Swiftcurrent Creek and I am beholden to no gods here.

Trembling, she waited - half fearing that he would not come. 

When at last the trees gave way to a flicker of motion, a dark shadow shifting through the foliage, the woman froze - turning towards it apprehensively. 

Dark eyes trailed the smooth grace of his dark limbs, watery as they lifted to his face - forgetting her abandonment in the face of his arrival.

"Kavik," she breathed in relief, her tones soft with adoration as she forgot about her manners and crossed the border with no mind paid to the consequences. 

How could anything so trivial as borders matter now? Now that he was before her in the flesh?

Two moons spent in the dark, delirious with illness. Even half insane she had ached for the nearness of her mate - half afraid that her sickbed would become her deathbed and she would never again see his face. 

Liri buried her head in the crook of his shoulder, murmuring his name almost drunkenly as she returned his embrace. 

She smelt of ozone and burned hair, of the heat that would soon take over her body and grant Kavik children, of wild things but the hunter didn't care how messy she looked or how she must smell.

All that mattered was that she was safe in Kavik's arms once more.