Page 5 of Betrothed to the Yeti

The Yeti stands on two legs and can speak the language of Alpha.Maybe there’s hope.

“You have trespassed into my home,” Pabu snarls from behind the large wooden door.

“You requested a bride, so it’s not trespassing. Think of the Seer as a brothel delivery service,” I snap back before I can hold my tongue. “I’m Jaya, and the rest of your tribute is outside. You can pull it from the snow drifts yourself.”

Large toes, three times the width of my fingers but the same length, are the first to enter the light. His laughter lifts and shakes the hanging tapestry on the opposite wall. I’m still mesmerized by the size of his toes when his right foot lifts. He may stand on two legs, but he doesn’t wear clothes. My gaze travels up miles of white hair until the back of my head presses into my shoulders. His face is still obscured, but the swing of the fringe over his face gives me an estimate of his features’ size. Ku Huang’s belly has swollen to a large sphere, but it’s half the size of his massive head.

“You came to mate a Yeti?” he asks cautiously. A hand as long as my forearm swipes the fringe over the back of his head. The brief stare of his empty, black eyes scares the vinegar from me before his hair falls back into place. “You entered my home…to live at my side…of your own free will?”

Well…

He saved me from working in the brothel, but the honest answer would be to tell him that the threat of being eaten every day isn’t a dream come true. If I am to survive, I must bat my eyelashes and spout lies about how pleased I am to gaze upon his…monstrous…form. “They gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” I say with what I hope is a flirty smile. My expression feels more like a crazed plea for mercy.

“What was that?” His whispers weave their way under my skin. The temptation to unload my story of woe beats as loudly as my heart, but I’m not stupid. Who would look to a beast for sympathy—even one who keeps his distance with slow, docile movements?

Think fast!I have the time it takes for his furry arms, each the size of my thigh, to cross over his chest to decide what he wants to hear. My eyes dart to the fusion crystal hearth, Ku Huang, the tapestry, the door, Pabu, back to Ku Huang, to the front door, and return to my feet. “I was to be sold to the brothel or you. My sister, Nima, ended up at the brothel…”

“So, you sacrificed yourself for her? You can take your noble intentions and—” His angry shouts rattle my bones and knock loose the bravado holding me together.

I throw my head back and laugh. Not a funny, ha-ha laugh, but the ‘I’ve-reached-the-end-of-my-tether-laugh.’ My piercing cackles echo off the stone walls and climb the interior of the mountain. Nima’s face, as she suggests Mr. Rinzen take my virginity, plays in a loop in my head. My eldest sister, who never looked after Dronma and me as a big sister should, tried to sell me to save her skin.

“Working at the brothel is the sacrifice,” I say between bitter chuckles. Tears inch down my face and escape down the neckline of my borrowed bridal dress. “The price of titillation is paid for by wretches like me. No, I’m the sister who got the best deal. I get to leave Alpha, this planet, this cold life, behind.”

“I’m sorry, I think,” he says with another swipe over his head. He steps forward, reaching for me, but stops himself. He clenches his fists at his sides. Have I angered him? Do I care? I lean onto my elbow so I can study his face. He steps behind a large chair next to the crystal hearth when I shrink away.

His lips are full and protrude with the size of the fangs they hide. When he speaks, the pointy teeth flash and sparkle in the crystal light. His nose is surprisingly small, but I guess he evolved to breathe the frozen air. The pinched cone ends in two long slits which flare when his chest rises with inhalation. The most alien part of him isn’t his tiny nose or gigantic hands, but the black pools serving as his eyes. No colored iris. No constricting pupil. An endless collection of stars, like the skies over Enceladus, sit behind his unruly hair. If not for the lines etched around them, I couldn’t read his expression. Right now, worry pinches the corners.

Does he worry my muscles will be tough since I haven’t spent my life sitting in luxury?

If he’s quick, he could trade me for the Seer. I’m sure her flesh is more tender.

“Are you cold? Hungry?” He asks me questions in the same tone I ask Ku Huang if she wants a treat. It reminds me he could pounce any minute, and I’d be defenseless.

“My whole life has been cold,” I reply with fresh tears building in my throat. “I should thank you for making my last minutes the warmest I’ve ever had. My toes stopped aching.”

“Easy enough. I’ll keep you warm to please you. What about food? I wasn’t expecting two mouths to feed, but I have plenty. There are piles in my kitchen and more outside,” he says as his body twists to point at the door he was hiding behind. His feet carry him in the opposite direction. Cold rushes in when he steps outside.

I’m alone…with an open door.

How pathetic am I that I’m trapped without physical restraints on my limbs? It’s like I’m not worth the rope to be tied or the energy it takes to close the door. What if I locked him out? How long could the stone structure protect me? How much food is there? Is there a water source in the temple? I guess I could gather snow through the windows and melt it, but could he climb to the windows and grab me? An image of him pulling me out the window, throwing me on the ground, and decorating the snow with my blood is enough for my plan to evaporate.

I click to Ku Huang to follow me as I tiptoe into the room he called a “kitchen.” If there are cooking utensils or a cooking hearth under all the bags and boxes, it will take years to dig them out. A golden candelabra shines like a crown on a tower of boxes. It brushes the pile of fabrics wedged against the ceiling to its right.

Bags of grains support sacks of rotten vegetables and bottles of triticale beer skunked to vinegar. My eyes water with the stench of wasted food. More meals, from molding loaves of Balep to congealed pots of stew, than I could eat in a lifetime, are haphazardly discarded on the floor. Sha Shaley rolls of meat and leafy greens ferment next to shriveled cakes.

“These are the ghosts of past tributes,” I murmur to Ku Huang. We’ve been starving to feed a beast, so he will eat our enemies. We pay him to eat with food. Who thought up that dumb arrangement?

“Does any of this please you?”

I don’t know if it’s the sheepish grin he wears, the anger at the idiots of Alpha, or that I’m unlikely to survive the food poisoning after eating any of this, but monster be damned…I can’t contain my temper.

“Please me? Please me? Please ME!” My shrieks increase in tempo, volume, and pitch as the volcanic rage in my heart erupts. Anger, my constant companion, has found the source of my struggles. While venting at the Seer quieted my soul for a frozen minute, setting this Yeti to rights reignites my righteous fury. “There is enough here to feed a village. Yet my village starves to give food to you. You—who doesn’t have the decency to eat the meals or return them so someone else can eat before it spoils? Do you know what my people are doing to one another because they are driven to madness by hunger?”

His empty eyes grow wide, but otherwise, he may as well be frozen solid. The newest tributes, carried here by a frail woman one-tenth his size, churn my stomach. I recognize the dried lamb from Nawang’s shop, the ribbons of the bridal ceremony, and the jug of triticale beer from the altar.

“I can’t eat this,” I say with a sweep of my arm. I clutch my waist in a feeble attempt to hold in my grief. How many families died of starvation so this could rot? In the name of—what? Religion? Safety?

“Teach me what you can eat,” he whispers in his deep rumble that strangely soothes my nerves. “What about the things I carry? They are new. They came with you. I assumed they were your provisions.”

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