53
If I thought the boredom of my existence in the war camp was bad, the anxiety of being nearly alone in it while the soldiers were away fighting was excruciating. When I’d awoken and found Rokath’s note, I’d hurriedly dressed and tiptoed out of the tent, finding only a few males still about, some tending to things that needed mending, others caring for the injured. Otherwise, the vast network I’d come to call home was eerily empty. And eerily quiet.
My thoughts, however, were loud enough to fill the void.
When our bond first snapped into place, I never thought I’d pace over a threadbare rug, fretting for his life. What the fuck was wrong with me? I shouldn’t be worrying over him. I worried for Rapp, too, assuming that he faced a similar battle across the distant canyon.
My gut twisted in knots. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, for the fear that pulsed through my veins.
I didn’t even have Grem and Zeec to keep me company. Digging through the various bags and chests in our tent, I found a ball the two of them liked to chase and threw it against the wooden table for something, anything, to distract from the breath that wouldn’t move in my chest.
When that didn’t do the trick, I plaited my hair and stepped outside again. Looking around, I found no one, so I took off at a sprint, racing down the line of tents before skidding to a stop and backtracking. It didn’t take long for me to become thoroughly winded from the exercise, so I switched into the routine Izgath and Uzadaan had shown me, taking care to properly engage my shoulder so I didn’t injure it again.
Over and over I repeated the exercises until I didn’t feel like I was going to crawl out of my skin anymore, and my breathlessness forced air into my lungs. The sun beat down overhead, only serving to make me sweat more. A few wayward tendrils of hair clung to my face, and I shoved them back, hands coming away wet.
With a sigh, I returned to the tent and stripped out of my sweaty clothes, then used the basin and some cloths to wipe myself clean. It was the best I could do for now, though at this point I was used to it.
While I cooled off, I lay in the bed and stared at the ceiling, worries slithering back into my mind like a snake through shifting grains of sand. Again, I found the ball and fidgeted with it, trying to soothe the nervousness I couldn’t shake.
Midway through the afternoon, a male I recognized as one of the healers poked his head into our tent. “Apologies, Halálhívó’s chosen, but we need to move.”
The ball I had been tossing aimlessly between my hands dropped to my lap. “Move? Why?”
Rokath’s note flashed through my mind. Had they lost? Were we supposed to flee? I would know if something had happened to him through our bond, right?
Before I could reach down it to check on him, the healer responded, “We need to advance with the battalions, otherwise they won’t have food and healing supplies readily available.”
My brows crashed together. “So, they won?”
“Aye, they did.”
The healer couldn’t smother the grin that split his face. “The Reaper’s eye was elsewhere this day.”
“Indeed. The Weaver’s thread too is strong. Glory to the Demons,”
I replied automatically, mind still spinning. All day, I sat here, worrying to the point that my fingernails were utterly destroyed. Somehow, I couldn’t convince myself to believe that Rokath would walk back into our tent like he promised in his note.
“If you don’t mind, we’d like to pack up now,”
the healer told me, stirring me from my thoughts.
“Oh, yes, right,”
I said, jumping from the bed and grabbing the satchels that held mine and Rokath’s clothes, taking extra care of the worn, fraying leather of Rokath’s bag. One day, he’d tell me exactly what happened that caused him to keep it.
The healer tied back the flaps, and a gust of hot desert air blustered through the space as he and two others entered, making quick work of dismantling everything.
Squinting against the brightness, I approached a wagon just outside the tent and secured them at the front where they were easily accessible. At the last moment, I remembered the scarf and dug it out, draping it with expert precision after so many days under the sun.
Blaeze was tied to the side of it, already saddled and ready for me to ride. I stepped out of the way to let the males fill the wagon and noticed most of the rest of camp had been deconstructed already. “Why not return here?”
I asked the one who had been in my tent.
“The Halálhívó wants to press their advantage. Apparently they took the Angels by quite a surprise, both from the Halálhívó’s push and Hadvezér Rapp’s,”
he told me, hefting the wooden flap at the rear and then securing the pins in place so nothing would slide out. He slapped the side of it, sending an echo toward the front.
