16

Serik

"She's not here," I shout at the females waiting in front of my den. "I'll save you the trouble of breaking the news. Just by standing there, I know you want to tell me my mate ran away."

"Oh Serik," Kiril starts. He reaches to embrace me before I shoot him a glare. Maybe he is as clever as his reputation because he shuts his glotat.

We carry half our bounty of butchered seals from his place where we processed them. I couldn't allow the eight seal faces to upset my mate and cause her to run…what a crock. I had a feeling she wouldn't be here and should have returned straight home.

"She's safe," Vera says, showing me her glowing star finder. "This blue dot is her phone—"

"I destroyed her phone," I growl.

Artyom clutches his mate by the hips and hauls her back against his chest. His growl isn't as deep or loud as mine…probably because I'm more pissed off. Volcanic. How could they let her leave? She's safe now, but how was her journey? Was she safe when they left her? Artyom abandoned Vera, injured and limping, on a random campsite to rejoin the humans. Was Vera so careless with Kaitlyn?

"Her brother bought her a new one," Sydney says. She clutches the arm Sergei placed around her waist to protect their unborn child from me—as if I'm such a Svoloch, I'd harm her kit.

I push through the crowd to unlock my dyla weturanya. Kiril and I hang the seal-skin sacs of meat on the hooks where they will stay cold by the door. I'll dry the steaks and pack the muktuk in salt later as well as crush the frozen blubber cubes into a paste for storage. I wanted to share these tasks with Kaitlyn so she would manage our pantry in the future. My dream was for her to give me a list of supplies based on her needs and desires. I would hunt. We would forage together. We would figure out how to care for her mushrooms.

Dammit, I hate the ache in my chest and the burning behind my eyes.

I rest my forehead on the icy cave wall and breathe in her lingering scent. It will be worse below ground. Should I abandon this home and claim one of the empty ones? I would rather shift through the remnants of a dead couple than the remnants of my dead relationship.

My guests pile wood in my fire pit and work together to set up tea. Each male squeezes my shoulder when they pass. Artyom catches my gaze and thumps his fist against his chest. My chest twitches with hyperventilation. He was supposed to support me at the mating chase, not my recovery from a mate leaving. That's a gesture used when a mate dies! She's not dead. Maybe he means I am. My life isn't over…right?

A Svoloch like me shouldn't have asked…to be loved.

Kiril drags me to the fire and pushes me onto my stool. Sydney and Patricika fuss over giant pots of seal stew from yesterday's kills. Timor cuddles his human mate, Polina, and orders the males around. His daughters sit behind them as if they can't be seen. Kits. Adam bounces Gustav while Artyom makes faces and silly noises at the kit. Sergei throws his head back in laughter when the kit grabs Artyom by the nose and yanks. They are all here except Gleb and Manya, who stayed north to watch over the humans who were too close to the fishing grounds.

I'm inside a big, happy clan, but not accepted into the fold.

Well, not a big clan—not like when our parents were alive, but those memories fade with the days. As I sit in mourning, my clansmen flaunt their families, strangely for my benefit. They don't notice when I muster the courage to enter my home. Their voices fade to silence as I squeeze through the widened crevice I fixed for Kaitlyn.

Do I regret leveraging her fears to lock her inside? No. Do I regret giving her the freedom to leave? Strangely, I don't. My one regret stares me in the face from my furs. Her soiled pajama pants shine with the dried evidence of our coupling. She wanted me to sleep beside her, but I wanted to wait. She fears mating, not me. We could have eased into sex. I didn't trust what grew between us could be love.

Why didn't I listen to the voice in my head that said she would break my heart?

Holding the pants to my nose, I stomp my return trip to the party. Let's make everyone too uncomfortable to stay. Maybe the families will allow me to have my grief in peace if I drape myself in sexual smells and memories. Svoloch move, but that's what they expect from me.

Cunning schemes hide behind a mouth full of fangs.

How did the other couples mate so easily? They met. They chased. They fell in love. Isn't that the Chuchunya way? I chased and fought for pleasure mates who rejected me. I bartered for a mate and got called a Svoloch while the other dealmaker enjoyed his mate and kit. Dammit, his family is intact because I did the right thing. I've plotted, tricked, kidnapped, and scraped my way through life…to have everyone frolicking around my fire without giving me a second look.

My misery is their excuse to party.

I'd rather they celebrate a successful hunt where I could have been the star, but I allowed my—my—Kaitlyn to influence me from afar. I couldn't kill the mother narwhal and live with my guilt. How would she find out? Even if she didn't, I would know. She doesn't understand because she's not Chuchunya. She's never run in a chase to be accepted into a Chuchunya clan. I'd bet she's not in the boreal forest. If I could decipher the blue dot on Vera's machine, I'd find she's in a human settlement…in her human home…

"Vera! Vera!" I shout loud enough for the merrymaking to stop—its participants frozen—and to earn the suspicious glares of the group using my dishes and fire pit. "Does Kaitlyn have a human male in her home? Could you smell one?"

"She's not Chuchunya," Artyom shouts. "My Ryluk can't smell others."

"Kaitlyn lives alone. She has two brothers who live far away," Sydney says, raising a spoon between us. "The one brother may visit her, though. He sold her the truck you blew up and will probably deliver her next one."

