Chapter Nineteen
Marquis
Marquis luxuriated in a dream, breathing deeply as wet, hot pressure engulfed his cock, slicking its way slowly up and down. As a grown male, he’d rarely had dreams so vivid, and he shuddered, the sensation growing fiercer by the minute.
Slick sounds pricked his ears, and pain from sharp nails digging into his chest woke him with a start as he lost the sliver of control he held onto and came, eyes fluttering open to stare at his mate seated atop him, taking his pleasure with the most beautiful expression.
Thin streaks of cum shot over his chest, wet streaks splattering and splatting with a beautiful note of pleasure.
He’d never been that amorous with Rexford during his pregnancy, but the small swell of his belly and hormones flushed through his system like a storm—and some of his medications had inhibited his orgasms. Off of them, his anxiety was high, but his sex drive made Marquis a walking target.
Slumping forward, Mads huffed, hair stringy with sweat and covering his forehead. His ragged sigh dissolved into a groan of pleasure.
He sat up abruptly and rested a hand over his belly, gently circling a spot for a moment before drawing Marquis’s hand in as a tiny flutter pushed back.
Marquis kept his hand there for a long moment until the stirring ebbed.
Mads, for his part, stared with open wonder at Marquis, meeting his gaze when he glanced back up. “Morning.”
“G’morning,” Marquis said with a yawn. “To both of you.”
Mads slid off of Marquis’s softening cock and donned a robe, stretching out his lithe body as the terrycloth draped neatly over his bump.
“Shower time and then I need to be in the community center at seven.” Mads yawned and Marquis peered at the alarm clock in betrayal. Six fifteen.
“Bollocks…” Marquis rose and went his separate way with a pair of low-hung pajama pants to the kitchens, praying his help had left some overnight oats or something for breakfast. Pleased to see it, Marquis pulled one of the jars out and dug in, eating silently as he stared at the rising sun outside with a glare.
Mages were nocturnal creatures, so early mornings were crimes against nature, sins against the goddesses, and wholly unnecessary.
For the humans he was forced to entertain?
Mornings were imperative. Marquis had the majority of his duties of an afternoon and evening.
Once he was full, he went to the downstairs bathroom to shower and back to their bedroom to dress.
It was a casual day, which for Marquis meant not wearing a jacket.
A button-up with rolled sleeves did him nicely as he tucked his wand to his side and strode out to his workshop to find a few of the humans already there, Nelson leading the gaggle of them.
“Good morning, Marquis!” Nelson waved, and Marquis gave him a soft nod. The humans didn’t give him honorifics, for Marquis was not a covenmaster or councilman to them. He was a master, a sage, and teacher.
He unlocked the workshop, and they filed in, back to work as they’d done the past few days, shaping out elegant rods of wood into serviceable wands.
They were far different from a mage’s wand, these a symbolic thing that would hold their power in a wish crystal, imbued with a certain set of spells tailored to the wielder and anchored to their bloodline.
Invisibility, permeability, mostly spells that could cause little chaos other than middling thievery.
They would be Penumbra wands, made with the old Eclipse standard, his father’s mark on them, a testament to Arthur and Baron’s misdeeds.
He dubbed them the wands of regret, each one a facet of their promises to the magi that their service was appreciated.
Marquis couldn’t imbue them the way he did a Mage’s wand, couldn’t spell the wood and link a mage to the earth.
They weren’t magical beings, but with wish, they could hold a piece of magekind with them, and to each, they would vow to uphold the secrecy of the mages and act as intermediaries in the world.
Mages had lost their touch in the new and digital age.
Each wand, lathed appropriately, received lacquering and had the handle drilled out, a cavity inside where a wish crystal would be positioned with sawdust from a mage’s wand as the cushioning, a reminder that they too are linked to magekind, though their magic may not be their own.
He could have done the same thing to any number of trinkets, but wands were the best. He knew wands.
