Page 54 of The Weaver

That emptiness within him filled with something bright and warm—pride and admiration.

As he neared the shelter, he made sure to brush his legs against a plant, rustling its leaves.

Her face snapped toward him, eyes rounding as she raised the knife in a trembling fist. When Ahmya saw him, her tension faded, and she lowered her arm, setting down the weapon.

Rekosh lifted his mandibles and crossed the last few segments separating them. Just outside the overhang, he pressed his forearms together and offered a low bow.

“Please forgive me,vi’keishi. My threads were...coming undone.”

Her brow furrowed. “Are you okay?”

Straightening, Rekosh nodded. With her before his eyes again, those desires stirred anew, but they’d lost their ferocity and overwhelming urgency. At least for now. “Are you?”

“I am. I was just worried about you.” She beckoned him with a hand. “Come out of the rain, Rekosh.”

He hunched down and entered the shelter, moving through the runoff falling from overhead. Shaking his head, he brushed the excess water from his hide with all four hands.

His hearts stuttered as he beheld the items laid out within the space—the contents of his bag. Had she seen it? Had she discovered his mating gift? Heat swelled within him again, wholly different from the heat of earlier, skittering under his hide and speeding his pulse.

Rekosh’s gaze fell upon the leather bundle, still exactly as he’d bound it.

No. She has not seen.

Every time he’d been about to present his gift, to declare himself to her, fate had intervened. And now, when they were alone, when he finally had Ahmya to himself, he could not do it.

It would’ve been so easy to speak the words, to give her the dress. To at last see her clad inhissilk.

But he knew that doing so would be to surrender whatever control he’d managed to wrest from himself. Seeing his silk caressing her lithe little body would shatter his tenuous restraint on the instincts he’d only just quieted, and he would succumb to them. He would mate her. There would be no resistance, no denial. Some part of him longed for that.

Yet he could not, would not, submit. He wouldn’t risk harming his Ahmya.

He would wait just a little longer.

The heat fled him in a slow, barely controlled breath.

“I took everything out of your bag so it can dry,” Ahmya said as she stepped around him from behind. “I…hope that’s okay?”

Rekosh turned his face toward her. She stood beside him with her long black hair hanging over her shoulders, covering her small breasts, and her hands fidgeting against her belly. Even her tiny toes, so strange and yet so delightful, wiggled on the ground.

Perhaps he should’ve felt shame for failing to tend to his belongings, but he could only feel pride in her.

His mandibles twitched up into a smile. “Yes. It is good, Ahmya. You did what I should have done.”

“You were exhausted and injured.” Frowning, she gestured toward his left foreleg. “You’re still injured.”

“Small hurt,” he said with a chitter. “Could have been more bad.”

“But you can’t walk on it, Rekosh.”

Ahmya bent down and picked up one of her silk coverings, but not before Rekosh noticed the subtle quivering of her bottom lip and the tears gathering in her eyes. She stepped closer, maneuvering between his left legs, and draped the damp silk over the top of his hindquarters, wiping the water from his hide.

A soft trill rose from his throat. He’d never been tended to like this by anyone, not since he was a broodling, but to have Ahmya doing this for him…

It was what mates would do for one another. A simple, intimate way for them to serve each other. To show their care.

“You’re hurt because of me,” she said, voice quiet and spiritless. “Those beasts attacked because of me.”

Rekosh twisted toward her, catching her chin in one handand forcing her to look at him. Her eyes glimmered, and the tears that had been welling in them had spilled down her cheeks. He did not care to see her cry. It made everything in him feel tight and unsettled, made the whole world feel wrong.

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