Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75388 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75388 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Hassen knows all about that.
I peek over my shoulder back at the cave entrance again. Just in case Hassen is still there. But he’s not, and I ignore the little stab of disappointment I feel.
The last thing I need is to get involved with the bad boy of the ice planet.
HASSEN
It is a cold night for me.
The laughter coming from within the tribal cave spills out into the snow, and I can smell the burning meat cooking for the humans. Someone is singing, and I hear Warrek banging away at his drum. They are all good sounds, happy sounds. My people are light and carefree and full of joy.
That joy does not extend to me.
I stand alone in the snow on a nearby ridge, a fresh-killed quill-beast in hand. And I am torn, because I do not know if I should ignore the punishment the chief has given me and join the celebration, or if I should turn around and leave.
I am exiled. I am nothing to my people now. I did not think I would care, but…I do. Their scorn hurts me.
If I go inside, I will be met with uncomfortable looks, but they will not turn me away. Some will be filled with disgust at how I have behaved. Some will pity me in my punishment, because I risked everything and lost. It would have all been worth it had things turned out differently, but I am empty-handed and alone, and thus a male to be pitied.
I am not one to dwell upon what might have been, but tonight, I wonder. I wonder what it would be like to have the tribe celebrating my resonance. To hold my mate close and bring her to my cave, and together our breasts would sing until our kit was created.
But I am happy for Rokan. He is a good friend and a good hunter. He truly cares for Li-lah, and together they will be very happy.
Li-lah…I have mixed feelings about. I am disappointed that she is not my resonance mate and yet I am incredibly relieved as well. I thought upon first seeing her that she was perfect—small, fragile, with dark hair and big eyes. I thought she would be the perfect female for me, and I listened to my heart and not my head, and stole her away. I kept her captive for hands upon hands of days in a hunter cave, and with every day that passed, I became more and more worried.
Li-lah cried. Many, many tears. She huddled in the back of the cave and stared at me, terrified. And me…I felt like a monster. I only wished to resonate with her, to cherish her and start a family with her. I want what the others in my tribe have with their human mates. I want to feel the warmth of another body against mine, to have someone to talk to. To see her belly full with my kit. I would never harm Li-lah, yet she flinched away from me every time I spoke to her. And then she would cry, again. It soon grew to the point that I was looking for excuses to leave the cave so I did not have to endure her weeping and trembling.
And I was so terrible in Li-lah’s eyes that she escaped. Left the safety of the cave and was taken by metlaks. Rokan had been in the area and helped me search for her, and when he returned, resonating to her?
I felt relief.
This cringing, terrified female was not mine. My gladness filled me with even more shame. Should I not be sad that Li-lah is someone else’s? Should I not be jealous of Rokan? But…I am not. I am glad for him, even as I ache with loneliness. There are not many unmated females in the tribe. If I am to ever have a mate, I will have to wait for one of the other females to grow to adulthood, unless my khui chooses the last human, Mah-dee.
I snort to myself at the thought. Sometimes I wish it had been her I had stolen instead of cowardly Li-lah. Mah-dee does not cringe and weep. She throws things when she is upset, and bellows at all that stand near. She attacked me the last time she saw me. She is fierce.
Now that is a female.
I step into the mouth of the cave to deliver the fresh meat to those that sit near the fire. Normally there is a hunter standing on guard at the front of the cave. Tonight it is Bek, his arms crossed and his expression as morose as mine. He is not interested in the celebration, either. Nor is he interested in taking my kill to the others for me. He watches me with disinterest and then gazes back out to the night sky again. I feel a strange sort of kinship for Bek—he knows what it is like to have a human female and lose her. Though I think Bek still has feelings for his; I test mine and still feel nothing but relief that Li-lah belongs to Rokan. My loss is what she represented to me, but I think Bek truly loved his Claire in his way. Claire, however, has resonated to another and even now sits near the fire with her mate, content.