Huntsman's Prey

by Marie Hall

  She sucked in a sharp breath. “You do love her.”

  It wasn’t really a question, more a statement of fact. He dipped his head once. “Yes. Very much. And I know she’s worried about you, because you do not feel for me as she does.”

  “She is right. I do not know you. But she is also wrong.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “I respect you for what you did. For the choice you made. For listening to me. In many ways Lissa is very innocent. I kept her that way, intentionally, as I’ve told you. But not just to use her to free us. I kept her that way because I wanted her to not know the horrors of what I…we, would eventually become. I wanted that innocence, and I clung to her. She saved me and I saw the world through clear eyes whenever she controlled us. I saw her insecurities, her desire for you, her anger at times, but mostly I witnessed her falling in love and it made me…” her lashes flickered like moth’s wings, “it made me curious. And very jealous. I wanted what she had.”

  His heart sank. Because if they were two different souls in one body, then Chrysalis would wish to fall in love with someone other than him. She’d kiss and rub and touch another and while his head would know it wasn’t Lissa doing it, he wasn’t sure his heart would feel similarly.

  “You will fall in love with another, and wish us to share then, is that it?”

  She gave a half snort and shrugged. Stripping a candy cane leaf off a peppermint bark tree limb, she twirled it between her fingers. “I did think that. All those years looking out through Lissa’s eyes, I craved what I never thought would be possible for me. Love, affection, children. A family of my own. But I know that my happiness would come at the expense of her own. Because eventually you’d start to wonder if it wasn’t me in bed with my lover, but Lissa instead.”

  His jaw jutted out and he looked to the side. “Yes, I would wonder that and maybe some days it would hurt worse than others, but there is much I would do for Lissa, including sharing the body that I love.”

  She sighed. “Well, like I said, she was wrong too.” Tossing the leaf, she dusted the peppermint crumbs off her hands. “Because I have a plan.”

  He snorted. “You always do, don’t you?”

  She laughed. “It’s a specialty of mine.”

  And just as before, Aeric found himself responding to her teasing. Not with the same intensity as he did with Lissa, but with the first initial stirrings of something deeper. Was it possible that he could wind up falling in love with both Lissa and Chrysalis? It almost felt wrong to think it, to want it, and yet…

  Flowers surrounded him. He remembered that too, that there were times when Lissa had smelled different than her scent of spring rain, that sometimes she’d smelled of a field of wild roses and he now realized it was because it hadn’t been just Lissa with him.

  Her finger ran down the plane of his nose and across the expanse of his lips. He sucked in a sharp breath at the sensations her touch stirred. Blinking, he tried to take a step back, because even though this was the same body, this wasn’t the same woman and just as the thought of her being with another hurt him, he never wanted her to feel that with him.

  That he could enjoy both her sides. Want both her sides.

  Her gaze was curious, but excited. “I think I could fall in love with you too, hunter. You saved us both that night, and I feel a debt to you.”

  He scoffed, shaking his head, finally able to step away from her. “That is not how you fall in love with someone. Feeling a debt of gratitude—”

  Placing a finger against his lips just as Lissa sometimes did, she wet her lips. “All great romances start at the very beginning. A blossoming seedling of curiosity, the instant flare of sexual attraction when two like minds first meet…” Her fingers walked up his chest as she leaned up on tiptoe. “Woo me, hunter. And not only will Lissa’s heart belong to you, but so will mine and then you need never worry if we’ll stray, for we’ll both be yours.”

  Finding it incredibly difficult to breathe, he placed his hands on her waist and meant to push her away. But instead his fingers dug into her flesh while his brain screamed that he should stop.

  His thoughts were a mass of fuzzy confusion. This would be the simplest and easiest way to make it work between him and Lissa. But it would wound her. He knew it, because he’d be cheating on her.

  Falling in love with another.

  He shook his head. “I…I can’t do that to her.”

