Baring the Thorn (The Mountain Tribe #3)

Chapter 15

Thorn

W e travel for most of the day, taking a break in the afternoon so that I can hunt nearby pheasant for our meal before continuing on with two skinny birds hanging from my pack.

Samara is patient while I hunt, her shoulder to me and her eyes on the cloudy skies above us.

We do not speak, even after some attempts on my part, the female retreats deeply into her own thoughts. Her expression is dark as she walks through the difficult, wild terrain, and I have no doubt that she is thinking about yesterday, that she is likely replaying her realization over again in her mind.

Misery is a deep wound between my shoulders that bleeds incessantly.

I cannot help but think of mere days ago when she had her fingers tangled with mine while she walked, the soft beating of her pulse a constant comfort against my own wrist.

Or even more painful, how her body had welcomed my touch, what her beautiful features had looked like when she found her release, and the pleasure that she had wrung from me so easily.

Now the distance between us feels impossible to cross, like the oceans I have never seen, like the green wilderness reaches seemingly until the end of the earth.

I do not know how to fix what has been broken between Samara and I, I do not know how to get through to her, how to stop her from chasing after the man who found the medicine.

I turn my thoughts to him, and the forest seems to chill further in the wake of my worrying.

I recognized the craftwork of the trap, the materials used, the way it was strung tightly up, and the footprint belonging to the heavy fur boots that I wore as a child, not the leather ones my tribe and I wear now.

My past is not distant and forgotten like River’s or perhaps Wolf’s.

I carry it with me, a scar in my side as well as a scar on my very being. A long time ago, I made my traps the same way and wore the same furs as the man we are hunting. A long time ago, I would have walked beside him, hunted with him, slept in the same broad tents.

The past has a way of filling me with shame, even now, of poisoning me with burning, quiet rage.

I feel the wound under my ribs as though it is fresh, as though it pulls with every step.

And Samara does not even want to understand why I warn her from them, why I beg her not to seek this man out. I cannot make her understand, I cannot make her see my fears, my worries, my past.

She must be open to it.

But her back is straight while we walk, her hands fixed firmly at her sides, and I know that she is not ready.

I allow her to lead the way, allow her to do the tracking with the skills that I taught her.

Samara glances at the ground often, where there is those chilling, heavy footprints, and sometimes a perfectly round indent in the ground, as though the cache was heavy and had to be set down.

These are the most obvious tracks, and the ones I suspect she follows the most closely.

We walk until the forest grows too dark to see the tracks, and it is with frustration that Samara sighs and stops hunting, setting down her pack and stretching her back.

I watch in rapt fascination as she lifts her arms above her head, tugging on her elbows, and I am treated to a delicate strip of the skin of her stomach.

My mouth goes dry, and it is with some difficulty that I turn away and make us a fire.

We cook one of the pheasants and split it between us, eating the tender meat in silence while the wind howls overhead with enough force to shake the trees.

Samara’s expression is of misery as she shivers in the darkness, her limbs pulled tight against her and her fingertips reddened from the wind.

It will only grow colder, both of us know it, and yet she does not move from opposite the fire.

“Samara…” I begin, and my voice is rough from being silent all day. “It will be very cold the farther north we go. You would be warmer if we slept beside each other.”

She chews on her lip, merely drawing my attention to its fullness.

Her expression is distant, and I have that sinking feeling once more that there is something broken that I cannot fix, that I may never heal, between us.

“You asked me to look after you. I want only to keep you warm, I would never… try to mate with you when you are this upset. You must know that.”

I urge her to see reason, to understand my side.

My feelings have been constant since I met her. I have never wanted her less, I have never cared for her less, I merely wish for her happiness, her comfort, her safety.

I may have ruined her happiness, so it seems that my efforts matter even more in all other areas now. I cannot make her understand me, or even like me, but I can keep her warm, fed, and well slept.

She mumbles, “I’ll wake you if I get hypothermic. But I… I don’t want to sleep near you. Don’t ask me again.”

Her resignation steals my breath, and I stare into the fire so that I do not have to see the pain in her expression, the distrust.

I feed the fire for hours while she sleeps, resting only in the early hours of the morning when her shivering finally ceases enough for me to take my eyes off her.

Yet it is not just my worry for her temperature that keeps me up, but for her safety too.

The tracks are fresh, the footprints new, and I know that in only a short amount of time we will find the cache.

I will be faced with a man I have not seen since my childhood.

A man who I cannot trust not to kill me or the woman who I now cannot imagine my life without. It is that thought, of the hidden danger in the forest that awaits my Samara, which pulls me from sleep whenever I tumble towards it.

Samara

The night was so frigid that I don’t feel like I’ll ever recover.

Even now, into the next afternoon, my fingers still feel frozen and my teeth ache from chattering.

I’m at the splendid balance of exhaustion and cold that makes me just want to sit and cry, that makes me long for slipping under the heavy covers of my bed back home with Little Pete purring next to me and the heater, true electricity, blasting up my legs.

But we still have ground to cover, we still have a cache to find, and I know that any time spent sitting is just an invitation for more fighting between Thorn and me.

So, I push on, past the discomfort, past the ache deep in my bones, and focus on our mission.

At least, while we walk, I know that he doesn’t try to talk.

Instead, he acts as a lookout, scouting ahead sometimes to check for difficult terrain, falling back to make sure nothings following us, hovering always around with a watchful eye on my back and another on the forest.

