The Golden Gryphon and the Bear Prince: An Epic Fantasy Romance (Heirs of Magic Book 1)

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Zephyr smiled thinly, eyes glittering, not taking Dina’s hand. If she’d been in gríobhth form, she might’ve bitten the hand off. As it was, she looked dangerously lethal. “I look forward to learning everything about you,” she purred, nearly a growl, then transferred her sapphire gaze to Astar. “The urgent message?”

  “Yes. Of course.” He gave Dina a quarter bow. “I apologize yet again, but I must—”

  She waved that off, serene and unbothered. “I understand very well the demands of the throne.” Her gaze slid to Zephyr, who stared at her with loathing, invisible tail whipping palpably. “I’ve been raised to be aware of political responsibilities. Duty must come first, yes?”

  “Indeed.” He almost promised to find Dina later, but he didn’t care to test Zephyr’s temper any further. Taking Zephyr’s arm in a firm grip, he steered her away before she decided to grow actual claws. “What is the message from Ordnung?” he asked in a low voice.

  She snarled, curling her lip. “There isn’t one.”

  “You lied?” He shouldn’t be surprised. Zephyr—and the Tala in general—didn’t place much value on truth. Not because they were inherently dishonest—in their candor, they could be honest to a fault—but because they saw a spectrum of truths rather than an absolute. Not surprising for a people who exchanged bodies as easily as breathing, but occasionally frustrating nonetheless.

  “It was that or shift into gríobhth form and frighten the mossbacks by gutting Princess Berendina on the ballroom floor,” Zephyr hissed.

  “Not to mention causing a diplomatic incident with Groningen,” he murmured, trying very hard not to be amused by her—but he was also intensely flattered by her possessiveness. And here he’d been worrying that she’d found someone else.

  “As if I care.” She tugged on her arm, but he firmed his grip, not letting her go.

  “Please, don’t run.” He found a space for them to stand. “All I’ve thought about all day was getting to see you. What have you been doing?”

  She rolled her eyes, but relaxed under his hand enough that he dared to let her go. “I had a big fight with Gen, saw more of this sprawl of stone than any person should want to, and then I’ve been at this dance. For hours.”

  “What did you and Gen fight about?” He had a feeling he knew—verified when she folded her arms and looked away, eyes glittering as she eyed the crowd, the gríobhth studying potential prey.

  “We’ve come to an understanding,” she said, firming her lips over any more words on the subject. Restlessness shimmered off of her, tangible as heat from a flame.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t go on a ramble, or flying.” Zephyr rarely went a full day without shifting. If she hadn’t, no wonder she seemed about to burst out of her skin.

  She slid him an opaque look. “I’m trying to be a good citizen. Just a normal mossback, like you pretend to be. I don’t know how you do it.”

  “I’m used to it. You aren’t.”

  Snorting in patent disbelief, she didn’t reply otherwise. The crowd swirled past them, Lena dancing by with one of Groningen’s heirs. She had a faraway look in her eyes, her mind clearly elsewhere, though the blithely chatting young man didn’t seem to notice. “There’s Lena,” he noted. “Where are the others?”

  “Gen is also dancing—and searching for true love. Jak went off to some game of chance, and Stella turned in for the night. She’d had enough of people for one day. I can’t say I blame her.”

  “But you stayed.”

  “Waiting for you,” she replied pointedly. “I didn’t realize you were here but occupied with Princess Berendina.” She hissed the name, ire heating again.

  “I was on my way to find you when I was waylaid by Groningen,” he said. “His granddaughter had just arrived and he made a point of introducing us.”

  “Is Princess Berendina on the list?”

  Lying at this point would be the easiest course—and likely safer for Dina. He, however, did place a high value on honesty. Besides, Zephyr would find out the truth easily enough. “She is indeed on the list. And I promised Auntie Essla that I would meet and be polite to the young women on the list. One dance was the courteous thing to do.”

  “Oh, as long as you’re courteous,” she replied scathingly.

