Barbarian’s Mate(19)

Not while I am around to take care of her. But if this is how she wishes to enjoy her dinner, I will humor her. I feed her another piece, and cannot resist grazing my thumb over her full bottom lip as I do. She gives a little shiver, and her khui grows louder.

Seeing her shiver reminds me of the fire, but I cannot build it higher without burning through more fuel and I want to keep it going all night because of the metlaks. Of course, thinking of the metlaks makes me also think of how she raced toward me earlier, screaming, fire in her arms. She could have been hurt. “It was dangerous for you to attack the metlaks,” I chide, and cut another square of meat to feed her.

“I’m not a wimp. And I couldn’t let you die out there.”

“I shall ignore the wound to my pride at the realization that you think a few adolescent metlaks can kill me.” I shove the meat into her mouth and watch her chew frantically. “What kind of hunter do you think I am?”

“You didn’t look like you were doing so well when I saw you,” she says as she chews. “Scuse me for trying to help out.”

“You could have been killed.”

She rolls her eyes and continues chewing.

“You should have come back in here and stayed safe,” I lecture, cutting my next bite smaller. My stomach growls but I ignore it. I will feed my mate before I will ever put a bite into my own mouth.

“It wasn’t like I had a choice.”

My eyes narrow as I offer her another piece of meat. I watch her take it from my fingers with her mouth and wait for her to chew for a bit before I speak. “Because I was being attacked?” I resist the urge to rub my chest out of pleasure.

“I didn’t realize you were being attacked when I came out. I was leaving anyhow. Once I saw you, I couldn’t just walk around you while you were being jumped.”

I frown at her words and feed her another tidbit. She was leaving? “Where were you going?”

To my surprise, her lip trembles. She pauses in her chewing and closes her eyes, then opens them again only after she swallows. When I offer her another bite, she lifts one bandaged hand and shakes her head. “I was leaving because…I have to save the others. I didn’t even know you were there.”

So she was not coming to save me? I am surprised - and irritated - at the sting I feel in my chest. She does not care for me after all. “What others?” I ask gruffly, shoving the bit of meat into my own mouth and swallowing quickly.

“The ones in the pods.” She gestures with her head, indicating something over her shoulder. “Remember when you guys saved us and six of the girls - Nora, and Stacy and the others - were in pods sleeping?” Her eyes get shiny but the tears do not spill forth. “I found more of them.”

“More pods?”

Jo-see nods, the look on her face heartbroken. “And they’re not empty.”

“More…females?” The unmated men of the tribe will be ecstatic. “Why are you so miserable? We can save them.”

“Because they shouldn’t be here,” she says angrily, jerking back. Jo-see won’t look me in the eye, either.

“Lies. That is not what you are angry about. You are angry at me.” As she glares in my direction, it dawns on me. “You are mad because you have to come back. Because you cannot leave them and you cannot free them on your own.”

“Oh, I can free them,” she says bitterly. “Free them to a death sentence. They’d die in a week, remember? I can’t kill a sa-kohtsk on my own.”

I watch her blankly, the realization that she does not yet care for me crushing.

If it were up to her, she would remain out here in the wild alone, forever. My wants and needs are nothing. The only reason she must return is for the safety of new human females.

Her mate is simply an annoyance.





JOSIE


It feels weird to realize I’ve hurt Haeden’s feelings. He’s silent as he moves around the cargo bay that we’re using as a cave, tending to the fire, roasting the rest of the kill and then scraping the hide clean with a bone knife. He melts more water, makes tea and then hands me a cup, all without a word spoken to me. His face is devoid of expression, features tight, and as he works with his back to me, his tail flicks back and forth like he’s pissed.

It’s not a good feeling. My cootie purrs a happy song, but I feel pretty fucking miserable. I just made this journey for nothing, Haeden was almost killed by metlaks, and I’m still resonating to him. Oh, and my hands suck. A little sigh of misery escapes me.

His entire body tenses, alert, and he glances over his shoulder at me. “Do your hands hurt?”

