The cold warrior makes no move to stop him from taking his leathers away.
For a while, I watch the man move through camp, gathering leathers along the way to the riverbank. Down there, the others are plating up meals, washing leathers in the river current, huddling together for warmth, or for comfort, or even muttered conversations I don’t hear, and secret smiles.
I wonder what Bee is doing…
I wonder if she’s safe.
Has she gotten away from that fae who captured her? Has she still got her radio? Maybe she’s out there somewhere, checking it every day, waiting for the moment I turn mine on—and we can be reunited.
Or is she with captives in another unit, trapped in slavery, waiting for her moment?
There’s one thing about Bee that is unchanging.
She never gives up.
Determination lives in her bones.
Ambition is in her soul.
She’s so much better than me.
Honestly, what she wants in a friendship with me, I don’t know.
I just know there’s a hollowness spreading in my chest whenever I let myself think about her out there, in the dark, with other fae—
And the thoughts are chucked from my mind when a splash strikes my boots.
I look up as the cold one climbs out of the hot pool.
The water rains down him, a stream rushing over boulders, and I trace the current—until my eyes widen, then swiftly cut aside.
He has no hair.
Like…
Nohair.
Nothing on his chest, his legs, his underarms… his pelvis.
My brow tugs, threading together, and I sweep the area, the hot pools, the fae moving in and out of the water.
And just like him, they are hairless from the eyebrows down.
Oh.
He looked.
He said he wouldn’t, but he did.
When I changed clothes on the forest floor, when I pulled on the fresh underwear, I understand now, he was baffled.
Because I have hair.
My mouth twists, uncomfortable, and I keep my gaze redirected, landing on a boulder, as he sifts through his satchel.
Out the corner of my eye, I see the leathers he draws out, folded and packed neat, before he dries off with a cloth, then redresses.
It’s only when his bare body is shielded again that I look away from the boulder.