  He set his teeth against replying in kind. He’d known this would be a peril of dallying with Zephyr. Her gríobhth nature didn’t fit well into ballrooms and polite political maneuvering. He wouldn’t try to soothe her ire, either, as it would likely only seem condescending. He didn’t blame her for getting her hackles up—he’d feel the same if he saw her dancing with another—but this was also the reality they had to deal with. “Courtesy and attendance to duty is all it was, because all day long I’ve been looking forward to dancing with you. Lovely Zephyr, would you favor me with a dance?”

  She slid him an unamused look, eyes full of blue fire as she scanned the crowded ballroom, her face pinched with what he’d call anxiety on someone else. “This really isn’t my sort of dancing.”

  He snorted a laugh. He’d been to enough parties in Annfwn to know exactly what she meant. The Tala loved to dance—but without structure, often shapeshifting through various forms, as many-faced and defiant of boundaries as the goddess of shadows. “Would you rather withdraw for the evening?”

  “Can we?” She looked so pleasantly startled, so grateful, that his heart twisted for her. He needed to keep in mind that being enclosed in a castle with so many people would grate on her, especially if she felt she couldn’t go on her usual rambles.

  “We can and will.” Offering her his arm, he set them on a course to take them out of the ballroom as quickly as possible. “The advantage of being courteous and attending promptly to duty is that once one’s responsibilities are discharged, one may discreetly withdraw.”

  “So many rules in your life,” she muttered.

  He couldn’t argue with that. They passed Gen dancing with a handsome young man he didn’t recognize, but who had the look of Groningen’s family. “Who is Gen dancing with?”

  Zephyr barely glanced. “Henk, a local princeling. Apparently Carienne is riddled with available royals on the prowl.”

  Not taking the bait on that one, he only commented that Gen looked delighted with her partner. “True, and it’s about time,” Zephyr replied cryptically. They made it out the doors and into the much quieter, far cooler, and nearly deserted hallway. “I think Princess Berendina suspects I’m your lover.”

  Astar thought so, too. Dina would be sensitive to social cues and personal undercurrents—and Zephyr was about as subtle as, well, a glittering mythological creature in a gathering of mossbacks. “You don’t need to be concerned about that,” he assured her, setting a hand on the small of her waist as they climbed the narrow, twisting stairs to the wing they were staying in. “Dina knows that ours would be a political match. If she does suspect, she wouldn’t cause trouble over it.”

  “Oh, we’re calling her Dina?” The hiss was back in Zephyr’s voice. “Sounds like what you’d call a pesky songbird, those kinds that come in flocks and hop about, chirping endlessly. Dina dina dina.”

  Astar manfully withheld a laugh, determined not to have it on his conscience that he’d mocked his bride, should he end up marrying Berendina. He also would never be able to call her “Dina” with a straight face again.

  “Astar.” Zephyr abruptly halted in the narrow stairwell, the wall sconce behind her silhouetting her glossy hair with fire. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.” Concerned—as Zephyr never hesitated to ask whatever she wanted to know—he caressed her cheek, sliding his arm more firmly around her waist. “What’s bothering you?” Besides the obvious, he mentally amended.

  “I thought Groningen liked me. He said he approved of me.” A question haunted her voice, her expression uncharacteristically uncertain. “Was I wrong?”

  “No. He wouldn’t have said so if he didn’t.”

  “He put us in a room togeth
er, but then introduces you to his granddaughter as a potential bride,” she said.

  Ah. “Politics,” he explained, tracing the delicate line of her jaw. “He can approve of you as my mistress and still know that I have to marry for the throne. And he’s savvy and ambitious enough to want a member of his family to be my bride.”

  She searched his face, a frown forking her brows. No carefully schooled expressions for her. “I don’t understand you people.”

  That stung more than it should have. He’d made a deliberate effort to distance himself from Tala ways—all to be a better high king for a people who were mostly not Tala—but he was still a shapeshifter too. Pressing her against the wall, he slid a possessive hand over her perfect ass, pulling her against the erection he’d sported since the moment he touched her. With his hand on the back of her neck, he slanted a kiss over her lush mouth, finding it hot and welcoming as she opened to drink him in. “I am your people,” he growled into her mouth.

