5 | Yaron
Heart Forest
The journey to the hunter’s hole was swift, but that does not save us. We still arrive beaten and abused. The storm wails ferociously as I force open the swollen, waterlogged door. The hunter’s hole is built into the side of a low hill, the spartan cabin set on the hunter’s line, a path now utterly indistinguishable from the swamplands surrounding it. It will be an undertaking to have it reestablished. It always is, and it needs to be maintained more often with how violently and frequently the rains come. The world is changing. Gatamora is getting darker. Something is coming.
I manage to find the latch and force our bodies across the threshold, the wind lashing our backs, water nipping at our heels, trying to drag us back. The majority of the structure is wood, but it’s largely reinforced by the earthen walls that form two of the four walls that make up the small space. I turn towards the rain whipping through the doorway and roar as the storm tries to force its way inside. I manage to place the bar across the door with the Omega in one arm, but I cannot batten the windows properly with her in my grip.
With the door closed, holding some of the rains at bay, I round on the cabin and quickly cross the short distance to the hearth. I find a pile of neatly folded blankets beside it and shake the first out, lay it before the hearth and then grab the second. I go to wrap it around the Omega, but my beast rears his head. The blanket smells of the hunters that came before. Three distinct scents, all male. I’ll lay this over her over my dead body…
Or hers.
Or hers. Fuck. I grunt and wrap the Omega up. I lay her down on the floor, hating the way her head thunks against the floorboards, even through the blankets. I quickly flip open the small metal box located beside the blankets, locate the firestarters and set flint to steel. I have a fire simmering — flickering — in the smooth stone hearth within a few moments. It takes me longer than it should. Even though the cabin is dry, the moisture in the air is enough to dampen the kindling, making it harder to catch.
Stacking a few of the smaller sticks in a pyramid shape above the flame, and inserting the smallest among them directly into the fire, I leave the small pile to burn and finish battening down the windows. Once finished and satisfied, I add a few of the larger logs to the hearth. The fire is not too smoky and seems to be brightening quickly. Quicker than it should. I turn and glance over my shoulder, wondering if it isn’t the Omega’s doing. She’s awfully quiet.
The hunter’s hole is a single-room cabin, a narrow bed against the earthen wall with dry wood chopped and stacked beneath it. Against the wooden wall across from it is the small kitchen, complete with a basin, but no running water, a gas stove, single pot, wooden spoon and nothing else. The fireplace sits against the other earthen wall, its chimney tunneling through the hillside. It’s a testament to how well it was constructed that the winds and rains don’t pour in from the mountain, allowing golden flames to flicker more peacefully now in the stone hearth. Before it lies the cowering killer, the Omega, wrapped in blankets that smell of a foreign male. I frown, not liking the direction of my thoughts, and frown harder when the Omega shivers again. Muscles tighten across my chest. My lungs strain.
In a voice I hardly recognize, I say, “I will go fetch water. Don’t move.” Don’t move? I feel like a fool, but my tongue is surprisingly thick in my mouth. I can’t find the right words to correct myself.
Out in the rains again, they come down so hard, I know that the killer and I won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Fine. I’ve dealt with worse. The kitchen is stocked with a supply lasting at least seven days and she is so slight as to hardly be visible. I round the cabin and find the troughs in the back. Three are set up side by side and all of them are near full with water already. There is an additional metal cistern also set up to collect rainwater. I remove the lid and allow rainwater to collect. After this storm, there will be plenty for us and the next hunter and the next and then some.
I grab two wooden pails of water, filling them to their brims before returning inside. “Omega…” I start, but I don’t know what order I would have given her next. I drop my pails, shut and latch the door behind me, task promptly forgotten as I inhale and then inhale again more deeply. I was not surprised before, but I am surprised now.
“You are not in pain.” That’s not what I meant. That’s not even close to what I meant to say.
She shakes her head, though, as if she knows what I’m truly asking. Because this trembling does not come from pain, though she can surely feel pain, too, after all that she’s been through. No, this trembling comes from something far more dreadful.
