25 Fight me harder, stubborn beast
The teleports tumbled past. Antal gripped Fi’s arm, her vision a blur of Void black and passing Shards. She didn’t ask where the daeyari was taking her. She could guess.
They emerged to ice-scented air. A whisper of wind over stone. The sitting room of Antal’s home upon the cliffs.
He didn’t release her.
Should it have terrified her? Alone in a predator’s den, close enough to measure every bared fang, black claws puckering the soft flesh of her arm. Crimson eyes bored into her. Once, the sight had sent her cowering.
She hadn’t been that hare in a long time. Not that he seemed to care.
“You fickle daeyari!” Fi shouted.
“You stubborn human!” Antal snarled back.
Then he shoved her to the wall and kissed her.
Not just a kiss. A battle. He came at her with his teeth, dragging her mouth open as if to conquer, claiming her lower lip with his fangs until she cried out in equal protest and pleasure. Hard stone pressed her back. Claws tightened on her waist, dragging hips together.
Fi hated how good he felt. How good he always felt, lean muscle pinning her to the wall, the hard bulge of his cock pressing treacherous heat between her legs, before she’d even had a chance to fight back. He’d looked ravenous on the Summer Plane.
Simple beast, always getting hard off her yelling at him. She weathered the offensive with a hot slake of adrenaline in her chest—
And unfamiliar cold across her stomach. Ten slashes of Void-ether flesh, new and prickling. The tingle deepened with Antal’s proximity.
Her parry struck fierce, hands digging beneath his shirt, nails raking down his abdomen. He growled into her mouth. Possessive. Covetous. Fi could have surrendered there, turned soft and forgiving in his arms, let his tongue deliver his apology as the lights of the city glowed in the valley below.
Their city.
Their home.
Antal had brought her here. He’d asked her to stand at his side, not some pet to leave behind.
Fi bit his lip. Hard. Her teeth had no fangs, but she clamped down until he relented, flinching back with a snarl. Ozone filled her mouth as she pushed the beast off her.
Not too far. Daeyari always fought at close range.
And Fi was fighting. No surrender. No swallowing this down for another time.
Today, she’d fought a bird immortal. She’d nearly been disemboweled.
She’d figured out how to weave Void ether all on her fucking own, hadn’t even had the chance to begin mentally unpacking that before Antal had committed to being an entire ass.
“You want to give up?” Fi demanded. “This deal that would give us everything we need? A real chance of keeping Thomaskweld safe? And you want to walk away?”
“It’s not worth risking you, Fionamara.”
“You don’t get to decide for me!”
“I’m trying to keep you safe.”
“I don’t give a fuck about being safe.”
“Clearly.” He gnashed the word between his fangs.
Antal paced the room—like a panther, scouring for the best place to strike. They’d bickered before, sparring matches fought with barbs and tongues.
They’d never fought like this.
“You keep pushing me away,” Fi said. “The Twilit Plane, your family, the other daeyari. This entire piece of your life, and you don’t want me to have any part in it!”
“I left that life behind a century ago.”
“And you’ve been miserable because of it! You told me you miss spending time with other daeyari.”
“Not if it means putting you in danger—”
“You think I enjoy watching you drag yourself around like a wet cat?” She grabbed his cheeks, heedless of his warning growl.
“Correct. I do. When I’m causing it. And when I can cup your silly face afterward and tell you that you’re a good, kind-hearted carnivore and it will all be ok.
That amusement doesn’t extend to cutting out your entire species. ”
Standing this close, Fi couldn’t avoid breathing him in. Couldn’t ignore the hum of energy beneath his skin. Couldn’t stop her thighs pressing together when his eyes dropped back to her mouth. Wretched beast.
She kissed him again.
Her fingers sank into his hair. She dragged her front against his, just to feel him fighting back, to feel the eager grind of his cock against her. She struck him with her lips. She speared him with her tongue, delving hungry into the ridges of his fangs.
Antal’s tongue sank into her mouth, rough and unyielding. The growl rumbling his chest was one she recognized. Not just anger. Want.
Here they went again, grasping at frayed edges.
They stumbled down the hall, too tangled to walk straight.
Fi hissed as a wall scraped her shoulder.
Antal groaned as she gripped him between the legs, pressing her palm down every hard inch of his cock, trapped within the stiff fabric.
He dragged teeth down her neck, and it took everything not to shout him into oblivion.
Not to scrape her throat raw with the plea of his name.
The bedroom was their next arena. Antal snared an arm around her waist. His knee breached the gap between her thighs. Fi shuddered at the offensive.
