Page 78 of Alliance
And she’d think to herself just how much that valley looked like a crater.
My lip trembled, overwhelmed with relief and gratitude. She’d spent so much time up therehopingthat her ruthlessness would lead to a stable life, and it had paid off for us. I wiped tears out of my eyes and flipped on my holowell to share the map with Fásach.
“Renata is along the southern bank of the Saphed River,” I told him, highlighting the hundred miles or so where it could be. “It’s built on black, grassy cliffs overlooking this crater. The…” I sounded it out from the map. “Valiya Kooyidthi Crater.”
Fásach stopped massaging his bag of broth, hands dropping into his lap, awestruck.
“There’s a hundred-mile length of the river that it could be—”
“But it’s definitely along that river?” he asked.
I smiled, emotion still lodged in my throat. “No question.”
He sat back, watching the map just like we’d watched the solar flares inside the cave.
“It looks so close,” he murmured, wide-eyed. “Gil said three weeks by foot.”
“A week now, if their snow needle can work in the jungle. I’m sure there are trails we can use. If we have to search a lot, it could be much longer though.” I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to remember through Rosy. “I think I saw trails along the banks. And Vindilus’s people had needles too.”
Fásach settled into faraway thoughts with me, comfortable sharing silence as the wind whistled across the valley, a mere breeze compared to the tundra. He cleared his throat with athoughtful chuckle as the last of the sun’s weak rays dipped beneath Dawn’s Razor, setting the points of the black trees alight like matches.
He grabbed the bedroll from the needle, and when he caught me laying a couple blankets over the vital pods, he smiled. Warm and sweet. We both knew they were thermoregulated, but I felt the compulsion to tuck them in regardless. I had a feeling that if I didn’t do it, he would have anyway.
“Good night, Safia. Good night, Misila,” I said, patting their displays.
Fásach laid out his bedroll and sat down on the edge.
“Roz,” he said.
“Hm?”
“No charging bay tonight.” His hand slipped to the bedroll beside him as he swallowed hard. “Let me keep you warm.”
And just like that, my core temperature blazed between my legs. My pussy throbbed thinking about his hand on my clit, his claws pinching my thighs. It was obvious he was thinking about it too, vitals elevated and short of breath.
“How much do you want me to take off?” I asked, breathless.
Fásach snapped his teeth together, the glint of white in his mouth shining in the light of our lamp. He licked his snarl down with effort and shook his head.
“Tomorrow morning,” he growled, then cleared his voice again. A chuckle bubbled up his throat, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t tame the aggressive wrinkle at the top of the bridge of his nose. He flexed his fists, sheathing and drawing his claws. “When yiwren go to war, they chase theirthuaisin a ceremony to spin them into a wild rut. It’s the fastest way to transition.”
“Aren’t you in a rut already?” I asked. “The last time you chased me—”
“I didn’t do what bucks usually do when they catch their doe,” Fásach said pointedly. He closed his eyes tight, licking his teeth between words and huffs of breath. “I was ready to kill Gil, but they were going to win. I waslucky,Roz. That’s all. And I can’t afford to lose the next time. The next time it’ll be Vin. Or Sizzle. I need to be stronger than I was before Safia and Misila lost their mara.”
“You will be,” I promised him, toeing off my boots and unlatching my coveralls. I kept them on but opened them down to the groin with shaking fingers, focused on assuring him that he was enough. “Your transition is moving faster than before, and I can help with my full spectrum senses—”
“Tomorrow morning,” he forged ahead, looking down the deep vee that exposed my thermals. “I want to chase you again. And this time, I don’t want you wearing anything at all.”
His words stalled us both in a heavy, warm silence. I heard him swallow like a thirsty husk of a man before he spoke again, the white glint of the lamp caught in the reflective discs of his eyes. The eyes of a hunter.
“I’ve been transitioning for what, two weeks? With a rut hunt, it would have been done in two days. Do you know what that is?”
My vision shook with anticipation. “You… you want to hunt me?”
Fásach snapped his teeth and groaned, stretching his face to the ceiling with a whine. “Roz—” He interrupted himself with a tongue-lolling pant before slurping that tongue back into the cradle of his jaws. “I want tocatchyou. Which means you need to keep your clothes on right now.”
“Oh.” [Analysis incomplete.] “Wait, why? I don’t understand. I liked telling you no before, but I really do want y—”
