by Alex Lidell
The Academy’s guards cadre were competent enough, but nothing equated to the battlefield experience River shared with the two warriors. Plus, whatever was truly terrorizing the town and farms, Sage wanted the details kept quiet. River had to agree with that. If the Academy was to remain open as usual, then they needed to control the gossip.
Beside Coal, Shade moved with a predatory lupine grace that made him one of the most dangerous warriors on a battlefield—though the man’s heart lay in healing, not killing. The assignment to Great Falls was supposed to help fill that need, and here River was, dragging him right back out into patrol. “If you’ve other obligations this evening—” River cut himself off at Shade’s curt shake of the head.
“Nothing worth missing a hunt over.” The warrior’s yellow eyes shone. Good. Shade checked the blade sheathed down the length of his spine. “Where do you want me?”
Surveying the moonlit forest, River considered the question. “All the assaults have happened at night, so I believe we are dealing with something nocturnal. We split to circle the wall first, ensure no immediate threat, then reconnect to head toward the farmland and set up on the livestock.”
Shade nodded once, melting silently into the woods. Sometimes River wondered if the male wasn’t part wolf himself for how he prowled through the forest, the smells and darkness of night seeming to free something inside him.
“If you’re this worried, why not send the students home for cause?” Coal asked, moving off in the opposite direction of Shade. “Say they couldn’t master the curriculum.”
“Politics.” River shook his head, his gaze moving as he fell in step beside Coal. “Explaining why we forced one kingdom’s subject out over another will look biased no matter what. All expulsions must be self-selected.”
Coal snorted. “Give me a name of anyone you want sent home and I’ll have her signing paperwork by day’s end.”
“Her?” River knew he should stop talking, but his treacherous mouth defied him. “Would you be thinking of your new student in particular?”
Coal’s eyes remained on the woods. “I was not. But if you mean Leralynn of Osprey, she’ll pack her bags quickly. I know the type.” Coal shifted, drawing a boot dagger into his free hand. “Center of the world, expecting recognition the instant they draw breath in a room—and damn well getting it from every male within range.” The last came as a quiet afterthought that made River’s jaw tighten in the darkness.
15
Lera
With his hand on the small of my back, Tye moves on silent feet along the woods lining the wall, keeping to the darkest patches as we stray farther and farther from the barracks. Try as I may to follow the turns and twists, the grounds—already unfamiliar in daylight—are utterly unidentifiable dressed in cast shadows. The grass is dry with cold, crackling softly around my boots, and the cool air is sharp with the smell of earth and pine. After a quarter hour’s stealth, the male motions for me to stop and crouches next to a set of hedges that look no different from the dozens of others. A few heartbeats later, his hand brushes dirt away from a trapdoor, which opens obediently on well-oiled hinges.
I stare into liquid darkness beneath us. “An underground passage?”
Tye nods, swinging himself down into the abyss without ceremony. When I let myself dangle off the edge to follow him down, I discover my legs are unable to touch the ground. I clench my teeth. Tye jumped from the second story for the enjoyment of it this morning, so his easy descent tells me nothing about the floor I cannot see. The ankle I nearly twisted getting out of my window whines with fear. I draw a shaking breath, my hands aching from the strain as I try to talk myself into letting go.
Firm hands grip my calves, pulling in clear command. Tye’s spotting touch echoes through me, the relief so palpable that I let my grip slide on sheer trust. The instant I do, my body drops into the male’s waiting arms, which close around me protectively.
For a moment, I stay there, my face pressed into Tye’s shoulder, drinking in his warmth and fresh scent. The steady rise and fall of his broad, muscled chest is soothing enough to stop time itself, returning me back to a world where the male held me readily with heart and soul. It’s so familiar here, I can almost forget for a moment that everything’s changed.
