by Zoey Draven
My gaze narrowed on him, not liking the way he twisted the word vekkiri on his tongue, as though it was distasteful. My mother had done the same.
“The entire horde suspects that you will,” he continued. “You will make her your Morakkari before the thaw, before we travel to the southlands. Is that not true?”
Claws digging into my palms, I met his gaze steadily, though I did not deny his words.
“We cannot forbid you from doing this, Vorakkar,” the elder next to him said. Slowly, he added, “However, we can strongly suggest against it.”
I bristled at the tone in his voice.
“Neffar?” I asked quietly, drawing out the word slowly, meeting his eyes.
It was…a threat. A subtle one, but a threat nonetheless.
The third elder spoke, “Already, three families are planning to leave the horde once the thaw comes. Four unmated females and one of the bikku have also announced to the pujerak that they intend to return to Dothik, to await the next horde launch once the Dothikkar selects his newest Vorakkar.”
My gaze turned to Vodan and he at least had the decency to look away.
My head warrior spoke next, “Seven warriors have told me they will also detach from Rath Tuviri once the thaw comes. Unless…”
He trailed off but I knew what he would say.
Looking down at the table, at the map of Dakkar, I mentally traced the route I was planning to take to lead my horde through the Hitri. Over two dozen of my horde would not be a part of that journey. A significant number of my horde. Losing seven warriors didn’t seem like much, given over forty would remain, but my horde would feel their loss once the Ghertun attacks started again. Losing four unmated females could potentially decrease that warrior count even further, compromising the safety of the horde.
“She would weaken us. She is already weakening us since there are those that will not tolerate a vekkiri queen. They would rather return to Dothik than have her rule this horde beside you,” the first elder said. His jaw set, sure in his decision, as he continued, “We have decided that if you take the vekkiri as your Morakkari, then we can no longer serve Rath Tuviri either.”
“We?” I rasped, feeling his words like they were a punch in my gut. My eyes turned to my head warrior, whose lips pressed together in hesitation, before they went to Vodan.
My oldest friend swallowed as he met my gaze.
“Even you, pujerak?” I asked slowly, a knot forming in my chest. “You agree with the council? You would leave Rath Tuviri and return to Dothik if I took her as my Morakkari?”
You would leave me, what we’ve built? I asked him silently. It went unspoken between us. Vodan hated Dothik as much as I did and he’d told me long ago that he would follow me always.
Vodan straightened, drawing in a deep breath, as he nodded. He didn’t say anything. It was only a brief incline of his head but it was a physical and emotional blow that hit hard. It stunned me in place.
His answer was a betrayal, one that took me by surprise because I’d never suspected that he would ever betray me like this, with whispers among my council. I’d trusted Vodan more than I’d trusted anyone in my entire life. He was a brother to me, a loyal friend, an advisor. We’d been together since we were boys in the streets of Dothik and we’d always looked out for one another.
He loved me like a brother and I loved him. But in one single moment, the trust that I’d placed in him chipped and fractured and I mourned the loss of it.
Silence weighed heavy in the voliki as they waited for me to speak.
I thought of Nelle. I thought of her love, written plainly in her eyes, and the thissie feathers around her neck. I thought of when I’d first seen her in that darkened forest with a wooden bow clutched in her grip. I remembered thinking she seemed sad, but I didn’t realize at the time that I’d felt that same emotion in myself. That over time, she had erased that sadness in me, as I’d erased it in her.
But it was I who would give it back to her in full.
My mother’s words returned to me then, words she’d said to me in Dothik.
“Do you think your council and your pujerak will stand behind you if you take a vekkiri as your queen? Nik, of course not. If they leave you, your horde will fall. Everything will be for nothing.”
I remembered thinking then that Vodan would stand with me, and with him by my side, the horde would always be strong. Because, unlike the other hordes, ours was a partnership.
Now, he was threatening to leave.
“Then I see that it has already been decided for me,” I said slowly, meeting the eyes of my council.
They had backed me into a corner. The horde could survive a couple dozen members leaving, but it would fall if my council and my pujerak left, just as my mother said. They knew that and I knew that. Even a Vorakkar had limits on his power.
Dread and grief lodged in my chest, making it hard to breathe.
“The horde always comes first,” I murmured, though bitterness tinged my words now. I met Vodan’s eyes, saw the relief in them. “Isn’t that right, pujerak?”
Whatever he saw made his gaze shutter, made shame creep into his expression. He knew this would change us. It already had.
“We are done this night,” I rasped, needing to leave the voliki. “We will meet tomorrow to make plans for after the thaw.”
“Very good, Vorakkar,” one of the elders said, a small smile on his lips. A smile that made my belly churn and nausea rise.
I turned my back on them and left, already struggling to breathe when I was hit with the reality of what I had to do next.
Outside, the cold bit at my skin painfully. I was already halfway back to my own voliki, where Nelle waited for me, when I realized I’d forgotten my pelt.
“Seerin,” Vodan called from behind me. I’d heard his footsteps crunch after me immediately after I left the council. “Please. Let me explain.”
