Alphas of Black Fortune Complete Series (21 page)

When Cressida went topside to talk to Kelly, Reza found Kamala and Prija in the sailors’ barracks. Their flight from the village had been so quick that they hadn’t brought anything with them but the clothes they were wearing. And those were somewhat inappropriate, so far as the bears were concerned, and so they had changed into borrowed clothes not unlike Cressida’s. They looked incredibly uncomfortable, and Reza felt bad for that. Kamala looked better, though, calmer, her eyes dry. Prija was tugging at her trousers like they itched her.

“You’ll get more comfortable in the clothes,” he promised them.

Kamala smiled at the sight of him, which warmed his heart. “I think perhaps if we just had clothes that
fit
.”

He nodded. “Yes, we’ll find you some on our way back West, I promise. There are plenty of ports to stop in.”

“Where will we go?” Prija asked. “Do you have a home, Reza?”

The question caught him off guard. He looked back at her, into her big green eyes, and faltered. “I…no, I suppose I don’t. I have Cressida.”

“Then what will we have?” Prija was looking at him, her eyes a little wide, and he knew her fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of the world away from the island. He knew it and he knew how unprepared they were, and he realized he had not thought this far ahead.

“I don’t know yet, but I won’t leave you alone,” he told them. He watched Kamala’s face fall and it was like a weight dragging his heart towards his gut. “Salamander, I won’t leave you, I promise. We’ll find a place you like and get you rooms to live in, find work you like. You should have things to do on the ship. What do you favor?”

“I’d like to alter these clothes,” Kamala said immediately. “If that’s all right.”

He nodded. “I’m sure it would be. Could you mend the men’s clothes?”

“I suppose so, if they wanted.”

“I can cook,” Prija said.

“You can help the cook, then,” Reza decided. “Especially during the first leg of the voyage, when we’ll be eating mostly supplies from the island. He’ll be unfamiliar with them.”

“But is this sustainable, Reza?” Prija asked worriedly.

“No,” he admitted. “But we’ll find a situation that is.”

“Are you going to just live on this ship forever?” Kamala asked.

“I…don’t know yet,” he said. “Everything happened so fast. Just…give me some time to sort things out, to make a plan. All right?”

They looked at each other and then back at him, and nodded. Reza ran his hands back through his hair and turned to leave them to put their bunks in order, but Cressida walked into the barracks.

“They’re going to come stay with me in Kelly’s quarters,” she told them, smiling. “For the time being.”

“They…are?” Reza blinked at her.

“Yes, that’s easier, for now.”

Reza looked over his shoulder at Kamala and Prija, and then took Cressida’s hand. “I need to talk to you,” he told her softly, nodding to the girls. “We’ll be back. Try to make yourselves comfortable.”

He pulled Cressida out of the barracks, into the narrow corridor without, and sighed at the complicated tangle of feelings that washed over him. He still felt caught between his old life and the possibility of a new one, his past and his future.

“Cress, I don’t think this will work,” he murmured.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“This. Us. All of us. They can’t live on a ship,
I
can’t live on a ship. We need a home. Kelly and his people need a home.” He sandwiched her hand between both of his and looked into her eyes, searching her face for understanding.

“Are you saying you’re going to stay here?” she asked him, voice small.

He shook his head. “I’m saying we need a better plan than sailing off to…we don’t even know where.”

“To get my ship back,” she said.

“Is that really what you want? Still?”

He watched confusion and hesitation darken her eyes. “I…yes. It’s what I’ve always wanted. It’s freedom.”

“Even at the cost of…us?”

His heartbeat hastened when she didn’t answer him immediately. He felt every thump fill his chest, echoing in his ears, the mark an electric hum that he knew would kill him slowly if she left him, if she refused to change for him as he had changed for her.

“I can’t,” she said softly, shaking her head a little. “I can’t…make this decision now, Reza. And I can’t make it alone. The three of us will have to sit down and…figure it out.”

He released her hands and took a step back from her, trying to quelch the disappointment he felt brimming into his eyes as he nodded.

“Of course, Cressida.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” she said quickly. “Reza, I never want to lose you. I couldn’t live with it.”

“Well,” he muttered. “We know what you don’t want and what you can’t live with. But I still don’t know what you do want, and what you
can
live with.”

She said nothing to that. He felt like maybe that had been a cruel thing to say to her, but she was his mate and he wouldn’t soften those blows for her. They’d chosen each other and everything that came with that. Including this horrible, horrible moment, and the other horrible ones to follow. When she fell silent, he let it stretch another moment and then turned to go back into the barracks and help Prija and Kamala pack up what they had to move to the captain’s quarters.

