Mara's spoon stilled in the pot. Without turning, she spoke—her voice like flint scraping against stone. "You smell like death, boy."
Jorik swallowed. Even weak and disoriented, he recognized the weight of that tone. It was the same one she'd used when he'd skinned his first kill sloppily, wasting good hide.
But beneath the sharpness, something else threaded through: a tension in her shoulders, a hitch in her breath. Kael gave him a shove between the shoulder blades, propelling him forward.
The firelight caught the silver streaking Mara's braids as she finally turned.
Her face was all angles—a blade's edge of cheekbones and a mouth that looked carved for scowling.
But her eyes—those were Jorik's own, dark and liquid. They flickered over him, lingering on the scar in his palm before rising to meet his gaze. A muscle jumped in her jaw.
"Black bile," she said flatly. "Three days with your guts turned inside out, and now you're standing there gaping like a landed fish."
She stepped closer, her calloused fingers seizing his chin, tilting his face left, then right. Her thumbs brushed the hollows under his eyes, the gesture almost tender before she clicked her tongue. "Still too pale."
Kael chuckled by the entrance. "He walked here on his own, mostly."
Mara's fingers dug into Jorik's jawbone hard enough to bruise.
"Mostly isn't good enough," she snapped, but her other hand was already reaching for a clay cup by the fire. The liquid inside smelled like fermented fruit and something acrid—medicinal.
She shoved it against his lips. "Drink. All of it."
The brew scorched his throat, tasting of burned honey and crushed beetles. Jorik coughed, but Mara held the cup steady until he drained the last bitter drop.
Almost immediately, heat bloomed in his stomach, spreading outward like molten fingers kneading his muscles. The lingering dizziness faded, replaced by a prickling awareness of every inch of his skin.
"Better," Mara muttered, snatching the cup back. She eyed him like a hawk assessing a wounded rabbit. "The mark's awake now. You feel it?"
Jorik flexed his scarred palm. The dull throb had sharpened into a steady pulse, syncing with his heartbeat.
When he felt like, Something—someone—was watching him from beyond the lean-to's entrance.
He turned his head just as Liss ducked inside, her braids swaying. Her leather wrap clung to her hips, leaving her thighs bare, and the firelight painted her brown skin gold. She licked her lips, gaze locked on his hand.
Mara's fingers twitched toward the bone knife at her belt before she caught herself.
Instead, she stepped between Jorik and Liss, blocking the younger woman's hungry stare with her own broad shoulders.
"Back to your chores, girl," she growled, the words sharp enough to flay skin. "Unless you want me to remind your mother how you failed to salt last winter's meat properly."
Liss's smirk didn't waver, but her eyes flickered with something darker—calculation, not fear.
She traced the curve of Jorik's collarbone with her gaze before shrugging. "Wouldn't want to 'interrupt'," she purred, dragging the last word out like a blade being unsheathed.
The leather strips of her wrap whispered against her thighs as she turned, deliberately swaying her hips as she ducked back through the lean-to's entrance.
Kael's chuckle rumbled against Jorik's back. "Careful, Mara. You'll make him more interesting by forbidding him to others."
Mara rounded on them both, her braids lashing like angry serpents. "He's got the stink of the grave still clinging to him and you're both—"
She cut herself off with a sharp gesture at Jorik's bare chest, his still-too-prominent ribs. "Look at him. The mating rites would snap him like kindling."
At the mentions of that same word again, the foreign memories coiled tighter around his thoughts, whispering of rites he'd never witnessed but this body knew.
The Black Serpent didn't shy from flesh; they celebrated it like a hunt, with teeth and sweat and claiming. His borrowed pulse hammered against his ribs, torn between revulsion and a low, insistent heat pooling in his gut.
Mara's knuckle cracked against his temple. "Stop twitching," she snapped, but her fingers lingered a breath too long in his hair, rough and familiar. "The mark doesn't make you invincible. Just stupid."
Kael's chuckle rumbled behind them. "Stupid enough to challenge Garok for his woman, maybe."
The name Garok sent a jolt through Jorik's spine—memories surfaced of a hulking warrior with hands like boulders and a wife whose laughter could cut glass. Sera.
She'd braided flowers into Jorik's hair during his fifteenth summer when he'd barely known what to do with his own hands. The thought of touching her now, with Garok watching, with everyone watching—
[Ding!]
Out of nowhere a high-pitched 'ding' reverberated inside his skull, sharp enough to make his teeth ache.
His vision blurred momentarily, and then glowing symbols scrawled across his sight like blood on parchment:
[Congratulations on awakening your Breeding Power System.]
His breath stuttered. The words pulsed with an unnatural light, searing themselves behind his eyelids even when he blinked. Then, just as suddenly as they appeared, the message dissolved—but the knowledge remained, settling into his bones like a second heartbeat.
Breeding Power.
The meaning unfolded inside him with brutal clarity: strength through conquest, vitality through claiming. The mark on his palm burned hotter in response.
Mara's grip on his arm tightened. "What's wrong with you?" she demanded, her voice laced with the kind of impatience reserved for children who pretended injury to skip drills.
Jorik wet his lips. "Tired," he lied, forcing his voice steady. "Just—need to rest."
Kael snorted, but his copper eyes narrowed as he studied Jorik's face. "Looks like you've seen a ghost," he mused, then shrugged when Mara shot him a glare.
"Fine, fine. I'll leave you to mothering." He clapped Jorik's shoulder one last time—hard enough to stagger him—before ducking out of the lean-to, the leather flap swinging shut behind him.
Mara waited until Kael's footsteps faded before seizing Jorik's wrist, turning his palm upward to examine the scar.
The firelight made the jagged lines gleam wetly, as if freshly carved. "You felt it," she said, not a question. Her thumb pressed into the center of the mark, and Jorik hissed as heat lanced up his arm. "Good. The Goddess doesn't waste her gifts on cowards."
A shadow moved outside the lean-to—too tall to be Liss, too deliberate to be curious onlookers. Mara's nostrils flared. "Garok," she muttered, releasing Jorik's hand with a shove. "He's been circling since you woke. Like a vulture."
Jorik's stomach knotted. The memories supplied images of Garok's fists, his laughter booming across the fire pits after wrestling matches where Jorik had ended up face-down in the dirt.
But sharper still was the memory of Sera's fingers carding through his hair, her voice low and teasing—"One day, little serpent, you'll know what to do with those hands."
The lean-to's entrance darkened as Garok shouldered inside, his bulk blotting out the sun for a heartbeat.
His teeth gleamed in a grin that didn't touch his eyes. "Look who's back from the dead," he rumbled, flexing fingers thick as tree roots. "Heard you got yourself a mark. Too bad it's wasted on a boy who can't even—"
Mara's bone knife thunked into the post beside Garok's ear before he finished. "Say it," she invited, her voice deadly soft. "I'd love to explain to the elders why I gutted you."
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