“This one will take Aree,” said Quiet Hunter, as if he sensed what Thakur intended. As they cantered flank to flank, the herding teacher nudged Aree from his back to Quiet Hunter’s. The treeling gave him a questioning look and hesitated, but when he nudged her again, she hopped over to Quiet Hunter. “This one will keep her safe,” the dun male called. With three treelings lined up from nape to tailbase, Quiet Hunter dropped back.
Thakur spurred himself into a gallop. Now they were on clan ground, in the forest before the meadow. Ahead of him, Grunt and Belch moved like two gliding mountains covering ground quickly with their long strides.
Now the herd was in the meadow, gathering speed and pouring across the creek, churning the water into a muddy mess that stuck to Thakur’s feet. He couldn’t stop to shake his paws, but instead ran the muck off, sending it flying from his legs.
Now noise no longer mattered; in fact, the more the better. Thakur opened his jaws in a battle cry. Above the smells of dust, herdbeasts, and the other Named males, another mix of odors wafted to Thakur: the scents of the courting circle. Though he had never experienced it, images formed in his mind, of females prowling, rolling, calling, and posturing. Of males fighting, blood and fur filling the air while others sneaked past to grab a female by the nape, pull her down and climb hungrily onto her… .
Thakur ran faster, the aromas of the courting circle filling his nose and mind. Now he could catch the group scent of New Singer’s raiders and the scents of the females in heat. The sharp acridity of aroused males stung his nose.
Searching for one special smell, he found it. Ratha. Mingled with the odor of another male.
Thakur’s growl became into a roar, coming from deep in his chest, funneling through his throat, and surprising even him by its power. He flattened his ears, stretched his gallop to a fast run, intoxicated and enraged by the roiling scents pouring from the raiders’ courting circle.
Now he was no longer a herder managing a controlled stampede, but a determined challenger, charging in to defend his chosen mate. Now he was on clan ground, his own ground, and he felt strong and sure. None of those rogues would take Ratha. She was his.
A yowled, “Herding teacher, what are you doing?” sounded only dimly in his ears as he passed the run-walking face-tails and then the smooth-striding rumblers. He paid no heed, feeling only the burning of rage and longing and the pull and tense of his muscles as he flung himself ahead in huge bounds. His back bowed and arched, his hind feet swung so far forward that they nearly touched his ears, his forelegs reached and ate ground at a fantastic rate as he ran faster than he ever had before.
He was there, the astonished hunter males turning in his blurred sight, the campfire leaping, the shadows of single females and couples, the gleam of a tawny gold coat and a black pelt that shifted and sparkled.
Thakur was going far too fast to stop, even if he wished. He turned his last bound into a leap that carried him far above the heads of New Singer’s renegades. He sailed into the ring, baring teeth and claws, hurtling directly for Ratha and the night-coated rival that had dared to take her.
Whipping his tail, he crashed into the pair. He saw Ratha’s head come up, the eyes startled. Everything spun in a tumble of fur and claws as the three rolled. He kick-raked with his rear feet at the black coat as he flung his forearms around the tawny gold.
The growing roar was not only the outrage of the black usurper. Even through his rage and desire, he recognized the sound of the stampeding herd.
He was still rolling, his forelegs wrapped around Ratha, twisting and tumbling. The ground shook and the thunderstorm of the stampede shuddered through him. Ratha screeched in terror, and he found his voice joining hers. Through smeared vision he saw the huge shapes, the pistoning legs and the descending feet.
Not knowing how or why, he wrenched himself and Ratha over to a shadow that looked only a tiny bit different than all the others in the flickering light of the campfire. The ground suddenly disappeared from underneath him, and he spilled, still clutching Ratha, down a dirt slope, rolled, and slammed into an earthen wall.
“Thakur?” she squeaked, but the explosion of sound from above drowned Ratha out. He could only tighten his grip on her as the two were bounced about the chamber, hoping that a rumbler’s foot would not crash through the roof or a face-tail avalanche down on top of them.
He found himself burying his nose in the fur of her neck, his teeth seeking her nape. Her odor was wonderful, alluring, arousing.
He no longer cared about any danger that threatened. The thunder overhead only excited him. He was here with one he had loved for so long, with endless patience and hidden misery.
She felt the same—he could tell by her frenzied tongue-strokes on his neck, his chest, his belly, the root of his tail, the way she breathed his name and the way she moved beneath him.
“Thakur, I want you. I have always wanted you.”
Ratha, yearling, clan leader, bearer of the Red Tongue, beloved—how I have ached to hear you say that. How I burn now and only you can soothe me.
Neither heard the noises outside or felt the end of the earth shaking, for they were both enraptured with one another, singing together in wild joy, trembling fiercely. Their scents mixed and the wonderful aroma cocooned Ratha and Thakur as they came closer together than ever before, burying themselves in one another, entangled and entranced by their need. It grew deeper and more passionate until Thakur spent himself.
He heard Ratha cry out and twist sharply beneath him. Instinctively he braced himself for her claw-strike across the face, feeling the muscles of her shoulders tense. Her paw moved, but she checked it and only her velveted paws touched and stroked Thakur’s face.
They curled around one another, each bathing in the feel of the other’s fur, the shape of their body, the glow of their eyes, the brush of their whiskers.
Thakur felt a rush of tenderness as strong as the mating urge. It nearly made him choke as he tongue-caressed her head, her ears, felt the whiskers over her eyes, then the lashes.
Ratha, my Ratha, as long as we live.
“Yes, I am yours,” she whispered, as if he had said his feelings aloud, then he felt her relax and her breathing become slow and regular. Sleep took him, too, and he sank into it, surrendering himself to a lazy bliss he thought he would never know.
The question of cubs and the Named light in their eyes crept through his mind. Things had changed. They were not as definite or forbidding as before. Thistle-chaser had certainly proved that cubs from his and Bone-chewer’s line could be as intelligent and self-aware as any others of the Named. If Night-who-eats-stars was, as Thakur suspected, Thistle’s brother from Ratha’s lost first litter, the brilliance in his eyes showed that he shared her gift.
Thakur had noticed that the most talented Named cubs grew more slowly than others less gifted. He himself had lagged as a cub, and he remembered how others had thought him stupid and slow for a long time.
Ratha’s judgment of her young had been too early. She herself had been young, with the rashness of youth. Now that she was older, she would have more patience. With what he now knew, he could guide her. Whatever gifts her cubs had or didn’t have, he knew that he would love them dearly.
His years of exile were over. Now he could stand proudly and openly at her side as her partner, her helper, and, most of all, her mate.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Drifting up from velvet darkness, Ratha became aware that she lay with her back against a warm chest, her head resting on the inside of someone’s foreleg, the weight of his other foreleg resting on her side just below her shoulder. No, not just someone. Not a night-coated intruder, not a dream Bone-chewer. Just a nice, real, strong, warm Thakur.