To Desire a Dragon - Amanda Milo Page 0,1

older can safely take him to bed; everyone younger must wait for a new man or risk too-close bedroll relations) his status as the only breeding male available is quickly becoming a problem. Two sunrises ago when I passed his sleeping ground to begin my journey, I saw Hupta leaving his turf house, her hair a wild mess, a grin stretched across her face. Hupta is from the Buffalo Hunt generation, just as I am. The rule of healthy breeding says that she shouldn’t be visiting any man’s lodge unless his generation matches ours—because otherwise she could be bedding her own father.

Thankfully though, Yatanak’s every feature is thrown strongly in his offspring and Hupta looks nothing like him. Provided they aren’t related, the only danger now is Yatanak falling dead on top of her, his heart stopped from too much excitement, just like old Pellmoh.

That’s how we used to lose most of our men.

With so few born, they’re kept busy until the day—or night—they keel over. Yatanak says it’s a fine way to go. But in the last few seasons, the boys in our tribe haven’t had the chance to grow old: they’ve been kidnapped. They may live to an old age and die in blissful excitement—but in the wrong tribe, it’s more likely that they’ll die with a shackle affixed to their ankle and never see the outside of a cum tent until the day their dead body is carted out to a pit or pyre.

We don’t want our boys to suffer that fate. It’s our custom to hand-select a tribe who treats their men well, one that lets them have the run of the village or camp and lets each man decide how many women he feels like servicing in a day or night.

No forced breedings. No being shut up and kept only for the purpose of procreational use.

A young man who finds himself chained to a stake in the floor of a cum tent may not complain too much about his lot of lusty fucking, not at first, but at some point, he’s going to grow to hate his tether. He’s going to resent his captivity. And when he gets to be too difficult to handle, the women he’s slaved to service—the mothers who forced him to sire their many children—are going to club him to death and replace him with a younger, more easily manageable male.

Sharply, I shake my head, trying not to think about it. Jöran, a boy birthed of my mother, was taken a quarter lunation ago.

‘I’m not a boy anymore, Nalle. I’m a man,’ he’d growl if he could have heard my thought just now.

We look nothing alike, we are nothing alike (different tribe fathers, we’re certain), but we were close.

He came of age this summer. My brother was set to be traded to the Middle Plains’ Tribe in exchange for one of their conscientiously-raised young men. The tribe of the Middle Plains lets their boys be boys just like we do. Lets them run and play with their sisters and they know their mother and their many aunts and they are free and happy. When they become men, the only thing to change in their existence is how they spend a good portion of their time.

A trembling smile tries to shine on my face when I think of Jöran’s oft-made complaint that one day, he wouldn’t have to do any weaving or washing. No more women’s work for him when he came of age. He’d just lie on his back and make the women do all the work.

(For this statement, he’d often receive a good-natured cuff upside his blonde head.)

Now I’m afraid he’s not laughing. I’m scared that wherever he is, he’s probably strapped down on his back and isn’t enjoying all the work happening on top of him like he was sure he would. That it’s not all ‘lazing about and relaxing’ like he joked it would be.

Because it was the Qippik tribe who abducted him. The Qippik Tribe’s cruel, raiding claws have a way of sinking into young men and leaving them hollowed husks they don’t bother to burn or bury. We came upon their men once. They’d left them dead on the plains for the scavengers, these ill-used fathers of their children, these human beings who deserved a full life even if their purpose was merely to seed every eligible woman who visited them.

I whip my hook-on-a-string at a sapling, catching a leaf and angrily winding it back to