14 | Kiandah
Shadow Keep
“You can open your eyes.” Yaron’s whisper is delicate, fragile, and uncharacteristic.
It causes me to jolt and pull away from where my face was buried in his chest. I could have fallen asleep there, in the safety of his shadows, if I hadn’t been freezing. Though he wrapped me in his dry cloak, the wetness from the mud on my clothes sank into my bones and I couldn’t stop shivering as he carried me in a cradle hold all the way back to the keep, his upper body Alpha while loping along on the legs of his beast.
I peel back from his body, peel my eyes open and look around just as the heavy sound of a door shutting registers. I recognize that sound and know where we are even before the haze clears from my eyes.
We’re back in his private chambers. His legs are human again and I hover at a slightly higher than normal human height off of the ground. Shyness and shame roll over me as the scent of pig shit clashes violently with the fresh scents of his room. Spicy incense, rich leather, sandalwood, and something distinctly Yaron. It’s too much.
I stutter out a torn whisper, “Thank you. You can put me down.”
“Yes, I can,” he replies, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he walks us back to the bathroom, which is separated from the rest of his open-air chambers by a large arched door. It’s colored slate, etched in so many beautiful and terrible depictions of beasts on the hunt and beasts coupling with one another, ravaging and rutting. I’ve tried not to overinterpret the symbols every time I had to go to the bathroom, but it’s been hard. I don’t know if the overall message is of devotion or destruction.
He pushes the door open with his foot and carries me into the bathroom. The cavernous space feels teeny tiny with him in it as he closes the door behind us, then moves to the far wall where he sets me down on the wide stone edge of the bathtub.
He keeps his hand on my thigh, just above my knee, as he reaches past me to turn on the spout. I can feel the heat from the water and shiver for the thousandth time as longing to be fully submerged fills me up just as water fills up the basin. I don’t comment on the modern water pump technology. Most homes in the Shadowlands use water pumps imported from the North Island, among other illegal technological necessities. To see the Shadow Lord with his fancy water in his rough-hewn stone tub is a contradiction that has made me smirk in the past. Not now, though. Now, I’m grateful for the chance to wash myself completely free of that foul Rider’s touch. His hands on my body, the feeling of him tugging my tunic loose… I shudder.
“Let me check your wounds first.”
He grabs a very, very small stool from beneath the vanity and drags it over. The stool looks far too small for him and he teeters in it in a way that makes the corner of my mouth twitch. He sees it and narrows his eyes. “Something on your mind?”
Only the manner of my torture. I shake my head.
He gives me a lingering look before changing the subject. “I can smell blood on your hands. May I see them?”
I show him my palms without protest.
“Stay still, please.” Please.
“S-sorry,” I croak.
His eyes narrow further as he plucks my right wrist off of my lap and hunches over it. “Now, I’ll ask you again and do not lie to me twice, Kiandah. I do not tolerate liars. I have told you this before and do not intend to repeat myself again. Ever. So, tell me now what thoughts are causing you to look at me thus.”
His gaze is focused on my palms as he picks little rocks out of them with the tips of his very sharp claws. My gaze is focused on his shirt — it’s almost uniformly red. As if it’s been soaked in dye. “My thoughts are…at odds with each other.”
“In what manner?”
“I…” I swallow hard and when he glances up at my face, he must see my focus on his shirt. He looks down at his torn and bloodied clothing, releases my hand for a moment, then tears his shirt free of his chest with a hard yank. He tosses the bloodied rags against the wall by the bathtub, in a corner I can’t see, then returns to my hands without another word. I can feel him waiting for me, expectantly.
“I um…I was thinking how funny you look sitting on that tiny stool.” He jerks up, then looks down at his stool, his eyebrows high on his forehead. Then I say, voice much softer, “And then I was looking at your bloody clothes and wondering how you planned to punish me.”
He glances over me once more, an unknown expression on his face. He inspects me from the top of my shit-smeared head down to the bottom of my mud-crusted shoes. “Do I look like I intend to punish you?”
I shake my head. “But I feel like you should.”
“Why?”
I bite my bottom lip. It stings and I wince. I struggle to meet his gaze, but force myself to. “I shouldn’t have left the keep.”
“Clearly. But did I command you to stay?”
I shake my head.
“Then you did not disobey. It was my mistake to assume you would remain put. It was my mistake not to have guards on you at all times. I saw how little you were willing to move around my own chambers. It did not so much as occur to me that you would attempt to leave — not just my chambers, but the castle completely. What were you doing in the village, Kiandah?”
