“You’ll change your mind after you have the first one. My mother claimed to only want one as well, but she had three more children after I was born.”
“I see, and is your mother one of the survivors of the stiffness? Is she living in the village?” I would love to know what her thoughts were on children now. Did she really want more children after Drelic, or did her husband pressure her to have more? If the latter were true, I might beg her to tell Drelic the truth so he wouldn’t try to pressure me to do the same.
This whole thing was turning into a nightmare. I just wanted someone to love me, to take the reins every once in a while. Not this. Sure Drelic might come to love me in time, but he also came with amountain of expectations that didn’t match my own. We’d only just begun this new life as a mated couple, and already I was planning a way to convince his mother to help me defend my decisions. This wasn’t what I wanted. This wasn’t freedom, it was a cage.
“No, she passed away in the stiffness along with many others,” Drelic lamented.
“I wish you could have met her. I know she would have liked to have met you.” His eyes were filled with a pain that matched my own. I missed my own family quite a bit. Taylor had become like a sister to me, but even she could not replace the loss of both my parents and all my siblings in one fell swoop.
I opened my mouth to say that I missed my mother too, but Drelic had already turned around and was heading back into the cave. A moment later he came he walked out with our stuff packed in his bag.
He held out his hand, “You ready to go?”
No.
“Yeah,” I sighed.
I did not want to go to the village. I wanted to go back to my mountain home. I wanted to hug Taylor and for her to tell me everything was going to be okay. I wanted to greet my Savrix, Tarak, and feel the comfort of his smile knowing that he was my leader and not Dameron. I wanted so many things right now, but I felt powerless to fight for any of them.
Tears burned behind my eyes. I hadn’t felt this helpless since I was a child. I’d always been confident and head strong, but with Drelic I was falling into old patterns of deference as if I were a child again.
A howl sounded in the near distance.
“Jagwas,” Drelic whispered as he looked to the right where the sound had come from.
“That was pretty close. Should we head back to the cave?”
I wanted that. I wanted more time to think and convince Drelic that we should go to the mountain and not the village.
“No,” he shook his head. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe,” he puffed out his chest and smirked. I hoped he was right.
As we kept walking, the howls of the jagwas got closer and closer. Drelic started to look visibly nervous as we continued to walk.
“It’s not far from here,” he commented with a tight smile, but the howls only got closer.
“Are you sure we’re going to make it?”
“We’ll make it,” he assured me, but I wasn’t convinced. The last time I’d been attacked by jagwas I was with the entire dekes. We had the shifters to protect us and even then we barely made it out.
My worst fears came to life as a pack of three jagwas emerged from the underbrush. They circled us, and Drelic quickly moved me behind him.
My fiance pulled out a spear and faced off the sharp-clawed beasts with red eyes and tendrils of fur that looked like vines.
The first jagwa lunged at us and Drelic expertly wielded his spear. Then he shoved it into the animal’s chest. The beast fell to the ground, but not before it swung its paw toward Drelic and made contact with his arm, leaving him with a deep gash.
Drelic gritted his teeth against the pain, and faced the next jagwa with his spear held high.
This jagwa lunged at him too, but they were more successful than their slain friend. Thick claws sunk into Drelic’s side and he screamed out in pain. The color was quickly draining from his face, but he held his post as my guard against the wild beast before us.
He thrust his spear toward the jagwa but only succeed in scratching its side. The beast howled but was otherwise unaffected.
Drelic stumbled on his feet as the gash in his side continued to bleed. He was fading fast and he knew it.
“Run,”he growled.
“What?” I could hardly breathe. Everything was happening so fast.
“I said run! I will hold off this last jagwa.”
