I search for the word Haroth discovered and drilled into us. Not mate. I have not glowed yet. Another word.
“Fuh-rend,” I say carefully, feeling the human shape of it. Someone you choose who is not blood or mate but still important.
Her eyes widen a little.
For a few beats of my dra-kir, she just blinks at me. Then her shoulders ease.
“Friend,” she repeats, nodding, her lips curving into a soft smile. She is looking at me strangely again, and I reach out in the mindspace like a fool, trying to brush her thoughts. “Yeah,” she adds, teeth flashing again, “friend.”
Fuh-rend.
Something deep in my chest, where the older instincts live, hears fuh-rend and translates it wrong on purpose.
Future-mate, it decides.
“Fuh-rend,” I say again, softer. This time, I pair it with one of our words. “Tor-vakh.”
Her brows draw together. “Tor—” She mangles it. “Tor…what? The translator didn’t translate that at all.”
“Tor-vakh.” I tap my own shoulder, then reach forward and tap hers. She does not move away. “Stone…back. Back to back.”
“Oh,” she breathes. “Like… watching each other’s backs.” She is looking at me in that strange way again, the one I cannot read. “Yeah,” she says finally. “That. I like that better than ‘friend,’ honestly.”
She seems to come to a decision.
She leans closer. Her hand lifts, then presses to my chest, directly over my dra-kir.
My dra-kir stutters.
Does she know? Does she know this is how we Drakav mark a vow? An oath?
“Tor-vakh,” she says. “Team. Friend.” She makes a small, helpless sound in her throat. “Whatever the cross-lingual Venn diagram is, that’s you.”
I do not know half those words, but my glow kicks traitor-bright under her palm anyway. I force it down.
“Okay,” she says quickly, pulling her hand back. “We can do the feelings circle later. We have sick people and poisoned water to deal with.”
My skin already misses her touch, the way a bruise misses pressure.
“Ready?” she asks, looking up at me, her Een-gleesh words carrying a question.
I bare my teeth in something I hope communicates joy.
But then a scent hits me again.
Faint, but there.
The scent I smelled before.
Fresh lifeblood.
It is not coming from Mih-kay-lah. And it is not coming from me.
It is not from Kelvan, who was wounded.
It is coming from ahead. From the dark where the water flows.
And it is not the scent of clan.