“You will remain like this,” I command her.
She nods, her lips pressing together into a thin line, or at least, as thin a line as is possible. She has such full, pretty lips. Fuck.
“You cannot be entering your heat now,” I say, willing it to be so.
To this, she does not respond except to writhe on the floor, her forehead pressed against it, her knees shoved under her body as she tries to curl into a ball of nothingness, but she can’t do that. Because I’d sense the explosion of her from any forgotten corner of Gatamora. The heat rushing out of her is powerful.
“Depriving you is no less punishment than you deserve,” I say, merely for the cruelty of it, even as my Berserker’s legs take hold of mine and the claws on my feet bore four holes in the wood. He presses a whimper between my bared teeth. “No,” I snap, the warning meant for him, but the killer glances up, looking at me for the first time.
And just like her killing spirit, her glare is lethal, too.
Fuck.
Her pupils are blown, her left eyelid still slightly swollen. So are her lips and left cheek. The light from the hearth seems to wick off of her skin, like it’s afraid of her. As am I. It’s like she’s made of gold, a fire’s light within her that puts this puny flame to shame. It’s stunning. She’s stunning. She looks so fucking young that I’m reminded, if she ascended so recently, she’s likely barely of age and off fucking limits.
I recoil, backpedaling, but nothing that should be a consideration is doing anything but making my beast salivate. Her swollen cheek. Her swollen lips that tremble. Her head, perfectly shaped and free of hair, that makes it impossible to look anywhere but at her face. Her beauty is understated and calls to me like a fucking siren song. She looks absolutely ravaged, devastatingly so. My beast wants nothing more than to add to that devastation and then bond her, so that she’ll be reborn.
Sinking my fangs into the side of that delicate, breakable throat… No.
My cock is swelling and my nakedness hits me acutely then. I reach down and have two choices — to grab my dick or try to cover it. One would be admitting defeat to her heat, because if I so much as brush my fingers over the swelling shaft, my knot already thickening at its base, I will have no choice but to mount her. The other would be to stand before her like a little boy covering his manhood and would fill me with embarrassment and shame.
“Omega, cover up. I will not bond you.” Bond her. I meant to say rut.
She has one of the blankets draped over her shoulders, but when she passes her dark brown eyes — which, in this light, are the color of melted tar and just as sticky — over my face and then lower to my body, she shivers. Her blanket slips further. Her shoulder comes into view, shining like the goddamn sun, and I come unhinged.
A wave of heat flushes my body. Venom drips into my mouth. I shake my head once, definitively, but my resolve feels like sand, gritty and incapable of standing up against such exposed, lethal flame. I bark, “Omega, I will not be tempted by you. I would not bond an underage female for all the secrets of Gatamora. I will toss you out into the rain first. Do. Not. Test. Me.”
Her lips press together so tightly it looks like it hurts. She makes the smallest, most tantalizing mewling sound before her elbows buckle and her body bows over itself. She clutches her stomach as she tries to lift her blanket and my Berserker does not like this, he loves it. The arousal I feel watching her ache, knowing that I am the only Alpha for miles that can soothe her hurt, take away her pain and replace it with limitless pleasure, has my erection pulsing to its own heartbeat. It stands stiff, out from my body like a goddamn third leg. It’s heavy. Its weight unbearable. I try to will it down, but anytime my thoughts move to it, my legs push me forward another half step.
“Calm yourself, Omega. Breathe deeply. Know that I will not touch you. You are underage and there is nothing on this island or in this world that would tempt me to touch an underage female.”
She balks and her lips curve up in a smile just wide enough I catch the flash of her teeth, pearly white. I cannot believe it. She’s smiling at me. I…did not think I would receive the honor and now that I’ve had it and it has faded, I wonder if I hallucinated it because it was striking, her smile. Not because it was sweet and shy as I suspected it would be from all I know of this Omega’s weak, flowery countenance, but because it cut like a knife.
