“Where will you go?”
I do not have an answer to that. I will not have long before the pain is too great. I remember huddling in the bushes and gripping my meq, stroking until I spilled and then repeating. But neither that nor the cuts I made to distract me did anything to calm the heat in my blood.
Eventually, I ran until I fell.
When I woke I was dehydrated and exhausted, but my body was my own and survival meant finding water and food. I don’t remember eating or drinking during the painful frenzy. This time, I am not sure I want to survive.
Your eyes give you away,Edilk says silently.
I growl at him.
A human mate is not much different to a Honey mate.
You have nothing to compare to, so do not tell me what I should do.I stand, needing space from him. From everyone.
Edilk gets up.I only mean that both cause the rut…that is all.
She will not choose me. She doesn’t want a mate. This is a pointless deliberation. The only option is for me to leave.
Mia will be free of all obligations. The others will not force her to choose. But when I look at her, I do not want to leave her. It is just the rut addling my mind, so all I can think of is protecting and pleasing the woman who is not my mate.
This tribe needs you.Edilk reaches for me.
I step back, sparks arcing between my extended fingers.No tribe has ever needed me.
He lifts his hands, and we scramble to jam each other’s spark and be the first to strike.
“You are allowed to be happy,” Edilk says through gritted teeth.
To break the standoff, I throw a punch, he counters. Sparks fly off our skin. We clash again. My blood is hot and since I can’t mate, a fight is the next best thing to release the tension.
I end up on my back, my hand around Edilk’s throat. He knees me in my hard and heavy mating equipment, and I grunt as the pain reverberates through my body. The distraction is most welcome.
“Have you two spilled your brains and your seed?” Orik shoves Edilk off me. He’s armed with a stick half his height, and when Edilk snarls, Orik slaps him over the shoulder with it. “Mate instead of fighting.”
I don’t make the mistake of moving, but he points the stick at my chest in case I was having thoughts. I place my fingers on the ground, discharging any remaining charge into the dirt and to indicate I am no threat.
Orik removes the stick from my chest, but his gaze has narrowed. “You are glowing too much.”
If the three women weren’t staring, I might have attacked him for those words.
If I did, he or Edilk might run me through with a sword. Making a friend kill me is not the way a warrior should want to end his life. Nor is running away.
I get to my knees and glance at Edilk. “I told you it would be better if I leave.”
“Leave? I don’t want you to leave.” Mia steps closer, as though she isn’t afraid of me. She should be. She doesn’t know how much I lost of myself the last time. It was death that brought me back.
“Please. He’s only like this because…because we aren’t really mates and he’s trying to make it through the rut. I’m supposed to be helping him, but I’m not.”
My heart stops as the words fall from her lips. How could she?
“What does that mean?” Orik rests the end of the stick on my chest. I want him to push hard enough that it pierces my heart.
“I don’t want you to leave,” she pleads. “I’m sorry.”
“It means that he had a mate before. That being around the women brought the rut back,” Edilk says.
Orik’s kam charge and his gaze flicks from me to Edilk. “You knew.”