“There is no need, pujerak,” I said, my voice strangely detached. I was numbing myself, something I’d done often growing up, to keep the emotional pain at bay. It was something my mother taught me.
Bury them deep, my son. So you never know the pain of them.
“Seerin,” he said, “I tried to tell you. I tried to stop this from—”
“Enough,” I rasped, turning my gaze onto him. “I do not want to hear your excuses. You got what you wanted. So did the council.”
“I took no pleasure in it,” he assured me, as if it would make me feel better.
“I do not believe that,” I told him softly. His expression tightened at my words, his brows drawing together. “Return to your mate, pujerak. I have no more use for you as my advisor tonight.”
“I am still your friend, Seerin,” he said to my turned back when I resumed my journey to the voliki I shared with my thissie. “I hope you remember that.”
There were a million cutting things I could have said, but I bit my tongue. Instead, I said nothing and continued on my way, leaving him far behind me.
When I reached the entrance of my voliki, I closed my eyes, drawing in a deep breath before I pushed inside.
Warmth immediately infused my veins, a shocking contrast to the bitter cold outside. Nelle smiled when she saw me, sitting cross-legged in the middle of our bed, weaving a scarf for Arlah. She’d been working on it all week.
It only took her a moment to realize that my mood was off because her smile slowly died and her hand stilled on the half-finished scarf.
“What’s wrong, Seerin?” she asked, frowning, concerned.
Vok, I can’t do this, I thought. How was I ever going to do this?
I went to her, undressing as I went, shivering. She put the scarf aside and I caught her in my arms, pulling her under the furs.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered, her hands resting on my chest. “What’s happened?”
I shook my head. I lied to her. “Nothing. I just need sleep. I just want to hold you, lysi?”
My answer didn’t satisfy her but she he
sitantly settled down against me. “Alright,” she whispered, her breath drifting across my flesh, laying her head in the crook of my arm.
We would talk in the morning, I knew. I couldn’t bring myself to right then, though I knew that I should.
Nik, tonight, I would hold my thissie close because it could very well be the last time.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Biting my lip, I eyed Seerin, who was sitting on the edge of the bed. I could see tendrils of blue morning light filtering in through the sliver at the voliki’s entrance. He’d already dressed, as had I, but he’d barely said a word to me this morning. Or last night, for that matter.
“Seerin,” I called, sitting next to him, pulling his hands into mine. He stared down at our entwined fingers before meeting my eyes. I felt like there was a stone lodged in my throat, like my body already knew there was something terribly wrong before he even spoke the words. “Tell me. Did something happen at the council meeting last night?”
He’d been quiet and distant since then. It made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
His nostrils flared.
“Nelle,” he said quietly. My brow furrowed because his voice was almost…pleading. He bit out a quiet Dakkari curse and pressed his forehead into mine, his eyes closing.
Fear infused my very bones. “Tell me what’s happened right now, Seerin. You’re scaring me.”
He pulled away. He pulled his hands from mine, his forehead from mine, and stood from the edge of the bed. I stood too, hesitantly.
“Please,” I whispered, furrowing my brow. “Just tell me. Whatever it is, I can handle it.”
“Nelle,” he said, his voice holding a hardened edge. “I have decided…I have decided that this cannot continue.”
I frowned. “What can’t continue?”
His eyes met mine. “Us.”
My breath squeezed from my lungs.
“What?” I whispered.
“We cannot continue this,” he said.
He said ‘this’ as though it was a simple thing. But ‘this’ was us. It was anything but simple.
“What are you talking about, Seerin?” I said, shaking my head, laughing, not wanting to believe it, even though my heart beat wildly in my chest, though nausea had begun to churn in my belly, acid rising in my throat. “You can’t mean that.”
“I told you even before I left for Dothik that I could not make you any promises, Nelle,” he said, looking at me steadily, his jaw set. “For this reason alone, that was why I did not want to make you a promise that I could not keep.”
Looking away, I saw nothing. Not the wall of the voliki, not the cabinet, nor the bathing tub or the bed, where we’d spent our long nights together. My mind simply couldn’t comprehend anything beyond his words.
He was serious.
He was serious.
“Last night, it became apparent to me that any future for us would be an impossibility,” he added quietly. “It was a fantasy, Nelle, and nothing more.”
“Why just last night?” I asked, though my voice sounded far away. “Just yesterday morning, you were talking of the Hitri mountains and giving me another gift. Was that…was that because you already knew? You were trying to make yourself feel better?”
I saw his fists squeeze, though the rest of his body was completely still. “The council confronted me about taking a Morakkari and it became obvious to me that…it cannot be you.”
It was then that hurt—hurt so painful and acute that my knees shook and my throat stung—penetrated my shock. Tears pricked my eyes as I stood there, staring at him because I couldn’t look away, no matter how much I wanted to. No matter how much I needed to.
It felt like he was ripping me in half. How could words hurt this much? How was it even possible?
“I see,” I whispered. Though I didn’t. I didn’t ‘see’ at all.
“Nelle,” he said softly, his eyes flickering. For a moment, I thought he felt the same amount of pain he was inflicting on me. Then he clenched his jaw, the look gone, and continued, “We cannot allow this to go on any longer. It is better this way, to end it now, before…”
Before what?