Unbidden, the desire to tell Tye everything fills my lungs. You are fae, Tye. My mate. And though you remember nothing of it and think you’ve a life here, it’s all different. I bite my lip. Would I believe such a tale? No. No one sane would. Gavriel’s warning of what fae craft accusations lead to nowadays sends a chill down my neck. This disaster with the veil amulets needs actions, not words. It needs a magical tablet to be found and fixed.
Setting me on my feet, Tye steps away and pulls down on a rope. The trap door closes obediently above us. “It’s an escape tunnel,” he says, leading the way forward along the rough stone. “Not very posh, but it will get us to the other side of the wall. Keep your hand on the rock to steady your bearing.”
I obey, stepping gingerly, my immortal eyes making out no more than an occasional glimpse of a wall—a human would see not even that.
“The guards don’t monitor this?” My foot steps on what feels like a dead rat lying in the middle of the path. I inhale sharply before moving on.
“We’re passing near the main gates now, actually,” Tye whispers. “There is a place in the guardhouse where they can see any light passing through here. So long as we light no candle or lantern, the risk is minimal.” Tye’s silhouette seems to glance over his shoulder. “But minimal isn’t the same as zero, pretty lass. Are you still certain that whatever it is you want to do is worth angering our lords and masters? Speaking of that, what are we doing exactly?”
“We aren’t doing anything.” My hand presses hard into the rock as I quicken my step enough to overtake the male. “I’ll take it from here. You need to go back to the Academy, Tye.”
Tye steps along with me. “I’ve been told I’m good company.”
“I’ve been told that getting tossed into a lake will teach me to swim—that didn’t make it true.” I stop, turning toward him. “Why are you helping me? In fact, how did you find me near that oak to begin with?”
Tye chuckles. “You had the look of someone about to make a jailbreak. As to why I came—I’m trying to impress you, of course.” He stretches. “And because it seems an entertaining way to spend the night.”
“And if we are caught?”
“Then the night will quickly become less entertaining.” He motions toward the passage. “Come along, mischief. You won’t find the exit without me.”
Fair point. Quitting arguing lest I win, I follow Tye along the uneven dips and rises until he finally blocks my path with his arm. Ordering me to stay put, the male feels along the wall until finally tugging on something I can’t see. A moment later, a rope ladder unfurls beside us. Why couldn’t the veil amulet have endowed me with this knowledge?
Sending me up ahead of him, Tye brings up the rear until we emerge into the wilderness. Fresh air fills my nose and lungs, washing away the stench of mold and dung my fae senses absorbed too clearly in the passage. Against the starlit sky, Tye’s silhouette has a soft, preternatural glow that turns his lithe movements into dance-like perfection. Now, like me, the male stands with his face tipped up, drawing gulps of crisp air. “Where to now?”
16
Lera
“That somewhat depends on where we are,” I mutter, turning about to get my bearings. The forbidding tower of the Academy’s keep, the jagged mountain range, the sloping forested ridge, all stand mocking sentinel against the night. Clear, yet telling me nothing. When I approached the Academy, the damn stone relic was rather proactive in attracting my attention, but my secret hopes that its shards might oblige me with the same courtesy are fading quickly. Which means I am going to be looking for my own tracks in the forest after all. A fool’s errand at night. My feet trip over a root I’d failed to notice, the loud crackle of dry leaves and branches as
I fumble for balance a mockery in itself.
Stars. A heaviness settles on my chest, the weight of it making it hard to inhale. What the bloody hell was I thinking coming out here? Dragging Tye right along into trouble with me? Tye, who thinks he is human and me no more than a conquest. A distraction. My fingers grip my shirt hem as I turn about, the forest alive with an owl’s ghostly hoots and a wolf’s too-close howl. Just like Shade, except not. A tremor runs through me.
Everything is just like but not. What if this is the reality, and the soul-gripping connection I thought I had with the males was never anything but a trick of magic? If we were truly meant for each other, would they not have noted me? Felt something? Anything? The wind blows into my face, its icy fingers racing down my skin. If this is the truth of it without magic helping us, then breaking the amulets’ hold heralds nothing but pretty lies. My throat closes, my eyes stinging, though I don’t let the tears fall.
