15. The Shadow’s Game
Haera
Theos had made good on his promise to wash her clean. They were back in the confines of her tiny cottage, but the memory of his hands on her skin and in her hair still made her body burn with a fury she’d never experienced before. He’d been achingly gentle with her, like she was a prized flower, and he was a gardener desperate to see it thrive.
His hands, had been soft and slippery as they slid across her belly, down her thighs, and into the burning heat between them. Ever the complete gentleman, he’d washed her cunt with his bare hands, insisting he wanted to make sure she was clean. Her hesitation had melted into erotic heat as soon as his thick fingers slid into the soft wetness she’d been trying to hide.
And he’d been crouched before her, content to lather some gentle, barely scented washing liquid he’d created to match her biology through her cunt, as if she wasn’t dripping arousal all over his hands as he did. She’d stood stock still, her hands slowly forming fists at her sides, nails digging into her palms as the heat coiled inside her. He’d driven her almost to orgasm too, his eyes fixed on her face while he was cleaning the rest of her body.
He’d asked her whether she was okay. Of course, she’d said that she was. What else was she meant to say? Was she supposed to beg him to make her orgasm? Being edged was something she’d experienced before against her will. But Theos’ gentle touches had been welcome. She just wished she’d gotten to –
She swallowed hard. It was fine. She would survive the way she had always survived. She wouldn’t bother him about it. He hadn’t meant to edge her, surely. She shook her head, forcing down another memory that was surfacing. Yes, Theos had gotten every trace of her attacker off her skin, out of her hair. But she wasn’t sure he’d ever get it out of her mind. She was cursed to bear these memories. Helpless to their harsh piling into her mind whenever they pleased, like they were doing now .
She crawled towards the headboard, suddenly unsafe at the edge of the bed. The predatory look in the werewolf’s eyes when he’d revealed his intentions stole her breath when it surged forward, crystal clear in her mind. She’d always known that The Shadow was after her for their own sick pleasure, but she hadn’t realized that it was that kind of pleasure they were after. Now though, all the patterns in their attacks over the past syrises were flooding back to her. Suddenly, she could see .
The way they’d chased her through the forest but hadn’t truly caught up to her. Chasing her down dark alleys they knew she could have gotten away from them. Never cornering her in a situation where they had successfully hunted her down and harmed her twice. She’d credited her consistency of escape to her own internal tracking of the safe escape routes across the province. She’d thought it was her memory that had prevented her from going down the same dead-end route twice. Now she knew it wasn’t. It hadn’t been up to her at all. She had never had a choice in the result of those chases. They had all been rigged.
She curled into herself. She’d been entirely powerless in the matter all along. They had watched her every move, identifying patterns in her daily activities and behaviours. A shudder and a sob broke out of her as the sense of safety and confidence she had built for herself over the syrises shattered all at once. Her sobs descended into wails of anguish that dredged up from the core of her soul. A game. Her life was a game. A game of cruel forces, much larger than herself, organized against her success. There was always something higher than her, controlling the strings. Her entire life had been left up to the mercy of those with more power than she had.
“Every time you run from us, we let you get away.” The memory of the clawed finger hooking around her windpipe and drawing blood felt more real than the bedroom around her. The slick hot burn of it as it slid down her throat. “And every time I let you get away, I want to taste you more the next time.”
It was a game to them. It always had been. She’d just been a pawn in their schemes.
───
Theos
Theos ran back into the room.
“What’s wrong, little star?” He leaned over the bed, reaching for her. Desperate to touch her. To pull her into his chest.
Her sobs rattled his insides. The bond was howling with despair, demanding he fix whatever was wrong. His heart strained against his chest with urgency. His palms were clammy from the fear that was washing through him.
“Here love, let me –”
Haera flinched backwards, scuttling so far to the other side of the bed that she tumbled over the edge and onto the floor with a dull thud.
“Fuck.” He cursed, leaping across her bed in one lithe movement to scoop her off the floor and into his arms.
“Don’t touch me!” she cried out, sobs still bursting out of her.
