“To the moon hearth,” he said. "It is… what the pack does. A hearth away from the pack, where we can… get to know each other."
My face went scarlet and Sira laughed.
Daska cleared his throat. When I looked at him, he was still slightly pink across his cheekbones, but he was smiling, that slow, wondering smile that I had come to understand meant he was genuinely happy. Not performing happiness. Not managing it. Just feeling it, openly, with his whole face.
It did something complicated to my chest.
He held out his hand. Not commanding. Just offering.
I took it.
The pack parted for us as we moved through the circle, and the drums shifted into something slower as we went, a walking rhythm, steady and warm. Hands reached out again as we passed—brief touches, blessings murmured in voices too low to catch and I stopped trying to hold back my emotions and simply let them move through me, wave after wave, grief and gratitude and terror and something fragile and new that I didn't quite have a name for yet. Daska guided me through the crowd, his hand never leaving my waist, and people parted to let us pass, their faces warm with approval and happiness. A few of the younger hunters clapped Daska on the shoulder, grinning, and one of them called out something that made Daska's ears go red.
"What did he say?" I asked.
"Nothing important," Daska muttered.
"Tell me."
He sighed. "He said... he said make sure you don’t fall asleep before sunrise."
I choked on a startled laugh, my face burning, and Daska groaned softly.
"I am going to punch him later," he said.
Daska took my hand and led me away from the fire, away from the noise and warmth and press of bodies, along a narrow path that wound up through a stand of birch trees, their white bark glowing in the pale afternoon light. The drumming faded behind us, growing softer with each step until it was more felt than heard, a distant pulse in the earth beneath my feet.
Neither of us spoke. I wasn't sure either of us could.
The path climbed steadily up the slope, and I was grateful for the soft fur-lined boots as the ground grew uneven underfoot. Daska walked half a step ahead of me, his hand still wrapped around mine, steadying me over the rougher sections without comment. His thumb moved in slow, absent strokes across my knuckles, and I wasn't sure he even knew he was doing it.
The moon hearth turned out to be a shallow cave set into the hillside, perhaps twenty minutes' walk above the main camp. It was small and deep and faced south, sheltered from the wind by a natural overhang of rock, and someone had been here before us. A fire already burned in the stone-ringed pit outside, laid and lit with careful hands. Its entrance was draped with thick furs to keep out the cold.
Daska pulled the fur aside and gestured for me to enter first.
I stepped inside, and the warmth hit me immediately. There was a small fire in the centre near the entrance, and the space beyond was lined with soft furs and woven mats. There was roasted meat, tubers, dried berries, flatbread laid out on a wooden platter, and a clay jug that probably held water or something fermented. From cracks and chinks in the cave walls, leather straps hung bearing bunches of spring flowers.
I turned to Daska smiling in delight. “Who did this?”
Daska ducked his head shyly. “I came this morning while you were dressing.”
“Daska…” I said softly, looking back around at the cave.
“Do you like it?” he asked. “I wanted it to be perfect for you. I know… know you didn’t want this…”
I turned back to face him, this enormous, gentle man standing in the entrance of the little cave he'd decorated with spring flowers and carefully laid food, his broad shoulders slightly hunched with uncertainty, his dark eyes watching me with a vulnerability that made my chest ache. He'd given up his best knife. His father's knife. He'd climbed up here in the cold morning while I was being dressed and braided and marked, and he'd laid flowers in the cracks of stone walls for me.
Because he wanted it to be perfect.
"I wanted this," I said.
He blinked. "You—"
"Not…" I stopped, trying to find the words, trying to reach for the right ones in his language and coming up short, so I mixed them the way I always did when something mattered too much to say badly. "Not the reason. Not Karik, not the law, not the…" I gestured vaguely, meaning all of it, the threat and the politics and the fourteen days and Rivik's calculations. "But you." I pressed my hand flat against my sternum. "You, I wanted."
"So," Daska said, his voice rough. "We are mated."
"Yes," I whispered. "We are."
