The Chieftain

by V. K. Ludwig

  “I mean, he did,” I went on. “When we traveled to the Clan of the Mountains, he did. But everything has changed now, and there won’t be any going back.”

  Autumn threw Max a reproachful look. “You knew he wanted to call off the divorce?”

  “Not exactly,” he said, waving his hand about as if it might deflect Autumn’s now cold stare. “But I kinda figured, why else would he show up at the clinic? It’s not like you get a semen analysis done just because the mood hits you.”

  “That’s what he did?” I asked, something inside me turning numb and transfixed, my voice dropping into a low mumble. “I never thought he would do something like that.”

  “Oh, he wasn’t too willing, I can guarantee you that. Guess the fact that River had himself tested made it less humiliating for him. Acted like a big baby when —”

  “What were the results?” it rushed out of me, hardening my stomach as soon as the words were out. Why would it matter to me now? “You know what… never-mind. It’s not like it’s any of my business anymore. Don’t feel like you have to answer.”

  Max gave me a cast-down glance. “I wouldn’t have, anyway.”

  “Yeah, because of the confidentiality.”

  “No.” He sucked in his upper lip and let it go in a noisy smack. “It’s not my place to tell. That’s entirely between you and him, and I think he should be the one sharing it with you.”

  I let out a sharp breath and picked up Rose, pressing her chest against mine while tapping my palm against her back. “Well, he didn’t and he won’t. Fact is, we will divorce, but he wants me and Rose to stay here.”

  Everyone watched me, including my daughter. Something paralyzing crept up my spine, grabbing me by the shoulders. Autumn had worked one of her eyebrows up, spelling out the obvious for me: staying was the best thing I might do. Not for me. For Rose.

  “That’s insane,” Max said. “I get he wants to make sure you and Rose are taken care of, but how are you supposed to stay here, surrounded by people who —”

  “Not insane at all,” Autumn said, pushing herself up to full height and pointing at me. “Where is she supposed to go? And with a baby girl? Women can’t… they can’t just leave and live on their own.”

  Max wiped his palm over his face, his expression as desperate as Autumn’s was furious. “Have you considered what life would be like for her? People are avoiding her as if she had the small-pox.”

  A familiar shake took hold of me once more. Definitely not from the cold now. Shunned by my own Clan, I would have to live out my sad, lonely life among people who hated me. The outcast, the snitch, the traitor. That would be me. Alive only because they thought I once gave birth to the chieftain’s daughter.

  Goosebumps wrapped me in a blanket of disgust — I saw them pointing at me, felt the tips of their fingers dig into my skin.

  My mind wouldn’t quit racing, showing me future scenes of a recluse at the edge of society.

  Hated. Avoided. Loathed.

  Pain needled my heart.

  Realization woke my conscience.

  Rowan meant well, but did he ever consider what Rose’s childhood would look like? Growing up as the daughter of a chieftain was tough enough — no need to bring a traitor mother into it.

  He had said he would look after us. Have everything we need. But what about friends, kinship and love? What about a place where we belonged? Where I belonged?

  Autumn took a deep breath but still didn’t hold back a quick scoff. “Small-pox is still better than worrying about your child’s safety every single day, and the people would think Rose isn’t his child after all if he would let Darya take the baby away. I don’t even know why we argue about that. It’s not like she’s got a choice. There’s nowhere else to go for her.”

  “The Clan of the Mountains,” I said, the sudden confidence in my voice making me sound like a stranger to myself.

  Autumn took a step back and shifted away from me. “What?”

  “Their chieftain offered me a home there, in case I ever needed it.”

  Rowan’s words replayed like a distant whisper at first, growing closer with each breath I drew. I was a mother now, and I was bearing a mothers responsibility. Number one? Rose was the only thing that mattered. No room for sentiments, hurt feelings, and broken hearts.

  The weight of this responsibility trembled my fingers, and I quickly folded them in front of my chest. I could stay here and try to make the best of it, my Clan being my only worry — day in, day out.

