into the enclosure for much needed food and rest.
Am I not allowed to touch Roon when we are in the horde? I wondered. For the first time, I regretted not asking my father more about horde life, about the customs and signs of respect that weren’t necessarily adhered to in a saruk.
Kiran handed me my travel sacks, which I took, sliding the straps over my shoulder, the heavy weight of them comforting against my side. Something of home, in this strange new place.
Then Kiran lifted his gaze to the crowd that had formed, that cold, hard expression etched into his features. Nothing like the smiling boy I’d once known.
“After the passing of our mokkira,” Kiran started, and I heard a wave of murmurs rumble its way through the crowd, “we were in desperate need of a skilled healer for the frost. Instead of bringing one in from Dothik, I took the best healer from the saruk of my father. She is to be our mokkira from this day forward and I expect the same respect given to her as you gave our last mokkira.”
From this day forward?
I pressed my lips together, keeping my gaze steady and my face carefully blank as I scanned the crowd of Dakkari.
I saw expressions of surprise, expressions of worry. Some, however, didn’t seem too concerned, which made me feel hopeful. There was a crowd of maybe fifty gathered, though I knew this wasn’t the whole population of Kiran’s horde. But word would spread if this place was anything like a saruk. There were sure to be plenty of gossips. Everyone would know that their Vorakkar had brought in a vekkiri mokkira by the end of the night.
When Kiran glanced down at me, silence stretched out, thin yet heavy.
Clearing my throat, I regarded the crowd once more and said, “It will be my honor to serve the horde of Rath Okkili, just as I served the saruk of Rath Okkili.”
That was when my gaze caught on someone that made me still with surprise.
A female.
A human female.
She was lingering on the edge of the crowd, leaning against one of the volikis that lay closest to the pyroki enclosure. Her belly was swollen with child and I knew that this was one of the females Kiran had spoken of. The one with a Dakkari male as her mate, with a hybrid child in her womb.
Another jolt of doubt went through me as I met her eyes. They were like mine. Though her skin was lighter in color and she had brown eyes instead of my hazel ones, her eyes were slightly tilted up at the corners like mine. She had whites surrounding her irises, like mine. She had hairs over her brow bones, no tail jutted out from underneath her flowing dress, and the tips of her ears weren’t pointed, like mine.
When she nibbled her lip, I saw the flash of her white, dull teeth, and I felt something strange in my chest. Something I’d never felt before. Something like kinship and recognition.
I’d never seen a human before, except for my own face peering back at me in reflections. I didn’t remember my parents. I didn’t remember the village I must’ve come from. I didn’t remember ever seeing another face that looked like mine…until now.
Then, with blood rushing in my ears, I saw another. A human male came up next to her and they bent their heads, speaking. I studied the male, my heart thudding in my chest, and a frown formed on my face.
This male had hair the color of dark fire and skin so light that it seemed translucent. His eyes were blue, a color I’d never seen before, except when it was reflected in Drukkar’s Sea. He wore black hide pants and a brown tunic over his lithe form.
I saw another human approach. Another male, with grey hair and dark eyes. They were all looking at me and I met their gazes with a kind of stunned realization.
Belatedly, I realized that Kiran was speaking and I exhaled a breath sharply, turning my eyes back towards the crowd.
“—and a feast will be held to celebrate her arrival and our new home in the south lands for the frost. In two nights.”
A feast?
The crowd gradually began to disperse once it was clear that that was all Kiran was going to say on the matter, though many lingered and watched.
Not unlike a saruk, after all, I thought. Perhaps everyone in a horde was always in one another’s business