“You aren’t prepared to fight an aedari,” he hissed against her mouth, the scant space between feuding kisses and shallowing breaths.
“Then tell me what I need to know!” She fought back with fingers carving his chest. “Tell me how to fight an aedari.” Her teeth scraped his lip. “Tell me, so I can fight with you.”
She rocked against his thigh, a bloom of dizzying heat between her legs. Antal made a low, ravenous sound.
“You could have died today,” he rasped.
“But I didn’t.”
Fi cried out as fingers tightened in her hair. He tipped her head back, forcing her to meet molten crimson eyes.
“And how could I know that?” he said. “When you were gone? When I smelled your blood in the dirt?”
The strike made Fi stumble. That crack in his voice. That bone-chilling haunt in his eyes. When he kissed her, his mouth pressed so bruisingly desperate, because he’d believed it.
He’d believed she might be dead.
Fi had seen Antal lunge for Avroz. She’d heard vengeance in his shout. She never wanted to cause him that pain, to pick at old wounds he claimed were healed. But…
“Why was I alone with Avroz?” she said against his jaw. “Because you left me behind.”
Antal shoved her onto the bed.
When he fell upon her, Fi clawed at his chest. She struck beneath his shirt, nails outlining every muscle, reminding him how fierce she could be. Not just any human. His human. She’d earned that place a hundred times over.
Cunning fingers plied open her silviamesh bodysuit. He flayed the armor off her, exposing her chest, laying bare the curves of her breasts, splitting her open down to her naval. All soft mortal flesh, exposed to claws. She shuddered with each brush of knuckles.
Fi grabbed the collar of his fancy-ass daeyari shirt so hard, seams snapped beneath her fingers. The rip of iridescent fabric exposed his chest, lithe muscle and skin like granite, heaving with each furious breath. Every part of him, made to break creatures like her.
“You told me you wanted me at your side,” Fi said. “When you asked me to come back with you to Thomaskweld. You told me you didn’t see me as any less.”
“I don’t, Fionamara.” He mantled over her. “I don’t value you any less. That doesn’t change what you are.”
“You’re acting like I can’t do anything.”
“And you act like you can do anything. Like you have to be reckless to prove yourself. You’re supposed to know better now.”
The strike pierced her heart. “I’ve always been fine—”
Fi flinched when claws clamped her shoulder, framing a year-old scar: teeth marks, a dent of missing flesh. The reminder of when Verne had bitten her, when Fi had faced her alone.
“This is what happens when I leave you on your own!” Antal’s grip tightened near to puncturing. When Fi hissed in protest, he splayed claws across her belly, tugging the fresh scars where his father had tried to disembowel her. “Now, this.”
He scraped claws down her hips, yanking her silviamesh lower. Fi surrendered a moan. She bit her lip as the needy sound slipped out of her, back arching into his touch, an ache pooling between her legs that threatened to undo her too soon. She hadn’t won yet.
Everywhere he touched her Void-sewn flesh, the skin buzzed. Like calling to like.
“Then stop leaving me!” she tried to shout, though it rasped to a pant. “When that derived daeyari attacked Nyskya, you brought me with you. When we faced Verne, you let me lead the charge. We were a team.”
“That’s not the same as fighting an aedari. Not the same as fighting my father.”
Always his father. Always that excuse for every asshole decision, cowardice prioritizing Avroz ahead of her.
“I’ve saved your useless ass as many times as you’ve saved mine!” Fi said.
She grabbed her beast by both antlers, bracing to flip him.
Antal’s claws clamped her hair.
Fi cried out as the strands pulled too tight.
He flipped her onto her belly, held her down with claws scraping her scalp.
His tail snared one flailing wrist. Then the other, binding both hands against her back.
She snarled, cheek pressed against the bed, squirming and kicking at his thighs. Nothing moved him.
Because he wasn’t playing. A panther, subduing a hare.
“You can’t even fight me off,” Antal said, too low. The predator she’d once fled from in the woods, who’d chased her down and pinned her to the ground.
A daeyari. And a weak little human. Fi writhed at the insult.
She wasn’t weak. She wasn’t any human. This beast was hers, and she knew how well he could bluff.
“You think I can’t top you from down here?” Fi growled against bedsheets. “You’re sorely mistaken, Antlers.”
She had no fangs. Her fingers clawed useless against the bindings of his tail. So be it. She had other weapons.
Fi hiked up her ass and dragged it against his front. He was desperately hard against her, still confined in pants. She enjoyed a sliver of satisfaction at his hissed inhale. He pushed against her, claws tightening in her hair.
“We’re fighting,” he protested in a rasp.
“Fight harder,” Fi ordered.