He rode her to a brief and vicious climax, and before she could even think that she needed more, he thrust his hand down between their bodies, giving her the release she had begged for. As her cries rose louder and louder, his fingers never faltered, and to her disbelief, she was riding the waves of pleasure again. They took her higher and higher, and this time she screamed with her climax, letting the pleasure shatter her body and her mind before she drifted back to earth.
Distantly, she was aware that he had pulled away from her, and she felt him unbuckle the belt and bring her arms back down. There was a little tenderness there, but no pain, and then he tucked her close to his chest. She burrowed against his broad chest, breathing in the smell of him, enjoying a long moment of pure peace.
“This is where you belong,” he said softly. “Right here, in this place and next to me. Please, for both our sakes, Riona, stop fighting it.”
It was the hardest thing in the world, but she shook her head. “I can't,” she said. “There is... so much between us, but until I understand it better, until I am easy in my heart and my mind, I cannot.”
He didn't make any sound, but she could feel something go out of him. After a moment, he rose, and she watched with tears in her eyes as he dressed again.
“Thank you for what you have given me,” he said formally. “I will always treasure it, and until you come looking for me, I will respect your wishes.”
He left, closing the door silently behind her, and she turned her face to the pillow to weep.
***
The day started as nothing special. She sent some of the children to the woods to gather woundwort, sage, and thyme for her, and though Ciara wanted to accompany them, she was simply too small to climb the mountain slopes as they did. Making a face, Ciara scampered off to be underfoot, and Riona found herself in the infirmary, straightening bottles that were already perfectly straight and neatening the beds.
She was lonely, she realized. Conleth had left a few days ago on an errand that he refused to name, and though Siobhan, Ferric and Angus tried to keep her company, there was a hole in her that she knew only Rordan could fill. She wished that her fears would not rise against her, but still a part of her held herself separate from the wolf king, and for his part, he kept out of her way. She passed him in the halls now and again, but his only acknowledgment was a distant nod, and she felt the hole inside her yawn wider and wider.
“I'm breaking my own heart, and his as well,” she whispered to herself, and the truth of that statement tore at her. It would be so easy to come to him, to wrap her arms around him and tell him yes, but that would have been a betrayal of her own heart, and sooner or later it would come out.
She was just getting ready to dust the all but spotless bottles yet again when she heard a yell. There was always arms training going on in the courtyard of the keep, but there was a frantic edge to it that she had never heard before.
Her heart in her mouth, she ran toward the sound, and now she could hear the ringing of steel on steel. For all their strength, the werewolves trained with weighted wood instead of steel, and now she knew that it was no training exercise.
She met Siobhan in the hall, and the bigger woman was running for the gate with bared steel in her hand.
“What is it?” Riona cried, running to keep up.
“King's Dogs, they've come to attack.” Siobhan's handsome face was drawn up into a vicious grin. “We shall show them what it means to bait beasts in their lair.” She turned her head to stare at Riona. “Not you,” she said shortly. “Go back to the infirmary. Lock yourself in until this is over.”
“I can fight!” Riona said, indignant. “I am not afraid!”
“Never said you were,” said Siobhan, coming to a stop. She met Riona's eyes with dead calm, and Riona knew she would not be budged.
“Return to the infirmary, and bolt yourself in. If you do not, I will carry you there and lock you in myself. Think of the lives I could be saving if I did not do that. Think of my companions who need my help.”
It was a neat argument, and there was nothing Riona could do to gainsay her. After a long moment, she nodded, dejected.
“I have your word on that, then,” said Siobhan, and she took off running.
Oh Rordan, please be careful...
Riona began her journey back to the infirmary. She was just thinking what good luck it had been that the children were in the woods hunting herbs that day when she realized with terror that that wasn't quite true.
Little Ciara was running around the fortress, and now the fortress was full of men who bore steel and came to kill.
