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“I rushed back here to get to you before the next turn at Gahn Thaleo’s came. But when I saw that shuttle lifting off, when I knew you were on it and that I had come too late...” He growled, running his claws through his hair. I blinked, noticing it was ever-so-slightly shorter than before, the cut much more even than it had been after getting bitten off.
“Your hair!” I gasped, reaching out to brush my fingers along the blunt, shoulder-length ends. “Did you cut it?”
“Not me. The new woman Zuh-Loane at the settlement. She has some experience with it.”
“Oh! You mean Sloane? Yeah, she used to cut hair as a part-time job back on Earth.”
“Yes. She has skills in such a thing and I wanted to look presentable and... Bah!” He sliced his hand aggressively through the air. “This does not matter! I am making a mess of things.” He fixed me with those tired, piercing sight stars and then, as if scared I was about to run away, enclosed my shoulders with his hard grip. “When I was in the Sea Sands, the Lavrika came to me.”
There was some way I should have felt. Something I should have said. But for the life of me, I couldn’t determine what it was supposed to be. Everything was muted, held behind a vibrating curtain. In a moment, that curtain would be pulled back. The emotions would rush in. And I’d either be left elated or devastated.
Depending on whatever else Dalk had to say.
“Congratulations,” I said numbly. “Who...” My voice caught. I swallowed and tried again. “Who’s the lucky lady?”
One of his hands moved inward from my shoulder, over the crinkly surface of my jacket to the exposed side of my neck. He palmed me there, cupping my pulse like he was cradling my very heartbeat.
“I just hurled my spear at Valeria’s shuttle to keep her from taking you away from me. Do you really need to ask that question?”
“You didn’t... You didn’t just... want to talk to me? To tell me that you had some new mate?”
His eyes flashed, sight stars glancing off of each other like light off water.
“No,” he hissed, his grip on both my shoulder and my neck tightening. “I had to stop that shuttle because only unmated women are required to go into Gahn Thaleo’s territory under the new deal.” His gaze grew fervent, heated. “And you are no longer an unmated woman.”
“Am I dreaming?” I stammered, slapping my palms against my cheeks until the skin stung. “I feel like I’m dreaming. Or...” Suspicion suddenly reared its ugly head. “Are you lying to me?”
“Lying to you?” he echoed in affronted disbelief. “You think that I would lie to you about this?”
“Well, I don’t know! Last time we talked you were willing to risk all sorts of punishment or manners of exile, even going as far as murdering a man, just to be with me! A little lie doesn’t seem so bad compared to all of that.”
“Name one other time that I have ever lied to you!” he exclaimed, his tail snapping back and forth with agitation.
“That time I scraped my knee and you said you were just cleaning my wound when you licked me,” I replied.
He froze and then frowned.
“Name another time I lied,” he finally said, some of his righteous indignation fading.
“Well, hopefully this isn’t one of them,” I said. “Dalk... I want to believe you. You have no idea how much. I’ve basically thought of nothing but you this entire time. I missed you so much. And I was hurting for you, too, for the loss of your uncle. I love you-”
Dalk reared back.
“-and I want to be with you, and I just need to know if we’re really going to have a chance or if things are going to fall apart someday, and maybe even someday soon. I don’t want to sink into this happiness with you, to think that we’re safe, only to have everything get ruined when I least expect it.”
“You... You love me?”
“That’s... What? Yes! That wasn’t what I was asking though!”
“No,” he growled, stepping closer, backing me up against the cave’s wall, “that is what I am asking.”
“I love you, Dalk,” I admitted, staring up into the astonished whir of his sight stars. “I knew it that night before you left. I’ve known it every day since then.”
“This day and all days,” he murmured quietly. He said it oddly, like it was a line from a poem or a prayer. Something he had heard before and was repeating now.
“I love you,” I confirmed. “I love you and I’ll say it as many times as you want to hear it. After you answer my question! Did you really, truly get summoned by the Lavrika? And was it... Was it really me you saw?”
“Yes,” he growled. “I have four witnesses who saw the Lavrika come for me, and one of them was a new woman, the Gahnala Chapman, in case you were about to question the credibility of my fellow Sea Sand men. I have no witnesses for what I saw in the pools,” he said, more softly now, toying with a stray strand of my hair, rubbing it reverently between his fingers and his thumb. “No witnesses besides the Lavrika itself. There is no proof beyond the way I love you, Fiona. And I hope that can be enough.”
