Page 34 of Finding Her Luck
She shook her head against him, not wanting to move. Those kisses had been just enough to awaken her body. As much as she hurt, she still wanted to connect with him again. Crawl inside of him. Make a nest under his ribcage next to his heart.
Instead, he lifted her and cradled her high on his chest, against the mark she had made, her claim tattooed there.
They rode.
The push forward felt determined. She didn't know if there was danger or if it was something else. But true to his word, they rode through the day and into next night, not stopping until they reached another cave. No Orki waited for them, but like all the others, it was a place they visited often, with all the provisions there. The routine the same, except after the meal and the fermented drink, Corrin didn't hesitate to crawl over the top of her Orki and demand his attention.
Which he gave, with a willing growl.
*
Corrin did not know how far the Orki party could travel in a night or how far they had come. With days and nights twisted and no map, but a vague memory of one she'd seen from the classroom years ago, a crazy otherworldly sensation took over.
She could be anywhere.
The consistently fast gait of the war beasts slowed, and the incline they had been following became a steady climb. Riders leaned forward on their nest mates, holding on to neck ruffs. Wherever they were, it blocked any natural light provided by the sky. She couldn't see anything. The taste of frost in the air, freezing the tip of her nose, she kept covered and stayed sandwiched between the heat of Urku-ri's arms and Searnon's body. There was not much talking. The animals occasionally made noises to each other, the ones in front grumping and chuffing at the ones behind. Sometimes it sounded like they were saying what they saw, sharing the view of the terrain. A beast in front made woofing noises, two grunts, and Searnon answered, changing her course, veering left instead of going straight forward.
They climbed for hours. "No stop. Danger," Urku-ri explained. He spoke some Orki that Corrin thought was an explanation of the danger and the string of names for each individual thing associated with it.
She could hear rocks shift as they moved, the crackle from branches, but could see nothing. With the silence, the dark, and Urku-ri surrounding her, Corrin drifted into a restless sleep. In her mind's eye, the battle with the hungries started to play again, imposing itself over the sensation of traveling on top of the war beast. She relived the gruesome scene of a growing wall of body parts and putrid colored slimy blood. Images sharp, surreal, she watched the mound grow around Urku-ri like a quagmire that pulled him down, suffocating him, burying him in a grave of clawed hands and grinning pig faces. Her tired mind playing tricks; she saw it happening even when she knew, in the cruel duality of the semiconscious state, that the heat warming her back was Urku-ri's heat.
Her whole body jerked forward, head pointing down instead of up. It happened quickly. Before she could wake, her mind was telling her she was falling into the hole the hungries had made with Urku-ri, buried under a mess of them. She began to scream for him as he disappeared, loss filling up her chest. Where was he going? Would he die? She'd just found him—couldn't lose him.
Felt herself falling. Knew the hungries were going to get her. Take her to the darkness. She was going to be pulled down that hole and into that tunnel to a place of the damned.
Her echoing screams brought her to a sharp wakefulness. Urku-ri was growling words, an arm tight about her waist. Searnon's back end was bucking and her front was scrambling. Together they were angled sharply downward into darkness. Either Searnon had fallen, or the path had collapsed, but the position was precarious, gravity tugging them down.
Blind in the dark, Corrin felt rather than saw help, heard other voices speaking, felt Urku-ri's body jerk. A rope. Quick movement. Searnon reoriented.
Corrin twisted, wrapping her arms around her Orki's bulk, confused, shocked, afraid. "What happened? Is it the hungries? What is it?"
His hand in her hair, the other holding her tight. "Cold visit the night before. The road weakened." He told her. Unbothered by the event, his heartbeat steady in his chest. "Corrin safe. Urku-ri keep Corrin safe."
How could he be so confident, have no fear? His hand engulfed her neck. He purred for her, calming her, taking her to that place where she worried about nothing. The tension drained out of her, from her neck to her toes.
She still didn't understand how he did that. Controlled her emotions and even her physical responses with a purr or a growl. How scent, taste, the touch of him had become necessary to her existence. He made her feel as if her life, until meeting him, had been incomplete. That she'd been too immersed in the daily routine of it to notice its emptiness.
She noticed now, even though their travel overland had been filled with routine, it was also filled with Urku-ri. He had purposely made himself the center of her world. When her eyes, even her thoughts, strayed, he brought her back to his orbit, commanding Corrin's attention, letting her know that nothing was more important to him than his redress woman. She had nothing in her life to compare it to.
Nanny, rest her soul, had loved Corrin, but she had also had her husband, daughters, and other granddaughters, and until the death of Corrin's grandfather, ran the household. Nanny made a point of tucking Corrin in bed at night as a little girl, but during the day, Corrin was forbidden to be in the places her grandmother most frequented. "I love you, child, but I can't have you underfoot where your bad luck might break my best mixing bowl," she'd say, giving Corrin a sweet biscuit and guiding her out of the kitchen.
Nor did she want Corrin to sit with her at her knitting and sewing. "I love you, child, but I still can't get the knots out from last time. Go outside and play."
When Corrin eased into adulthood, the sentiments never changed. "I love you, child, but-"
They were moving again. Continuing in the dark, climbing a mountain Corrin could not see. As usual, somehow, Urku-ri could sense what she was thinking, feeling. He pulled her in close, tucked tight and safe between his front and Searnon's back. She felt his jaw move against her shoulder in a nuzzling caress, before his tongue snaked out to taste her skin. "My Corrin, always. Redress."
"I don't understand that word, what it means? Redress is something farmer Billin's plays when cows break down the fence and get into the neighbor's corn," she said against his skin.
"Redress. You are all things. Reward, compensation, reparation, bad made good, wrong made right. Mine. Only Urkuri's redress. Mate. War bride."
"Reward. You called me that before." And she had become angry. Unreasonably angry.
"Always call Corrin that."
"I can't be your reward," Corrin confessed. "I was born under two cursed moons. Bloody moons. My mother died."
"Bad? No bad." His voice changed. Held a note she couldn't decipher as his mouth moved on her ear, his arms around her tightening briefly. "Bloody moons?Huumonsay bloody, mean orange moon? Corrin born under Blessing moons."
