“Fuck off,” Katsuki growled as his mother placed his food before him. His temper flared like the fires in the pit they sat around. His mother gave him a glare as she moved to get more. He knew that she was telling him in her own way to calm down. He knew that he needed to be calm too; Saso just never knew when to stop.

He was like a bug that continued to try and bite you. It never stopped til it was full of blood.

She turned to help the other women continue to set out the meal. Katsuki barely noticed as he turned his eyes to Saso once more.

The man was always pushing his luck. Had done so for years before he was even born.

“Katsuki, you must understand that a man shouldn’t remain unmarried like you have all these years.” The greasy smile on Saso’s face as he said that only added kindling. “Izumi has been gone for years. You have done well in waiting for her but the chief of the tribe must have a bride.”

“Where is the rule that tells us that, Saso? The scrolls of the elders say nothing of the sort, the other elders say nothing about the matter. She wears my bridal necklace even now,” Katsuki said calmly.

He knew that no one believed him but he could feel it. He could feel the metal against her skin, keeping it warm with her touch. The memory of the day he had given it to her was still there in his mind. It was as clear as if it had only happened moments ago.

“They fear you, Katsuki. They fear your anger in this matter like all others.”

He glanced around then, the people were quiet as they listened to the conversation. They listened and hung on every word that passed between the men.

Saso like the coward that he was, made sure of it by sitting across from him. All the way on the other side of the pits. It was a tactic to made sure that he couldn’t grab him, to make him whisper the conversation.

Everyone knew that Katsuki would not be moved from his choice of bride.

He had made it as a child and still never regretted it. Not even after all the years spent apart. He saw her every night in his dreams, more beautiful to him than the last. He knew her as well as he knew himself from those dreams.

The people did, his tribe didn’t know her like he did. They knew the child that he had fallen in love with. They knew she was special, a rare treasure that was prized to their kind.

But she wasn’t worth it in the end if he never bred children for their people.

He returned his ruby gaze to Saso. The greasy smile had only become wider as Katsuki truly realized what the man was trying to do. It disgusted him to see it grow alongside the man’s plans. “She wears my bridal necklace.”

“You can be given another,” Saso muttered reluctantly.

Gasps and outraged shouts filled the air in that moment. Katsuki remained calm as Saso tried to calm their people. They were right to be enraged though. The man had insulted one of their most sacred traditions after all.

A man was only ever given one bridal necklace as a child by the elders. When he found the one that he was meant to be with, he would give her the necklace in their betrothal. They would live together for a few years to see if they were truly meant for one another. After that time had passed and they remained together, he would take the necklace to reforge it before the wedding.

He would add to it, spending days, weeks if not months working on it. He would make it beautiful as it was reforged into an armguard. It would serve it’s purpose in showing their shared love. It was insulting that Saso would dare to think that Katsuki would ever replace that necklace.

“ENOUGH! QUIET DOWN ALL OF YOU!” his mother Mitsuki roared with authority.

All at once, everyone fell silent like they had never been shouting or enraged to begin with. It was rather terrifying to see his mother show her power like that. It only served to remind him to never get on her bad side.

He watch as his mother turned to glare at Saso then. Everything about her spoke of the anger she had simmering within her like a pot over the fires. It was ready to boil over at any moment if Saso continued.

His mother was kind enough to give a warning. “No more talk of replacing his bridal necklace, Saso. If you do it again then I’ll have a talk with my husband and the other elders about you.”

With a nod, Saso agreed and his mother returned to her work. Still the man did not quit the matter as Katsuki would have liked him to.

“You should still take a bride.”

“It would be cruel to do so,” Katsuki growled. “I would never love her. I would always love our children but be saddened by the sight of them. I would always want my bride to be another and for my children to have another mother.”

Katsuki stood then to gain the attention of all for his next words. “I would always want Izumi and would only ever love her.”

Everyone stared at him, their eyes burning him as they took in his words. The men knew what he spoke of and the women whispered of his devotion.

“The tribe deserves a new tribal mother, Katsuki-AAARRGH.” A woman had dumped a hot platter of food right into Saso’s lap.

It was then that Katsuki felt his mother’s familiar hand smack him in the back of the head hard. He turned to glare at her but stopped when she towered over him with rage aflame in her eyes.

He desperately wanted to run away in that moment but continued to stand there. If he gave into the fear then his mother would pounce upon him. He had the traumas and scars that reminded him of that fact.

When Mitsuki turned that glare at Saso, Katsuki found that he had been holding his breath.

Saso simply sat there dumbfounded by the food in his lap. He did that until Mitsuki roared. “THAT IS ENOUGH. THIS IS THE HOME HEARTH AND I WON’T ALLOW YOU TWO MORONS TO CONTINUE THIS HERE. SO EAT YOUR DAMN FOOD ALREADY!”

Katsuki immediately sat and grabbed at the food with the intent of obeying his mother. Any other time he would argue yet his fear of her made him obey.

Saso simply stared at Mitsuki though. Mitsuki glared back in kind before informing Saso, “You get nothing but what’s in your lap.”

Saso growled then at her and it was instant. All the men stood before Mitsuki. A barrier to the threat of the tribal mother. Katsuki snarled at Saso like an enraged beast.

