Page 22 of The VaDorok's Unexpected Mate
“So, what’s on the schedule for today?” she asked, her head tipping so that she could comfortably peer at him.
“Today—” He frowned. He had not thought that far ahead. He was simply feeling things out as he had while raising Ren. Did the others utilize specific daily plans? He cast a furtive glance around his den to see what needed to be done, his gaze falling on the skins that he was preparing. That would do. “Today you will assist me with working leather for a while, and then we will prepare our midday meal together. Just don’t let that creature near the leather,” he added with a grumble as he stood and cast a distrustful look at the durwa curled up a short distance away, on a pillow she insisted on it having.
“You worry too much,” she scoffed as she gave the animal and pat and rose to her feet. “Gremlin is well behaved. She hasn’t attacked your leather once.”
“Well behaved,” he echoed as he squinted suspiciously at the durwa. He snorted in disbelief when the creature twitched its oversized ears at him. Seemed unlikely. “Just see to it that it stays that way,” he grumbled as he headed toward the low table at the side of the room.
Rather than take a seat there as he normally would, he picked up the basket sitting beside it and carried it to the table set in front of the large sitting cushions so that she would be morecomfortable. His ears twitched as he heard her following behind him, but he pretended to take little notice of it. As if he wasn’t aware of her every movement through the room as he lowered himself onto the cushion behind the basket.
Katie sat beside him, crossing her legs in front of her. Her head craned toward the basket, a curious look on her face. “What’s that?”
“I do not currently have any fresh hides that need to be scraped and cured,” he explained, taking a large section of leather from the basket. “We can begin that process when I acquire skins of adequate size. For now, you will learn how to cut and sew leather panels together to make basic styles of clothing.”
She made a face at the leather. “No offense, but sewing was never my strong suit. Maybe we should skip this lesson and move onto something else that I have a reasonable shot at successfully doing.”
Kull lowered the leather into his lap and stared at her. Skip it? “How do you plan to clothe yourself in the future if you ‘skip’ this lesson? How will you survive at all if you simply refuse to do anything that is difficult? Even if you decide to take a mate who desires to care for you, do you imagine that you can simply shirk whatever you do not like to do? Even if he was willing to do this—what if he died and left you alone?”
“Wow,” she mumbled with a wince, her head lowering. “You’re not even going to sugar-coat that, are you?”
Sighing heavily, he reached for the wooden box that contained his carefully made needles and set it on the table so that it sat in front of both of them. “You think that I am being harsh with you—and perhaps I am—but surviving on Dorok does not just mean practical thinking when it comes to animals and resources, but it means being capable.” He eyed her and her cheeks reddening with what he figured to be shame or embarrassment, and felt it like a knife to his gut. He hated thatthe closeness that he had begun to feel with her forced him to be unkind, but if he did not push her, no one else would. “At this point, none of the rescued humans are capable enough to survive here.” He gentled his voice as he leaned down toward her bent head. “I do not mean to sound unkind, but truthfully, this is not a place for a people so soft and incapable of surviving here.”
Her lips twisted in a grimace. “That’s funny because Sara’s mate thinks she is the best thing to have set foot on Dorok, but all I’m being told is that I’m going to fail. Why? Is it because she managed to make it out of the lab like some kind of great heroine, whereas I suffered with humiliation not just once, but twice, and therefore I can only be a stone around someone’s neck?”
To his horror, her red-rimmed eyes brimmed with moisture, though she blinked them furiously in an attempt to keep tears from spilling. He immediately felt terrible. He had not meant to imply that at all. He considered her to be the bravest of the females, and that was why he couldn’t coddle her. She had to understand how serious the situation was.
“Vidok is following his heart. It makes him blind to some things but also pushes him to play a dangerous game against fate. If anything happened to him—” He bit off the unlucky words, not wishing to give voice to something that was so terrible. He nudged her gently so that she looked up at him. “You are strong to survive what you did,” he quietly admitted. “But you have to be even stronger to survive here. If I did not think you could become capable, I would not be pushing you to learn well.”
