The Lion King's Reluctant Mate novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Notched Ear

Jory feeds the cast-out cub his first stew and gets bitten for it; the lion king arrives with another kill, kneels to the boy, and offers both of them a dry den.

The boy woke with his teeth bared.

He did not scream or run, which told Jory more than screaming would have.

He sat up very fast on the hide with his back to the cave wall and clutched the jerky to his chest.

"Mine," he said.

"Yours," Jory said at once.

He lowered himself to the floor on the far side of the fire pit and kept his hands open on his knees.

The boy watched him for a long time.

Then he put a whole strip in his mouth and chewed it with his eyes still on Jory's face.

He looked about four years old.

His hair was pale and tangled, his feet were cut, and the piece missing from his left ear had stopped bleeding only recently.

Jory knew that kind of notch.

He did not know how he knew it.

A flicker came up out of the body's memory, of a big man's grey cloak and a river bank in the cold.

Then it was gone, and his stomach had turned over.

"What's your name?" he asked.

The boy swallowed. "Bix."

"I'm Jory."

"Bix is four." He held up four fingers.

"That's a good age," Jory said.

"Bix is hungry."

"I can do something about that."

Jory had made the clay pot on his third day here, out of riverbank mud and stubbornness.

He had been proud of it ever since.

He set it on the stones, filled it with water, and dropped in the last of the jerky and a handful of wild onion.

There was no salt. There was never any salt.

The boy crept closer by inches while it heated, until he was crouched at Jory's elbow and breathing in the steam.

"Let me look at the ear," Jory said.

He reached.

Bix bit him on the wrist, hard enough to draw blood.

Jory held still and did not pull away.

"Fair," he said quietly. "I'd have bitten me too."

The small jaw loosened by degrees.

Bix looked at the blood and then at Jory's face, and his chin began to shake.

"Hey," Jory said. "Hey. I'm not angry. Come here. It's soup."

He ladled some into a wooden cup and held it out.

Bix took it in both hands and drank it all with his eyes shut.

Outside, something scratched the doorpost.

It was a slow, deliberate scrape, three times.

Jory looked at the entrance.

The lion king stood in the dark beyond the firelight with a dead hare in one hand, scratching the post with the other.

He looked deeply embarrassed.

"I am following the rule," Lucan said.

"I see that," Jory said.

"I may come in?" Lucan asked.

"Yes."

Lucan ducked under the lintel and straightened, and then he saw the cub.

He stopped.

Everything about him went still. His shoulders came down, his hands opened, and the hare dropped to the floor and was forgotten.

Bix pressed back against Jory's side and began to growl, a small furious noise.

Lucan lowered himself onto his knees on the packed earth.

He did not come closer. He put his palms flat on his thighs and, very quietly, began to purr.

It filled the cave, low and warm.

The growl stopped.

Bix stared at him with his cup halfway to his mouth.

"Who cut you, little one?" Lucan asked.

Bix said nothing.

Jory answered for him. "Ironbark. Left ear."

"Hadrick Vokes."

The king said the name flatly.

"He throws them out at the first frost," Lucan said. "The ones he calls weak."

"Every year the Goldgrass hunters find one or two at the river, if they are lucky."

"Every year?" Jory said.

"Every year."

Something turned over in Jory's chest, and a piece of the body's memory shifted with it.

"That might be why I challenged him," he said slowly.

Lucan's head came up.

Something passed over his face that Jory did not understand, something close to pain, and it was gone quickly.

"Do you not remember?"

"No."

"No," Lucan said. "Then perhaps this will do instead."

He held out one large hand to the boy, palm up, and waited.

Bix looked at it for a long time.

Then he reached out and, very carefully, bit the base of Lucan's thumb.

Lucan did not move. A smile spread slowly across his face.

"Good," he said. "That is a proper bite."

"He bites when he's scared," Jory said.

"So do I," said the lion king, and he looked at Jory when he said it.

Heat climbed Jory's neck. He busied himself with the pot.

"Listen," Lucan said, still on his knees. "This cave floods in the first rain."

"It is in plain sight of Ironbark scouts. By morning they will smell a notched cub on the wind."

"I can't just leave."

"I am not asking you to leave," Lucan said. "There is a dry den on my side of the river."

"The Hollow. It has stood empty for three winters."

"Rule one," Jory said. "You knock."

"There is a doorpost," Lucan said gravely. "I will scratch it."

Bix climbed over Jory's knee and dropped onto the king's broad shoulder.

He wound one fist into the gold-brown hair and said, with great satisfaction, "Mine."

Lucan closed his eyes.

"Yes," he said. "I think I am."

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