“You dare?” He snarled as he reach out to wrap his hands around Saso’s neck. “YOU DARE TO THREAT MY MOTHER? YOU DARE TO GROWL AT HER? SHE IS THE TRIBAL MOTHER AND IS ABOVE YOU!!!”

He slammed Saso into the worn carpet beneath them. Saso’s face and hair dirtied by the spilled food. He saw red at the older man’s actions, wanted to kill him in that moment for the insult. Katsuki would have done it if it was for the smack to the back of his head.

“Let him go now,” she ordered.

Katsuki snarled one last time before he obeyed.

Still he turned to stand before his mother, intent upon guarding her like the others. The rage that she had displayed before was suddenly gone. The flaming rage in his mother’s eyes were instead replaced with a cold burn.

Katsuki knew that she would burn Saso alive in that moment. “What am I, Saso?”

“What?” Saso asked, clearly confused by the sudden change as he sat up.

“What am I, Saso?” she repeated, her ruby eyes piercing him as he sat there.

“…the tribal mother?”

She stepped out of the barrier then to walk towards Saso. She stood before him and stared. “Yes, I am the tribal mother.”

She put her foot between his legs as she continued to stare. Saso groaned in pain as she spoke. “I am the tribal mother. I am mother and caretaker of all those within our tribe and you have insulted me, Saso. By our laws, I can have you whipped by the chief…my son. He would happily do it as well.”

“Mercy,” Saso begged as he grabbed at Mitsuki’s foot.

“Do not disrespect me again, Saso. I am the tribal mother and I will discipline you as if you were my own child.” The pressure seemed to increase for Saso begged for mercy like a child. Katsuki smiled at the terrifying smile his mother gave the older man. “I’m far harder on him than any of the others.”

With that, she lifted her foot and went to sit next to where Katsuki had. Without a word passing between them, everyone sat down and began to eat.

Katsuki went back to his seat and stared at Saso though, never touching the food. At least not until his mother grabbed his nose to force his mouth open. Before he could even say anything, she pushed food into his open maw.

Stuff to the point that he almost couldn’t close his mouth, he struggled to swallow it all.

It was then that she scolded him. “You shouldn’t respond to him. He’s an elder but so is your father and you are the chief of our tribe, it is beneath you.”

Finally swallowing it all, he chided her in return. “He wants power, Hag. He wanted you so he could be the chief and that never happened. Now he isn’t happy that his son is my best friend, he wants me to marry his daughter.”

“You’re the chief, brat…people feel uneasy when the chief doesn’t have an heir,” Mitsuki told him. There was a sadness in her expression as she said that.

Katsuki knew that his grandparents had only ever had the one child like his parents. Some thought it meant that the Forest’s blessing was leaving their bloodline. Others thought it was because of the outsider blood of his great grandparents’ time. Many feared what it would mean when Izumi returned to him.

“I’ll just have to have lots of kids with Izumi then,” he muttered. He still refused to think of being with anyone else.

Love filled him when he thought of his people. Yet the thought of being with another that wasn’t Izumi was impossible. The thought alone had made him sick; the one time he had tried to be with another…he had puked.

His body and mind were one in the decision to wait. They wanted her and were happy to wait for her as long as he needed to.

“Will you at least think about being with another woman? No one would look down on you for having a child with an unmarried.”

“It’s impossible,” he told her.

Anger brightened his mother’s eyes in that moment. She grabbed him by the hair and forced him to meet her glare. Yet he stared at her with a calm expression, a rare thing on her child. It felt like hours passed by them when only a few silent moments did.

“I get sick at the thought of touching anyone but her. She has been my dream since that first day, mom.” He could see the surprise in her eyes when he called her mom. He only ever did when it was serious. “I love her like dad loves you. I refuse to be with another when I know that I love Izumi alone.”

“Katsuki, love can grow-”

“Over time? But it’s almost twenty-one years. Yet every night, I dream of Izumi alone,” he whispered as he cut in. Her tight hold on his hair softened then. “The one time I tried with another, I couldn’t get it up without thinking of Izumi. I thought of that woman as Izumi through it all; when I tried to enter her…I puked all over her.”

There was pain in his mother’s eyes at his words.

Mitsuki showed him all the pain that his words had been filled with. She understood that to be with another was truly impossible for him. A tear came for the pain that her son had suffered. “We’ll find her, brat.”

She moved to give him a hug when the warning went out.

The warning was a beautiful song played by an ocarina.

The wind carried the sound to them so that they would hear every hauntingly beautiful note. It was never said as they listened, knowing that one of their own risked themself for the good of all. It was simply understood and respected as they mourn their loss.

When the song suddenly died, everyone jumped.

Katsuki and the men left the Hearth fire without another thought beyond getting their spears. He knew that his mother would see the other women and children to safety.

With a spear in hand, they left their home for the forest that surrounded them. It had been their shield so long. The trees gave off a poison that killed those from the outside. A poison that they were immune to and used to their full advantage.

The immunity that coursed through their veins flowed within their enemy as well. Still, they were ready to defend their people to the death.

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Chapter 1 Otherworldly Love Chapters Chapter 3