“And your female?”Vret asked cautiously.“She is your mate now?”
I’d told him about Jessa when I found her, he knew I planned on claiming ulto once I’d had a chance to woo her and bring her to camp.Vret also knew that being taken prisoner by sytos was not part of my plan.
“I claimed her with the sytos as witnesses,” I admitted.It had been nothing like the happy, triumphant ulto I’d imagined but I couldn’t regret it.
My friend nodded.“I will tell the others she’s claimed then.”
I flicked my tail.“They were already asking?”I’d carried her into camp, to my tent for anyone to see.Surely, they didn’t think she was available?
“A new female in camp?”Vret laughed dryly.“Did you expect them not to take interest?”
Unlike most of the freed turochs, Vret did not pine for a female.He was polite to the mated humans, but he did not search for signs in the human city, nor dream endlessly out loud of his own future mate.I was never sure if he truly had no interest or assumed no female would accept a crippled male’s gentling.
“Tell them she’s claimed,” I growled, snatching a few cans off the shelves.“Are any of the females awake?”
Vret glanced out the glass doors, the large shapes of turochs silhouetted against the ever burning fire.
“Amy has not been sleeping well,” he said.“She might be at the fire.”
My ears pricked, the whole camp had been anticipating Kes’s son, a few times while trapped in my cage at the syto camp, I’d worried I’d miss the birth.
“She is well?”
“She is large,” Vret grimaced.“And she is often aching, but do not mention it to Kes,” he warned me.“He has been hot tempered lately, he does not like that he cannot help.”
Long faded home sickness swirled in my chest.It had been nearly half my lifetime since I saw a turoch son, this one would be half human, but the excitement remained.
The first child born to a human mother had every male in camp curious.What would our children look like, only half turoch?The humans were small, even the males.It was expected that the hybrids would lack their fathers’ size, but that was for the best.
There were no turoch females for them, when they grew, they would be mating human females.
“In a few generations,” I murmured.“There will be very little turoch blood in our band.”
Vret sighed, the sound holding all the wistfulness I suddenly felt.“I am glad to be here, joyful for my brothers’ growing families, but it is not the same.It will never be as it was.”
I nodded, feeling the same weight.
“Jessa asked me if I resented that I had to mate a human or be alone,” I admitted, rubbing my chest as if I could smother the bittersweet grief of the future lost to all the turochs on Earth.“I was angry that she suggested it.”
My friend stared at me.“Why be angry?You can mourn that our people will be forever changed by mating the humans.Wehavelost much.It does not mean that what we’ve gained is lesser.”
“I owe her an apology,” I said.“She was right to wonder, I had not taken the time to think of it.”
He shrugged.“Let us see if Amy is awake and you can return to your female and grovel.”
I scoffed at him but smiled.Vret was not one to linger on his emotions, his mind always returned to the practicalities of life.It was a habit that served him well when our lives were in constant danger.I did hope that one day he would trust the future enough to feel the past.
Amy was indeed awake, sitting in a cloth chair near the fire, her hands rubbing idle circles on her huge belly.When she spotted me, her face lit in a relieved smile that eased a bit of the tension around her eyes.
“Tovis!You’re back.”She reached up to squeeze my hand, and I noted that her fingers looked a little stiff and swollen.
“Back and with a female of my own,” I said.“You are well?The babe?”
Amy nodded, patting the top of her belly.“As well as I can be when I’m the size of a house and my insides are being kicked with turoch hooves.”
I winced at the description, suddenly guilty that I’d come to a heavily pregnant female in the middle of the night looking for favors.
“I was going to ask if you had spare clothes for Jessa, but it can wait.”
