Rokath exhaled, long and slow. “I am sorry you suffered, Assyria.” Angling his horse closer to mine, he reached out and brought his fingers under my chin. With a tenderness that surprised me even more than his apology, he lifted it up and toward him. “Truly. I can feel your sorrow and your anguish. You are right. Our pain is shared now.”

A small smile softened my expression as he brushed his knuckles across my cheek. “The Halálhívó apologizing and admitting I am right about something? Are you certain you aren’t ill?”

Rokath rolled his eyes. “I am not ill. I can admit when I am wrong.”

A laugh burst from me before I could smother it. “Sure you can, Halálhívó.”

Grem and Zeec finally returned to us, tongues lolling out of their mouths. “Good boys,” Rokath praised, turning his focus to them. Their tails wagged as they trotted alongside us. As we arrived upon the pool where I’d spotted the hounds earlier, Rokath called for a break.

Males worked in tandem to refill our water barrels, while others passed waterskins back and forth in an efficient line to provide as many as they could the opportunity to quench their thirst. Seated on the hanging lip of one wagon, I sipped from one Rokath gave me.

The hounds framed me, and I poured the remaining drops across each of their tongues. Zeec sat up and licked me across the face. “Ew!” I laughed, shoving him playfully away. That only served to encourage him to do it again.

Rapp approached, fiddling with the studs in his eyebrow. “Hey, Assyria, how’s your scouting training going?”

I snorted, playing with the end of my braid. “About how you would think with the Halálhívó.”

Rapp grinned and rubbed Zeec’s soft fur. “So he offers you a morsel of praise along with a list of everything you’re doing wrong?”

“Exactly like that,” I sighed, though a smile twisted my lips. “He did admit I’m taking to it better than he expected.”

“From him, that is the highest compliment you’ll ever receive.” Rapp wedged himself on the wood beside me, forcing Grem over. He scratched those furry black ears.

“Rapp, what happened to Rokath at the academy?” I asked at scarcely louder than a whisper since I was uttering my mate’s name. Most of the males had since moved on, leaving us alone.

Instead of responding, he froze, hand poised an inch above Grem. “Rokath should be the one to tell you that,” he eventually said, continuing to shower the dog with attention.

Annoyance fluttered through me, and I was even more curious than I had been before. With their caginess, my mind scattered in a million different directions, playing out a thousand terrible scenarios.

What had happened to Rokath that was horrible enough to warrant utter silence on the topic?

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47

“How much longer do I need to wear this?” I asked the lead healer. Rokath leaned against a worktable a few paces away, watching every touch from the male like a hawk about to swoop down and snatch its prey the moment it moved the wrong way.

“I believe you are healed enough to remove it except while you sleep, though I’d still avoid all overhead movement for at least another week,” he said, stepping around and prodding the backside of my shoulder. “Did that hurt?”

“No,” I told him honestly, though I was disappointed that I still couldn’t use my arm the way I wanted. I desperately wanted to bathe, like I’d seen the males going off to do since we entered the canyon oasis. My hair was a greasy, sweaty mess and even the braid I’d kept it in couldn’t stop me from cringing over it.

At this point, I’d sell my body for a chance to wash it. I thought the journey from Stryi to Uzhhorod was awful from a cleanliness standpoint. This trek was so much worse.

At least Rokath had an extra basin of water brought to his tent every night to wipe myself clean with, and for the most part, I could do it one-handed, albeit clumsily.

“Good,” the healer said, returning to the front and writing something on a piece of parchment. “Let me see you again in a week, and maybe I’ll clear you for some exercises to strengthen that shoulder. It will be weaker now that you dislocated it once.”

“Thank you,” I sighed, then slid off the table and looked at Rokath, my escort. We’d already had dinner, and it was surprisingly fun when he joined Rapp and me. I’d never seen him so at ease before, which only added to the enigma that I couldn’t quite unravel.

The camp had quietened for the night, and overhead, a million stars greeted us from the crystal clear sky. The heavens felt close enough to reach out and touch, though I didn’t attempt to, given the healer’s warning about too much movement.

“If you want to bathe and wash your hair, I will help you,” Rokath said, a hand resting on my lower back as he steered me back toward our tent.

“That’s just because you want to couple with me,” I teased.

He grunted, but I sensed a trickle of amusement down our bond. Rokath had slept beside me every night since the snake attacked me, and yet, he hadn’t hated every moment, like any other time he’d been forced to stay with me. As we walked back into our abode, the air wasn’t charged with lightning waiting to strike a wildfire into existence. No, it was calm like the ocean lapping against the shore.

Rokath grabbed two bathing sheets and two bars of soap from beside the basin. “Find a change of clothes for us both,” he tossed over his shoulder.

A sense of excitement gripped me as I rummaged through my leather bag, pulling out a simple dress that was easy to throw on. Rokath’s travel-worn bag rested beside mine, and the buckle fell away almost without me having to touch it. The threads barely laced it together anymore, and the fabric was cracked with age. Carefully, I wriggled a loose black tunic and black pants from Rokath’s bag—because that was the only color he ever wore—and tumbled them with my dress.

“Ready,” I told him when I straightened, the bundle of clothes tucked under my good arm.

“Let’s go,” he growled, striding for the exit. He held the canvas back for me as I returned to the fresh night air. From a nearby post, he grabbed two torches, and the flames cast dancing light over the carved structure of face as we strode out of the camp and toward the flowing stream.

With the late hour, we were alone when we found a spot near the edge, already damp from countless others who’d bathed earlier that evening. A scraggly tree swayed nearby, and Rokath planted the two torches near the riverbank before hanging the bathing sheets on two low branches. He stuck out his hand, and I offered the clothes to him as well. He settled them over another.

“Sit so I can remove the bind around your arm,” Rokath instructed, gesturing to the round boulders.

I did without putting up a fight. While he still ordered me about like he did the soldiers, I’d come to realize it wasn’t because he despised me any longer. It was simply how he operated. The acceptance that arrived with that conclusion helped me hold my tongue most of the time now.

Rokath worked over my arm, unwrapping the bandage and curling it around his palm as he did so. I caught my own wrist before it could fall as he unwound the last strap securing it to my body. A slight ache bloomed in the joint, but it wasn’t nearly as painful as it had been.

“I can manage the rest I think,” I told him, rising and kicking off my dusty boots.

He said nothing, but his eyes tracking my every movement as I unlaced the side of the leather and shimmied out of it. I tossed it behind me to the boulder where I had perched before. Getting naked in front of Rokath no longer bothered me after how often he’d had to help me.