Ice Planet Honeymoon (Four Novellas of HEA)

“I could have tried harder.” She swallows, looking around at the cavern. “I could have left your side and come back here—”

“And been eaten by metlaks. Or snow cats. Or ended up dead in the snow yourself.”

But she only shakes her head. She wanders about inside the cave for a bit longer, touching the dirty walls or staring at the floor. She pauses over the two covered bodies, silent for so long that I worry about her. Then, she takes a deep breath and turns to me. “Can we move them outside? I don’t think they’d want to be buried in here. They’d want to be…free.” Her voice wobbles on the last part. “Under the skies.”

I nod. “I can do this.”

For the next while, we do not speak as I carefully take one hide-wrapped human corpse and haul it outside, then the next. Georgie is lost in thought, but when I kneel in front of her and gesture that she should climb on my back again so we can leave, she does so without protest. She holds tightly to me, burying her face against my mane as I climb back out and into the brisk air. I carry my mate back down to the snowy ground and then kneel again so she can dismount, and when she stands before me, I rise.

Georgie stares at the three bodies, her expression hollow. “They’re together now.”

“Tell me where I should bury them, and how deep.” If she asks me to dig to the bottom of the mountain, I will. Anything to ease the sadness from her eyes.

My mate directs me, and I dig deep into the snow at the edge of one of the nearby cliffs. I dig as deep as I can, until the packed snow turns to ice. Georgie tries to help, but I growl at her and she backs off. I do not want her doing hard work, not with our kit so newly in her belly. I can do this for her. While I work, she wraps the skins tighter about each fallen human, making sure the body is tightly covered. She takes a piece of coal and writes strange symbols on the furs, and when I ask what she is doing, she says she writes down everything she knows about each girl so it will not be forgotten.

When that is done, she makes little crosses out of bone and decorates them with beaded thongs that I know Maylak gave to her. “I don’t know what their religions were, but I’m hoping it’s the thought that counts,” she tells me as I hop out of the pit and move to her side.

Then it is time to lay the dead inside. I do so carefully, listening to her instructions as she tells me to lay them head to foot, as if they are all sleeping in a large nest of furs alongside one another. I turn to my mate when the last one is placed.

She is crying.

I am shocked. The other humans cry and weep from time to time, but my Georgie is always competent, always ready with a solution. Right now, though, her eyes are wet and shiny and her mouth trembles.

“Georgie?” I ask, worried. This is not like her.

“You can cover them now,” she whispers, her gaze on the dead and not me.

I nod, and even though I am uneasy at her tears, I do as she asks. She sits beside the grave and cries silently all the while as I cover them, and then when the pit is filled once more, we both get small rocks and outline the graves. Georgie puts her crosses at the head of each grave and then moves to sit at the foot, her hands clasped together.

I sit next to her. It is clear she needs to say a few things. Perhaps this is part of the human burial ceremony.

Georgie stares at the crosses, her eyes wet, and takes a deep breath. “Krissy, Peg, Dominique…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I failed you.”

Eh? I turn to my mate, surprised. “How did you fail them?”

She swipes at her eyes. “I’m the reason they died. I couldn’t keep them safe.”

I shake my head, not understanding.

“I was the leader,” she says, voice shuddering. “It was my idea to fight our captors. That fight helped us break free just as we were crashing.” She bites her lip. “And I was the one that went for help.”

“You saved eleven other females, Georgie. You saved Leezh and Ki-rah and all the others. You came and found me and convinced me to go up the mountain to save them. You have brought life back to our tribe. You have given the males of my people hope for a mate and a future. Would you choose differently if you could go back?”