His heart ceased to beat. His entire body went stiff. What? He lowered her to the bed, swallowing his protests. He didn’t want to release her. But this wasn’t about him. He couldn’t make it about himself. As soon as she touched the black linen sheets, she scooted away from him again, eyes trained in his direction. She moved more carefully this time, edging away. The first time he’d entered her room flashed across his memory. Small, stealthy movements backwards. Never taking her eyes off him. Trying to get away. Fear. She was afraid of him again. No. Gods no.
But then, her face crumpled, another bout of sobbing began, and her wailing increased in volume. Each cry speared his heart, jolting through his body like the sharp point of a needle, over and over again. He hated hearing his creations cry – they were his children. He soothed them as soon as the first cry reached his ears. But Haera didn’t want him to soothe her. She didn’t even want him to touch her. Useless. He was useless .
“This is pointless!” she cried out between sobs.
Tears were mixing with snot as her body shook from her cries. Theos’ fists tightened at his sides. His arms were trembling. Don’t touch her. She doesn’t want you to touch her.
“Trying to get away is pointless!” she said again through her sobs. “I don’t have a choice either way.”
The words were knifing through him. Choice? He had given her nothing but choice. Was this about his almost love confession houyras earlier? For the sake of the gods, it was the twentieth hour of Mynphes. Pitch black outside. If she felt cornered, she would try to run. He didn’t want her to run. Not even for his sake, for hers. Running had gotten her into trouble. That was how they’d met. He couldn’t let her run. And yet, if she asked him not to stop her, he didn’t know what he would do.
For the first time, he wasn’t sure what to do. With all the other mortals in all the worlds – his children, he could read their minds. See as clearly through all their facades as clearly as they could see the suns he had made to rule over their skies. See their next actions before they did them. Stop them from doing stupid things, even if they hadn’t asked for his help. But not with Haera. He hadn’t made her. He hadn’t engineered her mind. He couldn’t get past the walls she had erected around her heart, or her mind, even if he tried. She would resist. And it was her right. It was her right but by the gods it was his undoing.
It cut straight through his identity as the leader of the godhead that he did not even know what she was referring to. The past was the dominion of The Fates. He could interfere there, go back, fight the bind and remove the scales that his brother had put over his eyes that had stopped him from seeing what her life had been. But he shouldn’t. It was law. His law. He had already broken his law once.
“I just can’t get away!” The sobs and words were still coming.
His urge to comfort her was swallowing him like a black hole – like a tear in the fabric of space that engulfed whatever it could reach. His teeth ground together as he transferred the tension in his fists to his jaws. His muscles ached. Don’t touch her. She doesn’t want you to touch her .
“What’s the point of this bond if I’ll be forced to love you either way?” she wailed .
Fuck . No. No. No. No. No . His mind echoed with the words he wanted to say. The words that couldn’t get past his clenched teeth. Instead of protesting, he let himself feel the rejection that flooded through the bond. He let himself sink to his knees, to the rough floor. Now it was he who knelt on the limestone, utterly fearful and in pain as though he was an offering in his own temple – a sacrifice to The Fates.
His vision dimmed in the corners as the ache spread through him like slow-moving lava. For a segund, he didn’t know where he was. Who he was. For a segund, all he knew was the breaking in his heart. The empty echoing of despair and guilt in his mind. The overwhelming desire to cry. He pressed his eyes closed, leaning forward so that he was on all fours.
Haera was still sobbing, but she gave a sharp intake of breath. Then there was silence. A sniffle. Then movement. She was crawling towards him, reaching out to touch his shoulder. The bond filled with regret.
“No, Theos, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He laughed, a broken, short sound. “Don’t worry, little love. I can take it.”
And he meant it. But then a deep settling of impending doom settled into the bond in his heart.
“What would happen if I said that I didn’t w –”
He shot upright and leaned forward, clutching her hand in his and pressing a thumb gently to her lips.
“No!” The plea was ragged, desperate. “Not that. Please . Don’t say that. Our bond would be immediately compromised if you even whispered those words. It would require a hearing with The Fates if he is in one of his rare good moods. If he isn’t, he would just rip it out of both our hearts immediately. A bond undone cannot be redone. If you do not mean it, please , do not say it. And if you mean it, Haera, please give me the chance to fix whatever I’ve done wrong. I can’t lose you.”
