“Thank you, Karisha,” I said with excitement, truly grateful that she had taken the time to walk me around the miles-long camp and share her knowledge and traditions.
“What exactly is the training ring? And why can’t women go there?”
Out of everything she told me, this was the part I was most intrigued by. I didn’t understand the connection, why the proximity to the sea was taken as a protective omen and why women were excluded from such a thing. It seemed archaic and out of place, so at odds with the modern human society I had been born into, yet I truly wanted to see it.
To be in a place where I knew I wasn’t allowed to.
“We can go check it out if you want to…” my new friend offered with a smile, her expression full of jest. Maybe she too felt like breaking the rules just a little today.
“Are we allowed to?” I arched a brow and tilted my head gently to fully look at her. The dense light of the midday sun poured heavily on us, pushing us to make wild and dangerous decisions.
“We’re not allowed to step into the training camp,” she explained, and I couldn't contain my expression from dropping. “But I am allowed to go up to its very edge and call for my mate if I need anything urgent,” Karisha replied with a playful grin.
Against Sylam’s protests, we both started taking determined steps towards the Western side, stopping from time to time for the tribe lady to either greet people or receive a request.
It felt like we’d been walking for miles when the salty air tickled my nostrils and invaded my skin with its harsh caress.
I hadn’t realised how much I missed the ocean; how heavy the waves of the sea beat against my own heart and how that horizon of blue filled my chest with joy.
I had always loved the sea, ever since I was a little girl and had to escape the school for girls late in the evening to go for aswim. I would spend long hours into the night floating through the waves and returned with salty skin and crispy hair.
I hadn’t done it in over two weeks… I hadn’t touched the sand, I hadn’t walked on the beach, and I hadn’t abandoned my body to the ocean’s caress. Watching the ocean again brought a calmness over my entire being. It truly was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Until Dahr’s sun-kissed skin blinded my attention with its glow.
We had to take two more steps uphill to see the elevated surface of the training ring, and the two men that sparred in the middle of it. Dahr being one of them.
“There’s Markos,” Karisha added and proceeded to walk downhill into the rocky terrain to reach the portion of the beach the men were occupying.
The training ring looked a little like a boxing one, only with a tall circular stage enclosed by leather straps, probably the exact same ones Dahr had tied me to the bed with.
There were multiple fights happening at the same time, with hundreds of shirtless, muscled men either watching, stretching, warming up or fighting. The main one, however, where most of the attention focused on, was the main ring.
I recognised Dahr’s skin from a distance, the way his tan glowed to compete with the sunlight, the flames on his back burning with every vicious hit he struck against his opponent. His hair was unbound, his back sweaty and his muscles more flexed than ever. He’d lost the leather band he normally wore around his waist, preferring to use the strength of his arms and the power of his kick in that particular fight.
My stomach jolted at the memory of the weapon jammed in his thigh and the pain he must have been in, yet he fought like a man possessed, like his very existence was dependent upon his every move.
I didn’t know much about fighting, but I knew a lot about the human body and how it naturally arched. Dahr’s movement posed a masterpiece with every turn.
I hadn’t even realised we had reached the base of the camp, my attention too focused on Dahr and the way he fought like a savage. In the short time it took us to reach them, he must have changed at least three opponents, exhausting them in only a few hits.
“What do you need?” Markos appeared from between the gathering of men, all of whom, just like me, were too enthralled in the fighting to care about our presence, or to even notice us.
“We need to ask for two more coffers, three tents are damaged, and we need to build a new one for the Firsymets. Manuh just announced another pregnancy,” she told him, voice filled with joy.
She must have kept this information to herself in case of an emergency, because I had been with her most of the day and I hadn’t seen a pregnant woman or anyone announcing her pregnancy. Smart woman, I mentally congratulated Karisha.
“Fine, I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” Markos said before his attention moved to me.
I forced myself to unhook my eyes from the fight and pay him my full attention, especially after the threat he’d blasted me with the other night. I couldn’t believe Karisha and Markos were mates. I couldn’t believe a woman as sweet as her would choose a man as harsh as him.
“What is she doing here?” the tribe lord snarled at me, and I had to fight the need to take a step back.
“We were just leaving. If Dahr wanted her out, you didn’t expect me to just leave her snooping on her own, would you?” she looked at me admonishingly, as though we’d already had some sort of conversation on this very subject.
I had enough common sense to lower my head and look remorseful, while also making a mental note to congratulate this woman for outplaying her mate time and time again. Markos seemed pleased enough with her answer, and my theatrical attitude, that he pressed a kiss on his tribe lady’s cheek and stepped back into the crowd.
I took the opportunity to lift my attention back to the stage once again and follow Dahr’s leg as it stretched and kicked, the muscles on his thigh tensing with the strength of the movement. He truly was hypnotising; the allure of his body and the sharpness of his motions were an artist’s dream…