  Or I could give Rose a life at the Clan where she belonged — without the shadow of her mother’s actions looming over her future. A life without me.

  “You can’t trust those people,” Autumn snarled.

  “Rowan trusts them enough to let one of our people marry their chieftain,” Max said, pushing his chest out knowing well he had a point. “So why not give Rose and Darya a chance to make themselves a new life there?”

  “Wait…” Autumn shook her head and blinked her eyes like an old digital camera in sports-mode. “Are you suggesting she takes Rose with her?”

  “Did we ever talk about anything else?” Max asked. “You can’t expect a mother to leave her child behind, can you?”

  Autumn flung her hands onto her hips and gave a mini-stomp with her heel. “She is his daughter, too!”

  “Except that she isn’t,” Max said like a boy who talked back to his mother after she sent him to bed without dinner.

  Autumn eased her posture. “Ever heard of that old saying? Like… every man can be a father, but not everyone has the guts to be a dad? Or something like that?”

  Max arched a brow. “But Rowan isn’t the father?”

  “God damn it, Max, you’re driving me insane. I get he isn’t the father. I’m just trying to say that he’s her dad nonetheless, and a damn good one at that. You know how it would destroy him if Darya took her away from him. You know it!”

  Max turned silent and grew small as if the reasoning inside him shrank because it couldn’t argue with feelings of the heart.

  “You understand he loves her, right?” Autumn took my hands into hers, a plea filling her eyes. “I’ll be a mother soon, but I won’t pretend I get what kind of agony you’re going through. But I want you to know… I want you to really understand how much he loves her. And that he would protect her with his life. Nobody would ever hurt her. She would be safe. Always.”

  Yes, Rose would be safe, wrapped in Rowan’s cloak of protection. But there was another message clinging to the edge of Autumn’s words. One only those could hear who knew how much her brother would suffer if I took Rose away from him.

  “You owe him that much, don’t you think?” she added.

  My heart punched against the lump in my throat. Everyone around me turned into a blur. I broke Rowan’s heart three times.

  Once when I ran.

  Once when he met Rose.

  Once when I returned.

  Ripping her away from him would break his heart once more — a fourth time. Something I promised would never happen. Sweat formed along my hairline — nothing but a confirmation. I knew what I had to do. After everything Rowan did for me, for us, my senses assured me it was only right.

  “I need you to buy me some time,” I said. “Not much, just enough for me to leave unnoticed.”

  Autumn gave a nod.

  Crack.

  The sound of my heart splitting in two.

  I’d leave both halves behind. One with the man I loved. One with our daughter. As for me, I’d have to learn to live without one beating inside my chest.

  Chapter 25

  Rowan

  My heart produced the pain quicker than my lungs could breathe it away. They hyperventilated, sending tingles through my body and fading the fucking maps in front of me.

  I tripped over the self-pity tied around my ankles and let myself fall forward, barely slamming my palms onto the table, holding me up, because real men didn’t crouch. Neither did they cry, but that message w
ent entirely lost inside my chest, and stray, salty droplets soaked the inked paper.

  I expected the walls of the longhouse to close in on me any second now, crack and crumble, burying me in a pile of plaster and eternal misery. They didn’t.

  Instead, they breathed and expanded, shrinking me with each stuttered breath I took. The longhouse seemed bigger now than ever before. The chieftain it contained was never smaller.

  What the hell did you do, Rowan?

  I sent my wife away, that’s what. The coward inside of me kept repeating it was for her own good, but whom was I kidding? It was better for myself, the jerk who would rather ruin a family than face his shortcomings.

  Shit! My chest turned into a pressure-chamber, flattening my lungs and sending a stabbing pain down my arm. How young can you get a heart attack?

  Another stab down my arm. The adrenaline pumped through my veins in double-time. Fuck. I had a heart attack.

  I pushed myself off the table, ripping half the maps to the ground. My legs stumbled across the longhouse and out the door. I ignored the curious eyes and concerned looks. Two clansmen walked up to me, their distorted voices asking if I needed help.

