The Horned Mage: Books 1-5

by Hayden Harper

  Lexus made a strained face. “Whatever is on that paper we’ll take care of it together.”

  “No.”

  “Get your head out of your ass,” Victoria snapped.

  I stiffened.

  “You think I’m with you only because of your magic? Is that what you think?”

  Yeah, I kind of had.

  My thoughts must have shown on my face because her eyes narrowed. “Un-fucking believable. Did you even do a Google search on werewolf mates?”

  No. No, I had not.

  “My wolf recognized you for you before your magic bound us together. I was already going to be with you, dumbass.”

  “But if it weren’t for my magic, I wouldn’t…you don’t understand. It’s changing me. I can feel it.” I reached up and touched my antlers. They’d darkened several shades since my curse had broken. Before long they’d be black if this didn’t stop. And my teeth were sharper now as well. And…and I was meaner. Tougher. More aggressive. I didn’t back down and I tended to act without thinking, on impulse, if the last few months were anything to go by. I was not a good person to be around. Bad things kept happening to and around me and now I knew why.

  “Bullshit,” she said.

  “Yeah, bullshit,” Lexus agreed. She looked between us, then offered me an almost apologetic smile. “You…you’re more confident than before. Back when I first met you, you were kind of a loser. Not because you couldn’t do magic but…you didn’t really do anything.”

  She thought I was a loser before my curse had been broken? Thanks, Lexus, thanks a lot. Because that curse breaking had not been an improvement. It hadn’t. And Victoria…werewolves were attracted to power, alpha males and all that shit. And look at her role models. Biker gang criminals. Violence on wheels.

  “I want to be alone right now,” I said. “Go away.”

  They didn’t move. As one they started to come toward me, slowly, as if struggling. My magic surged and I let it pour into my voice, commanding them. “Go home.”

  They both winced and averted their green eyes. And then they were gone.

  So I could command them. That wasn’t horrifying in the slightest. Dammit, what was I going to do?

  I stared at the paper some more until the golden light turned orange. New footsteps approached, soft and familiar. I recognized them as easily as I did Lexus and Victoria’s, though I had no reason to. I hadn’t spent a lot of time around Sarah lately. I should probably stay the hell away from her, truth be told. Maybe I could send Lexus and Victoria away as well? They loved each other, so they could have one another without me fucking things up for them.

  “Shouldn’t you be in the hospital with your mom?” I asked as she closed the distance between us.

  “She’s on drugs and passed out,” Sarah said. “Probably having her first real rest since…you know.”

  I nodded. “Still, you shouldn’t be here.”

  “Caleb Marshal, believe it or not you don’t actually get to decide where I’m supposed to go or what I’m supposed to do. I’ve had enough of that to last me a lifetime, thank you.”

  I cringed. “Guess you can have this table then. I’ll go find somewhere else to—”

  She snatched the paper from my hands.

  “Hey!”

  She glared at me, pale blue eyes narrowed. “Is this what’s bothering you so much?”

  I wanted to look away, to break her gaze. I couldn’t. I couldn’t back down from the challenge she was offering me. A wave of aggression surged through me and I stood up, towering over her. “Yes. It’s bothering me. Give it back.”

  She blinked. “No. But…I think I like this side of you.”

  It was my turn to blink in stupid surprise. “Huh?”

  She used my confusion to skim the paper, her eyes coming to rest on the same block of text that had arrested my own attention. Then they went back up, reading over the chart. Occasionally she would make little noises in her mouth.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this, this is fascinating,” she said when she finally tore her eyes away. “This might explain Dr. Hardin’s interest in you at least.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Never mind that right now,” she said. “Caleb. This…do you realize what this says about you?” She was so earnest. To her, this was just another medical science puzzle to figure out. She had always wanted to be a doctor.

  “That I’m a lot less human than I’d thought,” I said. “I mean, I don’t fully understand it all, but it says that…I’m both a cambion and a changeling. How does that even happen?”

