31. Violette
VIOLETTE
Shame has a certain familiar nausea twisting in my gut. He didn’t even eat my courtship offering. Just tossed it in a frozen storage cube before going about his day. How could that be? My logic kicks in to soothe my wounded ego—perhaps he didn’t realize the significance?
But how much more obvious could I be?
Surely, humans at least have this simple and basic ritual—as do most beings I’ve come across. Though I do tend to avoid human realms. They are… a reckless and unpredictable sort that seems to rush into everything with a haste that reflects their unfathomably short lifespans.
Perhaps they don’t have any formal courting rituals for this very reason?
Still, it seems inconceivable when even moths—not merely the highly evolved Noctarions, but also the insects—have mating rituals.
My mind ponders for several moments... Many beings utilize scent-marking. Perhaps humans are among them?
Resolution fills me as I fold into my idiotic male’s bedroom, eyes scanning his personal belongings—dark wood furniture, what I assume are some military awards and photos of a slightly younger version of himself—though just as world-weary—holding large guns, dressed in a rather flattering uniform, and skin marked with significantly fewer tattoos.
He is undeniably stunning.
Gradually, I manage to shift my attention to land on a tall shelf, replete with books. Scanning each of the titles tells me my soulbound has a fascination with spacetime, relativity, string theory, quantum mechanics...
The books come to a halt.
Only to be replaced with… dolls?
Sculpted creatures I’ve never seen before, non-human-looking people, and, to my surprise, even a few fae or elves, plus a man dressed in a bizarrely tight blue one-piece suit with a thick red S-shape in the center of his chest.
Just as I shift to turn away, my gaze snags on two males that are nearly identical effigies of two gods. One of whom is holding a very large, fancy hammer, the other a tall staff. Both have paid visits to me on numerous occasions at my former brothel. I might even call them friends.
If I had any.
I don’t.
Not anymore. Not since Thessaly and Horus.
But I know their bodies better than they do, and right now, I am, without a doubt, staring into the miniature faces of Tor, God of Thunder, Storms, and Protection, and his adopted brother, Loptr, the shape-shifting God of Chaos.
Does my human have connections to these beings?
To gods?
I don’t see any offerings or anything else on these shelves that would indicate it as a shrine.
A small relief.
I make a mental note to ask him about these effigies.
Turning around, I examine his neatly made bed and its dark coverings, along with his wardrobe across the room.
Both are in a ghastly state of disarray.
There are no fewer than three shirts on the ground, a worn undergarment with a hole in the crotch, and based upon the half-dozen rogue socks peppering the room, one might think he’d mistaken them for decor.
This simply won’t do.
Truly, how am I supposed to prepare myself to scent-mark a single thing in this squalor?
Frustration burns through me as I snatch up all of his clothing when an irrepressible urge comes over me, forcing me to pause. Standing in the middle of his room with what could easily be confused with detritus bundled in my arms, his mouthwatering scent reaches my nose.
Succumbing to my baser urges, I bury my face in his dirty clothing, inhaling deeply.
My eyes roll in the back of my head as his scent permeates every molecule of my body.
Arousal strikes a match in my core, burning a wick that rises up my spine and bursts with a foreign, fiery, weighty sensation in my chest.
The guttural moan of need that escapes is muffled by the clothing my face is buried in.
“Fuuuuuuucccckkk.”
Oh my fucking gods.
I haven’t even met this male, and already, I am undone.
Fear trickles through me at the realization, but this dizzying desire quickly smothers it.
Willing away my clothing—something I can scarcely manage in the moment—and with my face still buried, I march over to his side of the bed and slide under the duvet as I glamour away my wings, and my tail teases the inside of my thighs.
His scent—honey, burning pine, and musk—consumes me.
With his clothes resting on my face, my hands skate over my nude form, squeezing my breasts and teasing my nipples.
One hand remains as the other greedily reaches for the wet mess of my arousal.
My core clenches around my spaded tail, pumping in and out whilst imagining it’s Levi’s impressive, tattooed cock.
When I can deny myself no longer, my fingers slide to my clit, fervently circling the aching bud.
In my mind, Levi’s roughly shaven face is scraping against my tender flesh as he kisses and licks the column of my throat before sinking his teeth in to mark me as his. With deep, steady strokes, his long, thick cock thrusts?—
Oh, fuck, I’m cumming already—and oh, dear gods, I’m squirting.
My orgasm isn’t merely crashing through me—it’s a heavy, all-consuming, tingling wave of bliss that steals the very breath from my lungs on his moaned name.
“Levi.”
With my back arched off the bed, my pussy spasms for long, heart-pounding moments as this tether between us throbs with demand. Fluid even gushes from me, and when my climax finally dissipates, I lie there shell-shocked, staring up at the ceiling with his dirty clothes still draped on my face.
The male isn’t even here, and somehow, he has still managed to give me the best orgasm of my entire fucking life.
What. In. The. Hellish. Fuck.
No male has ever made me squirt before.
Akash almighty.
Intellectually, I knew this soulbound thing was intense, but this...
I’m officially fucking terrified.
My mother died of a broken heart.
When a syrith’s song doesn’t work on their fated mate, it’s as if their spirit, after a time of so much heartbreak, decides to flee the body and this realm.
