Claimed By the Horde King by Zoey Draven

Chapter Three

Reeling, as disbelief faded into horror, I stared into the dark eyes of this female…and I saw it.

Kakkari’s light, her guiding force. It manifested in different ways for different Dakkari, but it was unmistakable and undeniable. I’d experienced it twice before in my lifetime, though not through another, and it had led me to this.

To her?

For a moment, I was suspended, frozen in place, speared by her dark eyes and the knowing within them.

As a horde king of Dakkar, I’d endured much. I’d killed many. I’d saved more. I’d protected my horde and punished those that threatened it.

And as I stared down at this human female looking back at me, shivering against the pain of the whip—pain I knew well—I felt exposed. I felt as if she’d peeled back my flesh and exposed the monster underneath, when I’d never wanted to be one, when I had sworn in whispers during the night that I would never become one.

“Vorakkar?” the horde warrior called out, his bloodied whip poised, waiting for my order.

“Nik,” I choked out, holding up my hand. “Pevkell!”

Enough.

“Will you kill me now?” she whispered, tears tracking down her cheeks. Her face was so dirty that the tears streaked her skin.

She thought me a monster. And I was. No better than the bloodthirsty Ghertun that roamed our lands, killing and pillaging for the sake of it.

“Nik, kalles,” I rasped out. No, female. “I was never going to kill you.”

I heard the truth of that in my own frayed voice, but I had always meant to punish her, though I had never harmed a female—Dakkari or vekkiri—before in my lifetime.

Her eyes slid shut and I felt like I could breathe again, without the weight of her eyes. Dread rolled in my belly. It was the same dread from last night, when I’d watched her in the darkness. Had I known then? Had I sensed Kakkari’s pull in this female even then?

She has the strength of a Vorakkar, I thought, restlessness rising in my chest. She was small, young yet somehow old, with bones as delicate as a thissie. She looked half-starved, unwashed, and her clothes were not suitable for the coming cold season. They hung off her in rags. Yet she’d withstood the lashes of the whip. She hadn’t looked at her fellow villagers, but rather, she’d looked beyond them. She hadn’t told me who was responsible for the kinnu herd thinning, though there was obviously a lack of loyalty on their side.

“Vorakkar,” my pujerak, my second-in-command, called out.

“Neffar?” I snarled, my nostrils flaring. I looked up at him and I realized that he was watching me carefully, as were my horde warriors beyond him. He had expected me to execute her. Swiftly, easily, as was my duty when vekkiri broke the laws of our Dothikkar, our king. Perhaps that would’ve been more merciful.

Vodan, my pujerak, looked stunned by my reaction. I’d never once lost my temper, I’d never once lost control of my tightly restrained emotions.

Bury them deep, my son, so you never know the pain of them. Only then will you be powerful.

My mother’s words came to me and I bit out a curse under my breath, realizing that I was being watched by all, even the vekkiri behind me.

The villagers all looked half-starved and exhausted themselves, save for a few.

It is true then, I realized. The rumors that the human settlements are failing.

The Uranian Federation were not providing for their refugees, as promised to the Dakkari when a deal had been settled on after the Old War. When had the last ration shipment dropped? It looked like it had been at least a year.

And I had just whipped a young female hunter who had only tried to feed herself and her village. Because it was just one thing among many that my Dothikkar required of me.

But he did not see what I saw right then. He did not feel what I felt rising within me, the horror of my actions. Seated in the capitol of Dothik, surrounded by his luxuries and his females and his feasts, how could he understand this?

But I understood it. I knew hunger. I knew desperation.

What I also knew was that if I left the female there, she would die of her wounds. Her body was weak, malnourished. If infection took root, it would kill her.

And that I could not allow. I would not allow her to die. Not her. Not this kalles who had torn me open with sad, old eyes, with thissie feathers clutched in her palm.

Not this kalles who Kakkari herself had marked for me…who’d just been whipped bloody on my orders.

“Vok,” I cursed, belly churning, crouching in front of her. Her breaths were shallow and her eyes were closed.

Shame filled my chest, though it was an emotion I was well-acquainted with, especially growing up on the streets in Dothik. I’d clawed my way from the darkness and filth to become a horde king, but I’d never felt more like a fraud than at that moment.

A growl left me and I turned to the villagers, calling out in the universal tongue, my voice booming in the clearing, “Who claims this female?”

No one stepped forward. Not a single soul moved.

Was that relief I felt? That she was unclaimed? Or something else? Something darker?

I made my decision then. Careful of her wounds, I lifted her with ease, cradling her against my chest. She hissed at the jostling movement, her wounds pulling. Then she loosened in my arms, the pain finally overcoming her body. A small mercy.

I ignored the ripple of low murmurs that went through the villagers behind me, ignored my pujerak’s furious, baffled expression, ignored all but Lokkas, my pyroki. I held out my hand for my loyal beast and he came to me, nudging his long, pointed snout into my outstretched, calloused hand.

Vodan approached me then, the tension between us palpable, the tension in the village thick.

“Vorakkar,” he hissed. “This is…you cannot take her. As your pujerak, I must advise against this. The horde will not—”

“I am not the first to take a vekkiri female,” I told him. “I will not be the last.”

He sucked in a breath. “Surely you do not mean—”

“Enough,” I growled, my patience threadbare. “You have questioned me too much as of late.”

“You chose me as your pujerakbecause I question you, Vorakkar,” he replied softly, his eyes straying to the female in my arms.

“She will die if I leave her.”

