“Why haven’t you gone to Earth then?” Summer demanded. “Captured yourself a human woman like Ar’ar did?”
He turned his face away, leading the multari again. “Very few are selected for the competitions. Even fewer win the chance to journey to your world to hunt a mate.”
“I thought—”
He made a huffing sound, a bitter g’hir chuckle. “What? That any male who wished it was provided with the location of your homeworld? That we would let loose millions upon millions of warriors to hunt there unchecked?”
“Why haven’t you?” she demanded. “You could. I’ve seen your people’s technology for myself, up close and personal. My world wouldn’t stand a chance against you.”
“You—human females—our last and only chance of survival,” he said grimly. “To invade your world—we would bring you to the brink of destruction as readily as those who unleashed the Scourge upon us have.”
“The Zerar.” That story—of how their enemies created and introduced the plague called the Scourge, the disease that had killed nine of ten of the g’hir female population in a matter of weeks, while leaving the males alive—she’d heard during her time with the Betari.
“How old were you, Ke’lar? When the plague came here?”
“Five summers,” he said, without looking back, without breaking stride. “I do not remember a time when Hir was not a graveyard, when mine was not a race looking into the face of its own extinction.”
“I’m sorry.” Her throat was tight, recalling the Betari enclosure’s monument, the thousands of remembrance stones sparkling under the suns to honor their lost females, women, girls, babies . . . “I’m sorry for what the Zerar did to your people.”
He didn’t reply. She shifted in the saddle uncomfortably, the unspoken retort hanging in the air—that if she were truly sorry, truly cared about the survival of their kind, she would accept Ar’ar as her mate and provide the g’hir with the children they needed so badly.
“So you seem young and healthy,” she said, her throat tight. “Fast enough to catch yourself a human woman for certain.”
“I would gladly hunt a mate from your world if I could. I would lay down my life for her. Bleed myself dry for her happiness.”
“Her happiness?” she scoffed. “You know, I don’t understand you at all, Ke’lar. How can you claim to feel any respect for women—for our rights and wishes—if you’d hunt us like animals?”
His fangs flashed in the moonlight. “I would give a day’s blood to the Goddess in thanks for the chance. I would have treasured her, my human mate, with every breath.” He turned his face away, walking again. “But I will never be permitted to compete. I will never be among those who journey to your world.”
“Why not?”
The reins in his hand were slack and Summer realized Beya, her big head lowered to be level with Ke’lar’s, was not being led at all but walking contentedly with him.
“A number of reasons,” he said, just when she had begun to think he wouldn’t answer her at all. “I am the second of our clanfather’s sons. My brother Ra’kur has his Jenna to lead when he becomes clanfather. My mate would have little chance of becoming a clanmother. I will not be chosen when other clans lack a female to lead. I am a second son but had the plague not come . . .” His voice was tight. “I love my brother. We have always been best friends as well as brothers and no one knows me better but—may the All Mother forgive me—I . . . envy him.”
“Because he will lead the clan? Because you want to be clanfather?”
Ke’lar gave a short huffing laugh. “If you knew me better you would not ask that. A clanfather must be the perfect balance of the All Mother’s sky children: powerful as the Brothers’ morning rise with the coolness of mind of the Sister moons.”
Summer glanced at his shoulders, the breadth of his back, the astonishing strength of his body. “And you don’t think you’re powerful?”
“I am too much of the Brothers, with too much sunfire in my essence,” he said easily. “And not nearly enough moon. I am told I take after my mother in that way but I could not say. My father loved her greatly but from what I have been told of her, she, like me, would follow her fire and go her own way. Ra’kur was once like me, one who also always chafed against the rules. That is the fire that sent him into the stars and ultimately to find your world. My fire sent me to forest. Perhaps it simply suits my nature better. That way I have no one to argue with but Beya”—he threw Summer a smile—“and out of pity she lets me win. But since he found his Jenna, Ra’kur has found his balance, the moonlight to his fire. It is best for all that Ra’kur will be clanfather and in that I am content.”
“Was that why Ar’ar got to go to Earth but not you? Because he’s the heir?”
“The Betari are a powerful clan and wield great influence. Mirak would do whatever was necessary to ensure that their enclosure has a clanmother.”