He didn’t share meals with me (not that I got up to eat, I didn’t get up at all, except to use the pot at the back). He didn’t visit with me.
He didn’t even know my name.
At least he was gone during the days.
And he had just left and like every day when he left, the five women who’d seen to me after the claiming rushed in and bustled around his tent with great activity. The one with dark skin, clearly the leader of the group, as usual coming to me, talking gently but increasingly anxiously using words I didn’t understand but her hand was always light on me, the shakes she’d give my body always gentle and I got the message – she wanted me to get up.
I didn’t get up and eventually they gave up and stole out.
I barely looked at them.
I needed to get home. I needed to get the fuck out of there.
I needed to do it but I had no clue, not that first stinking clue, how to do that.
And my nightmare rolled on.
The hand left my hip and I felt her get up from the bed. Then I heard her speaking softly but urgently to the other women.
I shoved my hand under the pile of soft pillows at my head and kept staring across the tent, seeing nothing, still feeling him between my legs, knowing he’d be back.
What could have been five minutes or five hours later, I heard the tent flap slap back, my body tensed, my mind searched the tent to see if it could feel if it was him who had returned (it would be a first, it was still daylight) and I didn’t feel his raw, brutal energy filling the tent.
I relaxed.
Then I felt a presence seat itself behind me and another light hand on my hip.
“Kah Dahksahna, my dear, you must rise, you must eat, you must show yourself to The Horde.”
I blinked and turned to my back, my arm moving to cover my breasts as I stared up at a very pretty woman with dark brown hair, hazel eyes and a gentle expression. She was wearing the clothing of the natives and speaking my language.
“You speak English?” My voice was scratchy because I hadn’t used it in three days.
Her head tipped to the side. “English?”
Great. She didn’t know what English was. She wasn’t here from a dream either.
I stared at her and guessed she was maybe in her early forties and aging very well. I also knew, in their desperation, the women who tended me went out and found a woman who spoke my language.
Well, interesting to know that there was another person in that vile place who spoke my language but not interesting enough for me to care.
I turned to my side again and resumed my contemplation of nothing.
Her hand shook my hip gently. “Kah Dahksahna, please, you must rise. There are whispers.”
“I don’t care,” I stated though it was more that I didn’t understand but I didn’t care enough to understand either.
“I see you were sheltered,” she muttered to herself, her fingers giving me a kindly squeeze.
No. I wasn’t sheltered. Like Narinda, my Mom died when I was young. It happened when I was ten. A freak incident, the kind you never heard of unless it was on TV or in a movie. Mom going to the bank, a robbery in progress, the robber flipped out when Mom walked in, he turned and shot her. She died in the ambulance. She was doing something simple, making a deposit and then… no more Mom.
My father owned a moving company and was not loaded by a long shot. Therefore, he couldn’t afford to pay for babysitters or childcare but also, with what happened to Mom, I thought it was about him keeping me close and around people he trusted. So I grew up in his office around his men who looked after me, took care of me, were cool about it and I loved them. They did their best to be appropriate around me but they were guys. Shit happened. I heard things. It was the way of the world.
And I grew up in that office until I started managing that office at fifteen. Now, at thirty-five, I still managed that office and the guys didn’t do their best to be appropriate around me. I was older; I’d been around awhile so I was one of the guys.
Though one of the guys with tits and ass that I caught some of them staring at on more than one occasion.
But I wasn’t sheltered.
That said, I’d definitely been sheltered from this. Then again, Pop didn’t know this existed. If he did, though, he’d have sheltered me from it. He’d take a slash from a warrior’s sword to protect me from it, as would any one of his boys. I knew it.
I wondered what he was thinking, being at home, me not there. He was probably going out of his mind.
“I know this is strange for you,” the woman said.
Right. Strange. Yeah, she hit that on the head. Strange.
Though, I might use another word for it.
Or several.
“But, you must care, kah Dahksahna,” she whispered on another squeeze.
“My name is Circe,” I told her quietly.
“Pardon, my dear?”
I sighed then repeated, “My name is Circe, not kah Dahksahna.”
“Circe, lovely,” she murmured. “But Dahksahna isn’t your name, it is just you. It means ‘queen’ and you are our queen.”
I decided not to reply. That had been working with the other women, no reply, eventually they’d go away.
Her fingers gave me another squeeze and I felt her bend closer.
“I remember feeling much the same as you. Seerim, my warrior husband, was different than the Dax, of course, but I remember this feeling, my dear. I know it is not a good feeling. But you will come to understand it is their way.”
“It sucks,” I muttered, forgetting about not responding.
“Sucks?” she asked, sounding confused.
“It sucks, it stinks, it’s for the birds,” I explained, rolling to my back again with my arm over my breasts and I locked eyes with her. “It’s hideous, foul, vile, detestable… it sucks.”
Her eyes got soft and she said quietly, “It is their way.”
“Their way sucks,” I returned and rolled back to my side.
Her voice came back to me. “I understand you see it that way. But, they know of our way, of wooing and falling in love and waiting to claim your mate after your wedding celebration, not the peasants doing that but soldiers doing it, warriors, and they think that is strange. Laughable. Silly. They think it is ridiculous, not to face a challenge, best your brothers in order to earn a beautiful wife. You don’t believe me now, but I promise, as unbelievable as it seems, you will come to understand their way. I have seen, now, ten Wife Hunts since my own. There are girls like you, girls who settle in and enjoy their lives with The Horde. You will too. You just need to get up and face it, learn their ways, be amongst –”
I cut her off. “I’m not getting up.”
“You must.”
“Well, I’m not.”
I felt her get close, her mouth at my ear. “You must Dahksahna Circe. For your slaves, for your Dax, for The Horde and… for you.”
My body got tight and my head turned to her. “My… slaves?”
I watched her nod. “The women who have been seeing to you. Those are your slaves. The Dax has given them to you. It is very generous. Most warrior brides receive a slave, at most two. I have been with my warrior over twenty years and I only have three.”
I blinked then repeated, “Slaves?”
Her face flooded with understanding but still she stated, “The Horde takes slaves. It, too, is their way. In
