Rogue Within

by Mima

  He thrust and caught her lemons-and-leather scent. It reminded him he needed the rich earthy loam of his own magescape to make this work. She had to come inside him. She had to risk his shadows, his hidden traps. With effort, he wrenched his attention from his cock, from her soft rolling give beneath him, to his mind. He could picture his jungle nest. He could even picture Moriko there, her golden skin and deep brown hair a perfect complement to Bear. But as his body thrust with more and more urgency, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t drag her into his world, tricking this beautiful strong person into the path of their horror.

  As usual, when things went to shit he hid, calling on his stronger half. Bear. It’s time you claimed our mate.

  Bear was nearly out of control already, battering at Donte’s brain and ribs. He didn’t feel the least bit of uncertainty turning her over to Bear. If this had been a civilized mating before a clan Alpha, she’d still have to meet Bear and deal with his passion.

  So, unlike other nights, where Donte had kept Bear locked down until the very end despite his wild demands, Donte freed Bear, knowing he’d find a way to claim her. He stared right into Moriko’s pretty, passion-clouded, intelligent eyes, and gave her up to joining their dark, twisted path. It sliced, grating inside his chest with the familiar sorrow of loss.

  Immediately, scent disappeared. The light muted and sensation sharpened. His neck twisted with the wash of prickling, blooming sensation rising from where he fucked Moriko. Without any decision from him, Bear, now wearing Donte’s body, nuzzled her forehead and slowed their thrusts. This surprised him. He’d expected Bear to become even more passionately violent than previously. Donte grew dizzy as he slowed even farther, smoothing out the hitch of his hips until they swung on smooth, long strokes. Her channel was the softest, tightest, warmest, slickest thing he’d ever known.

  “Bear?” Moriko’s pretty eyes still stared into his, a little wider.

  “Mate,” Bear grunted softly, and shafted her while she stared at them for long, panting moments.

  “I can still see Donte shadowed in your eyes. You switched.”

  Bear sighed and pulled out of her, backing down to lap at her throat. Donte could feel the call of the blood. What was a primal, darkly sexual urge for him was a dominant need in Bear. Their teeth changed, taking Bear’s form of long, blunted daggers. Moriko arched into Bear’s mouth. Her bravery shamed him. Inside the cavern of his own flesh, he breathed out as Bear continued lower to her breasts.

  “Why do I know you?” Moriko whispered. She cupped her chest, mounding the nipples higher.

  Bear licked across her tips with thoroughly long glides. “You match us.” His voice rumbled the same way Donte’s did, but to Donte, they sounded distinctly different. “Your strength is equal to ours. Your wounds are ones I can heal. You will care for our scars.”

  Donte went very, very still. Bear rarely spoke this much. Or rather, Donte was rarely this present when Bear was this strong. Usually he’d gone deep into the jungle and let Bear stand alone in the ugliness.

  She rolled her shoulders, clasping his head to pull him down harder. “Suck me. Stronger.”

  Bear obliged her. Their mouth filled with smooth softness.

  “Why do you come to me? Or why don’t you visit in the physical world?”

  “We are captive. We hunt the darkmages and they fear us. You are the one we found. Our female. Our mate.”

  Moriko pulled at Bear, who only moved lower to her stomach. She got up on her elbow, her free hand petting his hair again. He trembled. It felt so good but so surprising. He expected the sizzle of sex from his cock, but his scalp was a new zone of pleasure. “I’m a princess. I cannot mate—I mean marry—who I wish. I must ask my Queen.”

  “She can’t stop us. This is real.” Her soft belly was almost impossible to resist devouring. They covered it in sharp nips, their control so perfect they never broke her skin. Bear licked her belly button. Donte thought of babies stretching that skin tight. Then banished the ridiculous urge to the same forbidden corner as his memories of the fortress.

  “Do they have you right now?” Moriko scrambled onto her knees and pulled at Bear’s shoulders.

  He rose at her command, kneeling to face her.

  Cut the shit, Donte ordered. Get her into our magescape. Finish this.

  Bear cupped Moriko’s flawless face in their giant hands.

