by Willa Hart
Behind the beast’s back rises another wolf. Even bigger than the grey wolf. This one is light grey, the color of the sky on a cloudy winter morning, and his head is not nearly as slight. Should it jump from the rock, its shoulder would be higher than my waist, and on its hind legs, the light grey Wolf is taller than I. My caution over being in the Dark Forest with night fast approaching rapidly turns to fear, an unfamiliar companion for me.
A cold, dark trickle in my blood. Fear and the realization of my complete loss of control. If either beast should choose to, they could kill us both in an instant.
The light grey wolf looks at me. A human with some sense, he thinks directly into my mind. You have no protection upon this land. Why are you here?
My family…Meela starts, and the light grey wolf’s head jerks away from me. His gaze latches onto her.
I just discovered the home, in the woods, that belonged to my family that…I didn’t know existed until now.
The wolf takes a step back and turns to his mate. There is some form of communication between the two—communication that not only can I not understand, but I can’t hear in my mind. The light grey wolf’s gaze returns to Meela. He stands high above us both; his paw on top of the rock is near my face and, Goddess, it’s is the size of my head, the claws like long-knives. He dips his head and stares at my Meela.
Return to Roya land, Meela, it is not yet time for you to return to the Dark Forest, he thinks. His eyes slide from her to me, and then both wolves turn and bound away from us, over the rocks, and quickly fall from our sight, into the trees and the darkness.
I take a deep breath to help my heart return to a normal pace. I grasp Meela’s arm and pull her close to me. Thankful that she is still alive. My Goddess, the idea of losing her, of her being harmed, the thoughts of those things are beyond my ability to bear them.
“Wolveskin,” Meela says.
“Had I not witnessed it with my own eyes, I would not believe it,” I say. I tighten my arms around her. “I believed Wolveskin to merely be bedtime stories to keep children from misbehaving.”
“No,” Meela says. “They were Wolveskin. I…I know it.” She creases her brows and shakes her head. “I’ve never seen Wolveskin before, but…they… I knew them…just as I knew my house before I even entered it. There are…there are memories in my mind that have been hidden, that are only now coming out for me to find.”
There is confusion in her gaze and longing in her voice. She presses her fingers to her forehead as though she seeks understanding of all these terrifyingly new images and events.
I care little as to whether she is Eliterrati or Dreg or whether the Wolveskins know her by name. I know only I am grateful that she is safe, that she is with me, that she is by my side. Now, here, in the moonlight, after we were confronted by two giant wolves, and with the realization that there was nothing I could’ve done to save us should the wolves have lunged for us, I know.
“You are my fated,” I say. The words leap from my mouth before I give thought to them, as though they have their own life. I press my fingertips to her chin and gently tilt her face up toward mine. I stare into her luminescent brown eyes that stretch to my infinity. “Just as you knew the house and the wolves before any of it made sense, I know, I know that you are meant to be my mate. I cannot explain it, but I know.”
I lean forward. The moonlight slices through the trees and she sparkles with the light of the moon. Energy courses between us. A desire, a want, but also a deep knowing that in her eyes is my future, my life, my existence for the rest of my life will find a home wherever Meela is. I know this to be my truth to the core of my being. I press my lips to her lush, plump lips.
My body explodes with desire.
My cock is hard, and I fight the urge to grab Meela and pull her to me and take what I so desperately want to make mine. The urge is primal. Animalistic. Beyond all that is decent. Instead, I breathe and I sink into the pleasure of this first kiss.
With my lips on Meela’s mouth, visions explode in my mind. My mother smiling, my fathers laughing, my children being born, the sun streaming, rivers flowing, thunderstorms and rushing winds…the entirety of my life and my existence comes to me in this one kiss. Everything is present in this kiss. I exist only in my connection to Meela. I shake with the knowledge that one tiny little bird can control the entire existence of a bear.
Chapter Fifteen
Meela
A fire crackles in the hearth. We are safe. Darkness is deep beyond the window of the hunting lodge, but here I am warm and safe. I’ve just finished my hot bath. My hair is wound tight in a bun, and I wear a warm and soft dark-blue nightgown.