“The…Fates?” she whispered. His precious little mate looked completely confused.
He nodded, panic still fresh in his body. “There are things I should not do, but nothing I can’t.” He repeated the words he had said to her before. “I created it all. I govern it. I could do it alone. But I don’t. Impartiality and fairness are important to me. Along with self-control, they are the three foundational qualities that I hold dear. With my self-control, I hold the universe together. To achieve my goal of impartiality, I elected The Fates, my brother, to rule over the worlds. To chart each mortal’s destiny. He is the one who rules over mates. ”
He searched her eyes as he spoke, watching the bits and pieces of information he was supplying connect with other things.
“And with my goal of fairness, I gave in and allowed mortals to have the gift of death. Since The Fates chart their destinies, and I can no longer guarantee their lives will be happy or long, I gave them the opt-out. At least, no one would suffer forever because of circumstances they could not control. My brother, Regos, rules over death.”
“So,” she hesitated. “You did not…create me?”
Theos closed his eyes for a moment, trying to get his heart to stop racing. But he opened them again and let himself focus on the roundness of her cheeks and her small button nose. “It would be a travesty for me to have not only have created you, but also have chosen you as my mate.”
Her lips parted in surprise. He savoured the expression of innocence.
“I handed the gift of creation to my brother once, many millennia ago, and that was when he wound your existence into the worlds. Gifted you to a family, orchestrated your life, charted your destiny. He hid you entirely from my view. I do not know what has happened to you, nor could I have rescued you.”
“D-did he ruin me on purpose? ”
Sorrow bloomed in his stomach and filled him ears to toes. So, he had ruined her . He swallowed, hard. His worst fears were unfolding in real time. She should have been safe. He’d trusted Kheos to keep her safe.
“The Fates is orchestrated by impartiality.” He locked eyes with his beautiful, heartbroken mate, giving her the correct answer even though he was losing his belief in it by the segund. “It is impossible for him to harm, bless, favour or help any one mortal more than the other. All his actions are driven by degree of destiny. And by the fatal collision of cause and effect. The Fates may have the best of intentions, but somewhere along the line, someone else chooses to do the wrong thing. And the repercussions fall down through generations.”
“D-did you make the people I came from?”
A soft smile pulled at Theos’ lips, and he nodded. The first thing I created was a garden filled with flowers, lakes and beautiful fruit trees. There was a man, then I created a woman for him. And just like that, love was birthed in the worlds.”
He looked at her for a long moment, staring deep into her eyes, tracing her bloodline’s origin. Cold shock jolted through him when he found a direct, pure line of contact between her and the first people he’d made. Kheos had set Haera’s life in motion at the same time as Theos had made them. His heart trembled with the weight of the realization.
Haera swallowed. “And do you l-like what your brother has created?”
A deep sound of satisfaction echoed out of his chest and she flushed. “For as much as he despises me, my brother has done well. I have never seen someone with beauty like yours. The Fates know me better than I thought I knew myself. You are perfect.”
“Why do you call him ‘The Fates’ if he is only…one?”
“He is past, present, and future. All three states at once.”
Haera’s eyes watered again. “It must be hard to bear the brunt of the rage of a million generations. Who don’t know you but hate you for what you haven’t done. It must be so lonely.”
A tear leaked down her cheek. Lonely . The word settled into his mind, replaying over and over. Was The Fates lonely? He shook the thought away.
“Haera, I will answer your questions for the rest of the eternities. Right now, I need you to tell me, why were you crying?”
Her face immediately crumpled again, and Theos’ jaw tightened. Her fear-stricken rejection of his touch still echoed in his ears. His hands ached with the desire to touch her. Touching was how he created, and how he healed. He couldn’t touch her. All he could do was watch silken tears slip over her soft cheeks. Hear her sobs and his heart as they both cracked like some kind of whip. Another sob, another crack in his heart.
