by Lucas, Naomi
He growled. “And leave you to fight this battle alone?”
Her eyes dipped and briefly flared. “Centaur heads?” she asked suddenly, refusing to acknowledge his words.
He released his hold on her neck and knelt at her side. She is hurting. He forgot how different humans were to the beasts borne of the mist. Their emotions were softer, their thoughts kinder. They were so easily broken.
“Calavia,” he said with sudden reverence, never hearing his voice speak in such a way. He knew what he was about to do was wrong, but his submission felt right. The need to bow his head and show her his most weakened, vulnerable self, to demonstrate that she was not alone in this, threatened to overcome him. He longed to tell her that he had wanted to find her the moment she appeared as a wraith in his cave. That he had wanted to claim her even then, and that he was going to save her no matter the cost.
“Your blood is gone from the air, your thralls are fearsome to behold.” Astegur rolled his tongue in his mouth, finding the appendage heavy and burdensome. With his loins primed, his prick began to lubricate itself, and he was overwhelmed with the need to submit to her.
Astegur bent over and placed his spread hands on the floor before her.
He had never laid himself out before another with an inescapable need to pledge his strength, his life, so fervently. He knew he should be rallying and preparing for the imminent attack—he felt the quiver in his tendons to fight the threat that hovered over him and Calavia—but he could not stop the soul wrenching urge to prove himself to her.
That, if she asked, he would abandon his brothers for her. That, if she needed it, he would fight to the death for her. It was beyond lust for her body and her humanity, beyond the power she could give him in spades, and beyond the power their children would be born with. He wanted what the thralls had.
He wanted her.
He just didn’t give a mistfuck about Prayer. He never had.
Chapter Fifteen
Calavia wanted to fight off the numbing chill in her chest when Astegur appeared, but it was hard to eradicate something that kept her protected from the world. Something had happened to her when he’d walked away, and the image of his back fading into the mist would forever be burned into her mind. She closed her eyes and tried to shake the image, but it remained, like a waking nightmare. The fear was unwarranted, and yet, it was there.
When she reopened her eyes, they met and locked with his. He looked away first, lowering his head to the ground where the tips of his horns grazed the side of her dress.
“Astegur?” She drew back as he leaned forward. “What are you doing?”
He reached behind him and pulled the heads from his belt, dragging them forward and placing them to the side. “I killed those who tried to harm you. There would be more if your thralls had not torn the others from limb to limb. I have never seen anything like them. But those kills were not entirely mine.”
She licked her lips and pressed a hand over her heart where it pounded. He was prostrating himself before her. This fearsome warrior who had all the power in his grasp to kill her on the spot was yielding to her. “Why are you bowing to me?” The sense of it still eluded her. But her pulse quickened seeing him in such a position.
The silence that stretched between them felt like an eternity. She outstretched her hand to touch his head, his horns, but stopped short when he spoke.
“I have not seen such devotion in a leader since my father was head my old tribe. If you will have me, willingly this time, I would beg for such devotion to be extended to me.”
Her hand began to shake. She could not believe her ears. She wanted to lower her hand and touch him, but a sudden fear stole over her. A niggling whisper told her that if she gave him that power, he would use it against her. Her loneliness caught in her throat, and she swallowed it down. Beasts such as him do not submit willingly.
“I will give myself to you, guard you and yours, if you would mount me.” His words ended on a soft whisper.
Calavia looked around at the thralls surrounding them, and the weapons they infused with her power. Her wax dripped off them. Somehow having them here, as witnesses to Astegur’s submission, gave her the courage to hope. It was an emotion she hadn’t felt since she realized her magic and wax supply was dwindling.
From the corner of her eye, farther back than the rest, she saw her mother watching from the shadows, her arms still bleeding. But then her mother stepped back and vanished from Calavia’s sight.
Calavia turned back to Astegur and gently placed her hand on his horn. A rumble escaped him as she caressed up the bone to pet his head. She pressed her legs together as the noise he made filled her with longing. He sat up to his knees slowly, and her hand dropped from his head to fall upon his chest.
She discovered the fresh wounds he had sustained. She dug out the arrowheads still within him, making him hiss, and let his warm blood flow over her hands but did not hesitate. She took some of her wax and spread it across his skin, willing the wounds to heal.
When she was done, she met his dark eyes and understood he was hers.
“Mount me, female. Claim me. Finish what you have started.” His voice darkened in her ears.
A tremor shot through her, and a deep, dark ache coalesced in her core. The smell of his cum overshadowed her thoughts. “Not here.”
It was the wrong thing to say, because in the next moment, he was standing over her and she was thrown over his shoulder. Calavia scrambled and tensed as she grasped at his back, but all her blood flooded her head and made her dizzy.
He released her just as suddenly, and she looked around, dazed, at the hearth and old kitchen. The knots grew and tangled between her thighs as her now familiar emptiness burst inside her. She righted herself. She didn’t have long before he pulled her down to straddle his thickly furred thighs. His large hands tugged her skirts up around her waist.
He was dirty, and his blood was on both of them, but his intent upon her was too much to deny and she liked the markings of the slaughter on his body.
