Broken by the Horde King (Horde Kings of Dakkar #4) - Zoey Draven Page 0,5

was exactly what I did.

The week before he was set to return to Dothik to gather his horde, he asked me to join it, to join him in the wild lands. He promised me that I would have a place as a healer in his horde. Our relationship was shifting, I could feel it. He wanted me to come with him? To leave the saruk, my home, my family, to be with him in his new one?

In my mind, I was beginning to believe he returned my feelings. I was twenty then. A woman of mating age, though I was a human. I’d felt his eyes begin to linger on me the way he often looked at other Dakkari females. Soon, he would be choosing a Morakkari, a queen and wife, of his own. In my mind, it was possible it could be me.

I was older. Maybe this was what we’d both been waiting for.

Even in my excitement, I waited until the celebration feast to give Kiran my answer. At any feast where an unmated Vorakkar was present, it was customary for hopeful females to show their interest by presenting him with brew. A goblet of brew, placed on his table, in front of everyone.

That night, I put on my best dress, a long, flowing gown of shimmering bronze that complimented my skin tone, or so Laru had said. Lomma plaited half of my wild hair back and decorated the rest with the seffi I’d picked from the okkara trees in the forest, a morning’s run away. I was practically faint with excitement because I knew that night I would declare my feelings for Kiran before the entire saruk.

“Are you really going to do this?” Laru asked quietly, brushing her fingers over my cheek. Only she knew that I would be presenting my goblet. We had kept it from Lomma.

“Lysi,” I replied, taking a deep breath, catching her yellow eyes in the reflection of the mirror.

We looked so different and though we were not related by blood, she would always be my true sister. Just like my parents, who had taken me in when I had no others, when I had truly been alone in the world.

Laru gave me a soft smile and a squeeze on my shoulder. She may have kissed Kiran all those years ago, but she was in love with a darukkar of the saruk now. An honorable male a few years older, who worshipped the ground she walked on. Any day, we expected him to make her a matehood offering. Maybe even tonight.

“There are my beautiful girls,” our father said, appearing in our room, the walls of our home booming with his heavy steps. “Ready?”

A flutter in my belly had me huffing out a sharp breath and I gave Laru one last smile in the mirror, missing her expression of worry completely.

The feast was grand, as expected. The Sorakkar and Arakkari’s son had just become a Vorakkar, after all. The whole saruk was in celebration, for it was a victory and an honor for us all.

I couldn’t find Kiran before the feast began but later he slipped into his seat at his parents’ sides, taking the place of honor, the place usually reserved for his father. Because as Vorakkar, Kiran now outranked his father.

The goblets didn’t start arriving until after most of the feasting was over and the drinking began. The Sorakkar and Arakkari were milling around the tables and Kiran sat alone, up on the dais, his black hair gleaming in the firelight. My chest ached with his hardened, raw beauty, at the way his full lips seemed perpetually downturned now.

My father mentioned to me once that Vorakkars were made, not born. But looking at Kiran right then, watching as the goblets began to arrive on his table, brought to him by beautiful unmated Dakkari females, I thought that Kiran had been both born and made to be a Vorakkar.

I gathered my courage close when I saw he drank from no female’s goblet. The females left his table disappointed.

I felt Laru’s eyes on me as I grabbed my own, still full of brew, and rose from our family’s table.

A hushed quiet seemed to descend in my ears as I approached Kiran. I felt like the whole feast slowed when his eyes caught on me.

That frown he wore didn’t make me falter, however. Kiran’s eyes flickered to the goblet then back up to me. Though I wasn’t allowed to meet his gaze, my eyes never left