  Placing her head over the spot of his heart he felt her lips stretch into a smile. “What if Lissa agrees? Would you then consider this arrangement?”

  Could he really do this? What if Lissa did say yes? Give him free reign to fall in love with not only her, but pledge his heart to another? If the situation were reversed he wasn’t sure he’d be okay with it. Because then his worry would be, which part of him did she love more?

  Grabbing his forehead, he growled. “This feels wrong. As much as I want to say yes, because I want her more than anything, the thought of hurting her wounds me.”

  Leaning back to look at him, she took a deep breath. “Then let us ask her, and if she says no. Then you will walk away from the both of us. That is the way it has to be.”

  Heart racing, mouth dry, he nodded. Because he knew she was right.

  “Aeric?” the soft cadence of her sweet voice, the way she said his name like a benediction, he knew he was talking to Lissa again.

  Desperate, he stole her lips. Took them and crushed them beneath his own, swiping his tongue inside her mouth, twining it with his. Never wanting to let her go. Terrified of what her answer might be.

  He couldn’t do this to her.

  But he couldn’t let her go.

  “Lissa,” he moaned, grabbing her backside and forcing her thighs to straddle his hips. Her whimper was full of sensuality and desire.

  In seconds they’d worked one another’s clothes off and were on the ground. Aeric couldn’t stop kissing her, caressing her, saying without words how much he treasured and adored her.

  Wanted her.

  “Come inside, Aeric, please,” she said with a kittenish flick of her tongue on the shell of his ear.

  Groaning, he slipped inside her velvet heat and shuddered as her body gripped his tightly.

  This was where he belonged. Where he’d always belong. Inside his woman for eternity, bound to her by both heart and soul.

  Her nails were sharp as she dragged them down his back and her mating was just as wild and reckless as his. She said she knew what Chrysa did and said. So she must know what Chrysalis had proposed.

  She also must realize that as much as he hadn’t wanted to, he’d responded to Chrysalis. That part of this erection was because of the other woman. It shamed him, but she didn’t cry, or pull away. She seemed just as manic to touch him, to brand him, as he her.

  “I love you, Aeric,” she hissed out and then her spine curved upward as she moaned her orgasm.

  The sight of her flushed face and rosy cheeks sent him spiraling over the edge. Calling out her name, he clung to her body and moved deep inside her, floating up through heaven before finally crashing back down to reality in a sweat, soaked haze.

  “I love you, hunter.” She fluttered her fingers across the scratches she’d just given him.

  Resting his head on her breasts, he took in deep breaths, his entire body soothed as she kissed his forehead over and over again.

  “I love you too, kitten. Only you. I need you to know that.”

  “I do. But Chrysa is right.”

  Moving up on one elbow so that he could better look at her face, he pushed the hair out of her eyes and pursed his lips. “About which part?”

  “About all of it.” Her eyes weren’t sad, so much as they were determined. “It’s not fair for me to ask her to never love. To never have what I already do.”

  “And you’re okay with me… with… that?”

  It was still hard for him to put into words. Because while that solution would solve both their problems, and on the
outside would seem like a fantastic predicament for any man to have, it was vital to him that she understood that he loved her like no other. That regardless of how sexually excited Chrysalis could make him, he didn’t love her the same way. That Lissa was truly his world. And her opinions mattered as much, or more to him, than his own.

  She bit her bottom lip. “I can learn to be okay with this. As long as you promise to love us both equally.”

  “I’ll always love you more.”

  She shushed him with a pinky finger to his lips and he couldn’t help but nibble it. But this time it didn’t elicit the smile it typically did from her.

  “Then that wouldn’t be fair to her.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I know we are asking you to do the impossible. To understand this nonsense that is our life. But I doubt very strongly that any man could, except for you. Because you know us in a way no one else ever will. Chrysa was right when she said you saved us. You saved us both. And I know she will fall as madly in love with you as I have. No matter if it’s you, or if it’s someone else, I’ll never be able to live a full life with any man unless he accepts the duality of my nature. And the truth is, I would rather her fall in love with you and know you and touch you, because then it is only ever going to be you in my mind and in my thoughts and in my heart. I won’t have to remember the touch of another man on this body, because it will only ever be yours. And I want that.”