Her heart beating in her chest, Riona started running, ready to check every single hiding place that the girl loved to use if she had to. She looked in the deserted library, in the weaving rooms filled with looms, and in the dining hall only to come up with nothing. Once in a while, one of the werewolves of Dunclough rushed past her, but they were too intent on joining the battle to stop her.
She was just beginning to run out of ideas when she remembered how much the child loved the kitchen, where she could hide with ease between the great barrels of flour and bags of chestnuts. Riona ran for the kitchen, and within the space of a few moments, she had found Ciara, sleeping soundly on the hearth.
“Darling, darling wake up,” she crooned. “Please, we must get to the infirmary.”
As she scooped the child in her arms, the sounds of fighting came closer and closer. She could hear snarls and steel on steel, and she turned to pick up a solid iron spoon just as the door burst open. The skinny man from Conleth's band pulled his sword out of the body of a wolf that she did not recognize, and the moment he looked up, their eyes locked. Riona felt such a chill of fear that she squeezed Ciara tight, raising her spoon threateningly.
“You,” the man snarled. “Come here, you're coming away with us.”
“Not likely,” she said, hating the way that her voice shook. “I will never go anywhere with you.”
With a furious growl, he stepped toward her, but then he toppled forward when an enormous black wolf struck him square in the back. The man howled, and he turned into a wolf himself as soon as he hit the floor.
“Rordan!” she cried, and the black wolf's eyes flickered toward hers before the other wolf snapped viciously at his face. They snarled and growled, and she could tell that this was no fight for dominance, meant to be settled with blood and no more. This was a fight that would only end when one of them was dead.
Riona shrank back against the stone wall as the two wolves fought viciously. She had watched Conleth and Rordan fight, but it had never had this cruelty. The skinny wolf tried to strike at Rordan's belly, and she knew that if he succeed, he would tear him apart. Rordan was the larger wolf, but he was not quite as fast, and the other struck him again and again.
Rordan had come to the fight already bloodied, and now Riona could see that he was tiring. Her heart in her mouth, she watched as he was driven back and back. He was pressed to the stone wall now, and Riona could take no more.
She dropped Ciara into an empty barrel, and taking the long iron spoon in both hands, she stepped forward to give the other wolf a stunning blow to the head. It only dazed the wolf; in a moment, it would have turned on her and ripped her to bits, but that moment of distraction had given Rordan exactly what he needed.
He threw himself at the enemy with a blood-curdling howl, and his teeth latched with a savage sound on the wolf's neck. Riona stepped back as Rordan made short work of him, and then stood over the corpse, panting and snarling.
“Oh, Rordan,” she began, reaching for him, but to his shock, he bristled at her and snapped hard. If she had been a little slower drawing back, he would have bit her hard enough to lay open bone.
She stared at him wide eyed, and after a moment, she could read the shock on his face as well.
In that terrible moment, Ferric appeared at the door, walking on two legs and supporting a limping Siobhan.
“The battle is
won, my king, and we stand the victors. What are your orders?”
For a long moment, there was no response, and then Rordan whined, a note of terror in his voice. For all the time she had known him, Rordan had been completely fearless, but now something frightened him so badly that he was completely frozen.
“He can't,” Siobhan said in shock. “He can't turn back.”
“Rordan...”
Riona reached one pleading hand to him, but the black wolf only twisted away. In a moment, he had dodged around Ferric and Siobhan, and he was gone.
***
The following days were a blur. There were people to bury, both their own and the King's Dogs, and once the battle was lost, more than one former enemy decided that he would rather stay at Dunclough than return to a life in the city. The wild wolves were wary, but in Rordan's absence, it fell to Siobhan to decide their fate.
“Let them live, let them all live,” Siobhan said. “If they do not betray us by the time summer comes, they will be our family as if they were born with us.”
“It's a fine decision,” Riona told her later.
Siobhan shook her head. “I never wanted to be wolf king. Not when there was hunting to be done or water to swim in. Another should rise soon and I'll step aside, if he's right for it.”
