matter what planet you’re on, that’s always a bad idea!”
“I know, but—”
“No buts. Bad idea. End of discussion. You’ve got at least a dozen other guys out there getting ready to fight for you. And then Kruin will have to get in the middle of it and…” And maybe lose. Nona shook that thought off hard and said, sharper than she meant to, “Do you really want to see that happen?”
“No!”
“Yeah, me neither. So you hiding in here is not an option. Although…shit,” she sighed, raking a hand through her hair. “Okay, look, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Heather tried to laugh through the threat of tears. “If it starts like that, I don’t think I want to know.”
“That’s not an option either.” Nona went over and leaned against the cave wall next to Heather’s bed, close enough that if Heather needed…whatever, a hug after hearing this, she was there to give one. “So I’m sure you remember yesterday’s werewolf wedding vows.”
Heather sniffled and nodded without curiosity.
“There’s a bit there about feeding me, feeding my future cubs. Remember that?”
“Uh huh.”
“Okay, well…cubs may actually be a thing you have to think about.”
Heather tipped her head back and gave her a frowning, puzzled stare.
Nona winced and nodded. “Apparently, if you have sex, you might actually have…babies or puppies or…whatever you call a half-human, half-lycan kid.”
Heather kept staring.
“So,” said Nona, but didn’t know how to follow that up. It was a hell of a thing to spring on someone right before sending her out to pick a mate. Hating herself, knowing the offer was as hollow as this damn cave, she said, “If that changes things—obviously, that changes things, sorry. But if that means you can’t go through with this, then I can probably…I mean, I’m not that good with the slingshot yet, but I’m getting better, and I’m sure I can—”
“Are you seriously saying you didn’t know that?”
Nona stuttered to a stop. “What?”
Heather squinted. “You didn’t know you could pregnant if you had sex?”
“Well…It…With a werewolf! I didn’t know there was…magic or whatever that could—”
Heather’s eyebrows shot up into the thicket of her hair. “You didn’t know there was magic on this planet?”
“I—”
“What part of…of…of everything made you think there was no magic here?”
“Gee, I don’t know. Physics?” Nona shot back defensively. “There’s no such thing as magic!”
“No such…? We drove to another planet in a Kia Sedona, for Christ’s sake!”
Nona blinked. Like a stranger in her own body, she heard herself say, “That was a Kia? I didn’t know Kia made a van.”
They stared at each other for another few seconds and suddenly, they were both laughing. It wasn’t funny, not really, but the laughter came anyway, shaking Nona in its teeth like Basharo with one of his teething toys. She could hardly breathe. Each time she thought she was beginning to get herself under control, the image of hurtling through space and time in that piece of crap van like it was the Magic frigging School Bus with Ms. Frizzle at the wheel slapped her in the face and she was off again, ultimately sliding down the wall to fall onto the mat beside Heather, both of them hugging onto each other and howling.
At last, the tidal wave of crazy washed out again, leaving them both breathless in each other’s arms. Heather might have cried a little then, it was hard to tell, but Nona just wiped her own tears of mad laughter away and pretended not to notice.
“You okay?” she said again and this time, she meant it.
“Yeah. God, my stomach hurts.”
“Mine, too. A Kia,” she groaned, shaking her head. “Is that really what it was? I didn’t even notice.”
“You were too busy punching a guy. Meanwhile, I was taking all kinds of mental notes, so I had something useful to tell the cops when…yeah. A grey Kia Sedona. Want to know the license plate number?” Heather looked at the mouth of the cave, where Laal was peeking in at them wonderingly. “If I don’t go out, are they going to come in and get me?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it. But…But let’s at least go look at them. Okay? If you can’t handle it, you can always duck back in here and take a breather, but I know you can handle it.”
“I don’t think I can,” said Heather, but she wiped her face again and got up. She took Nona’s hand (which was a surprise, one Nona tried hard not to show) and walked close beside her as far as the cave’s mouth, where they could each stand with one foot on the slope and one on the flat threshold of sluagh-shaped stone and look down at the raised rock.
The wolves vying for Kruin’s indifference saw them at once. Rather than quiet down, their bickering intensified. Pushing became brawling. Snaps became bites. In the surge of violence, several of the smaller ones were driven to the edges of the crowd, while Vru took the coveted central position, picking up what appeared to Nona’s eye to be a fully-grown alligator and slamming it down at Kruin’s feet.
Kruin calmly kicked Vru’s gift off the raised rock and resumed his impersonation of a statue.
