I face Amir and this time, I do not bow my head. I place my fist against my chest — the old greeting, the one I gave Meekah in the market — but I hold it longer than custom requires.
“Thank you, Amir.” I use his name without the title. He asked me to, and I did not honor that until now. “I will build something here that my Matriarch would recognize. And I will build something she would not — my queen is not Bouda, and she will need a home that belongs to both of us.”
Amir smiles. “Good,” he says. “That is the right answer.”
He clasps his hands behind his back and walks toward the treeline. At the edge of the clearing he turns, and gives me one last look that carries the full weight of a king who has waited centuries to give a Bouda male something worth staying for.
Amir teleports away in a blink.
We are alone,my Bouda says, and the joy in his voice is so raw.We are standing on our land, Alemayehu. Our land. Not borrowed territory. This is ours.
I breathe in and the air fills my lungs with pine and clean water.
I have changed my mind about the layout,my Bouda continues, already pacing inside my head.We need fourteen rooms, not twelve. Zaki will want her own wing. She will complain about noise from the cubs and she will say it is beneath her to share walls with lesser Bouda, and then she will spend every night sleeping in the nursery because she cannot stand to be away from them. I know my sister.
I laugh out loud, alone on the land, the sound carrying across the clearing and bouncing off the trees. My Bouda is not wrong about Zaki and we both know it.
Also, the fire pit must face east. Toward the sunrise. Our Matriarch always held court facing the sunrise because she said a queen should never turn her back on a new day. Kendra will not know this tradition yet, but she will learn it, and when she sits at that fire pit for the first time she will feel what our Matriarch felt. Purpose. Belonging. Home.
“We need to get back to her,” I say. “She should not wake alone after last night.”
Then let me run, Alemayehu. Let me run home to our queen on our land.
I surrender the reins and the shift takes me, bones cracking and reforming, my Bouda’s paws hitting the soft earth with a force that sends pine needles scattering. He takes off through the trees, running south toward the community lands, and his stride is different this time. No urgency in it, no flight, no fear. The land beneath his paws is his. The woman waiting at the end of his run is his.
The community lands come into view through the thinning trees and my Bouda slows to a trot, then a walk, his breathing steady, his ridge flat and content. He stops at the treeline near the cabin and yields the reins without resistance, and the shift carries me back to my human form. I stand naked in the cold air for a moment, steam rising from my skin, looking at the cabin where my mate is sleeping.
I walk up the steps and through the front door and up the stairs to the bedroom. She has turned onto her side, the blanket pulled tight around her shoulders, her face peaceful. The mark on her neck is darker now, settling into the skin, becoming part of her.
I go into the bathroom and close the door behind me, turning the shower on and letting the water heat before I step under it. The blood from the hunt has dried on my forearms and between my fingers, and I scrub it off with soap, working the lather across my skin until the water running off me is clear. I rinse, turn the water off, and step out onto the mat.
The towel is rough and warm from the heated rack and I drag it over my body, across my shoulders, down my arms, through the ridge along my back where pine needles have lodged between the blades. I brush my teeth at the sink, the mint sharp and clean against the lingering taste of elk, and I study my face in the mirror for a moment.
I hang the towel and walk back into the bedroom. She has not moved. I slide into bed behind her and pull her against my chest, my arm wrapping around her waist, my face pressing into her hair. She makes a sound in her sleep and pushes back into my warmth, her body recognizing mine before her mind wakes.
Fourteen rooms,my Bouda whispers.And a garden. Kendra will want a garden.
I close my eyes and hold her, and I think about the land and the stream and the fire pit facing east. Levi coming to help build.Zaki returning with more of our people. The cubs my Bouda has already named in his head without consulting me. And the word I said out loud for the first time at the water’s edge, still sitting in my mouth like something I swallowed that was too large for my throat.
Love. I am in love with my mate. And I do not know how to tell her yet, but I will learn, as I am learning everything else in this new world.
