32 | Yaron
Shadow Keep
I repeat the same message to the scribe for the hundredth time since the attack eight days ago. My irritation must show, because the scribe responsible for sending messages to the other cities — in duplicate, because I do not trust anything anymore and cannot ensure their reliability — scribbles faster.
“Owenna, sister to the Shadow Lady, stabbed Sy, the Fate of Mind and Madness, but I know the Beast Fate, Omora, capable of healing her. Merlin, who ran Trash City, will not be so fortunate. My axe embedded deep in her chest, all but halving her.”
“Was the body recovered, my Lord?”
“What?” I all but snarl, irritation flaring. It’s been eight days since the battle, and six days since I’ve seen my Omega. They are keeping her from me because my rut is flaring and her heat is still dormant. I still have fucking heat stroke, according to Okayo, and in my attempt to honor her despite having already bonded her, it’s been suggested that I wait to bed her until after the Red Moon Festival — tomorrow. One. More. Day.
I might have ignored their wishes were I not also injured. Kiandah is also still recovering, even as she tends to her sister, Owenna, who only just woke up this morning. Weak and suffering from severe migraines, it appears that Sy did a number on her. She’s had Sipho very willing and content to keep her company, though. It is, apparently, because of her that he survived his imprisonment by the Fates at all.
Operating as a true black cloak and in the most clandestine fashion, she managed to keep him fed and tended his wounds without the Fates’ or Trash City’s detection. There were chances for her to escape, but she stayed and continued to pretend to work with Trash City and ally herself with the Fates once again because of him.
“My…uhm…Lord?” the squeaky male asks.
I glare at him and snarl, “You mean the undead Berserker or Merlin?”
“Horace, Finn and Okayo have preserved the undead Berserker for study. I was speaking of Merlin, my Lord?”
“Picked apart by crows, undoubtedly. Nothing but blood and intestines left. My axe was undoubtedly also stolen, but that is irrelevant. The threat of Trash City has been neutralized, though I still want it communicated that Trash City allies are enemies of the Shadowlands and any found to be aiding or abetting any of Merlin’s former partners should be imprisoned or killed. Killed is probably most effective.” I reach across the thick slab of my desk and stab my finger down on his paper, making him jump. “Write killed.”
He nods, scribbling fiercely.
“And burned.”
He scribbles some more, then says, “And so the Fates did manage to escape?”
I hate his tone and glare hard enough that I will him to explode into blue flame. I, unfortunately — or perhaps, fortunately — lack the self-control and desire to preserve life that my Lady has. Also, the skills to make that blue flame happen. Reluctantly, I consider that Kiandah may be better equipped to manage such an extraordinary gift.
I sigh quite abruptly, startling the male, though he seems to exist in a perpetual state of surprise around me, as I think to myself… My female is extraordinary.
“The uh…Fates, my Lord?”
“Yes, they managed to escape,” I grunt. “Three only. The fourth…the Fate of Death, Noon Dragnovic, did not survive. She died, but by her own will. We had ships comb the beaches and shallow waters of Zaoul, but no bodies were found. My Omega says that she used her own chains of captivity to weigh herself down.” Berserker Dragnovic will not be pleased that his sister took her own life. I feel a brief sorrow grip me that I could not save her, either. Though I’m not sure…would I have, if given the chance? With one touch, Noon had the ability to kill everything I hold dear to me.
“Zaoul is not a kind master.” The man mutters, sticking his tongue out of the side of his mouth in a way Kiandah does when she’s thinking very hard while simultaneously stirring or chopping or otherwise making whatever food concoction she’s dreaming up. I watch her in the kitchens sometimes, though I’m not supposed to. I like stalking her very much, seeing the way she is with people when she doesn’t know I’m there, watching her.
“No, he is not.”
“Was it ever determined how so many undead made it onto our shores, my Lord?”
I grit my teeth, feeling appropriately foolish. “The ports.”
“By ship, my Lord?”
“No.”
“Then how?”
