Page 92 of Ruled By The Alpha

“It’s gone!” I shout at him, my nails digging into my flesh as I bunch my hands into tight balls. “It’s gone!”

He blinks, sweeping ash from his face. “What?”

“My kill. It’s gone.”

His head swings that way and he peers at the bare patch of ground.

“You were meant to be guarding it,” I spit, thinking of him again curled up cozy beside me while a creature crawled into our camp.

His gaze sinks to the ground in shame. “I am sorry, Nafia.”

“Sorry?” I cry. I don’t want him to be sorry; I want him to shout back. I want him to be angry. I want those words fromyesterday and the warm sensation from waking up beside him to be wiped away with our mutual animosity. Frustration courses through my veins. We are far from our people—most probably lost—and now our kill is gone too.

Hot tears spill from my eyes and onto my cheeks, and I taste salt as I scream at him again. “You’ve ruined everything!”

He jumps to his feet at this, and now I can tell he is angry by the tightness of his jaw and the rigid form of his shoulders. He picks up my spear and starts to march.

“Where are you going?” I shout. But he doesn’t answer, does not even acknowledge me, just keeps on walking out toward the plain.

For a moment I just stare at his back, then swing my gaze about desperately before running after him.

“Wait,” I call, but he ignores me.

His stride is longer than mine, and I have no choice but to trot to keep up with him as he continues his fierce march across the grassland.

We continue like this until my breath comes fast and ragged, mixed with my exasperated sobs, and something in his countenance softens. His steps slow, and finally I can match him without the need to run.

“Where are you going?” I ask when I can speak again. We are no longer walking east.

“That tree,” he says, pointing to an old tree, mighty and magnificent against the lightening sky.

I peer at its branches, strong and thick at its trunk, thinning to spiky, twisted things at its points. “Why?”

But he’s still angry with me, and he doesn’t answer until we stand beneath the great boughs and the sky is hidden through a blanket of thick leaves.

Hensta hands me my spear and jumps, catching the first branch above his head and pulling himself up.

Now I see; he means to scale the great tree and make its canopy his vantage point.

I jump too, my hands scraping the bark, but failing to find purchase. Dropping to the earth, I curse, then try again.

“Stay there, Nafia,” he calls to me from so high in the tree I can hardly make out his brown body camouflaged against the wood.

Frowning, I jump harder. This time I find my grip, and with a grunt, I swing my legs up and shimmy around the branch. Then I climb, the tree providing branch after branch to lift me into the sky until I’m peering out above the leaves.

It has been a long time since I scaled a tree like this. I had forgotten the awesomeness of the view. From up here, all the land spills about beneath me. It is breath-taking. This is what it would mean to fly, like they say the ancients once did, to look down from the sky and see all below, to feel the wind stroking at your wings.

My gaze skips right to the horizon, and for a moment, all my worries disappear.

Hensta’s head breaks the dome of leaves, and I realize I must have passed him on my way up.

“I beat you,” I say, unable to keep from grinning.

“You should have stayed on the ground,” he grumbles.

“You are the one with the injured shoulder.” I smile at him. I can’t help it; I can’t stay angry up here in the sky.

He examines the curve of my lips, and a smile of his own breaks across his face as he shakes his head. It is like watching the sun chase away the darkness at dawn, his whole face brightening. He so rarely smiles, and I realize now that each time he does, it’s like a little victory, a special reward all of its own. Perhaps more satisfying than taking down a kill.

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