  Donte punched at Bear’s lowering chin, but he only hesitated because she spoke.

  “Did they do this to you? The darkmages hurt you?”

  Bear nodded.

  Donte cursed.

  Moriko’s eyes glowed with welling tears.

  Donte cursed again, softer.

  Bear kissed her cheek. The flutter of her eyelashes against his nose made their balls tighten.

  “Where are you held now? I will come for you.” Her voice vibrated with the same passion as her hoarse orgasmic cries.

  “River Mountain. My brothers will kill us instead of use us.” Bear kissed her other cheek, lingering, lips drawing over her skin, testing the fine hairs, the smooth give of it, so beautiful.

  “But … so you’re away from the darkmages?”

  Donte wanted to distract Bear, to demand he end this unwise sharing, but then she ran her fingers through their hair again and all he could do was crouch and shiver.

  “Just. Sometimes they’re still around in our head.”

  “That’s so wrong.”

  Because they were in her magescape, he got flashes of her bone-deep fear and hatred. Her memories flipped past, of working with Signy, respecting and enjoying her, then discovering her true nature, and enduring the following wreckage. The hatred made the fear stronger, but the fear made the hatred solid.

  “You’ve known Signy. But she didn’t touch you. She will not. On my spirit. If I can stop her, I will.”

  Donte ripped and tore at their internal body with battleform claws and feet. How dare you make promises. You know how we fail at protecting. We’re using her, not saving her! Shut up, shut up!

  Bear only grunted from his efforts.

  Moriko gave a soft smile, dipped her head, and ducked in against their lips. “Are you two men? Or one?”

  “Both.”

  Laughing, she gave them small kisses that ripped down their spine. “I’d like to know you well enough to understand that some day.” The kisses roved from top to bottom, side to side. Brushing, pressing, her mouth danced over theirs.

  Bear and Donte were held by the soft chains of her first truly offered touch. Moriko kissed them. Not just accepting their thrusts, or arching into their demands. She knelt against them and angled her head up and pulled his down and kissed them. Repeatedly. Gently, firmly.

  Lingering over a scar, she flicked it with a wet lash of heat. “Bear-Donte… You’re dangerous. I can feel it.” Her lips brushed the marks of shame on his jaw. She paused, gasped, and he knew she’d pulled the memory from Bear.

  Donte didn’t have to urge him. This time, Bear lifted away, knowing she shouldn’t have gotten that taste. In her magescape, they had to be more careful to keep the memory-horrors away. There was no need to remember Thad, the pretty-boy leader, no need to remember the wicked trio, or the—

  “No. Don’t pull away.” Now her small, calloused hands cupped their ugly, fucked-up face. “I’m interested in all of you.”

  She stared so deep into Bear that Donte felt the edge of her gaze. She jerked back. Her hands fell to her sides and he knew she’d gained too much knowledge of him. She’d seen some stupid piece of the filthy way he’d lived.

  Bear waited. Donte crouched, tense. It was all over. This was what he’d wanted to avoid. He couldn’t, simply could not, force Moriko to join him. He’d wanted to seduce her before she knew the truth. But Bear had had to be strangely obedient to her and now they would never know her presence. They’d never get to really—

  “How do you go on?” Her voice scratched and broke.

  Bear sat back on their heels. Their er
ection was still firm, and Donte was angry with its demand to join this woman who had just caught him in a cruel game.

  Bear sighed, fingers tracing in warm sand along each side of them. “You take care of what needs to be done. They don’t want it but I know what’s right. Find pleasure in moments you can. That’s all.”

  Granules flowed through their fingers and Donte heard the distant swish of the constant ocean. Moriko’s hair hovered exactly across her brow, down her cheeks, and along her shoulders in a neat precise line.

  Her gaze pinned him and he stopped breathing. He would forever remember the look in her eyes. It wasn’t anything he’d seen before. It wasn’t something he could quite understand, but he wanted to. Her eyes flexed with the power of her soul and he suddenly drowned beneath the questions he wanted to ask her. It was like what she’d said—I want to know you.

