My head jerks up and I stare as my gorgeous, wild mate storms into our cave, holding a spear aimed for Liz.
“You must be the mister,” Liz says as he comes in. And then she gasps when he nears. “Holy fucking shit.”
What? I want to ask, but I press my fingers to my mouth. I feel…awful. Something’s wrong. The baby kicks hard, and this time it doesn’t make me feel happy. It worries me. Blackness creeps in on the edges of my vision.
“No touch my mate,” Rukh snarls, and the spear gets closer, edges under Liz’s chin. “Har-loh, come to me.”
I try to get up, but Liz jerks me back down.
“She’s sick, you jerk. Look at her. Does she look well to you?”
“I’m okay,” I breathe, but the blackness creeps in heavier, and I’m really, really not okay. My head suddenly feels like it weighs a million pounds and I wobble on the cushion I’m seated on. It’s only Liz’s supporting arms that keep me from falling backward.
Then Rukh’s there, and he touches my face. I feel clammy but sweaty at the same time, and the nausea in the back of my throat won’t go away. His face swims into my blurry vision, and he looks so handsome and so worried that it makes me want to cry. I want to comfort him, but I just feel…awful.
“I’m fine,” I tell him again, but his tormented expression is the last thing I see before the world blacks out.
RUKH
My heart thumps in my chest, frightened like a stalked quill-beast. Har-loh is limp in my arms, unconscious. Her skin is covered with a sheen of sweat, like she is hot, but her hands and her cheek are cold.
Another human scurries around my cave, a female. I want to snarl at her to leave, to go back to the bad ones, but she’s got a bladder of water and she dampens a square of leather and brushes it over Har-loh’s face. She looks upset, too. She wants to help.
It’s only because of that I let her stay.
My Har-loh is sick. I hold her close, stroking her jaw and neck, waiting for her to wake up. At her side, the female dabs the wet square on her cheek.
“Has she done this before?” the female asks.
I want to snarl at her to go away, but I don’t know what to do to help. Maybe she does. So I shake my head in answer.
“Has she had problems with the baby? Spotting? Nausea?”
I don’t know some of these words and bare my teeth, holding her closer. “She is fine.”
“Bullshit.” She doesn’t stop to explain the word. “Look at her face. Her eyes are like hollows. She looks tired and even I can tell she’s hurting. She rubs her side constantly.”
“She is carrying a kit,” I snarl.
“So am I! And I’m not sick like her. Something is wrong.” The female all but yells at me. She gestures at her belly and I see a rounded bump there for the first time. She’s right – her face doesn’t have the same exhausted look that my Har-loh does.
I cradle Har-loh closer to me, worried. She…is pale. And she has difficulty waking some mornings. I’ve noticed that she struggles, but I don’t know how to fix it. It concerns me that this female sees it right away. Have I been turning a blind eye to my mate because I am afraid of what I will see? Of losing her?
I hold her closer, agonizing. I will die if I lose her. She is the only thing worth living for. Now that I have Har-loh, I can’t go back to the loneliness of before. I cannot bear the thought of a day without her smile, her touch, her scent. Her small, cold hands on my skin as I wake up.
“What do I do?” The words escape me before I can bite them back.
The female purses her lips, and for a moment she looks so strangely similar to Har-loh that it fills me with longing. I stroke my mate’s sweaty face again. “She needs to come back to the tribe.”
Leave me? Leave here and go with the bad ones? I bare my teeth at the female for suggesting it. “No!”
“You think it’s safe to be out here in the middle of nowhere with her?” The small female smacks my arm as if trying to beat her words into me. “What are you going to do if the baby comes early? What are you going to do if she starts bleeding and doesn’t stop? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s not a lot of sa-khui and human interbreeding going on around here, buddy. This shit is all new and we don’t know what’s going to happen.”
I stroke Har-loh’s soft cheek. We are different peoples. I didn’t think that it could hurt my mate, but now my heart clenches with worry. Survival instinct wars with the need to keep Har-loh safe. All my life, I have been warned never to approach the bad ones. Now this small female that has the same flat features as Har-loh is telling me I need to take her to their den?