  “On purpose, I would think. The effort that had to have gone into conceiving you…Caleb, you do know what those are, don’t you?”

  Not in intense depth, but basically yes. A changeling was a half fae-half human child, usually left abandoned by the fae parent on a doorstep or in place of a kidnap victim. A cambion was the result of incubi and succubi trading human sperm and impregnating a human woman with a human man’s semen, tainting it with infernal magic along the way.

  Both changelings and cambions were prone to…misbehavior. They didn’t tend to live long lives. If you had asked me, I wouldn’t have thought that an incubus or succubus could rape a fae. And it was rape—those creatures were not the hot little sex-bombs videogames made them out to be. They were fucking evil. And I had their blood in me. Along with the blood of an unknown type of fae.

  “I researched them both,” I said. “They still don’t know what kind of fae blood I’ve got but they want to run more tests on the samples we sent.”

  “Caleb, you’re still half human. Demons don’t actually have genetic material. They influenced your magic, not your DNA. Or…at least that’s always been the theory. I don’t know how their magic interacts with fae magic.” She was actually getting excited.

  That was good, wasn’t it? I liked seeing her face light up like this. I wish it was about something other than this though. Being part fae wasn’t all that surprising really. Most magic that tied things to the land, at least in the west, tended to be fae-related and my magic liked whatever was going on at Eleanor’s house. I had thought though that maybe I was only a quarter or something, like maybe one of my parents had been a changeling. Not that one of my parent’s was a fae who had been either been raped or been party to a rape by demonic entities while my other parent was raped outright. It was…disturbing.

  “Sarah,” I said slowly. “I’m a monster.”

  The cheerful expression on her face died. “Don’t you dare talk to me about monsters. I know monsters much better than you do.”

  I guess that was fair. “But—

  “No buts! Caleb,” she reached up and put a hand on my shoulder and took a deep breath. “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. You…you made that house so much better. You made things bearable.”

  My face cracked. “I’m so sorry. I had—I was right there and I had no idea what was going on. I should have—“

  Her hand went from my shoulder to gently place the fingers over my lips. “That right there is why you are a good man, Caleb. This paper doesn’t change that. We understand your magic and maybe your impulses a little bit better now, but that’s all. You’re still you. And I wanted to protect that. I didn’t want…Caleb, I didn’t want you to know what was happening to me.”

  Her fingers dropped away and she broke my gaze to stare down at the bench.

  “Why?” If she had told me I could have helped her. I would have helped her. God, I hated that I had been so blind.

  “Because then it would all be over,” she said. “Not the…not what he was doing. But you would have gone away. They would have taken you, and you’d have known that…that I wasn’t worth…”

  I lifted her chin up and met her teary eyes. I meant to pull her to my chest in an embrace.

  Instead, our lips came together and we kissed.

  Chapter Eight

/>   The kiss should have been short. A chaste and accidental thing that we could brush off. But when our lips began to part, I pushed forward, capturing her mouth with mine, my fingers reaching around to tangle in her pale hair and pull her to me. I wanted her. I had wanted her since the first day I’d been brought to the Marshal household and told she was going to be my new sister. I’d wanted her even more since she’d snuck into my room all those years ago, but I’d pushed those desires down and aside. That wasn’t our relationship and was never going to be our relationship.

  And now here we were.

  She kissed me back, throwing her arms around me and pulling me into her. The bench and picnic table didn’t make for a comfortable position and when we tried to adjust ourselves we fell. I tucked myself under her and hit the ground at the same time she fell on top of me with a little shriek.

  She was on top of me. She was in control.

  I didn’t want to hurt her or ruin the relationship we’d built. This wasn’t the right time to do this. If there ever could be a right time it wouldn’t be now, not when I’d just learned she was pregnant with her rapist father’s baby and we’d both learned that her mother was both alive and had been his victim for the last two years. The last few days must have been traumatic for her. I should put a stop to this right now. My erection screamed at me as it strained against my jeans, informing me that I was an absolute dumbass.

