“Aaaaand there!” Dorothy circled back around, eyeing her handiwork, and gave a firm nod. Her gaze shifted to the table and she jerked her chin. “Come. Sit with me while I work, and I’ll talk.” Waving at me and then the tub as I glanced back at the bathwater, she told me, “I’ll have one of the fellas carry it out and dump it in the back garden later. Don’t worry yourself with that now.”
With a mental shrug I followed, taking the seat she offered.
“Now, I guess I should start- Well… Hmm.” A short, humorless laugh escaped her. “Hell, where does it matter where I start?” She sighed, long and loud. “Guess I’ll just begin and take it from there. This’ll just explain themselves from there, hopefully.”
Dorothy took her seat across from me, her work laid out before her, prepping while she talked. Tossing the last bit of wild blue meat and alien vegetable chunks into the cook pot, she paused to glance up at me. “You were curious about how the fellas got their name. It’s a story within its own, really,” she began, acknowledging my earlier question. “The Lo denaii were once part of much larger clans, far off past the forests, and even beyond that.”
Dorothy picked up the stew pot, waving me off with a shake of her head when I went to stand to offer help. Lugging it towards the fire, she hung it on a small, fat black hook built right into the hearth.
Standing back, she went to one of Tokre’s baskets and pulled several animal hide pouches from it, walking back to the pot and uncapping them to dump the contents inside. Adding spices from Tokre’s spice bin, she gave one final pinch of a bright orange spice and stood back, smiling absently.
When her eyes met mine as she walked back, she looked nervous. She was stalling. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have, but from the look on her face she was determined to see this through.
“What are the other, uhm, clans like?” Perched in my chair, I began to slowly finger comb my hair, sifting through the wild mass haloing my head.
“From what it sounds likes, the females rule the roost but the men see over the hen house. For the most part, it’s much like they already do here, hunting and or foraging for food, skinning, tanning, weapons and training, doing the warrior things.”
And then she started to stall again.
“Do you… I…” Dorothy blew out a long breath that was more of a raspberry than an exasperated sigh. “I hear there are these nature documentaries on your televisions, and they tell you about critters and such? Well, these creatures, we’ll call them The Abominables because while I might use the beasts’ phrase for themselves when it’s unavoidable or to keep the peace, and unless the fellas translate, which is basically just them making up a word for us to help us understand, we’re left in the beastly growling dark. We’re wont to understand, and come up with our own terms, and the fellas are pretty mum about the tribes they originated from. Make sense?”
“I’m with ya so far.” Or I thought I was.
“Good.” The healer’s expression went from slowly scowling as she spoke to sad, as if she couldn’t blame them for not wanting to bring up the past, then back to scowling fiercely. “In Abominable society, females have the final say in everything. There are times when an Abominable male, and possibly a female, though I’ve yet to see it happen, doesn’t… is deemed unfit, unworthy, for whatever reason. These beasts found undesirable are cast out, forced to the outer rim, the area that borders a vast desert that leads to the forest you see around us, surrounding us. Once at the desert, they’re left.”
The for dead was left unspoken.
“Those who were strong enough, stubborn enough, found their way here, where they started this clan you see now.”
“Why did they cast them out, though? Were they bad? What did they do?” And if so, how bad, I thought with some trepidation. Have I been kidnapped into a tribe of felon beast creatures? “Did they…” Gulping audibly, I forced the words past suddenly dry lips. “Did they kill their own people? Was that it?” Did they eat them?
“The girls and I have been trying to piece it all together, one beastly bit of reluctantly given information at a time. My theory, they were too outwardly aggressive for the females to handle,” Dorothy admitted. “Though Mona, she’s another bride, seems to think the females cast them out for fear the males might try to overtake them, too many males to females for their liking. Which, I guess, could make sense.”
Push out the strongest to leave the weak and compliant? Plausible, I reasoned, though the bad beastie boys thing was still stuck in my craw. “Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of the male’s role as warriors and protectors?” And these males around us could get pretty damned aggressive.
