Ice Planet Honeymoon (Four Novellas of HEA)

She is beautiful, and even though I am tired, my cock stirs at the sight of her. I tap her cheek with gentle fingers and then gesture at the hills. Her brows furrow together, and I think she does not understand, so I point at my spear.

Har-loh gets to her feet and moves to my spear. She grabs it…and then flings it away from us. It skids into the sand a short distance away and I look at my mate in confusion. Why did she do that?

She points at me. "Yewnmee needta tok."

"Har-loh." I move to go pick up my spear, but she makes an outraged noise and steps in front of it before I can. "Har-loh meat." I point at the kills I brought in last night, because I remember the word for food. "Meat, yes. Fur, yes. Har-loh, yes."

Her gaze goes to my catches, and then she shakes her head. "Staaaah," she says softly. She gestures at the ground, and it takes me a moment to realize that she does not wish for me to go. She wants me to remain here with her.

"Meat," I say again, but I worry she does not understand. "Yes meat." I point at the animals. "Yes. Yes. Yes." I make a gesture for an enormous amount of meat. "Har-loh meat." I pat my stomach, indicating I want her to have a full belly. "Mmmm."

Her hand goes to her mouth, and her lips twitch. I would much rather she smile and laugh than weep, and I smile back at her.

"Rukh," she says softly, taking my hand. She pauses for a moment, studying our surroundings. "Iyam tieherrrd." She pauses, and makes a great big yawn. "Tired." She points at the meat, and with each strip, she says her name again. She points at the fire and says her name. She points into the cave, and then gives me another weary look, then yawns again. "Har-loh tired." She moves toward me and brushes her fingers over my face. "Rukh tired."

I make a noise of frustration. How do I make her understand that it is my responsibility to make sure that she is fed and warm? That I am a poor mate if I cannot keep her comfortable? I indicate the hides on the animals. "Fur. Har-loh fur. No brrrr." I mock-shiver. "Rukh mate, Har-loh fur." I nod, as if this answers everything.

She shakes her head again. "Stay," she says in the soft voice again. "Tired. Rukh tired. Har-loh tired. Fur later." She moves toward me and wraps her arms around my torso, pressing her cheek against my chest. She is warm and soft, and I am a weak, weak male. Stay at her side? I would like nothing more.

I pet her mane, loving the nearness of her, of the press of her skin to mine. "Lay-turr?" I echo. I do not know this word, but I suspect it means tomorrow. That we rest today and tomorrow I hunt again.

"Later," she agrees.

Very well. A day of rest, then.

19

RUKH

It is not a day of rest after all. The moment Har-loh and I eat a bite and wash it down with water, my mate gets to work. I thought that by leaving her behind, she would relax and sleep by the fire, waiting comfortably for me to return. This is not the truth, though. When I go into the cave we have claimed for ourselves, I see dried meat on every surface, the hides rolled up and the heads rotting in the corner of the cave. When I return to Har-loh's side, she is already hard at work, butchering the dvisti. She uses her small stone knife to hack it apart and to peel the skin away. She slices open the gut and pulls out the organs, then takes them to the water's edge to clean them out and hangs them to dry, too.

I cannot have my mate doing all this work, so I pitch in and help, and she tosses me a grateful look.

By the end of the day, I understand why my Har-loh is so tired. I understand now why she did not wish for me to run off into the mountains with the easy task of hunting. Preparing the meat and the fur is time-consuming, and messy, and exhausting. We work until the suns fall beyond the edge of the sky again and it grows dark. At the end of it, the skins are rolled up and bundled, and Har-loh makes motions that she will scrape them tomorrow. I think of all the skins waiting inside the cave, too. Of all the meat. Of the strips of reeds she dries so she can make something with them. Of the organs she carefully saves and gestures that she will make something with them.

It is very different from when I have hunted on my own. If I was hungry, I would kill something and eat it until there was no more meat. If I did not finish all of it, I would shove it into a snow bank and gnaw on the frozen meat the next day. I did not think about the future. But with Har-loh, we must think of many turns of the moon from now.