Page 5 of Dark Destiny: The Fates' Bargain

"Mama!" Tomek called from behind her. "I have something for you."

She turned to see him running toward her, holding a bundle of fabric in his hands.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Bowen's friend, his name is Alfie, he said that you can wear his shirt if you don't mind that it's dirty. He said that dirty is better than wet, but if you don't want it, he is not going to be insulted." Tomek extended his hand, which was apparently holding a shirt, and leaned closer. "You should wear it. It was so nice of him to give you his shirt. It's not going to be nice if you say no because it's dirty."

Tomek's logic was as solid as always, and as she turned to look for the generous shirt donor, she found him by the bright smile he flashed her the moment her eyes landed on his face and stayed there so she wouldn't have to look at his bare chest.

"Thank you!" she called out.

"You're welcome. I'm collecting more for the other ladies." He lifted the shirts he was already holding.

"Thank you," she said again. "That's very kind of you. I'll tell my friends that the shirts are for them."

The men had worn these shirts during the operation, and they were dusty from the work and carried the smell of their owners. But at least they had been kept dry under the wetsuits.

She would have to tell the women to accept the generous offer even if it bothered them, because Tomek was right. To say no would be ungracious. It would be offensive.

She crossed the rest of the way to the women and showed them the shirt Alfie had donated. "The warriors are offering us their shirts so we can have something dry to wear." She unfurled the shirt in her hand and held it in front of her to show them how long it was on her body. "These shirts will cover us from neck to knee, so if you are brave, you can also take off your wet underwear. I for one am going to do that." She added a smile, hoping to get some back, but the women just stared at her as if they hadn't understood a word she'd said.

Had she spoken in English and not noticed? Or were they just grossed out by the idea of wearing something that carried the smell of a man?

Given the hesitation she saw on their faces, it was the latter, the cold pulling one way and the deep-seated aversion pulling the other.

Sullha understood. For women who had spent their lives having no reason to trust men and every reason to fear and resent them, wrapping themselves in the scent of one was not easily done.

Eventually the cold won, and as Alfie arrived with a large bundle of shirts, they each took one.

Changing was another matter, since there was not much privacy to be had on the small fishing boat, but they improvised with a tarp held by three while the others changed, then traded places so those three could change too.

Sullha was among the last three, and as she stripped off the wetsuit and pulled on the shirt, it felt wonderful despite the dust and the smell of a stranger. It was dry and warm, and the slight smell was a small price to pay for that.

She turned and looked for Alfie, intending to thank him again, when she saw Yaaf heading her way.

"There is a bathroom below deck," he said.

"That's good to know."

He was still wearing his wetsuit, peeled down to the waist and tied off to be out of the way, because he had nothing to change into either.

Whatever he and his friends had worn before putting on their wetsuits now lay on the bottom of the cove, along with what she and the other women had been wearing, so there would be no trace of them and no clue where they had gone.

The women at least had the few small items that the Guardians had stored for them. Yaaf and his friends had left everything behind. Other than their identification tags, they had retained nothing from their former lives.

Yaaf's was hanging from his neck, and she did her best to focus on the metal rather than the smooth, tan skin and the muscles rippling beneath.

The tag was stamped with a number, and it wasn't one or eight. The one-through-eight they used among themselves was theirown, a thing between them. This was something else, a serial number stamped into the metal to tell one soldier from the next.

The others had similar plates hanging from chains around their necks. At the moment, they were heading toward the group of women, who looked a little better now that they were dry and warm.

Yaaf's friends' destination was obvious, and even though Sullha had known it would come, she was still anxious. The reunion the mothers had surely dreamed of throughout the years was not going to be simple. The boys they remembered were gone, and the men they were now bore little resemblance to those boys.

The men had not forgotten their mothers, and they'd been familiarizing themselves with them as well as their sisters through Yaaf's visits to the enclosure.

As Number Two approached Mirumah, she rose and stood before him. She had to tip her head back to look up at him. Her son, the boy she had last seen as a thirteen-year-old, was now a grown man who was a head and a half taller than she was, broad-shouldered, wearing a stranger's face with only the ghost of the child she’d named Dumuz a faint echo in his features. She lifted a hand halfway toward his face and paused, uncertain. Dumuz looked down at her, and neither of them said anything, because they didn't know what to say.

"Dumuz?" Mirumah finally spoke, and it came out as a question, as though she were not sure the name still belonged to him.