He continued to hush me, crooning and moving closer.
“Vurhg fix. No cry, female. Vurhg no mean to hurt. Vurhg fix. Go to village, healer fix. Shh. Shh.”
There was more but I was lost, only making out bits here and there.
When he tried to press something to my head that smelled strange, I fought at first. He had to pin me down to accomplish whatever it was he was trying to slop onto my head. In the end he prevailed.
Worn out from fighting him over tending to my head wound, I had to concede it was probably a good thing he’d insisted on it as I grew woozy and shaky.
Wrapping Cy’s blanket better around me, leaving it loose so I didn’t kick up a fuss, he picked me up, carting me around princess style, and even went back for that stupid pillowcase full of his plunders, and then took off to who the hell knew where, because I certainly didn’t, at a run.
Even with all he was carrying, he was barely winded as he rushed on, wind whipping over my exposed skin.
All the while, he kept crooning to me that all would be okay.
No, it wouldn’t. Nothing was okay.
My parents were liars. I lived a lie. The whole damn thing.
They’d been the reason Elm and Cy and Birch were forced to keep away. All this time. Consoling me as they had, excusing it all away to try and make me feel better thinking it was all my fault, my parents had been the cause. My mother was a literal alien, my father from another dimension.
Who the hell am I? What does that even make me?
And yet, even as I slumped dizzily in an Abominable beastman’s arms, the part of me that demanded sanity and sensibility screamed that it was all lies, none of this was real.
It sure as shit felt real for a nightmare.
Wherever he was taking me to wasn’t close by. Even running as he was, we’d gone some distance before I’d blearily demanded to know how much farther. My head was killing me, I felt oddly tired and the bastard refused to let me sleep, nausea was touch and go, and the breeze over my head was chilling.
With a grunt, a few grumbles, and no short amount of expletives, I convinced him to stop long enough to try and drag Cy’s blanket over my head. Giving one side a hard yank, the end slapped Vurhg, as he called himself, in the face.
Vurhg blinked once, then harder. With a scowl, he grabbed up a corner of my blanket and brought it directly to his nose. He looked like he was sucking the thing up into his nostrils instead of sniffing it, like it was hard for him to smell it.
Maybe it really was hard for him to smell anything, what with the way his nose looked badly broken and poorly fixed. It was crooked in several places, thick, and wide.
“No lie, you have- You have mate? Smell funny but Lo denaii,” he grumbled. More blinking down at me.
Was it just my imagination or was he looking paler than usual?
“Yeah,” I lied, “and he’s going to kick your ass inward when he finds out what you did to me.” Pretty bold for someone who can’t stand for two seconds without fumbling to my ass. My head injury had me ten kinds of bold as hell and lippy.
“But Vurhg no mean to!” he burst out.
Hauling me up higher in his arms, he took off faster than before, snarling under his breath.
The hood I’d created to protect me from the brunt of the cold flew back, he was busting ass so hard. With a snarl of my own, I fought to hold onto it.
One of the hands cradling me loosened, dropping me more firmly into the crook of his arm. This sent my legs floppingover his other arm but I didn’t care. We looked ridiculous. I could not say I was overly concerned about that.
His village couldn’t be that far, could it? Surely we’d run into somebody at some point. There were outposts all over the place out here, or so I was told. I’d never actually been adventurous enough in any kind of way that I’d have found out.
A Yeti village… here? Did Dad hike out here and talk to them?
Squished up against the male’s chest was oddly soothing. He had a heavy, loud heartbeat, just like my old man. The comparisons were kinda freaking me out. I still didn’t want to believe it.
It was getting really hard to stay awake, despite Vurhg’s snarling insistence that I not fall asleep.
“Shut up,” I muttered curtly, much as I would to Cy or Birch or any of the Elm brothers for pestering me when I really didn’t want to be bothered with.
