Predatory Marriage

Leah blinked as she felt fingers brush her eyelashes. Ishakan was stroking her cheeks, and she frowned at the tickling sensation.

“Wake up, Leah,” his deep voice urged her. “You’ve kept me waiting too long…”

Her drowsiness vanished like magic, and Leah turned her head to look up. His golden eyes met hers.

Setting down his pipe, he exhaled a final stream of smoke and then lifted her up to sit her on his thighs. Leah leaned against his chest.

“…Ishakan.”

Though she still felt a little shaky, she examined his body carefully. She remembered searching for injuries before she had fainted, but if he had had any, they were minor enough to have healed while she slept.

“Mura…” She remembered. “What happened to Mura?”

“Don’t worry. She’s recovering,” Ishakan said sharply. “Is this the time to be worrying about other people?”

“…Ahh.”

His eyes shifted to her legs, and she looked with him at the motionless limbs, limp as the legs of a broken doll. When she tried to move them even a little, the stabbing pain was so sharp that tears sprang to her eyes.

She remembered how she had fallen when Cerdina’s black smoke struck her. Something must have happened to her legs when she hit that wall.

“It will be about a week before you can move them,” Ishakan said. “And you’ll be at least a month before you can walk properly again.”

His voice was cold, but Leah met his eyes directly. Ishakan was clenching his teeth as if he were biting words back, and then he silently reached and flipped up the skirt of her nightgown, baring her thighs.

Her eyes widened as she looked at the large wounds visible even beneath the thin bandages on each thigh.

“You will have scars,” said Ishakan.

It looked as if the wounds had been stitched up while she slept, but even that pain hadn’t awakened her. She hadn’t even realized she had been wounded.

But the severity of the wounds frightened her. It was so much worse than she thought.

“The baby?” She asked urgently. But Ishakan didn’t respond immediately. His mouth was stubbornly shut. “Ishakan?”

She was suddenly terrified of what he might say. It had seemed that the baby wolf was healthy when she had watched him tearing across those vast plains, but maybe something had happened to him since then.

Her gaze was fixed on Ishakan’s mouth, willing him to speak.

“The baby is all right,” he said after a long silence. “Kurkans don’t die so easily.”

Leah sighed with relief, but his face remained rigid with anger.

“But you are human,” he said softly, and she felt her heart sink. Those brief words held powerful meaning. “I can recover quickly from any harm. You cannot.”

He was not condemning her. It was a statement of fact.

“Don’t leave me alone,” he finished.

His face was grim. She almost apologized, unthinking, but then paused.

“…I won’t,” she said, reaching out to caress his cheek. “From now on, we will always be together.”

He looked at her silently, and Leah hesitated a moment and then stretched to kiss him lightly on the lips. Only then did Ishakan finally relax.

Leaning back against his chest. She could feel his warmth as she listened to his heart beating. After a while, she plucked up the courage to ask.

“Cerdina…is she dead?”

It was a difficult question. She had to know what had happened to her. Surely, she must be dead. Cerdina had been even crueler than brave. Leah only regretted that she hadn’t been able to see Cerdina die with her own eyes.

But she looked at him with increasing nervousness at the hint of mischief in his eyes, and an equally mischievous smile.
.
“She’s escaped.”