“I can share with Bridget while Sunif is on watch.”
Both warriors shake their heads.
“Why? No one needs to sleep on the ground.”
Sunif sighs. “Because the blanket is the only bed, I can build my mate. For which I am sorry because you deserve better.” He sounds as though he means it, and I want to believe it. “No one but the mated couple sleeps in the bed.”
“Oh.” So because we are pretending Orik must suffer.
“I’d offer to share, but I don’t want…” Bridget glances up at Orik.
He grins, that closed-mouth smile. “It will be all right. I have slept out in worse weather.”
“Tell the tale of the storm,” Sunif says.
Orik’s eyes are bright in the fire light, a deep amber and he laughs. “You only like it because you and Vari found me almost half dead.”
It is clear he holds no resentment about his rescue, and I have a feeling it is a tale that has been told a few times, maybe to all new members of their group.
Sunif moves the blanket we will share away from Bridget, and we settle in for the story.
Orik is a good storyteller, describing how he came of age, was given his banishment marking and sent away as a storm hit his mountain tribe home. He fled down the mountain, avoiding a farming tribe, but the storm chased him. He hid in the forest, making shelter, but he had no fire as the snow had made everything damp.
Cold, and tired and with little to hunt, he chewed twigs for a few days before even that became too much effort. He was roused by a buzzing and assumed it was the nearby tribe seeking to hunt and kill him, so he stayed quiet.
The next time he woke, there was a fire and a naked warrior on each side of him. Sunif and Vari.
“I’d have happily pleasured them both for saving my life, but Sunif declined and went hunting. So I thanked Vari instead. Not everything that works is well thought out.” He flicks another stick into the fire and his smile fades. “I’d have been happy to never take a mate. I told my tribe that. But they banished me all the same.” He glances at Bridget. “Vari is much the same. But the scent of rut is tempting. It does something to me and makes me want it. So maybe they are right, and all fourth born sons need to be banished so they do not take a woman.”
Next to me, Sunif nods as though he knows what Orik is talking about. “That is why newly mated couples spend time away from the tribe, so the rut does not affect every male.”
“You talk of mating, but not love. Not even with Vari,” I say. Yet when Orik talks about Vari, it’s clear that it’s more than sex.
“Love?” Orik frowns.
And I sense the conversation between the two warriors.
“Like when you care for someone and don’t want to live without them?” I press. I glance at Bridget. What did she and Orik talk about all day?
“Did you expect to fall in love in the colony?” She asks.
Maybe. But I don’t want to admit that. It seems foolish when I understand the reality, but there are a few people my age who have gotten together and who seem to be in love. “No. I think Sabine was searching for love.”
And for her, being mated to Edilk, an alien who promised to look after her and be hers, was close enough.
“My attachment with Vari might be what you call love?” Orik places his hand over his chest. “I care deeply for him. But mating is different.”
“The connection is deeper,” Sunif says carefully. “It’s for life, and losing a mate is painful.” He places a hand on my thigh as though making it clear that I am his, even though I am not.
He will hurt unless I mate with him. But I don’t want to surrender my happiness to help him. There is a difference between offering my blanket and my body.
Bridget leans forward, the firelight making her dark hair gleam reddish. “Does it hurt when attachments are broken?”
“No.” Orik’s grin is back. “Though there is no need to choose between us. While I am the better cook, he is much better with his tongue.”
I almost drop the stick.
Sunif catches it and eats the last bit of meat. “You are trying to convince her to take you both?”
