Till Love Do Us Part: Cala and Yuma, #1

By Laura Pérez Caballero

Can you imagine a race very similar to humans, but descended from pumas and living hidden in the woods? They exist and one of them, as a child, finds a baby in a dumpster. A baby that later becomes a beautiful human. Although the first rule of these beings is not to be seen by a human, the cougar boy takes the human with him and integrates her into his clan in exchange for a promise that no one will ever confess her human origin.

But as time goes by, the girl grows up and it becomes increasingly difficult to hide her origins, which she constantly asks about. And that's not the worst thing, the worst thing is that time reveals that between her and the boy who found her, there is something more than a sibling relationship, which is what they are supposed to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Victor Morcillo Sevilla
• Release date: Feb 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201540166

Book preview

To my parents and siblings

It takes courage to grow into who you really are. Cummings

1.

Without a doubt, the human was a really stupid race.

There was no other way to explain that they would murder each other because of those bills and coins with which they obtained objects, and then they would just throw them away in those garbage cans.

The day Yuma's life changed forever; this was his reflection in front of those containers.

He jumped onto the edge of one of them without even imagining what he was about to find.

It was already dark and the condensation was coming out of his mouth as if it were a chimney.

The January cold was at its worst in that clearing at the end of the forest, where the road to the city began. From there, Yuma could see the lights being on and hear the sounds of traffic with his fine feline hearing.

He stared for a moment at the clumped buildings in the distance, submerged in a gray haze, then threw himself into the task of rummaging through the bags. It had been days since he'd been through the dumpsters, and he wondered what treasures the humans had discarded.

His hands, accustomed to such activity, moved with agility. He ripped open a couple of bags and peered over their contents, seeing nothing of interest. He ran his fingers through his tousled black hair, unconsciously stroked the cougar-print amulet that all the Tupi wore, and his eyes, big and round like a cat's, stopped on a bright red object. Wow! A tiny car imitating one of the vehicles the humans used. He picked it up greedily and sniffed it as was customary among his clan. His flat nose analyzed the smells with the precision of a scientific test. He hid it quickly in the leather pouch he wore knotted to his belt. He smiled in the darkness, pleased with his find, and leapt from the container with astonishing agility.

He had to go now, it was getting close to dinner time and he would soon be missed in the clan. But first he had to stop by his secret hiding place to leave the stroller with the rest of the items taken out of the garbage.

Yuma touched the bundle the stroller made in the bag and, satisfied, moved toward the trees to return home when his fine ear heard a sound unfamiliar to him. It was like the meow of a kitten, faint, very faint, as if muffled by something. He approached the containers again and sniffed the air. It had started to freeze and he thought about forgetting the sound and leaving when he heard it again. It was coming from one of the containers, he was sure of it. He climbed back into one of them and started rummaging through the bags. Maybe it was a puppy cat. If he left it in the dumpster it would die, and if he took it to the clan, who knew, maybe they would let him keep it, at least until it grew up and was able to survive on its own. As she dug, the whimpering became clearer. It didn't sound like a cat's meow to him now. It was true that it sounded almost the same, but something told him it wasn't. Yuma began to tremble with excitement and before he lifted the bags covering the little body and felt a pang in his chest, he knew what he was going to find. It was a human baby.

Now its crying sounded at the top of its lungs. Yuma watched it expectantly. He brought his nose closer, but he didn't smell any odor. The humans smelled at a distance. As he approached the baby's face, it stopped crying and stretched out a small hand towards him. Yuma backed away in fright. The baby persisted with the outstretched hand and Yuma moved his own hand closer. Instinctively, the baby grasped his little finger tightly.

-Hey, Yuma protested. And at the sound of his voice, the baby smiled, and its little mouth gurgled in a way that excited Yuma. He moved his face closer to the baby again and repeated, Hey, hey, hey, hey....

The baby laughed. It stretched out its little hand in the air and its eyes squinted. It tapped a couple of times on the round wooden medal with the carved puma print that fell on its little face. The Tupi amulet wobbled in the air. It had been carved by Yuma's father before he was born, as was the custom among them.

Yuma stood next to the baby for a while, undecided. How had it gotten there? As a boy about to turn five, he had a hard time recognizing the evidence. Someone had thrown it there, as they threw all those things he collected. But it wasn't a toy, it was a living being. Lendula was right, without a doubt, humans were the worst race in the world. But that baby was a human baby and he didn't hate it. For a second, he thought about taking it with him. He was touched by its little face, its smile... but it was impossible. It was a human, as cute as he thought it was. Besides, he couldn't tell his family that he'd found it while rummaging through the dumpsters at the edge of the forest. The baby chirped and Yuma turned his attention to that little face. His heart shrank at the thought of leaving it there alone, hungry, in the freezing night. What was he going to do? If only he had never found it, he thought. If only he had never gone to that place.

