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~ SASHA ~

Dunken helped her keep her feet going down the hole to get outside.

It was brighter outside—still dusky, but more light than there\'d been in the fox hole. The land dipped down to that little creek, then back up the other side. She could hear howls still rising—louder out here—and growls and barks. Were they going to do this displaying in the wolf forms she wondered nervously.

"You\'re a good female, Sasha," Dunken said as he led her back up the land on the other side of the creek, and towards the pile of boulders and trees, toward the village, the direction that even she could hear the footsteps and voices approaching from. "Just be resolved that they aren\'t for you. Like Zev said, don\'t smile or be inviting. The rest is up to them."

She nodded, but her breath was coming quickly and her heart trilling as they climbed the pile of boulders and began leaping from rock to tree trunk to rock down the other side.

Sasha stopped for a moment to breathe once she found a flat top on a rock where she wouldn\'t lose her balance. She looked up towards the village and cursed.

A crowd of men was spreading out in front of her, pushing past the few that had their backs to her and were trying to slow the others, breaking through that line, those at the front began to run—fast, faster than she\'d seen a man run before—and reached the bottom of the rocks where she stood within seconds.

Sasha wasn\'t sure what she\'d expected when Zev said the males were going to display, but it wasn\'t that she would be mobbed by a hundred men or more, all pushing each other aside to draw closer, their eyes alight with an edge that chilled her, while animal snarls and howls broke the deepening dark.

Dunken returned to her rock and stood at her shoulder. "They will touch, but they will not… violate you," he repeated. "You are not unsafe. Zev is not the only male that would defend you if anyone didn\'t respect the boundaries," he murmured.

Sasha nodded. "So I just… walk out there?"

The men stood in a dense crowd, watching her. She swallowed hard.

"Do you know the way to your house from here?" Dunken asked.

"Sort of. I mean, it\'s that way," she said, flapping her hand vaguely to the other side of the village and a little right.

Dunken nodded. "You see where the peak of the mountain rises between the tops of those two trees?"

"Yes."

"Following that line will lead you to the edge of the village, to the trail behind your house that leads to the bathing pools. You\'ll be able to find it from there."

"Thank you," she breathed.

"Good luck," he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice which was so rare that she turned to look at him.

His face was completely straight, but she couldn\'t shake the feeling he was on the edge of laughter. "What\'s funny?"

"You\'ll see," he said, his lips twitching up on one side.

Sasha gave him a flat look, but he lost the twinkle in his gaze and nodded tipped his head towards the men.

"Delaying will only heighten their anticipation," he said quietly. "Best that you… give them their moments."

Sasha blew out a breath, then stepped off the rock and down one, two, three boulders, and over a dead tree until her boots crunched in the snow on the ground.

The males inched forward, making a hesitant semi-circle around her, watching her as if waiting for a signal. But she didn\'t know what it was they expected, so remembering Zev\'s warning to just keep walking for home, and Dunken\'s directions, she fixed her eyes on that mountain peak, and was about to step forward, when a deep, guttural snarl rose behind her, echoing across the near-silent space. The males didn\'t move, but they all tensed and some eyes flickered up, over Sasha\'s shoulder.

Sasha turned quickly to find in the waning light, the form of Zev stepping down to the boulder where she\'d stood a moment earlier, his body disappearing in that black suit against the deepening dark of the forest beyond. But his eyes…

His eyes glowed, catching the light and reflecting it back like a wild-animal in the dark.

Sasha\'s heart leaped, but she knew she couldn\'t run back to him—if she threw herself into his arms, she\'d be forcing him to fight for her and she didn\'t want him to have to fight anymore. So she took a deep breath, turned back and stepped forward towards that peak.

Surprisingly, seeing the course she took, the men all shifted, making space for her to walk through the crowd as she approached the line of them.

Sasha blinked. Had Zev been wrong? Did they, perhaps, not want her at all? Were they just going to let her walk through them and head to her house?

But just as she reached the first line of men and stepped in between them, they closed ranks behind her until she was completely surrounded and while the space in front of her was left clear, the men in the direction she was going did not move to make room for her to pass.

She frowned, but remembered that she wasn\'t to speak or invite anything from them, so without any other option, she just kept walking.

Ten feet before she hit line of men that would block her path, one of them stepped from her right to stand in front of her.

He was shorter than Zev, but heavily muscled if the breadth of his shoulders was anything to go by. Swathed in furs, she couldn\'t see much beyond his face.

But then he flashed a smile, his teeth and eyes white in the dark and he bowed slightly from the waist, dipping his head.

Then he reached back with one hand to pull his thick shirt—jacket?—from behind his neck and tugged it forward, over his head, and off until he stood in front of her, naked from the waist up, his muscles—just as ridged and defined as Zev\'s—gleaming in the moonlight.

Sasha swallowed as he prowled forward, his eyes locked on hers.