Claimed By the Horde King by Zoey Draven

Chapter Thirty-Six

“You cannot be serious,” Odrii said, staring at me like I’d lost my mind. And perhaps I had, but all I could feel hours after Seerin had torn my heart from my chest was numb. “Nelle. Nik. I will not take you back. Your home is here.”

Avuli sat at the low table in her voliki, Arlah at her side, looking between us. Though the young boy had learned a few words in the universal tongue, he looked confused by the exchange and his mother would not translate the conversation for him. She was looking at me, her expression knowing. As if she recognized heartbreak in me because she’d experienced it keenly herself when her mate had died in battle.

Her mate didn’t choose to leave her. He was taken.

Seerin, on the other hand, had willingly chosen this.

I hadn’t cried since I left his voliki earlier that morning. It was nearing evening and I simply felt…as detached as Seerin had seemed.

“I will return to my village with or without your help, Odrii,” I said softly, looking down at my hands. They were smooth and soft now, even during the cold season, probably because I’d been Seerin’s alukkiri, spreading on his oils every night.

A sharp pinch in my chest made me squeeze my fists hard and I looked up at Odrii. The warrior male was looking at me with a thunderous expression, as if angry with me.

“You do not know the way,” he growled.

“I know,” I said. “But I will still leave.”

He cursed under his breath, looking to his sister, who’d still said nothing.

“You just need rest, Nelle,” he argued. “Your perspective will change in the morning.”

“And if it doesn’t,” I started, “will you be my guide back?”

“She will not change her mind, Odrii,” Avuli finally called out softly. “You will take her back, brother, if she does not wish to stay. You would rather her leave by herself? Nik. It is safer this way.”

Odrii cursed again, looking away from us both.

Silence permeated the voliki. I’d never questioned whether this was the right decision because in my eyes, it was the only decision. I simply could not stay.

“I’m sorry to ask this of you,” I whispered, looking at all of them. It was then that grief slithered its way up my chest, tightening my throat. “You know how much I care for you. All of you. And it breaks me even more that I have to leave you. But if I stay…I’m worried that—that it will take everything that’s left of me, everything that he hasn’t taken already. I would be a shell. Nothing more.”

I’d begun to envision my life in the horde with Seerin. I’d thought we had a future together because how could we not?

Had he known all along that this would be the outcome? Every single night, as I lay in his arms, had he known that he would have to break me apart like this?

I thought he’d loved me. But now, I could see that I was a fool for believing that in the first place.

He was cruel, if he’d known all along.

“Please,” I whispered, looking at Odrii. “I-I need your help. I have to leave.”

I would never see Seerin again. I would never touch him, or see his smile, or taste his lips, or look deep into those consuming eyes again. I craved him as much as I hated him. My heart wanted two very different things at once, so it was easier to not feel anything at all.

Once, I’d been afraid of this happening. When I’d been back at my village, I’d feared becoming so emotionally distant from everything around me that I would simply float away. I thought that I would simply cease to exist if that happened.

But right then, it felt like a blessing.

Odrii finally nodded, but he looked at me as if I were hurting him. “We will leave in the morning. At dawn.”

Relief pierced that numbness with startling sharpness. Relief and grief.

“Thank you,” I whispered, tears finally falling again.

* * *

Odrii metme at the entrance to the encampment a little before dawn. Avuli was with him, but Arlah wasn’t.

I’d taken only what I needed for the journey home, which consisted of my warmest clothes. After some internal debate, I’d decided to keep Blue’s pendant, but had taken off the blue jewel necklace Seerin had gifted me a couple mornings before and left it on my bed. The only thing I regretted not being able to bring with me was the rock that Arlah had given me, which sat in Seerin’s voliki. And I wouldn’t dare go there now to retrieve it.

Everything else I didn’t need. I’d survived for years on much, much less.

I didn’t feel the chill as I approached Odrii on his pyroki. Avuli embraced me when I reached her and I squeezed my eyes shut as I wrapped my arms around her, letting her warmth seep into me one last time.

“Please tell your father ‘thank you,’” I told her softly. She pulled back and looked at me. “I regret that I didn’t say goodbye.”

She nodded.

“Arlah?” I asked hesitantly.

She shook her head and I felt a prick of sadness and guilt. When I’d left their voliki the night before, Arlah had finally understood that I was leaving permanently and he’d barely looked at me, turning his face into his mother’s dress when I’d tried to embrace him.

“I am sorry,” she whispered. “He did not want to come.”

I nodded, swallowing the thick lump in my throat. Avuli reached out and patted a heavy-looking sack attached to the seat of Odrii’s pyroki.

“Dried kinnu and kuveri,” she explained. “I went to the bikku’svoliki last night and took as much as I could fit. It should last you through the cold season.”

My throat tightened at her foresight. “Thank you.”

“I packed an extra fur,” she said. “And a blade. Just in case.”

I nodded, thinking of the dagger Seerin had given me, which was in his voliki next to Arlah’s rock. Back in my village, I’d always slept with an arrow close by, especially after Kier’s attack.

Odrii made a sound on his pyroki, a growl. He didn’t like this. He couldn’t understand why I needed to do this, but Avuli seemed to understand.

“Nelle,” he said softly. “Please reconsider. Stay. This is madness.”

His pyroki stomped its claws into the earth, as if agreeing with his master’s words.

Pressing my lips together, I reached out to squeeze Avuli’s hand.

“Thank you,” I whispered, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “For everything.”

She gave me a watery smile, her eyes shimmering in the low light of the morning. “Lik Kakkari srimea tei kirtja.”

May Kakkari watch over you.

I reached my hand up towards Odrii and he sighed, his shoulders sagging, taking it as my final answer, my final decision. He pulled me up easily, settling me in front of him, his thighs encasing my own.

Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed movement between two volikis. When I turned my head to look, praying to Kakkari that it wasn’t Seerin, I saw his pujerak instead. I’d barely seen him since that night, over a month ago, when he’d confronted me in the training grounds. Now, the Dakkari male stood, watching us with narrowed eyes and a frown.

When his gaze turned to me, I looked at him for one brief moment.

You got what you wanted, I thought quietly. I’m leaving.

His lips pressed together in answer, but instead of smug victory on his face, there was only…relief.

I looked away, giving him no more of my time or my thoughts, looking down at Avuli one last time before setting my gaze out towards the plains that I saw beyond the gate of the encampment. I didn’t look back as Odrii’s pyroki led us away. I didn’t look back at the training grounds where I’d spent many nights with my bow, or my mitri’s weapons tent, where I’d finally perfected my arrows, or the maze of volikis that I could navigate in my sleep. And I most certainly didn’t look up the small incline at the back of the camp at the voliki where I’d spent some of the happiest moments of my life.

I would never see him again.

I would never see him again.

The sudden realization almost broke me completely. It was that crushing.

“Ready?” Odrii asked me. We were just outside the gates now, a blanket of snow and ice in front of us, stretching as far as I could see over the plains of Dakkar.

Never. I would never be ready.

“Yes,” I said, as tears drenched my cheeks. “I am.”