26
KOJO
Amir snaps his fingers and clothing appears on both of us, a black tunic for him and a simple shirt and pants for me, the shirt already torn at the back to accommodate my ridge. He clasps his hands behind his back and walks toward the water, his bare feet leaving no prints on the wet ground.
“Sit with me,” he says, and it is not a request. It is not quite a command either.
I sit beside him on the cold ground. The lake stretches out before us, the surface catching fragments of starlight and scattering them across the dark water. Amir’s pointed ears twitch once, and he settles into a stillness that carries more weight than any words I have heard from him.
“My Bouda rarely comes out.” He speaks without looking at me, his gold eyes fixed on the water. “But I suppose I have the privilege of seeing him more now.”
His ears twitch again and his gaze moves to my neck, then to the place where my scent has changed. He can smell it. Every shifter on Wintermoon will be able to smell it.
“You have claimed your mate.” He says it simply. His gold eyes find mine and hold them. “I am glad for you, Kojo. Truly.”
I bow my head. “I did not plan the bite. My Bouda took control during...” I stop. I do not know how to explain it to a king, and my ears burn with the closest thing to embarrassment I have felt in a thousand years.
“I know how the claiming works.” The corner of his mouth lifts and his ears twitch with amusement. “You do not need to explain the mechanics to me. I have been alive long enough to witness a few.”
The silence returns, but it is an easy one. Water laps at the shore in a rhythm that sounds like breathing.
“I wished to speak with you about something.” He rests his palms in his lap. “When Kade, Damon, and Leah first brought the supernatural species together on this land, I believed the old ways would hold. The customs, the hierarchies, the traditions that had governed our kind. I was wrong.” He pauses, and the weight of the pause tells me this is something he has carried for a long time. “The old ways were built for a world that no longer exists. I had to learn that the hard way, through losing people who refused to change, through watching customs destroy what they were designed to protect.”
His ears flatten briefly, then rise. “My mate, Anora, is a witch, but she lived a human life for many years. She does not understand why I clasp my hands behind my back or why I bow my head to queens before they bow to me. The hierarchies mean nothing to her. She was not raised in them. And for a long time, I tried to teach her our ways instead of learning hers.” He turns to me. “That was my failure. Not hers.”
I listen. Amir is not finished, and a king does not pause for interruption.
“Kendra is not Bouda.” His voice carries no judgment. “She will not lead your clan the way your Matriarch did. She will lead it the way Kendra does, and if you try to shape her intosomething she is not, you will lose the very thing that makes her extraordinary.”
“I do not wish to shape her,” I say, and Amir does not flinch. “Not with malice. With love. But the effect is the same. When you bow your head to her, every time you call her queen before she has decided to carry that title, you are placing a crown on a woman who is still learning how to hold it. Meet her where she is, Kojo. Walk beside her, not behind her.”
The words settle into me. I feel the ripples move through my chest, disturbing things I thought were fixed, rearranging beliefs I have held since my Matriarch first placed her hand on my head and told me my purpose was to serve.
“I am feeling something I do not have a word for.” The admission comes out rough. I look at the water instead of at him — the vulnerability of it almost more than I can manage.
Amir’s ears twitch forward. “You do have a word for it. You have simply never needed it before.”
“Love.” I say the word and it sounds foreign in my mouth, a human word for a human feeling that my Bouda has no framework for. The mate bond is primal, a frequency locked to a frequency. But this is different. This is choosing her — not from what Mother Fate wrote into my blood, but from watching her cry and laugh and fight and lead and forgive, and wanting to stand beside her for every version of herself she has not yet become.
“The mate bond is strong,” Amir says. “But love is what makes it last. The bond will keep you near her. Love will make you worthy of her.” He grips my shoulder. “Your Matriarch would be proud of who you are becoming. Not who you were on the highlands. Who you are now.”
I bow my head. I cannot speak. The grief and the gratitude and the new unnamed thing in my chest are all pressing againstmy ribs at the same time, and if I open my mouth I do not trust what will come out.
Amir rises to his feet and extends his hand to me. “Come. I want to show you something.”
I take his hand and fear hits me before the magic does, every instinct in my body screaming against what is about to happen. Shifters do not teleport. Teleportation shuts us down, forces unconsciousness, and my Bouda is already thrashing inside my head in protest. But you do not refuse a king. Before I can brace myself Amir’s free palm presses flat against my chest and a warmth spreads outward from his palm, a golden shimmer that wraps around my body. The shield settles over me, my Bouda’s thrashing quiets to a rumble, and the world folds.
The magic is instant, the forest and the water and the stars collapsing into a tunnel of gold light that deposits us somewhere else entirely before I can draw a breath. My bare feet hit soft earth, the shield dissolves from my skin like mist burning off in morning heat, and the air smells different here, warmer, richer, carrying the scent of old pines and untouched soil.
I open my eyes to open land. A wide clearing surrounded by mature forest, the trees old enough that their canopy creates a natural ceiling high above, the ground beneath them soft with fallen needles. A stream runs through the eastern edge, the water clear and fast. The clearing is large enough for a village, for buildings and paths and gardens, for cubs to run and hunters to train, and the morning light is just beginning to touch the tops of the trees, turning everything gold.
“This is yours,” Amir says, his hands clasped behind his back, his gold eyes watching my face. “This is where your people, the Bouda, will rise again.”
I turn in a slow circle, taking in the land, the trees, the water, the size of it, and my ridge vibrates along my back in a frequencyI do not recognize. Not alarm or aggression or submission. Something my body has never needed to produce before.
“Levi of House of Zorah will be visiting soon to discuss the build.” Amir’s ears twitch and his mouth curves — he has been waiting to deliver this particular gift. “I expect you will want input on the design. The Bouda have specific needs that the wolves and lions do not.”
The stream,my Bouda says immediately, his voice cracking with an urgency I have never heard from him.Alemayehu, do you see the stream? The cubs will need fresh water. And the tree line is a natural barrier for defense, we would not need to build walls on three sides. The fourth side, the southern opening, we fortify with a watchtower. Two, actually. And a fire pit at the center of the village for the Matriarch to hold court, the way our queen held court on the highlands. The earth here is soft enough to dig foundations. I can smell the clay beneath the topsoil, it will hold structures. This land is perfect, Alemayehu. It is perfect and I am not being dramatic for once in my entire existence.
