Page 40 of Kian
“Stay,” Kian growled at her, predictably.
Kinsley was left to watch as the others fought the sled, straining to lift it out of sludge that looked nearly knee deep in places.
Kian and Avril pushed with Bill and Hank, but the sled merely squelched in place until the sheriff and deputy joined them.
Kinsley was close to leaping out of the sled, against Kian’s wishes, when the thing finally began to move.
The group let out a cheer that had the baby stirring in her sling on Kinsley’s chest.
When it was fully out, everyone wiped off their hands as best they could on their tunics.
“Hounds of hell,” Avril cursed, shaking her head.
Kinsley looked down to see that the guard had lost a boot. There was no sign of it in the thick mud.
“Take mine,” Lyslee called to her from the bear’s back. “It’s no use to me if I can’t walk.”
“Not on your life,” Avril told her.
Then she had to duck as Lyslee hurled a thick, fur-lined leather boot down at her. Kian let out a bark of a laugh, and even Avril smiled and shook her head as she pulled on the boot.
Kinsley felt a little twinge of jealousy and tried her best to fight it down.
It was hard watching Kian laugh and pal around with Avril, while he made Kinsley sit uselessly in the sled.
I’m his mate,she reminded himself.
But maybe he’d rather have a mate like her,a little voice in the back of her head whispered.Someone more like him, big and strong and fierce. Not a weak little Terran nobody.
Certainly not an infertile woman who can never give him another child.
She had pushed thoughts of her infertility from her head after he told her she was his mate, but they wouldn’t stay down any longer. If the two of them sealed the bond, they would be living in an isolated place near the pole, it was unlikely they would find more children to adopt there. Fishing would be hard work, and there would never be more sets of hands in their family.
Jealousy reared its ugly head again as she pictured him with Avril instead, a dragon-shifting baby with wild red hair cradled in his arms.
But those thoughts did not become her, and Kinsley struggled not to indulge them.
Kian jogged back to the sled, the sunlight glinting in his golden hair.
He was so beautiful that it was almost hard to look at him.
“You okay?” he asked her. “Not throwing away any more of our food rations?”
She tried to scowl at him but only smiled. He was teasing, which meant he was glad to see her.
The convoy rounded up and got moving again, but by now it was the height of the afternoon.
“The mud is at its most melted right now,” Kian told her. “As soon as the sun starts sinking, it will cool.”
She nodded and tried to calculate the distance between the mud flats and the white expanse of tundra ahead, and couldn’t.
A deafening crack split the air, breaking her concentration, and sending her heart to her mouth. It sounded like shots. But the bandits hadn’t had blasters…
“It’s the ice,” Kian said quickly.
“What ice?” she asked him.
“Ahead of us?” he said. “All that white is the frozen surface of North Lake.”