Baring the Thorn (The Mountain Tribe #3)

Chapter 13

Thorn

S amara walks back to the camp, silent, tight-lipped, her gaze distant.

And I follow, through the quickly falling darkness, feeling as if I am the cold, frail husk of the man that I was just earlier this day, feeling that I am nothing…that I have been drained of every single drop of blood and ounce of muscle and every bone.

I stumble on my way, hardly watching my feet, and think back to merely an hour ago when I had held her in my arms and warmth had wrapped around me and the world had felt so full of possibility.

Now I feel as if the very forest is robbed of warmth, of color, of air.

All because of a trap, a simple little fixture in the forest that captured her attention. I am not too proud to know that it is my fault too, and not too stubborn to understand why she reacted the way she did.

Samara feels betrayed, yet she does not understand that it had to be this way.

I did not lie when I told her that I would make the same choice a hundred times over, that I would have chosen to shield her from this truth for the rest of her life. She thinks that it is because of control, because of spite, yet it is only because I care for her, and for my tribe, so deeply, that I did not tell them.

They are everything to me, and she is too, even if she scorns me for the rest of our days.

Knowing that it had to be this way is no comfort.

In fact, it wounds me further to know within my heart that there was no alternative, that it might have led to this whether she found out tomorrow or in ten years, after we shared our bodies, and I built her a home and filled her lap with children. This fact makes me ache as if my very bones are being crushed, as if they are pressing in on my insides like a fist.

I only wish that I had more time with her, more time to enjoy her comfort and her smiles and her easy caresses before the truth came out.

I watch in frozen despair as Samara moves her furs to the other side of the fire and sets up her bed far away from me.

She throws a look over her shoulder, as if to challenge me to say something.

It will be cold, and it wounds me that she cannot even stand to use me for warmth, that the mere idea of touching me is so repulsive to her, but I know when my female has her mind made up.

So, I sit atop my furs, and decide that I will dedicate the night to watching over her, to feeding the fire and adding furs on top of her while she sleeps so that she does not shiver too much.

Samara crawls into her bed and turns her back to me, and the forest is so silent around us that I can hear every furious little breath, and every chatter of her teeth.

I feed the fire more, and it blazes high, but still her form shivers.

I reach over and add my furs on top of her, and nearly jump out of my skin when she suddenly faces me, her face a beautiful, frightening mask of anger.

“I don’t need your blankets, I’m fine,” she snarls.

I watch her patiently. “You are shivering.”

“You think you know better than everyone,” she says the words with hatred dripping from her voice, with a coldness that sends a chill through me. “I don’t want the furs. I don’t want anything from you, do you understand that?”

“Samara,” I struggle to maintain a calm voice in the face of her stubbornness. The female is right, I am a headstrong, unyielding brute. I will fight her even now, even when her eyes swim in hatred for me, because I cannot watch her shiver and sniffle all night. “Do not be unreasonable.”

“Unreasonable,” she scoffs. “Why don’t you just let me freeze to death? Then I won’t go back to camp and tell your secret, and you can continue on fooling everyone.”

I had not… considered what would happen when we returned to camp.

The idea of letting her be cold is painful, let alone allowing her to freeze to death - unthinkable. My feelings for her are as immovable as my resolve to keep the truth about the world from my tribe.

But I had not thought yet of what Samara might tell the others, of what damage she could do within the camp.

“Yes, unreasonable,” I tell her, “for thinking that I would allow any sort of harm to come to you.”

She pauses, and I can see her expression flicker with thoughtfulness, under all the layers of anger.

Samara puts her hand out and stuns me by laying it flat against my chest, right over where my heart beats in slow, sad thumps. As if it responds to her touch, it begins to pump in erratic pulses under her palm.

“You harmed this part, Thorn,” she says, and her voice is raw with emotion.

I can match her anger, I can meet her stubbornness, I can listen when she is telling me something important, but this… this pain that she unleashes on me, as if showing me the mirror of the open wound I harbor, showing me the blood and the bone and the rendered flesh, is unbearable.

It steals my very breath.

Still, she continues, digging in the knife between my lungs, “You have hurt me in a way that can’t be taken back. There are no furs, no amount of hunting, no possible conversation, that could ever heal this type of hurt. Do you understand me? Whatever you feel right now, however much it offends you or makes you upset that I’m angry with you- it is nothing compared to what you have done to me. And when the truth comes out, which it will, I won’t be the only one this upset.”

“No,” I breathe, soaking in the warmth of her hand along with the cold slice of her words. “You will forgive me. I will make you understand.”

“How could I?” She says, and in the darkness of the night, her big round eyes seem to pour into mine, seem to seek something out in me that I know she will not find. It occurs to me that she asks me this as well as herself, that she too is wondering if it is ever possible to move past this, whether she wishes to or not. Samara drops her hand, and her chin quivers with unshed tears. It tears at me that I have done this to her, that I have hurt her so badly that she does not think she will ever forgive me or understand me. “Go to sleep, Thorn. I can’t-… I’m done talking tonight.”

Such finality.

She lies down and wraps her furs around herself.

I worry that she is still cold, but after some time her breaths slow, and her sniffling quiets and I know that she has fallen asleep.

I do not retreat to my furs, I stay awake all night, watching over her and feeding the fire, and the dawn comes quickly.