Until her swollen lips finally parted, and some gurgle of pain escaped them, and then, words. “The Shadow,” she began. “They’ve been making my life a living hell for two syrises.”
She paused to sob. Theos’ mind raced as he scanned all the information he had stored in his mind about werewolves. Shadow wolves were the wolves that guarded the borders of each pack’s territory – every pack in Vanzantia had them. She was from Aegon. So this was about Aegon’s Shadow.
Theos wanted to be a good, patient mate. He wanted to wait for her to share the story at her pace. Oh he did. But the longer the sobs spilled out of her pretty lips while he knelt there, the more his anger flared.
“Is the Aegon Shadow the reason that you are so… intimately acquainted with the cold, Haera?”
The sounds of her crying quieted immediately, and instead of the sorrow that had been roiling through the bond from her a segund ago, there was fear. His voice was different. Firmer. More demanding. Harsher. Deeper. It was a barely restrained growl that somehow managed to turn into words on its way past his lips. He knew it was. But it was the realization, the short flicker of surprise that explained her fear to him. He had hit the nail on the head.
Haera’s heckles were up, like a frightened cat, but the quick, short nod she gave in response wasn’t explanation enough.
“Tell me what happened.”
She hesitated. He bit back a growl.
“Go on little darling. No more withholding.”
───
Haera
The demand sank into her mind, and she retreated to the middle of the bed where she was surrounded by pillows and soft bedding. Where she felt…safer than she felt on the edge of the bed looking into his raging eyes. She watched him stand, his posture rigid, fists tight at his sides.
Her limbs trembled. The books in her bookcase were rattling, the anger in his voice making the ground beneath them, beneath her , tremble. She braved a glance up at his face, and found his fierce eyes fixed on her, pinning her into place. The muscles in his arms flexed, his forearm bulging as he released, then re-clenched his fists.
“Why isn’t the cold something you are unused to, Haera?”
She stopped breathing, and the fractional narrowing of his eyes told her that he had noticed. His senses were probably a thousand times more sensitive than hers were. He could probably hear her heartbeat without trying, and her every breath. No doubt he could hear that she wasn’t breathing. She couldn’t focus on that realization any longer. Her heart was sinking into her belly as all the harrowing memories came piling to the forefront of her mind.
“I’m a rogue.” She hardly recognized her own voice. Hardly felt her lips move or the words pass them. “The Shadow Guard loves to…hunt me down. Attack me when they think I least expect it. Corner me, then let me escape barely alive.”
The saliva in her mouth was bitter. She couldn’t seem to stop remembering the way her blood tasted when she had had to shift, lick her own wounds, and shift back before she was discovered in wolf form. “At the command of their alpha, and for their own amusement, they torture me. I was rejected by the pack two syrises ago, and for all the seasons, and particularly the winters since, I have had to live…alone, away from the pack.”
Hot tears burned her skin as they rolled down her cheeks again. She felt herself cringe and recoil. Her knees came up to press against her chest and she wrapped her arms around them, trying to make herself feel safe. It was a useless effort. She hadn’t felt safe since she was forcibly removed from her pack.
“But rogues aren’t allowed to transfer packs without paperwork and approval from the Third Royal Prince, Miron Vanzant.” Just the mention of the prince’s name sent shivers through her body. “And I cannot request a transfer myself. It would need to be requested by someone else and approved by my ex-Alpha. And he would never let me leave Aegon territory. It’s where he can torture me. Watch me bleed. Two syrises ago, when I was rejected, I had nowhere to go – nowhere to live. So,” she swallowed, hard. “For the rest of the winter of that season, I lived in the woods. In the snow. Alone.”
The room chilled. She rubbed her arms, pulling the sheets and blankets around her, her internal thermostat frantically trying to figure out what to do as the weight of the memories and the sudden cold settled into her body. The windows across from her were frosting. She thought she could see her words in the air when she spoke.
“All my friends dropped me. Why would they want anything to do with me after what happened? They thought I was a fool.” Their rejection had speared through her like a sword. Another tear slipped down her cheek. Its heat on her skin and the cold air around her made her lips part. “My ex-alpha forbade my best friend, Alanis, to see me, speak to me, or offer me any help. The pack re-absorbed and re-distributed all my possessions. All I had was the clothes that were left on my back when they kicked me out.”