“If you’re ready, Halálhívó’s chosen,”
he said, gesturing to a still-hitched Blaeze.
“Yes, thank you,”
I said, going to my horse and taking his reins. The male strode around to the front and joined another in the driver’s seat.
Still feeling adrift, I dug my foot into the stirrup and mounted him. They trundled forward, and I followed alongside, unsure how to act without Rokath running interference between me and everyone else.
He must have been intensely focused on the task at hand if he allowed me to go without an entire guard toward a battlefield. I was hesitant to reach down our bond and search his mind, not only because my feelings about him were such a tangled mess, but also because I didn’t want to distract him by appearing in his mind.
If he was winning, and handily, then I wanted him to continue to do so. The sooner this was all over, the sooner I would know that Rokath, Rapp, and every Demon in the realm wouldn’t perish.
Still, the rear was the better place to be, so I stayed there, riding silently along the healers, until we approached a stretch of torn, bloodsoaked earth. The scent of death assaulted me immediately, and I coughed, gagged, and forced myself to breathe through my mouth. One of the healers dug out thick red cloths and passed them around. They each wrapped one over their nose and mouths.
“You get used to it eventually, once you’re around it enough,”
the one called out to me, though his words were slightly muffled.
Taking his cue, I rewound the scarf so it also covered my mine
“It’s worse in the summer when it’s hot. Attracts more flies and everything rots faster,”
he continued like this was a normal conversation.
My stomach churned, and I kept my gaze firmly forward. But then, the first pile of bodies appeared just ahead, and bile rose in my throat.
This was nothing like I’d experienced with the plague.
The moment someone died of the sickness, they were carted away and burned. Besides that, it was winter, and the smell wasn’t so foul.
Here, despite the openness, the stretch clung to everything, filling my nostrils through the scarf. True to his word, flies buzzed over the tangled pile of limbs. White hair was soaked with blood, blue eyes were glassy and lifeless. Jaws forever frozen in silent screams.
The sight was horrifying.
I ripped the scarf away, bent over and retched. The wagon halted, and the male hopped down, rushing to my side. Once I finished, gasping for air, he offered me a waterskin. “Thanks,”
I said, lifting it to my lips with shaky hands. I swished the cool liquid in my mouth and spit it away from him. I dared not lift my gaze and see what else was strewn across the battlefield.
“Would you like to ride in the wagon? You’ll be hotter but at least then you won’t have to see it,”
he offered, concern etching his face.
I knew what he was thinking—this was why they didn’t have females in the Demon army. But as I faced him, a petite figure with long braided hair caught my attention. The head was turned away from me, and the body was facedown on the earth, but there was no mistaking the Angel female who had fought and died for her realm.
I sucked in a breath and squared my shoulders because I needed to prove to these males that a female could hold a place among them during the war. That we were worthy of more equal treatment than we currently received. “I’m ready to continue,”
I pronounced, my voice steady and firm. These males wouldn’t question my presence after today.
Lifting my chin, I rode past the bloated bodies with carrion birds picking at them and toward the roar of battle and clashing metal. Blood rushed in my ears, increasing to a cacophonous crescendo when we rounded a tumble of rocks and spilled onto the field of war. Even more of it slicked the ground from where the wagons had pulled off to one side, with a mile or so distance to the nearest fighters.
My breath fled as I beheld the apocalyptic scene, flashes of light and dark battling among silver and bronze. Shrieks and howls rent the air, slamming into me with so much force I instinctively wanted to flee. But I gritted my teeth and moved forward, trying to stay hidden among the moving wagons.
The stench was even worse here, sweat and metal combining with the dust and assaulting my face as the wind blasted across the flat expanse. It carried with it the sounds of the dying too, piercing that part of me that was acutely aware of the pain of loss.
And there was so much of it.
The Demons had their backs to us, leaving mounds of white-haired bodies in their wake, and very few dark-haired ones. I scanned the fray in search of a helmet with horns of wicked ebony.
It didn’t take long to find my mate. Not when the cries of anguish shifted to ones of horror.
I froze as I beheld the Halálhívó in all his glory.
