by Lucas, Naomi
His snarl grew and he growled into the grey morning light. Not without her. He would not leave her to this fate when he had the strength to stop it. She was not an evil being, despite living her whole life in the horrors of the labyrinth, and if she had the blood that would clear the skies of Bathyr and make his bull sons and daughters strong, she would have been perfect.
But she wasn’t, and the human blood he had smelled the first day had not returned.
The thought of the seed he’d given her taking root stoned his skull and thoughts. He would not leave her to die in Prayer. When the centaurs overrun it, he would bring her with him to the mountains, even if her safety there was not guaranteed.
Astegur was not prepared for the burden of a human. He had decided long ago he would avoid the sacrificial zones until the Bathyr ruled them. Calavia wasn’t human, and yet he battled the need to protect her as if she were.
His hooves sank low into the water as he stepped off the raised land later that day, with ropes of reeds hanging off his right shoulder. He headed for the outer stakes first, at the settlement’s borders and began a gruesome web.
A faint noise filled his ears, and the smell of tainted blood filled the air.
Calavia?
Chapter Twelve
Astegur stopped, his muscles tense. He had forced Calavia to rest not long ago. How did she leave the temple without his knowledge?
Her scent was faint but unmistakable. His jaw ticked, his hands formed fists, and his barely suppressed anger returned. He stepped toward the source of the noise—toward the scent of blood—without making a sound.
The closer he got, the stronger the smell of tainted blood became. And as he settled his back upon the broken stones of a fallen building, Calavia’s voice filled the air, quiet and faint.
“Mother, what have you done? What have you done!”
A groan and shuffle of clothes and limbs had him peering around the corner. Calavia stood several yards away, touching and attending a female thrall. Astegur narrowed his gaze. Her mother? It was the same thrall from the first day, the one that could have been the hag’s twin, if circumstances had been different. If humanity had remained within the thrall.
It had to be her mother.
But it was Calavia’s worry that kept him hidden in the shadows.
“Why would you do this to yourself?” she cried, gripping the thrall’s arms and exposing them to the light. Blood drenched its arms, leaking from scratches running up and down their length. They were at their thickest upon the thrall’s wrists.
His eyes glazed over as he watched the blood from the thrall stain Calavia’s hands and dress. Ruby on alabaster. It reminded him of the taste of the hag’s innocence all over his tongue. Delectable in an entirely hedonistic and wrong way. It was like feasting on an extinction.
He had not been worthy of taking a pretty female’s cunt, let alone one that had never been touched by male hands.
His prick hardened fast, and he widened his stance to accommodate its thick mass. The front of Calavia’s dress was now soaked with the thrall’s blood. Her worried pawing and hopeless noises made his cock jerk in excitement. He stepped out from the shadows.
The thrall’s hand suddenly snapped out of Calavia’s grasp and slashed across her cheek. Astegur stepped forward with a snarl when something otherworldly and potent hit his nose, rooting him to the spot.
Calavia cried out and wiped her cheek with her free hand without noticing him. “Why have you done this to yourself? Why are you trying to kill yourself?” She let the female thrall go to rip the hem of her dress. “Please, please stop.” She clutched at the thrall again and tried to bind the thrall’s bleeding arms.
Its mouth fell open.
His own mouth parted as he realized that the faint scent he smelled wasn’t just the sudden, thick stench of blood, but of pure blood.
Pure, citrusy, mouthwatering blood.
Astegur snapped his mouth closed and ignored the various smells on the air but the faint, delectable, pure aroma underneath them all. It was the same smell as the one in his cave, many days prior. The same one that kept Calavia’s ghostly phantom embedded in his skull as he traveled days across the land in torturous pain.
He growled low. “What trickery is this?”
Calavia finally looked his way just as a horrible, bloodcurdling scream filled his ears. Pain surged through his head, and his nose filled with his own blood, deluding the delectable scent further.
