The Chieftain’s Daughter (5 page)

“Take it off,” Mechan hollered, his guttural voice echoing past the tent, desperation sounding through the reverberations. “Take it off. Spirits be damned, take it off. Take it off!”

Ishara no longer felt empowered. Fright froze her. She heard him shouting at her, but all she could see was the cold anger that pierced through his dark eyes and into her very soul. She needed to take the dress off. She had become a part of something she did not want to be. No longer did Ishara think of this as Mechan’s weakness. This dress, this memory of his wife…this was Mechan—his whole world.

She quickly pulled the dress up over her head, abandoning it on the ground, a puddle of suede and memories.

Mechan picked the dress up with his one hand, and with the other, he grabbed Ishara by her wrist and tugged her out of the sleeping quarters, through the living quarters, and out into the cold night. Rain fell from the sky as if the very spirits cried for Mechan’s plight.

What had she done?

Ishara winced as Mechan tossed her back into her slave pen. She rolled across the dirt, the bars of the pen stopping her. A pang of anger surged through her limbs, but as she looked back up at Mechan, ready to yell at him for manhandling her, she was quickly reminded of the pain that she caused him first, and it did not make her feel victorious at all.

“I do not know what they teach you in your tribe, child, but in
this
tribe, we respect the spirits of the dead and we respect the people who have lost those close to them.” Mechan pointed a thick finger at her face, and behind him, the Manahotchi started to leave their tents, peeking out toward the commotion. All eyes were on them. “You are not my wife. You will never be my wife! You will never know what she was like or who she was, because you have shown me today that your defiled self could never understand someone or something as beautiful as she was.”

“M-Mechan…”

“Don’t you speak to me so familiarly, slave. I am your Master and you will address me as such.” Mechan spit in her general direction, and if he wanted to really hit her with it, he probably could. But the pained tug on his features made Ishara think that he really didn’t want to spit on her. Or hurt her. She had already wounded him, and he had had enough.

Ishara looked between Mechan and the others who now watched her. She swallowed hard and lowered her eyes, shivering beneath the chill of the rain. It no longer mattered that she was naked and shamed in front of the whole tribe. Mechan was right. Ishara acted inappropriately, especially for a chieftain’s daughter. Because of this, she could only manage to muster a quiet, “Yes, Master.”

Mechan turned away and stalked back into his tent. The flaps were tied down tightly, and soon, all was quiet save for the pattering of the rain in newly formed mud puddles.

Ishara curled up in the corner of the pen, hugging her knees up to her chest and the top of them brushed against the necklace that she still wore. She reached up with shaky fingers and wrapped the tooth into her palm, holding to it tightly. “I am sorry,” she apologized to the piece of bone and held it close to her for the rest of the night.

Chapter Five

Mechan did not know how much time had passed since he put Ishara in the slave pen and crossed her out of his life all together. It might have been minutes, or hours…and when he looked at where the light seeped in through the canvas seams, he thought that even days could have passed.

He put the dress back in the trunk where he would no longer have to look at it. When he did, he saw Ishara and his beloved wife at the same time, and the thought maddened him. He did not know what this woman—this slave—was doing to him, but he felt like he should hate it with his whole being.

He didn’t.

It quickened him and breathed life back into his once dead heart.

Why? Ishara proved to be a defiant, disrespectful little brat of a woman who seemed to want nothing more than to push the boundaries and see how much she could get away with. As Mechan closed the lid of the trunk, he thought of his wife. She had been much the same way. The daughter of one of the elders in the tribe, she rebelled against everything expected of her, insistent that she not have to be bound by tradition and expectation. It was this fire that Mechan yearned for, and Ishara carried the same flame.

“The necklace.” Mechan opened the trunk up again and sorted through it. Nothing. A new anger surged through him. “She took the necklace.”

“What necklace?”

Mechan craned his head around to find Zari standing by the entrance of his tent. She wore a dyed blue dress that made her dark, black eyes glitter like they held their own light inside. “Zari. What are you doing here?”