There was no ceremony to what he did, only gathering, shaping, and exchange. A wand would match their mage. But, for this, Marquis made it ceremonial, boxing their wands in handmade displays, enchanting them one at a time with the vows of silence, of loyalty, and the spell or two that could fit.
Nelson rather liked his invisibility, and another wished he could fly—but hovering a little was the best Marquis could offer.
The human body wasn’t meant to be throttled full force through the upper atmospheres unprotected where any godless man woman or child could see them break natural laws shortly before wrenching themselves asunder.
There was a reason mages used brooms at one point.
The spell itself tended to settle in the shaft of a broom, or in anything straight and thin—like bones.
Humans couldn’t easily come back from having their legs depart at unheard-of speeds ahead of their own bodies through the air.
They tended to not survive the process. Usually.
Nelson had to reassure the others that Marquis spoke truth. Why else would mages ride motorcycles?
Because brooms tended to crush testicles when straddled.
As the humans worked their way through the embellishments of their wands, Marquis stared at the wrinkled letter that Doris had left behind.
He started and stopped reading it so many times, he had the first few lines memorized.
But he had little else to do and with Mads pregnant and his life changing, he needed to brave it.
As if sensing something wrong, Nelson approached, sitting beside Marquis as he pulled the letter free. “I’d offer to hold your hand, friend. That letter has troubled you for some time.”
“We all handle grief our own way.”
“Betrayal and grief have entwined, and it’s a unique pain you bear. I’ll just sit by you a bit—moral support and all that.” Nelson smiled and Marquis nodded.
No backing out now. Marquis frowned at the first paragraph. Nelson must have known he might turn tail again.
So, lacking any other reasonable option, he read.
Marquis,
I’ll forgo any affectations. By the time you read this, you will understand what I did.
My love for you is not the same sort of love you have for me.
I have manipulated you into codependency.
You needed me at a time when you had suffered the worst betrayal imaginable.
There is no excuse for all I did and did not do.
Mads was beneath you, I thought, and I admired you from afar.
You knew what I was and treated me no differently.
So, when Baron and I shared our common goals, he gave you and Rexford to me.
Please know that I do love you, even until the end.
The leaves on my wand tree grow gnarled and twisted. I see my demise in the branches.
I owe you my story. And this is it.
For years, I have done research into familiar bonds.
Shifter blood mingled with magekind, and the bond between alpha and omega became inundated with our beings.
We took the best of the mongrels, selected their strongest bloodlines, and bred them into what we were.
All shifters that exist, the incomplete and useless creatures, are nothing more than incomplete and failed familiars.
And any mage that would sully themselves with a shifter, lay with one, breed with them, should be put to death as they put down those of their own that bugger common animals.
As an omega, myself, I never developed the traits of a familiar.
I should have been born a woman in the first place instead of the flawed male I was.
Imbued with magic and unable to channel for a mage as a familiar should.
I became the woman you always saw me as.
You never saw Doran, the boy I was. You saw the woman I became.
Unfortunately, I got caught up in my dreams and wistfulness.
Instead of achieving the unthinkable, proving the origins of magekind, and rooting out the blood that ruined us—I became a mother instead.
And I could only do so at your reluctant side.
I love you, and I love Rexford more than anything, but I know your heart never warmed to me.
You cried out his name in your sleep often.
You have a nephew alive, Damien’s first son they sent back to Wales.
His name is Seren Heulwen. He’s a covenmaster of the Haul covens, Machlud.
He looks a lot like you. But what you’re likely more concerned about is Midnite.
The Greymorning adjunct covenmaster went searching for him years ago, and Baron found him.
Our contact reported the boy had no magical talent, but Baron was certain that he had familiar potential, and so we began an experiment…
Marquis read through the rest of the page then another, notes on familiars and omegas, how every omega had potential, but they had to be fostered.
That trauma stifled an omega’s magic, which funneled it more into their desires for freedom, their fascinations, which is why familiars often took the forms of animals they loved the most. And by stifling creativity, making an unhappy child, and exposing them to a comfort creature…
You got a familiar. Some of the wealthiest families knew it already and guarded the secrets.