Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
APOLLO
Iwatch in confusion as she smirks and turns, heading back towards the pond and cave. After a few moments, I jog after her.
“What do you mean? Your name’s Angel,” I tell her, as if she doesn’t know her own name.
She doesn’t stop, just speaks to me over her shoulder, “Noooo, you call me Angel, but it’s not my name.”
“I don’t understand,” I tell her in confusion.
This time she stops and spins to face me, hands on her hips. She doesn’t seem angry, maybe a little disappointed though? “Apollo, do you seriously think that’s my name?”
“Yes?” She rolls her eyes and turns, but I grab her wrist and spin her to face me again.
“Wait, let me explain. From the first moment I saw you, laying in the desert, practically dying, it was as if you had just fallen from heaven, for me, my little Angel. It’s what I’ve been calling you in my head ever since.
You’re like this beautiful little creature, too heavenly for me to get close to.
And even though I know you must have another name, you’ll always be my little Angel, you see?
” I ask, pulling her closer until I can wrap my arms around her again.
“I forgive you,” she whispers, making my eyebrows raise in surprise before she presses her lips to mine. I can’t get enough of her, and as long as she lets me keep kissing her, I would. What would my brother think? Would he be happy to know we’re getting along?
I feel the rain start to ease off and I pull back as we both tilt our damp faces to the sky. When she looks at me, I smile, taking her hand gently in mine as we head back to the cave.
“I have some dry clothes here you can wear,” I tell her, pointing to a pile of clothes.
Together we dig through and find her another one of my tunics to wear and pants and a tunic for me.
I expect her to turn her back to me as she changes, but she just pulls the wet tunic straight over her head and lets it fall to the ground with a wet plop.
I stare at her body, trying to swallow through the dryness in my mouth.
Her breasts look the perfect size to fit in my hands and I find my fists clenching at the thought.
Her pussy is covered by short red hair, a bit darker than the mass of wet waves falling from her head.
She just stands there, letting me ogle her. I want to touch her so badly, but I don’t deserve that, at least not yet. So instead I ask, “Can I braid your hair for you?”
I see the small beat of confusion on her face before she smiles. “That would be nice, thank you.” She grabs the dry tunic and pulls it over her head before going to sit at the end of the bed, watching me curiously.
The way she’s looking at me, it’s like she’s daring me to strip for her.
If she can do it, so can I, right? I pull my shirt off, knowing she saw my chest and scars last night.
And as my wet pants and underwear stick together, I pull them down as one, watching her face intently.
I can tell the moment she sees my cock, her eyes widening slightly as she licks her lips.
I stand up tall and can’t help but run my hand up my rigid cock.
Watching her strip made me hard. And as I see her swallow nervously, I take pity on her by grabbing my dry clothes and quickly redressing.
She seems to shake herself out of the haze she was in as I grab a brush and sit behind her, gently brushing out her hair. Seeing her reaction to my body has my mind reeling. I’m pretty sure she liked what she saw, I don’t think it was fear in her eyes.
After a few minutes of heated silence, I decide it’s a good time to get to know her better.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Did Indy bond with other lonelings before he met you? It’s just, before, you mentioned mates, as in plural, a few times.”
“Oh, no, he was on his own when I met him. I have three mates, including Indy, and I met each of them individually. He was the third to join. I met Ryker first. He’s a skyreacher trainer, and we met when I tried to take off on one and he jumped on behind me.
Braxton I met when the bird dumped us at the top of his snowy mountain. ”
“How did you meet my brother?” I ask curiously.
“He saved me when I was trying to pet a bullicorn, and helped me find Ryker and Braxton, not before we were ambushed by bandits, and he and the masked man saved me.”
“What’s a bullicorn? And where were your first two mates when all this was happening?”
“We got separated when I fell down the mountain.”
I pause in my movements. Did I hear her right? “Did you just say you fell down a mountain?”
“Yeah, it was an accident, I was just so excited we weren’t stuck inside that mountain anymore. After the avalanche trapped the three of us in there, I was feeling rather claustrophobic.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I say, turning her so I can see her face. “I need to understand this.”