I wince at the reminder of my rash decision to destroy her lab to make her stay. Fat load of good that did.

"I have her location on my phone because she has mine. She can find you if—"

"You are too kind, Ryluk. But perhaps Serik isn't ready for hope," Artyom says to his mate. She nods before cuddling against him.

My guts churn with nausea. Kaitlyn cuddled against me like that. She may not have loved me or even liked me, but she sought comfort from me. She trusted me to provide for her, protect her, and talk about our mistakes. Like how I left fresh kills as gifts for her before I knew they distressed her…and then butchered them in my dark pantry when I found she feared their eyes.

Wait…does she know leaving me would distress me? A loving mate changes their behavior when it hurts their mate. Have I ever told her how I feel? In waiting for true love to blossom, I never fought to claim her as mine. I never pushed our boundaries for fear of rejection, but what if I sent the wrong message? What if she felt she could leave me because I would rebound? I told her about my past mates and how I was ready to try again.

Did I ever explain dushevnayasvyaz in terms of love and soulmates, or just in terms of kits? We decided we didn't want kits. So how could she know she's the love of my life? She's not a pleasure mate and has the power to burn a hole in my heart. She's destroyed me by entering my home and abandoning me with the knowledge of how good my life can be.

I never showed her the way I love. I tried to be Sergei the Provider, Artyom the Patient, Timor the Strict Leader, and other Chuchunya males who live to procreate and nourish young. They run to chase the mothers of their families. I run to fuck. I chased down females who I knew weren't my soulmate, to spray my seed on them, not fertilize their wombs. If my dushevnayasvyaz has a nasty temperament, it's because she's made for me. I'm not a gentle giant. Our clan already has too many of those.

I'm a Svoloch. I'm Serik. I love differently. Maybe the way Kaitlyn needs, I've never tried.

My plan forms in my head when Vera sets down her star finder box beside me. She joins Sydney at the boiling soup pot to serve everyone with my bowls. If she wants to take Kaitlyn's place as the female who owns this dyla weturanya tonight and serves the clan, fine. I won't be here to watch her. My hand creeps over the box and the screen lights up with my touch. The map remains on the display. I haven't lost it in the vast cavern inside the box! With a sleight of hand, I tuck it into the pocket of Kaitlyn's pajamas.

Keeping my steps measured and slow with sadness is the hardest part of my retreat. I wave Kiril away when he tries to follow. With a touch of irony, I clasp Timor's shoulder as I pass his family. Saying goodbye to our leader with theft in my pocket and a plan so devious it puts the clan's secret in danger, gives me a jolt of power. I could expose us all for their poor treatment of me…

…but Kaitlyn rearranged my insides. Just like I couldn't pretend the narwhal calf didn't exist and kill its mother, I can't carry out my revenge on the clan.

I just want my mate…and so I'm going to surprise her. Claim her. Bring her home.

At the edge of the central grounds, I lift my feet into a jog. Thank the fates I live the closest to the humans. My southern home, deep within the boreal forest, will be where we rest after I retrieve Kaitlyn. I should be exhausted from hunting all morning, traveling all afternoon, and suffering through Kiril's slow butchering skills this evening, but my legs pump with boundless energy. I need her more than I need air. I don't even stop to wrangle a reindeer when I pass a herd. Their noises and scent may attract unwanted human attention.

Drawing Vera's star finder box from the cloth, I study the blue dot. It's contained in a square that I assume is Kaitlyn's dyla weturanya. Knowing there won't be a male there to challenge my claim puts me at ease. She hates butchering, so she'll likely throw a fit if I slaughtered a human in her home. My tender-hearted mate is afraid of blood, eyes, and organ meat, but hides these fears under a hardened shell. Why would she leave after allowing me to see her inner vulnerability? Because I didn't make my intentions clear?

Vehicles of every color of the rainbow travel over the hill using a hard, black surface ahead. Do I dare jog parallel to them? I want to say the black path for vehicles is the blue line on the star finder's map. If that's true, it will lead me to the group of squares that surround Kaitlyn's dyla weturanya. I wish the star finder box could show me if the squares were underground, connected, high in trees, or on the ground. For technology so treasured by humans, I find it's inferior in many ways.

With a deep breath and sweaty palms, I trust my dushevnayasvyaz-created instincts. If the blue line isn't the black path, at least I'm heading in the correct direction. The sun is a much more reliable landmark. I run through the thick brush alongside the black path, ducking as the vehicles pass. With her smell in my nose, I travel through the night.

The forest ends where the star finder box says, "Yellowknife." I'm on the right track because a large, rectangular sign has YELLOWKNIFE carved in yellow letters on it. A giant flashlight illuminates the sign for visitors…or hunters like me. A knife, laying horizontally, is also carved onto the sign, just below the letters. Is it a warning to others? Do they have a fierce clan of protectors? This is the town where Kaitlyn said she took Adam before he returned to Patricika the final time. How fitting she will be caught in the same trap she laid for him.

I stretch out on the forest floor behind the sign. My weight crushes the promise of new plant life as I rest. If there are protectors between Kaitlyn and this warning sign, I must recharge before facing them. The daylight gives them the advantage—and makes my clan's discovery inevitable—so I'll sleep here until dusk, when prowling between the buildings will be easier. I hope her day at her human home is everything she wants…because it will be her last.