Cressida felt adrift when Reza walked away from her. Everything had gone so quickly from passionate and happy at last to completely upheaved. It felt like the mark actually throbbed against her throat as he went back into the barracks and she was left standing alone in the corridor. The Jewel of So Sur around her neck suddenly weighed a hundred pounds. She went to the cargo hold to take inventory and also just to give herself some space. She supposed it was true that they’d all been so focused on getting the jewel that they hadn’t stopped to think of what would happen
after
they had it.

They’d all been operating on the assumption that there was only one path to what they each wanted. Kelly wanted the jewel to sell it and buy his den a real home. Reza had wanted to
go
home until he got there. And all Cressida had wanted was to get her ship back. It was the physical representation of her freedom, of the fact that she made her own way and lived the life she wanted. She hadn’t ever thought that perhaps the representation of her freedom was beginning to take a new shape, that it even could. But who would she be without her ship?

When she met Reza and Kelly for dinner in the captain’s quarters that evening, she still had no answers. The tension in the room was as thick as an early-morning fog. Kamala and Prija were eating on the deck with the rest of the crew, and Cressida could tell that Reza was uncomfortable with leaving them alone, even if he knew that no harm would befall them. The bears respected them even if they couldn’t understand them, mostly because they respected Kelly.

They sat at the end of the long table in Kelly’s quarters, Cressida at the head and either of her mates catty-corner, but she didn’t eat much of the fish that Prija had helped prepare. She moved it around on her plate a little, and when she perceived that neither Reza nor Kelly seemed particularly interested in eating either, she simply set down her fork and looked between them.

“How do we fix this?” she asked.

They looked at each other, each shifting uncomfortably in his seat. No one had answers, it seemed. No one had a solution. But Cressida was determined to find one.

“Well, first,” Kelly finally said, “we go back home.”

“Whose home?” Reza asked.

“I…we leave this part of the world, and go back to the one Cressida and I hail from.”

“And then what?”

Kelly looked down. “I told my den I would find them a home.”

“Are we not now a part of your den?” Reza pressed.

Kelly sighed. “Well, what do
you
want to do, then, tiger?”

“I want a home too, and not on a ship. You don’t want to live on a ship forever.”

There was a pause, then, before Kelly looked at Cressida. “But she does.”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, shaking her head. When she couldn’t think of what to say other than what she’d already told Reza, she sat back in her chair and took a breath. And told them the truth. “I don’t know that I want that anymore, James. All I do know, for absolutely certain, is that I want you both with me. Wherever I am.”

Some of the tension softened then. Perhaps both Kelly and Reza had been unsure of that. She was glad to have told them, but sad to think that they had doubted her. They were the two people in the world that she never wanted to disappoint, never wanted to be betray, and never wanted to be free of. She felt the mark warm between them, and lifted a hand to touch the Jewel of So Sur where it pulsed against her skin.

“We are three strange creatures with no home,” Kelly murmured. “And people depending on us to create one.”

“Where in the world could we go to create such a thing?” Reza wondered sadly.

Cressida looked between them, at their defeated, weary expressions, and had the most preposterous idea she’d ever had in her life.

“Right here,” she said, sitting up.

Reza and Kelly looked at her, neither one understanding.

“The island,” Cressida went on, clutching the jewel. “This island. Reza, you said it, when we were leaving the Keeper’s sanctuary.
I
am the Keeper of the Jewel now. So that sanctuary is mine as well. And your chieftain said that the jewel is sacred, and so is the one who keeps it.”

“Cressida,” Reza said, shaking his head. “No. You hate it here.”

“No, I don’t,” she insisted. “I hated it here when it was hurting me, when it was keeping me from you, but it’s brought us together. Kelly, you could bring your den
here
. We could all live here, the tigers and the bears, and me, together. The tribe will get to keep its sacred artifact on its island, and Kelly’s den will have a home at last, together.”

“You would live here,” Kelly said, staring at her. “With us. You would give up your ship?”

“Well, we should have at least
two
ships to protect the island, shouldn’t we?” Cressida asked, smiling slyly.

Kelly breathed a laugh and sat back in his chair. “This is madness.”

“You’ve said that this whole time,” Cressida pointed out. “But you joined yourself to me all the same. This is the answer. For all of us.”

“We’ll have to make peace with the tribe,” Reza said.

“And go
get
the rest of my den. And convince my men to bring them here.”

“The crew wants their family as much as you do, James,” Cressida said. “They’ll go along with it if you tell them it’ll work. And it’ll work. We’ll
make
it work.”

“I…” Reza looked at her, and her heart leapt to see the ferocity suddenly glimmering in his gold-green eyes. “Will help you make it work, Cressida.”

She smiled, more in love with both of them suddenly than she’d ever been before. “First thing in the morning,” she said, “we’ll take Kamala and Prija back to the village and speak with the chieftain. They want freedom but they don’t want to leave home.”