I raise my hand, ticking off fingers as I list the events.
“You tried to ride a skyreacher on your own, you got dumped at the top of a snowy mountain, got trapped by an avalanche, fell down a mountain, was almost killed by a… bullicorn, was attacked by bandits and… stabbed by a sandcrawler.” I look at her in disbelief. “Am I missing anything?”
“Well…” There’s more? “There was the snowprowler that tried to attack us on the mountain, the time I tried to make breakfast and burned my arms and then the same day some guy dragged me into the woods.”
I stare at her in shock. She’s like a magnet for disaster. “You say you only have three mates?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You need twice that to help keep you safe.”
“Why, you offering to be one of them?” Is that what she wanted? Or was that a joke? I stare at her, trying to read her expression, but she quickly changes the subject, and I’m not sure if it’s because she is afraid of rejection or because she didn’t mean it.
“You should probably know that I wasn’t raised here, where I’m from, we don’t care if you have brothers because we only marry one man. So marrying multiple men, and the whole brothers thing, is all rather new to me.”
“Where are you from?” I ask, confused. I’d never heard of a place like that before.
“It’s a place called the human realm. It’s a long story, but basically my soul was born into the wrong realm.
It was supposed to be born here in Dyconia, but it was born in the human realm instead.
One day, my friend Ria went missing. I searched for her for a year, with no luck.
Then a couple months ago, this woman appears and tells me that she needs to send me to Dyconia, and that it’s where Ria was.
Since Ria was my only family left, I didn’t hesitate to step through the portal. ”
I wasn’t sure what to say to all of that, it was quite the story.
“It’s okay if you don’t believe me. I’m not sure if I would if I were in your shoes.”
“No, I… It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just a lot of information to take in.”
“I know, portal travel and another realm—”
“No, not that part,” I interrupt her. “The fact that you just said all of that happened in only a few months.”
“Well, technically. Everything before the burning breakfast incident happened in the first few days. And I married Brax and Ry right after that, and your brother a week later.”
“You didn’t even know them a week before marrying them?”
She shrugs. “When you know, you know.”
I silently turn her so I can finish brushing out her hair before braiding it. I work in comfortable silence, I think we are both going over everything that was just said. She told me so much about herself, maybe I owe her something in return?
“Are you done?” she asks when I don’t move for a minute.
“Oh, ah, yes, I’m finished now.” She turns to face me.
“Can I braid your hair? Or is that weird?”
“You want to braid mine?” I ask in surprise. Braiding a man’s hair is something only a wife or mother would do. But maybe it meant something different where she was from. I didn’t dare ask.
She nods. “Yeah, if you don’t mind?”
“Of course not, here.” I pass her the brush and give her my back. Her gentle fingers stroke through my hair and I try not to moan at the feeling.
“Did you come out here as soon as you left home? You made this oasis with your magic, didn’t you?”
“There was a small oasis here already, the waterfall and pond, a few palm trees and a bunch of rocks. But everything was much smaller. I just helped it grow. But I didn’t come here until about a year after I left home.” I knew she deserved to hear my story, and know why I was covered in scars.
“When I first left, I thought I could become a knight. I thought it was a noble job for a loneling. I figured I could keep my power hidden. But you have to understand that my magic is part of me. I can’t just shut it off, I can always feel it there, and denying it exists makes it act up, like it’s begging to be noticed.
I tried to use it in tiny doses, when nobody would notice, like when I was bathing or washing my hands.
One day I made the mistake of watering a plant that looked dried out in the castle hall.
Another knight saw me and before I knew it, I was stripped of my armor and thrown into a fighting ring in nothing but my boxers.
They had their senior guards fight me, four of them at the same time.
Two of them carried small knives, that’s how I got the scars on my chest and face.
When three of them pinned me to the ground, the third cut my finger off, as it was the one I used to water the plant, they thought it was the source of my power.
Then they threw me out on the street, with nothing but my boxers. ”