Chapter 33: I Am Not Obsessed. I Am Concerned.
The space for the tiger tribe was finished.
Cael walked through it beside his father, checking the structure, noting the areas where the walls needed reinforcement before the cold set in. His father was talking. He could hear the voice.
But Cael was not retaining them.
He was thinking about whether Neve had eaten.
"Are you even listening to me?"
His father snapped his fingers directly in front of Cael’s face.
Cael blinked and came back to reality. He looked at the structure around him and located himself in the conversation approximately.
"I am," he said.
His father gave him the look that said he knew that was not true.
"I was saying," his father continued, with patience, "that everyone in the village keeps staring at you. Wondering where the skin came from."
Cael looked down at himself.
The wrapper. The belt with the cowrie shells. He had walked through the village earlier, and people had stopped what they were doing. A few of the younger warriors had asked. He had not answered them, which had somehow made them more interested.
He thought about Neve’s hands tying the belt. The focus on his face. The small corrections he made when the fabric sat wrong.
He covered the lower half of his face with his palm.
"Cael."
He lowered his hand.
His father was staring at him with an expression Cael had never seen directed at him before. His father, who had watched Cael fight opponents twice his size without changing his face, who had seen Cael refuse every mate prospect for three years without a flicker, who had been present for every significant event in Cael’s life and had never once looked surprised by any of it.
He looked surprised now.
"It was Neve," Cael said, before his father could say whatever that expression was building toward.
"I thought so." His father turned and kept walking, but something in his posture had changed. "That boy is strange, Cael."
"He knows things," Cael said. "The fire. The meat. The cooking. The room he asked me to dig out. The way he treats the sick." He paused. "The red panda tribe must have kept things to themselves for a very long time. Hidden information that other tribes never had access to."
"And now he’s here."
"And now he’s here," Cael agreed.
His father stroked his chin. "You should move faster. Make him your mate properly before someone else does." He stopped and looked at Cael sideways. "Isabella is back."
Cael looked away.
"I have nothing to do with Isabella," he said.
"I know that," his father said. "But she is the former chief’s daughter. We have obligations there. Just be civil. Once she understands you already have someone, she’ll find another match." He paused. "Anyone would be glad to have her."
"Then anyone can have her," Cael said.
His father made a sound that was somewhere between exasperation and amusement. "The inspection is done. Go back to your cave."
"I was going to anyway," Cael said. "Neve is making soup."
"What is soup?"
"You don’t know yet," Cael said. "But if Neve made it, it’s going to be good."
His father turned and started walking beside him back toward the main village without being invited. Cael noted this without commenting on it.
"We should treat Neve well," his father said after a moment. "Especially now that we know whose mark he carries."
"That doesn’t change anything for me," Cael said. "I’m going to mark him and make him mine regardless of who else is involved."
"Nobody said you couldn’t," his father said. "If the king of beasts wanted him alone, he would have come for him already. He hasn’t. So there’s room." A pause. "Calm down."
Cael had not said anything that indicated he needed to calm down. His father had just read it correctly anyway.
He thought about the king of beasts.
Vaelthorn. The dragon lord. Whose mark was sitting on Neve’s neck, put there in the dark in a trade city while Neve had been alone and Cael had been one room away, not knowing it was happening.
He thought about Kael, the wolf prince who had proposed in a street and promised to visit every week.
He thought about Ryker, arriving tomorrow with his whole tribe, who had held Neve’s hand like it was something personal.
Three rivals already, and the world hadn’t finished producing them yet. Cael could see the trajectory clearly. Every person who came into contact with Neve developed feelings with speed and certainty.
He understood. He was not immune to it himself. But the difference was that he had been first. He had found Neve at the south border, alone, smaller than seemed survivable. He had carried him home.
He was not going to step aside for anyone.
He also knew that telling Neve this was not the approach. Neve made his own decisions about everything, and anyone who tried to override that found out very quickly that Neve had a way of simply not cooperating.
So Cael did not argue.
He just stayed close. He found reasons to be where Neve was. He learned the things Neve wanted done and did them before Neve had to ask twice. He paid attention.