  His heart increased its beats. Because now that she was telling him it was okay, he realized he wanted that too. Looking back on his journey with Lissa it was now easy to see the moments he’d been with Chrysa, and how she’d make him laugh. Or get irritated. Or stand in awe of what she could do. He didn’t love Chrysa as he did Lissa, but it was the two of them combined that made him feel what he now did.

  “I almost feel like I’d be cheating on you,” he admitted.

  This time her smile was a little sad. “The only time I’d ever feel that way is if you ever loved her more than me. I can never be apart from her. But nor could I lose you. I will learn to be happy and I want you to be too. Together, the three of us, we can make this work. I believe it.”

  He licked his lips. “That means I will need to be with Chrysalis. I will need to fall in love with her, and her with me. Are you really sure you understand this, Lissa? Because I will do it, and I won’t lie to you now and say that a part of me is not intrigued, that would be an untruth and I never wish to do that to you. But unless I truly know I have your blessing, I will not do this.”

  Her hand didn’t tremble as she laid it on his cheek, and giving it an emphatic jerk, she nodded. “You don’t have a choice, hunter, for I refuse to let you go. Ever. I promise, I’m not going anywhere.”

  And with a final, lingering kiss she vanished.

  And he knew the moment she’d withdrawn because the languid warmth of her body was replaced by one that went immediately rigid. Her eyes widened and when she glanced down to note that not only was she naked, but he was still deep inside her, Chrysalis laughed.

  “Bloody hell, hunter, I did not expect things to happen so soon.”

  He chuckled. Moving off her, he helped her dress and as he did, he looked at her.

  “What?” she said with a bashful grin.

  “One thing about all of this has always bothered me.”

  She frowned.

  “Right before the end, the sun rolled through the sky. In all the times I’ve gone through our story, that’s never made a bit of sense to me. Did you do that?”

  Her smile was brilliant. “I never knew that Danika was secretly helping me along the way. You knew she was the one who made Pillar give you the drink, I told you, but she revealed to me that the sun was also planned. Jericho was the only one who could handle Siria’s fire. He needed to be there, but because of his curse, he could not. The month hadn’t yet rolled over.”

  “She did that?” He shook his head, feeling a sense of admiration for his godmother in a way he never had before.

  “I’m not sure how she did it, as that defies even the laws of Kingdom. But I’ve learned never to doubt what my godmother can do.”

  He laughed. “I’ll second that motion.”

  But then the tension was back because he knew it was time to make her fall in love with him. But how did one actually go about doing that?

  She grabbed his hand. Her fingers were strong and firm and sure in his. “Look at me, Aeric.”

  He lifted a brow.

  “The moment this gets weird, we stop. You shouldn’t have to force this.”

  “Well neither should you,” he whispered.

  Smiling, she led him toward a distant knoll.

  “Where are you taking me?” he asked.

  Her lips twitched. It was so easy to forget that in her head, she was a different woman. They looked so similar, holding her hand felt right.

  “We have a few months to get to know one another, I’m going to show you who I am, hunter, and when we’re done learning us,” her hand waved between them, “you and I both will know if this could really happen.”

  Stopping her, he covered her hand with his. “I want it to work.”

  She looked at him so long that he wasn’t sure whether she was going through another one of her trances when she finally said, “Me too.”

  Chrysalis led him back to where it’d all ended. To the moon pool.

  Stopping she spread her arm and nodded, “for so long, ever since I was four, I’ve come here. Dumping memories into those bushes,” she sighed, “wondering why the one voice in my head just wouldn’t go away. Trying to take it out of me with each pass through here.”

  Sensing her sadness, he was moved to trace her cheek. She paused, stilled at his touch and it made his stomach twist, because to her this intimacy with him was all new. He’d held her before, talked with her, but never truly knowing it was her.