Still, I can’t help but remember how the Wolveskin were familiar to me. How is that possible that I knew them? I knew them as though I’d met both the black wolf and the dark grey wolf before today, a day that has been filled with impossibilities. The house that lies beyond the Roya lands in the Dark Forest that was my family’s home. The memories of living there that had been gone until now. Cloaked in a way that I would’ve never remembered had I not gone to the house. The knowledge that my mother was a handmaid to the Queen and an attendant at her wedding? And that I…or my family…is Eliterrati?
More questions than answers have been given to me on this day. And why…why have I been hidden in a Ninaku laundry since I was eight? And why did my parents sell me and Huali and abandon us? Are they alive, and if so, where?
So many questions, my little bird.
I smile at Sarkany’s thought entering my mind. I trail my fingertips over the velvet softness of the blanket on my bed. The pillows are fluffed, and the blankets are pulled back. Sarkany. My body aches with desires that linger, an unquenched thirst for Sarkany even with so many questions on my mind. Perhaps, in part, because of all these new discoveries and questions, my desire to be in Sarkany’s arms is even more intense. There is a safety in Sarkany’s embrace, his kiss, and a passion that is wild as the woods, free as the sky, and as complete as the expanse of the mountains. I know what his passion feels like even without having experienced his lovemaking.
My nipples harden. My sex is wet. Sarkany. I close my eyes and picture the wild, giant Sarkany standing naked before me, my imagination taking me away to the soft touch of the man. Just the idea that a creature of the wild could contain such ravenous desires to provide me pleasure and gentleness causes my hips to pulse up and back even while I stand beside my bed, alone in my room.
This is what you want? His deep voice rumbles in my mind.
Yes. Through the fabric of my nightgown my fingertip traces a circle around my tight nipple. My eyes are still closed, and I imagine Sarkany standing before me. His thick muscular body glowing in the flicker of the firelight. He fills the space in front of me, his cock long and swollen and ready for me. I gasp at the size and want only to feel him stroke deep and hard into my sex.
Yes, I want this. My fingertip is more insistent, and I pull my nightgown over my head and drop it to the floor. My fingers find the wet swollen nub of my sex, and I slide them to my clit and stroke, my eyes still closed. His hand grasps his cock. Within my mind, Sarkany slides his hand up and down and up and down stroking himself, while watching me touch my sex.
“I want you Meela.” Sarkany’s voice cuts through the silence of my room and I open my eyes. He stands before me, just as I envisioned. The firelight casts a glow on his brown skin. The scars of a warrior on his arms and chest. The tattoo marks of the crest of House Roya a perfect twin to my mother’s broach on his chest.
I pull my fingertips from my sex and reach my hand to him. He grasps my wrist and pulls my hand to his mouth. Still wet with my want, he presses my fingertips to his mouth and pulls each finger between his lips as though licking the sweetest of nectars from my fingertips.
I close my eyes. Desire heavy upon my body.
Sarkany pulls me close to him. We are both naked and the heat of his flesh presses to me. He leans forward, and then his lips are on my lips.
Heat unfurls in my belly and curls upward into my chest. His tongue slides between my lips and my desire is unleashed. I pull his tongue into my mouth and our tongues tangle. His fingertips find my sex and slide into the hot wetness that wants only his touch. I reach out and grasp his enormous cock in my hands.
“Oh bird,” he says, the desire thick in his voice. What he wants pulses into my mind, a vision of me on the bed, my legs open, and him above me as his mouth consumes my flesh. My body nearly orgasms with the mere thought.
“Please, Sarkany, yes,” I say.
His strength amazes me; as though I am a feather, Sarkany lifts me and wraps me in his giant arms and gently sets me onto the bed where he lays me ever-so-gently onto the soft mattress. As though I’m a delicate and fragile creature. He pulls his mouth from mine and his eyes slide over my flesh.
A shiver runs through my body. The caress of his mind.