“I…um…I left to help my…family…”
“Family,” he exhales the word with me and looks a little annoyed. “Is there nothing you would not do for them? Jump headlong into fire?”
“It wasn’t just for them.” I flex my hands, trying to retract them, but his hand on my wrist pinches slightly and I’m easily bound. “It was for you, too.”
He balks. “Do not lie.”
“I’m not. It’s…I wanted to make you dinner.”
What is wrong with me? I feel heat flash in my face and linger, then roll down my neck when his beast pushes at the underside of his chest. I can see it in the patches of fur that crop up all over him and fade just as quickly again. He blinks at me with huge, round eyes and I can’t breathe. The steam from the bath has started to thicken, creeping between Yaron and me, acting as a buffer, a veil, making the world feel too small, too close, too intimate.
“You wanted to make me dinner?” he says, as if practicing the words in a language not native to him.
I nod.
He shakes his head, clearly flabbergasted. “Explain.”
I speak fast. “I…my family and I are still cooking for you and the Crimson Riders. But we haven’t been able to get the supplies we need because the farmers and butchers and other vendors in the Orias marketplace hate us. They give us only spoiled and rotten things.”
His brows furrow. His jaw sets. “Why did you not inform Radmilla? She would have taken care of it.”
“We did — she did…” I’m losing what’s left of my voice and have to cough into my fist. “A couple times. But it doesn’t matter how sternly she warns the vendors, they claim to deliver fresh produce to the castle. The staff claims they receive rotten stuff. No one takes responsibility. There’s nothing we can do but try to…” I cough again and just leave it at that. Rambling will only hurt my throat and there’s nothing left to say on the subject. Nothing but the one thing.
Looking into his slate-colored eyes, I say softly, “I wanted to plead with them directly so I could make dinner again. I like making dinner and I wanted to make it for you. But I can’t serve you that which we were given.”
His eyes lose focus momentarily and I wonder what he’s thinking…but then his attention snaps back to me and he says softly, “You… You are cold.” His head cocks at the slightest angle, making him look far, far too much like a boy.
“N-no, I’m not,” I reply, my teeth clacking together.
“I can see that you’re shivering. Your lies…”
“I’m not cold and I’m not lying, my Lord. I’m scared.” I’m not really that, either, but I don’t know exactly what I’m feeling in this moment. Like the rumblings of a distant heat far, far away, but still large enough to see on the horizon. It feels eclipsing.
His face flashes with anger. Fur sprouts across his chest again before thinning back to a dusting of black hair. I remember the weight of it rubbing against my skin as he fucked me from behind, like I’d ordered him to, nothing but animals. Nothing but equals. I feel that threatening heat on the horizon loom closer and then…he reaches out and snatches me by the hips, yanking me until my butt is all but hanging off of the edge of the stone bench. His thighs part around my legs so that my knees press against his groin and the very prominent erection there.
“My Lord again, Kiandah?” He stares at my lips for a moment too long, long enough for my inner Omega to daydream perilous things. “When we are alone, you don’t need to call me Lord. And you never have reason to fear me, Kiandah.”
“But you’re angry with me…”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do to me?”
“So many things.”
I suck in a sharp breath.
And then as quickly as the charged moment slammed into me, he releases me from its prison. He turns my palm over in his paw. “Your hands will recover well, so long as we are sure to clean them thoroughly.” He gently trails his fingertips up my wrist, over my arms, along my clavicle to the buttons along the front of my tunic. He slices through the first with a claw. My shoulders tense. He pauses and inhales deeply, then exhales through flared nostrils that transform, momentarily, into a snout. “Is it bad?”
I don’t have the faintest idea what he’s talking about and can’t make sense of his words at all through how hard my heart is pounding. We’re sitting so close. We’ve been…closer, but not like this. Not with our eyes wide open and all of our senses so finely tuned to each other. I’ve never been this close to anyone before. “W-what?”
“What Ugaros and the other villagers did to you.” His hand brushes over my forehead. Crusted blood flakes onto his fingers and I wince even though he didn’t hurt me. His touch was too soft for that.
“Oh. No. It’s not too bad. Just some bruises…”
His gaze switches between my eyes. It’s too much, the power of his focus wholly on me. I could drown. “Are you lying to me?”
“I hope not.”
The corner of his mouth twitches right before his claws slice quickly through the rest of the fabric. He fans my tunic open, exposing my torso to his gaze. My breasts aren’t enormous like my sister Zelie’s or even as large as Audet’s, but Lord Yaron looks at them as if they’re the first breasts he’s ever seen in his life and he does not find them lacking. My dark brown nipples are hard as stones. I struggle to stop myself from arching…
“He touched your breasts?” Yaron’s expression twists from something almost light to furious.
