Page 31 of The Highseer's Mate

“Varek!”

Chapter 13

Varek

I’m on the mountainside, meeting with Draxel in the privacy of the rocky heights.

Except now all I can see, smell, taste, and think, is her.

My mate.

They way she watched the skies like she’d never seen anything so beautiful. The way her cheeks flushed every time I touched her. She’s divine. I couldn’t have made her more perfect if I tried.

“I left the provisions outside the ship and watched. No movement. When I returned last night, the food was still there. Untouched,” Draxel reports.

I frown. Humans as Paige calls herself. They are either stubborn creatures by species or unobservant.

Judging by the troublemaker in my furs, it’s the former.

“And this morning?”

“Untouched. And there was a strange scent.”

I cock my head.

“Sickness. Rot,” Draxel clarifies.

“From the land?” I press. We are no strangers to pruning the marshes when they reject the mists, but they have never turned so soon. It was but two years ago that our harvesters turned over that entire zone.

Draxel shakes his head, his jaw firm. He carries his weapon of choice over his back—a spear longer than he is tall. On the leather weapons strap across his chest are luminite daggers, sharpened to slice the beard off a strid in one swipe.

“From the…humans,” he grits out the word as if it’s dripping with acid. He snarls and spits on the ground.

His dislike of my mate’s kind has my spinal bristles flaring.

I widen my stance and level him a look. I’m not here to chat about the shortcomings and weaknesses of the human race. I’m here to get an update on the females my mate wants to protect. I promised to do my best, but I’m going against my duties as Highseer here.

Something I never thought I would do.

“Get closer,” I say. “Confirm that the rot is coming from them and see if you can’t figure out the issue. Or if there are more coming.”

Five other females.

The odds are stacked against us, but I never thought I would encounter my mate inside the strange vessel. There’s a chance—however slim—that some of my clan’s mates are also on that ship. We can’t let them die.

Paige would never forgive me.

But we can’t bring them to the glowhollows to protect them either.

Again, my Mate is a stubborn female.

She doesn’t understand that the marshes, the expanse, is a dangerous place. The luminite keeps us safe here, we can harness it to ward away the Thachiens and the strids steer clearof populations larger than a family of nomads. There is strength in the togetherness.

And those women are not safe.

“We should hand them over to the rest of the council,” Draxel suggests, his jaw tight. “Let them decide what to do with the women. They are none of our concern.”

I hold up a hand to silence him. “You are a hunter. Not a Highseer.”

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