Page 37 of Ragoru

Thral huffed and turned his attention back toward the village. That was another reason that they couldn’t approach. For all of his grace and skill when it came to running through the forest, it all disappeared once Sabol was put on a mountain. The humans wouldn’t even have to see their approach. They would be able to hear Sabol before they even left the foothills.

“What is it?” he growled, working hard to keep the unpleasant bite from his voice.

His foul mood wasn’t Sabol’s fault, so he wasn’t about to take it out on the other male. Not only would it be wrong, but Sabol wouldn’t hesitate to rip into him with claws and teeth for the insult. The other male wouldn’t try to kill him, nor did he think that Sabol would try to wrest control of the triad from him, but he would issue a painful reminder that he wouldn’t allow mistreatment. Worse, he knew that it would hurt the male’s feelings—he could already see a hint of uncertainty on his face as his ears rotated back warily.

Since Thral wasn’t interested in hurting Sabol any more than he was interested in nursing wounds while their mate was gone or being dragged over the rocky terrain by either of the males in his triad, he reined in his temper and offered Sabol an apologetic look.

“Apologies, Sabol,” he sighed gruffly. “What brings you down here?”

The male dipped his head slowly in acceptance of the apology and cleared his throat. “I was just curious if there was any sign of Evie returning.”

Thral shook his head. “Not yet. Probably won’t see her on the path for another day or more,” he reluctantly admitted.

“Ah.” Sabol glanced back up the mountainside toward their “camp” as Evie called it. “There’s nothing but hard, miserable rock here, but it’s not the same without her here.”

Thral rumbled in agreement. The rocky ledge where they had carefully built their sleeping nest was terrible, but that first night it had been bearable with Evie there nestled between the three of them. Without her it was difficult to get comfortable, even when they curled in close to each other for comfort and warmth when the wind took a cold turn. Yet the waiting was the worst of it.

“No, it is not,” Thral agreed. Although he hated to show any sort of vulnerability when he was to be the strength that led their family, he made the decision to open up to Sabol and share the yearning that had been weighing on his heart over the last several days. “I miss our den in the forest. I miss the smells of our territory, and the mingle of our scents in our home. I miss being there with our mate nestled between us.”

Sabol peered at him for a long moment, his throat working with the emotion that overwhelmed him. His four eyes blinked rapidly, and he peered down the narrow path that twisted dangerously below. They both stared at it for a long moment, lost in their thoughts when Sabol suddenly growled in the back of his throat. “I don’t like this. I don’t like the distance and not being able to see where she is or smell her. We were insane to agree to this. We should just go down and get her. We could be down there by nightfall.”

“And then what?” Thral asked, his ear tipping inquisitively as his brow rose. “Do we try to sneak in and alert every human in the village—including the huntsman that Evie warned us of. And if we did, how would our mate appreciate us being killed in front of her?”

Sabol snarled, but he didn’t argue. These were things that they all knew, but the male just didn’t appreciate the reminder. Thral understood since he didn’t care for it either. His instincts called for him to act much as Sabol had suggested, but it was remembering that they were reasoning beings and that they had given their word to their mate that kept him rooted to the mountainside even as his blood raged at him to do more.

“It shouldn’t be much longer,” he assured the other male as much as himself. “Once she is done, she will return to the mountain for us. Until then, all we can do is wait.”

Shaking his pelt in an attempt to relieve his own distress, he turned and nudged Sabol back toward camp. They could wait just as well there and see just as much of the path from their vantage point. His descent into the lower foothills had more to do with his own anxiety than any tactical advantage. The other male went reluctantly ahead of him, and they loped back up along the sheer rocks and the narrow, treacherous paths until they returned to the flattened shelf of rock. Vrishna looked up at them curiously from where he sat on a large rock. He tipped his head inquisitively, and Thral shook his head.

A look of disappointment shifted across Vrishna’s face, and Thral felt it deep into his own bones. He had expected to see or scent some sign of Evie leaving the village. It frustrated him that she was lingering behind the human walls so long when she had been certain that she would be able to get in and accomplish what she needed to do swiftly. He had lost her scent early that morning, presumably when she had stepped beyond them, and already the sun was beginning to sink in the sky.