  Vivid blue eyes full of keen intellect peered deeply at him before her lashes fluttered in acceptance of his touch.

  “I’m not sure how to do this.” Her voice broke and he tugged her in for a hug.

  At first she was stiff and unyielding, but he just continued to rock her, to stroke her back and whisper she’d be okay and Aeric was shocked that this didn’t feel in the slightest bit weird to him.

  “Lissa knows how to live. I’ve looked through her eyes, seen her take joy from a moment, she knows how to laugh, how to love. Me, I’ve been so hidden, so wrapped up in my head that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to learn how.”

  Her words pierced his heart because he wasn’t sure what to tell her. Everything she said was true, to deny it would be a lie. And that’s not how he wanted things to go between them. Not ever again. Tipping her chin up, he held her gaze as he asked, “Why me, Chrysalis? I understand why Lissa would want this, but why you?”

  Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. “Because I can’t imagine anyone else ever being able to truly accept me as I am. To understand my struggle. But you witnessed it, you saw and you know and it gives me hope that maybe…” she swallowed and he heard the tears.

  Brushing his fingers on her cheek he smiled. “You want to know how to live? How to embrace the magic of a moment as Lissa does?”

  “With everything in me.”

  “Then tell me, if you had one thing in the whole of Kingdom that you wished to do or see, what would it be?”

  Blinking she turned her face to the side and he could see she was giving it much consideration. Her tiny brows furrowed into the cutest little line and he grinned when her body softened, yielded to him. When she took an infinitesimal step deeper into his arms, his space. When her scent of roses laced the very fabric of the wind.

  Finally she looked at him. “I wish to see a star be born.”

  He’d asked Lissa almost the exact same question and her answer had been the very opposite. Grinning, he shook his head.

  “What?” She asked with a twitch of her lips, he couldn’t seem to help but trace the laugh lines around her mouth
. Lines she’d probably had no hand in creating, but that he meant to see become her habit one day.

  “You just remind me of someone.”

  “Lissa?” her voice sounded slightly defeated, a little sad.

  Moving his hands so that he framed the softness of her face he nodded. “Yes, sometimes. But I see you too, Chrysalis. I have not forgotten the sacrifices you made for her, for myself. You are a woman worth knowing.”

  Blue eyes swam with tears.

  “You want to know how to live,” he repeated himself, “then kiss me.”

  Leaning up on tiptoe, he felt the electric charge of her strawberry laced lips slide against his own. Her kiss was soft and so very tentative, but it moved him all the same. Chrysalis was not Lissa, what she was was a good and decent woman who’d fought the battle of her life and won.

  Wrapping his arms around her waist, he kissed her back.

  And so began their courtship, it blossomed from beside the bank that’d been created to destroy her.

  A month later he was smoothing down his jacket. The sleeves were a little short, but otherwise very comfortable. Chrysalis was taking sewing lessons from her father and insisted on creating his clothes as she found the skins he wore offensive.

  He chuckled as he gazed in the mirror of the cabin that they shared. The cabin wasn’t large, only a one bedroom with a built in hearth and small kitchen. Baths were taken in the moon pool out back. Aeric had built the home when he’d determined that coming and going over fifty miles every week was asinine, getting to know her meant they needed to stay in much closer proximity than that.

  She’d decorated it simply. A small multicolored yarn rug she’d woven herself, a small vase full of apple blossom twigs, as cutting chattering flowers, she said, would be much too noisy.

  There were curtains, but they were so isolated they usually left them open. Chrysalis was no longer bound to the moon as she’d once been, the mark under her eye was now gone. The moment Siria’s hold had left, so had it.

  And slowly but surely she was coming out of her shell. Chrysalis was much more subdued and prone to long bouts of silence, but they weren’t uncomfortable and he found he rather enjoyed it. She’d sit on his lap and knit and they’d be content to simply be together.