Realms and Rebels: A Paranormal and Fantasy Reverse Harem Collection

by C. M. Stunich

  “A tribute of what?”

  “Of what you can provide. Usually a residence and food.”

  “And we never say no to gold, though that’s not required,” Kunil offered.

  I rolled their words through my mind. It wasn’t much of a choice, was it? The empire would retaliate no matter if we allied with these creatures or not. “What do we need to do?”

  Kunil grunted. “Nothing. We’ve already claimed this town.”

  New Mila, fighting Mila, surged to the forefront. “A bit highhanded.” I pushed to my feet and confronted the copper gryphon. My head barely reached his shoulder.

  Kunil frowned down at me, then spun away and out the door, the latch snicking behind him. A moment later a roar, similar to the ones that had echoed through the sandstorm last night, reached us.

  Audax took my hand. “Now,” he said as if his brother had not just thrown what amounted to a tantrum over nothing. “We finish sorting out a few things. Kunil will be back when he has… worked off some of his frustration. After that, we go to see the emissary and extract the information we need to ensure we continue to hold this land.” He led me back to my seat and indicated the tray of food. Knowing I needed the sustenance, I sought something easy to eat and found a roll. “What do you know of gryphons?” he asked.

  Was he serious? I let out a dry laugh. “Until you mentioned them, I’d never even heard stories. There are tales of giant eagles in the Grypes Mountains and great cats to the south, but that’s it.” I took a bite, my thoughts drifting to Kunil. What frustrations did he need to work off?

  Orel returned to his seat on the bed. “The gryphon,” he said, “has three forms.”

  “Our beast form, which you have seen,” Audax said as he once more sat at my feet.

  “Our human form,” Orel continued, gesturing to himself.

  “And the sands,” Audax finished.

  The bread seemed to swell in my suddenly dry mouth, and I swallowed with difficulty. “Can you really control the sand? The storm really was you?” Despite everything I’d witnessed and everything they’d told me, this was something too hard to believe.

  “We can call the sands. The winds bring them.” Orel rose to pace the room.

  “So you control the wind?”

  “In a manner.”

  “That tells me nothing.” I set the roll down and twisted the hem of my shirt, trying to hold back my frustration.

  Audax reached up and freed my fingers from the cloth they were tangled in. I gripped his hand, my nails digging in to him.

  “We—” He cleared his throat. “We’ll need to make sure your nails get some attention. I don’t mind a scratch or two, but I prefer they be accompanied by kisses—or more.”

  I shifted my grip, my fingers wrapping his wrist and digging in. Yes, fighting Mila was still at the fore.

  He squawked. Actually squawked. “Right,” he said. “I’ve never had to explain how we bring the sands. The peoples of the desert already know that we do and have never asked.”

  “So there are people in the desert?” I shouldn’t be surprised—one more thing to add to the list of new knowledge.

  His mouth parted. “Of course there are. Where do you think so many of the spices come from?”

  I inhaled, filling my nose with his scent. It was foreign, light, and almost sweet. “I guess there is much of this world I don’t know,” I said wryly. “The sands?”

  “The sands,” Orel picked up the explanation. “Gryphons... band together in tribes, which are in turn broken into coalitions. A coalition consists of gryphons, male and female, who form a family unit for protection and to guard a particular territory.”

  “Females?” The words came out sharper than I intended.

  “Don’t worry. We have no females yet,” Audax teased.

  “That’s not what I meant.” My cheeks heated. It was exactly what I had meant. These gryphons were mine—my light in the dark, my solace in dreams. I swallowed and pushed the feelings down.

  “Hmmm.” His lips ticked up at the corners as his fingers caressed my wrist. I didn’t pull away this time. “Well, seven years ago we all began having dreams. Orel was the only one to remember his. We’d already been restless, ready to leave our coalition and form a new one, seek a new territory, or find another, smaller one to band with.”