  Bear’s fingers curled into fists, knuckles grinding roughly into the cooler, deeper sand. “Mate.”

  “Yes.” Her fingertips reached up and rested over his heart. The touch was light but struck him with the force of a spear strike. She held their gaze, and a small, tentative smile crept over the regal set of her face. It made her so sweet.

  He licked his lips at the same time Bear did. Why was she touching and smiling at them? She’d seen a snatch of what they’d done.

  Her smile grew. She kissed her own fingertips then placed them against his damp mouth. “Yes.” Her nails scraped lightly over the pad of his lower lip that suddenly felt as sensitive as his cock. “Yes, I’ll be proud to join you.”

  What?

  Moriko climbed forward, spreading her legs to mount their thighs. “I am your mate. I’m so glad you found me and I accept.”

  Donte clung to Bear’s strong spine, limp and stunned.

  Hanging from their shoulders she lifted her hips and lined up his cock. She lowered her ass, sheathing him into wet … silken … gripping…

  “I cannot wait for our court marriage.” She laughed, a throaty, growing chuckle. “A royal bear.”

  By the time he was pressing against her body’s end, she buried her face into his neck and giggled with a mad freedom he only dimly remembered from childhood. The blanket behind her was a splash of red like old blood, like his reality all wrinkled up.

  What was going on? She’d caught the truth of what he’d been and done, but she’d come forward on her own. Her yes was still pinging around inside his skull like an echoing hailstorm.

  Bear cupped her ass with gritty palms and shifted her on him. Her laughter changed into moans. Her lips nibbled on a tendon in their neck, her fingers strumming their abs with pleasure.

  Bear swung her up and back. Her tongue stroked up their pulse to their jaw, flicking off their earlobe with an impertinent, pointed flick. Bear froze, every muscle abruptly locked on the instinct to ravage her. Donte froze with him.

  Then she did it. She nipped at the skin there, a sexual challenge an unmated beastspirit was incapable of allowing in a match.

  With a roar, Bear had her off their cock, thrusting her into the air. He grabbed her ribs and twisted her around so she landed on all fours on her blanket. He was behind her before she’d even taken a breath, and in her before she’d finished the surprised inhale.

  Get her into our jungle.

  But Bear was gone, primal and wild and rutting. Donte held open their magescape, thinking perhaps the couple would fall through. But no, Moriko had to willfully enter for that transfer to occur. And in moments, Donte wasn’t much better than Bear, unable to process the pleasure, for without control of their body, all he could do was feel.

  She was down on her elbows now, her bum wide and soft against their pummeling hips. Bear used trux speed and she wailed. The sound was tight and sexual and only an incentive. Bear’s grip was too hard, Donte noted, the fingers so deep in her folded hips the skin whitened around the indentations.

  Bear didn’t care. He claimed her, yet Donte saw now how wrong he was to abdicate. Just like in a true bonding ceremony, they’d have to blend. They’d have to share.

  With the luxury to watch and take in the moment outside of the urgency of the one directing it, Donte watched Moriko’s silky hair toss wildly from the force of their thrusts. He watched their creamed cock’s base appear and disappear between the globes of her ass as they shafted her, the visual melding with the pinching fire at his tip. His balls bounced on impact. His toes curled in the sand to leverage deeper. Her back was a natural work of art unblemished by lash or knife, and he was the one touching her, his own choice. Her strength pushing back against their strikes made his cheeks clench. Her shoulders shifted and her fingers were in her folds, flicking against his balls, and she was coming, shrieking, ass arching high.

  Bear focused on the rosette of her ass, but then he was coming as well.

  Donte mourned. Now it would end. The orgasm brought to mind the look on her eyes just before, the look that had seared him, and so this erupting heat took the sting of that and burst it even wider, hotter. His firecraft flared to life and Bear flung a fireball high, arching, roaring. Donte watched the fireball tumble, a swishing tracery of orange against the blue of her sky. Just as it almost matched the sun, the orgasm passed its peak, and Donte knelt on crisp, cool fern fronds in his jungle nest.

  Bear sat next to him with a thump.

  Donte looked over at him.