“No, they’re fine.” They’re numb and covered in goo, but they’re fine for now. Tomorrow I imagine it’ll suck to be me, but I’m trying not to think about that.

He grunts and turns back to poking at the fire with a rib-bone.

An apology springs to my lips but I bite it back. I’m not in the wrong, I tell myself. He should know that I don’t want to see him.

But then I think of the way he held me close after the metlaks ran off, and he stroked my hair like I was the best thing since sliced bread. The urgent desperation in him as he gazed down at me, like everything was right in the world as long as I was safe. The way he’d fed me bits of meat with such intensity, like his entire world centered upon feeding me and taking care of me.

I squirm uncomfortably in my seat. He’s made me the center of his world…and isn’t that what I’ve always wanted? A mate who put me before everything?

Except it’s Haeden, and that makes things tricky.

“I’m sorry,” I say after an uncomfortable length of silence once again. I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it if he doesn’t talk to me all night. I haven’t seen anyone else in days and that’s why I feel a desperate need for him not to be mad at me, I tell myself. If it were anyone else, I’d be just as unhappy.

But then I think, again, of the way he looked just before he’d hugged me in against him.

He grunts acknowledgment of my words but doesn’t turn around.

Clearly I’m going to have to say more. “This is just hard for me,” I tell him, resting my hands palm-up on my knees so I won’t hit them against anything. “I guess…sometimes I just want a say in something, you know? It feels like every time I turn around, the universe is deciding my fate for me and it gets old.” When he continues to remain silent, I add, “If you could go back and change things, wouldn’t you rather not resonate to me? If you had a choice?”

“No.”

“No?” I’m dumbfounded by his answer. Dumbfounded…and oddly pleased. I stare at his back, at his twitching tail, trying to understand. “Really?”

He nods slowly at the fire, but I know the nod is for me. “I would change nothing.”

Oh. Warmth furls through my chest. I think this is the first time someone’s picked me. Really picked me, not put up with me because they had to, or because the check for foster care wouldn’t come in otherwise. “Thank you,” I whisper. “That means a lot to me.”

“Clearly it does not, because you would not have returned for me.” He pokes the fire again, angrily. “It is easy to say words, Jo-see. It is another to mean them.”

“I know. I know I’m making this difficult for both of us. I just…I need time, okay? I’m kind of gun-shy about not being wanted after my childhood.”

“Eh?” He turns to give me a narrow-eyed glance over one shoulder. “Guhn-shy?”

“It’s an expression,” I tell him. “Skittish. Wary. Afraid.”

He grunts again and the silence falls. Then, he tosses aside the bone he’s been using to prod the fire and gets up. He picks up the cup of tea that I can’t hold and brings it toward me. I drink a little with his help and he sets it down again, then crouches near me. “Why are you guhn-shy?”

I shrug and stare down at my bandaged hands that look like the saddest mittens ever. “Just had a bad childhood. Happens to a lot of people.”

He looks up at me expectantly. When I’m silent, he gestures for me to continue.

I wince. “Please don’t make me talk about it.”

The expression on his face grows wintry again. “How can I understand if you will not share?”

I swallow hard, my throat suddenly dry. “Because it sucks. Because it was a long time ago and I am determined to not let it control my life forever.” But he’s not wrong…he can’t understand how much it means to me to have a real family unless I tell him why. “This isn’t an easy story to tell.”

Haeden grunts acknowledgment and to my surprise, reaches up to brush a lock of hair off my shoulder. “Neither is mine, yet I told you.”

Fair enough. I nod slowly. “So…my parents gave me up when I was two—“

He interrupts, the look on his face intent, as if he must capture every single word. “I do not follow.”

Oh boy. Yeah, I can guess that something like that won’t make sense to him. In their small tribe, every child is welcomed with joy by everyone. “Well…there are a lot of people back where I come from. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. So many that your mind cannot comprehend it. And sometimes these people are not…responsible, I guess. The people that had me didn’t want me and so they took me to a place called a state home and left me there. With strangers.” At his frown, I add, “The state home is where people take the children they don’t want and leave them for others to take care of.”