  She purred, a true gríobhth rumble rising through her to thrum into his chest as she wound one leg around his waist, her hands busy with the buttons of his fitted jacket. “Mine,” she agreed, tearing her mouth from his and fastening it on the cord of his neck. A sharp flash of pain as she bit down made him choke out a gasp, and his cock harden impossibly more. She ground her hips against him, leg vising around his hips to hold him in place. “Say you’re mine,” she insisted.

  His head swam, making him dizzy, the searing heat of her sex pressing through his pants. Her skirts had somehow ended up around her waist, and she was naked beneath. Even in the heat of passion, he had to smile that she hadn’t bothered with traditional mossback underthings—only the ones she liked, clearly, since she wore those ribbon-tied stockings. He followed the silken texture of one to the blatant heat of her bare skin above the ribbon, and found the scorching slick folds of her sex. Crying out at his touch, she flung her head back, exposing the swanlike length of her throat.

  Greedily, he licked the slender column, feasting on her skin and savoring the frantic beat of her pulse that echoed his own. He still didn’t know exactly how to please her—and she’d said it was complicated, so he didn’t want to do it wrong—so he cupped her sex in his palm, giving her the pressure she seemed to crave, and she rode his hand, setting her own rhythm. She came, fast and furious, her cry carrying a raptor’s edge and echoing up and down the stairwell.

  A public stairwell at Castle Elderhorst—a small and tremendously relevant fact he’d forgotten in his craving for her. “Not here,” he muttered, batting away her hands, her fingers nimbly attempting to unlace his pants. Sweeping her into his arms, he carried her up the last distance, taking the steps several at a time, slowing only to navigate the narrow turn without scraping either of them against the occasionally rough jags of stone. Striding down the hall, just short of a run, he only hoped his pants were still laced enough not to fall around his ankles.

  “I like it when you carry me,” Zephyr said dreamily, arms draped languidly around his neck.

  “Do you?” He risked a glance at her—a mistake, as her full mouth tempted him to kiss her again, and yet again. Now that he’d sampled the pleasure of her embrace, each taste only whetted his hunger. Instead of sating him, each time with her made him want her even more. At some point in the near future, he’d exceed some ultimate state of need and simply… explode? Go up in a burst of flame?

  He didn’t know and didn’t particularly care. He only cared about this moment, when it seemed nothing else mattered, or could matter, ever again.

  ~ 21 ~

  Zeph had never seen Astar so close to being completely out of control—and she liked it. His impassioned response to her soothed the raging gríobhth inside. Mine. She hadn’t been joking when she’d mentioned the possibility of shifting and rending Dina limb from pretty limb. Then she’d find this pernicious list and take wing, finding every princess on it and disposing of them as well.

  She wouldn’t be sorry either.

  Except that Astar would never forgive her. And it wouldn’t make him truly hers. This, however, this inferno between them would seal their bonds in blood and sex, tying them inextricably together until he finally admitted that he was hers. Politics and courtesy wouldn’t matter. This was real. This mattered.

  Astar kicked their chamber door closed behind them, setting her on her feet, then spinning her around to tug at the laces of her gown. “I can vanish it,” she protested.

  “Not if you want to wear it again,” he said firmly. “It will need to be cleaned and mended, or you’ll run out of gowns. Besides, I like this one.”

  “Oh?” She’d thought she looked good in it, but he’d never said so before.

  “Yes.” He got it loose enough that it fell to the floor. “I wanted to tear it off of you with my teeth that night at Ordnung.”

  As if in demonstration, his teeth closed over the join of her neck and shoulder, the jolt going straight to her throbbing sex, and she moaned, trying to turn.

  “No,” he said, pressing her down over the arm of a chair, following her so his body lay over her, hard and heavy. His hand rounded over her bottom, sliding into the cleft and finding her sex ready for him. More than ready. Needy and wanting. She spread her legs helpfully, and he groaned. “I want you like this,” he growled. “Is that all right?”

  “Anything you want is all right,” she panted, spreading her legs even wider. “Stop asking and take.”

  He made a sound, more like a bear than ever, shooting a heightened thrill through her. With one hand on the back of her neck, he pressed her down, freeing himself with the other, then thrusting at her invitingly open passage. He was clumsy—no surprise there, and finesse would come with practice—but she raised herself on her tiptoes, wriggling to give him the right angle. Finding it, he plunged into her to the hilt, both of them momentarily stilling at the sweet sense of connection.