Rokath stood on his own, a ring of bodies a dozen paces in every direction. Shadows swirled like a dark twister around him as he made a dramatic move to curl his fingers into his palm.
Then he dropped to one knee.
He cocked his arm back.
And he slammed his fist into the ground.
The earth trembled with fear beneath me.
A shockwave of shadow blasted from the circle, ghosting across the ground and wrapping around the dead bodies scattered across the field. Slowly, they perked up, some wielding weapons of silver, others weapons of bronze.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
A collective roar sounded from the still-living Demons, and they charged forward with renewed vigor as the dead joined them in fighting the Angels.
“Reaper,”
I murmured, heart pounding against my ribcage as I watched the scene unfold. It was unlike anything I had ever seen, could have possibly dreamed of, with Rokath acting like a God in directing the movements of them all.
Pebbles coated my skin, and a chill settled over me, banishing the heat of the sun.
Hundreds, thousands of bodies under his command fell upon the Angels, fighting as furiously as any of the living.
When the Angels hacked at them, however, they did not flinch. Did not rest, did not surrender, and with horror I watched one dead leap onto a living male and rip his throat out with his teeth. Another speared the reanimated corpse from behind, and it turned its fury on the newcomer who barely managed to slice its head from its shoulders.
The male panted, a look of pure anguish on his face as he beheld his fallen comrades. The corpse remained motionless. The Angel who it killed, however, rose again, under the command of Rokath’s power, and launched himself at the still-living one.
All I could do was stare in slack-jawed awe as the tide crashed over the Angels, each fresh corpse only an addition to Rokath’s growing horde. It was a terrifying sight to behold, and yet my body yearned for my mate. His power was intoxicating, and I opened the block I kept firmly over our bond to let it infuse me.
As if he sensed me finally, he tilted his head over his shoulder, and all I could see in the slit in his helmet was one maniacal burgundy eye. Rokath wasn’t just the Halálhívó and the leader of the entire Demon army. No, he was a Weaver of fate himself, with power to bring any God to their knees. And as he returned his attention forward, the Angels did just that, dying faster than they could flee.
Because I knew one thing for certain about Rokath.
He offered no mercy.
The battle was over within minutes, and still, I couldn’t close my mouth. Finally, I understood the fervency of belief in Rokath and Xannirin. The worship. The veneration.
The Giver wouldn’t create a power like his if she and the other Fates didn’t have plans for him to wield it.
My anxiety over his well-being earlier that day seemed like a silly thing now that I had borne witness to his prowess. He didn’t need me to fret that he might die on the battlefield.
In fact, he didn’t need me at all.
And yet as that riot of shadow stopped swirling, he faced me again, eyes colliding with mine with the force of a violent thunderstorm. Like lightning had struck between us, I leaped from my horse and he raced toward me, snatching me in his arms and crushing me against him. I yanked the horns atop his head and tossed the skull-shaped helmet to the side, and then his mouth was on mine, furious, hot, passionate.
No, he did not need me. But he desired me. Wanted this. And I did too.
The thought struck me like a thunderclap, stealing my breath even more than the swipe of Rokath’s tongue against my own. The thought frightened me, but I groaned wantonly into his mouth anyway. Wrapping my legs around his armored waist, I barely managed to lock my feet together. In his arms, I was tiny, and after watching him wield his power, I felt so incredibly safe.
Our bond was an opened floodgate, the high of the battle cascading from him into me, heating my blood. My core throbbed with the need of him, and wave after wave of lust swept over us both.
“I need to be inside you,”
he growled into my mind.
“Yes,”
I pleaded back, not caring that we had an audience or were surrounded by dead and dying bodies.
Rokath broke our kiss, chest heaving, eyes wild. He placed me gingerly on my feet, then whispered in my ear, “Run.”
A thrill shattered through my veins, and I bit my lip and spun on my heel, wasting no time in racing across the ruby ground toward the rumble of rocks.
