Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Rafe
We are loading the last of the packs outside the farrier’s yard, where we stowed our spare supplies, when I see him.
More than a year. Several hundred miles. Through a portal and into another world.
Maren.
It takes me a moment to place him, and that bothers me. He is moving through the morning market with his head down, buying nothing. Just moving. I know that walk. I know what it means when a man moves like that.
I finish tightening the strap on my pack and say nothing.
He served Elijah directly—which means he’s Queen Elisa’s man too.
The kind of man who got things done that his lord preferred not to be associated with.
Scandals covered up. I knew him by reputation before he even arrived.
A thug through and through, one who created his own share of trouble.
There had been talk. A kitchen maid. One of the younger ladies in Elisa’s household.
Nothing had ever come of either, because nothing ever came of anything where Elijah and his men were concerned.
What the fuck is he doing here?
He turns, and his eyes find mine.
He holds them a beat too long. Deliberate. A message, maybe, or just the arrogance of a man who thinks he’s untouchable.
I look away first. Like I haven’t placed him. Keep my face easy.
“Lark,” I say quietly.
“Already on him.” A pause. “That’s one of Elijah’s dogs.”
“Aye.”
“Hydornia is a long fucking way from here.”
“Aye.”
I can feel him working through it, same as me. “She’s not going to like this.”
“She’s not going to know. Not yet.” I shoulder my pack. “We continue to the shepherd’s lodge, same as planned.”
“And if he’s not alone?”
“We deal with it.”
Behind me I can hear Violet’s voice, bright and carried on the morning air, saying her farewells to Master Pugstone on the front porch of his home. She sounds like she does when she’s close to something she wants—a particular lit-up quality that I have tried and failed not to notice.
I turn and lift my hand in acknowledgment, fighting to keep my expression neutral.
We quarreled this morning. My palm is still itching to make contact with her ass.
But the cold dread that sweeps through me at the thought of that bastard being in the same kingdom, never mind the same town, sets my hands shaking and my body on high alert.
The chance of Elijah being here seems remote to the extreme, but still…
Her smile knocks me for six the way it always does, despite how she bestows it upon Lark with equal measure.
I do not look back at the market.
But I listen. I count. And I do not stop counting until we are through the village and the road opens up ahead of us into the mountain pass.
Violet
We set out from Acton Trussell. Ahead of us is a several-week journey on foot, at the end of which I hope to finally glimpse a griffin. Our backpacks are full of rations, a tent, and other essential supplies, enough to last us for weeks if we can supplement the food with game along the way.
Every step takes me closer to realizing a dream, and every moment builds anticipation in my heart.
The ascent is gentle at first, but soon grows steep. A twinge catches me unexpectedly, and my hand lowers to my abdomen.
Rafe, who walks ahead and, ever attentive, pauses to glance back at me. His deep forest-green eyes rest on my hand, noting how it covers my lower belly for too long.
“It’s nothing,” I lie. “Too much time in the saddle. I’m a little rusty on my feet.”
“It’s starting already,” Lark says from behind me.
“What?” I laugh; it sounds nervous even to my own ears.
He cannot possibly know what is or is not starting, and further, has never made mention of it before.
I refuse to go into heat now, when I am so damn close.
Waving a dismissive hand, I shift my backpack on my shoulder. “Something I ate for breakfast.”
We carry on, but I’m aware of their attentiveness, how Rafe turns to check on me more frequently than he usually would, how Lark is always close, helping with any obstacle in the path.
Every time he takes my hand under the pretense of helping me, my awareness shifts and heightens.
The little tingle that lingers where he brushed his thumb over the back of my hand becomes a source of undue fixation.
I find myself finding reasons to touch them in return, pretending to need a steadying hand.
We walk throughout the day, and as dusk falls, Rafe finds a good place to camp beside a stream.
They are both quiet and industrious. Rafe prepares the camp, setting up the tent. Lark elects to see if he can snag some game.
I unpack my bedroll and go to wash up in the stream.
Stripping down, I wade a small distance into the icy water.
This quest is coming to a head. Soon, I will see a griffin, and after that, I shall have no more excuses.
I must return to Hydornia, probably seeking a place with my sister, Rosalind, where I will confess that I, too, am an omega and ask for her help finding a mate.
Maybe when I am mated to an alpha and my belly begins to swell with a child, I can put aside these restless adventuring days and embrace an ordinary life.
Ordinary life?