  All day, she’d craved having him inside her again, filling her, completing her in a way she’d never known she needed.

  “Zephyr,” he whispered, her name like a prayer and a vow, then began stroking in and out of her. He was trying to be gentle, she could tell, but his control was fraying. She encouraged it, pretending to struggle against his grip on her neck, turning her head to snap at his fingers. “Oh no, you don’t,” he snarled, gripping her hip with his other hand and pounding into her, hard, almost painful, driving her relentlessly into a climax that punched her through the sky and into the stars where the air was too thin to breathe and she could only fold her wings.

  And fall.

  “Zephyr.” A gentle hand stroked her hair back from her brow. “Zephyr, darling, come back to me.”

  “Mmm.” She stretched, deliciously sated, the silk of bedcovers beneath her skin. Barely cracking her eyelids, she studied Astar and his worried expression. “Don’t want to.”

  “I’m sure.” He rubbed his forehead. “But I have to make sure you’re not hurt. I’m so sorry. So very sorry.”

  “What for?” Suspicious, she levered herself up onto her elbows to scan the room. They were alone, the fire prepared by the solicitous servants crackling merrily. A carafe of wine and a platter of food set out for them. “Don’t tell me you have to go be courteous some more,” she warned. She wouldn’t be responsible for her behavior if he tried to go back to dancing with Dina.

  “What? No.” He ran a hand down her body—not a sensual caress, but as if checking for injury. “I was rough with you. Unforgivably so. I was—”

  “You were rough,” she agreed, cutting off the rush of guilt. “And I loved every moment of it.” She lay back and sprawled in invitation. “Be rough with me again.”

  He stared at her, clearly astonished, more than a little bewildered. “You’re serious.”

  “Yes.” Tempted to tease him, she instead decided she’d do better to take her role as teacher and debaucher seriously. “Sometimes sex is rough. There are emotions involved, and all that edge you have.” She trailed a finger down t
he center of his chest, revealed in the part of the shirt he still wore. He’d probably dutifully laced up his pants again, too.

  “I held you down,” he argued. “I bit your neck.” He feathered his fingers over the spot, which stung delightfully.

  “Believe me, I know,” she purred, undulating, heat and need building rapidly. “I remember every delicious moment.”

  “You passed out,” he added, almost accusingly.

  “The highest of compliments,” she replied with a satisfied smile. But he looked so distraught—and seemed to be trying so hard not to look at her nakedness—that she sat up, framing his face in her hands and kissing him gently. “The only surprise was that you were the one to lose your head instead of me.”

  “I don’t know what came over me,” he admitted, though he looked less worried.

  She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Does it matter?”

  “Yes,” he answered earnestly.

  “No.” Shaking her head, she set to work divesting him of his clothing. “And here I was holding back out of concern that I might shock you. The gríobhth in me was so angry, so determined to fight off any competitors for your attention, that I thought I’d be the one ravishing you. I’d planned to strip you naked and have my way with you until you could only think of me. I still plan to do that,” she added. “Just so we’re clear.”

  “Zephyr.” He grasped her wrists, stopping her from unlacing his pants, which he had indeed knotted tightly, probably with some misguided notion of imprisoning his cock for bad behavior. It clearly wasn’t listening to his big head, as it was erect and thrusting against its velvet cage. She intended to reward it lavishly. That might be the best route to getting Astar to stop overthinking and start enjoying again. “We need to discuss this,” he said, so very seriously that she nearly laughed in his face.

  “All right,” she said, far more agreeably than she felt. “But if you’re going to make me sit through a boring conversation about what should be fun, then I’m getting wine.” As soon as he released his grip on her wrists, she gave his cock a firm stroke and squeeze, to keep him simmering and less inclined to talk them to death. Then she slipped off the bed and did a quick shift, coming back clean, naked, and with her hair hanging loose. Much better, as those mossback hairpins gave her a headache. Continuing her campaign to scramble Astar’s overactive brain, she strolled slowly and seductively to the table with the wine carafe, posing on the far side of it and facing Astar, so he’d have a good view of her body.