“She was always supposed to die,” Vodan argued. “From the moment her arrow sunk into the rikcrun, even before then, she was always meant to.”

I stilled, drawing in deep lungfuls of air to calm the maelstrom swirling inside me.

“Ready the pyroki and the warriors,” I bit out at last, holding his gaze, daring him to challenge me.

His jaw ticked. Finally, he inclined his head. “Lysi, Vorakkar.”

Then he turned from me, biting out orders to the darukkar and they began to clear from the village.

I hefted the kalles onto the back of Lokkas before swinging up behind her, tucking her close. Taking my pyroki’s reins in one fist and using my other to steady her, my gaze connected with the village’s leader, a male who offered his given name much too freely, though I did not care to remember it.

He only held my eyes for a moment before he looked away, a muscle in his cheek twitching.

Circling Lokkas, I urged my pyroki into a run through the village’s open gate, kicking up dust in my wake.

“Vir drak!” I bellowed.

Answering cries from my horde pierced the air and I pushed Lokkas faster and faster, gaining distance from the village until it turned into a speck on the horizon.

The female in my arms didn’t wake once on the journey, though her blood soaked my chest. It soaked into my skin, marking me as certainly as the golden tattoos across my flesh.

When we reached the edges of our temporary encampment, I swung off Lokkas and brought the kalles down gently, grim determination coursing through me as I carried her to where I slept.

Mercy. It was what Arokan of Rath Kitala’s vekkiri queen had asked of me, with her rounded belly and shining eyes, pregnant with his child, with his heir. Had that just been yesterday, when I had visited the other Vorakkar’s encampment? When I had told them I was journeying to an eastern human settlement to punish the hunters responsible for the kinnu?

We only ever needed mercy, she’d told me in her soft, human way. Arokan had given her mercy, had spared her brother’s life, and her life had been forever changed.

As I laid the kalles down on her stomach over my bare pallet, as I looked down at her wounds, I knew this was not mercy.

Vodan appeared at my side as I peeled away the female’s cut tunic, exposing the entirety of her back, the evidence of my brutality.

Monster? Lysi, I’d been becoming one for years. Or perhaps I’d always been one, shaped and crafted, like a blade, since my youth.

“I will bring clean water,” was all Vodan said, knowing that my mind was made up, knowing that it was already done. And that was why I’d chosen him as my pujerak. For all his faults, for all mine, he was loyal to me, to the horde.

I stared down at the female with her cheek pressed against the hard pallet, taking in her strange features. She had dark hair, the palest skin I’d ever seen, a pointed nose, a small mouth. I hadn’t encountered many vekkiri in my time as Vorakkar, though I was certain my horde warriors had when I’d sent them on patrols.

When I turned to look for Vodan, I saw my horde warriors dismounting their pyroki, casting speculative glances my way, though none met my eyes out of respect.

Perhaps they thought I’d gone mad, like the horde king to the north.

PerhapsI have, my mind whispered.

Still, the weight of their stares prickled my neck.

“Ovilli, vir drak drukkia!” I called out, my voice echoing around the encampment.

Prepare, we ride at midday.

For home.

The warriors were eager to return, as was I. In a flurry of activity, they began the process of breaking down the camp, leaving me to tend to the kalles without the weight of their eyes on my back.

Vodan returned with a pot of water and clean cloths. I took both from him and went to work. I was no healer, but I wore enough scars across my flesh to have ample knowledge of wound care.

“No uudun salve?” I asked Vodan.

“Nik,” he replied. “We did not expect…this.”

Vok, I thought but pressed my lips together. I soaked the clean cloth in water and pressed it to the kalles’ back. She was dirty and the cloth came away a muddied red, grey with filth.

“Hold her down.”

Once her arms were secured, I tipped the clean water over her back, washing the dirt and blood away. She came awake in an instant, her body tensing, a muffled cry falling from her lips.

“Be still, kalles,” I told her in the universal tongue. “I need to dress your wounds.”

“You,” she whispered, her face turned to me. Her dark eyes were unfocused, dilated, but they were on me. “Why?”

It was unnerving, I realized. Once I became a Vorakkar, no one met my eyes, except for other horde kings, my pujerak, and my Dothikkar. To have this kalles look upon me so freely, I was reminded that once, I had been nothing more than a duvna, a scurrying, poor gutter rat in the streets of Dothik. Everyone met my gaze then.

What was most strange was that, looking into her eyes, I realized how much I’d missed it. That simple connection of looking at another being.

Yet, with her, it was something more. Something that called to me, something I recognized, pulling me in, threatening to consume me as surely as it promised to free me.

“Because I must,” was all I told her.

She hissed in pain when I poured more water over her back and I gritted my teeth, an uncomfortable sensation swelling in my chest with her cries.

From experience, I knew it hurt like Drukkar’s fire.

“I don’t think I want to die,” she said, teeth clenched, looking straight at me. “I don’t t-think I…”

She trailed off, the pain pulling her under again. Released of her gaze, with a grim expression, I washed as much of the wounds as possible, but without the uudun, I knew the risk for infection was high. We needed to reach the rest of the horde soon.

“Why are you doing this?” Vodan asked me quietly, releasing her limp arms, watching as I bound her back in clean cloth. “You are a Vorakkar. She is a vekkiri. You punished her for her crime, yet now you seem driven to save her.”

I didn’t answer him.

“What did she say to you?” he asked quietly. “When you ended her punishment, she spoke to you.”

It wasn’t about what she said. It was about what I saw, what I felt.

Again, I didn’t answer him.

Instead, I told him, “Vir drak drukkia.”

We ride at midday.