He snarled and snapped his teeth at the loss, his skull feeling as if it would split in two.
He saw Calavia drop to her knees, her hands covering her ears as she curled into a fetal position. He reached for his weapon, fighting through the wave of shock as his skull threatened to shatter when the sound grew even louder.
The female thrall—who he now knew had to be her mother—had a distorted, terrible face, its mouth hanging as if stretched out far past the bones of a human jaw. It turned his way as he fought his way forward, Calavia’s deceit no longer on his mind.
“Don’t hurt her!” Calavia begged, trying to get between him and the thrall, her voice rising over the thrall’s shrill wails. “She’s not right, please.”
He barely heard her, the thrall’s shriek eclipsing rationality. His only thought now was to get Calavia away from the creature.
Astegur pulled his battleaxe out and moved to swing, gritting through the pain of Calavia’s magic against him.
He raised his blade.
“Mother, run!” Calavia screamed.
The creature suddenly twisted away, wailed again shrilly, and tried to twist back around, as if it didn’t want to run from him and his deathblow, as if trying to deny Calavia’s command. But at the last second, with his heavy axe hanging in the space between him, Calavia jumped between him and the thrall.
“No,” she said, eyes narrowed upon him.
He bared his teeth and hesitated.
And with a speed he could not match, the female thrall scurried on all fours out of sight. Astegur grabbed Calavia’s arm and wrenched her to his chest just as it faded in the distance.
He gripped her hair and tilted Calavia’s head back to look at him. “Why?” he roared, furious.
But he wasn’t answered by her. The sound of a horn blared in the distance, followed by hollers and whistling. His head snapped up.
“Astegur?”
He barely had time to fall upon her, forcing her low to the ground to shield her when he realized what the whistling meant.
“Astegur!” she screamed into his ear as he pressed her as low as he dared in the water and mud.
“Stay low,” he rasped out, wrapping his arm around her and stopping her confused struggles. The whistling sound zipped directly overhead where they had just stood and he dropped his weight a little more upon her. “Spears,” he said, trying to calm her. She cannot hear what I can. Her struggles stopped. Another spear shot above his horns, followed by two more. One grazed his shoulder before it stabbed the ground a short distance away. Several more shot by, searching for their mark. He lowered his mouth over Calavia’s ear. “Quiet, now.”
She nodded against him. “They’re here.”
“It appears so.” He licked the curve of her ear and lifted up just enough to meet her eyes. His gaze caught the faint red slashes on her cheek where the thrall had slashed her with its nails. Tiny little dots of blood seeped from the minor wound, but it was enough to ensnare him. He breathed in deeply, lowering his nose to the source, almost afraid that what he smelled wasn’t real, wasn’t powerful. But as the scent flooded him again, he knew it wasn’t an illusion. His mouth watered.
“We’re not ready,” she said, breaking him out of his trance.
Another spear whistled above them, boring into the mud less than three feet away, snapping him further out of his transfixion.
“A scouting party,” he muttered, lowering his voice further and swallowing the saliva in his mouth. “They are listening for us. We need to move.”
“Yes
.” She twisted around underneath him to crawl on her elbows and knees. She made her way slowly back toward the center of Prayer, and he moved with her, shielding her back, easily keeping up with her slow progress. As they made their way steadily, and at some point while wading where the water was at its deepest, the spears stopped being thrown. They were replaced with cackling hoots and jeers deep in the mist and beyond the green lights.
His eyes remained on Calavia’s back, and as the blood on her cheek began to clot and was displaced with the swamp water, the rest of the citrusy smell faded from his nostrils. His focus shifted to the centaur scouts, their voices, and how many separate sounds they made.
When they reached the temple steps, one of the thralls came forward and helped Calavia out of the swamp while several others moved to flank her sides.
Astegur followed her up and put his arm around her, drawing her into his wet chest. The thralls went still around them, eyeing him as if they did not trust her safety with him, and he stared them down. Eventually, they moved to flank him as well.
