Stolen (Tribes #2) - Milana Jacks Page 0,40
strokes my head and sighs heavily, and I know he’s carrying a burden on his chest. I wish he’d unload on me, but he’s so hard, and unburdening his feelings just doesn’t seem like something he’d do. Perhaps his brother could speak with him, or perhaps it’s his brother who put the burden on Nar in the first place.
I close my eyes and move closer to him, seeking warmth and maybe even some otherworldly love.
Chapter Sixteen
Nar
I pat the fur over Aoa’s body, feeling the peaks and valleys of her curves in the process. She’s a thin female made thinner by the starvation Gur imposed upon her. Now that I’ve marked her, and she returned the marking, something not even the females of our species do, my mind drifts down memory lane straight to Mas.
I’ve known Mas for as long as I’ve known myself. I don’t believe there’s been a span when we weren’t together, and there were times when I thought he might be a brother from a different mother, even though I know he’s not. After the raid on my parents’ house, Mas found Hart and me. He dug us out since the roof had fallen over our exit.
Over the turns, we battled many Ra together, always having each other’s backs. Until recently. I failed him. I chose a female over him.
I grind my teeth so as not to snarl and wake up my goddess. I grip the fur Mas gifted me with after I saved his life that one horrible night when I thought his gut wound would never heal. But by then, he’d pioneered the first repair system on the planet and subjected himself to the test.
The males watched the agony he went through, and nobody would go near the repair system again. Except Hart. Because Hart’s the Kai, and also a lunatic. Amti found her soul mate in him for sure. I am endlessly happy for my brother.
I leave the bed to stand in the middle of the room, pull up my portal control center, open a short portal, and walk into Mas’s room, a small space with a bed inside the main tower. Mas never needed a hut, and our homes lay in ruins after the extended wars. I never asked why Mas never built a hut near mine. In fact, most males never rebuilt anything, expecting another war and more destruction, probably not wanting to bother with building anything when the Ra would just come and destroy it, and, yet again, we’d be forced to retreat deep into Ka territory to regroup so we could reclaim Kalia, this city and our capital, cursed to be located close to the Ra border.
Mas’s room looks like Portal Central of our land. I don’t believe even the tower portal control center has this many monitors or entries. I don’t have access to his controls, so I can only see the maze of connections, bright golden lines and dots and stars everywhere. I swipe a palm over the controls, trying to open some portals here and there, but fail.
From the corner of my eye, I spot a fur from one of the vicious tribes living on Mount Omila. They rarely walk as males, more animals than rational beings. We kill them on sight, although sightings of them are rare. I run a hand over the fiery red fur, remembering this female. She tried to lure us into a trap and fell into a den of vipers herself. When they sucked her dry of blood, Mas and I snuck inside the den and stole her body. I removed her pelt and we burned the rest so when her people come looking, they couldn’t scent us on her. We burned lots of land that span as we made our exit from that horrible place.
I unpin the fur from the wall and step back to see a strange portal, a tiny white light among all the other golden lights on this wall. Slinging the red pelt over my shoulder, I poke the portal with my finger. A net of at least a dozen portals over different parts of our land pops open in the room. And I recognize one, the same one Mas had set up inside the woods in Ra territory for when we needed a quick escape.
We’ve never entered from these locations, I’m certain of it. There’s a portal even to Mount Omila, though none of us had ever returned there. Unless Mas has. I think he has, and