Page 19 of Rhaz's Redemption
Footsteps sounded from down the hallway and everyone grew silent. Rhaz stepped into view and my traitorous heart skipped a beat when his eyes met mine.
“I’ll leave now to speak to my sire about the offering,” he announced. “I do not know if I’ll be successful, but if I am, this question of the goddess being real or not will become irrelevant.”
He gave a pointed look to both Lumod and Axon. Lumod uncrossed his arms and Axon took a few calming breaths.
“Be careful. You know better than anyone how dangerous Dameron can be,” Tarak warned.
“That I do,” Rhaz sighed. Then he turned to leave again, but before he did, he glanced over his shoulder one final time and let his gaze linger on me.
“Do not send anyone after me if I don’t return. If you don’t see me again, assume I have failed and prepare to either give an offering or a fight.”
His words sent a chill down my spine.Don’t send anyone after me. Rhaz had been so quick to discard his own life as if he were actively seeking death and would not be stopped until he found it. It was unsettling.
“I’ll decide whether someone checks on you or not,” Tarak called out after him, but Rhaz was already gone. I walked to the exit of the ship and watched as the large badger shifter disappeared into the forest.
“Good luck,” I whispered. I wanted him to be successful so we could keep our food storage full, or at least that’s what I told myself, but I knew deep down I just wanted to see him come back alive. Dameron wasn’t one to be messed with. The more I heard about the other Savrix, the more I understood why Rhaz was so afraid of becoming like him, his father.
Unfortunately, that didn’t change anything between us. I could not fight this battle for him. He would have to decide for himself what reality he wanted to live in, the one in which he is his own person, making his own decisions, or the one in which he believed he was destined to repeat the mistakes of the male he hated the most.
I would not convince him either way. Some journeys, no matter how hard they become, are meant to be walked alone.
“He’ll be back,” Nahrul stood behind me and patted my shoulder. Then Jax came around my side and mimed being stabbed in the heart, dying, then coming back to life again.
“He’s impossible to kill?” I laughed. Jax was the optimist of our community. The young hunter nodded his head with a smile.
“I hope you’re right,” I commented as I turned my attention back to the treeline where Rhaz had disappeared. “Please be right.”
We returned to Axon’s moon cave once more where everyone settled in for the night. I sat with Anusha and Fatima as we ate the vegetable soup Orsu had prepared.
“This has been so nice,” Fatima sighed as she glanced toward the exit of the cave. “Did I ever tell you that I used to travel for work?”
“No,” I shook my head and took another bite of soup.
“Yeah, before I got abducted, I had been hired by a private art collector to curate a museum they were building. For six months I traveled all over the world inspecting artifacts that she was interested in.”
“Fancy,” Anusha commented. “That beats working in a lab all day.”
“I thought you liked your graduate program,” I retorted.
“I did, but school is school and my advisor had an unwritten expectation that we had to work in the lab for seventy hours a week.”
“Seventy hours?” Fatima grimaced. “That’s awful.”
The three of us were sitting next to one of the three tunnel entrances that led out from the main cavern, and ourgroup suddenly grew silent as we heard the echo of Neelu and Drondia’s conversation. They must have gone into one of the tunnels to have a private chat without realizing anyone sitting at the entrance could hear every word they said.
“It’s such a shame his mate died so young,” Neelu began. “I heard they didn’t even get a chance to fulfill luminescence before she died.”
“Yeah,” Drondia sighed. “Do you see how he looks at the other couples? You can see in his eyes that he longs for what they have.”
“Who are they talking about?” Fatima whispered.
Anusha and I shrugged our shoulders and I looked out to the crowd gathered in the cave with us. It didn’t take me long to catch Zander looking in my direction, but his gaze wasn’t locked on me, it was focused on Fatima. He quickly looked away and turned his attention back to Tarak and Gabby with whom he was sitting.
“Maybe Zander?” I whispered as low as I could. “I can’t think of anyone else who had a mate that died.”
The other women nodded their heads and we remained quiet so we could eavesdrop on the rest of their conversation.
“Do you think he’d be willing to risk a relationship with one of the unmated women here?” Drondia asked her friend.