She met his gaze. “Again?”
Astegur answered by gripping her waist and pushing his cock hard against her sex. “Choose me, Calavia,” he demanded. “Mount me.”
She jerked up and her breath hitched as the blunt head of his cock pressed into her entrance. She had barely healed from their first time, before he took her again, and now he wanted to fill her for a third time in so many days. Her body burned with prior use and a fresh wave of lust.
She leaned over him, reveling in the power she now had over him. “Be careful, bull.” She gasped again as the blunt, wet side of his tongue stroked her face. “You are close to begging.”
“If it comes to that point, hag, you will not like what I’ll do to you.”
His words thrilled her. She squeezed his shaft with both handsand rolled her sex upon his tip. She forgot the pain of penetration as the void between her legs grew making her crave his member a little more.
He moved a hand between their bodies as his other lifted her off him and on to her knees. Her hips jerked into the air above as he forced two of his thick, vicious fingers inside her. Her eyes closed tightly as his fingers scissored her sex and ravaged that emptiness she hated so much. She was spread open, forced to succumb to his will as he readied her to accommodate his size.
Pleasure ignited like hellfire where his fingers probed within her. Calavia threw her head back with a mewling cry as bliss exploded within her, coaxed by the fingers inside her body. The same fingers that belonged to the hand that had killed countless was ripping pleasure out of her. She fell into Astegur’s scarred chest, shaking, feverish.
Her muscles clenched and spasmed and continued to do so unendingly while she desperately caught her breath. He pulled his fingers out of her, leaving a gushing wet trail behind, and gripped her waist again. She wanted to cry, to beg for him to thrust his fingers back inside her, but she knew it wouldn’t be enough to fully sate her. She raised her trembling hips up to
seat herself on his cock. The blunt tip pressed against her entrance.
He thrust into her, and her body hungrily accepted him.
“Female,” he grunted in her ear, again and again, primal and perfect.
Calavia sank her nails into his chest as she rode him hard, fast. The fervent, wild pace didn’t last long as Astegur roared, blasting her with wind and smoke that swept her hair back from her face. His seed filled her womb. His smoke flooded her senses. She breathed it in.
And yet, it still wasn’t enough. In the back of her mind, beyond the glorious pleasure, she knew it would end and hell would return, but for a single selfish moment, she let herself give in and ride the waves of delicious torment, ride his monstrous bull cock, and allow the pain to morph into something pleasurable.
“We’re going to die,” she cried through bliss and bleakness. Her climax had forced the words from her lips.
Astegur grasped her hips tighter and rammed her back down upon him, making her cry louder, forcing tears to her eyes. “Do you trust me?” he rasped.
How could she not? What is trust in such a dark world? She was loyal to him, she knew that now, but what was loyalty without trust? She clutched his hard flesh with her nails, seeking the hot feel of his blood beneath their beds. “I do.”
He thrust up into her again as he pushed her hips down. “You will not die.”
She closed her eyes tight, leaning heavily upon him as he moved her. “How can you be so certain?”
“Because I would never allow it.”
She squeezed her eyes shut tighter. “I’m afraid.”
He released her hips and grasped her hair, pulling her head back and forcing her to look at him. His eyes were hard, animalistic, and betrayed no fear. They pulled her in, made her want to believe him.
“You’ve given yourself to me, female. It is the greatest gift you could ever give a creature such as myself. I will not let you die. You’ve chosen me despite the risk, let me prove to you that your choice was right.” He held her firm and pinned her under his stare, tightening his hold ever so slightly.
Calavia tried to shake her head but he wouldn’t let her. “I wish I could feel as you do.”
“You will soon enough. I have a plan,” he said, startling her. He released her hair before she could respond and grabbed her buttocks, lifting her slowly, deviantly off his length.
A slow exhalation of air left her lungs as he slipped out of her. His huge prick fell to the side to lie on his thigh as his seed poured out of her to slicken her own. She didn’t want him to leave her but didn’t have the will or energy to stop him.
“A plan?” she asked.
“I will tell you while you eat.”
“I don’t think I have the stomach for it,” she whispered.
Astegur grunted and pulled her back into his arms, standing at the same time and kicking the linens he previously piled before the hearth back into a soft pile. He laid her upon them and moved away to gather blisterbark from the storeroom. When he returned, he placed them in the hearth and breathed over them until they ignited into flames.
“You have lost a lot of blood in the time I’ve been here. As long as you know the barriers around Prayer will hold, then you must take the time to eat and restore your strength.” He returned to the storeroom and came back a minute later with his arms filled with roots and her ration stores. “I will not tell you my plan otherwise.”
He stood there, seemingly waiting for her response, so she nodded. He went back to preparing a meal.
“I don’t know how much longer the barrier will hold,” she said.
“You cannot strengthen it?”
“No…”
He stirred the ingredients into a bowl, adding in a jug of fresh water. “Why?”
“I did not put it there to begin with.”
His eyes shot back to hers, and she moved her legs under her.