“Yaron,” she says, so informally and out of turn, but she shows no remorse. Her hands are curved protectively around her head. She’s constantly in motion, unable to stop. “I am thirty-four years old. I haven’t been underage…” A knot of pain must strike her severely enough to rob her of whatever words she’d been poised to say next. She gasps and collapses forward onto her hands and it takes me a moment to realize what’s so odd about this position. She’s presenting…she’s presenting for me.
“You…aren’t…” I say, voice threadbare, a frightened whisper.
“I am. I am thirty-four years old.”
And I remember that it is not impossible. The Fallen Earth Omega I so recently met also ascended older than the others usually do. Looking at her face, any doubt I had that she is not the Fallen Fire Omega, the Fire Fate’s counter, is erased. That is, if what she is saying is true…
“What year were you born?”
“Under the evening light of our four hundredth blood moon.” My beast howls and my other foot drives forward though I mean to keep it rooted. It, too, has claws. So do both of my hands. My fangs are fully protracted and my face is half snout as my beast and I war for control.
In my mind, I canter backwards, wondering if I should not rather brave the rain, but it’s too late for that. With her words, I am undone. “Omega,” I say and my tone is different now.
She must hear it, too. Her eyes flash open. She looks at me and straightens her arms beneath her so that she’s on all fours, the blanket slipping…just waiting for her… “Beast.”
My stomach clenches. My thoughts dissolve. My clawed fist flies to capture my cock, the rough pads of my hand doing nothing for me at all. I want her. I want her. “I am Lord of the Shadowlands. You are a killer…”
“You are,” she whimpers, eyelids fluttering. My gaze rakes down her body. She is thin, but not overly so. She carries weight in her hips and thighs, which are pocked slightly and calling for me to take a bite out of them. Her breasts are heavy and weighted and peaked in nipples that look inky and black in this light. I want to suckle one. I want to bite one. I want to bond her there, and then everywhere else. But I can’t. “But I’m not.”
“Remove the blanket.” The blanket that smells of another male. The thought of another male here, now, in the presence of her heat and perfection, makes my vision dim, tinting red first, then black. Rip the throat out of the Alpha who would challenge you, then fuck her in his blood.
She flings it off without hesitation and rolls onto her back, then spreads her legs. She’s fully naked and completely bared for my gaze. There’s nothing touching her. Not one single thing. She has a dusting of short black curls between her legs and that’s all. The brown petals of her core peek out between the soft mounds of her labia and I want to part them with my claws carefully, so very carefully, and have her trust that I will not harm her. I have already harmed her. I glance at her face and I forget for only one instant that she’s a killer, and I pretend for only one instant that I could have the dream I’ve only ever hoped to dream…
This Omega is mine, and we are in love, and this is not our first heat we’ve been through together but one of many, and she will carry my kits one day and we will touch each other gently with fondness, for we are bound and we are best friends and we share everything with one another, our hearts most of all.
My lungs are robbed of breath and I can’t speak as the reality of this world comes crashing back on her next full-body shiver. I take a step. “You are…” So unabashed. So uninhibited. So unafraid. So fucking lovely.
I swallow hard, willing steel into my tone as the floorboards bend beneath my flexing claws. “This changes nothing between us. I will not seek to claim you at the Festival of the Red Moon, but give you up to whichever Alpha or pack wins you, and I will not lessen my punishment against you or your family because of this. I will only ease your need and my own because we are trapped here. I will only sate your heat at my own personal expense.”
Ha. My beast laughs at me. As if I do not want this. It will be easier to let her think that. And safer for me. She is a peasant. I am her Lord. I want no ideas of grandeur coming into her mind that I would break tradition hundreds of years old. Shadow Lords are mated to their lands. There is no beauty set to tempt them. They are above such mortal things like want and affection.
“When your heat ends, we will not speak of this again.”