Looking to Tokre, I had to rethink that bad boy thing. “Or maybe some of them were shunned because they don’t meet their standards,” I mumbled softly. Their standards for normal.
What a quaint, outdated load of shit. And my Tokre wasn’t seen as ‘fit’ even for a shunned beastie.
Tokre broken. Those words haunted me. I could only imagine how being treated like you were broken yet again and again would have affected him.
“The men, the warriors, the… Lo denaii, hold a search party, going to the edge of the forest every warmer season, because that’s when the shunning takes place, in search of more outcasts.”
“So, Lo denaii, roughly translated, means…?”
“Rejects, Outcasts. The Undesirables. Veck, he chose the name. He took what they’d called them and made it their own. They all look up to him. I know they use that name with pride but I can’t shake it. To call them undesirable, loving my mates the way I do, it rankles.”
Undesirable, I thought, feeling struck even thinking it. Ugh. My gaze never left Tokre’s chest as it rose and fell. To embrace it though, like a giant fuck you to their old clans, my inner tigerlady approved wholeheartedly, two clawed middle fingers raised up high towards the direction of the forest.
“I’m told he came with his mother, and she had Zhuii with her. Those two were the youngest to come back to camp that they’d ever seen. A long baby with these huge little beastly feet, and then Zhuii, this short, squat little thing with his bright blue hair,” Dorothy admitted softly, seeing where my gaze fell. “There aren’t many females here, and she was considered an oddity, refusing to take a mate, to interact with any males unless necessary. Veck and Heckes called her Chekbah, difficult one. She refused to tell anyone her real name. Guess she wasn’t much in the way of friendliness or togetherness, but I always wondered if she was grieving someone back home, like a mate or family she’d left behind. Kept to herself right up until the end there. The males still talk about her. Kind of a hermit, wouldn’t help with the chores and refused to eat at the gatherings. Knowing he’s deaf now, I think she was protecting Tokre, worried if the Lo denaii found out he was different they might outcast him from their village, too.”
God, my chest was squeezing painfully.
“What happened to her?” Frowning, my eyes met Dorothy’s and I thought I had my answer.
The older beast bride smiled a watery smile and cleared her throat.
“How old was he?” I asked with no small amount of dread. How long had he been left to his own devices, all alone, not even a parental figure to talk to, to love him, understand him?
“This last storm, right before the portal opened. She must’ve gotten caught up in it and couldn’t get out. Berkr found her frozen clean through, huddled in a ball by the small lake where she liked to set traps and fish. It, uh, didn’t go well when your fella found out. Only thing that calmed him down was one of the older warriors knockin’ him out cold to drag him home. Zhuii looked after him after that, far as I can tell, though those two didn’t seem to associate much beforehand after Zhuii’d come of age, built his own hut, and left Chekbah’s.”
Wow, was all I could think, a million things running through my mind. Who, what, where, when, why, how?! Leaning forward, resting my elbows on the table, I cupped my face in the palms of my hands.
I didn�
�t know how long I sat there, trying to imagine losing the only person in the world who loves you unconditionally, and then going on a bride hunt in some cockamamie attempt to fill the void. That was what he was doing, wasn’t it? Filling a void?
I was a void filler.
The idea made me feel funny for reasons that should never be. I can’t have those kinds of feelings for him. No. No way… Impossible!
Dorothy went on to talk about what she knew and the human women’s theories and such, about the Lo denaii and their ways.
By the time it felt like she’d just about exhausted any and all conversation, the small hut was filled with the yummy smell of stew.
“Now just look at me!” Dorothy went on, a large bowl of stew and cup of hot tea later, scraping the bottom of her bowl as she smiled over at me. “Probably think I’m a gossipy old woman, talking your ear off the way I’ve been going.”
“I don’t mind,” I assured her, tentatively smiling back. Truth was, it was comforting, and she didn’t mind when I was quiet, talking enough for two.
Feeling a little more settled, more level on my own two feet, with a promise from her without my prompting to help me fit right in, I had some small semblance of balance going for me, for once.
Belly full, skin scrubbed a few layers less, hair nice and dry and already curling about my face, I yawned.
