Fated Mates by Addison Carmichael

Author:Addison Carmichael [Carmichael, Addison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

FATED MATES

CHAPTER 12

Rebel Yell

“What are you doing here?” Bryant shouted, stalking up to me from the longhouse.

I batted my eyelashes, tucking my herb filled basket into the crook of my elbow.

“Like you, visiting my friends,” I answered sweetly. “And how are you this fine morning, Mr. Bryant? Did you have fun carousing out all night with the boys? Hope you didn’t get Black Crow too drunk and disorderly yesterday. Dove-caller will be miffed.”

Bryant ignored my jibe and gripped my upper arm to haul me aside. I pursed my lips and yanked out of his hold, visually warning him not to try it. He started to reach for me again, then thought better of it and swiped a rough hand down his jaw.

“I asked you to stay at the cabin,” he said in a tightly restrained tone.

“No. You ordered me to stay at the cabin,” I corrected. “Problem is, I don’t take orders from you or anyone. It’s a revolutionary thing in my time called ‘personal freedom’. You should try it. It’s all the rage.”

He grumbled something in Gaelic that I probably didn’t want to know its translation, then tried another tact. “It’s not safe for you to be out and about, Callista. That’s why I wanted you to stay at the cabin.”

“Why? Are the Arcan Hunters back? The slimy town sheriff hiking the woods? No? Well then, there’s no reason for me not to be here then, is there?”

Bryant opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.

“All right then. Since you’re here now, there’s not much I can do about it,” he said.

“None.”

“At least stay with Dove-caller until I come to retrieve you. We’ll leave in the next hour.”

I was about to rebel against his infuriating male chauvinist dictate, then decided against it. There was nothing he could do about my current presence at the village, and he accepted it with bad grace, but it wasn’t nice to gloat over my small victory, as much as I wanted to.

“See you later then,” I said, turning from him and making my way around the village until I came across Dove-caller.

There really had been something of necessity that I wanted to discuss with her ever since my last visit to Silver Falls.

She was washing and beating clothes in the nearby creek. Alone, too. A streak of luck, since what I wanted to talk to her about was meant for her ears alone.

“I-tsi, dsya, ya!” I called out, one of the few Lushootseed phrases I learned.

She smiled and waved me over, twisting and beating another shirt onto the smooth stone.

“Need some help?” I offered.

Dove-caller handed me another item, and together we went about the family laundry as she filled me in on the latest village gossip.

“The mother of Yellow Leaves is not happy that Gray Wolf has rejected her offer to wed her daughter,” she said.

“Is Yellow Leaves even old enough to have a husband yet?” I asked, twisting out the excess water from the cloth I had just beat clean.

A slight, pretty girl with a penchant to giggle, she couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen.

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