  Bear swung his muzzle away and lay down, crossing his paws and setting his head upon them with a sigh.

  Donte reached out and stroked Bear. “I can’t fault you. You said too much, but we’ll take her tomorrow night. She accepted us once so I’ll convince her, somehow.”

  Bear relaxed in satiation, clearly unconcerned with any potential displeasure of Donte’s.

  The echoes of their orgasm were passing from his twitching thighs. He collapsed against the edge of his bowl-shaped nest. Now that she knew he’d failed the hawks, done brutal things to trick evil beings, perhaps even knew he’d killed his own kind in his determination to share the knowledge and strengthen the war, how the fuck would he get her to come inside him? Nausea churned. She was out there right now, thinking about him. Thinking about what he’d done and all his failures. He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes.

  Our mate, Bear mumbled happily, refuting Donte’s churning gut.

  Abruptly, disgust at what she knew heaved into rage at what he’d learned. Signy had used her, damaged her, drained her. Signy, always slinking in and out in that gray cloak, her cunning eyes cold in her wrinkled face. She had the leader Thad’s ear and often his bed. Signy had gone into Moriko’s world and ridden it almost as long as Donte had been trapped there. If he hadn’t gone rogue in a failed attempt to save the hawks, he could have been there for her.

  Stop. Not true. Rest. Tomorrow … we will have our mate. Bear’s voice was faint, drifting into restful sleep.

  Donte stared with burning eyes into the emerald canopy layered over his mental nest, and ached to kill.

  Chapter Six

  The discussion began the next day when Bear was still riveted on claiming their mate and his rage was so fresh it had made three trux spring into battleform as he passed them in the hall. Not such good timing for them to finally drag him into their august presence to shout how he should be executed.

  He stood in the big council room, chained in the center with his clan Alpha, with all the other clan Alphas, their Shields, and the Council standing around the outside, including that horror Dom. The ancient curved table formed a sort of fence between them and him. Also invited was the spiritmage groundbear Quor, who had thoroughly torn through all the parts of Donte’s mind he could.

  Apparently they’d all read Quor’s report and come to the only correct conclusion: they needed all the information he had before he could die. As if he hadn’t fought his way through the wolves to willingly give them this information. The heated conversation seemed to be about the fact Quor hadn’t gotten to see into big chunks of time when Bear had been in charge of Donte. The m
en were at odds over whether he should be kept for further study to try to get at those memories, or if he should be killed now.

  The best thing about this nonsense besides getting to stretch his legs was the fantastic scents from the food tents in the plaza and the fresh breeze off the river just beyond. Such sweetness. As much as his clan was dust to him now, he’d been part of all this once and the river held so many good memories. Ones he’d barely let himself hold onto in the fortress. He breathed deeper, a bit easier.

  Before a half hour was even gone, Wolf totally lost it. Donte was the only one who noticed. Everyone else was still bickering over one another. It was understandable that he’d break under the injustice. After all, Donte still stood here, alive, when two of Wolf’s own warriors were dead. Never mind that they’d attacked him.

  Donte stood in the middle of the domed room and watched as the powerful clan Alpha slid close to bloodlust. It was all there in the angle of the man’s shoulders, in the set of his jaw, in the way his fingertips braced on the table top. Any second, Donte figured, and he’d be diced to pieces before Dom could blink.

  Stop him, Bear commanded. Our mate waits.

  True. When Wolf went for Donte, he couldn’t guarantee his own survival, considering he was chained hand and foot. And there was the fact Donte didn’t really want to kill the man. The Wolf’s Shield, Ivor, needed to pay the fuck attention. Donte gave the man a hard stare, and he was aware enough to feel it and meet Donte’s eyes. Donte flicked his gaze at Wolf and back again. He lifted one brow.

  Inside, Bear was on his feet, crouched and ready to battle.

  Frowning, Ivor gave his Alpha a hard look. Jumping to his feet, he belatedly recognized the fury the leader had built within. That’s how Ivor got to take the edge of the first blow, and slow Wolf down enough as he leapt the table for Dom to get on top of him. Then a whole bunch of other people were there and a lot of shouting ensued.