Page 70 of Unleashed

She took a tentative bite of the meat, unsure of how it would treat her uneasy stomach. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since her last meal, but she was hungry enough that she was almost nauseous.

Her uncertainty shattered once the flavor hit her tongue. She devoured the rest of the meat with a ravenousness she’d rarely experienced, tearing it apart much like she’d seen her valos do. She sucked the little flakes of leftover meat off her fingers and looked up to Balir.

He had another piece waiting, and she ate it just as quickly.

Only as she finished that second helping did she consider what Aduun had said. They needed to move forward; she knew that much without being told. The need had grown inside her with each step they’d taken, driven by the urgency of those voices. But what did he mean by the rest?

“Why does the cover of night matter?” she asked. “Isn’t it usually safer to travel by daylight?”

“Usually, yes. But what awaits us through that opening is…” Aduun frowned, brow furrowing. “There was a word, an old word from the tales, but I never really used it myself…”

“She’ll know when she sees it,” Vortok said.

“The word isdesert,” Balir said gently. “Beyond this cave is a desert.”

“Yes. That is the word.” Aduun lifted a bowl in one hand and a waterskin in the other, carefully pouring the melted snow into the spout.

Nina knew the word; for Orishok, deserts were little more than mythical places in old stories, but Quinn had confirmed their existence and provided more detail. Regardless, Nina had no experience with deserts. That they were dry and hot comprised the entirety of her knowledge.

“We’ll leave shortly then,” she said, taking another drink from the waterskin Vortok offered before rising to her feet. Only then did she realize how filthy and…stickyshe was. Her cheeks heated. Stepping toward the fire, Nina picked up one of the skull bowls. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

“Do not go far,” Aduun warned.

“I could go with you,” Balir offered.

“No. It’s fine. I won’t be long, really,” she said.

They both frowned at her, concern and conflict in their expressions; she understood it was difficult for them to let her out of their sight after several near-death scares.

“Let her do what she needs to do,” Vortok grumbled. “She can survive a few moments away from us.”

Nina smiled gratefully at Vortok, grabbed her clothing, and moved deeper into the cave. She found a secluded spot away from them which still received a bit of the firelight. After relieving herself, she used the water in the bowl to splash herself clean and scrub her thighs and lower abdomen.

Once she was satisfied, she dressed herself and returned to the valos. She handed the skull bowl back to Aduun. “Is there still enough to refill the skins? I can go and—”

“There’s enough, Nina,” he replied. “We have no more reason to go back.”

She nodded and stepped away to gather her belongings, lifting the blanket off the cave floor after everything else was packed. She frowned at the musky smell that wafted from it; the thing was well overdue for a cleaning, but there wasn’t likely to be any opportunity to do so if they were about to enter a desert. When she noticed light shining through the blanket, she pulled the fabric taught, slipping her fingers through the small tears that had been clawed in it. She cast a smirking glance at Aduun and Balir before wadding the blanket and stuffing it into her bag.

While Vortok and Balir moved to the cave opening, Nina slung her bag over her shoulder and looked around the small space, committing it to memory. It wasn’t much, but what she’d shared with her valos here made it worth remembering.

Aduun scattered the little fire, plunging the cave into shadow. Nina turned toward the cave mouth, her gaze following the faint illumination on the floor. The sky outside was dark, but whereas the stone ceiling and walls around her were totally black, the heavens were deep violet, sprinkled with countless stars — countlessunfamiliarstars.

She and Aduun joined the others, and together they stepped out of the cave.

The landscape stretching before them was vast and uneven, with wide stretches of sand and dirt broken by chunks and outcroppings of bare rock, all sprinkled with scrubby vegetation. Everything was painted in varying shades of gray by the starlight.

The chill in the air surprised her; it couldn’t compare to what they’d faced on the other side of the mountains, but all the stories had described deserts as places of unbearable heat. For a moment, she considered digging out her furs, but decided against it. Once they were moving, her body would generate some warmth.

Aduun’s feet whispered over the dusty ground, their sound mixing with the night songs of unknown, unseen creatures, as he came up beside her. “Which way?”

Nina nearly cringed as she sought out the voices. That instinctual reaction came with a pang of guilt; these were her mates’ people she was trying to find, her adopted people, but there was just…somethingthat made her uneasy about it. The voices had changed since she’d first heard their calls. Maybe it was simply their desperation to know freedom. Maybe they were running out of time. Either way, Nina couldn’t help but feel guilty for her hesitation in seeking them out.

Raising her arm, she pointed at a spot in the distance where the dark shapes of rocky cliffs flanked a flatter, sandy area. “There.”

When she turned her head toward Aduun, she found him running his gaze over her body, and immediately recognized the hunger gleaming in his eyes. Despite everything, her body reacted.

“Not the time,” she said, as much to herself as to him.

---