Emins’ Mate(50)
“Shit,” he cursed when they both found the bump on her skull. “I really hurt you.”
“No, no.” She waved it away. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.” She turned to reassure him but lost her breath again at the concerned look in his eyes. He was never concerned about her. Annoyed? Yes. Irritated? Absolutely. But concerned? Never.
It was at that moment that she realized how he’d sat them down. Him sitting on the cot and her spread across his lap. One of his arms wrapped around her hips like a steel band and the other hand stroked across the back of her head. Their faces were only inches apart.
Apparently, their situation became clear to him at the same time because both of his hands tightened for the flash of a second before he quickly slid her off of his lap. He stood and paced in front of her, one hand raking through his hair.
“Why are you here, Zara?” His clipped, irritated tone set her stomach roiling, but at least it was familiar. The concerned manner from a few moments ago had made her confused and unsure how to proceed.
Zara took a deep breath, arranged her night dress over her knees and crossed her hands in front of her. She tried to look him in the eye, but her eyes skittered away from his intensity. She settled for looking at his chest, but realizing it was bare, she just stared at the air over his shoulder.
“I need your help.”
He crossed his arms over his bare chest. And nodded. Zara noted the change in his manner. As the leader of the Surgere, he was used to helping people. He was comfortable with it. “With what?”
Even though she’d practiced a hundred times ever since she saw him building her hut that morning, Zara found she couldn’t quite get the words out.
“You can’t make me mate,” she blurted out.
Shock crossed Solar’s face and his hands dropped to his hips. “Excuse me?”
“I mean, with the hut and-” she cut herself off and nervously took a piece of her long hair in her hands. She played with the ends and forced herself to look at him.
“Zara, I’m making the hut to give you privacy. And to keep you from distracting the unmated Surgeres. Not to make you mate.” She couldn’t interpret the look on his face but it was so fierce that she nearly flinched.
“I’m not saying this right. Just let me-” She waved her hand in the air as if to start over. “I know that fertility huts are built for privacy for the woman who’s just become mateable.” She lowered her eyes. “But I know that they are also used to give a new… couple privacy once they’re mated.”
He said nothing, neither acknowledging nor denying that fact. So she plunged on. “And I wanted you to know that I’ll keep away from the camp if I’m causing a distraction. Or if I’m in the way. I’ll use the hut for that. But I won’t mate with any of them.”
Zara was proud that her voice didn’t quaver. But when she looked up at Solar there was a tentative sort of resignation on his face.
“Zara, I know you’ve never seen a fertility transition before, what with being sequestered at the castle, and then all of the female Surgeres already being of age.” He shifted slightly on his feet. “But you don’t really know what it’ll be like for you. You might want to mate. And the men here are certainly going to want to mate with you.”
“No,” Zara said, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. “I won’t. I don’t want any of them.”
Solar shifted on his feet again. And before he answered he stalked over to the tureen of fresh water in the corner of his hut. He cupped some in his hand and drank deeply. The moonlight splashed over his back; there were more scars there than Zara had ever noticed before. But then, she couldn’t remember a time she’d been able to freely study him without his shirt on.
“You can’t know what you’ll want after you’re fertile, Zara. Besides the biological aspects of it, there’s the emotional aspects as well. You might want a mate. For the companionship. You might want to be a wife.”
“I’ve already been a wife, Solar.”
Her words cut across the room like an arrow and Solar froze. She knew that he was hearing her now. He was really listening.
“I know I’m young. But I’m not a child. I haven’t been a child since the day he made me wear that crown.” She wouldn’t speak Dalyer’s name out loud into the still of the hut air. She didn’t even like thinking it. “I’ve been a wife since I was born. And an active wife since I was twelve years old. And thank the good lord a young girl is physically unmateable until 21, so I didn’t have to carry out that particular wifely duty. But I’ll never go back there, Sol. I’ll never be lashed to a man again.”