  “But you didn’t do that.” I loosened my grip and ran my fingers over the light hairs on the back of his arm, watching the soft outline of purple that lit where I touched.

  “No.” He tilted his head to the edge of the room, where the other gryphon spun and headed back to us. “Orel always insisted we were never in the right place. We continued moving south, farther south than many gryphons venture.”

  “And came here.”

  “Yesterday was...” He trailed off, and I glanced up. His brows were pinched and his gaze locked on where my fingers rested against the back of his wrist.

  I smiled. It was reassuring to know that I wasn’t the only one lost to this situation. “Yes, yesterday was.”

  Orel halted before me again. “As we said, gryphons have three forms. Man, our beast form, and the sands. But we are not sand. We are... the spirit of the sand? The sands exist in us, and we cannot exist without them.”

  “So where you go, so go the sands.” In a way it made sense. Their words were starting to sink in. I didn’t understand the how or the why of it all, but there was more than enough proof confronting me that I could accept what obviously was.

  “To a degree, yes.” His eyes flashed, and for a moment I lost my train of thought.

  I swallowed. “And what will happen to the compounds if you stay here and continue to bring your sands? We cannot grow the food we need in such an environment.” Stay on track, Mila.

  “There are always oases in the desert. Places where life and growth flourish,” Orel replied. He tilted his head, voice and gaze steady.

  “You have an answer for everything.” I loosened a hand from Audax and reached for my roll, taking another bite.

  “No. Not an answer for everything. I don’t have an answer to you, not yet.” His brows pulled together, and his lips tipped up. I’d seen that expression before on Jonathon in happier times. I’d even enjoyed putting it there. It kept him on his toes.

  “No one has ever had an answer to me.” Where that response came from I didn’t know. “Why can you sense me, but not Audax or Kunil?”

  Audax turned his hand over and threaded our fingers together. “He blooded you.”

  The prick at my finger. “Blooded me.” I sighed. “Please stop assuming I know what you are talking about. Never heard of gryphons, remember?”

  “And yet you are taking this all remarkably well.” Orel closed the distance between us, until he stood only inches away.

  I would have to crane my head back to see him. I didn’t, instead focusing on Audax. He was easier to read. “Yes. I am, aren’t I? Now, blooded. Explain.” I took another bite of the roll. It was very good—soft, flavorful, and made from the fine white flour I hadn’t tasted in seven years.

  “I’m not that easy to read, you now,” Audax said.

  I stiffened, and my throat tightened. “What?” I finally managed. He could read minds?

  The gold intensified in his cheeks. Was he blushing? “A bit. Orel can heal. Kunil, well... let’s just say Kunil is undefeated in battle, staged or otherwise. His speed and strength are considered powers of their own.”

  I took a moment to digest this new bit of information. When I was a girl, I’d met a family traveling from Sinozus, south of the mountains. They’d had a son who delighted in telling me scary tales. One of them had been of a beast who could rend you with its claws, then devour you with its mind. That sought after gold and guarded its treasure jealously. I tucked the information away.

  “Blooded?” I asked, bringing us back to the original topic. I still refused to look up at Orel.

  He sighed above me. “Not going to let that go?”

  “No.�
��

  Wings flapped outside the door, and wind rushed. A moment later the door latch clicked, and Kunil entered. His chest heaved with heavy breaths, but he didn’t speak or try to approach me.

  “Blooding,” Orel said, stalking behind me, “is how members of a coalition bind themselves together.” He laid a hand on my shoulder. “It shouldn’t have been possible to bind a human, let alone through a dream. But much has been lost of the lore concerning seers.”

  Kunil moved, pacing the edges of the room as Orel had done earlier. Unlike Orel, this was restless. The copper gryphon hadn’t worked off all his energy it seemed.

  “My blindness?” Something was coming. The weight of it pressed into me.

  “I attempted a healing when I treated your side. I could find nothing wrong, nothing to mend,” Orel said. “There are tales of oracles, of seers who lose their earthly sight to gain something new. Perhaps this was the case with you.”