“Fifty, forty-nine, forty-eight, forty-seven…”
Rokath counted down, spiking my heart rate and making me pump my arms faster. A grin split my face as I willingly ran, ecstatic for what would happen when Rokath caught me. Gone was the female Vagach had beat into bitter submission, who gripped the sheets and waited for him to finish. I had bloomed into a fiery female, owning that I too enjoyed this game of chase and the intensity of Rokath’s desire coursing down our bond.
I stuck out a hand and grabbed a jutted stone, using it to propel me around the bend faster, putting more distance between us.
“Ten, nine, eight…”
Sweat dripped from my temples and down my spine, but I wasn’t going to stop running until Rokath grabbed me. I skidded around another bend in the rock, the sounds of battle nearly dying out as I slipped between two large boulders. The slot offered a semblance of privacy and protection, and I glanced around, trying to find another exit or way to scramble up the rocks.
The ground trembled beneath my feet, and I spared a glance over my shoulder, finding Rokath a hundred yards behind me and closing in quickly. A laugh tore free and I raced forward again. But before I got much farther, I felt him reach for me. Spinning, I avoided his grip, then ducked under his outstretched arm and raced in the other direction. What I lacked in size, I compensated with agility.
A rumble filled the slot as he spun and gave chase again. “Can’t fuck me if you can’t catch me, Rokath,”
I teased, breathless. When I faced forward again, I skidded to a stop, too late, and landed myself in a tangle of shadows.
A low, sinister laugh that raised the hairs on my arms echoed around me. “Got you, little imposter.”
The debauched grin Rokath wore sent a gush of wetness between my thighs. Piece by piece, he stripped off his armor, maintaining his hold on me the entire time. I wiggled against his magic, but they were like vines around my arms and legs. One smoky tendril offered my neck a gentle caress, causing me to shiver from head to toe. Another tugged at the laces of my tunic and pants, stripping me bare without him having to touch me.
Never before had he displayed such power with me, and the sheer mastery alone was impressive. Let alone the lethal body of the male who wielded it. The culmination of it all made me drip for him. If my thighs had been sticky with sweat before, they were damp for an entirely different reason as he revealed his swollen length, the tip beaded for me.
“Will you get on your knees or do I have to force you there?”
he growled, striding forward. His cock bobbed with each step, and I couldn’t help but watch it. The hold over his magic softened enough that I fell to my knees willingly, ready to worship him.
A primal, masculine sound slipped out, and he cupped my cheek, lifting my face so I was forced to look him in the eye. “Good girl.”
He thumbed my lip, and without resisting, I opened for him and sucked the tip into my mouth, raking my teeth along the pad. “Open wide,”
he commanded, and I dropped my jaw again, although for a very different reason than before.
As he slid along my tongue, a burst of salty musk flooded my senses. He stopped before he hit my throat, then dropped his hand from my face and braced himself against the smooth stone. Eyes like an inferno stared down at me as I worked over his length, remembering how deeply he liked being in my throat before. I gagged around him, struggling to breathe, and he groaned. “Just like that, Assyria. You’re doing so well.”
The praise went straight to my core. Saliva dripped around him, and soon, wet, sloppy sounds filled the silence, punctuated by heavy breaths and curses from Rokath when I took him deep. Then, without warning, he pulled me off him and hefted me. Spinning us, he settled me on top of a smooth rock, then spread my legs and knelt between them. “I need to taste you. See if that’s the taste of victory,”
he moaned, then swiped his tongue through my slick folds.
“Fates,”
I cried out, grasping for purchase on something, anything, as he flicked my clit.
“They don’t give you pleasure. I do.”
“Yes,”
I panted, mind blanking as his rough beard tickled the sensitive skin between my thighs. My mind blanked of everything but him. “Rokath, fuck, I need more.”
A growl rumbled against my center, and he slipped two fingers inside, joining his tongue in working me to a frenzy. “I was right, little imposter. You do taste like victory. Now come for me and drown me in your arousal.”
He curled his fingers against my inner walls, stroking roughly as he lapped at my clit, and I shattered, crying out his name. Body snapping like a whip, my muscles clenched around his fingers, head tipped back to the sky. “Your cries are so pretty, Assyria.”
