Neve walked beside Cael through the morning market and tried very hard not to think about last night.
He failed completely.
Every few steps his mind went back to it. The warmth. The hands. The voice against his ear. The way his own body had responded like it had been waiting for exactly that and hadn’t told him about it beforehand.
He touched the mark on his neck without meaning to.
It was warm again. It was always warm. Like something living sitting just under the skin, reminding him constantly that it was there.
He dropped his hand.
’Stop thinking about it,’ he told himself firmly. ’You don’t even know who it was. You can’t think about someone you don’t know. That’s not a thing people do.’
He thought about it again anyway.
His face went red.
"Does the bond hurt?"
He looked up. Cael was beside him, one hand loose around his arm, looking at Neve with an expression that Neve didn’t know how to deal with. Cael never looked like that. Cael’s face was usually nothing, flat and unreadable and steady. But right now there was something in it that sat heavy.
Disappointed. Sad, even.
Like someone who had been first in line and turned around for one second and lost his place.
"It doesn’t hurt," Neve said. "It’s fine."
Cael nodded and looked forward.
Neve watched him for a moment.
He understood what Cael was feeling without needing it explained. Cael had been the first one to find him in the forest, carried him home, asked to bond before anyone else even knew he existed. And then one night in a trade city and a stranger with dark hair had done in an hour what Cael had been patient about for days.
It wasn’t fair. Neve knew it wasn’t fair.
"Cael," he said.
Cael looked at him.
Neve kept his eyes forward. His cheeks were already warming and he hadn’t even said anything yet.
"Once winter comes," he started. He paused. Kept walking. "I’ll let you bond with me."
Cael stopped walking.
Neve kept going for two more steps and then stopped too and looked back.
"You’ll finally bear my cubs?" Cael said. His voice had done something unfamiliar.
"Who said anything about cubs?" Neve turned his face away. "Just the bond. First."
He heard movement and then he was off the ground.
Cael had lifted him and was spinning him once, arms wrapped tight, face pressed into Neve’s stomach.
Neve went completely rigid.
They were in the middle of the market. People were looking. Of course, people were looking; there was a very large leopard beastman crouched over a small, red-eared person in the centre of a busy trading city. Neve could feel every single stare without looking.
Kael was standing three feet away with his arms folded watching the whole thing with mild entertainment.
"Stop," Neve said. "Cael. Put me down. Right now. There are people—"
Cael set him down gently and kissed his forehead.
Neve’s brain went completely offline for two seconds.
"I’ll wait for you, Neve," Cael said quietly.
"What about me?" Kael said immediately.
Cael looked at him. "Stay away."
"You can’t tell me to—"
"Kael," Neve said, because Cael’s expression was moving somewhere that would cause a scene. He looked at Kael properly.
He was part of the ten. Neve knew it since the system had confirmed it. The favourability number floating above his head knew it.
But he couldn’t rush it. He couldn’t rush any of it. He had two hundred litters to eventually produce and he didn’t even understand this world properly yet. He needed to build things first. Understand things first. Getting bonded to ten people while he was still sleeping on borrowed straw was not a plan.
"After winter," Neve said. "I’ll think about it after winter."
Kael leaned forward and pressed his lips to Neve’s forehead on the other side.
Neve stood very still between them.
"I’ll come visit," Kael said. "Even if I have to travel to the leopard village every week."
"Let’s go," Cael said, hand already around Neve’s wrist, pulling him forward.
"The cloth," Neve said quickly. "We still need to get the cloth."
.
.
The trader laughed the moment he saw Neve.
"There he is," the man said, leaning on his stall with a grin. "The walkabout. You really went and got yourself kidnapped within an hour of arriving."
"I was just thinking," Neve said flatly.
"About what? Walking into a kidnapping?"
"About fabric."
The trader laughed again, shaking his head, and reached behind his stall.
What he pulled out was red.
Deep, rich, clean red linen, folded neatly, clearly the quality he had mentioned before. Neve’s tail moved before he could stop it. He stared at the fabric and touched the edge of it carefully. Smooth. Properly finished edges. It held its colour evenly all the way through.
"How did you dye it this colour?" Neve asked.
"Trade secret," the trader said, looking pleased with himself.
Neve filed that away. He would figure it out eventually.
Both Cael and Kael stepped slightly in front of Neve as the trader’s eyes lingered too long. The trader noticed, coughed once and looked at his own stall instead.
Cael bundled everything together and put it directly into Neve’s hands.
Kael pressed a small wrapped skin into his other hand. Crystals and fruit inside, from the weight of it.
"For the journey," Kael said.
"Thank you," Neve said.
Cael had already shifted. He crouched and Neve climbed on and Kael stood in the market watching them go, tail swaying once behind him, hand raised in something that was almost a wave.
They rode out of the city as the morning got properly bright.
.
.
The forest came back up around them and the market noise fell away and Neve sat on Cael’s back with the red linen bundled in his arms and thought about thread. About needles. About the specific problem of having fabric and no way to cut or sew it into anything useful.
He had two pieces now. The white linen from last night and this new red one. Both of them are just lengths of fabric with nothing done to them.
He looked at the trees moving past.
’I need to figure out how to create a fire first,’ he thought. ’Then cooking. Then clothes. Then soap. Then...’
"Hold on Cael!"
Cael slowed immediately, alert, scanning the trees. "What’s wrong?"
"There." Neve pointed. "That stall near the edge of the tree line. Is that salt?"
Cael looked at it. "Salt?"
"White. Grainy. Comes from—" Neve stopped himself from explaining too much. "Just walk over. I’ll show you."
Cael walked over in his leopard form, which made the trader stand up very fast and take one step back. Neve slid off and held up a crystal.
"That," he said, pointing at the white crystals in the large clay container. "How much?"
The trader relaxed slightly. "One crystal for that whole container. But careful with it." He lowered his voice like he was sharing something important. "It’s poison if you use too much."
Neve blinked.
"...Poison."
"Terrible taste and makes you sick. We use it to deal with animals that are too dangerous to fight. Put it in their water."
Neve looked at the container of salt.
At the trader.
At the salt again.
"One crystal," he said, and handed it over.
He took the whole container.
.
.
Back on Cael, moving through the forest properly now, Neve held the salt container against his chest and thought about everything he was working with.
Fire, which he was going to create with bamboo, tomorrow morning. He was fairly confident about this.
Cooking. But he would need the fire first, then he could figure out what vessels existed in the tribe for boiling or roasting.
Salt which was now acquired, widely believed to be poison, good for flavouring meat once he convinced someone to let him near their food.
Clothes — fabric without thread was just a wrap. Workable for now. Uncomfortable but workable.
He touched the mark on his neck again.
’I’ve only found four,’ he thought. ’Four of the ten are accounted for. Cael. Ryker. Kael. The unknown one from last night.’
He looked at the trees.
’Six more somewhere in this world.’
He thought about the mating part of it and then firmly stopped thinking about that.
But eventually, at some point, mating was going to have to happen.
With all ten of them. After all, it was needed for him to build his tribe.
He pressed his fingers to his temple.
’I will deal with building the tribe later,’ he told himself. ’First, I need to understand this world well, get the mission rewards, figure out medicine, make actual clothes and soap. Then, figure out how to explain to an entire village that I am not a moving fruit and not a female and that I am going to help them survive winter whether they like me or not.’
The village was going to come into view soon.
He squared his shoulders on Cael’s back.
’One thing at a time,’ he thought. ’Let’s start with the fire. That’s if I don’t end up burning the whole village ’accidentally’.’