Warder by Catherine Miller

Wife.
Daughter.
Warder.

There was a shift in the mountain. Where once creatures would ascend to the peak for the winter, now they hunted. With venom and claw, warders fell.
Others of her kind had settled. Wives, mothers, they flourished in their freedoms. While Gwynn struggled with the worry, the strain that came from lonely nights without news of her husband’s wellbeing.
A bargain. An entreaty. To train as a companion when the missions grew longer. To no longer be left behind.
And if she should find some remnant of her kind, a hint of their history, then was that so very wrong? Of a people that were not merely slaves, but explorers. Whose ships traversed the stars themselves.
She would be like them. Would see the world long denied to her, her husband by her side. Because the mountain was theirs.
Wasn’t it?