Still, he did not relent, pulling every last drop from me as he spread and speared his fingers. “Fuck, Rokath,”
I panted, sweat rolling between my breasts and down my stomach.
Only then did he rise, my arousal glistening in his beard. He wiped it with the back of his hand, then pumped his dick while raking his gaze over me. “So damn beautiful,”
he murmured as if he were venerating the body that just wept for him.
He nestled between my thighs, then gripped the back of my head with his free hand. “I want you to keep your eyes on me the entire time, understood?”
“Yes,”
I whimpered, barely resisting the urge to scoot closer so his head would slip inside me.
“Mmm, good girl,”
he praised, then split me apart with one powerful thrust.
My mouth popped open and a gasp slipped out as more pleasure swept through me. Rokath was massive, and we didn’t couple often enough for me to be nearly used to his size. Each thick inch of him stretched me, brushing against every nerve. Before I could gather my bearings, he buried himself again, sending me rocking back. He switched his grip so that he supported my head and back, and then set a brutal pace, skin slapping so hard that I knew it would bruise.
The entire time, he didn’t look away from me, keeping me pinned under the ferocity of his gaze. Those burgundy eyes were pools of black, and through them, I saw the male underneath. The male who feared losing the war to the Angels. Feared being vulnerable, feared being seen as weak.
Feared becoming attached to me. Feared that I would hurt him too.
And he bared those truths to me through those windows into his soul, through the thick rope that tied our fates together. Words were unnecessary when we were bound like this, every thought, every emotion, open and available to one another if we simply allowed it to be.
And in that moment, he did.
A hand wrapped around my throat, thumb secured under my chin and lifting it even higher. His attention flicked to my fluttering pulse, then back to my eyes. He stilled, so deep inside me I swore he was in my stomach.
A noise of protest slipped out of me. “Rokath,”
I pleaded, though for what I wasn’t sure. I just needed him to do something, anything, to abate this ache for his touch.
His chest heaved, and a wildness slipped into his eye as he beheld me. Something was tumbling through his mind, and I waited, breath lodged in my throat. He moved again, slower, dragging his length to the tip before slipping back in. “You will come for me six times before I am finished with you tonight, Assyria. Six times for the six hours it took me to slaughter those fucking Angels.”
My core clenched at his words, a mix of excitement and apprehension swirling through me. “I don’t think I’ve come that many times in my life,”
I panted, rocking my hips in an attempt to garner some friction.
“Do not challenge me further, little imposter,”
he growled, yanking me down on his hardness. Stars exploded in my vision. Then, he fucked me again, at such a frenzied pace I was careening toward the edge with no chance of stopping it.
“Rokath, I–”
With a cry, I came again, digging my fingers into his shoulders as he continued to drive into me. My breasts bounced with each movement, and I crested one wave after another. Before I’d even had time to recover from it, he switched his grip again, one arm wrapped around me to offer support while the other toyed with my clit.
“Come again, and show me how sweet victory is,”
he growled, swirling more wetness there and pressing.
“Oh, Fates–”
He growled and slapped that sensitive bundle of nerves.
“Rokath,”
I corrected myself, half-screaming as another orgasm tore through me.
“That’s it, Assyria. Drip all over my hand,”
he rasped.
When I came down that time, he ceased touching me and stuck one finger in his mouth. His nostrils flared as he cleaned it, then he offered the other to me. “Taste victory, little imposter.”
He swiped the tip against the seam of my lips, and I opened, sucking and tasting my arousal. I moaned, and his cock thickened inside me. “Three more,”
he ordered, pulling his hand away.
“I don’t think I can,”
I panted. Sweat slicked every inch of my skin, and my body felt wrung out in a way it never had before.
Rokath tugged me off the rock and settled me on the ground. I nearly whimpered when he slipped out of me, but a moment later, he spun me and locked his arm across my stomach. Dropping his head to my ear, he said, “Brace yourself against the rock. It’s going to be a rough ride.”
My breath hitched, and my skin pebbled as he guided me forward. Locking my arms, I readied myself for him again. The head of his dick nudged at my entrance, and then he was inside, filling me in the most exquisite way. “Oh,”
I breathed as he moved, taking me at a deeper angle. He flattened a palm on my lower back, forcing me to arch more.