Riona smiled at her fierce friend, but it was another week before a wolf king showed up. It was Conleth, and he was not alone.
Riona heard raised and curious voices as she stepped into the main hall, but it wasn't until she heard Conleth call her name that she knew something was strange.
“Look,” Conleth said. “I've brought you a visitor, Riona.”
He stepped aside and revealed a figure she never thought she would see again in this life.
“Abbess Beni!”
The old woman looked even tinier than Riona remembered, and while Riona was frozen in shock, she swept over to gather her old novice in a bone-crunching hug.
“I thought you were...”
“No, dear,” said the abbess firmly. “I only got myself a monstrous headache, and after that there was only the grief of missing you. Then this fine strapping man comes calling, and when he said I might see you again, well, there was no journey too long at all, my dear.”
For a moment, she was a child again, taking comfort in the embrace of her old mentor, but after a long moment, she pulled away.
“I have so much to tell you,” she said honestly, “but there is a wrong I must set right.”
***
The forest at the end of the fall was frigid, and almost all the trees were bare of leaves. There was no snow yet, but there was the crisp promise of it in the air, and Siobhan and Ferric had forced her to say that she would turn back if there was a single snowflake. She promised, but she knew in her heart that she would not return until she found what she sought.
She walked for two days, nibbling on the food that they had packed her and following the deer trails as Angus had shown her. She came across the remnants of a few single and solitary kills, which made her think she was on the right track, but it wasn't until a fresh rabbit had been left by her cook fire one night that she realized she was being watched.
On the evening of the third day, she finally sat down at the base of an old oak tree and waited. The sun set, and the stars came out, and she sat as still as she could. Some hours later, when she could see her breath in the starlight, she was rewarded.
The black wolf slid out of the shadows and in the darkness, she could see his eyes like amber sparks.
“There you are,” she said softly. “Do you have any idea how long I have waited for you?”
He tilted his head, and she laughed.
“Not just these last few days, though as long as I kept you waiting, I do not begrudge it. No, I've been waiting for you my whole life. I know who you are, Rordan, and somewhere inside you, you know it too.”
Riona spoke slowly and soothingly, and the black wolf crept nearer.
“I was afraid, though,” she continued. “I saw you, and to me, you were something out of a legend, or perhaps a dream I had when I was just a little child. You represented everything I tried to quell in myself to live at the nunnery. Abbess Beni used to despair of me, you know. She didn't even like to send me gathering in the woods too often because of my urge to wander.”
The wolf flinched and took a few steps back, but she smiled at him.
“She's alive, you know. She's a tough old woman, and it will take more than a simple swat from a wolf to give her pause. No, you never meant to harm her, and I know that. Rordan, I am sorry, but I think I knew it from the beginning. I held it like a shield to protect myself.”
The wolf's ears flattened sadly, and the look on his face could have broken her heart.
“But I know better now,” she said softly. “Oh, my love, I know so much better now. I know now that you were right. I was made for this life, and I was made for you. You are the wolf king, and you are Rordan. You bested Berach in battle, and you sought for the last of the witchfolk to save your people. You bested Conleth of the King's Dogs, and you saved me and Ciara from being taken by invaders.”
She paused. He was close enough now that she could reach out to touch him, but she kept her hands where they were. There was such longing in his eyes that she could have wept, but she made herself keep talking.
“You're my lover,” she said softly, her voice throbbing with emotion, so intense it was nearly a pain, but the rightness was something she never wanted to let go of.
“You are mine, and I am yours, and so it will be until the stars fall into the night sky. I am Riona of the witchfolk, and you are Rordan, the wolf king of Dunclough. Come back to me, my love, please come back...”
As easy as breathing, he was a man again, and he stumbled the last few paces into her arms. “Oh old gods above,” he gasped, burying his face in her neck. “Oh I love you, I love you, Riona....”
THE END
Following the Wolf (Trilogy Bundle) (Werewolf BBW Erotic Romance) Page 7