Before it was too late?
“I love you,” I whispered, tears spilling down my cheeks. “I love you, Seerin. It’s already too late. Please don’t do this. Please.”
That crack in his expression appeared again. He already knew I loved him—how could he not?
“Stop,” he growled. “Do not make this harder than it already is, kalles.”
“Is it?” I cried. “Is this hard for you, Seerin? Because it doesn’t seem that way. How can you be so cold about this? What are you even saying right now?”
His jaw clenched and those familiar grey eyes didn’t seem like Seerin’s at all. They seemed more like the horde king I’d first seen in my village, hardened and detached from everything around him.
“You will always have a place here, Nelle,” he told me, ignoring my questions. “You may remain in the horde for the rest of your life if you wish.”
Air was pulled from my lungs, whooshing out of me in a gasp of disbelief.
“You will never have to worry about a home, about food, about your safety again,” he continued, as if that softened the blow he was delivering. “You will be protected here.”
He blurred in front of me as tears filled my vision and poured down my cheeks.
“And when you inevitably take a Morakkari?” I whispered, unfathomable hurt spearing into my chest over and over again…until I couldn’t breathe. “You think I can just stand by and watch? You think I will be able to stomach you taking her to your bed? You think I will be able to withstand seeing you with her every single day for the rest of my life?”
“You must,” he growled. “It is my duty to take a Morakkari, thissie. For the sake of my horde, I will have to, and you will have to accept that.”
Disbelief made me stumble back, away from him. He’d said it so easily, so coldly that I wondered if I truly knew him at all.
“You’re cruel, Seerin. I never realized how much,” I said softly, glaring at him across the spacious distance between us. His expression contorted, ever so slightly. “You’re cruel if you ask that of me.”
He looked away, down to the rugs on the floor, where he’d made love to me numerous times over the last month. It hurt to think that another female would soon think of this voliki as hers, that another female would soon think of Seerin as hers. Would they share meals and baths together? Would he call her rei thissie too? Would he tease her and laugh with her and kiss her until the world spun?
Oh, this hurts, I thought, trying to breathe. Struggling to breathe. It hurt so much.
I’d been rejected all my life. By my mother, by Jana, by my village. Even by Seerin before. I should’ve known. I should’ve known he wouldn’t have wanted me. No one else had before, so why would he?
He’d made me believe differently, however—if only for a little while. I hated him for it…because now I knew what it felt like to be wanted.
What was wrong with me that made others discard me so easily?
“Nelle,” he rasped, approaching me.
“Don’t,” I pleaded, holding my hand out so he wouldn’t touch me. Because if he touched me, I would crumble completely. “D-don’t.”
He didn’t need to say anything else. His mind was already made up, I could see that. And it didn’t matter what I wanted. It never mattered.
“Did you ever love me?” I asked, voice trembling, though I kept it strong. A tactic I’d used with Grigg often, so he wouldn’t sense my fear. “At all?”
He said nothing. He met my eyes and said nothing.
And I felt like the universe’s most naive fool. A heartbroken fool.
I looked at him right in his eyes and I looked deep. Once, I’d been frightened to look too deeply because he’d been stealing my soul at the time.
I laughed, but it sounded too strange, even for me.
“Now it would se
em we’re just two demons who possess one another’s souls, Seerin.” Finally, pain registered in his gaze, but it didn’t make me feel any better. It made me feel worse. Because even now, I didn’t want to hurt him. Not the way he was hurting me. “And believe me, I would give yours back to you if I knew how because I don’t want it. Not anymore.”
Turning, I walked towards the entrance of the voliki, numbness cascading over me.
“Thissie,” he rumbled, twisting the knife with that word. “I am sorry.”
I closed my eyes before wiping away the tears on my cheeks.
He didn’t want me. It wouldn’t be the first time someone felt that way. But I vowed to myself that he would be the last.
“I hope you find everything you’re looking for, Seerin,” I whispered, so quietly I wasn’t sure he heard me. “I truly wish that for you.”
Then I left without looking back. And I knew, right at that moment, as cold wind slapped against my still-wet cheeks, that I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t stay in the horde that I’d grown to think of as my home.
After all this time, I would need to return to my village. Because the pain that I would feel remaining close to Seerin, knowing that he would choose another that was not me, knowing he’d never truly loved me, was nothing compared to the struggle I would face returning to the only other home I’d known.
I needed to leave. Though it was the height of the cold season, I needed to leave.
If I stayed, it would destroy whatever was left of me.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“You cannot be serious,” Odrii said, staring at me like I’d lost my mind. And perhaps I had, but all I could feel hours after Seerin had torn my heart from my chest was numb. “Nelle. Nik. I will not take you back. Your home is here.”
Avuli sat at the low table in her voliki, Arlah at her side, looking between us. Though the young boy had learned a few words in the universal tongue, he looked confused by the exchange and his mother would not translate the conversation for him. She was looking at me, her expression knowing. As if she recognized heartbreak in me because she’d experienced it keenly herself when her mate had died in battle.