“The answer was always right in front of my eyes, young scribe. They were undead.” Slouching into my seat, I lean forward onto my elbows and roughly rub my face. I’ve already removed my cloak and unbuttoned the buttons of my tunic as well as the ties to my pants. I am itchy and uncomfortable, hot periodically and overwhelmed by waves of desire that I am not to act on until tomorrow when I can take Kiandah beneath the red moon’s fiery light. I want to do this. I want to honor her. I have to tell myself this again and again so that, through sheer repetition, I may believe the lie. Because the truth is that I want to tear my castle down stone by stone until I find her and then fuck her mercilessly among the rubble.
“What…do you mean, my Lord?”
“They don’t need air to breathe so they fucking…” I growl, gripping the edges of my desk. “They walked from the North Island. They must have weighted themselves down by some means and walked on the sea floor where Zaoul’s foulest creatures cannot reach, and they simply walked ashore. Many others were buried in Paradise Hole, but the majority came from the sea.
“They overwhelmed the docks, destroying many in the process, killing two Riders who fought them there and ensured the safety of the citizens through Paradise Hole.” I sigh, furious that I had to leave them. No, not that I chose to leave them, but that it was required at all. Two Riders’ lives were lost in their battle to save their people. They honored themselves and their sacrifice was a worthy one.
I clear my throat. “We have rebuilt the majority of the docks now, though,” I say, nodding. “Our people have truly come together in ways we haven’t seen in years. I credit our Lady. She has rallied them with her strength and determination. I believe she is the Lady that the Shadowlands need — have needed for some time — she is the fire in the darkness that will lead our people to safety, to hope, when all other lights are out.”
“You’re making me blush, my Lord,” comes a voice I have no right to hear — until tomorrow. I look up, my attention homing in on her, the scribe immediately forgotten as my gaze snags on the vision of perfection standing in the doorway to my throne room.
Her hair is freshly razed down to the scalp, and I fucking love the way it accentuates the stunning features of her face. I do not understand how she could think herself ugly, though I know her youngest “pretty” sister many times made her feel that way. I have vowed to help her see herself as I see her — as anyone would see her — for the rest of my days.
But not today.
Today, I clamp my lips shut. I ignore the pulse of cum that spurts — not leaks, not drips, not dribbles, but fucking spurts — from the tip of my erection. My penis is on fire and my knot is pulsing at the mere sight of her. I lift my nose to the air, hoping to catch her scent, but she’s too far. When that smell remains elusive, I make the dangerous and altogether unwise decision to transform my nose and mouth into a snout so I can smell her better. As I do, I can only hope that my beast remains caged and does not lose his ever-loving mind, as he’s done already many times since I first met Kiandah.
The scent of her carries and it’s a lovely thing. Not fire or flame but almost like rain. It reminds me of the first time I ever rutted her in the woods. This time will be different, though. I stopped taking the herb eight days ago and I will not give her the elixir tomorrow unless she commands me to. I want to breed her too badly to stomach anything less. It’s dangerous, I know, but she has something I want. A big family that’s also hers. I want to add to what she already has, building on it, protecting it with everything that I am.
I inhale a little more deeply and frown and grip my desk even harder, with all my might. Kiandah giggles and drifts further into the room.
“Uhmm, should I depart? Come back later, my Lord?” the scribe asks.
Kiandah shakes her head, her skirts swishing over the floor — cream, with white embroidery…fuck, she looks lovely, the colors bring out the vibrancy of her brown skin. “No, no don’t worry. I’ll go. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
I keep my eyes shut tight, my grip slipping on the table, on control too. “Why are you here?” I say between clenched teeth.
She’s on the other side of the table, her fingers on the corner. I can feel her through the massive slab of wood. “I missed you.”
“Scribe, out!” I roar.
The male all but sprints out of the room. Meanwhile, Kiandah makes the unfortunate misstep of backing away, too. “Not you, my Lady,” I hiss, the smell of her even stronger now, and I’m more certain she is nearing heat, that I could trigger one with my pheromones alone. Now that she’s been bonded, she’d survive it…or is it too risky? I don’t know and hate that I do not know.