  I started to say something and the look of dazed lust in her eyes suddenly became both hard and fiery. “Don’t you dare stop now, Caleb. Don’t you dare.”

  Her voice broke a little on the last word.

  I rolled her over, flipping her into leaves and pine needles, and once again claimed her mouth with mine. Desire exploded between us. My magic rose and I didn’t care. All I could think about was the girl in my arms, her tongue sliding against mine and her breasts pressing into my chest. Only a few layers of cloth separated our bodies and I wanted them gone.

  I held back. I didn’t want to hurt or frighten her. She’d been through enough. She…she needed me. Needed me to need her and to not hold anything back. I had a sudden insight into her life, not unlike what I’d shared with Lexus the first time we’d had sex. Apart from our brief encounters, Sarah had only ever been with Albert. And Albert had been…he’d made gentle sex something that made her skin crawl. She needed something different.

  It had taken me a little while to learn the preferences of my girls. Lexus liked gentle kisses and hard sex. Victoria liked to make love but appreciated rough foreplay and dirty kissing. What Sarah liked came to me in a hard rush, whether because we’d had sex so long ago or because I was adapting to magic, I couldn’t have said and in that moment didn’t really care.

  I kissed her, crushing her mouth with mine, grabbing her hands and shoving them over her head. Her back arched off the ground and I ripped her shirt up, over her bra, over her head, and used it to help bind her hands together. Her body was softer, more lush than either of my girls, her skin paler and her breasts more bountiful, straining against the boring beige bra that held them against her chest.

  Green fire sprang to life between my fingers and I burned the bit of cloth in the center hooking the two cups together and the garment spilled away, revealing her naked breasts to the air. Her nipples were shockingly pink and hard, begging to be pinched and kissed. I pressed my mouth into the side of her neck, letting her feel my teeth against the sensitive skin while the hand not holding her hands above her head slid down to cup one of her full breasts.

  She made little moaning noises that set my blood on fire. My hands were not gentle with her. She didn’t want them to be. I could feel her pleasure at my roughness, igniting a passion in her that she’d feared she’d never feel.

  I was in her head, then I was her and it was a little over a year ago. Another student, a man also on a Navy medical track, had propositioned her. He was attractive and she wanted him. She wanted him more when he’d told her that he lived a rather eccentric lifestyle. The kind that featured floggers and ball gags. She hadn’t wanted to turn him down but she had, ashamed of her excitement. She had just escaped an abusive relationship, why on earth would the idea of a pretend abusive one turn her on so much?

  She’d thought she’d pushed the memory away and forgotten it. It resurfaced now and with it, a surge of lust mingled with…hope. My remaining doubts about hurting her vanished.

  I yanked down her pants, forcing them over her tennis shoes, and ripped her panties off before freeing my cock. I fell upon her, slamming our mouths together once again as I slammed our hips together. My cock found a home between her lightly haired pussy lips and pushed in. She was only a little wet and she gasped in a mixture of pain and pleasure as I forced myself inside her body. She shook and gasped, shuddering as I bottomed out, and suddenly her pussy was flooded.

  “Oh God, yes,” she cried. Fluids gushed over my cock and down our thighs. “It hurts so good. Do more. More.”

  I slammed into her. Over and over. I mauled her breasts, pinching her nipples between my teeth as my hands held her down and roughly explored her body at the same time. She was so soft and plaint and delicate and she wanted me to break her. I happily obliged, becoming everything she wanted and thought forbidden to her. I let out every ounce of pent up anger and fear and years of longing and slammed my body into hers over and over again with bruising force. Her legs split apart, and her whole being shuddered with ever impact, tennis shoed feet bobbing wildly on either side of us in the air.