Vru lost his goddamned mind, grabbing at other lycan’s offerings—woodrats and tumbili and rabbits—and flinging them out into the clearing, roaring all the while about how strong he was, how far he’d gone to find the…the…whatever it was. She couldn’t make it all out, but apparently there had been a whole nest of them, and he’d butchered them all just to get this prize and it would be seen, it would be seen and give him the man-bitch! Now! Right now!
All around the clearing, hackles stiffened and tails bushed out. Burgash stood up; so did Henkel and Telash and Metaka. Alorak stayed seated, but even he was watching Vru now and some of the petulant set of his ears had be
en replaced by wariness.
“Oh God,” whispered Heather and shivered.
“Relax. Let the baby have his tantrum. Ignore him. Look at the other guys and remember, you don’t have to pick just the ones who brought a present. You can literally point at anyone down there, anyone at all. Or no one.”
Mika looked at her.
Nona put her head down and bulled ahead, just like saying it extra-hard would make it true. “As long as you’re choosing to say no and not hiding from the choice, no one is going to force you to do anything.”
“No,” said Heather, staring sickly down at the clearing. “No, I definitely need to pick someone. I need help and…and this has to stop. I just…Who…Who do I…? They’re Fringe-wolves! I mean, I don’t care,” she said quickly, blushing as nearby Samatan gave her a ‘beggars/choosers’ sort of sniff. “I’m just saying, I don’t know anything about them! I don’t even know all their names!”
Nona couldn’t help her. She couldn’t name every lycan in the pack, much less the Fringes. A name was the first step to making a friend and she didn’t want friends. She was supposed to leave in the spring.
A little time passed. A few minutes and then more than a few. A thousand, as the lycan liked to say. The waiting wolves shifted and snarled at each other. Kruin remained motionless, impervious. He did not even once glance back to see what the damn hold-up was.
“I can’t,” said Heather suddenly. “I don’t mean I won’t, because I will, but I can’t pick one. You do it. Okay? Do it for me. Tell me who to go with and I’ll—”
“No,” said Nona and then said it again, gently. “No. Sorry, but I’m not going to do that. This is your life. I can’t decide what you do with it.”
Heather uttered another hurt little laugh. “Why not? I decided for you, didn’t I?”
Now it was Nona’s turn to laugh and even if it was little more than a puff of steam through her nose, it had real humor in it. “That’s the story we agreed on, but just between the two of us…I don’t know. No, I do know,” she interrupted herself, shaking her head. “I know damn well. I’d have done it anyway. If you hadn’t said anything, if you’d left me there to sulk it out on my own, I’d have still done it.”
“For me,” Heather said miserably.
“I wish. No, damn it, I’m sorry. I don’t wish that at all. This is not your fault,” she said with sudden vehemence. “None of it. If I made you feel like…I mean, if you weren’t even here, I’d have still…” She trailed off as her eyes met Nakaroth’s across the clearing. And the angry noise at the raised rock didn’t hush and the sun didn’t come out and the cold wind didn’t ease, but still her stupid heart skipped a little and her stupid skin warmed where he touched her…everywhere he’d touched her.
“God, it pisses me off how much I want the son of a bitch,” she muttered. “And before you say anything, no, I don’t love him. We didn’t fall in love.”
Heather looked at the ground between her worn-out shoes.
“But I like him,” she admitted and scowled. “I like him a lot. I’ve…I’ve spent a lot of time being invisible. Or wishing I was. And I’ve got to tell you, it’s…it’s nice to have someone there who sees you. Who really sees you—” The last word shook. She took a breath to steady herself, tried again, and heard her voice crack on the first word, on every word. “—and wants you for exactly who you are.”
Behind them, Mika unexpectedly said, “They may be Fringe-wolves, but they aren’t all dogs. Some of them are no different from you. They are hungry and cold and looking for a chance to prove themselves. To our lord, yes, and also to you.”
Heather laughed unhappily.
“You are easy prey,” said Mika with a shrug. “I will not say otherwise, but to take any mate in High Pack is still a prize. You will be prized. No, it isn’t love…but love is not a thing that falls. It is a thing that grows.”
Samatan and Laal murmured encouragingly.
“It’s just not fair,” Heather said quietly, as if to herself. “I’m sorry, I know how that sounds, but it’s not fair. I worked all my life for a future I’ll never get. You know? Straight As and after-school activities, just to look good on my college applications. Just the right elective courses. I knew who I was. I had it all worked out. I had plans. And now here I am. Here I am. This is what I worked for all my life. Every double shift, every all-night study session, every sacrifice…this is the pay-off.”
