I try again, more carefully. “I would speak with you.”
Her eyes lift fully to mine then. Blue and gray. Too easy to read. Too hard to bear when she looks at me like she is trying to decide if I can be trusted with the softer parts of her she has not spoken aloud yet.
“I’ll come,” she says.
I leave her there because if I stay longer, I will either say too much in public or touch her again in ways that will light the whole camp watching. Neither is wise.
Inside the tent later, the fire is already built up and one lamp is lit low. Keandra comes not long after full dark, ducking through the flap with the smell of the camp still on her. Smoke. Clean sweat. Bread. Herbs. And under it now, always, herself. The scent I know too well.
She pauses just inside. “You wanted to speak.”
There it is again. Not fear. Not ease either. A waiting. A readiness for whatever I will do with the space between us.
I am standing near the table when she enters. I thought through this moment several times, and none of the versions satisfied me. Too many words sound weak. Too few sound cold. Truth is the only road I trust, but truth with humans has to be worded better than I would give it to a warrior or a council.
So I begin where I should.
“This morning,” I say, “I chose you before the horde.”
She does not answer at once. Her gaze stays on my face. “Yes.”
“I did it with purpose.”
Her fingers tighten once on the edge of the wrap around her shoulders. “I know that.”
Do you.
The thought is unkind. I keep it in.
“I do not think you know all of it.”
That lands. I see it.
Keandra comes one step farther into the tent, but no more. “Then tell me.”
There. Direct again. Good. Let her ask. Let this be between us in words rather than only body and gesture, and her trying to read instincts that were never shaped for her.
I fold one arm over my chest, then let it fall again. Too formal. Too closed.
“In the horde,” I say slowly, “who paints a male before the hunt matters. Who binds his hair matters. It is not decoration. It is position. Intimacy. Trust. A place others read quickly.”
She does not look away now. She makes herself hold my gaze through it. Another thing I notice. Another thing that affects me too much.
“I guessed that part,” she says softly.
I go on. “Oshara held that place because she is First Mother and because I had no wife in the horde before.” I pause. “Now I do.”
Keandra’s throat works once.
I step closer. “I did not choose you to make a display. I chose you because that place is yours now if I say it is.”
If I say it is.
The words sound too hard in my own ears. I see the faint shift in her face too. The reminder that power lives under everything with me.
So I give her more.
“I chose you because I wanted the horde to see what I already know.”
