Sasha grinned at him. “You make me nervous, too. I like it.”
“You would.” Dragan caught Zev by the scruff and pulled him in for a kiss. “I’ll send word to Snow-Walker and his mate, maybe Star-Finder. It will help if we have more people looking for him.”
Sasha headed outside with Zev, pulling his coat tighter. The chill in the air said snow would be there soon enough. “I’ll miss you this winter,” he told Zev as they headed toward the woods. “I mean, I figure you can’t come visit the caves.”
“Right.” Zev smiled at him. “I think my mate plans to keep me busy.”
“I think he does,” Sasha agreed, waggling his eyebrows. “Good for you. Seriously. If anyone deserves being bent over and fucked for a few months straight, it’s you, buddy.”
“Thanks,” Zev murmured, and the tips of his ears were red, though that might have been from the cold. He had his fur bundled loosely around himself, but he was barefoot, and though he wasn’t as skinny as he used to be, he didn’t have the same kind of padding most Lukoi did. “I’m going to shift now. Can you keep up?”
“Can I— C’mere, fur-face,” Sasha shouted good-naturedly as Zev shifted to his wolf form. While he couldn’t run quite as easily through the forest as Aksa could, he did fairly well.
Zev might have shifted to avoid Sasha’s teasing, but Sasha knew it was alsoso he could use Aksa’s better senses to find Micah. When they reached the burned-out husk of Micah’s shack, Sasha looked at Aksa with concern as the wolf whined and pawed at the ground.
“I got him out,” Sasha said, putting a light hand on Aksa’s head. The wolf whined again and trotted around, pawing at the piles of sticks, sniffing the air and moving back and forth as he attempted to follow Micah’s scent. After a moment, he woofed and took off at a lope, so Sasha cursed softly and followed.
It wasn’t long before he heard a cough a few paces away and saw Micah’s sad, limp form huddled under a lean-to. It had started to rain again, and if Sasha was cold… hell, that poor kid must be freezing. By the time Sasha leaned down to place a hand on Micah’s shoulder and shake him gently, Aksa was whining again and nosing at Micah’s neck.
Aksa turned and blinked at Sasha, who slipped his hand under Micah’s lank hair and pressed his fingers to his pulse.
“He’s alive,” Sasha said to Aksa, who was circling anxiously. “I’ll take him back to Viv, okay, buddy? Go back and tell your man, yeah? Don’t want him to worry.”
Aksa barked, then nudged Sasha before turning and doing the same to Micah. Micah barely moved, and he was so cold his skin was turning blue. Sasha wouldn’t be in any danger sleeping outside in this weather, but then again, he had a good deal more meat on his bones than Micah. If they hadn’t arrived…
Well, no point thinking about that. Sasha lifted Micah’s limp body, sighed, and turned to make the long trek home.
“Guess I should tell you a story, huh,” he said as he moved, at a pace he could keep up for hours, toward the mountains. “It’ll make the time go faster. How’s about a tale of epic romance, yeah? Everyone likes those. I’ll tell you all about how I wooed and married the best little sadist in all the land…”
* * *
Micah barely remembered being carried out of his shelter. There were patches of overcast sky, a familiar voice rising and falling through the fog in Micah’s mind, leaves trembling in the wind—and then warmth, the sound of a door closing. He opened his eyes, and it took him a moment to realize where he was.
It was a house. Not a house like his own or his parents’, made of wood with furs to insulate the walls, but one made of stone, like the kuvar’s. Except the ceilings were sloped and roughly hewn, with stone dripping down like a petrified waterfall in places, pebbled and wavelike in others. The stairs were carved out of the rock, but the walls were reinforced with wood planks and long rolls of cloth. Lukos didn’t support enough goats or sheep to give that much wool, but he was surrounded by beautiful decorative rugs someone had hung between wooden beams. There were an alcove with cushioned benches, a kitchen and a chimney built into the stone, and a room farther in with a massive bed that was only just visible.
“I don’t smell any goats,” Micah said. Sasha, who was still holding him up, gave him a bemused look. “For your walls.”
“The wall cloths? Oh, nah, we make those with cave poppy. You know, plants? All fuzzy on the inside? They’re everywhere down below, in the main portion of the Compound. That’s where we are, buddy. Sort of.”
Micah wasn’t sure it mattered. At least Sasha hadn’t dragged him to the kuvar’s to be stared at. Sasha set him down on the cushions in the alcove, and Micah looked up at the rug on the wall. It was woven to create the image of a woman walking down a hill, her long red hair twisting into different shapes: a bear, a cat, a porcupine. It was masterfully made, and Micah wondered, as he shivered in a cold he should no longer feel, if it would be the last thing he saw.
“Let me look at him. Oh no, he’s more of a baby than I remembered.” Viv’s voice was sharp with dominance, the words snapped out like a fire popping in the hearth.
“I’m full-grown,” Micah said dreamily.
“Mm-hmm. Can you turn your head, or will you let me do it?”
“People don’t usually ask.” Micah’s parents had just moved him around whenever they needed to, like an inconvenient piece of furniture. Micah let his head flop to the side and looked up. Despite her forceful tone and fierce, calculating expression, Viv was tiny, slim and almost as young as he was. She was wearing a gown that was just as ornate as the rugs on the walls and made out of the same material.
“Well, I’m asking.” She frowned at him. “I’ll have to touch you if you’re going to get better. Will you fight me?”
“No.” Micah wondered why he wasn’t afraid. He usually was, around new people. Maybe it was because Viv had healed him before, when he first met her at the kuvar’s fire. Or maybe because she spoke like him: bluntly, without trying to obfuscate her meaning.
“Good. All right, we need to regulate your temperature first. You’re going to breathe on my count, and you aren’t going to argue.”
“She’s gonna make you feel better, buddy,” Sasha said, his tone much warmer than Viv’s. Micah nodded—or he thought he did. He felt hazy, not quite aware. Maybe he was dreaming this and was going to wake up in his flimsy shelter, alone again.
Viv lay her hand on the book Micah held to his chest, and his eyes widened. Her expression softened a touch. “It’s all right. I won’t take it from you. But I need to put my hands on your chest for this to work. There’s too much smoke in your lungs.”