He was not obsessed.
He was very attentive.
There was a difference.
He heard laughter as he came up the path toward his cave.
Female laughter. More than one voice, and underneath it Neve’s polite voice.
Cael was moving before he had decided to move.
He pushed through the cave entrance, and his eyes found Neve immediately, standing near the kitchen wall with three women in the space — Isabella’s two lackeys and then Isabella herself, which registered in the back of his mind as a problem to address in a moment.
He crossed to Neve and took his hand.
"Are you hurt? Did something happen? Did they—"
"Nothing happened, Cael." Neve’s hand turned in his and pressed back slightly. Calm. Steady. "Relax."
Cael did not relax. He looked at Isabella over Neve’s head.
Then at the two women beside her who had tried to poison someone at the cooking session and frame Neve for it.
The warmth that had been in his chest since this morning converted into something much colder and considerably less pleasant.
He pulled Neve against him and looked at all three of them.
"Why are you here?" he asked.
Isabella held his gaze for about three seconds before something in it made her look slightly to the left.
The two women behind her did not attempt eye contact at all.
Neve put his hand on Cael’s shoulder.
Cael looked down at it.
Then at Neve’s face. The anger disappeared immediately Neve touched him.
"They were just leaving," Neve said pleasantly, and looked at Isabella.
"Yes," Isabella said, something careful moving across her face. "We were. Thank you, Neve. I’ll see you tomorrow."
She bowed to the chief at the entrance, gathered the two women with a look and left.
Cael watched the cave entrance for a moment after they were gone.
Then his father cleared his throat from the entrance.
"You said something about soup," his father said.
Neve stepped away from Cael and clapped his hands once. "Since you’re both here. Sit down before it gets cold."
"Soup?" Cael asked.
"Stew this time. It’s different."
"Different how?"
"Well, it’s thicker. So sit down, Cael."
Cael sat.
His father sat faster, already pulling the mat toward the centre of the room with the energy of a man who had decided this meal was happening and did not intend to miss it.
Neve turned toward the kitchen and then stopped.
He was looking at the second cave opening. The one Cael had dug. The one that had been empty rock this morning.
Cael looked at it.
There was light coming from inside.
Warm light coming from somewhere inside the room. The room was dark and empty when he left.
He stood up again.
"What is—"
Neve reached into somewhere on his person and produced a small lamp. He held it near the entrance, and the light brightened the whole space.
Cael and his father both looked into the room.
The floor was covered. Something soft and deep that his father stepped onto immediately and made a sound that Cael had never heard his father make... something between surprise and pleasure, his foot pressing down into it and then pressing again like he needed to confirm it was real.
"Oh," his father said. "Oh, that’s—"
"Soft," Neve said. "Yes."
A bed in the centre. Cael had seen sleeping straw his entire life. This was something else. He walked to it and pressed his fingers into the surface, and his fingers sank in and kept sinking slightly before the material pushed back.
He pressed again.
"Is this from the red panda tribe?" he said.
Neve made a small sound. "Uh... Yes."
"Your tribe kept all of this to themselves?" the chief asked from the carpet, still pressing his foot into it.
"We were secretive," Neve said.
Cael looked at the wardrobe. The drawer set. The centre table. The rug between the bed and the wall. The lamp that wasn’t burning anything, and wasn’t flickering and wasn’t going to go out.
He thought about every piece of information Neve had produced since arriving here. Fire. Cooking. Medicine. Clothes. Now this.
’The red panda tribe,’ he thought, ’must have been extraordinary.’
He looked at Neve standing in the entrance of the room with the lamp, watching their reactions.
"Neve," the chief said from the middle of the carpet. "Is it possible to do this for the other caves in the tribe?"
Neve’s face went very still. Cael looked at him.
Neve looked at the carpet under his father’s feet. At the bed. At the wardrobe. At the lamp.
"That’s—" he started.
"The whole tribe," the chief said. "Imagine every family with a floor like this. A sleeping place like that." He gestured at the bed. "Whatever that is."
Neve’s mouth opened and closed.
His tail had gone very still.
"That," Neve said carefully, "is a very interesting question."