“Lass?” Tye’s hands settle on my shoulders, turning me toward him.
I swallow, suddenly unsure what to do. What to say. Five. There are supposed to be five of us. And now there aren’t. And it hurts like a knife slicing across my soul.
“Five what?” Tye asks, and I realize I’ve spoken the word aloud. “What are you searching for, Lera?”
“Tracks,” I say numbly. “I dropped something on my way. I’d hoped to find it.”
“At night?”
“I couldn’t exactly walk out during daylight, now could I?”
Tye’s answering chuckle vibrates through me, a rumble that starts in his chest and makes my bones tremble. Alone in the darkness with nothing but the sounds of the forest around us, the deep loneliness I’ve somehow held at bay before now slams into me with a bitter vengeance. Before I can draw my next breath, Tye pulls me in against his shoulder, his arms wrapping me tightly, his heart a steady beat beneath his breast. His fresh scent is a balm to my senses, his muscles surrounding me like steel wrapped in velvet.
The phantom limb of magic that I awoke with in this new fae body stirs in its shackles, unable to move.
I want him. Every fiber in my body wants to be pressed against his, even with the mating bond muted. I may not be his female right now, but he is my male. And I’m too lonely, too tired, to care about the former.
My hand fists in Tye’s shirt, pulling the male toward me roughly, my lips covering his with desperate need. As the warrior’s taste fills me, his achingly familiar mouth hot against mine, my body wakens, begging for more. Real or not.
Tye’s hands grip either side of my face, pulling me away gently even as his sudden hardness throbs against my belly. His breath comes hard, his green eyes gleaming in the moonlight. “Not that I mind, lass, but I think you do. Or will come morning.”
My heart pounds against my ribs, the sound echoing in my ears. “Come morning, I’ll deny it ever happened,” I say, my breath ragged. Needy. Maybe I’m not Tye’s conquest, but he is mine. A notch on my damn belt. My teeth grind together, my hands digging into his shoulders. “Don’t go getting attached, pretty lad.”
A tiny predatory growl escapes Tye’s lips, his emerald eyes flashing in the moonlight. “Oh, we’ll see about the morning, lass. I’m told I can be very memorable.” The male’s mouth is descending upon mine even as he bites off his own words, his body pushing me back back back until I feel a tree trunk digging into my shoulders.
Tye’s kiss deepens, his lips and tongue plundering my mouth with hot savageness. Heat ripples through my core, my legs and arms and abdomen tingling with energy as pressure builds high between my thighs. My sex pulses hungrily, blindly. More. I want more. The void inside me howls, screaming for Tye’s cock while I clench and clench around nothing.
With a growl, I shove into Tye, my strength too great to be mortal even in this world’s shackles. A lesser male would have swayed from the assault, but Tye, Tye only lifts his face away from mine as his body absorbs everything I can throw and doesn’t give an inch. Heartbeat after heartbeat, he stands his ground, looming over me while his broad shoulders block out the moonlight. He stands, taking it all—until he moves.
Grabbing my wrists, he pins them above my head, his knee forcing my thighs apart. Deprived of means to squeeze my legs, the pressure along my sex turns unbearable. I struggle futilely against his hold, each failed attempt to escape only feeding the merciless ache inside me.
A flash of Tye’s teeth, of the canines I can’t see, and a sharp sting sinks into the tender spot where my neck and shoulder meet. The pain of the claiming shoots down my body, turning to exquisite heat.
Tye licks the bite, the tiny laps of his tongue starkly soft, as exotic as ice in the eye of a flame. I writhe, but the iron bands of his hands at my wrists let me do nothing but feel every unbearable zing. My body trembles, the surrender and storm of sensation battering me from all sides. The world about me narrows to the dampness soaking my underthings, to the tingling heat that brings me to my toes with desperation.
Tye shifts my wrists until he controls both my arms with one hand, his other sliding along my shoulder, my breast, my waist and down down down.
