Page 14 of Love in the Wild

She got to her feet. “Hello?”

Thorne stood up to his full height. The female did not approach him, but stayed where she was, her eyes lifting from his feet all the way up to his face, her lips parted as she inhaled softly. Then she seemed to recover herself and spoke again.

“Kiswahili?”

She spoke Swahili, but his focus was soon diverted. The forest had grown quiet around them again, just as it had when he’d fought the predators.Somethingwas out there. It was not safe for his female. Thorne’s keen ears heard the jaguar’s footfalls, and he issued a warning by throwing his head back and bellowing. He had killed jaguars before, but he would not now, not when he had a female to protect. Caring for others was one of his responsibilities. Yet when he thought of caring for this creature, that duty became a sacred thing. Keza would praise him for it.

“Unaongea Kiswahili?” The female asked him if he spoke Swahili.

Thorne cast her a glance before he gave a sharp whistle into the jungle, calling for the birds to be his eyes and warn him if the jaguar came back this way. The birds whistled back, and he faced his female again. There was no time to try to find his tongue to speak. She needed to be taken to safety.

He grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder. Hers was an easy weight. When he’d seen fourteen winters in the jungle, he had been smart enough to battle dominant silverback males who’d tried to chase him away from his mother and brother. He had speed and agility in other ways, and his ingenuity had proved the most useful skill he had in battle against an opponent bigger than him. He had proved to those males then that he could and would fight back. But he’d also grown strong, strong enough to fight almost any beast in the jungle, and where his strength wasn’t enough, his cunning was far better.

Those adult gorillas had backed off and let Thorne and Akika as grown males stay in the band when adult males were expected to leave to form their own bands with other female gorillas. By the time he had seen seventeen winters in the jungle, Thorne had killed the jaguar who had stalked his family and attacked the infant of another mother. That beast had been twice the weight of this female.

Thorne ran at a quick pace deeper into the jungle, far away from the areas where the men of Bwanbale’s world went. He had his own place, a home he had built that was close to the waterfall and the river. The female would be safe there.

He reached the network of trees that formed his private home, and he set the female on the ground. She rolled to her side and vomited. Thorne’s chest ached because he wanted to soothe her, but when animals were sick they often felt weak and did not want to be touched. He didn’t wish for her to lash out at him.

When she seemed to have recovered, he held out his hand. She placed her palm in his, and something shot through his body, as though for the first time in his life he wasawake. Her green eyes met his, and for a second he wanted to speak, wanted to tell her all that lay in his lonely heart, but for the first time since he was a child, he was afraid. What if this beautiful female did not wish to hear the words from his soul? He pushed away the riot of new feelings swirling inside him and pointed to the tree before them, then gestured for her to climb on his back.

“No, no, I’m not—”

He lunged at her, planning to throw her over his shoulder again, but she threw her hands up in submission.

“Okay!” She pointed at his back.

Good, she understood his commands. He faced the tree, his breath strangely quick for being so still. Her soft hands touched his shoulders, and her legs wrapped around his waist. Excitement burst through him like a sunrise. He wanted her to be in front of him, to feel her body against his, but he could not climb that way. This need to feel her against his body was both strange and exciting.

Thorne used the footholds he had made in the tree and climbed up to the concealed entrance of his home. He moved the branches covering the entrance aside and crawled into the tree house. That was what Bwanbale had called it when Thorne had brought him here. He had marveled at Thorne’s series of three structures connected by vines wound carefully around and through wooden planks to make pathways in the air.

Thorne was not sure how he had first envisioned building his home. Perhaps it came from the murky depths of the past he could not remember or the wild and beautiful dreams that came often when he fell into the twilight of sleep. Once he’d learned he could use vines and the pieces of wood from fallen trees, he’d used pieces of broken shale rocks to smooth the fallen wood into flat planks.

He’d shown Bwanbale his home, and the other male had helped him refine the buildings and his technique even further so that his home was hidden from the ground. But from above, it truly was a home in the trees. Bwanbale had left him tools, a machete, a long knife, a short knife, a spear with a sharp arrowhead, and other things that had helped Thorne. In exchange, he’d shown Bwanbale how to hunt and how to find his way through the forest that Bwanbale calledimpenetrable.

He had made a home here. In recent years he had felt the need to be apart, to live away from the gorillas. It wasn’t simply because he didn’t belong, but it was more the need to feel he could survive alone, define his own space and life apart from his family. The gorillas of his family belonged to the ground, but Thorne did not feel comfortable sleeping below where animals might strike out at him. So he’d built this place, a haven in the trees.

He visited Keza, Akika, and the others often, but he did not worry them with his presence. He longed to explore the jungle more, and he strayed farther and farther north, deep into the mountains and caves where even the gorillas did not tread.

The female took her first tentative steps on the wooden floor. “What is this place?”

Thorne grunted, wanting her to stay in the safe corner. When she didn’t immediately understand, he herded her into the spot he wished her to be and she fell back onto her backside and gazed up at him, a hint of fear rolling off her skin.

He had to return to the place with the other humans who were dead so he could search among what they had left behind. If he was to have this female, he needed to prove to her he could provide for her and protect her. Keza had taught him that to love was to care for others. Maybe then this female might consider being his mate.

In the many years of being here, he had never had the chance to mate. It had left him with an undeniable loneliness that had been slowly hollowing his heart from the inside out, but now ... Now he might have a chance to have someone who belonged to him. He started toward the trapdoor to leave.

She moved toward him. “Wait! Where are you going?”

He bared his teeth and growled. She needed to obey him for her own safety. Bwanbale had warned him that human females could be stubborn. Their gazes locked as he waited to see if she would challenge him again. She stayed put, her green eyes still full of fear and uncertainty. Only when he was certain she would not try to follow him did he slip down the tree and leave.

Thorne raced back to where the attack had happened. As he reached the small clearing, he peered through a tangle of foliage at the bodies still lying upon the ground. He rested his palms on the latticework of vines that ran like pale veins through the vast emerald sea of the trees.

A heavy stillness settled around this place of death. It reminded him of the place where old gods dwelt in the cavern full of fallen stars. Bwanbale often spoke to Thorne during their time together about his gods. The spirits had dwelt in the forest since before the dawn of man. Only Thorne was brave enough to venture into those places. His curiosity drove him to explore that which his animal brethren would not. The quiet cave had called to him, and he’d answered.

In those explorations, Thorne had discovered a cave that held the dust of the gods in the walls, like striated stars shot through with sunlight, and glittery stones that covered the floors in numbers too high to count. The crown of leaves he wore when hunting rested upon his brow now. He believed it to be the crown of one of the gods of the jungle. He had offered it to Bwanbale as a parting gift. Bwanbale had curled his hands around Thorne’s, making Thorne clasp the circlet tight.

“This belongs toyou, Thorne, Lord of the Impenetrable Forest. Wear it with pride. A man like me deserves no crown. I am but a hunter. And even that, I am no more.”

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