FEAR, FURY, HEAT, MINE
RYTHAR – RYTHAR’S FORTRESS IN THE GREEN REACH
My fortress walls were built for war. Twisted up long ago from the roots of stone, and armored in the raw Green Reach jungle that bends to my will.
Every door knows my presence. Yet for the first time in all my life, there is someone here who does not obey—the human female I carry over my shoulder. My bride.
Her fists batter my back. Her strikes are soft, but I feel the outrage in every wild, animal thump. I have seen her kind only in the old records. Never in my arms. Never as mine.
Never with the smell of her fear blooming in the heat of her skin.
She is afraid. Why? She has seen me control the jungle. Seen me kill. I killed for her, there is no one more powerful than I in all of Xytheos, and she is still terrified. It’s senseless.
She howls her protest down the main corridor, sounds half in her language, half wordless shrieks of feminine anger.
The guards hear it and drop their gaze, bowing their heads.
They defer to my dominance. I thought dominance would calm this female.
It has not. I believed fury could spur mating.
I am no longer certain of anything where she is concerned.
Her mate bond already dimmed. Mine only amplified.
Inside me, it roars with hunger. This is as close to losing control as I’ve ever allowed myself. This is not who I am.
How long until her desire for pleasure outweighs her fear? No female has ever refused me. Never wanted to refuse me. And I brought them great pleasure, long ago.
But they weren’t human. Elena is different.
The passage to the Mating Chamber opens to my left.
Elena is wriggling now, fury rekindled by the new corridor, kicking so hard her foot nearly catches my ear.
It makes me want to laugh. Almost. But I don’t.
Her resistance rubs against me relentlessly.
It makes control over my urges harder, not easier.
She is soft, brown-eyed, fierce in her stubbornness, and more alive than anyone I have ever held.
I want her.
I want to fuck her until she cries out my name, until every echo of her old life is washed away by sweat and pleasure and the sound of her voice in the dark hollows of this place.
But she’s not ready for me. Not yet.
With my warriors, I issue orders, and they obey. But Elena’s submission would not be enough, even if she would give it to me. And I know she would not. Her outraged face flashes through my mind.
Time. I need time to think. Just a few moments.
I veer right, down a side corridor, and duck into a smaller vault. One of the original containment suites. Built before we engineered control.
I set her down on her feet. She staggers, fists raised, but I don’t touch her again.
The blue glow of the chamber paints her skin in something like moonlight.
It sharpens every line of her face, making her eyes look impossibly dark and beautiful.
They are the soft brown of a gentle creature, but they are full of rage.
“Is this where you’re going to keep me? Until what—until I beg you to let me out?”
Her voice is hoarse from her screams. I hold her gaze. I want to kiss the anger out of her, fuck her right here in this chamber. But I don’t move. I can’t speak without feeling like I will lose the last thread of control I have.
She balls her fists tighter, arms trembling. She views this as punishment rather than protection.
The Concord Stone’s mate bond has not given me strength. It stripped my armor off, one layer at a time, and left only the throbbing, desperate need to possess and protect her in equal measure. I would kill anyone who touched her, but I would tear out my own throat before I harmed her.
I back out of the vault while I still can. I press my hand to the stone beside the door. The surface ripples, then slides closed. I punch in the time-seal, ten minutes. I hope it’s long enough for the mating urge to ebb. For her anger to ebb. The bond only tightens.
I brace my hands against the living stone outside her door, every inch of me trembling with rage and want. The jungle outside reacts, offering to absorb, to store the power it shares with me. But nothing will blunt this.
I stand here, panting in the hallway, a predator locked out of its own den. I left her inside because I was the dangerous thing.
Once, finding a mate was simple. Male fought male, and the female went to the victor. That was before Xytheos. Before they started engineering us for something other than war.
We rulers of Xytheos are supposed to be disciplined. But my cock is so hard it aches, straining against armor and discipline both.
I let my forehead rest against the door. She looks at me as though I am a monster. Maybe I am. But the monster wants to keep her, not break her.
I drag in a ragged breath, holding back more than my urge to mate.
The Reach itself wants to close around her, to show her every secret and root.
The plants in this fortress are only a sliver of my power.
Out there, in the Green, I could crack open the world if I wanted.
But inside, I’ve always kept it quiet. Subdued. I must maintain the balance of Xytheos.
I listen to her through the door, the way her footsteps circle, then slow, then stop. Even her silence has an intensity.
I make myself think like a biome lord, because the alternative is opening this door.
Vorak. His warriors came armed for far more than an accusation, and he will not stop at one attempt.
The Stone gave him a Starfallen Bride of his own, and still he reached for mine.
I think of the friend Elena screams for.
Sophia. Vorak is old code, but I am certain that if the Stone gave him a Bride, he will be like the rest of the biome lords.
Unable to harm a female. And if he found a way around that, he knows the High Lord would order him killed for it.
Finally. And yet my own bride insists that Sophia is in distress.
My own bride is in distress, and yet she is perfectly safe.
There is too much I do not understand.
Even the Concord Stone itself has changed.
It speaks inside Elena. It presses inside me, louder than it has been in all my centuries.
The Stone was never a voice before. I called it a hand at my throat only as an expression.
Now the hand is moving. Vorak's complaint is already lodged with the Council.
Contact between Starfallen is forbidden.
There will be trouble from the Council. Later.
The Council moves slowly. Vorak does not.
So. The problem, stated plainly—I must make Elena want to stay. I must teach her to obey our laws, because here, obedience is survival. She will fight me on both.
She will fight me in everything.
The mate bond pushes on my mind, sending me images. I can almost taste her on my tongue. My body demands I go to her, now. Take her, claim her.
I want her.
I want her more than war, more than victory, more than any female I have ever been near.
Her fury excites me, but I cannot take her if she doesn’t want me. I am matched for life with one who rejects me openly. Rejected by the one with whom the Concord Stone has promised offspring.
Now, the images that flash through my head are sharper, meaner, and far more desperate.
I see her naked, spread on the soft mats of the Mating Chamber, hair tangled, skin flushed.
In my mind, she arches her back, calls out my name, her legs locked around my waist. I fuck her until she cries with pleasure.
But always, always, the fantasy sours when she looks afraid.
I think of what little I know of human women.
She is nothing like the texts describe. She’s better.
Wilder. The challenge in her makes me want her even more.
I have my concerns about the Concord Stone’s other decisions, but mating me to Elena? I will never call that a mistake.
I breathe in her scent, where it carries through the door.
Fear, fury, heat, mine.
When this door opens, I could take what the Stone promises is already mine. End this ache in one brutal, perfect claiming.
I won’t. I can’t. I stand there shaking, denying myself the one thing the bond screams for—because if I break her, I lose her. And there is no path forward without her.