What I do know, however, is that Kiandah should have come to me days ago if she was in need. I frown at the thought.
“Yaron?”
My hallucinations fade, leaving me restless and needy. My cock is misbehaving, as is the beast within me. I keep both hands visible, because if I touch my cock, even to reposition it within my trousers, it’ll all be over. I try to remember honor and decorum or the fact that her entire family is busy preparing tomorrow’s feast, including Zelie, after having been safely returned to the castle by passing steel workers, as well as the new staff of ten they have hired. The menu will be based on old Orias cooking methods passed down from their ancestors so as to honor her, and by honoring her, honor me.
“Yes, Omega? What do you need?”
Her breathing changes, becoming more shallow. She licks her lips and I inhale deeply, frustration tickling my nostrils as I breathe her in.
“I was asking about the stock?”
What? My mind skips, imagining her in stocks. Ah. Perhaps, this is what she means. “You’d like the stocks?” Chain her head and her hands so that her ass is presented for me at all times. Yes, I could see that as an acceptable alterna…
“Yes, the stocks for the kitchens?” She smiles, licking her lips again. Her chest is rising and falling in small waves.
I shake my head. What is she on about? Stocks for the kitchens? There are no stocks in the kitchens. I frown. “Speak plainly, my Lady.”
She bites her bottom lip. “My family is low on flour for the festival tomorrow. We need a few other last-minute supplies as well. The spice selection from the Night Market was amazing. I found a rare northern spice that tastes incredible in the cake I’ve prepared. I was hoping to get some more. Cyprus can take me.”
“You’re joking.”
“No,” she pouts.
Even though Cyprus has proved himself capable in battle, he is not capable of standing up to his sister and neither am I. We make a poor protection detail, but I won’t allow any other. And even though the docks have been fortified, reinforced by hideous, yet necessary walls and gates to prevent any off-shore entry except through a single well-guarded point, a zombie horde just passed through. If she thinks I’m letting her leave to go fucking shopping a day before our bonding ceremony, she’s lost her goddamn mind.
“Have you lost your senses?”
“No,” she says again, slightly more breathlessly this time. I can’t believe this. This is actually unbelievable. She truly came here for this?
“You truly came here for this?” I have to ask.
She smiles at me, taunting me, and produces a long scroll from between folds in her dress. She slips it onto the edge of my desk. Her scent hits me like a wave when she leans forward and I’m momentarily lost in the mire. Delusions and hallucinations involving chains and stocks, dripping cunts and my own body arching and pumping and stiffening and knotting cloud my mind.
I hear her lovely voice through the haze of stupid things she says. “I missed you, wanted to see you, and needed to deliver the list anyways.”
Present for me. The words are on the tip of my tongue. I drop my ear to my shoulder and roll out my neck. “You came to torture me.”
“Only a little, my Lord.”
“You have succumbed to madness then, if you truly think I will let my bonded, yet unclaimed, Omega wander recently ransacked streets where a few stray undead still roam, while also approaching her heat? I can only deduce that you are not aware of how close to your heat you are, that you are trying to get an unsuspecting Alpha killed, or that you have been sating yourself in some other way in my absence.”
Her eyes widen. She bites her bottom lip. Oh no. Oh no no no.
I rise up to stand slowly. Very slowly. I pin her down with my gaze.
“How have you been sating your urges these long, long days while we have both been suffering through the recovery of our injuries?”
“I…” She clears her throat and looks down. “I don’t think that’s an appropriate question to ask a Lady, my Lord.” Her downcast gaze flicks up to me.
“You have not come to me with a request for relief.”
“Of course not.” I growl as she speaks. “I was told we had to wait for the Red Moon Festival. I…they showed me the dress I’ll be wearing for you…the robe you had Zanele commission…” Her breath catches. Her tone becomes breathy and lustful. “That you would be…dressing me in other ways during the festival. And that the paint you bought at the Night Market is edible…”
“Do not speak of it. Tell me now. Have you gone to another Alpha with a request for assistance, then?” The knot at the nape of my neck tightens. I close my eyes and shiver with restraint.
