Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Fenix
Darrion is waiting for me at the entry cavern when I return from my patrol. I dismiss the rest of my wing and join him.
His posture is tense.
So am I. It’s early for this shit to be kicking off. Fucking typical that this would happen when there is an omega to claim and train.
Also, he smells of her, specifically her arousal, and it is very fucking distracting.
“They’re keeping to the cover of the trees, like they think that means we don’t notice.” I roll my eyes. Stupid humans. They seem to forget that aerial predators have eyesight and senses beyond their comprehension. “We spotted three different groups moving through the forest.”
“Scouting parties? Opportunist thugs?” Darrion asks.
“It’s hard to tell. All I know is that it’s too early for the dark fae bastards, and they don’t come from that direction anyway. No. This is a human kind of trouble.”
“It’s been a few years since they had a punt at the villages under our protection,” he says.
“You smell like her,” I blurt out, voice ripe with accusation that I do not even try to temper.
Darrion arches one noble brow and adjusts the cuffs on his silk jacket. He always was a pretentious prick. Also, he has not answered my fucking question.
“Why do you smell of her?”
His lips curve up on one side. Bastard. “He had her laid over his desk when I went in to tell him about your patrol,” he says.
My nostrils flare. “What do you mean by laid over the desk? Was he… was he fucking her?”
His smirk grows wider. “No, merely toying with her. He had her skirts up and her ass and pussy on display. He asked me if I wanted to watch.”
I swallow thickly. “And did you?”
“You’re damned right I did,” he says heatedly. “I pulled up a chair and watched the slick drip from her cunt to the wooden floor. She was absolutely drenched… and very obedient. It was quite a compelling sight. I’ll be taking my cock in hand later to the memory.”
“Fuck,” I mutter gruffly. “I wish I hadn’t asked.”
He arches a single blond brow again.
“Fine. I’m glad I asked, but also, now I’ll be thinking about it, and I wasn’t even there.”
“She is close,” he says. “Very close, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Did your wings spring?”
He scowls at me. “You know they fucking did. I only have to catch a whiff of her in the corridor, and they’re out and on display unrestrained. Darkan turns into a love-drunk fool that must preen before his mistress at every opportunity. Even if she is not there to see.”
“Galeor is the same,” I admit. Galeor unruffles his wings inside my mind, preening in a practice display. We are among the youngest in the Cairnborn Pride, though we have risen to third.
“See,” Galeor says, “It is not only us. We need to make sure we display our wings appropriately whenever she is around. Better yet, our full griffin form… Also, I’ve had some thoughts on mating that will satisfy my needs.”
“Not now,” I say brusquely.
“Having a conversation with somebody else?” Darrion inquires.
I scowl at him. “Are you saying Darkan is any better?” I shift my stance uneasily, before adding, “He is thinking about mating.”
Darrion’s expression turns calculating. “If you had seen her spread over the table, moaning softly as Atlas fondled her pussy, all slick and glistening, you would be thinking about it too.”
I groan weakly.
Our conversation is interrupted by heavy footsteps, and we both turn to find our leader bearing down on us, wings out. Mine immediately snap into existence, as do Darrion’s.
There is not enough room in the corridor, and everybody’s wings bat against each other.
“For fuck’s sake,” Atlas mutters. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Us?” I say, incredulous. “You had your wings out first!”
“I have just left her,” he says, scowling. “It is understandable that my wings are out. What are your excuses?”
“I can smell her all over you.” I sound fucking surly. “Did you fuck her?”
He takes me by the throat and shoves me against the nearby wall. “I did not fuck her. But I will, when I’m ready. Do not question me again.”
I swallow. He’s very fucking riled up at the moment. But he is our leader. The one who will claim her.
“We are going to claim her, too,” I say.
He sighs heavily, unwraps his fingers from around my throat, and steps back. “You will claim her, if she accepts you, as we have already discussed… And when I am ready. Now, what did you find on your patrol?”
“Three different parties,” I say.
“Could you identify them?”
I shake my head. “They were deep in the trees. No fires. But the scent was human. No shifters among them, not that I could tell. Traveling from the south. The way they moved made me feel like they were together. Coordinated, maybe.”
“The Blighten have been pushed back,” he says ominously, “and the querulous humans are up to mischief, it would seem.”
I nod. “That is my thought, too.”
Yet a familiar prickling sensation is back, and there are threats worse than humans out there.
“When human wars come to a stop, they find new ones, and if they cannot find them, then they create them,” Darrion agrees.
His age is measured in centuries—he is nearly as old as Atlas—and he has seen the patterns of human existence through his own experiences, whereas I have only read about them in books.