“No, I don’t think they do,” Reza agreed.

“And we’ll need people to help create a livable village of our own while we make the journey back to get the rest of the den,” Kelly said, nodding. He reached over and took Cressida’s hand, and she felt her smile deepen as he squeezed her fingers. “Love, you are brilliant.”

“I just know a thing or two about making my own way,” she reminded them.

That night, she stayed in Kelly’s quarters and shared the bed with Kamala and Prija. It wasn’t the most comfortable night’s sleep she’d ever had, but both women had been so relieved when she and Reza had told them that there was a plan, and that the plan did not involve sailing them to the other side of the world. Cressida suspected that Kamala’s feelings for Chaiya were more than just
tolerating
him, but that she loved her brother too much to tell him the truth. Prija was a different story, but Cressida did not know the tigress well enough to begin to guess why she might have been so quick to leave home, except to assume that Prija, like Cressida herself, had a wilder spirit than her father cared for. She was also stunning, and Cressida had already caught Fat Tom staring at her at least four times that day. She had a feeling that Prija would make her own way somehow, just fine.

Kelly called the whole thing
madness
another three times the next morning, as they got into the dinghy and rowed back to the island. Washed and dressed and once more with a sword at her hip, Cressida felt more confident about her idea, even as she stared up at the island’s peak upon approach. She had not expected ever to go back to this island, and it hadn’t even been two days since they’d left it. But there was a warmth to the jewel around her neck as they approached the beach that told her that this was the right course of action. Perhaps the jewel was never meant to leave the island anyway, and Cressida had been wrong to try to take it from its home, however good her intentions. It belonged here. What surprised them all was simply that perhaps they did as well.

“We should’ve brought more men,” Kelly was muttering, as they worked their way back through the jungle towards the village.

“We’re forging peace with them,” Reza reminded him. “Not invading them. And they won’t hurt Cressida. Her claim is already established. All Sajja can do is turn his back on us, in which case the Keeper’s sanctuary is still ours.”

“We don’t want to alienate our only neighbors,” Cressida said. “Any more than we already have.”

“He’ll want Prija to marry one of the bears,” Reza told Kelly.

Cressida blinked at that. “Well, that’s preposterous. There’s no arranging marriages, absolutely not.”

Kelly glanced at her, then at Reza, and shrugged. “I won’t force anyone, but if they
want
to, then I won’t stand in the way either.”

“That is Prija’s birthright, Cressida,” Reza told her, with a look behind them to where Prija and Kamala were walking a few feet back. “She deserves an important marriage. She wants that.”

“She
wants
to be married to a stranger?” Cressida scoffed. “That’s awful and I won’t support it. You confirm for me that it’s what
she
wants, fine. But none of this
birthright
business, Reza. No forced marriages.”

Reza put up his hands. “I give in.” He smirked at her. She batted at his shoulder and he ducked and drew back, falling into step with his sister instead, urging them closer as they neared the village. Cressida would enter first, the jewel on prominent display around her neck, to halt the advance of any of the warriors when they saw Reza and Kelly.

They were not far from the perimeter when the warriors emerged from the tangled green of the jungle, surrounding them. They each put up their hands and Cressida stepped forward, lifting the jewel in both hands.

“We beg words with the chieftain,” she said, and felt the stone translate her words so the warriors could understand her.

They looked at each other, plainly suspicious, as no doubt they had seen her transform into the giant serpent that had nearly killed the chieftain’s son. But after a moment’s delay of consternation, they waved them forward and led them to the well-trod path that curved to the village. Cressida was surprised to find that she was beginning to recognize the roots and trees and vines that surrounded her. She couldn’t tell whether it was the jewel guiding her, or just that she had started to learn the jungle on her own.

When they emerged into the village, the first thing that Cressida noticed was that the vine-made ring of battle had been removed from the village center, but blood still stained the grass. People began to gather when they saw their little party walking behind the warriors, towards the chieftain’s hut. Women in colorful saris, their bright skin and hair decorated with flowers, bellies and breasts exposed. And men bare-chested and bristling with weapons and symbols painted on their flesh, wearing ornate wreaths of leaf and vine and bone.

Sajja was waiting for them in the doorway to his hut, his face a grimace of anger and trepidation.

“Why do you come back here?” he demanded.

“Father, please!” Prija cried, ducking between the warriors to go to him. She hugged him, and Cressida saw part of that grimace give way as he returned the embrace. “I didn’t want to leave the island, not really. I only wanted to make my own choices and you were hurting people.”

Sajja’s shoulders sagged. He held his daughter and looked at Cressida. “Come inside, Keeper.” He turned and led them into the hut.