“You must be plum tuckered out. Here, let me just wash these and you go on and lay down with your male.” Dorothy took my bowl, the strange spork-like utensil Tokre must’ve carved from some dark purple looking wood, along with her own, and went to wash them.
Tired and still feeling twinges in fun places, as well as a few new ones, rest sounded fantastic.
Ah… What I’d give to for a decent night’s rest, I thought wearily.
Tokre was still passed out, snoozing away contentedly, but Dorothy assured me it was just a side effect of the tea and the healing, and that he’d be just fine before I knew it.
Approaching the side of the bed, I slid the furs back and climbed in. So warm, was my first thought. My second, as I snuggled down, wiggling until my backside rested against Tokre’s hip, the warmth that naturally emanated from him making the bed nice and toasty, comfortably so, was how he looked so much better, pink streaks already replacing the slashes that had once been painting me crimson. I ventured they’d be faded by tomorrow, based on how speedily this whole healing process worked for them.
Would he heal faster without the help of the tea, I didn’t know, but if that was the miracle juju that did it I’d have to make sure we were never without. Dorothy could teach me and I- Shit. Just look at me, I marveled, stunned. I’m already talking about now and the future, like I’m never going to leave.
But I wasn’t, was I? I couldn’t go back to find everyone else is gone. I’d be going back to nothing! No one. I’d be even worse off than before. But could I stay, I wondered. Could I stay and be… and be… I didn’t even know.
“Not going to think about any of it,” I told myself, giving my head a tiny shake.
“What was that?” Dorothy turned to stare at me.
Wadding up a fur for a makeshift pillow, my cheeks pinkened at getting caught mumbling nonsense to myself, but I shrugged. “You didn’t tell me about Zhuii yet. Why he can’t be a warrior.”
“And to think, that’s what got us started to talking about it. Guess I didn’t.” Her smile was small but mothering. “I’d start now but I’m wondering if you’d make it passed the first two minutes of my yammering.”
“Good point,” I agreed, mumbling my words on a yawn, making her laugh.
“Another time,” she promised. “You need some sleep.”
The healer’s eyes shifted from me to my mate, then me again, as if sizing us up.
Clearing her throat, Dorothy went to her basket and rummaged through it. “You know, and not that it’s any of my business, mind you, but I’m just going to leave… this, right here for ya.” She held up a small container similar to the one Tokre kept his hoo-hah balm in and waggled it before stepping closer to hand it to me.
Sitting up, I took the small jar with a thankful nod. Curious, I unscrewed the lid to examine the contents.
“It’s a healing salve,” she explained, and with a small, unapologetic smile, she gestured between us on the bed meaningfully. “Works good for just about everything, and you can keep putting it on his wounds if he needs it, but, uh, it’s good for other things, too. Numbs and tingles, warms ya up a bit, but it passes.”
“Oh, I don’t want to waste your salve,” I lied, trying not to cringe at yet another pot of va-jay-jay salve for Tokre to smear me with. I’d be sore ‘til the end of days with our current supply. Just a little bit and I was in orbit.
I held out the salve to her but she stepped back and shook her head.
Dorothy held her hands up. “I insist.”
My skin slowly flushed, blushing beet red, and I reluctantly admitted, “I-I-I-I think I might be allergic to it or something. I, uhm- That is…” Taking a deep breath while Dorothy stood by, waiting patiently, I blurted the whole ugly affair, the virginity taking, the soreness, the crazy horndoggedness of the salve, the extra soreness. I just didn’t think I could handle another romp any time soon, humping-salve-induced or otherwise.
By the time I’d finished Dorothy was hovering by the end of the bed, gaping. “Oh my, that is rough,” she sympathized. “Do you still have this salve you used? Might I see it?”
“It’s over there.” I pointed, then watched as she retrieved it, opening the container to give it a short whiff.
“Wooo.” She blinked and coughed. “This batch is, uhm, strong. Pungent.”
“Is that a bad thing?” I worried.