“There you go,”
he growled, then swiped his fingers through my wetness and circled my clit. I wanted nothing more than to melt into the ground and let him continue to touch me, but as he slid through my slickness, he didn’t stop at his dick.
No, he continued up and parted my cheeks. “What are you–”
“Relax and it will feel good. If you come for me with my fingers in your ass, I might let you off the hook for the other two orgasms you owe me.”
He swept the wetness over my puckered hole, and I nearly groaned at the foreign sensation. “What happened to me having to earn them from you?”
“I’m feeling generous after my victory today,”
he replied, then circled his hips again. He wasn’t lying when he told me it would be a rough ride, and I had to shift my sweaty palms to brace myself better.
The feeling of his cock pressing against all my walls while his finger brushed over my ass was unlike anything I’d experienced before.
“You’re doing so well, Assyria. Move that pretty cunt along my length while I work a finger inside you,”
Rokath commanded. Everything with Rokath felt like a first. Instead of being a passive participant in coupling, he made me feel alive. Empowered me to snatch at what I wanted from the experience.
Slowly, I worked my hips back and forth, pleasure building quickly now that I was in control of the motion. I paused when the tip of his cock hit just the right spot, raking it over and over and over again. Wetness trickled down my thighs, but whether it was sweat or arousal, I didn’t know. Didn’t care. All I could focus on was the sensation of Rokath inside me and brushing over my ass.
“That’s it, keep going,”
Rokath encouraged, and then his finger slipped in.
A sharp inhale preceded a string of curses and Rokath’s name. I stilled as I adjusted to the new sensation.
He dragged himself over that spot again, eliciting a whimper from me. “Mmm, yes, I can feel you throbbing, Assyria. How does it feel being claimed in two holes?”
“So fucking good,”
I managed to get out, body tensing as he adjusted his finger ever so slightly.
“That’s my girl. Take your pleasure from me,”
he instructed, and I did, working over his length while he continued to press into my ass.
Curses and moans fled me in rapid succession as tension coiled tighter and tighter in my pussy. Rokath never stopped his ministrations, and soon I was careening toward another orgasm. “I think I’m going to come again,”
I panted, eyes fluttering as I grappled for control of myself.
“Come all over my cock, Assyria. Scream my name. Let them know who shatters you to pieces,”
he growled.
Those words were my unraveling. His name ripped from my throat as I pitched forward, arms trembling and unable to support my weight any longer. He fucked me through it, quickening his pace and thickening inside me. My walls gripped him, holding him inside me until I was certain we had fused into one being.
There was nothing and no one in my world except for him.
“Rokath,”
I moaned, long and low, and then collapsed against the rock.
“Fuck, Assyria, I love hearing you say my name,”
Rokath groaned, then pulled out of me with a grunt. I didn’t have the energy to move as he jerked himself and spilled his cum over the sandy earth.
Rokath spun me to face him, then pulled me into his arms. His heart beat erratically against my ear as I wrapped my arms around his sweaty torso. The way in which he held me then didn’t just speak to a male and female after a thorough coupling, but something more.
Something that wanted to reach between my ribs and heal one slash in my tattered heart. Rokath had been an asshole to me again, and admittedly, I to him, and yet, after this victory, after this chase, after this claiming, I sensed the winds shifting, blowing us back to the course we’d charted while my injured shoulder healed.
Despite my better judgment, I basked in what he offered me. I kept the barrier between us open, let our bond hum contentedly as our emotions, thoughts, souls, were shared like one thick stream of being.
Rokath too surrendered to the feel of us, and all those hurtful words he’d spoken about me being too much of a distraction, getting in the way of saving the Demons, melted away.
Trust bloomed in that moment of shared vulnerability, as if it had been waiting for the perfect conditions to show us what a beautiful blossom it could be.
We remained wrapped in each other for a long time, until the sound of revelry drifted into the slot and we decided we needed to return and celebrate the swift victory Rokath delivered.
We reentered the camp hand in hand.