The coroner deduced, when he could find no other cause of death and learned that my mother had been living separate from her soulbound, that her will to live must have waned in his absence.
Yet here I am, in my soulbound’s bed, heedless of life’s lessons, and dripping from the mere thought of him.
Every day I spend trying to forget him makes his absence all the more excruciating.
It fortifies my determination to dominate him.
I will have Levi begging for me—bound, gagged, and utterly at my mercy.
Sitting up, I choose to ignore the dozens of tiny effigies watching me from his shelves and peel back the sheets to see the laurels of my efforts.
There’s a large wet spot on the sheets between my legs, and his duvet is soaked.
Hm.
A kinder, more considerate mate might at least clean his duvet for him.
Kind and considerate I am not, and the whole purpose of my coming here was to scent-mark his home so that he may know that our courtship has begun, and soon, after he has had some time to come to terms with the matter, I will return for him so we may prove our worthiness of one another in earnest.
So, technically, this is me being kind and considerate. If I were not, I would have stolen him away already.
In syrith culture, when a matebond is triggered, the courtship begins that very day.
It is a sacred event. All responsibilities are delayed or momentarily divided among the shiver—the term for a tribe or group of syriths—all for the sake of a fruitful and blessed courtship, and thus, the soulbound union.
Some gnawing sense of guilt and shame that I belong to no shiver, have zero experience of syrith culture, and ultimately have no business performing any syrith rites or mating rituals, pervades me.
I’ve never even met my grandparents.
Even though my mother was from the Selcarimi Mountains.
Was she banished from her shiver for leaving?
Or did she just disappear after meeting my father to chase him?
Or even more likely, to protect them from him and his exploits?
Perhaps all of the above.
If it weren’t for my flueratheurgy skills, I wouldn’t even be able to speak or read their language.
I am what they would call a paraseivero.
While there is no direct translation found in any singular word, the most exact definition would be: they who have no loyalties.
Loyalty is everything in a shiver; where every single person is just as imperative to the survival and well-being of the shiver as the next.
To have no shiver is to have no loyalty to anyone or anything but oneself, and that, according to my exceedingly rudimentary knowledge gathered solely by textbooks, is the greatest shame of all.
Perhaps it is why my mother all but blatantly refused to speak of it.
For my own self-preservation and sanity, I shove the thoughts away. Tuck them into a little mental, hermetically sealed, metal chest with lock and key and toss it into the depths of the turbulent sea that is my mind.
I’ll still be hanging up a ‘Closed for Courtship’ sign in my storefront window as soon as I return to Caerwynath.
Not that anyone will notice.
I spend the next several minutes rubbing his clean clothing over my body, some of which I even drag between my legs as wetness perpetually blooms.
Willing my undergarments into hand—the pair I’ve spent the day wearing—I place them on his pillow.
In search of pen and paper, I rifle through his nightstand to discover a variety of clutter: a small, square device with a glowing screen, tissue, lubrication, and a long tube with a squishy, fake vagina on the end of it.
Oh, my darling. Are you that desperate?
Bringing it to my nose, I’m disappointed to find it only smells faintly of his delicious seed, but more predominantly of soap.
Possessiveness tightens in my chest, and I realize I don’t want anyone bringing him pleasure other than me. Not even his own hand.
Never again shall you touch another cunt, not even a fake one.
I will it away along with the bottle of lubricant.
Returning to his drawer, I snatch up the pen and leather-bound journal to peruse the pages.
My brow furrows as I read.
I am the untethered anchor at the bottom of the sea.
Filled with blood, but always empty.
Surrounded by many, I am still the only one.
An echoed cry on a still night.
A muffled scream stifled by my own hand.
Who am I?
Surprise and a certain knowingness—a soul-deep recognition—roll through me.
I whisper my reply. “Loneliness.”
The answer isn’t written, but I know the answer like I wrote the riddle myself.
Akash almighty.
This man is making me fall in love with him.
With nothing more than his written words, he has me reeling as though our souls have just collided.
Resolution settles deep within me as I carefully tear out a blank page and attempt his unfamiliar English script. Even I can tell it looks like I wrote it with my foot, but at least it’s legible.
Will he be elated or fearful of having a non-human mate?
My grin widens, imagining the latter.
Nothing like a little fear to heighten one’s arousal.
To punctuate my message, I press my red-stained lips to the paper and leave it for him beside my undergarments on his pillow. A small smile tilts my lips as a bubble of excitement builds in my chest—a feeling I haven’t experienced since the last time I fell in love.
The phantom sensation of a long-healed wound flares at the reminder of Lucen.
Fuckhole.
I often wonder if he survived my father’s wrath when he realized I’d escaped; I can’t even begin to imagine having to sever my soulbond tether. Despite his manipulations and him beating me to a pulp... I want to rescue Soriya, regardless of my vow.
Partly out of spite for my father, but a greater part of me is compelled to do it because, as a former brothel mistress, I know what it’s like to have to surrender my body to someone it doesn’t belong to, and I wouldn’t wish that for anyone.
Thoughts of soulbonds and Lucen inevitably lure my mind towards Azrael. For the last fifteen years, the very thought of him causes an inexplicable ache in my chest.
Yuck.