“Are you well?” he asked, searching her person. Her entire body was on view through her thin, sodden dress.
She raised her wet hands to her face. “Yes. They’re here. How did they get back so soon? I thought we had more time… And their spears came through. It’s not possible. Nothing has ever come through my barrier that has sought violence.”
He grunted, pulling her with him as he went deeper into the entrance of the temple. Once there were walls on every side of them, he relaxed enough to let her go. Calavia shed her wet dress in front of him and ducked into the kitchens. He moved to follow her, if only to keep her in sight, but she returned with another old, ragged shift in her hands and dressed herself. The shift was just as old and thin as the first and would do nothing to protect her from the elements, let alone centaurs.
He wanted to tear it from her body with his nails and teeth.
His pent-up frustration roared back to life. “Stay within my sight. You can no longer move through Prayer freely.”
She looked up at him, her expression sober. “I can be quiet, and there are places here I can hide. I have hidden from the world in the past, but I don’t want to hide. I want to fight and protect my dark spot in the world.” Her eyes moved from him toward the exit several times. “We need to kill them.”
What was she looking for?
Astegur looked behind him to see the thralls hard at work again, but he could not find Calavia’s mother within the group. His tail flicked in annoyance. The female thrall had run away like an animal, had tried to bleed itself dry, and had put Calavia in danger. It’s still out there.
He turned toward her. “Who was she?” he asked, wondering if she would lie.
She frowned and looked away, but he caught her chin and tilted it up. His thumb slid up to caress her scratch.
She reached up to clutch his wrist but did not struggle to get away. “My mother.”
“Your…” He shook his head. “I know. How can I not? She looks like you.”
“Yes.”
No wonder she wanted to protect Prayer. Some of the pieces fell into place, and some of her actions started to make sense. A rumble built from the pit of his stomach to rise menacingly up his throat. “You have dwelled here all these years because of her?”
Her gaze remained steady on his. “This place is my home. Her home.”
“She hurt you,” he snapped, tapping the scratch with his thumb. He could not look away from it even though the small beads of blood had been washed away.
Calavia reached up and covered the wound with her hand, jerking out of his grip and turning away. “It’s nothing. The centaurs—”
He grabbed her shoulder and spun her back around, plastering her slight frame hard against his chest, consuming her presence. “I know,” he growled.
She stiffened in his arms, leaning as far back as she could, and furrowed her brows in confusion.
He said it again. “I know, Calavia.” Steam poured out of his mouth. He was suddenly unable to control it.
“You weren’t supposed to know.”
Fire swirled through him in infuriating waves, stroking his frustration. “Know what? You thought you would be able to keep your humanity from me, while trapping me in this dying spot, until you got what you wanted from me? Until I fought off your enemies? What did you expect? To keep such a secret? How? If you have been here all these years, how have you kept her away? She is a thrall!” Astegur slammed his fist into the stone wall to his right, sending dirt into the air. “Thralls do not understand language, they do not protect unless they are enchanted, and they do not have pure blood!” What had he gotten himself into?
If he lived to see Vedikus once more, he would strangle the life from his throat. He caught Calavia looking away from him, her hands fiddling, her expression guilty. He glared at her. “What more have you not told me?”
“We need to kill those scouts. There’s no more time for this, please. If they tell the others—”
“If they tell the others, there will be nothing that stops them.” He gripped her hair and forced her to her knees before him. He tilted her head back until her neck strained from looking up at him. “Oh, hag, there is always time for battle, but there’s no more time for secrets.” He breathed smoke into her face. “I will have the truth now!”
Astegur hauled her up and dragged her after him as he stormed into the deepest recesses of the temple. He released her at the foot of her altar. He threw back his head and bellowed furiously, filling the room with his heat.
When he looked back down at Calavia, she had risen to her feet and was holding clumps of wax in her hands. “Astegur,” she said as he bared his teeth, “I don’t want to do this.”