17
River
Coal tapped his ear, signaling to River.
River paused, cocking his head in search of the sound that Coal had marked. A wolf howled. An owl hooted nearby, a pair of squirrels who should be sleeping scattering along the trees instead. As if something—someone—was disturbing their slumber. Someone whose heavy breathing River could now make out.
A small movement of River’s hand had Coal walking again, the warrior’s steps silent on the cold earth. A predator stalking prey. River’s steady heartbeat kept its rhythm even as his mind raced. Whatever the foe, it was too close to the Academy. Had to be put down. Now. Tonight. With Shade’s help if possible, but not at the risk of letting it escape. River’s blade whispered free of its sheath.
The sounds of panting breath increased, branches snapping beneath feet that belonged to neither River nor Coal. Close enough to the Academy’s wall that a stone’s throw would reach it. Stopping with his back pressed against a wide oak that was the last point of concealment between them and the target, River shared a readying glance with Coal.
The warrior nodded.
River’s hand lifted and closed into a fist in the moonlight. Go. Go. Go.
Twisting around the trunk at the same time as Coal, River brought his sword into ready guard just as the foliage opened to—
Tyelor of Blair, pinning Leralynn of Osprey to a bloody oak, the man’s hand so deeply inside the woman’s tight pants that his fingers couldn’t help but be stroking inside her hot folds even now.
River’s chest tightened, heat simmering in his blood and filling his lungs, his face, his hands. Leralynn’s auburn hair was loose but for a single braid on the left side, swinging like a mesmerizing pendulum with the couple’s movement. The moonlight showed the naked skin of her exposed throat as she tilted up her head to meet Tye’s kiss, her undulating body giving so generously of itself that a tremor ran along River’s skin, making his cock twitch at the thought.
The furnace inside River blazed hotter with each of Lera’s soft gasps, and when her face turned slightly, she reminded him so much of Diana that River had to bite back a roar. The damn woman was out in the wilderness, beyond the Academy’s protective walls, here where three people had died in as many nights. That alone made River’s arms long to shake her. Except his arms wanted to do so much more than just shake the woman. The scent of her arousal spun River’s head, the glistening wetness on Tye’s fingers as his hand slowly withdrew and slid up her torso toward her heavy breasts as tantalizing as chilled wine in a desert’s midst. An ache he had no right to feel for a student gripped River’s groin so fiercely that no shifting would be enough to relieve the sudden horrid tightness in his britches.
“What the bloody hell are you two doing?” River’s voice was ice. Too controlled for his racing heart, so polar to the inferno inside him that it was a wonder th
e two didn’t meet in an eruption of steam.
Lera gasped, tearing her mouth away from Tye’s.
Tye cursed, his green-eyed gaze moving between River and Coal in a too-experienced assessment of the situation even as he pushed Leralynn behind him. As if his back would protect the woman from the deserved wrath.
Leralynn’s eyes widened as she met River’s, her skin blanching beautifully. When she turned, River caught sight of the sword hilt rising above her shoulder. She’d not come here just for the…for companionship, then. River didn’t know whether that made him feel better or worse.
Not that it mattered. Leralynn was done. Sage might not allow students to be shown the door outright, but by the time River was through with her, she’d be running for the exit. Which would be best for all involved.
18
Lera
I gasp. My body, trembling in anticipation of the release Tye’s deft fingers teased to the surface so skillfully, recoils at the abrupt change.
River’s ire saturates the air, overpowering the forest’s fresh scent. Sheer masculine dominance in each contour of his muscular body, his movements vibrate with a restrained violence that—despite my wishes—stokes my anxiety and arousal in equal measure. I focus on the chill breeze to clear my foggy mind. River is angry, yes, but it is a kind of fury I’d imagine the male reserves for an invading host from the dark realm, not a stray student snogging in the darkness. As it is, the intensity in River’s gray gaze is so potent, his eyes seem to glow with it.