  “I don’t have any sort of new sight. I’m telling you, there’s nothing.” My lungs tightened and I struggled to draw in my next breath.

  “You can see us. And our bonding is incomplete. I have blooded you, but you have not yet blooded me,” Orel said, his fingers skimming over my hair. I flinched as they caught in the tangles.

  “And this will cure me?”

  “I do not know. Do you want to be cured?” His arm came over my shoulder, a small blade held in the palm of his hand. Was he asking me to—?

  Kunil sped toward me, a blur of copper and light, and knocked Orel’s hand away. The blade disappeared as it left Kunil’s hand and skittered across the floor. I stared in the direction it had flown. How had I been able to see it when I could see nothing else?

  “You’re an ass,” Kunil said. “She needs to know what she is getting herself into. You blooded her by accident. As a human, or even a seer, we don’t know what will happen if the bond is complete or if she is blooded again. And she doesn’t yet know what it means, not fully, to belong to a coalition. You’ve told her nothing of substance.” Kunil reached down and slapped the back of Audax’s head. “You are at fault, too. Fledgling,” he muttered.

  Then he offered his hand to me, and after a brief hesitation, I set down the roll and allowed him to pull me from my chair and away from the other two.

  “Let’s walk. I need the air, and the people here need to see you, see that you are all right and that we are not doing nefarious things to you.” He pulled me from the overseer’s room and scooped me up in his arms before bounding down the stairs. He moved with such speed that for a moment I imagined I was flying.

  “Nefarious?” I asked. The kernel of hope that Orel and Audax had begun back in the overseer’s rooms grew into something warmer.

  He shrugged, his shoulder lifting my body in a wave. His arms were strong around me, and I wanted to rest there. A little girl’s fantasy of happily ever after. Kunil’s grip tightened, and a deep rumble vibrated from his chest and into mine. It soothed me, and I relaxed into him. We didn’t move for a few long moments. Around us, the air stirred in a gentle breeze. Spice, this one hotter, deeper than Audax’s, filled my nose and tickled the back of my throat.

  I sneezed.

  Kunil huffed and set me to my feet. “Come.” He tucked my arm into his and set off, his strides long, and I struggled to keep up. When I stumbled, he glanced down at me and slowed.

  “We will talk. I will tell you what you need to know, and I will not hold back,” he said, his tone serious, grim.

  I licked my cracked lips. “So, what do I need to know?” I asked, my throat dry from more than just the sun overhead.

  “The coalition is a family. We support each other, we protect each other, and we fight with each other, as any family will. Some choose to mate, though not all do. This connection would be more than what we have with those who live in our territory and who offer tribute. If you join us, you would need to travel with us. I do not know how that will work. You would live with us. I do not know where that will be.” He slowed then stopped on the path.

  Around me, people worked, shovels digging into sand and that sand hitting wood. Carts, the axles rusted and squealing, traveled past us. Kunil led me off the path, packed gravel becoming grass and sand beneath my feet. “Here. Sit.”

  He guided me down until I nestled in a shallow hollow of stone, cool beneath my hands. He knelt in front of me. “Others may come and ask to enter the coalition. You will have a say in who will be accepted. If our lands are threatened, you will protect them.” He rested a hand on my knee. “If we are threatened, you will protect us. I do not think this will be a problem for you, though.” The rumble deepened, and this time I did not think it was in displeasure.

  “We used to be engaged. Jonathon and I—the emissary.” The words slipped out.

  “Ah.” Kunil nodded. A higher pitched whine entered the rumble still coming from him. Anger? “I have heard of this practice. I do not follow the ways of humans as closely as my brothers. You were promised to be blooded.”

  I shuddered. “Something like that. But that was before.”

  “Before?”

  “Before the blindness. Before my flaw.”

  The whine climbed in intensity. “You are not flawed.”

  “And yet I was sent here.”