His obsessive watchfulness would get annoying, but I’m so tired that I don’t even care anymore.

Sometimes he tries to hunt, but we’ve gone farther north than I think any of the other women have, and we end up skirting around some steep mountains with snowy peaks, where the wilderness is more vast, rocky plateaus and less dense forest.

There doesn’t seem to be as much out here, and when we stop for breaks, we only have the tea for energy.

We come upon some mud with a large print in it, and it must be notable in some way because Thorn stops me, suddenly, his hand at my shoulder. I yank away quickly.

“It is fresh,” he tells me. “We come closer to him every hour. I… know that I cannot talk you out of searching for the cache, but I want you to be prepared.”

Thorn’s expression is pained as he reaches into his pack and produces a sharp bone knife, a kind I see the hunters using a lot.

He extends it to me, “Do you know how to use this?”

I’ve used the knives many times for tasks around camp. Just because I haven’t gone out hunting like Cass and the others doesn’t mean I don’t know how to prepare meat for the main fire, skin rabbits, or whittle.

It was a thin bone knife that saved Leah. But in combat? I’d have to rely on instinct.

I take it from his palm, and feel it’s weight, it’s sleekness. “Thanks, I guess.”

“I will be there to protect you, but I could not,” he sucks in a breath, “leave you defenseless.”

I tuck away the knife in a safe spot.

“I’m not defenseless. And by the way, if you wanted me to be prepared, you might tell me about the stranger. Where you know him from? What you know about him? What he might talk or look like?”

Thorn releases a heavy sigh, and his eyes wearily scan the horizon behind me, the windy mountains that we’ve been slowly climbing all afternoon.

My patience only grants him a minute or so, and then I’m rolling my eyes and turning away, “Yeah, figures. I’ll just wait until we meet him.”

“Samara!” At the urgency in his voice, I turn, my arms folded over my chest.

I’m not sure if I have time to wait around all day for him to say something that I’m only going to doubt anyways. And I’m tired of fighting, of waiting, of asking for more information.

I just want to get to the medicine.

Thorn meets my impatient gaze, “He will… look like me, like my tribe. But his furs will be white or grey, an animal that could blend into the snow.”

“Is he from the north?” I push.

Thorn opens his mouth and promptly shuts it, his eyes flickering behind us again. His jaw works, tensing and clenching.

But he doesn’t say anything more.

“The more I know, the safer it would be to approach him,” I insist. “Especially if he’s as dangerous as you say. There might be something we could barter with him, some deal we could work out-”

His eyes snap back to mine, and panic flickers within the green depths like flames. “No! You will not make a deal. You cannot trust him, Samara.”

A laugh bursts out of me. “Who am I supposed to trust instead, Thorn? You? You would have kept his entire existence a secret to everyone.”

The patience is wearing thin on Thorn’s expression, and I watch as a surge of defensiveness rises.

He stands over me, glaring down, refusing to be reminded. “There are things about this world that you could never understand, female. There is a history here that you were not a part of.”

“So, help me understand!” I shout back. “Tell me what this man did that scared you so much you felt you couldn’t even tell me!”

“I am-” Thorn hollers, but he pauses, taking a steadying breath and continuing in a lower tone, so that the final word is like a curse across his lips, “ trying . I am trying hard, Samara. Understand that it is…difficult, unnatural, to speak of things that I have not said aloud to anyone, ever.”

I hate that I’m swept into the tide of his discomfort, his pain, that a feeling way too much like sympathy begins to bloom in my chest.

I lower my voice too, “You have to try. Preparing me is the best way to protect me.”

“I cannot-” Thorn pauses, and his gaze focusses on something in the distance. His eyes, anguished and pleading, widen, and the look that takes him over makes my breath freeze. “Do not move too quickly. There is a bear hunting nearby.”

I try to swivel around, but Thorn presses a quick hand to my neck, hard enough to hold me steady and force me to keep facing his direction.

“Do. Not. Move,” he whispers, urgent and panicked.

My heart begins to pound, climbing up my throat like bile, and I fix my eyes on Thorn, on his stony, fearful expression and his windswept auburn hair and the freckles that stand out so starkly over his pale skin.

Without even realizing what I’m doing, one hand reaches for the knife he just gave me, while the other twists into the front of his shirt, my fist over his rapid heartbeat and my frozen fingers warmed by his heat.

I focus on hauling in deep breaths, on watching his expression for the tiniest hint of change, for the most subtle inclination that the bear has moved on.

We hold still, on this sloping hill where we’re the only thing for at least half a kilometer in any direction, where we practically reek of life, of warmth, of meat.

Behind us, I hear the ground crunching under heavy paws, a few moments of silence, and then a thunderous roar that seems to shake the stones from the very mountains around us.

“Samara,” Thorn reaches up, his eyes not leaving a fixed spot over my shoulder, his voice strained, and removes my hand from his front. “When I tell you, you must run back down the mountain. Do not stop. Do not turn around until you reach the river we passed this morning. I will find you there.”

I stare up at him in horror. “W-what? No! No, I’m not going to leave you!”

His eyes flicker down to mine, and they seem to pour into my very soul as he begs, “Listen to me. For just this once do not argue. Run to the lake.”

“Thorn-”

I don’t have any time to argue, I hear the scraping of claws over stone behind us and then Thorn flings me aside.

His voice echoes through the mountains around us, “Now! Run, Samara!”