Could I hide nothing from him?
“It’s nothing,” I insisted, gritting my teeth. Jana had always told me to hide my bleeding time from men, though I didn’t know why.
He scowled. “Tell me now, Nelle.”
I let out a small, even breath as my cramping peaked again. His voice was sharp, the same tone he used with his warriors, the same tone that was both a warning and a command.
I swallowed and chanced a look at him. When my eyes strayed to his lips—remembering that now I knew the feel of them—I said quietly, “It’s just my bleeding time. It will pass.”
His shoulders relaxed ever so slightly, his muscles shifting under the expanse of his golden skin. I saw him daily, slept next to him during the nights, and somehow I always managed to forget howbighe was.
“Why did you not just say?” he rumbled.
“Because…” I whispered. “I’m supposed to hide it.”
“It is natural,kalles,” he murmured. “There is no shame in it.”
I didn’t answer him as another wave of pain came and went. He rose from the bed, going to his cabinet on the far side of the tent. I couldn’t help when my eyes perused his body, glancing over the plethora of dark scars on his back that did nothing to hide the evidence of his strength and physical power.
I watched as he mixed together something in a goblet, filling it with the pitcher of fresh water that was always present in thevoliki, before he brought it over to me.
“Thekerisaleft it here for you, if you felt any pain,” he explained, returning to me. I recognized the black liquid in the goblet and I took it from his hands, sitting up in the bed.
“Thank you,” I said quietly and drank it down. My eyes met his as he took the goblet away and set it beside the bed. I cleared my throat and asked, “Myvolikiwill be ready today?”
His expression didn’t change. “Lysi.”
I nodded. He stood from the bed and began to dress.
The sudden silence between us felt different, charged and thick, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. To fill it, I asked, even as I began to tap on my wrist, “What is it that you do all day?”
“Today, I meet with mypujerakand the elders again,” he told me.
“About what?” I asked, grasping onto my curiosity as more cramping clenched my abdomen.
“I ride forDothiksoon,” he informed me, casting me a glance out of the corner of his eye as he shrugged on a fresh, thick tunic that molded to his flesh.
“What?” I asked, shocked, my fingers stilling. “But…but it’s the cold season. Surely you can’t travel now.”
“Worried for me,thissie?” he rasped, giving me the full weight of his attention.
I stilled under that gaze, pinned.
I licked my dry lips then I was reminded of his own. How they were impossibly soft yet firm, how I’d felt his heat through those lips. How his growl and his groan had reverberated inside me and awakened something fierce and aching.
Clearing my throat, I asked, “Why are you going now?”
“TheDothikkarrequests hisVorakkars’presence in the capitol when the moon is full,” he told me.
That was in less than two weeks’ time. Depending on how far awayDothikwas, he would leave within the week.
“Are you taking the warriors with you?”
“Nik,” he said, fastening his pelt over his shoulders. “I go alone.”
I didn’t know what was bubbling up inside me—all I knew was that I didn’t like it. Biting my lip, I told him, “It’s foolish for you to go. It’s dangerous.”
“I will not be gone long,” he told me, studying me closely as he approached. “I will stay inDothikfor as long as I am required to be there and then return.”