  “You are not flawed. I have talked to the healer and the supplier.” Kunil leaned in, eyes trained on mine.

  He must have been referring to Ben. Like Healer Telki, his position was much more neutral. As the steward of the compound, he ensured the stocking of food and staples and all materials needed for the day-to-day operations.

  “He told me of this Citizens’ Initiative,” Kunil continued. “It is an atrocity. My mother told me tales about an empire to the south with peoples of all colors and customs, which was a land where wonders could be found, with plains of grass that stretched away like the ocean, and cities of stone that shone like jewels. She told me about celebrations and dances that lasted for days, and music to make a gryphon weep. Maybe these were tales of your empire as it once was.” The line of his mouth softened. “She also told me this land turned its back on those deemed different. How anything magical—of wonder or awe—was driven out. She did not mention they had turned the citizens to slaves. Each one of you does a job that many with none of these ‘flaws’ could do.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but he was not done.

  “It is not enough to protect this one village. According to the supplier, there are four other villages like this one. They too must be guarded.”

  I followed his logic to the end. “Even if you take this compound, the others are still under the empire’s control. And if those are taken, the empire will just build more, sending others to those new compounds.”

  “Yes.”

  “It can’t happen. We can’t let it.”

  His gaze bore into me, looking deep, seeking something, though I didn’t know what. Finally, he nodded. “Then those new people will need to come here. And if we are to have more men and women join us, we need additional land. And you need to understand that in order to succeed, we will need other gryphons with us. My brothers and I, we are competent, but we cannot take on an empire by ourselves.”

  “Which means they will join your coalition and be blooded,” I said, finally connecting what he was telling me. “And that they, and not just you three, will be my family.” I studied him. There was something else, something he wanted me to realize on my own. “If I blood bond to you and Audax, will others be willing to follow you?” Orel could be explained away as an accident of fate. The other two could not.

  “We do not know,” Orel said from behind me.

  I twisted. The other two stood there, Audax in gryphon form.

  I asked my next question, one I needed to know the answer to, though I knew not why. “Mating. Would others come wanting to mate with you? How would this work?” And what would my place be?

  Orel smiled. “They may come. But I would turn them away. In truth, I have not
wanted another for seven years.”

  Audax flashed to his human form. “Your place would be by our side. Always. You would have the full privileges and rights of the coalition as one of its primary members.”

  “Which means that when others follow us here, and I believe they will, that you will need to lead them as well,” Orel continued.

  “I don’t know your ways.” They were asking me to leave behind everything I knew to start over once again. Where was the new Mila when I needed her?

  “We will teach you,” Audax reassured me, his tone earnest.

  My hands fisted in my lap. “And the mating?” What if no other females came? What if they did? The problem was I didn’t know what I wanted. Would they expect more from me than I was willing to give?

  “I told you that I do not want any other,” Orel said, nudging Kunil until he scooted to the side.

  I looked down, avoiding his gaze.

  “That’s not what she means,” Audax supplied, his young voice soft. “It’s whatever you want Mila. If all you want is a family and security, that is yours. If you want me, then I, too, am yours. Even if another female arrives. We will simply have to find another male for her, won’t we?” He knelt on the other side of Orel, so all three faced me. “The longer I am around you, the greater the certainty grows. You connected with us even before the blooding, whatever the reason. You are ours. And we are yours.”

  “Yes.” Kunil leaned toward me. His hand rose, skimming over my hair and down to cup the back of my neck. He rested it there, the heat seeping into me. “And it is your decision whether to complete the blood bond with us. We will still protect you regardless. It is your decision.”

  I wanted to reach out and grab what they offered with both hands. I wanted to believe what they told me. I opened my hands and skimmed them over my thighs, the cracked and callused skin catching on the rough weave of my trousers. I thought of my scars. My ragged nails. I reached up, patting my hair. It was tangled and clumped. I licked over dried and peeling lips.

  “Why?” I asked. There’s that word again.