Shifters After Dark Box Set: (6-Book Bundle)

by SM Reine

  “What are you doing here, ‘Les?”

  He stared at me with a look of frank confusion. “We’ve had no word from you all summer—not since May Day at least. Pellam agreed I should come with the soldiers to ensure you were all right.”

  “Cynric’s messenger would have told you we were alive and safe. The ring we sent him with would have affirmed that. What need really do you have to be here? Unless you or our father-king had no trust I could handle this situation.”

  “You sent for help.”

  “I sent for bodies to fight not a brother to take my place as bailiff here.”

  “Cynric has been running Warwick as his own private palatine for far too long. He needs a reminder that Pellam is king.”

  I caught the faint cock of Pel’s left brow.

  “Did you think I might be remiss in mentioning that? You have no trust in my abilities—”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “No? Then why did you step in before even consulting with me?”

  “I deferred to you—”

  “You condescended. If Cynric didn’t notice, I certainly did.”

  “I am here to offer guidance alone. Your father and I discussed—”

  “My father? Pellam is still your father as well, not your peer. You are not king yet.”

  “Your father is in process of dividing the lands he rules. Yours and Pel’s shares will be held in trust till you are each twenty-four. Next month the northern region passes to me. Then I will indeed be peer and king.”

  Comprehension flooded through my thick head at last. Father dividing his small kingdom— In a handful of short years three more petty kings would be vying independently for the isle’s few resources. And if the three of us were to have three sons each… How long before each ‘king’ owned but their own keep and but a handful of acres of this precious island? That way led only to war and madness.

  “Tell me, brother,” I said, “where lies the difference between the duke who has set himself up as a king here and a son who has been parceled out arbitrary lands to rule?”

  “Now you question your birthright?” He pre-emptively cut off any reply I might have made with a slice of his hand in the air before my face.

  My jaw snapped shut at the insult.

  “This land deserves better.” Pel spoke for me. “It deserves peace. It deserves for every man, every family to live unafraid. What has the Roman invasion brought this land but the same problems a hundred chieftains had—only multiplied. And multiplied more with every noble son’s birth?”

  “And you’ve found the answer to Britain’s problems while wandering the wilderness?”

  I grinned. “Exactly that. Or maybe it was just hope we found.” Pel nodded when I glanced at him. We were of a mind in this. “Tell our father we won’t be home before the Christ Mass, if then. We’ll be accepting an invitation elsewhere.”

  Pelles favored us with the same look the hound master reserves for the eager pup new to the hunt that spoils the scent for the rest of the pack. “And that would be—?”

  “Camelot.”

  The name rolled easily from my tongue. After weeks of debate, it felt right. Les’ presence here sealed the decision. The world was changing, the old ways of our father giving way to the new. The young, unseasoned pups weren’t spoiling the hunt but creating a new trail.

  “Idealism is wasted on the youth,” Cynric opined to no one in particular as he waited impatiently for us to rejoin him.

  Pelles ran an impatient hand through his beard. “You would join with an untested boy-king over your own kin?”

  “Arthur’s young, but he’s hardly a boy. And he has been tested—by the Old Magic and the fae folk who chose him.”

  Could I really fault my older brother for his derisive laugh? Only recently had I been convinced of the truth of it myself.

  “I cannot credit that you believe such cradle tales,” he challenged.

  “Then credit me with enough sense to know truth when I meet it in person.”

  “You’ve seen Arthur?”

  “Seen him, met him, and witnessed the miracle of him. His dream for Britain may well be impossible, but lately I’ve seen enough impossibilities made real to know he cannot be easily dismissed. Is not a few months from the lives of two younger sons who are not yet kings a small enough cost to gamble on an impossible peace?”

  Speech-making had not been my intent at the onset, but as I spoke the words, the truth of them crystallized in my mind.

  “Pel and I did not stay then with Arthur—but only out of loyalty to a father whom we thought believed in us. Your presence here, however, says otherwise.”

  “Otherwise? The first of the warlords you were sent to negotiate with was given to the fire along with 30 warriors slaughtered to a man. Or so the monk said who bore us the news. You must see where Father took his concern.”

  Brinn snarled at the memory. I moved to lay a comforting hand across her finely chiseled head only to find Pel there before me.

  I firmed my jaw. “Extend our love and devotion to our father. Pel and I will try to make it home for Easter.”