A single claw traces the bruised skin on the underside of my right breast. I shiver as my painfully hard nipples harden further. “I…didn’t realize he had.”
Yaron makes a brutish sound, half roar, half hiss. “Lift your hips.”
“What?”
“Either stand or lift your hips, Kiandah. I need to remove your pants.”
“I…” I don’t move. He’s seen me naked before but I was gone to the heat. I didn’t have time to be self-conscious and I haven’t had a proper bath in weeks. Not to mention what I’ve been through today.
“Now, Kiandah.” He looks up at me, jaw clenched, the muscles within it pulsing. “You truly have not one self-preserving bone in your body, do you?”
I shake my head, then nod, then shrug and shiver again.
“You try to defend a dead man. You defend villagers who attacked and assaulted you. You defend a family that lied to you and committed treason. You defend even Radmilla who should have known that rancid food entering my home is something egregious that should have been brought straight to me. You defend everyone but yourself. And you go even further, Kiandah the selfless. You command my beast without hesitation. He loves to serve you. But you deny your Lord now.” He comes close to me, closer and closer still. He brushes his stubbled jaw across my shoulder, his lips working their way in towards my neck. “I do not understand you or what cruel god created you and thrust you into my path.”
He bites my neck very softly, but it releases a flood of desire within me and makes me moan aloud. “Up, Kiandah.” He pats my hip twice. “You cannot bathe with your clothes on.” He reaches behind me and turns off the water. The bath is immense, big enough for six, and full to the brim.
“I can bathe myself, my Lord…” He doesn’t feel like Yaron right now. He feels too much, too unwieldy to handle.
“You can, but why would you when you have your Lord on his knees begging to do it for you?” His eyes…I can’t look into them for long. His voice is a rumbly whisper that hits me in the thighs. If I could purr like he does sometimes, I would. I’m glad that I cannot. “Let me serve you, Kiandah. Stand for me.”
It’s too much. I’m powerless. I rise shakily from my seat and Yaron doesn’t hesitate to cut the ties of my trousers and push them down over my hips. The filthy material pools around my feet. I don’t dare look down to see his reaction. I keep my gaze fixed on the door at the far end of the room. My hands…I dont know what to do with my hands… I set them lightly on his shoulders, which twitch.
“Do you feel any pain?” he asks after a moment. His fingertips feather over some bruising around my pubic bone and right hip and rib — likely, where I hit the stone fountain. I flinch when he touches a scratch on the top of my thigh, not because it hurts, but because his hands are so hot.
I shake my head and he responds with a low sound. “I do not believe you would tell me if you did. Your desire to protect others is infuriating.” Yaron’s tone drops, filling with heat. His hands wrap around my hips and I can feel each of his hot breaths against my lower belly. “You would protect the scourge of the earth, even when there is no saving them. You would sacrifice your own bones to make me a meal worth eating.”
“I…” His words sound wrong, so hostile, something to be rebuffed. “Is that so wrong?”
“You have power enough to protect yourself. I’ve seen it, Kiandah. You protected your family from me in the dungeons. You protected me from the undead in Paradise Hole. You could topple my throne and rule the Shadowlands if you so desired. You could make an ally of Mirage City or, better yet, overthrow the Fates who rule there. You could rule Gatamora.”
I feel his words course through me in a funny way. It’s not that I think he’s mad or wrong or delusional. It’s that…I know he’s wrong and a little mad and only somewhat delusional. He is Lord Yaron and he doesn’t lie. He is a rational, reasonable, beastly male. And these are the things he thinks of me so they must be right. But…they don’t matter. Not even a little. So, while warmth may cascade across each of my cuts and bruises knowing that he sees me this way, I also feel…sorry for him.
I lift my right hand from his hot, powerful shoulder and stroke his hair. My fingers come back stained in blood and I frown softly down at it. “Your hair…” I try to clear my throat, but it’s too scratchy. It’s a wonder he can understand me at all. “It’s greasy. When was the last time you washed it?”
His expression loses its cutting, murderous edge. His pupils blow wide to consume all the grey. “Are you avoiding your chambers? Is your refusal to share quarters with me what has kept you from it?” I tsk, clicking my tongue against the backs of my teeth.
“What are you doing?” He speaks through clenched teeth and I don’t miss the fact that some of those teeth have transformed into fangs.
“Is that it? Have you been avoiding me? Did I guess correctly?” I cough a little, inhaling steam and the scent of blood and sweat from his skin. Heavenly.
“Yes.”