He eyed her hands and reached for her. She threw the wax into his face and dodged him. He roared again, scraping it from his eyes. He saw her reach for another clump as his vision began to waver and spot. This time, when she threw her magic at him, he dodged and skidded on his cloven hooves, knocking her back into the altar, and capturing her to his chest.
“No!” She slammed her elbow, her feet, everything she had, into him but it did nothing to stop him from turning her around until she faced him.
He tightened his hold around her middle hard enough that her back bent. One of her hands came free and tore at his chest before he caught it in his fist and squeezed.
“The truth!” he bellowed. “Why is your blood pure?”
“I can’t!”
“I will not fight for a liar.”
“You will not fight at all! You just roar like the mist owes you for the blood you have spilled.”
She struggled against his chest, fighting him, and he just held her, stopping her from doing any damage to his flesh. But the more she fought, the more they cursed each other, the more the tension within him built. She would not settle. She was not tiring. Her eyes were wide with fear and desperation.
Her struggles excited his bestial nature, and his body primed fast and vicious.
Tensing, with his tail tapping wildly on the back of his leathers, he groped and touched her skin, her soft spots harder. The fire in his gut flooded his prick, hardening it to a painful point, lengthening it until he felt her fight against it. And as she fought, Calavia rubbed it mercilessly between them, making the haze in his eyes grow, and his bestial side spit and fumed.
Astegur grabbed her hair and wrenched her head back, slamming his mouth over hers. His lips mauled hers, nipping, sucking, and tasting, suddenly desperate with pent up rage, and the frustration he felt whenever she was near. From the moment he saw her in the flames, seeking his help, he had been furious. Why? The fury had grown and bloomed and now spilled out of him from every fiber of his being. She was a cursed human! Now a pure blood one to excite his darker side. A blight to his plans!
And he could not imagine her anywhere else but here, in his hold, where he could touch her at will. Where he could breathe his smoke all over her pale skin and lap
its bitter taste up with his tongue. Where he could slip his scarred, horrid hands into her hair and force her to her knees before him.
He pictured her spreading her pale legs out for him.
He crushed her mouth with his, feeding off her startlement, her fear, and forcing her to bend to his will. When her lips opened in a gasp, he shot his tongue into her mouth and fought her tongue. The kiss was brutal, like he was, a promise to her that if they should live, it would always be like this.
Because he liked the power she made him feel.
Eventually, Calavia stopped fighting him, and he allowed her hands to come up and grasp his horns. Her legs ceased kicking and instead hooked above his muscled thighs. When she moved her lips against his, it was with hesitation.
Astegur ate her inexperience up like the starved beast that he was.
Her taste filled his mouth, wild, magicked, and fresh, with a bitter burn for an aftertaste. The faint smell of her pure blood drove his need, and he grasped Calavia harder to him, feeling her body mold with his… But he couldn’t get enough. His nails bit into her flesh, his teeth razed across her lower lip, and the mews she sounded urged him on. He sank his teeth into her flesh, and her blood filled his mouth.
His eyes went wide with shock, his mouth faltering on her own. Calavia whimpered and looked into his eyes as he realized what he was tasting.
“You are human,” he said rasped slowly. “You’re pure.” Awe laced his voice as a terrible excitement filled him.
“It’s not what you think,” she whispered.
She tried to pull away from him, but he found her mouth again and held onto her tightly. It didn’t matter anymore, nothing about her past or Prayer, or the thralls around them—the incoming danger—mattered. All that mattered was that the gods smiled upon his sacrifices and gifted him a female so perfect. And he had already claimed her. A boon for all his hurts, his battles, and the blood he lost in each one. The God queen of his people had given him the means to breed a future lineage of great warriors.
He sucked hard on Calavia’s tongue until her whimpers faded back to moans and her pelvis rocked against his prick.