MasukXAHEN. The meeting had run long. Draven wanted to revisit the border patrol issue. Hale had negative thoughts about it. Base had jokes about Hale's thoughts. The whole thing went forty minutes longer than it needed to. I spent the second half somewhere else entirely mentally. Specifically, the courtyard in the Eastern Realm. The dragon's body would still be there. I wanted to go see it. Nobody in the Eastern Realm was moving something that size without a very good reason, and very good reasons weren't something the Eastern Realm produced in abundance. It would be right where it fell. That was one thing on my mind. The other thing was Kane. From what Nala told me, Kane had known about the dragon fight. Which meant he'd been there. Which meant at some point during the part where I was losing significant amounts of blood on Eastern Realm cobblestones, my brother had been standing nearby watching it happen. I wasn't bothered that he hadn't helped. I didn't need he
THEODOSA.I looked at her and didn't say a word for a long moment as my words settled in the air.She held my gaze. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking or feeling. Then she said, "Go ahead.""What?" I breathed."Go ahead." It came out the same way she'd said it the first time, like it cost her nothing. "Tell him."I couldn't find a single word to put in front of her."I've known Xahen for a long time,” she said. "If you think a threat about Kane is going to make me stand back and watch you suffer through a full heat alone then you don't know me at all." She held my gaze. "And after everything we've been through in this cabin, I'd like to think you know me a little."I felt the threat come apart in my hands before I could stop it. I'd thrown it out fast because it was the only thing I had, and now it was just sitting there doing nothing."I mean it," I tried again."I know you do." Her voice stayed even. "You're scared. You don't want him knowing your body is doing something you di
THEODOSA. I stared at her, lost for a moment . “I didn’t think I was eligible for a heat,” I whispered. Afnie sat quietly beside me, taking it in like it wasn’t the craziest thing she’d ever heard, and somehow that made it worse. “Is it truly, truly possible?” I panicked, glancing between the both of the’m. “I thought a mated couple had to be fully marked before the female could go into heat.” “That’s usually the case,” Nala said. She put her hand under her chin. “When a male marks his female it disrupts her biology,” she said. “Her hormones, her instincts, basically everything shifts. It intensifies the need to mate with him until the bond is fully completed. Nature’s doing.” She paused. “But another thing is this… the timeline depends on the strength of the bond. For example, an alpha male could send his mate into heat way quicker than a beta blooded male, or any lower rank.” Afnie and I stared at each other, then at Nala. “But Xahen never marked Theo,” Afnie said. “That’s
THEODOSA.My door flew open and I jerked awake.A second later the blinds went up and sunlight came straight at my face like it had a personal grievance with me."Rise and shine!"I got my hand up over my eyes and squinted through my fingers at Nala, who was standing at the window looking entirely too pleased with herself for this hour of the morning. Whatever she'd had for breakfast, I needed to stay away from it permanently.She crossed to the bed, grabbed both my arms and pulled until I was sitting upright."Wait one second," she said, already heading back for the door. "I'll be right back."She was gone before I could respond.I sat there blinking at the wall.She came back with a steaming cup and set it on the side table next to me.I looked at it. "What is that?"Her brows furrowed. "Coffee."That couldn’t be right. Nala made things in cups, hot things that steamed and smelled strange and tasted like whatever plant had wronged her most recently. Coffee was not something she wa
XAHEN.She was still coming down from it.Her scent was buried in my nose, thick and sweet and completely inescapable. Her arousal was sitting on my cock like a reminder I didn't need. My shoulder burned where her nails had been. I didn't look at the marks.My canines were throbbing with the urge to sink into her skin, and that was exactly the problem.This needed to stop.I pulled off her immediately and stood up on unsteady legs. Her blue eyes widened and I looked away a second too late. She was spread across my bed with her hair everywhere, her chest heaving and her thighs still parted, looking like an invitation I couldn't afford to accept. Her breasts were heavy flushed swells connected to a slender waist, forming a milky and freckled path downward to those reddish curls covering her pale pink pussy.It was the most inviting site in the world. I turned my back to her and shoved myself back into my slacks, tucking away what was currently making clear thinking impossible. The p
**ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.**XAHEN.Kane had talked for the better part of the morning.I let him finish because it was faster than cutting him off and arguing through the parts he hadn't said yet. He laid everything out in order, the way he always did, and when he was done I told him I was going anyway. He ran out of words. That didn't happen often with Kane.The councilors weren't coming. The current set were all past sixty, half of them used canes, and the Pitts would finish them before a feral got the chance. A guard detail would slow me down. I'd planned to go alone.My wife wouldn't have it.I watched her back as she moved through the trees ahead of me.She knew this terrain in the way people knew things they'd learned the hard way.Her feet found solid ground without her looking down, stepping around the soft patches without breaking stride. I caught the smell every few minutes — low and chemical and wrong in a way that the upper level didn't have, that nothing down here seemed to
THEODOSA.My body knew him before my brain did.Something in my chest pulled tight the moment he filled the doorway, some deep, instinctual alarm that had been dormant since the beach. Since the shore. Since I stood on that dark sand in the cold and realized there was no boat, there had never been
XAHEN. I needed more whiskey. The six crates I’d brought back from my last trip to the Eastern Realm were down to two and a half, and at the rate I was going through them, I’d be out before the week was over. Normally I’d just wait. Let the supply run low and make the trip when I absolutely had
XAHEN.I couldn't focus on a single fucking word being said.It was on days like this that I hated the fact that I didn't deal transport with Duskmire and Lucenia.Maybe if I didn't move important cargo between realms, I wouldn't have to sit here and listen to my council bicker around me while my h
THEODOSA. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Nala walked beside me with a pace that said she wasn’t going to slow down no matter how much I dragged my feet. The path toward the palace grounds stretched out ahead of us like a death march. “You wanted this,” Nala said without looking at me. “I know.