  Mini-orgasms rippled through her sex, spreading through her core and into her limbs. They weren’t enough. She needed more. We needed more. We needed to fuck away everything that had been done to and denied us.

  I pulled out and she groaned, only to turn that sound into a panicked little scream as I grabbed her hips and flipped her over in a spill of leaves and nettles. I positioned her before me on her hands and knees, her pert ass up and ready for me. I grabbed her hips and slid home in her pussy and she moaned.

  It was a moan of both pleasure and disappointment. Pleasure because she wanted my cock inside of her. Disappointment because it didn’t hurt as much anymore. She needed more pain. Craved it. I gave her ass a quick spank and she let out a delighted shriek, pussy clenching down on me.

  I knew what I had do to.

  I slid out of her, ignoring her moan of disappointment as I left her empty, and repositioned my cock. She went very still as the head, coated liberally with her fluids, pressed into her rosebud.

  She audibly swallowed. “Caleb…do it. Hurt me. God I’m a horrible freak, hurt me.”

  I pressed into her, a gentle but constant pressure. Her sphincter slowly gave way and she moaned. She was tight. So, so tight. I had to put more pressure or I wouldn’t go all the way—suddenly I was through and the increased pressure slid my cock all the way inside of her until my hips slapped into her ass. She screamed. I grabbed her hips and held her still.

  “It hurts,” she hissed. “It’s like a hot knife.”

  I began to pull out.

  She slammed her hips backward, forcing me to stay bottomed out. “No!”

  She took a deep breath. “No, don’t stop. Don’t…just…just take me, Caleb.”

  I withdrew myself and slowly pressed back in. Then again, a little harder. And then harder. She whimpered and moaned and her entire body shuddered. Her arms gave out on the fifth stroke and she fell to the ground, impaled ass up in the air still taking my cock. I pistoned in and out of her several times, gripping her hips to deliver each thrust harder than before.

  I released her hips and leaned over her, pressing my chest into her back and tossing her platinum blonde hair clear of her neck. She was gasping, moaning with miniature orgasms. Sarah didn’t come like any other girl I’d been with. I grinned at her flushed face, so different from her usual composed expression. She was utterly wanton and I adored her for it.

  I kissed her neck, then bit her. Her entire body stiffened as a n
ew orgasm struck her. Her ass clenched down on my cock and I lost control. Nothing had ever squeezed me so tight. Pulse after pulse of my semen spurted into her, coating her bowels until I finally had nothing left to give and collapsed atop her, panting.

  We lay there in a tangle of limbs for several moments until my cock slipped out of her. I rolled over and glanced down. My cock had been smeared in a fine reddish orange coating and smelled of iron. I’d made her bleed.

  I rolled onto my side to make sure she was okay but she rolled over at the same time. Fiery green eyes met mine.

  She smiled. “That was…unexpected.”

  Her blue eyes were gone. I’d never see them again. “Sarah, I—“

  She silenced me with a kiss. “I’ve been wanting to do that for years, Caleb. Don’t ruin it by apologizing.”

  Slowly, I nodded. This was going to complicate things.

  A phone rang, making us both jump. Night had fallen while we’d been fucking and we were both suddenly and keenly aware that we were naked, outside, in a very public place. We hurried to get dressed and in the process found Sarah’s phone going off. The call went to voicemail before she could answer it.

  She frowned at me as she held up her ruined bra and underwear, then slapped me with them. “Really? You couldn’t just take them off like a normal person?”

  I grinned at her, sheepishly at first, then wolfishly as she melted under my gaze. “You loved it.”

  She blushed. “I kind of did. Now hush.”

  She put the phone to her ear and listened to the voicemail. The pleased expression on her face fell, replaced by a shocked look of utter dread.

  “We have to go,” she said, hurrying out of the clearing and back to the trails.

  “What happened?” I asked, jogging to keep up.

  “It’s Dad,” she said. “He showed up at the hospital and…he’s got Mom.”