“Do I disgust you that much?”
“You know that isn’t the reason.” His voice is hard, but he doesn’t elaborate. Left with no answer, a small sadness fills me at whatever the true reason might be. My fingers, meanwhile, continue to trace the line of his head, so perfectly shaped, to the back of his neck before following the hard angle of his jaw to his chin.
His pulse is thrumming madly, desperately, and I feel it, this power he’s speaking of. In his presence, it seems easier to reach. When I was on the road, I searched for it and found nothing. Now, I feel it like a ball of liquid magma nested in the pit of my stomach, moving and lurching. I could slip a ladle into it, and drag up a draught.
Curious and amazed, I lift my hand and with only the briefest thought of fire, I manifest pure flame. It appears as a sentient torch in the middle of my palm, no brighter than a candle, but blue at its heart. And it doesn’t burn me.
“Kiandah,” Yaron says, “you see your gift?”
I nod, and then I close my hand around it, dousing it for good. “To be powerful and to have power…” I shake my head. “You have it wrong, Lord Yaron. You can have one without the other. I may have power, but I don’t want to use it to cause pain. I don’t want to hurt anyone ever. I don’t want to rule. I just want to live. And for everyone to live. Is that so hard to believe? That I may have power and choose not to use it? That is a power in itself, I think.”
I draw away from him and see the most spellbound expression covering his face. He looks so much less like the Shadow Lord in this moment. A softness touches him, like the wisps of fog twisting through the air. I touch his cheek wishing, for one fleeting moment, something I have no right to wish.
But I don’t dare give voice to it, because it can never be. There is no fantasy universe in which the Lord of the Shadowlands could belong to me.
“I suppose that is a lie… I say I don’t want to rule. I do. It’s just that the only thing I want to rule is you.” I tilt my head to the side, letting him hear my truth, letting him weigh it, but not letting him respond to something we both know he doesn’t want and that could never be.
My small smile wobbles and the power I felt vanishes. I rub my filthy palms together, finding them colder than they ought to be given the circumstances. I think my adrenaline is crashing and I shiver, then shiver again. “I am sorry, Yaron, that I don’t have these ambitions,” I say in a scratchy voice. “Really, all I truly want in this world is to cook for you.” So much more is loaded into my final words that I quickly reach for more levity to break the moment. It’s too heavy to bear. “And right now, to bathe.” I offer him a small smile as I use his shoulder to steady myself, turn and lift one foot, intending to step into the massive pool.
But the moment my toes touch the hot water, my feet are jerked out from under me. I yelp and laugh as he scoops me up and steps into the bath himself. “You’re still wearing pants, Yaron,” I shout, looking up at his face with a smile, but Yaron doesn’t return it.
Instead, his expression is strange — somber and strange — as he lowers us both into the tub. Hot, nearly scalding water envelops me and feels so fucking good. I whisper a moan and Yaron releases me onto the stone bench ringing the inside of the tub. I duck underneath the heat, letting it wrap all the way around me, burying its pins and needles in every follicle.
I come up for air with a tired grin in time to see Lord Yaron plastered against the opposite side of the tub, arms outstretched, hands clutching the lip of the bath in a white-knuckle grip. “Yaron?” I croak, then hiss, my smile falling. “Shit. I must have rubbed it too hard,” I whisper. There’s blood running from the cut on my eyebrow into my eye.
Yaron’s on me in a second, a rag in hand, pressing it gently to the wound. He gathers me up and sits me on his lap where I can feel the unmistakable rod of his erection digging into my lower back through the shreds of his trousers. And as he administers to me from so, so close, his fingers gently holding me around the waist, his chest a wall of heat against my weary bones, the rag light on my face, he says the last thing I would have ever expected to hear from him here, now, ever.
Voice low, he says to me, “I hope you know, Kiandah, that when the Shadowlands hosts its next Red Moon Festival and all of the other Alphas and their packs gather to claim you for their own, they will leave disappointed.”
“I…you find me so disappointing, my Lord?”
“You know that is not what I mean at all.”
I blink up at him, confused, his face so close to mine, his lips blood-red and perfect, dripping with water from the bath. I want to lick it off, but I can’t. He is the Shadow Lord and we are not destined for each other. “I… You circumvent tradition?”
He nods.
“How?”
“I am the Shadow Lord. What I will, so it shall be.”
“So, I’ll be able to live on my own? Without a master? Is it because I am still a prisoner, my Lord?”
His brow furrows and his cheeks, already warm from the bath, flood with greater heat. “You misunderstand. The Alphas will leave disappointed because I intend to vie for you. You will be master to me.”