She cried some more. Nona held her hand and leaned into her side a little, shielding her from the worst of the wind.
“Okay,” said Heather at last, drying her face on the back of her dirty sleeve. “I’m ready. Will you…Will you c-c-come with me?”
“Whatever you need,” Nona promised and took her hand.
Kruin surely knew they were coming by the change that came over the gathered lycan, but he still did not turn to watch them come or in any way acknowledge them until they stood before him at the base of the raised rock. Then and only then did he shift his gaze from Vru to Heather. “Daughter.”
Heather’s brows pinched. She looked at Nona. Nona’s shoulders twitched in a shrug. ‘Roll with it,’ she thought and Heather must have heard because she ventured a, “Father…?” in reply.
On the edge of the clearing, ears flat, Alorak sneezed.
“There are hunters among my pack who seek a mate. I charge you to see them now. See Grydul of Low River. See Fearuul of Snow Peak. See Chesm of Thorn Ridge. See Srukelt of Grey Hollow. See Urrunt of Broken Stone.”
As each was named, a lycan stepped forward, pushing in front of his predecessor, and Heather cringed further and further back until she was completely behind Nona.
“They have brought—”
Vru, unnamed, let out a rage-roughened bellow abruptly cut off when Kruin slapped him hard across the muzzle.
“They have brought the meat of their hand before me,” Kruin continued, gesturing toward the assortment of dead animals Vru had strewn about the clearing, pointedly ignoring the gruesome lizard-like creature Vru himself stubbornly kept trying to present. “They have given me their oaths and I see them with favor, yet in High Pack, the claim alone is not enough. Here, a female chooses her mate. And so I put to you, daughter, shall you—”
Again, Vru picked up his kill and slammed it down on the raised rock, this time with enough force to smash its skull open. Clotted blood and cooling brain matter splashed back, some of it hitting Nona in the face.
She let out a reflexive cry of disgust, slapping at herself to get it the hell off, and then slapped at him, too, just as reflexively. “Knock it the fuck off!” she yelled. “You are not part of this!”
He roared back at her, caught another slap from Kruin, and backed up, bristling and breathing hard enough to blow ropes of drool between his teeth and onto his ruff to freeze. He began to pace, staring at Nona as he stalked back and forth, letting more and more wolves push between them, but never breaking eye contact.
Shadows moved at the edge of Nona’s vision. She risked a darting glance that way and saw Nakaroth matching Vru, step for step, just behind her. Beyond him, Burgash was on his feet again, still holding one of the deer’s hind legs in a grip so tight his claws had disappeared into its flesh.
This was only getting worse. Nona looked up at Kruin, tensely waiting for him to put a stop to this.
Instead, Kruin said, “Shall you look upon these males with favor and select of them one to be your mate? To bear his cubs and raise them as strong wolves of High Pack?”
Heather squeezed Nona’s hand hard, but didn’t answer. She shivered.
“If not one of these, then will you have another?” Kruin asked intently, ignoring the surge of snarls this option provoked in her would-be suitors. “I would see you bound to your pleasure. I will hear your words, daughter. Speak his name—”
The Fringes crushed forward, shouting names in a riot of incoherent noise. Heather jumped back, yanking painfully at Nona’s arm, then burst into tears. One of the lycan moved t
oward her, an arm outstretched in what might have actually been a genuine effort at comfort, only to be beaten back by another rival. At once, the two of them were fighting and whoever they bumped into in the brawl joined in. Heather’s sobs became hysterics and who could blame her? Nona tried to hush her anyway, all her nerves on edge. This was not the time to panic. When a hungry wolf sees a deer in distress, does it pity her? Or does it pounce?
And suddenly, there was a deer. Half of one, anyway. It sailed right over the top of Nona’s head to land heavily at Kruin’s feet, spilling out part of a lung in the violence of its impact. The Fringe-wolves swung in almost perfect unison to see where this odd attack had come from and there, standing over his mate and crying cub was Burgash.
Just for a moment, it seemed to make things worse. Kruin looked surprised more than anything, and Heather didn’t even seem to notice, lost in her hysterics. Vru snarled from the sidelines, someone answered with a snap, and there was a general display of claws and teeth from all the suitors, but Burgash was not intimidated. He put his hackles up and stepped boldly in front of Nona and, by extension, Heather, staring down the Fringe-wolves until, one by one, they showed throat.
“I will have her,” Burgash said, although he did not look or sound entirely comfortable with the idea. “I bring you meat of my hand, my chief. I claim Heather of High Pack.”