She blinked her eyes rapidly and gave him a wobbly smile. “Yeah?”
He nodded, the truth of his words surprising even him. When had his opinion changed so quickly from the absolute certainty that she would die? Perhaps it was her obvious cunning andstubborn determination that was beginning to make him feel as if she could be capable of anything that truly set her mind to. “But I fear that it would never reduce my worry,” he honestly added. “Even the life of a VaDorok can slip away far too easily here.”
With one hand, Katie dashed unshed tears away as her face filled with sympathy. “That’s right; you lost someone,” she whispered.
Again, he nodded, but this time with far more weight and sorrow behind the gesture. The wounds were old and healed over, but they had scarred him, and they still made him ache when he examined them. “My mate and unborn offspring.”
Her small gasp of surprise sent a shard of pain deep through him. When speaking of his mate previously, he had not mentioned that she had been pregnant, and with good reason. The double loss had been a pain that he had struggled greatly to endure when he wanted nothing more than to rage at the gods and find a place to curl up and die.
“It wasn’t the ice or snow, or even the threat of starvation that had killed her—though such things have felled VaDorok males and females alike, and every time is more horrifying than the last—but the ever-present threat of off-worlders arriving with an unknown, and potentially lethal, purpose. She was not ‘humiliated’ like you say that you were.”
A sickness filled his belly at the thought of what Katie had suffered at the hands of the Agraak intruders. He wanted to kill them all over again for harming her in such a way. The knowledge that they could return, or another off-worlder could come and hurt her in such a way again, made him feel both murderous and incredibly anxious.
“Instead, they killed her as if she were less than a beast while we were out hunting.”
“Damn, I’m sorry, Kull,” she whispered, her hand settling over his. “I get why you are worried about a bunch of humans running loose here unequipped for this world if nature can take us out so easily, but also because we are easy to overpower.” She squeezed his hand and gave him a watery smile. “I promise I will work harder. I’ll do my best to learn everything so that I can ease your worry for at least one person.”
He returned her smile. She spoke as if she were no different from all the other humans and that worrying less about her was something trivial. How could he tell her that she was the one who mattered the most? Not just because of the ulukskinon, but because she had been the one that he had held in his arms and personally pulled out of that terrible place. He had witnessed her fire and determination for survival even when every threat to her wellbeing had held her firmly in its grip. He cared about the fate of the humans left on Dorok, but she was the only one he truly worried over.
The leather that he held in one hand suddenly tugged sharply, jerking off his lap, startling him as it flew across the room, one end held firmly by the white furry blob of the durwa racing away with it. Its entire body vibrated, and right before his eyes, it began to rapidly shred the leather as he jumped to his feet. He discovered that he did not need to give chase, however, because the creature raced around the other side of the table to deposit the mangled leather at Katie’s feet with a satisfied purring trill.
Katie glanced up at him guiltily, her fingertips going to her lips in shock, though he could see that she was struggling not to laugh. And he honestly could not blame her.
“Oh shit, sorry Kull!” she said, handing him what remained of the hide. “I’m so, so sorry. Bad Gremlin!” she turned and scolded the little monster.
He shook his head, laughter escaping him in spite of himself. “Do not be. As far as she is concerned, I deserved it. Look at how pleased she is with herself coming to you for approval.” He shook his head again in amusement. “Let us see how much of this we can salvage.”
“Do you really intend to teach me how to set a basic trap?” she asked as she studied the leather in his hands. “Despite my complaints, it actually may be a good idea. While I may not be able to chase anything down, learning to do that much might be helpful. It does seem like much of what you subsist on comes from your traps.”
“Yes, this is my thinking as well,” he replied. He taught Ren to trap burrah as a youngling. It should not be too difficult to teach a human. “But first we must get some suitable things made for you to wear. Without fur, you are going to need several layers... leg coverings, overskirt, tunic,” he rattled off as mentally combined the attire of male and female younglings to make sure that Katie was as warm as he could possibly make her.