“Tell me now, Calavia,” he ordered, his voice grave. “I will not ask for answers and be given none again. We are past secrets between us. I will not forgive your lies again.”
It was hard for her to even fathom the idea of making herself any more vulnerable than she already was, but she knew he was right. They had to be past it, and he had proven himself to her. He stayed.
She bit down on her tongue. Despite all the promises she made to her mother to keep herself safe at any cost, to retain her knowledge in her throat and not share it with the world, Calavia knew it couldn’t be her burden any longer. Not since the minotaurs arrived and took over the mountains close to her own land, and not since she’d chosen to save Aldora and help the human and her minotaur escape.
Calavia thought about what she would do if she could go back in time. Would she have still helped the human female out, knowing all she did now? Not once had she ever thought there could be more than her quiet existence, not until she saw what Aldora and Vedikus had. Nor in the many years alone prior, had she thought there would be kindness outside of her small world.
Her mother convinced her otherwise.
She looked at Astegur and knew she would divulge everything.
Calavia clenched her toes, deciding, knowing there was nothing left to lose. “I told you before that Prayer fell the night my mother conceived me. She was taken by force by a sun priest in the hours leading up to the town’s fall. The mist was clouding our village and the capital was delivering sacrifices to keep it at bay, but my mother was a priestess who had hidden her magic, and when the mists worsened…she tried to stop it. The priest caught her.”
“Your father?”
“My father.” She waved her hand at the walls around her. “He ruled Prayer. According to my mother, this was once a deeply religious place, and people would travel far to study here and become priests and priestesses themselves in order to serve the sun. There was once a monastery high up in the mountains devoted to the most religious patrons, but Prayer was the town that supported it. The capital lost the mountains and did not want to lose Prayer, as well.”
Astegur stopped stirring and turned to face her. “I’ve been there.”
“Yes,” she said. “I know. There’s not much to do here but spy through my wax.”
“Have you seen me in it?”
“It’s hard to say. You saw the centaurs before, but do you remember their faces, the details? Everything the wax shows is out of context… I can’t assume to know what is actually happening, or who I’m actually seeing.” She remembered back to the day she summoned him. “I did not recognize you when you first stood before me.”
“In the flames?”
“And the smoke.”
“And the barrier that protects this place?” he asked.
Calavia stilled, but forced herself to relax as she laid her hands before her, palms up for Astegur to see. “My mother fought and cursed my father. She prayed, bloodied and ruined, to the sun for help. She would not tell me what happened, but I know now that it wasn’t the sun that answered her prayers, but the mist. It flooded the town, and she got her wish, but—”
“Everything comes with a sacrifice.”
“Yes.”
“So, your mother placed the barrier?”
“I don’t know, not really. In the hours that Prayer was enveloped, most of the survivors tried to flee, including my father, before the labyrinth wall had time to erect itself deeper into Savadon. No one knew if they made it. They never came back. But not everyone was able to flee. My mother was too hurt to try, and the prisoners from the capital were left behind, stuck behind bars. The elderly were too weak. It was chaos. The people gathered here in the temple to fight off the monsters that waited for the wall to shift so they could enter. But they never came, and Prayer remained untouched, even after the wall moved inward.” Calavia picked at her dress. She peered back up at Astegur and he stared at her with a strange expression, one she was sure was disbelief.
“A dark spot in a dark world,” he murmured. “One that shouldn’t even exist anymore.”
“
Why not?”
“The mist takes everything it can. It doesn’t answer prayers or listen to anyone.”
“It still took everything. It just gave nothing to the beasts.”
He growled. “To my kind, you mean.”
“Can you really speak for it? Are you more powerful than you let on?” she argued. “To speak for a curse that is beyond us?”
“In all my travels, the mist has done nothing but take, reap, and distort the land and its creatures in a monstrous way. It has taken the light from us and killed the land. It’s a disease.”
“And yet the mist hides us when we need to move quietly, it gifts its creatures the strength to survive it, and maybe sometimes, when a witch—or a priestess—is willing to curse the world in her despair for protection, it answers because it understands? Perhaps my mother’s dormant magic and her prayer were the last things the mist needed to take this land. Because it did not just take the settlement, it took the entire swamp.”
“It did not take you.”
She curled her fingers into her palms and brought them up to hug herself. “Sometimes I wish it had.”
His eyes narrowed angrily and she quickly looked away. Calavia waited for him to force her to look at him again, but it didn’t happen. Instead he stormed away with another growl, but in the next moment, he was back at her side handing her a bowl full of simmering roots and meat from the hearth.
“Eat,” he ordered.
She lifted the bowl to her mouth and blew on the broth. Once it had cooled, she sipped carefully. As it entered her mouth, there were tastes she couldn’t quite name but disregarded it for weakness. He was right, she had eaten little since he arrived, and had extended herself greatly. The flavors made her light-headed, and before she could swallow and chew the contents, her thundering pulse quieted, and a calmness took over her.
“Thank you,” she said once she finished eating.
Astegur took her bowl away and placed it on the hearth ledge.
Calavia wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her aches and pains were fading faster than usual.