Zari snaked her way into the tent with a hippy swagger that made the beads strung around her waist click together. “You have been in here alone for half of the day, Chieftain. I thought you might need the company.”

Mechan watched her cautiously, not trusting the way she seemed to slither into his presence. There was always something about her that gave him pause. It was probably why, despite the pressure of his clan, he had not bothered to think about wedding her. He grunted and shut the trunk once more.

“You should not let that girl get to you, Mechan.” Zari bravely addressed him by his name and had he been in a better mood, he might have let it be.

“Chieftain.” He moved to sit back down beside the fire. “And I do not let slaves get to me.”

Unfazed by the reprimand, she sat down beside the fire as well. “The whole tribe speaks of it. How she disrespected your wife. They all agree that you should have just drowned the little wench and been done with it.”

Mechan lifted one of his thick brows and stared across the flames at Zari. “Go on.”

Sliding her palms back over the furs to lounge, she continued, “She is the daughter of the Oolani chieftain, and she has belittled you…in your own camp. I know that you are adverse to killing women, but a statement should be made here.” Zari’s icy eyes flickered to Mechan as she dragged her hair out of her face. “What will the young men think if they know a slave can get away with insulting the chieftain? It just shows them how much they could get away with as well.”

“That is ridiculous. The Manahotchi would never do any such thing.”

“Wouldn’t they? Just the other day, your son found a few boys trying to plot their own rebellion. With all of this talk of an impending attack, they wish now more than ever to find glory.”

Mechan scoffed and stared back into the fire. “If they were raised by any good Manahotchi mother, they would know that glory does not come from shame.”

He could sense her eyes on him, but continued to watch the ash in the bottom of the fire pit glow, curl, and extinguish over and over again. The hot, orange tones rippled and churned, lifting into the amber of the bigger flames. He wanted her gone.

Zari placed her hand on Mechan’s forearm. “You know as well as I do, my chieftain, that these boys are born of ambition…and ambition blinds even the most dedicated of men.”

Mechan withdrew his hand from her touch and shook his head. “I am not killing the girl.”

“It’s because you have feelings for her.”

He narrowed his eyes and glared back at her. Zari crossed the line.

“Don’t look at me like that. I can see it. Just in the days that you’ve had her, she’s ensnared you in a trap that you refuse to acknowledge.” Zari crawled around the fire and sat directly beside Mechan, unafraid. He did not appreciate this sort of defiance—the conniving, sneaky kind that made it impossible to trust in those who used it. “The whole tribe can see it.”

“They cannot.”

Zari’s lips tugged into a cat-like grin. “So you admit it, then? You admit that she has trapped you.”

He snarled and rose to his feet, stepping away from the fire. “I admit nothing, as there isn’t anything to admit.” He crossed his arms across his broad chest and his muscles tensed as they would before a battle. But he was not at battle. It was only Zari. “You are trying my patience, woman.”

“How long will you play this game, Mechan?”

“Chieftain,” Mechan corrected once more.

“
Chieftain.
How long? You should have been remarried years ago. There is an impending attack. You only have one heir.” Zari rose to her feet as well, her body rolling fluidly as she stood. She approached Mechan and reached out to put her hand on one of his biceps. “If you marry me, you secure your tribe’s future. You will fill them with a renewed confidence.”

Mechan didn’t back away this time. He kept perfectly still, frozen to the very spot where he stood. “I am not ready to remarry.”

“And if the girl wished to keep you as a mate? Would you be ready then?” Her words were bitter. Challenging.

“She is a slave.”

Zari laughed and pulled her hand away from him. Turning on a heel, she snorted and moved across the tent, stopping beside the branch that kept the one side of it propped up. “You can’t hold on to her forever. You are hurting your tribe by doing so. And when the enemy comes to destroy us, Spirits forbid it, who will you leave to lead the pieces left behind?”

Mechan looked over at the elder branch, ignoring Zari, and his lips pressed together. In a way, she was right, and he hated to acknowledge it. But poison ran through her veins, he could feel it. Intuitively, he put off any future marriage with the woman less because of his yearning for his deceased wife, but more because he could not imagine himself with such a creature. He would put her away forever, just like Ishara, if he had a reason. But she hadn’t done anything.