“Don’t make me angry, Yaron. You won’t like your punishment.”
“My punishment?” I snarl. I cannot stop myself from rounding the desk even though it is my last barrier. “You come in here with the express intention of taunting me, baiting me, knowing the state that I’m in, and you expect to be able to punish me? Oh no. It is time, my little Lady, for your punishment.” My gaze devours her chest. Through her dress, I can see her tight brown nipples perking the fabric. I can’t help myself. I reach forward and cup her right breast simply because I’m a crude, naughty boy and want to cop a feel.
Her neck muscles work as she swallows. Her pupils are blown, but she still tries to maintain the upper hand. “You’re right, my Lord.” She gasps, wilting towards me like a flower. She’s anything but. But everything is topsy turvy between us, between her heat and my rut. “Punish me,” she breathes.
My back arches and I grab her by the neck, my palm molding to her throat just below the thin scar only visible to my beast, still etched there in memories of a moment I thought I would want to forget. I thought I would hate the sight of it, that it would bring me shame, but it does not. Her scars only further prove that she is a beautiful, violent, extraordinary thing.
I toss her face-down onto my desk, which stands so high her toes barely reach the ground. I fight the urge to throw her dress over her head, and instead, slap my palm against her ass. She bucks and moans and I almost perish on the spot. My burning wounds from the venom of the undead Berserker feel like they’re all opening back up again and bleeding for her.
“Now tell me, did you touch yourself to relieve your desire for me?” I say, arching over her body.
She says nothing, so I spank her again, hand falling even harder than it did the first time. “Yes!” she finally screams.
“When?”
No answer results in another three slaps. The scent of her…she’s releasing slick moisture that has as powerful a smell as any of her spices. A rich bergamot, a powerful cayenne, rosemary, thyme.
“Kiandah…” I growl. The globes of her ass are staring up at me, so inviting. Her soft waist, thick enough for me to fit two hands around or one massive paw. To hold her down while I fuck her into the floorboards. “Answer me.” I slap her again, a sharp pain radiating through my palm, almost as if I can feel each strike someplace else on my body through our bond.
She’s clutching the papers beneath her cheek, her eyelashes fluttering. I gently curl my claws over the back of her head, stroking them down over her skull. “I like your hair,” I whisper.
She makes a soft sound, a subtle moan. “Every day, my Lord.”
“Hm?”
“I stroke myself every day to thoughts of you.”
I grab the bottom half of her face and force her to look up at me from her position, immobilized across my desk. “You touched yourself?”
Her eyes are wide and dilated, those thick lashes blinking at me seductively. She nods.
I squeeze her face harder. “Did you forget?”
Her lips part in question.
“You may own me, body and soul, but I own you, too. That pussy is mine and you have no fucking right to touch it unless within my presence. Understood?”
But Kiandah. Oh dear, sweet fucking Kiandah. She is constantly surprising me, because she says, voice barely above a whisper, “No, Yaron. I think I’m going to need a harder lesson.”
Fuck it. Fuck everything. Fuck the red moon.
I reach down to throw her skirts up when the most horrible sound imaginable rings in my ears. “Ancestors help me! What the fuck are the two of you doing?” Cyprus’s disorderly and disobedient shout should get him cast into the dungeons, but that would displease my Omega, and I can’t suffer through another long wait.
“Go away, Cyprus,” Kiandah shouts.
“You tricked me,” he shouts from the doorway to the throne room. I look up and see him standing there holding a messy bundle of scrolls in one hand, covering his eyes with his other. If I weren’t so sexually frustrated and needy, I’d have found his stance and his words comical. I’d also have been more…touched? Impressed? — that he was willing to say them in front of me. Almost like we’re already family.
“You sent me off on this wild goose chase to find these stupid scrolls all so you could do exactly what you told me you wouldn’t do and track down Lord Yaron even though Okayo said…”
But Kiandah has stopped listening and jerks upright, practically vaulting off of the top of the table. She shoves me away from her.
“But…” I start, sounding like a whiny child.
