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Dutch had missed Simbelmyne. He'd longed for her. Worried after her. Agonized over the hurt she would suffer at his expense; how he had failed her and their children. How he wished, desperately, that he could wake up with her in his arms as if from a horrible dream.

Dutch had missed Simbelmyne. But Chakliux — he did not have words to describe what he felt for the other man. Simbelmyne was his wife and his partner, and he loved her like he had loved no other woman before her. But, if he was forced to give a name to his other half, he knew it would be —

"Chakliux," he murmured, lifting his head from a dead slumber at the sound of the other man's voice. he struggled to his paws, untangling himself from a pile that included Valiant, Katmai, and — to his surprise — Chagak. Dutch pressed a reverent kiss to the sleeping faces of either boy before stumbling into the open, directly into the seal hunter's path.

"Mera bhai," he said, a smile in his voice even as his mouth trembled. Chakliux looked changed to him, somehow — but he quickly realized that it was only his blurred vision at fault. When he shut his injured eye, Chakliux was the same. And, despite a missing ear and a thinned body and the ugly, tattered wounds on his shoulder, Dutch finally felt like himself once more.