Sitting next to Vrishna, he pulled a small piece of wood from the sack of supplies that he’d hidden in there and resumed scraping at it with his claws. It wasn’t much, but the work settled his nerves some—more so he expected than Sabol’s nervous pacing did for the other male, though it made Thral want to cuff him and force him to sit. In any case, Thral needed the distraction. It kept him from dwelling too much on the slow creep of time, though he never ceased sniffing the air whenever the wind blew right, searching for a hint of her return. That didn’t stop him from growing increasingly anxious as the sun dipped lower in the sky with still no trace of their mate carried on the air.

What could possibly be delaying her?

CHAPTER31

Although she had a wonderful nap, Evie was less than amused that it was practically sunset by the time Overseer Manchen returned for her with profuse apologies. Something about a mix-up at the mine which caused the miner to miss the first transport out, and then, upon return, she had to log in her equipment and verify her cache. All of this Manchen explained, and as a reasonable person, Evie got it. As a woman separated from her mates, however, her patience was dwindling. By the time Evie was brought to see the witness, she in a foul mood and only somehow managed to keep herself under control as she followed the overseer to an isolated table at the back of the cafeteria. Evie took her seat across from the miner as Manchen took a seat to her right.

Dull mousy brown hair cut at jaw length framed the miner’s round face. Tired dark green eyes followed Evie as she took a seat at the other side of the table. Evie wasn’t given an opportunity to introduce herself before the miner spoke, her voice soft but having a firmness to it that Evie appreciated.

“I’m guessing you’re Ms. Willocks.” At her nod, the woman tipped her head in acknowledgment. “I’m Suzanne Striker, but feel free to call me Suzanne. The miners here don’t take too much with formality. As you may or may not know, I’m assigned to work in the northeastern stretch of the mines, and it was within one of the new tunnels that we had opened up that I saw it.” She paused and gave their surroundings a second glance before focusing on Evie once more. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I don’t like to say anything whenhe'saround. The huntsman makes my skin crawl, and he’s been too interested in all of this since I made my initial report. He’s hungry for something, and that hungry sort isn’t to be trusted, as my daddy always said. But since you are here and have come all this way to hear about what I saw, I’ll get straight to it. I’ve pulled a long day.”

“Please,” Evie replied gratefully. “The report was incomplete as far as I can tell. All it said was that you saw something that didn’t look natural and provided approximate coordinates, but now I’m hearing that this was something seen inside the mines?”

Suzanne shook her head. “It wasn’t in the mine at all, but I saw something through a deep crack in the wall of the tunnel. This whole mountain region is riddled with all sorts of caves. In some ways that makes it easy for us because it can provide different access points for our tunnels. We still wear our protective gear, including our filter masks, but fresh air shafts do make our life easier. We had just opened the new northeastern tunnel. It’s the farthest we’ve gone yet under that particular mountain. The shaft there was entirely unexpected, and I’d been standing there, looking at it, when I saw something moving along a wall.”

She paused and chuckled humorlessly. “More like behind the wall. It took me a moment to realize that I wasn’t looking directly at the wall itself but at a deep crack about half as wide as my body, and there was something—someone—slinking back there. Pale gray skin and what looked like masses of dark boils covering it. I would have thought it was a person except its body seemed to curl in on itself, like it couldn’t quite walk right, and it made this terrible shrieking sound.”

Evie waited patiently, her holopen hovering over her pad as Suzanne lifted her cup and took a long drink of the water in front of her before setting it back down.

“There are rumors, of course. Supposedly the original colonists had a facility in the mountains here somewhere that the port here served. This was before the mines were discovered, I think.” She looked over at the overseer, who nodded in agreement.

“That’s what I heard too when I was stationed up here. A bit of lore from the previous supervisor and there are some hints that I found in the logs here,” Manchen clarified. Her expression softened as she looked over at Suzanne. “If you don’t have anything further for Ms. Willocks, you may go ahead and have your meal and retire.”

A look of relief crossed the other woman’s face, and she bobbed her head. “Sorry to say that’s all that I have. Whatever it was, it made my skin crawl because, despite the way it was bent over and mangled and those disturbing boils, there was something almost human about it that gives me nightmares. I hope you’re able to discover what it is. I would certainly sleep better knowing.”

Standing, Suzanne left their table and slipped among the crowd of miners, leaving Evie with Overseer Manchen who sighed and rubbed her eyes.

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