“War is expensive,” Atlas says. “Yet it becomes a way of being. With the coffers depleted, they seek ways to use their trained, battle-hardened minions to replenish them.”
“Humans are strange,” Darrion says dryly, like he has forgotten what it is to be human, so long has he been bound to his griffin, Darkan.
“Never satisfied unless there is blood spilling in some way or another. Not that I tar all humans with the same brush. Our people are good. Many people are good. It is the kings, queens, and lordly fuckers who set greedy eyes on things that do not belong to them out of boredom that piss me off.”
“All the more reason to expedite matters with her faux beta mates,” Atlas says decisively. “If we are to have a battle on our hands, then we shall definitely need the matter of our food resolved.”
Food. The word lands like a little explosion inside my head and is followed by a swift tightening in my groin.
“Is she… does she… will she?” I ask, barely coherent in my eagerness to know if she truly is a chosen one, the one who can be our nourishment.
“Yes,” Darrion says, surprising me when he is the one answering. “If our leader’s expression was anything to go by when he tasted her, she is assuredly a perfect and pure source of food.”
Atlas cuts him a scowl, cheeks darkening. “It was but a small taste from my fingers, not the source. But yes, even that much…” He leaves it hanging.
“Gods,” I mutter weakly. I can’t fucking wait. Galeor rumbles a complaint that he wants to taste her, too.
“We need to turn them. Both of them. Today,” Atlas states.
“I believe they are ready,” Darrion says. “Ready to break.”
“Good,” Atlas says, all business. “Let us proceed. Have the servants bring them to the training pit immediately.”
This is progressing fast. Faster than I anticipated. Yet the restlessness inside me never really finds peace, not while a threat lingers on our lands.
It is not the human kind of conflict I worry about, although they are assuredly bad enough. No, it is one far more personal to me.
Scars: the deep kind that even after all these years, never fully heal…
One hundred years earlier…
“Help me.”
The voice is low and guttural, the words shaped awkwardly around tusks and a tongue not made for this language.
I don’t help him—not in the way he wants. Couldn’t, even if I wanted to. But I open the small metal slot at the bottom of his door and shove the bowl of slop that passes as food through. Then I close it again and move on to the next.
Prisoner two is quiet.
Prisoner three demands to know what’s going to happen next.
The fourth curses me and my late mother.
The fifth tries to reach through the gap for me.
The overseer is ready. The crack of his club is swift and hard. The orc recoils with a grunt.
“G’it back, green bastard,” Overseer Barnes snarls. He nods once.
The hatch is shut. No food for this one.
“Aye, this batch is feisty.” His laugh is cruel and carries a note of mockery. “They’ll learn their place soon enough, eh, whelp.”
Like many people in this godless place, he thrives upon the misfortune of others.
I continue my round, doling out bowl after bowl until all the prisoners are fed.
The overseer waves me on, and I take my empty pot back to the kitchens where I work. Here I scrub dirty pots. But there are worse things than scrubbing, and I don’t complain.
I’m thirteen, and I’ve been a thrall of the dark fae all my life, like my mother and father were before they died, and their parents before them.
Sometime later today—or maybe tomorrow, or the day after—the orc prisoners will be collected one by one. Then they’ll be taken over to the compound, where they will be tortured and made to drink the tar drawn from the Reba swamp.
A few of them will likely die.
Those that survive will become rocklings.
I do not hate all orcs, though I have heard of their fearsome reputation and warlike ways. All I see are the prisoners before they are changed, who might be both good and bad. No different from men, really, save for green skin and tusks.
The moans start low, just enough to rouse me from sleep. Rolling over on the bare wooden cot, I pull the threadbare blanket over my head.
Not that it will help. Nothing blocks out their moaning once they start.
Also, pulling the blanket up uncovers my feet.
Old Billy, on the far side of the men’s dorm, has a nasty cough and begins hacking up a lung.
“Die already,” someone mutters.
Their anger might be directed at Billy, the orc prisoners, or both.
The next moan is long, drawn out, and agonized.
I clamp my hands over my ears.
It doesn’t help.
A scream comes next—high-pitched, inhuman.
“Bastards are starting early tonight,” another man grumbles. He shifts; wood creaks as he turns over, trying for sleep.
There is no peace here. Nor sleep, for the screams continue long into the night.
When I get up the next morning, there are no prisoners to feed.
But a week later, new ones arrive, and it begins all over again.
Present day…
The screams fade. They always do, eventually. I roll out my shoulders and shake the past loose from my wings as I follow Altas and Darrion for the training pit where Rafe and Lark wait.