Captive of the Horde King (Horde Kings Of Dakkar #1) - Zoey Draven Page 0,56
ask you to approve my decisions when it comes to them. I will do whatever it takes to keep my people safe. Even if it means killing a being who could be innocent, whose pack might be innocent. By leaving the Dead Lands, those Ghertun have already signed their fate, that spy signed his fate. Would you truly risk the lives of the horde to save one Ghertun? Knowing what you do now, would you ask me to be merciful again?”
The answer rang clear in my mind.
“No,” I whispered.
“Would you kill him yourself if you had to?” Arokan asked next, that cold voice unyielding.
The question caught me off guard. “I—I wouldn’t know how.”
Arokan looked away, his jaw ticking, his hands on his hips.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “you will start your day tending to the pyroki. You will walk among the horde, you will keep your head high. You will wear what your piki dress you in without complaint. You will show the horde that you remain strong, regardless of what happened today.”
I swallowed, looking down at my lap.
“You are Morakkari now, Luna. Despite what I called you today, you are Dakkari now,” Arokan rasped. I looked up at him as he said, “Act like it.”
I nodded.
Arokan went to his drawers before undressing. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, seeing the scars lining his back. Not for the first time, I wondered how he’d received them.
“Arokan,” I whispered.
The horde king paused, turning his head to look at me.
“I really am sorry,” I said. “I know I made a mess things today but…I’m trying.”
“I know, kalles,” he replied a moment later before pulling on pants made from hide, concealing his nudity. My eyebrows furrowed when I saw him sheath his dagger into the belt.
“Where are you going?”
“To hunt the Ghertun pack,” he replied. “I sent scouts ahead. We might have caught their trail.”
My lips parted. “You’ll kill them all?”
He turned to look at me again, studying me. “I will not return until we do. They are too close to us, too close to Dothik.”
I blew out a sharp exhale. After a moment, I nodded, rising from the cushion, my legs numb from sitting for so long.
“Be careful,” I told him. And I meant it. A week ago, I would’ve been praying that he never came back, so that I could return to my village, our bargain forfeit. “Please.”
Now…it made me worried that he was leaving again.
I was too emotionally exhausted to figure out why. I didn’t care why. I knew what I felt and I wanted him to be safe.
He was still disappointed in me. I could see it in his gaze, but he reached out his hand, cupped my cheek, before he murmured, “Stay close to your guards while I am gone, kalles.”
With that, he turned his back and ducked through the entrance of the tent without so much as a goodbye.
And I stood, in that empty tent, feeling like I failed as I watched him go.
Chapter Nineteen
Mirari watched me from outside the open pen enclosure with something akin to horror on her face.
“Missiki, please,” she begged for the hundredth time. “This is not fitting for you. Not for a Morakkari.”
I huffed and blew a strand away from my face. Though the air was cool, I felt a drop of sweat run down my back, and my arms trembled slightly as I hefted yet another pile of pyroki shit with my shovel and threw it into what I called the Shit Corner.
A young Dakkari boy—whose given name was Jriva—was elbow deep in the Shit Corner, sifting through the pyroki excrement. Though he didn’t speak the universal tongue, Mirari had translated for him when he said that they used the shit as fuel and to enrich their soil in Dothik and throughout other outposts around Dakkar. He told me his job was important, that he took great pride in it.
The boy seemed happy with my presence. He was no older than ten and had told Mirari to tell me that one day he would be a horde warrior. He would prove himself to the Vorakkar—to my husband—with his strength and protect the horde and his family.
He’d beamed up at me as he said it, as Mirari translated, though he was surrounded by pyroki filth. I couldn’t help but admire his tenacity, for someone so young. He reminded me a lot of Kivan, which had struck a chord of longing and loneliness inside me.