She was lightheaded, only barely present in the room.
“I had to hunt in the deadest houyras of the mrnug, under the fading moon, staying hidden so the light never caught my fur. I was already breaking the law. Rogue wolves aren’t allowed to shift. We’re easier to subdue in our more human like form.”
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, suddenly thirsty, after remembering herself rushing through the woods, this way and that, trying to find a stream that hadn’t frozen over. The lake’s shore was far too exposed, too deep in Aegon territory for her to brave the location to get a drink. She had gone dahys without drinking water, and when she had found water, it was filthy. Werewolf excrement, blood, flies, all contaminants of the water she had had to drink.
“After the pack already claimed all the best kills, and went back to the pack housing, The Shadow let me hunt. They watched me capture, and kill, and waited until I had exhausted myself with the chase to rob me of whatever I had managed to hunt.” Her voice was hardly a whisper now, and she felt like she was back in the deep cold darkness of the Loriax. “The woods were icy and unforgiving, the Earth raw with the strain of the cold and the weight of the snow. There was not much to hunt. A rabbit once a mohn, a squirrel if I had the energy to chase it.”
Her voice was breaking. So was her connection to reality. It crackled like a distorted voice that was trying to speak to her from some distant dimension. It called out to her, but she could barely discern its voice from the sound of the wind in the trees. She was no longer seeing the bookcase that was in her room. Lines of naked trees replaced it, and she was ploughing through snow up to her snout, eyes frozen open, searching for something, anything to eat. Her ribs were clanking together, making a horrifying sound as she walked. Her hip was broken from being battered by the Shadow. Her back right paw dragged on the ground. The last remaining feeling she had in it was fading fast .
“Even when I thought it was safe to eat, after I had scanned the trees a thousand times, spent half the dahy listening for the sound of movement anywhere in the nearby miles, The Shadow would appear, and attack me. Always from the backward flank or head on. The hit always sent me flying into the trunk of a tree. Or the face of a cliff. Or across a gorge, or into a stream that hadn’t yet frozen over.”
Cold sweat was beginning to soak through the thin blouse she was wearing. “By the time I woke up after an attack, I was always covered in snow, too injured to move.”
The sky suddenly thundered, and rain pelted against her windows.
“I survived four mohns of brutal winter without eating or sleeping, for the most part. When I did sleep, I was curled up under mounds of snow. I would have done anything to hide from them. I learned to appreciate every breath. I never knew which would be my last.”
Reality regained contact with her mind, and she noticed that a red haze had filled the room. She blinked to clear her vision, and alarmed when the fog didn’t clear, Theos was the first thing her eyes sought out. When their eyes met, her breathing stopped again. His irises looked like disks of freshly drawn blood, and if her own eyes were not already blurry from tears, she would have thought she saw tears in his.
He inhaled, chest rising as his eyes closed, and exhaled audibly, long and hard.
She jumped when something struck her window. Her eyes widened at the now violent weather outside. Hail was raining against the glass in droves as a blanket of snow fell from the black sky, wild in the grip of the blustering wind. Her head whipped back around to face Theos, who met her gaze as it returned to him. She swallowed, suddenly very aware of herself, aware of her body. Her arms felt heavy, and there were phantom pains in her ribs and her right ankle. Unable to help herself, she looked back towards the window, but gasped and shrunk away when lightning split the dark sky. The floor trembled again. This time it was because he was speaking.
“You should know, my love, that what you experienced is not the standard treatment for rogues. Your ex-alpha sounds…bitter.” Another long, jagged, deep breath from him, and then the ground was rumbling again. “I can’t imagine what you must have thought of me when you first realized I was your mate. That I could have stopped all of this, but was entirely powerless to do so.” His eyes closed. “I am more sorry that you went through all of this than you will ever know. Thank you for telling me what happened. ”
“But there is one more thing that I must know, Haera.” His voice was quiet. “Why is he so angry with you?”