Waving me away, she beelines it to her brother. She immediately rips the scrolls from his hands. “You actually found them?” Her voice is so high-pitched, it’s nearing a decibel only beasts can understand. It’s a tone I’ve never heard from her before and my curiosity is swiftly and successfully piqued.
“You didn’t even expect me to find them?” He makes a choking sound that again, might have caused me to laugh, if I weren’t simultaneously annoyed and intrigued. I take a step forward that causes Kiandah to spin around. She quickly slips the scrolls behind her back, as if expecting me to think they’ve suddenly disappeared — or that her body will present an actual barrier against my getting to them.
“Let me see those scrolls, my love,” I coo.
Her pupils dilate slightly, then she shakes her head. “What scrolls, my Lord?” She gives me a little curtsey that makes me want to put her in those stocks we were talking about and finish tanning her hide.
“Kiandah,” I say in warning.
“It’s nothing. Some old doodles. Don’t concern yourself with them, Yaron.” And I’ve abruptly become Yaron again. Hmm… “I’ll put them someplace safe and return right away so we can finish what we started.” Panicked, she whirls around on the ball of her foot and pushes Cyprus towards the door. Before leaving, she turns to me and says, “Stay right here. I promise, I’ll be right back.” She departs in a rush, slamming the door shut, but she made a mistake. She may have told me to stay, but she didn’t command me to.
I wait a moment before leaving after her. Whatever papers litter my desk can wait. I follow her, at a distance of course, down the hallway. I notice Alphas out and about coming to a stop or staring in her direction as they pass. I growl or snap my jaws in their direction as a warning, though I already know none would be so stupid as to attempt to address their Lady while she’s weeping a slick that I caused.
My clothes are in disarray and my cloak hangs askew off of my shoulders. I realize as I round the corner and the stairs leading up to our private chambers come into view that my staff is staring at me just as much as they are staring at her, regardless if they are Alpha or Beta.
Some of them giggle as I pass and it occurs to me that they seem…happy. We were just set upon by zombies and yet, they’re smiling like they’re pleased. Perhaps, because my Omega and I saved them. My Omega, mostly. I am not sure, but I make a note to ask Kiandah if she has any theories later — after I’ve seen those scrolls.
I open the door to my chambers and see Kiandah attempting to stuff them behind the books in a bookcase in the back of the room while Cyprus watches her.
She squeaks when she looks up and sees me. “What are you doing here? I told you to wait.”
The insolence. The punishment she’s owed. The beginnings of a purr strike up deep within my chest. I force myself to calm and remain calm when I tell her, “My cloak is wrinkled. It needs replacing.”
“Along with the rest of your clothes, too, my Lord?” Cyprus grunts.
I finally do break and laugh then. “You truly are gluttonous for punishment, brother.”
He seems to stall over the term of affection, but he gives me a dry look and smiles as he finally says, “Lucky for me the dungeons are all full.”
I snort and turn to my cloak rack, remove the one I’m wearing, hang it back up and then begin listlessly pawing through the others. He’s right, of course. The dungeons are overcrowded with individuals Owenna identified as having worked with Trash City and the Fates to either kill, embalm or transport the dead Alpha bodies.
Those responsible for the deaths directly number only six and exist in the dungeons’ lowest rung where the rest of the world no longer exists for them. The rest — another thirty civilians — occupy the next two levels, including the daylight cell where the Ubutu family once hung. Where Kiandah first attacked — not to kill, never that — but to save her family from me. I can still remember the suddenness of the feeling of her fire washing over me.
Owenna identified more than that, forty-eight to be exact — the female was organized and, even before donning a black cloak that none will ever see, she kept lists, amassing her power through information that she carefully documented.
However, twelve of those identified changed sides and were spotted fighting the undead at the keep. They were punished — sent to work rebuilding the docks — but spared from the dungeons as a recompense for their wrongs and an acknowledgement of their renewed loyalty.
I turn back to my closet while Cyprus turns back to his sister. He drops his tone to a whisper. “Are those the…”
“Don’t!” She slaps a hand over his mouth.