You are perfection. His thoughts of how he sees me are radiant and true. He dips his mouth to my breast and pulls my nipple into this mouth. My hips roll up with the heat and wet of his tongue caressing and teasing my nipple. He sucks, and a gasp comes from my mouth. His hand slides over my belly and to the V between my legs. He presses my legs open and slides a finger to my swollen clit where he circles slowly, pulling want through my body with his touch. He rolls his fingertips across the slick surface and my hips jut upward. I moan, “Oh, Sarkany.”
Oh yes, my little bird is responsive to my touch.
So responsive, I can barely breathe. My sex clenches and unclenches wanting his hard cock between my legs. I grasp his sex and slide my hand up and down the velvet skin of his shaft. Sarkany’s breath hitches in his lungs and he gasps.
Oh, bird, so fucking good, he thinks.
I know that he wants me more than he’s ever wanted another. I sink into the idea that being with Sarkany, now, in this moment is somehow bigger and means more. That once we are together, that shall be the end of all others for him.
I already know this, he thinks. There is no other. I am not afraid.
But I am. What if, what if—
Of what? That you may be stuck with me? Ah, but you already know the truth.
He presses his lips to mine and my mind explodes into a million stars and fireworks pop inside my head. Yes, it’s true, there can be only one Sarkany.
He presses his lips to my neck and then to my belly. The Bear’s lips are near my sex and he spreads my legs open with his hand. With a delicate touch he leans forward, opens his mouth and strokes me with his tongue. He slips over my clit, ever so lightly. His hand on my hip steadies my body as I buck upward wanting him to pull me deeper into his mouth or satisfy me with the stroke of his strong cock deep into my sex.
He presses two fingers into me, and his tongue probes and strokes, and then he pulls my clit into his mouth. I dance on the edge of my orgasm as he sucks my clit. Wave upon wave of pleasure rolls through me and my body tightens. My climax shooting me over the edge into pure pleasure.
So wet for me Meela. May I take you now?
Take me, take me! I wrap my fingers deep into the thick black hair on his head and pull him up to my mouth where I taste the slick of my sex. His thick cock nudges at the opening of my sex. He is so big! How I will take all of him? He nudges into me, the head of his cock just past my folds and at the entrance to my body—stretching me. Pleasure from the pain of it.
My precious Meela, so fucking tight!
Exquisite pleasure as he nudges into my body, his cock slowly pressing into me. My hips tilt up wanting to take all of him. His face tightens with the burden of his restraint. The muscles in his arms flex as he holds himself over me. I grasp my hands around his forearms. Our eyes meet, and his gaze drills into me. Sarkany is in my mind, and I am in his, and we experience not only our individual pleasure but the pleasure of the other as well.
Goddess! His body is on fire for me. Sweet sweet torture for his cock to press ever so slowly into my body, stretching me and fighting off the beast within him that seeks only to thrust deep inside me and take and thrust and take and thrust, proving through his desire and his conquest that I am his. His mated, now forever part of his Roya line.
How do you restrain?
Ha! I restrain only for your pleasure.
He can barely even think. His thoughts are blinded by pleasure and the sensations in his cock. Heat in his balls, an electric pulse of energy.
Meela, I can’t… He strokes out and slowly back in once more. His need, his desire, clouds his vision. His eyes close and he is only a desire, a need, a quest to finish his pleasure and spill his seed and—
Take me. I am yours.
Sarkany pulls back and thrusts deep into me. Thrusting in and out of my body. I wrap my legs around him and hang on to him riding his wave of pleasure that is my wave too. His body turns to stone and Sarkany roars, “Meela!” He calls my name both out loud and in his mind. The sound rattles through all of me.
A hot electric pulse jets from his balls and through his cock and spills into me. His spine tingles and the release…the release is pure and complete, and in this moment, all is clear and soundless and pure pleasure within Sarkany’s mind.
His body is limp upon mine and I am spent. Our moment of pleasure took us both to the edge and over.