  “I’m fine,” I mumbled, wiped the sweat beads off my forehead with the back of my hand, and flung my arm onto my aching chest.

  Wet snow clung to my boots and pants like ankle weights, turning the stroll over to Max’s cabin into the hike of my life. That was it. Each step turned me weaker from my knees down, threatening to sink me into the depth of winter.

  I’d go down in history as chieftain Rowan. Maker of laws. Breaker of hearts. Died of hypothermia following a heart attack aged thirty-nine, because he wasn’t man enough to father children, and certainly not man enough to admit it to the woman he loved.

  What felt like three ice-ages later, I was surprisingly still alive, banging my fists against the rigid door of my sister’s cabin.

  Autumn ripped the door open, her hands falling onto her chest. “What happened? What the hell is going on? Are you… are you injured?”

  “I’m having a heart attack,” I said calmly, my voice making me rest assured I had made peace with the fact death was imminent.

  “Max,” Autumn shouted. “Max! Hurry! Rowan got hurt, or injured or… something’s going on with him.”

  Max opened the door wide. “What happened? Where’s the wound?”

  “He said he has a heart attack!”

  “A what?” Max flung my arm across his shoulder and led me over to the stairs. “Why didn’t you go to Hazel at the clinic?”

  “I’m dying, Max.” I let myself drop onto the staircase, the un-sanded edges rubbing against my butt crack and thighs. “Max, it’s a heart attack. I can feel it right here in my chest… like… I can’t breathe. And pain here… my arm… and…”

  “Pain where?” he asked, pressing into my chest. “Here?”

  “Other side.”

  “I see.” He squeezed my fingers. “Does that tingle?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Should I get Hazel?” Autumn asked, her eyes rimmed with fear.

  Max held his hand inches from my nose and snapped his fingers. “I want you to count each time I snap, ok?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Snap. “One.”

  Snap. “Two.”

  Snap. “Um… three.”

  Snap. “Fouuur.”

  Snap. “Fiiive.”

  Max placed his hand onto my slowing chest. “Better? Is the pain less now than when you got here?”

  “Uh-huh, yeah, yeah, it’s less, but it’s still there. Right here.” I lifted my sweater and pointed between two ribs. “You think I’ll need one of those difibrators?”

  “Defibrillator,” he said with a smile sitting on the edge of his mouth. “And no, you won’t need one of those because you don’t have a heart attack.”

  My chest expanded wider at my next breath. “I’m not dying?”

  “Are you sure, baby?” Autumn asked, her hand tugging on Max’s arm. “Maybe Hazel should check —”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. You’re not dying today, Rowan. It was a panic attack.”

  “A panic…” my voice trailed off, making room for my ears to listen to the calmed da-dum… da-dum… da-dum of my heart. The stabbing pain along my arm faded, but the pressure in my chest stayed like three-day-old leftovers, refusing to go away.

  Autumn squeezed herself between me and the wall, sat down and placed her hand onto my shoulder. She looked up at Max. “Why on earth would he get a panic attack?”

  “Oh, gee, I don’t know,” Max said, the scorn in his voice spread on thick. “Maybe because he broke up with Darya on a whim?”

  “It’s better that way,” I lied. Mostly to myself, because Max arched his brows into a I’m-not-buying-it kinda look.

  “Suuure.” Max pouted his lips and dragged the word into a mind-shattering echo. “When did you figure out it’s better like this? On your three-minute walk from my lab to your longhouse? Or did you actually allow yourself another five to make this life-changing decision?”

  “You’re unfair,” Autumn said. “He’s just trying to protect his family and the Clan. You got no clue how quickly things can take a turn around here. Do you have any idea how many chieftains we had since I was a kid? Thirteen. Thirteen chieftains, Max.”

  “And how many of them kept up trade agreements with the Districts for over a year?” he asked. “How many cut the numbers of rapes and assaults down close to zero? How many of them freed five people from the council’s oppression?”

  “Exactly, Max!” Autumn threw her hands up, building a defense where I couldn’t. “My brother is an amazing chieftain. If he stayed with Darya, he would put it all at risk.”