Several emotions flash across her face, but I’m uncertain whether they are on account of my words or on account of her heat pangs. The scent that blooms from her core is intoxicating, rapidly ballooning to fill up the small cabin. The sound of the rain battering the outside of this little shack is nothing but white noise, lulling me further into the trance of her cutting scent and her soft beauty and her fiery gaze.
“Do you understand?” I say.
“Yes,” she says, voice twisted on a moan. Her knees tip further apart, spread so far that her inner thighs are quivering. She rolls her head on her neck for a moment, as if in ecstasy, before looking back up and meeting my gaze fiercely, as if she’s heard everything I’ve had to say and not only doesn’t care, but finds it boring. The look in her eyes is condescending and murderous and so fucking powerful — I stagger at its force and my hand on my cock squeezes hard enough that my balls jerk and precum spills from the tip, robbing me of thought.
“Are you finished?” she says flatly.
My head whips back, as if struck. I’m shocked. “Your impertinence knows no bounds, Omega. Though I should not be surprised to hear such a lack of propriety displayed by a criminal. I am your Lord and you will show me respect.” I speak through clenched teeth, my words hardly intelligible. My mouth is full of fangs.
The Omega’s hips buck and her scent…gods, her fucking scent…it could bring me to my knees. My legs are shaking now. She moans and it’s a whispery, needy little thing. “You are my Lord outside of this cabin, but in here, you’re just mine. Now, stop talking, Yaron, and fuck me.”
What the fuck? Heat unfurls in my gut while something larger than that shifts in my chest. I…am at a total loss. And with no thoughts in my mind other than a mild confusion mixed with a far greater lust, I take a terrifying step towards her.
She gasps as if I’ve slapped her clit even though several feet still separate us. She bites her bottom lip. Her eyes flare and she lifts her hips, tilting them up and using her hands to reach down her body and spread herself wider for me. My gods.
“Gods…” I choke.
She smiles and it’s a horrifying expression because I can feel my…control…slip… She’s giving me a vision of what it will be like when I’m deep inside of her, sunken into her heat up to the knot. I palm my knot now, the ring around the base of my erection covered in the same silky skin as that of my penis, only twice as thick, about an inch wide — for now. When it inflates, it’ll be three, four times thicker and two inches wide, fitting snugly into her opening and holding her in place for me while I…
I release a prayer to the old gods for strength not to bond her because right now that’s all I can think about, filling me with an even greater longing than knotting and fucking her sweet, breakable body and her perfect, dripping cunt.
I feel savage as I take a step towards her, only for her gaze to snap to mine, an awareness there that hadn’t been before as she battled her heat and her desire. Now, she seems in control and my beast hesitates. I hesitate. She shakes her head, no.
“No?” Gods no... Don’t let her tell me no now. Not at this precipice.
“No, my Lord,” she sneers, as if the title is not mine at all. “If you want to claim me, you’ll come to me on your knees. Crawl to me, Yaron.”
That heat in my groin rolls through me and claims my entire body. I can’t…believe…what she’s said to me. I can’t respond. “You…dare…” I choke, but the words are rotten in my mouth and I can only just barely spit them out.
And then Kiandah does the damnable. She laughs. Her face is black and blue and she laughs with her brown pussy lips spread until I can see the pink at their core. “Fine. I’ll just do it myself…” She leans back and starts to rub her clit, rolling that tight little nub between her fingers…
“Kiandah…” I bark, not having intended to use her name.
Her neck snaps up. She looks at me and the soft vulnerability that crosses her face and pulls her eyebrows together is the last piece she needed to ruin me. She has already studded my chest with arrows launched from her quiver but that vulnerability clamps around my heart like an iron maiden. Her lips work. Her bottom lip trembles and she winces, as if in pain.
“Crawl, Yaron,” she says, she begs, and I have no choice.
She’s issued an edict, a challenge, and while I cannot believe the insanity of what I’m about to do — me, Lord of the Shadowlands — I can see no other choice. There is no other choice.
I fall to the ground on my knees like a worshipper at the altar.