Through My Eyes
I found myself unable to register all that had changed my life, in a mere matter of hours. Things had gone from being firmly under my control, every day meeting my expectations, to sheer turmoil.
The fact that I was lying in Jaecar’s bed now, was testament to that fact.
Everything changed last night. I held my hands over my nervous stomach as I stared at the ceiling. Eventually I lifted my thumb to chew a fingernail, as I often did when worried.
Somehow, I’d never seen it coming. It had never dawned on me that Jaecar would really do it.
But he did last night. He made me his.
I could still feel the raw spot on my neck where his teeth had punctured me. Breaking the skin to insert his saliva into my bloodstream. Forever mixing our scents.
I was so proud that he had declared me his, this morning. There was a sort of peace that had entered me from knowing that it was done.
I’m marked.
I’m his.
But a few hours had tempered that sort of peaceful joy, and returned it to a level of bitterness and betrayal.
He didn’t have to go about it the way he did. I thought angrily. Finding myself moving to stare out the window toward the rest of the camp on this misty morning.
It was hard to see any evidence of the chaos that had reigned last night.
Wolves had been willing to consume one another, just for a chance to slake their lust. Female pheromones had screamed to the males over the miles and the males had turned into ravenous beasts with hardly any trace of the men they’d been during the day.
They were all monsters.
I’d heard them outside the hut last night. Clawing and howling, nipping at each other as they competed to try to get inside my hut.
But only one made it in.
Jaecar…
The one who’d built the secret hatch for me to begin with.
The one who’d made my hut relatively impenetrable during the many Mating Moons since I’d arrived with the Asara.
Jaecar’s words this morning after declarations, lingered in my mind.
Remember, Sam. I’m willing to earn your trust back. I’ll work for it. What we did last night won’t happen again until you tell me you’re ready. And it will be wholly different, I swear it.
I couldn’t imagine that though. Last night Jaecar had been raw fury. Primal and animalistically hunger. His lust had been unquenchable and his demands for submission, undeniable.
Far from the Jaecar I’d come to know over the many turns of the season.
I hardly recognized the beast I met last night.
I had believed Jaecar when he’d told me that, as he had walked me to his-no, our hut.
He’d shown me to his bed and laid me down, covering me with a heavier fur and stroking my hair until I had relaxed enough he’d thought to leave my side.
I woke soon after that, or perhaps I’d never actually gone to sleep to begin with…I couldn’t tell.
Eventually, I had risen from his cot and walked into the bigger room where there was a line for drying meat for the winter and a large table for meals.
A large window was there, with double shutters that opened to give an unobstructed view of the center of the camp and the path toward the river, in the distance.
I glanced around the hut and confirmed that Jaecar had gone somewhere, perhaps to check the borders as he often did. My feet found their way to that big window. I turned the bolt to open the shutters and pulled them open like some great cabinet.
A heavy mist hovered just above the ground, obscuring the men throwing logs back toward the fire and righting overturned odds and ends. They were all quiet, working together to right everything that had been upset in last night’s chaos.
It was mostly males that roamed the camp this morning. All of them had a sort of forlorn frown creasing their features.
Aloira and Cindy were the only females aside from the healer, that dared venture across the span of camp this morning. Even they looked exhausted. Generally outgoing, both of them moved skittishly toward their huts, clinging to each other nervously.
I knew what kind of night I’d experienced, so I could imagine what they’d gone through.
Everyone was tired.
Our beasts had conquered our spirits last night, pitting us against each other and those we cared for.
It was the way it was every Matting Moon. But this one was especially hard for me.
Because this pink moon, I witnessed it firsthand.
I would’ve said yesterday that I understood what the Mating Moon was about, but I would’ve been wrong.
There’s no way to understand the raw power it has over the wolves within us, without experiencing it.
It was hard to define what I was doing at that window. Perhaps I hoped that if the sun emerged to banish that fog, it might cast away my trepidations with it.
What have I done? I let Jaecar mark me…
That wasn’t wholly true. I had let him mark me, like wolves had let the pack plagues decimate their populations.
It wasn’t really their fault, anymore than it was mine.
I was so intent on the clang of pots and the thud of logs being thrown, that I missed the door to my right being opened.
Jaecar had come in at some point and stationed behind me.
I was watching the healer, Rebekah, move around the camp. She had a pouch of herbs that she was scooping from as she rubbed poultices over the hands and faces of the males. Trying to ensure that fever couldn’t set in to any of their open wounds.
It was only the morning after the rage of the pink moon, but none of the males seemed to offer her a second glance.
There was something about her that commanded their respect, something I wished I had.
“What are you looking for?” Jaecar asked quietly from behind me.
