Mated to the Warrior Beast

“I’m waiting, Gar,” Elreth hissed as they stalked down the trail. If she’d been in her lion form, all the hair on her back and tail would have stood up.

Gar kept looking around, left and right and up into the trees, as if he thought they might be trailed by birds. “We need to get out of the City limits first, I think,” he said. “We’ve got hidden patrols everywhere right now.”

“Which only begs the question, how did any Chimera—even one—get into the City at all without Anima help?” Elreth muttered, cursing under her breath.

Aaryn gasped. She turned to her mate who stared at her shocked.

“You think they were helped by one of us?”

Elreth looked at Gar and saw a strange combination of pride and regret on his face.

“Yes, I do,” Elreth said, without breaking eye-contact with her brother. “Holy shit, Gar. What did you do?”

Gar gestured for her to be quiet. “First thing’s first, if we’re going to find Tarkyn, you’ve got to send Aaryn back. One of us has to stay in the city in case the others are hurt or delayed.”

.....

Elreth drew up short. She hadn’t even thought about it. But he was absolutely right.

Aaryn stared at her. Hard.

For a second she was confused.

Oh, wait. Baby. Right. Her cheeks pinked. “I, uh, won’t do anything stupid. But I need to talk to Harth and Tarkyn, and if we wait for someone to travel to them, and them to travel back, it wastes precious hours. I need to know what they know, and hear what Harth has to say about what Zev is likely to do now.”

“You need to rest,” Aaryn said pointedly.

Elreth let her eyes flash at him. “I need to do nothing except live my life and… and accept what I cannot change,” she said, arching an eyebrow at him. “And I need to talk to my brother.”

Gar raked a hand through his hair, but he didn’t contradict her.

“Seriously, now you two are closing ranks on me?” Aaryn gaped at them. “After everything we’ve been through—”

“No, Aaryn. Now we’re all doing what we have to do for our people. I need to talk to Gar. Gar needs to take me to Taryn. And that means that you need to go back and be King in case something happens to me. Or him.”

Aaryn’s jaw twitched. “At least take guards—”

“I’ll pull some off patrol on our way,” Gar said. “I know the signals. They’ll come. I’ll wait until we’re out of the City though, because whoever’s watching now might be in on it—if they got in and out without being detected… we can’t know.”

Elreth’s stomach chilled. He was right and she hadn’t even thought of that.

But that meant that any of the guards might not be trusted!

Elreth buried her face in her hands, but then caught herself and shook it off. No, no she wasn’t giving in to that fear and paranoia again.

Something bad had happened. Something she couldn’t control. Now she had to deal with it. And she needed Tarkyn on board to do that. And she needed to hear what her brother had to say.

“Aaryn… I’m sorry to ask it, but please. Can you go back? Gar will keep me safe until the patrols join us. And then we’ll have Tarkyn as well on the way back. I can’t afford to lose a whole day to their travel. And we can’t afford to have no hierarchy present at the Tree City, just in case.”

“You realize they could be planning an invasion? That this could have been their first move—there might be an entire army out there!”

“There’s not,” Gar said emphatically. “They couldn’t hide that from us. I would know. I’m dead serious, Aaryn. We’ve had an escape, but this isn’t… this isn’t war. And it doesn’t have to be.”

Elreth shot her brother a look. But he just met it with pleading eyes. “We can’t turn on each other, El. We can’t start suspecting everyone. We have Anima mating Chimera. Clearly we were brought together for a reason. We have to find away through this!”

“How?”

“I want to send Tarkyn to the Chimera. As an Emissary. They won’t kill him because it would kill Harth.”

For a moment Elreth’s pride rankled. She’d thought of that too—why was everyone a day ahead of her today?!

“Unless they’re ruthless and they kill both of them,” she said stubbornly, though she knew she’d end up agreeing on this point. There was no one safer to send than Tarkyn—but that meant she needed him back here and coordinating with Gar before he left and all hell broke loose.

Her brother and mate argued, of course. And she let herself be persuaded, because really she didn’t have a choice. Then finally, Aaryn submitted.

“But you watch over her—she needs as much rest as is possible, do you understand?” Aaryn said to Gar, his eyes flashing.

Gar nodded solemnly. “I’ll protect her like she’s Rika.”

Aaryn pulled Elreth into an embrace, and she went willingly, suddenly no longer eager to be apart from him. But she knew she had to.

She was the reason they’d gotten this far without a solution. She needed to be the means by which the answer was found. It was the only way to redeem herself.

Aaryn held her and kissed her, and signed to her in the finger-language they’d been developing since they were children, ‘Don’t put the baby at risk. Don’t put yourself at risk. Come back to me, safely.’

She nodded, swallowing back tears, which was so frustrating. She wasn’t a crier!

Then she and Gar turned away and hurried down the trail as Aaryn headed back towards the city.

She waited until she was certain her mate would be far enough behind not to hear, then she turned on her brother. “What did you do? What do you know about this? And why didn’t you tell me?!”

But Gar just turned to face her, his own expression stern. “How long have you known you’re pregnant? And why didn’t you tell me?”

Elreth’s jaw dropped.

*****

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