“You may leave now. And you can take back to the tribe that I have recovered from the food poisoning that has kept me inside for the past night and morning.” He watched Zari smirk before she turned to leave.

His eyes flickered back to the branch, the one Zari held no regard or respect for. Ishara at least found some honor in it. But she was a slave—the daughter of a chieftain, but still a slave none-the-less.

Mechan sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. “Forgive me, my wife.”

* * *

Zari threw her hands up in the air. “He is utterly impossible.”

Aloran watched her from the comfort of a pile of soft bear furs. He found it amusing that Zari would waste her breath on his old man. Amusing and pitiful. “You know, Zari, if you spent as much time with your mouth around my cock that you do blabbering about how my father won’t marry you, at least one of us would accomplish something.”

She glared at him. “And what would I accomplish with that?”

“I didn’t say
you’d
accomplish something, did I?” Aloran plucked a fat grape from the wooden bowl next to the furs. Popping it into his mouth, he surveyed Zari’s sleek form. “You are wearing that dress that I adore.”

Immediately, Zari’s frown disappeared and she pressed her hands down over the curves of her hips. “I thought it might sway your father.”

“
Tsk
.” The young warrior clucked before sliding another grape into his mouth. With it half full, he continued to speak, “You know damn well my father does not care about what dress you wrap yourself in.”

Zari pouted. “You do not know that.”

“He has not had a woman since my mother died.”

“He’s had that rotten, little Oolani bitch.” Zari’s teeth ground together as the words left her mouth. This apparently bothered the woman more than Aloran thought.

Leaning forward, he placed the bowl aside and held out his arms in a pathetic and completely fake gesture for Zari to join him. “Come, my dear, and let me tell you about how men can lie just as well as women do.”

Zari slipped into Aloran’s lap and wrapped her hands around his neck. “You don’t think he’s taken her yet?”

“No, Zari. I do not think it. I know it. That little, disobedient flower locked up in that cage is as untouched as freshly-fallen snow.” Aloran ran his finger down the line of Zari’s jaw and slipped his finger past her lips and into her mouth. She suckled the tip of it greedily, and his balls tightened beneath his lengthening cock. “Which is all for the better, because when you help my slave to escape into the woods, I am going to catch her…and then she will rightfully be mine.”

She withdrew his finger, and her eyes dimmed once more. “What?”

“You heard me. You are going to help her to escape. Let her think she is running back home. Do her the favor, Zari.” Aloran hooked his thumb around into her mouth and tugged her head so he could put his lips to hers. He kissed her passionately, his tongue roaming through her mouth, then broke it with a whisper. “And when I catch her, I will fuck her and make her mine.”

Zari braced both hands against his chest and shoved out of Aloran’s lap.

“What, my dear? You cannot expect to have both me and my father, can you?”

“You are using me!”

“Of course I am. In the end, you can have my father and go live together somewhere out of my way, and I will take his tribe and people and make them mine. I think it is fair. Don’t you?”

Zari spun around and pointed a slender finger down at Aloran. “What good is your father to me if he is not chieftain anymore?”

Aloran sighed, tapping a finger against his bottom lip in mock concern. “I suppose that isn’t my issue, is it?” He reached up and grabbed her wrist, yanking her back down into his lap. “Come, Zari. You know that just as soon as my old man is dead, I’ll take you as mine. But these things come in their own time. And if you ever want to be the mistress of this tribe, you will have to play with me…not against me.”

She fell back into Aloran’s lap with a huff, and he could hear the growl that started low in her throat. With another kiss, the rumbling tapered off, and soon she returned the kiss with a fiery gusto. Aloran smiled after pulling his mouth away from hers, and then patted the curve of her ass. “That’s my girl. Now. Think of a plausible escape plan that the slave girl will believe. She is smart, remember, so if it seems thrown together, she will not trust it. Or you.”

“Very well. I’ll come up with a plan, and that little whore better believe it because I have little patience for the web she’s trapped Mechan in.”