The Satyr’s Wood (Dangerous Monsters #4)

Prologue

Barbasa reclined against a tree as he rubbed a thumb across the carved reed pipes.

It had been long since he had fashioned an aulos but he had little to do with his time as of late and it proved him with some small pleasure.

Besides, he had nothing but time on his hands.

He no longer had a flock to guide and provide for.

There was just him and the woods where he’d chosen to make his home.

Tilting his head back, he breathed deeply, drawing the sweet air into his lungs.

Sunlight dappled through the trees as birds sang to each other from where they fluttered among the branches.

It was good.

Better than good, actually.

After centuries trapped in the labyrinth, he had forgotten the taste of fresh, clean air and water.

Of proper food prepared in a proper home that he’d found abandoned in the depths of the woods he claimed for his own.

Acorn bread had almost wiped out the memory of the taste of human flesh.

He wished for it to be gone more than anything.

Although his kind took pleasure in frightening humans, that was a feast that they’d never indulged in.

The labyrinth had turned him and his flock into monsters in truth.

Somehow, he’d managed to hold on and remember himself.

He never descended into the craven madness of his flock.

That knowledge had been a source of guilt before he even left the labyrinth but more so afterward with the murder of his kin staining his hands.

But he hadn’t been able to risk bringing them out into the world.

As much as he’d hoped that maybe he could save them, he’d realized that the taint had to die in the labyrinth with them.

By all rights he should have died as well but he’d been unable to carry it out no matter how his conscience whispered to him.

Placing the reeds to his lips, he pushed his breath through the instrument, the double reeds of each pipe picking up his song.

His fingers slid over the holes, the melody of one pipe counterbalanced by the drone of the other weaving in his mind threads of memories of ages past.

Time before the labyrinth which was faded and little more than a shadow in his mind, diluted from the horror that became his existence.

The last note echoing, he lowered the aulos and sighed, his eyes glancing restlessly among the beauty of his surroundings.

How was it that he was free and possessing such a territory and yet his music possessed such melancholy? Was he...

lonely? His skin shivered as he felt a dark emptiness close in around him, muting the splendor of nature.

The poison of the labyrinth that he always feared he contained still within him, rushed through his blood, heightened his senses, and made his cock swell and pulse within its sheath.

It was a strange madness that stirred his lust so unnaturally.

He did not need that.

He needed a companion to temper the monster that had grown within him.

Barbasa threw back his head and laughed.

What companion would dare to enter the wilderness and chance the awaiting dangers? Surely, they would be madder than he! The forest would devour them...

but then again, he could not guarantee that he would not.

Chuckling wildly, he tossed the aulos, his yellow eyes following it as it sang its last hollow note as it whipped through the air before landing with a splash in the pond.

Leaping to his hooves he began to pitch into primal dance, his hair streaming behind him.

Round and round he danced among the trees, his hooves tapping a lively rhythm.

His breath rushed in and out of him as his heart raced and for a moment it was as if he was chasing prey among the dark corridors of the labyrinth once more.

Leaping with a turn, he laughed again, banishing the dark, looming walls in his mind.

He was not in that place, he was free, and whatever he desired or needed he would chase and claim.

With a deep howl he spun and dashed through the woods.

Running.

Running.

His nostrils flared, a hunger crawling up from within his belly.

A forbidden pleasure ran up his spine as his cock extruded and released threads of cum that dripped from its tip.

It flexed, seeking to burrow deep and slake its need within his prey.

Running until exhaustion claimed him, Barbasa gripped his cock hard within his hand and stroked it viciously, his natural lubrication making his hand glide slick over his shaft so that each pass caused his hand to curl tight and tug at the head.

His hips kicked and pumped as he forced his cock to burrow repeatedly into his tight hold as it swelled further, growing as the veins bulged in the way of his kind as his pleasure grew.

That pleasure wound deeper as a hot thread coiled through him, contracting and stretching until it unraveled and his howl terminated on a roar and his hot seed pulsed in thick jets from his tip along the fronds of ferns and sunlit leaves of the bushes before him.

He stared at evidence of his lust, his seed wasted upon the ground, and felt emptier than ever.

As he would until the madness caught him again.