As I stare at the flowing stream, my toes going numb from the cold, I wonder if this heat, so imminent, will be the one that ends me. If I will die here on this desolate mountainside, still holding onto a dream of seeing a griffin.
Something is coming…
My stomach cramps. It’s so severe I have to bite my lip to keep my whimper inside, and it’s accompanied by a sharp, visceral image of me writhing between two blurred shapes. Men… their hands are on me, lips against my throat, fingers inside me, pumping, hot cocks sliding against my skin… pleasure.
My body jerks, and a deeper spasm engulfs my core.
I drop to my knees in the stream with a splash, a climax detonating in my womb. The images keep coming one after another, hot male flesh filling me, pumping into me, and me begging for more…
“Violet? What are you doing, lass?”
Rafe’s stern voice snaps me out of the daze, and I stumble to my feet.
“Nothing! I, ah, slipped. I’m fine now!” Gods, he can’t see me like this! “Please don’t come any closer! I am undressed!”
“Alright,” he says gruffly. “Don’t wander. It’s getting dark.”
“I won’t.”
His footsteps move away, and I sink to my knees again, this time slowly, and splash cold water over my face.
My hands are shaking. The strange episode, or whatever it was, has passed, thank goodness, and was assuredly not one of my false heats.
They are mindless experiences that I sink into swiftly and without warning.
A fever where one thrashes and moans, and someone presses a cool cloth to your forehead, from which I eventually awake wrung out and exhausted.
A sweet, delectable shiver runs down my spine. A fresh false memory assaults me, of hungry lips moving over mine, tongues tangling, messy kisses trailing down my throat… another mouth on me intimately.
I whimper. A prickling awareness sets the hairs rising across the surface of my skin. Goosebumps bloom.
“Got a nice rabbit,” Lark calls as he stomps noisily into the camp.
I have a terrible, terrifying notion that what I just saw was not a false memory, and that it might have happened.
Only if it did, that would mean…
I glance toward the camp.
No. It can’t… They can’t have…
Suddenly, I can’t breathe, can’t get enough air. Splashing more cold water over my face and throat helps to rouse me from the mounting hysteria.
Only the images are still coming. More and more of them. Endless scenarios playing out.
“Good girl,” Rafe says. I’m jostled. I fall against Lark’s chest. He is inside me, filling me. Rafe is kneeling behind me, his cock wedged against the place where Lark penetrates me. Lark slides out. Rafe squeezes their cocks together, and this time they both push…
I am in a soft, makeshift nest in a tavern…
I am in an old shack in the woods…
The forest floor…
A hayloft…
In the shade of a great oak tree on the edge of a meadow with nothing but a blanket beneath me…
The sun is high in the sky…
I am under moonlight…
They are both inside me and the stretch is delectable. Thrusting into me erratically, filling me.
This is not the first time, and nor is it the last.
I sob with joy and frustration. I want to come again. I want it so badly it is like a taste lingering on my periphery.
“Come for us,” Rafe commands. “Come all over our cocks.”
Their seed and my slick drip from me, easing the passage of their thrusting cocks. My mind soars, my heart thumps so wildly in my chest it is a wonder it does not break out of my ribs.
Their lips are against my throat, kissing, our slick bodies moving as one, finding a rhythm.
I am between them. Perfect. Where I was meant to be.
Goddess, let me not forget, I pray. Let me keep this memory this time. Let me cherish it.
Tears trickle down my cheeks. I’m crying.
“It’s okay,” Lark says. The tenderness in his voice makes me weep harder. “It’s okay, we’ve got you. Come for us. Come one more time. We beg you, princess. Come for your mates.”
Mates. Why does he taunt me with something that can never be?
And then another cataclysm swallows me, my eyes roll back, and a final climax claims me.
I’m caught in a storm, shaking and shuddering uncontrollably, my body nothing but a ball of white-hot bliss.
Their seed filling me all up, dripping between us.
Our labored breaths before the final quieting of my crazed mind.
Little rattly purrs emanate from their chests.
I whimper, trying to gather the potency of the emotions into sense.
Yet I am also done, sated, aching so good, squished between two walls of hot male flesh. Their scent is soothing. I cling to them shamelessly, one hand reaching forward, one hand reaching back, needing to touch them, pulling them in closer, wanting to be trapped, surrounded completely, protected.
Their hands are gentle, soft caresses that make me shiver, lips against my throat, my forehead, my hair—so tender, so much love.