“You can’t be serious,” he whispers again, pulling away. “You really fancy him that much?”
“Fancy him? What are we, five years old? And shhh! Keep your voice down.”
“What are you talking about? He can’t hear us.”
“If you keep talking about my drawings, I will light your hair on fire.”
“If you try, I’ll slap you upside the head.”
“You do, and you will lose yours.” I don’t look up from my wardrobe, where I’m putting on the pretense of sorting through identical cloaks.
“Ancestors, he can hear us.” Cyprus continues to whisper.
I can’t help the twitch of my lips. I know her brother would never hurt her and that he’s joking, but I don’t much like the threat. I turn to face them and he turns to face me, his shoulders slightly sagged in his defeat. It’s my triumph and I can feel my own shoulders roll back, but that’s not the only reason. I abandon my fake cloak project and prowl forward. Couches and divans litter the space like unwanted clutter. I’ve never liked them and the only reason I don’t get rid of them all now is because I can imagine fucking Kiandah on each of them.
Kiandah hasn’t smiled. She doesn’t laugh. There is no levity in her movements, only panic. She’s got her hands in the bookcase and is feverishly trying to smash books over the scrolls to cover them.
“I can hear you just fine. Your words. Your breath. The shifting of your feet on the floor. Your pulse, how it races.”
I inhale deeply and the skin across my many wounds stretches, even though I’m on my way to being fully healed — as fully healed as scratches and bites delivered by the undead ever will be. Scars still decorate my sides from my first confrontation with them on the North Island. And I still bear scars on my back from the whip. But I have no feelings about my scars, those from the whip especially. I do not worry if they are revolting or beautiful. They are as they are. And Kiandah holds them in reverence.
I pull my arms behind my back and clasp my hands together, letting my unbuttoned shirt fan open across my chest. The blood is surging through my body. I feel like a beast on the hunt. “What did you draw, Kiandah?”
Kiandah curses. Her brother starts. He tries to whisper to her again, a fact I find amusing. “Just show him. What’s the big deal? You drew them long before you ever started to…fancy him,” her brother spits, looking even more defeated at the prospect of his sister fancying anyone, let alone prepared to marry…
I chuckle darkly. “Kiandah, I will not be upset. Show me. What evil things did you draw and write about me? What hateful images did you use?”
She hesitates, then looks at me and I can see the very faint traces of a blush in her dark brown cheeks. She shakes her head no.
I feel sorry that she is so worried, but there is nothing she could have in there that would deter me from loving her with every ounce of my beastly heart. Whatever she drew and once thought of me, I will change her mind if I have not already.
“Kiandah, my love…” She melts a little more. “Why don’t you just make this easier on everyone and hand them over? I’d hate to have to wait until you were asleep. I’m sure your lovely drawings would be better revealed in the daylight.”
She pulls them from the bookcase slowly and clutches them to her chest. When I snatch at them, she twists away, like she might use her body to keep them from me. “A human shield is not an effective shield. Arrows, like bullets, pass through easily.”
“You going to shoot me, Yaron?” she bites. There is defeat in her tone. Fire there, too. I am a reach away from grabbing and punishing her properly, as is her due.
“I would rather shoot myself, Kiandah. But I will see those sketches.”
She groans, her head falling back on her neck. She drops her scroll and lifts her head up, shoulders back. She slaps Cyprus in the chest with her artwork and snaps, “Cyprus, could you not have been a little more careful?”
He guffaws, truly sounding like a younger brother, and throws out his arms. “What is the big deal, Kia? They’re just drawings. You did most of them a million years ago, anyway.”
“Hand them over, Kiandah.” I lift my hand towards her. “Do not fear. I won’t be angry. No matter the contents.”
Her lower lip juts like she’ll say something, but eventually she sighs and slaps the scroll into my palm. I take the crumpled papers, my heart beating with surprising urgency in my chest as I retreat to the closest ceiling-to-floor window, through which the entirety of Orias is visible. I unfurl the scroll and stare down at the first drawing.
