Barbarian Mine (Ice Planet Barbarians #4)(37)

Then we are before my father’s cave. I hesitate for a moment. This feels very…personal. As if I am about to expose my entire world to this stranger that I don’t know but who shares my face. Thoughts war within me. He is a bad one…yet my brother. Would my father not want this? With a heavy sigh, I lay my spear against the cliff wall and crouch low to enter the cave. “Come,” I tell Raahosh, my voice harsh. Whether or not he chooses to follow is up to him.

I crawl into the small room and crouch next to the pile of rocks that covers my father’s bones. I still remember the day I dragged his dead body here, the long hours it took, the endless trips to collect more rocks because the thought of scavengers tearing at his bones was more than I could bear. I was just a kit myself, then, and completely alone.

The sorrow of that day fills me and I bow my head. My father.

I hear a small hiss of breath and look up. Raahosh is there, his long body folded over to crawl into the cave next to me. His scarred face is turned toward me, and he stares at the neat, orderly pile of rocks that is our father’s last resting place. His gaze turns to the necklace hanging from the jut of stone, and raw sorrow creases his face.

“That was my mother’s,” Raahosh says after a moment. “Our mother’s. I remember him putting it around his neck after she died.”

My heart aches. “I no have memories of her.”

“Her name was Daya.” There is a rasp in his voice, and he will not look at me. “I have very few memories of her myself, just that her belly was rounded with you when father took us away. She resonated for him twice. The first time with me, and then five years later, with you.” His gaze flicks to me. “She did not love our father.”

My brows draw together. “But…they resonated.” I think of Har-loh, her chest purring under mine. It fills me with such contentment and joy. I cannot imagine anything but.

“She loved another. I remember that very clearly. She did not like Vaashan.”

Vaashan. Father’s name. Raahosh’s words fill me with anger, but I want to hear more. He knows things of my family that I cannot, and I am hungry for answers. “But I am here.”

“No one can deny resonance,” Raahosh says flatly. He reaches forward and touches one of the rocks on father’s grave. “Hektar – Vektal’s father and then chief – decided that they must have the kit for the sake of the tribe, but that she did not have to live with him. She could return to her heart-mate.”

My mouth thins at the thought. No wonder my father hated them so. They kept his mate from him.

“Our father decided that was not a good enough answer for him. He took mother and I out with him on one of his hunts…and then never brought her back. He just took her further and further away from the tribe. Not here.” He lifts his head. “I would remember the salt smell. But he kept her and hid her. She was not a hunter and did not know the way back to the tribe. I remember many days and nights of her crying. But father would not change his mind.”

My gut feels as if a stone has lodged there.

“Then you were born, and the tension between them seemed to vanish. Mother was content for the first time, I think, since leaving the cave. She loved you. Her tiny Maarukh. I remember her saying it over and over again. It’s one of my last memories of her.” His gaze swings away, back to her necklace. “Sa-kohtsk are difficult to bring down with six hunters. Imagine trying to bring it down with one man, his mate, and a young boy.” He shakes his head and rubs his jaw with one hand. “Mother was determined to help, because she knew if we did not get you a khui, you would die. They felled it, but Mother died in the hunt and I was mauled.” His hand touches his face, the deep scarring below the broken horn. “I don’t remember much after that. Just Father taking me back to the tribe for healing and leaving me there. I never understood why he did not stay with me.” His gaze slides to me. “Now I know. He told me you were dead, but it was a lie. He just didn’t want to bring you back to the tribe. With me, he had no choice.”

I do not know what to say. There is much anger in Raahosh’s voice. I think for a minute, in silence. It is very quiet at father’s rocky bedside. “He carried much hate for them. Always.”

Raahosh nods slowly. “And yet he left me with them and protected you. I do not know why this angers me, but it does. You are not to blame.”

I am angry too, and puzzled as to why. I loved my father. I missed him terribly, but after hearing this, I am filled with confusion and resentment for him. He never told me about Raahosh. He never told me that he had to force my mother to stay with him. I no longer know what to think.

“When did he die?” Raahosh’s voice is quiet. “I went looking for him many seasons later, but there was nothing left in his old cave.”

I am silent for a long moment, trying to picture which cave Raahosh visited. My father had several he passed through from season to season, and I did the same. It’s how I avoided the bad ones for so long while on my own. Yet I find his admission that he came hunting for his father…satisfying. I like the thought of this man never giving up on his father. It is what I would have done. “I was young. Maybe…” I try to think. “Seven seasons. There was a hunt and he was hurt by a snow-cat. The wound did not heal cleanly and he died of fever.”

Raahosh’s face twists angrily. “Another thing that a healer could have prevented. Did he want to die?”