"Move, you idiot!" The scream tore through the chaos of the intersection as the truck's brakes screeched too late.
Jason had just enough time to shove the kid clear—some preschooler who'd wriggled free from his mom's grip—before the grill of the delivery van crushed his ribs like kindling. Pain flared, then vanished.
The last thing he heard was the kid wailing.
Darkness swallowed him whole. No light, no sound, just the sickening sense of falling without a body to feel it.
Then—heat. A dry, oppressive heat that clung to his skin like a second layer.
Jason gasped awake, lungs burning as if he'd sprinted through a desert. His hands clawed at dirt, not pavement. Above him, a sky the color of faded bruises stretched endlessly, broken only by the silhouette of a woman kneeling beside him.
"You live," she said, not a question. Her voice was rough, like she'd smoked since birth. She wore a halter of stitched leather strips that barely contained her chest, and her skin gleamed with sweat and ochre paint.
Jason tried to speak, but his throat produced only a croak. The woman snorted, then grabbed his wrist and flipped his hand palm-up. A jagged symbol, freshly scarred, glared back at him. "Good. The mark took. Weak, but it took."
Jason's head throbbed as he pushed himself up on wobbling elbows.
Around him, a circle of lean-to shelters crouched under the weight of the sun. Half-naked men and women moved between them, some hauling baskets, others sharpening spears.
One guy, taller than the rest with a necklace of what looked like teeth, caught his stare and grinned, revealing a chipped incisor.
Jason's stomach dropped when he realized his own legs were bare except for a strip of leather laced tight around his hips.
When suddenly pain interrupted his thoughts and his vision swam as a flood of foreign memories slammed into his skull.
Jorik.
The name echoed through him like a drumbeat, pounding in time with his racing heart.
He—Jorik—was eighteen summers old, the son of Mara of the Black Serpent, and he'd collapsed three days ago after vomiting black bile. The last thing he remembered was his mother's calloused hands pressing a damp cloth to his forehead while whispering prayers to the Serpent Goddess.
The healer—her name surfaced like a bubble in tar: Vexa—released his wrist with a grunt.
"Your spirit clung harder than your flesh," she said, wiping her hands on her thighs. "Mara will be pleased. Though she'll skin me if you die before the mating rites."
Jorik's body shuddered at the mention.
The memories came sharper now—fragments of the tribe's customs flickering behind his eyes. The Black Serpent didn't marry. They 'proved'.
And the proving, as his new instincts insisted, involved a lot more than just spears and hunting. His stomach twisted, though whether from residual sickness or anticipation, he couldn't tell.
Vexa leaned in, her breath hot and herb-sour. "Can you stand, boy? Or do I drag you to your mother like a gutted deer?"
He managed to get one foot under him before the world tilted.
Strong hands caught him—not Vexa's. A man's hands, broad and scarred, belonging to the tooth-necklace warrior who'd grinned earlier. Up close, his eyes were the color of tarnished copper.
"Easy, little brother," he rumbled. "The Goddess didn't bring you back just to crack your skull on a rock."
Jorik choked out a laugh despite the dizziness still swimming in his skull.
The warrior's grip tightened, steadying him, and the name surfaced like a fish breaking water—Kael.
He knew this man. Not well, not like brothers-in-arms, but enough to recall the way Kael had once pinned him in the dirt during sparring, grinning down with those copper eyes while Jorik wheezed. "Little brother," Kael had called him then too, mocking and fond all at once.
"You always this dramatic," Jorik slurred, borrowing the old Jorik's memories to shape the words. His tongue felt too thick, but the cadence sounded right—a lazy challenge, the kind you'd toss at someone who wouldn't knife you for it.
Kael's grin widened. "Only when you're this pathetic," he shot back, hauling Jorik upright with a jerk that sent pain lancing through his ribs. Vexa snorted and stalked off, muttering about men and their posturing.
The camp sprawled around them, alive with the clatter of tools and the low hum of conversation. Jorik's—no, his—people moved with a practiced ease, their bodies lean from a life under the sun.
A woman with braids coiled tight against her scalp passed by, her gaze flicking over Jorik's bare chest and lingering on the fresh scar in his palm. Her lips curved, slow and knowing, before she disappeared into one of the lean-tos.
Kael followed his stare and chuckled. "Liss has been eyeing the unmated since the last moon. You're not her usual taste—too skinny." He clapped Jorik's shoulder, the impact nearly sending him face-first into the dirt again. "But the mark might change that."
The mark on his palm pulsed faintly, a dull heat threading up his arm. He flexed his fingers, testing the strange sensation. It wasn't pain, not exactly. More like the ghost of a touch, something humming just beneath his skin.
"Stop gawking at your hand like it's a fresh kill," Kael said, nudging him forward. "Mara's waiting."
The name sent a jolt through him. Mara. His mother.
The memories surged—her voice sharp as a flint edge, her hands rough from weaving and skinning, the way she'd cuff him upside the head when he slacked during drills.
But there was something else, too, buried under the instinctive respect: a flicker of unease. Jorik-the-stranger couldn't parse it, but Jorik-the-tribesman's body remembered. His steps faltered.
Kael's grip tightened. "Breathe, little brother. She won't bite." A pause. "Much."
They reached the largest lean-to, its entrance flanked by two spears driven into the earth, their shafts wrapped in serpent-skin. The air inside was thick with the scent of crushed herbs and smoke.
Mara stood by a low fire, her back to them, stirring a clay pot with a bone spoon. Her shoulders were taut under the leather halter, her spine straight as a spear.
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