I frown. The drawing is of a man. Not me, but an older male. He’s mid-draught of a pint of ale and the depiction is so realistic, I can feel the condensation of the cool beverage on the side of the flagon and I can smell the sweat wafting from his skin. I can read his exhaustion in the lifelines running across his palms. I set the page aside on the wide window ledge and paw through the next pages, finding various depictions of townspeople mid-activity in various sizes and shapes but all impeccably drawn.
“These are impressive, Kiandah. You have incredible talent…” My voice trails off.
“What are you looking at him like that for?” her brother grumbles, but Kiandah says nothing to me or to him. She’s been waiting for me to arrive at this page.
I flip to the next and the next…and the next and the next. I move them aside, setting them down one by one, but the sheets are stacking up. Some slip onto the floor and I let them scatter. They’re all the same. No, they’re all different, but the subject matter isn’t. They’re all me. Over years. Years and years of drawings of me. Some are scenes that are plausible. Me, speaking to the shadow people. Me, in the village. Me, once as she saw me in the halls of the castle.
But many are clearly visions found only in her thoughts. Me, shirtless in the bath. Me, spinning her close to my chest on an empty dance floor. Me, staring down at her face, the grey at my temples accentuated in lighter shades of charcoal so that it matches the color of my eyes. Me, me, me, me, me, me me mememememememe.
And each image, no matter how small or badly smeared, is spattered in love. Like blood from a corpse after a swift beheading. It stains the pages. It’s inescapable.
I arrive at the final image and stare. I stare and stare and stare at it, then I spin, whirling away from Kiandah and her brother. I slam my fists down on the window ledge, the image trapped between shaking fists. I hold onto it, like a lifeline, and don’t move. I don’t dare. I need my concentration now more than ever, because the feeling is setting over me with the same urgency it did at the ports.
“Is he losing his mind?” Cyprus asks. “Is he angry? Maybe, we should just go.” He grabs her arm. I don’t see it, I can feel it, like I can feel the pressure of her hand on the pages as she drew this image of what was to come. Her body presented before a beast — not my beast, to be sure, because she had not seen him before and could not envision him properly… But that doesn’t matter. She thought it was him. It rips through me, the pressure, and when it takes my hands, I know that I’ve already lost.
Over my shoulder I shout, “Cyprus, get out of here immediately. Run!”
Cyprus’s eyes widen, but he doesn’t quip. Instead he takes a step and gestures towards his sister. “Kiandah, come on!”
“Don’t…” I roar as pain fires through my bones. Fighting this…fighting this is not done. I tried once before, and was only able to use the blood leaking from Kiandah’s injured body to stop myself from falling further, the need she had for me to save her. Now, here in our chambers, the palest light filtering in through the windows…the circumstances are perfect. Nothing will stop me. Especially not Cyprus. “You touch her and I will kill you. I won’t want to, but I won’t have a choice. You need to be gone, Cyprus. Gone in the next ten seconds. Leave. Kiandah…”
I turn to see that she’s moved to stand in the middle of all my stupid fucking furniture with pupils that are fully fucking blown. Her lips are parted. She’s looking at me like she’s only half conscious. Like the other half of her is unconscious and already sinking into the place where I’m about to be. Oh fuck. Oh yes. Oh gods. Help me.
“Kiandah, do not run. Whatever happens, do not run.” I swivel my neck, fighting back the surges of transformation as they come on. “Make it easier…present for him…for me…whatever he wants…I don’t want to hurt you, Kiandah… Don’t let me hurt you…”
“You won’t, Yaron. You’ve seen already what I want and that I’m not afraid of you. In any form…”
I roar and surge away from the window just as the door to my chambers slams shut, locking Cyprus and the world out and Kiandah and me in. I turn and the world appears so much smaller beneath me. A hazy warmth prickles my skin and I know that whatever happens next, I will only be partially present for it. I give in…
I fall fully into rut.
And I am stunned when I gaze upon Kiandah, standing there patiently waiting… because I register her eyes and I realize, her heat is upon her.
And all I can think is…
Thank. Fuck.