He pulls from my body and slides to his side. His hand brushes over my forehead and his lips are on mine. His hand grasps my chin and his eyes seek mine with the deepest connection of love and kindness and gratitude.
“Oh, Meela, there is no other for me.”
I cannot say it. Not yet…for while it is true…
“Did I hurt you?”
I shake my head and meet his gaze.
He presses his lips to my forehead and wraps his arms around me. I drift off to sleep feeling safe but knowing that my life has forever changed.
Cold air wakes me. Darkness surrounds us. The fire has burned down to embers. My cheek rests on the chest of my bear.
“What have we done?” I say. I press my lips to his chest, and he pulls myself up so that we are eye to eye. Sarkany grabs the heavy covers and pulls them up and over both of us. His strong arms surround me. “I…I can’t do this now,” I say. “I can’t be the mate of another. I…I must find Huali, I must find out why I’m meant to go deeper into the dark woods, I must discover what happened to my parents and how I know the Wolveskin and—”
“I know,” Sarkany says.
His heart aches with the knowledge that every word I’ve said is the truth, and I must do all of this.
“This…this is not a good time to be in love,” I say.
A laugh bursts from Sarkany. “Oh my little bird, what an understatement. My Uncle may be plotting a coup, we’ve nearly been killed by wolves, my two brothers grow more different each moment, and there is an uprising in the North. No, you are absolutely correct that now is not a good time to fall in love, especially a love that has so many questions. Perhaps you are a Ninaku Dreg and perhaps you are Eliterrati royalty? We know nothing other than everything—and I mean everything—is uncertain and”—Sarkany presses his fingertips to my chin and tilts my face up to his so that I may look into his stunning black eyes—“that we are absolutely fated mates and that we are in love.”
A tiny smile curves my lips.
So here we are, my little bird.
“Yes,” I say, “here we are, indeed.”
Chapter Sixteen
Leo
In the distance, a bear roars and I awaken in my bed. The distant sound breaks through the darkness and silence of the night. The sound comes to my mind across many miles as though in the Wild Lands of the Dark Forest. The great bear roars. A chill trickles through my veins. This roar tells me many things about my future, Sarkany’s future, Taraz’s future, and the future of our Kingdom. All the things that I can do nothing about while moonlight slices through the darkness and peers down at me through the glass of my bedroom window. No, tonight I sleep safely in the Palace, a Princ
e who is meant to be one of three Kings, but tomorrow? After this great roar by The Bear that is my brother, all our lives will change—as they have already. Deep breath. Please, Goddess, guide us. My gaze stares through the window into the night and I return to sleep.
This morning, I wanted to believe the roar was a dream and I nearly convince myself that I was awakened by the possibility of what could be, not what had actually happened between Sarkany and Meela—and I was very nearly convinced of this while I showered and shaved and brushed my hair and teeth. I pulled on my pants, then my shirt, and had just completed the first two buttons when the roar burst into my brain again. A second roar. This one as great as the first. I place a block around the sound, not wanting to hear this noise again.
Fuck.
Neither Taraz nor Sarkany have any idea what this…this fixation with a Ninaku Dreg will do to the Kingdom, to Uncle, to us…to our allies. I bolt down the stairs and to the front hall where Taraz stands beside Jix, that damned Dreg he’s fixated on. Taraz is holding the drone, and Jix is using a tool up beneath one of the rotary blades.
“Leo, you’ve got to see what this technology can do,” Taraz nearly shouts. His face and voice vibrate with excitement.
It’s too early for shouting, I think, and shoot him a dark look.
Why are you in such a foul humor?
Did you not hear The Bear roar? I think.
Taraz lifts an eyebrow and tilts his head. Were you so foolish to think that would not happen if we left them alone in The Bear’s hunting shack? Brother, you are not that naive.
Fuck off.
I stride past my brother. While his thoughts are accurate and appropriate and, yes, exactly what we assumed would happen if Sarkany determined that this Dreg was his fated mated, a part of me, and not a little part, can’t believe that Sarkany is convinced that our fated mate is a Dreg.