Kai and Dryja crossed paths with the five other patrols a mile from the mountain entrance. Each oxbeast stood between eight and ten feet high with patches of gray and brown fur. Thick horns twisted toward the muted blue sky, and a second set caged their wide mouths full of multiple rows of teeth. A long, barbed tail swayed with their ambling walk.
Had she not known the females atop their calm mounts her entire twenty-eight years of life, she’d not be able to tell one from the other. They all had the same sleek dark brown hair and amber eyes. The same layers of rust, ochre, and clay leather. The same wraps of thick, gray, or brown oxbeast fur.
They were all trained warriors, spears in hand. Bone pommels peeked over their shoulders from the blades sheathed down their backs. Obsidian knives were strapped to waists, thighs, or inside boots. Lastly, strategically placed on their saddles were a bow and quivers of arrows.
The entrance to Black Spear Mountain was through an archaic ruin of broken columns, walkways, and stairs that the ancients had built into the ridges and slopes. Once, it was a palace or temple, but no longer. Time and extreme cold had devoured much of it. Rooms were now crumbling with broken floors and clawed walls with no ceilings. Their only use was for thearmed patrols, who watched in constant rotation through the short days and longer nights.
The walk was heavy and slow, and the six females quietly watched the shadows throughout the ruins as they passed. The snow and cold dissipated the deeper they traveled, and the ground turned muddy. Finally, the heat from within the mountain struck like a wall, and Kai’s skin tingled.
Inside, the rock face glowed red and orange from the fires that were never allowed to grow cold. The fires burned inside large pits in the floor, from low-hanging chandeliers, and from torches angled off the walls.
A formation of armed females parted to allow them entrance. Steel Arrow females—trained handlers from Sixth Clan—took the beasts’ reins. Each bore the tattoo of three overlapping rings between their brows. Young trainees from Sixth Clan stood by to help the patrols escape their extra layers of clothing.
Kai slid from the saddle and dropped to the floor several feet below. Dryja noiselessly followed her handler to the upper chambers, which were open, cool, and dry. The lower levels of the mountain were too hot for the beasts.
Otekah Silver Wolf came around on Kai’s left, unwinding a long fur from her neck and torso. “Your mother is here.” She motioned with her sharply angled chin toward the tunnels.
Shadi Silver Wolf, Grand Matriarch of all clans, appeared with her wife, Doli. Towering over them both was their consort, Tse. Tse had fathered a total of nine females and two males between his two wives. Six of the females were of Shadi’s pure blood.
Doli reached Kai first and gently tapped their foreheads together in greeting. She was a kind and soft woman, wearing the mark of Silver Wolf on her forehead: a solid black circle between her brows. “Daughter, I hope you are well.”
“I am, Mother.” Kai then welcomed Tse’s identical greeting, bringing their Silver Wolf tattoos together in a light tap. “Father.”
Shadi stood aside to watch the greetings, her expression unflinching and detached. She was an imposing woman who lived inside a small body carved with lean muscle. Along with her clan tattoo, she also bore a stylized wolf, shaped like wind, across her left cheek just beneath her eye—the mark of the Grand Matriarch.
“Greetings, Mother,” Kai said. She began removing layers and passingthem to a nearby female. An entire layer of sweat coated her skin. “The patrol was quiet. No tracks. No sign of outside life.”
Shadi’s mouth opened to speak, but they were interrupted by swift movement.
Kai’s wife, Fala, wove through everyone, a smile on her full lips. A triangle of tan leather stretched over her breasts, with thin straps that crossed behind her bare back. Her burnt umber skirt sat low on her slim hips, and a single silver chain necklaced her smooth, narrow waist.
Smudged kohl lined Fala’s almond eyes, and between her brows were three tattooed triangles of solid black; the top one small, then medium, and the base large. The mark of Quiet Rock, Third Clan.
Kai and Fala tapped foreheads, then Kai kissed her wife, who smelled of woodsmoke and tea tree. As their fingers linked together, a sigh escaped Kai’s lips. This female was the only thing she would ever need in this world.
“I came to warn you as soon as I heard,” Fala whispered.
“Why is she here?” A run-in with her mother was the last thing she needed right now.
“I don’t know, my beloved.”
Fala took a half-step back and smiled as if she hadn’t conspired to come between Kai and her mother. “Come,” Fala said. “I have prepared a hot bath and a meal for you.”
Fala understood better than anyone what tonight’s opening ceremony was doing to Kai. While Fala would welcome the duty if called to take a male, she didn’t wake from nightmares at night with visions of blood and echoes of screams.
Kai let Fala lead her by the hand.
“The Eternal One would see you first,” Shadi interrupted.
Kai’s stomach flipped. “Now? What of the ceremony?”
“One thing has nothing to do with the other.”
Shadi turned, her skirt swaying with her hips. Her bared back muscles pulsed with movement, and the beads surrounding both wrists clicked in time with her arm swings.
Kai gave her wife a look she hoped conveyed everything she felt: the apology, the forgiveness, the understanding, the helplessness.
Fala nodded and released their hands.Go, she mouthed, and then she greeted Doli. To Shadi’s irritation, Doli was quite fond and accepting ofFala. Tse, too, had accepted Kai’s wife, though he was more mindful of Shadi’s feelings.
