Emins’ Mate(54)

She’d already asked so many embarrassing questions. What was one more? “Did David claim you?”

A light color came into Keiko’s cheeks but she didn’t pause as she slipped a fish loose from the net and tossed it, flopping and gasping, into the basket at her side. “Yes, he did. And I claimed him right back.”

Keiko waded out of the water and Zara followed. Some things were much clearer now. And some were much more confusing. But she supposed the ins and outs of it didn’t really matter considering she didn’t intend on partaking in any of it.

The first time she’d ever even imagined what it would be like to have a mate, a voluntary one, had been last night. She’d lain in Solar’s bed, completely unable to sleep. His smell had surrounded her. Grass and wind and man all rolled into one. In a way, it had been comforting, because she trusted him so deeply. But in another, more confusing way, it had been deeply disconcerting. She didn’t understand why it would make her heart race, her palms sweaty. And then every time she felt like she was about to drift off into sleep, she would hear Solar rustle and it would jolt her awake again.

Solar slept outside, in front of the door of his hut on a thin little mat he’d rolled out. Zara had been mortified that he’d be putting himself out like that for her. But all he did was repeat that it was “none of her concern” before he closed her into his hut and told her to go to bed. She should have slept easy considering she was completely protected by Solar. No one was going to get past him. But she was too aware of him out there, ten feet away.

Would that be what it was like to have a mate? She had wondered it all night. Were you hyperaware of your mate all night long? It sounded exhausting to her. And oddly thrilling.

The two women carried their baskets of fish back to camp. According to camp rules, since they had caught them, they wouldn’t have to cook them, for which Zara was thankful. She really wanted to use her free time that evening to move her things to her hut. She didn’t think she could take the tension of another night in Solar’s. And she was certain he wasn’t going to let her sleep in the infirmary anymore.

“Look, the watch is back,” Keiko said, raising her eyes to the sky. Ten Surgeres soared overhead, circling camp before they landed in the big clearing a quarter of a mile south.

Zara immediately recognized Solar among the group. He was in his dragon form. She’d always admired it. His scales were the same midnight blue as his eyes and instead of reflecting light, he almost seemed to absorb it. He was the color of moonlight on the ocean, the sky in the moments right after twilight. And he was sleek. He was a dragon built for speed. She’d never seen a faster flier than Solar. His flight was dexterous and agile. He was really something to behold when he was in the air.

Keiko hurried ahead to deliver the fish to whoever was cooking tonight. The watch would be hungry. Keeping watch over the rebel territory was an exhausting job. One they all rotated through. Zara wouldn’t be surprised if they’d flown a hundred miles today, keeping tabs on all perimeters.

The other dragons instantly headed off to land, shift, and come back to camp to eat. But Solar did another circle of camp and then another. Keeping an extra eye on things, as usual. Zara hung back under the cover of a towering balsa tree and watched him swooping through the air. Such an impressive dragon. Something pulled tight, like a string, inside her, but she didn’t know what it was. Couldn’t have said what it was even if she’d been trying to answer her own question.





CHAPTER FIVE





Solar spent a week of virtually sleepless nights tossing and turning on a thin mat outside of a hut. This time it was Zara’s new hut and not his own. He cleared out every morning at first light. The first night that they’d slept there she’d been utterly mortified to learn that he was going to sleep outside for her again.

“Are you going to do this every night?” she’d asked, her eyes planted firmly on the ground.

Look at me, he’d wanted to say. Just look me in my eyes.

But he didn’t. Instead he’d gone his usual route and just snapped at her. “What do you think ‘protecting you’ means, Zara?”

She hadn’t responded to that. She’d merely thanked him and stepped back into her hut.

He didn’t want to go through the whole song and dance with her again every morning so he was generally gone before she woke up. Now, the sun was rising through the mist of the jungle, the birds were starting to chatter in the trees, and it was time to meet with the Oracle and with Javi, Solar’s right-hand man.

He never knew what to expect from these meetings. Sometimes they were fraught with frustration over whatever riddles and jokes the Oracle was speaking in that day. Sometimes they were tense with some imminent danger they needed to figure their way out of. And occasionally, they were joyous. He never knew which kind he was going to get. But he did know that showing up on less than a handful of sleep, no coffee, and an aching back was a bad idea.