Absorbed in the baby's face, totally enraptured by it and its little eyes, he suddenly realized how late it was when he heard the truck approaching, unloading the dumpsters with garbage. He shuddered as he remembered how the truck lifted the dumpsters, dumped them inside and crushed the garbage. Without thinking, he grabbed the baby in his arms and pulled it out of the dumpster.

Think Yuma, think, he told himself. Letting it die was the last option, taking it with him the most tempting, but too complicated.

There were rules in the clan. The first and foremost was never to be seen by a human. Then, for the smaller ones, like him, there were limits that they could not cross except in case of force majeure, and he broke those limits when he went to the dumpsters.

All those rules existed because humans were the worst race that could exist; his mother, Lendula, told him that all the time. If any of them caught him, he could be lost; if they saw him, it would mean the whole clan would have to move, and it wasn't easy to find places to live without being discovered and to create underground lairs, with ventilation and smoke evacuation systems, without attracting attention. It was a long, dangerous and risky task. In the middle of winter it could even mean death. The clans could not live together in large numbers, that would draw too much attention from humans. It was very dangerous. That was another Tupi rule. Tupi villages were totally out of the question but communication between clans existed, even among the most distant clans. Young men when they reached a certain age would visit clans in search of a mate, and women usually moved to the clan of their mate, so clans were usually made up of grandparents, parents and grandchildren. There was also a Council, made up of the oldest Tupi and in constant training, which established the rules of coexistence and security. The rules were taught from birth and every Tupi was instilled with the obligation to comply with them for the good of the race. The survival of the people depended on obedience to the rules.

Lendula said that humans were a treacherous race. That no one could trust them because they hurt each other even among themselves. Sometimes she spoke to Yuma of great wars between them and assured him that this had never happened between the Tupi, the brothers of the puma, because the puma was a noble animal that only killed out of necessity. But man was the brother of the monkey and the monkey was an evil animal that laughed at everyone and thought it was superior, hence the arrogance of the human race. They were greedy and liked to dominate everything: They experimented with everything, they keep animals locked up, imagine what they would do with us" his mother frightened him.

Suddenly, he came up with a solution: he would leave it on the ground and the humans in the truck would see it and take it with them.

He felt the baby's little body against his own and it was such a nice feeling that he was reluctant to put it down, but the sound of the engine indicated that the truck was getting closer and closer. What if the humans were as evil as his mother had always told him and didn't pick it up? Or, worse, what if they decided to get rid of it and threw it in the garbage truck? He clutched the baby to himself in anguish. No, they couldn't be capable of doing something like that. He was much faster than they were, if he saw them make the slightest suspicious move he would run out of hiding and snatch the baby from them even at the cost of being seen. Consoled by that thought, he dropped the baby on the ground and ran to hide behind a nearby bush. He saw the lights of the approaching truck, which stopped next to the containers without turning off the engine. One of the humans got out of the cab, passed by the baby without seeing it, almost stepping on it, and began to maneuver with the containers to hook them to the truck's mechanism that would then lift them into the air and dump them inside. The other human listened to that device called a radio without getting out of the cab. The one who had descended from the truck hooked the container up and made a signal to the one in the cab. Yuma knew very well what would happen next, the garbage would be crushed. He thought of the end the little human baby would have had if he hadn't gone that to rummage through the garbage and shuddered again.

The human baby was crying and Yuma could hear the desperate crying perfectly, but the noise of the engine and the radio of the human who remained in the cab of the truck prevented the other man from perceiving the crying and, as soon as he finished his work, he climbed in with his companion and the truck started off down the road. The noise of the engine faded little by little into the night. Then there was only the baby's crying and Yuma watched it still hiding behind the bush. Human hearing sucked and their sense of smell was no better, Yuma thought as he approached the baby again. He rushed to hold it in his arms because he longed to feel the soft little body against his chest again. Deep down he was glad the baby hadn't been taken away, even though he knew that his desire to take it to the clan could only cause trouble.

He stroked its little face and rocked it gently until it stopped crying. It was wrapped in a thin blanket and Yuma thought about how cold it must be getting. In no time it could freeze without warmth. It was so small that he had an immense desire to protect it.

He couldn't leave it there, that was clear to him now. It would die there, and being a Tupi and not a human, he would not do that kind of thing. How could they abandon one of their own? Besides, it made him feel such tenderness that it seemed even more inexplicable to him. The human race was as evil as his mother and his cousin Namid always told him.

However, grandmother Min always scolded Lendula and told her not to tell them such barbarities and not to lump everyone together. There are bad humans and good humans, just as the Tupi can choose to be evil or kind, Min replied.

But Yuma had never met a tupi who would leave one of its own to die. No, none of its own would be capable of such a thing. They wouldn't do it to any of their own, and he was sure they wouldn't hurt that baby either. They might not want to keep it,