  “You know what.” Max walked up to us and placed one foot on the first step of the stairs, leaning in close to me. “The Rowan I know would say ‘fuck the risk’. Fuck the Clan. Fuck those assholes who think they can do better than you. And he sure as hell won’t go hide under a rock just because he can’t make babies.”

  My breath stopped inside my chest, my lungs crippled by his words. A flash of heat rushed into my cheeks, amplified by the way my sister dropped her gaze to the banister. He had said it out loud.

  “Don’t, Max,” Autumn begged, a flush creeping up from her earlobes.

  “Why not?” Max asked. “What has changed, now that I said it? He is still the same great chieftain, the same amazing dad, and the same caring husband.”

  “It changes the way our people see him.”

  “Well, then you’re fucking hypocrites.”

  A knot of doubt formed in my throat.

  “What?” Autumn asked.

  “You heard me,” Max said. “When I came here, you guys told me about how the Districts are wrong to exclude those who aren’t perfect. And now you’re telling me the fact that Rowan isn’t perfect changes the way they see him?”

  The narrow staircase turned into the funeral home of silence. Autumn clasped her knees tightly together, rocking herself back and forth, trying hard not to look at me. Siblings shouldn’t have to hear about each other’s fertility issues. Hell, they shouldn’t even know the sibling had a sexual life at all.

  Max gave a heavy sigh and sagged against the lime-washed brick wall beside him. “You didn’t tell her. Did you?”

  The way he had asked left no room for doubts — he knew full well I didn’t.

  “She shouldn’t have to deal with this crap,” I said. “The way the Clan is rallying against her is bad enough already. No need to put herself through the danger for a guy like me.”

  “You mean the guy she loves?” Max’s gaze wandered to the door across the staircase, eyes squinted as if his ears had picked up on a noise. Then he crossed one leg behind the other and shook his head. “That was her decision to make, don’t you think?”

  Metal clanked against something, the sound coming muffled from somewhere within the house. A lid dancing on a steaming pot, perhaps.

  “It’s to
o late now anyway,” Autumn said. “What’s done is done, and there’s no going back from it.”

  “We should tell him,” Max said into the room, but I knew we meant them, and him meant me. They knew something I didn’t, and the roaring, churning mess forming at the bottom of my stomach told me I wouldn’t like it.

  “Tell me what?”

  I glanced at my sister. She zipped up her sweater and crossed her arms in front of her chest, inching herself away from me. “We promised her.”

  “No,” Max said and wiggled his finger in front of his face. “You promised. I asked both of you to step on the breaks and talk it out. I told you it’s a stupid idea. Go on. You tell your brother!”

  “For heaven’s sake, tell me what?” I shouted.

  Another clank of metal against something. Not something. Wood. And not just any metal. Bells. My heart sunk so low, I wasn’t sure I could ever get it back into my chest. Max pointed at the door across.

  I pushed myself up, almost slipped when I stumbled down two steps, and slowly pushed the door handle down. The familiar scent of baby powder greeted me first, followed by a cranky whine.

  “Why is Rose still here?” I asked and turned around, searching my sister’s pale face for an answer. “Is Darya still here, too? You’re not telling me she didn’t come yet, right?”

  Autumn sunk her head. “She was here. But she’s gone now.”

  “Gone where?” I asked, the familiar knot inside my throat swelling from doubt to a complete loss of faith. A certain familiarity loomed over this moment, forcing me face-to-face with an ugly past. She didn’t leave, did she? No, she would never. Not without…

  “She left a note next to the crib,” Autumn whispered. “I swear, Rowan, I just didn’t want to see you hurt again. And neither did she.”

  “So you convinced her to leave her own daughter behind?” My voice could neither hide the hurt nor the hate for my sister at that moment. “This isn’t true. Why on earth would… I can’t believe this… I… shit…”

  The pressure inside my chest returned with such force, it sat me right down on my ass. I pressed my back against the wall, slid down to the floor with a whomp, and flung my hand onto my heart.