Chapter 38: I Did Not Sign Up For A Public Announcement!
The celebration was loud and long, and Neve was bored within the first hour.
He wasn’t unhappy. He was just bored and tired. There was no beer, pork meat or anything spicy. It was just filled with conversation flowing around the central fire about things he had no context for. Territory boundaries. Trading agreements. The specific political history between the leopard and tiger tribes that went back apparently several generations and involved disputes he had no frame of reference for.
He nodded when it seemed appropriate, said nothing, and leaned slightly into Cael’s side.
Cael’s arm tightened at his waist. He had not moved it since they sat down. His head had migrated to Neve’s shoulder somewhere in the second hour, which Neve had noticed and then decided not to acknowledge because acknowledging it would require doing something about it. But right now, he was comfortable with it. The weather was cold, and Cael was warm.
He was like a very large cat who had found a sunny spot.
Neve watched the children instead.
Both tribes’ children had found each other within twenty minutes of the tiger tribe’s arrival and had been operating as one unified, chaotic unit ever since.
They were gathered in a circle near the edge of the fire, doing something involving the ground and a lot of excited noise.
One of them held something up.
A worm. A large, pale, wiggly worm that was clearly just excavated from the dirt.
Others crowded in. Someone screamed. Someone else grabbed it. The first child grabbed it back. It became a worm-based territorial dispute that the adults around them were comprehensively ignoring.
Neve watched this for a while.
It was more interesting than the trading agreement conversation.
Ryker was three seats away, talking to one of the leopard tribe elders about something. He had the focused expression of a chief covering business.
He was doing it well. He was also looking at Neve at regular intervals in a way that he was clearly trying to make casual, but was not succeeding at making casual. Neve could tell he’s being watched.
Neve looked at the fire.
On Ryker’s other side, Isabella sat straight-backed and pleasant-faced with her hands folded in her lap, talking occasionally to the woman beside her. She was doing a good impression of someone who was completely comfortable with everything happening around her.
Neve had spent enough time around people performing comfort to know the difference from the real thing.
She looked at Cael’s arm around Neve’s waist and Cael’s head on Neve’s shoulder.
She didn’t stop there. Her eyes also lingered on Neve sitting there in the shirt he had made himself and the pants with the tail hole and the mark on his neck, and looking... he knew objectively how he looked, the appearance stat made it impossible not to know... and Isabella’s jaw was set in a specific way that her smile was not reaching.
Neve yawned.
He didn’t mean to. He covered his mouth, but it had already happened, and Isabella’s eyes sharpened immediately.
She looked at him.
Then, at the gathering around them.
Then back at him like someone who had found an opening and had decided to use it.
"Neve," she said.
Her voice carried just enough to pull heads around without seeming like she was trying to pull heads around.
Everyone looked.
Cael didn’t move his head from Neve’s shoulder.
Isabella’s smile was warm and filled with concern. It was the kind of thing that Neve recognised as fake. After all, he had categorised her as part of the people who had weaponised warmth so long they didn’t notice they were doing it anymore.
"I heard you haven’t officially become the young chief’s mate yet," she said. "But he’s already spent his crystals on you. That fabric, the things in his cave—" She tilted her head. "It’s a lot to give someone who hasn’t committed anything in return."
Neve looked at her, confused.
’Why is this one talking to me?’
He was still thinking about ninety five percent pheromones and winter tomorrow and how he was going to sleep with Cael tonight. So his brain was not fully present for this conversation.
Isabella kept going.
"And forgive me for asking," she said, in the tone of someone who had already decided they weren’t sorry for asking, "but isn’t it strange? A man with a female scent?" She looked at the people around them, making sure they were following. "The young chief is wasting time, surely. You can’t give him cubs. You can’t even be a proper mate. What exactly is the arrangement here?"
There was murmuring. She had read the room correctly... There were people here who didn’t know Neve well, who had questions they hadn’t asked yet, and she had just given those questions a shape and a voice.
Neve let her finish.
He was not particularly hurt. He had known since the cave visit that Isabella was building toward something. He had just waited to see what shape it would take.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Cael spoke first.
"I’m not the young chief," he said.
His voice was completely flat. He had still not moved his head from Neve’s shoulder. He said it like someone who was correcting a factual error.
The murmuring stopped.
"My brother is well," Cael said. "Soren will be chief. Not me."
Everyone looked at Soren.
Soren, who had been quietly eating across the circle and had apparently not expected to become the subject of the conversation, looked up with a piece of meat halfway to his mouth and found the entire gathering looking at him.
He lowered the meat.
"I—" he started.
"That is true. He’s been unconscious for more than two years," someone said. "You’ve been... we thought—"
"He’s well," Gideon said from beside Soren. "Thanks to Cael for bringing the right help at the right time."
"Haha! The help was Neve," Soren said.
Ryker looked up from his conversation immediately.
"Neve?" he said. "He knows medicine?"
The leopard tribe chief laughed. The genuinely pleased laugh of someone whose tribe had just been made to look good in front of guests. He straightened up and looked around the gathering like he was about to make an announcement he had been saving.
"The leopard tribe has been blessed," he said. "A beastman of the red panda tribe... rare, secretive, knowledgeable beyond what we knew to ask for. He treated my son when no one else could." He looked at Soren. "Which means the tribe is ready for its next chief." He turned to Soren fully. "After the winter festival tomorrow, I will hand leadership to you."
Soren’s piece of meat hit the ground.
"Father—" He was already moving, dropping to his knees in front of the chief. "I’m not ready. I’ve been...I was unconscious for two years, the tribe has changed, I don’t know—"
"You’re more ready than you think," his father said.
"Cael should lead. He’s been—"
"I don’t want to lead," Cael said.
Everyone looked at him.
He was still sitting beside Neve. Still had his arm at Neve’s waist. He said it with a flat and uninterested tone, like he’s not ready to have any more conversation.
"I want to pay attention to Neve," he said. "Not everyone in the tribe."
The silence that followed had a specific texture to it.
Neve looked at his own hands as his tail started to move and his cheeks flushed red.
Soren looked at his brother for a long moment. Something moved across his face, like an older sibling watching a younger one be completely and sincerely themselves.
"I’ll accept," Soren said quietly, and turned back to his father.
The gathering reacted immediately. Voices picking up, the energy shifting to a particular excitement of a succession announcement.
Isabella sat very still.
Her plan... whatever the specific shape of it had been... had not produced what she was looking for. The murmuring she had generated had been redirected within thirty seconds, and now the gathering was talking about Soren becoming chief and Neve treating him and being the leopard tribe’s good fortune. There was no space left for what she had been building toward.
She pressed her lips together. Neve did not look at her.
Then the seat beside him changed occupants.
Ryker stood from where he had been sitting, crossed the gathering without asking permission, and sat down on Neve’s other side.
His people looked at him. Even Isabella was frowning. She didn’t want her chance with the tiger tribe chief to get ruined.
Ryker looked back at his people like someone who had made a decision and was not explaining it.
He took Neve’s hand, turned it over and pressed his mouth to Neve’s knuckles.
Isabella’s breath made a sound.
Neve looked at Ryker’s mouth on his hand and then at Ryker’s face. Ryker was looking back at him with those eyes that didn’t hide anything he wanted.
"I guess it’s time I announce something too," Ryker said. His voice was loud enough to reach everyone.
’No! No! No!’ Neve screamed in his brain.
Ryker looked at Neve directly. "I intend to bond with you, Neve."
The gathering went quiet again. Cael’s arm around Neve had gone rigid.
Neve’s eyes never left Ryker.
’Fuck! I didn’t sign up for this fucking public announcement!’