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"Thank you, yes," Tay said. "Well, not just this moment, but once I've filled these I certainly will, if you can spare the time?"

She smiled at the other lioness, whose offer to help marked her as a thrall almost as clearly as her coat colors did. Tay had seen very few lions in the Stormborn with markings like hers, which meant she must have outlander blood. Tay dipped her head in embarrassment as she caught herself thinking that. She was an outlander, herself, and in no position to judge anyone else based on the place of their birth.

"I'm called Tay," she said as the pair drew near the river and she began to slip out of the containers' harnesses. "What's your name?"

Despite the treatment she had received at the paws of many Stormborn lions, Tay's spirit had not been broken, quite, and her masters had done a great deal to improve her lot and outlook, restoring her in many ways to the sunny lioness she had been before she was brought to the Stormborn. That lioness had been outgoing and obnoxiously cheerful. Tay had learned to curb those behaviors, particularly since the brothers Grei didn't like their subs talking to other males, but this lioness was clearly not a male.

Tuli grinned back at the lioness, who spoke with an exotic accent in the common tongue rather than the hereditary language of the Stormborn. Tuli decided she must have been a captured thrall. "I have time, though I'm part of a hunting detail later on."

There was something familiar about this lioness, even though Tuli knew she hadn't seen her around the pride. It clicked in her brain when Tay introduced herself. Then she remembered the half-dead thrall Captain Ruzanski had brought back from a viking before he was even a captain, and how she had been used and abused by so many males in the pride, even having the misfortune to capture the attention of Kjar the Breaker. At the time Tuli had been glad that the lions' attention was on Tay and not her sisters, but now, up close to this slight little thing, she ached to think of how much Tay would have endured.

"My mother named me Utulien, after her grandmother, who was an outlander, but most people call me Tuli." She smiled and then realized Tay wouldn't get the joke. "It sounds like the old Stormborn word tuuli, which means wind. Because of how much I talk."

"Sorry," she apologized for the third time.

Tay had not had to help another lioness into the harness before, and so it took a bit of figuring out before she had Tuli securely strapped up. The irony of a sub like her occupying the unaccustomed position of binding someone else, rather than being bound, was not lost on her, but she said nothing about it. The brothers Grei liked their privacy and she cared enough about them that she would not have willingly exposed their private preferences to someone outside the den.

"There we go. I really appreciate your help, Tuli. Lugging those things up the slope is kind of a pain, especially two at a time." But if she had done it one at a time it would have meant more trips and she would have been unbalanced by the uneven distribution of weight, though now the latter would end up happening anyway.

"It's nothing," Tuli assured Tay, and she meant it.

As they ascended Tuli chatted with Tay about inconsequential things, noting the way Tay carried herself and the way she responded. She was definitely different to the way she had been before being claimed as a personal thrall, and while she seemed happy, the soft-spoken deference struck Tuli as unusual.

"Your master, are they good to you?" she asked. If they weren't, there wasn't anything Tuli could do except offer a sympathetic ear or help to patch her up if she was hurt, but sometimes that was enough. Tay seemed so small and frail to her, Tuli couldn't help but want to protect her if she could.

As much as Tay would have liked to count Tuli as a friend, she had not failed to notice how the other lioness reacted to hearing the family name of Tay's masters, and she could recognize the curiosity and desire to pry that suddenly infused Tuli. That was why she had drawn to a stop before going into the den. Not that she would have invited Tuli in anyway, but her curiosity and obvious hope that she would see or hear something she could later tell others about made it easier for Tay to refuse her.

"Thank you for offering, but my masters are very private lions and prefer not to have people in the den that they haven't invited." Her refusal was polite but firm.

A part of Tay also began to reconsider whether she could really count Tuli as a friend, suspecting that the other lioness was interested in salacious gossip about her masters and their lifestyle. It wasn't impossible to have friends that must be kept apart, but Tay's first and truest loyalty was to her masters and she didn't want them to think that her loyalty was even a little divided.

It amazed Tuli how quickly Tay had refused her offer, divested her of the water-carrying harness, and sent her on her way, and how politely she had done it. Even though Tuli knew she was basically being tossed out on her rump for even hinting at curiosity about the Greis, she couldn't feel angry at Tay for her treatment, even though it did not seem as though she was acting under any sort of compulsion but for her own will.

As she walked away Tuli thought about what the Greis could possibly have done to inspire that kind of loyalty in Tay, and the thoughts were every bit as salacious as Tay suspected they might be. In the end, she decided that Tay was probably a weak-willed outlander and likely to be a bad influence on her sisters, so it was for the best that they probably would not be seeing much of each other in the future. Tuli certainly didn't want her sisters getting mixed up with the brothers Grei.