“Is for you, from what you’re telling me,” she said with a shake of her head. “Poor thing, no wonder it made you wonky!” With a small chuckle she put Tokre’s salve back and, collecting her things, turned to motion towards the jar she’d given me. “That one won’t set you off. Minimal tingles, etc.” And before I could protest she gave a half snort, adding, “You have my word.”
“Alright.” I nodded and went to rest my head when she waved me off.
“I’m going to leave the stew in a snow bucket, keep it ready for a reheat and eat when you and or Tokre wake, and I’ve left a pack of dried tea leaves, should Tokre wish another dose.”
“Dorothy,” I called quietly, right as she opened the door.
Dorothy turned to look at me over her shoulder.
“Thank you. For everything.”
Dorothy’s smile was soft and understanding. “I know this isn’t ideal,” she murmured kindly, “and believe me I’ve been in your shoes, but I think you’ll learn to love it here. And I’m glad my Nea- Uh… Noyel caught sight of you. The boy needs someone special to hold his heart. Someone softer than his momma but stronger than all of his daddies combined.”
“Oh, I don’t- I’m not- He didn’t- I,” I spluttered, the hand not clutching a jar of hoo-hah balm waving about wildly.
Dorothy’s smile widened until she was grinning at me, like I wasn’t shaking my head vigorously, trying to deny her son and any kind of ownership associated between either of us.
“Lovely chat,” she murmured. “Welcome to the family. We should definitely do this more often, hmm, but under better circumstances, of course.”
“No. Son. Not mine. I don’t. What? Uhm. Soft… I don’t?” Now who was speaking softly growling, beastly gibberish?!
That smile grew impossibly wider, her blue eyes shining. “Just lovely! I’ll call on you again in a few. You go on and have a good rest now, Rosalinda, dear.”
And leaving my spluttering butt sputtering after her, she was gone.
“But… no,” I mumbled, feeling defeated on top of dead tired. Shaking my head, I flopped back on the bed. Wriggling and rolling some more, I stared at the ceiling. “Can’t decide if she’s determined or insane,” I confided in the silence of room. The crackling fire held no answers, th
ough it was doing a fine job of lulling me to sleep.
Holding the jar up, I squinted at it. Biting my lip, debating, I finally opened the small jar and rubbed my finger along the top. Giving it a sniff and finding it much milder than Tokre’s balm, I shrugged and put the lid back on.
Stuffing it under my makeshift pillow for safe keeping, I settled back down with a long suffering sigh. Definitely in need of a nice, long nap. A very nice, I thought on a wide yawn, long, thorough nap…
Before I’d even finished the thought I was out.
CHAPTER 15
Aloud noise, like a chainsaw going off, had me snuffling awake. My eyes felt gritty, like they’d tried to glue themselves shut while I slept. Groaning, I shifted, scrubbing at my crusty feeling eyeballs.
It took me a full minute to realize that chainsaw noise had suddenly stopped, and had more than likely come from my drooling maw. Yikes, I thought in embarrassment. But then I recalled where I was, bundled up warm and snuggly with a giant beast man who’d bound himself to me, and I gave myself a pass.
It’s been a rough bit here. More than a bit rough, I corrected dryly, it’s been mind fudgingly insane, but who was keeping tally, right?
“Definitely not me,” I muttered resignedly.
A heavy chuff to my left signaling Tokre was awake had me laughing nervously, partly in excitement, because my nutso ass was suddenly bursting at the seams happy he’d opened his crazy, wild, tar black eyeballs, and another part of me was shaking with nervous anticipation.
He’s awake, that thrumming hummingbird in my chest sang, while my head screamed, Back that shit up, girl! Whoa now!
A peek over my shoulder and my soft brown eyes blinked, my head jerking back in surprise as I found myself surrounded by wide, dark peepers pitch as black staring down at me.
He was so close our noses could almost touch, his lips pinched tight so he wasn’t breathing directly in my face.
“Rrrr-ssss-eee mnnnn,” his deep voice rumbled out softly.
Bride of Glass (Brides of the Hunt Book 2) Page 23