  “It was good to see you again as our brother,” Pel added. “In your role as liege we are not as delighted.” He smiled then, a smile of benefaction such as a priest anointed by the hand of God might smile to a thief about to have all his sins washed away in the Blood of the Lamb.

  That smile terrified me in a way even The Beast could not. He more than approved the decision to join Arthur and, for a time at least, to abandon brother and father. It was, I realized, what he’d wanted all along. Arthur was kin in a way I could never be. Old Magic called to itself, a bond I knew now that could be as strong as blood. In some ways, even stronger.

  My heart stopped in the moment I hesitated before laying my hand atop his on the high dome of our hound’s most perfect head. I knew I could never feel the connection that thrummed so viscerally between Pel and Brinn. And even though I clasped the solid heat of his flesh in my hand and stood close enough to him to see the fine lines of pain and responsibility already crinkling around his eyes, only one thought pounded itself over and over against the inside of my thick skull.

  I had lost him.

  44. Brinn

  After a restless night where we barely touched one another despite the small width of the mattress on which we slept, we were on the road with the dawn. Pelles left the brothers a bit of coin and a ring or two, while the kitchen sent them off with packs of food they slung across their horses’ croups. New tunics, repaired tack, and well-grained stallions meant we were outfitted well enough for a ten-day of easy travel.

  It wasn’t thought of the days ahead that troubled me. Sol and Lleuad were no palfreys with sleepy, rollicking gaits that made sitting them tireless and encouraged conversation between travelers. The princes, in fact, for their bodies’ sakes, would be walking as often as riding.

  I might walk with them as a woman at times on deserted ways and share the odd word or two with them. Even meals would pass cordially enough with something more than each other to focus on.

  It was the nights I dreaded most. The hours just after the last of the supping when the fire flickered low. When there was naught to distract us but each other. Naught between us but the raw emotions of the moment. Naught ahead but slow and painful parting.

  And yet, too, I longed for those nights and welcomed the pain of them. For that pain meant life and sharing. The pain of parting meant we were not yet sundered, and there was still hope beyond hope that we would always be.

  That first night when I lay between brothers, I embraced both the joy and the sadness. Hands and lips and skin were all as knowing as ever. I offered myself first to Pel, licking his jawline, then blowing breath between his parted lips in invitation.

  To my surprise, in a gesture unlike him, he turned me about, face away on my elbows, and, hands to my hips, entered me from behind. His strokes, long and slow, though delectable as always, felt distracted. As though he had fo
rgotten about the sweet reward that awaited him at the end.

  Alain, his breath fast and shallow, rolled beneath me, cupping my breasts that hung free for the touch. His face beneath mine expanded as my focus narrowed on it and on the liquid passion, liquid pain that battled in his eyes.

  Neither Alain nor I moved for ten deep, unhurried thrusts from Pel. Then, of their own, my hips rocked back, encouraging Pel to remember the destination in this joyous act. He bumped against me, faster, six more times. On the seventh, he pressed tight and deep, filling me with his life.

  I contracted around him, determined to hold him within.

  “Stay,” I pleaded.

  Instead, he leveraged himself away. Not abruptly, but slowly, thoughtfully, in true kindness.

  Alain didn’t give me time to mourn the loss of Pel inside me. As soon as Pel withdrew, Alain clutched me close, determined to fill the void where Pel had been.

  “I won’t go,” Alain vowed.

  In proof, he thrust again, keeping me enclosed in a circle of arms, his embrace hard, his thrusts powerful and intense.

  So different they were, yet so alike in the instant of highest passion, their flesh molded to mine, their staves hard and purposeful as their seed fountained into me.

  True to his vow, Alain rested inside me, against me, still clutching desperately to me. The stubble of his beard chafed against my neck. A tiny prickle of pain to remind me all pleasure comes with cost.

  “Pel, come back to us.”

  Such a simple invitation to the man who sat but a length away, watching us with languid eyes. But the tremble in his tone betrayed Alain’s fear.

  “Please.” Alain’s voice nearly broke on the word.

  I twisted to better see Pel’s reaction, then added my own heart’s desire. “Yes. Come. We need you.”

  Pel’s face transformed, flooded with the light of love and passion. I nearly wept with the beauty of it reflected in the firelight.

  He moved to rejoin us, and my heart sang in gratitude.

  Then the keening wail of The Beast pierced the air between us, drowning all but the silent echo in my heart.

  Only one thing could have convinced Alain to abandon me. He sprang to his brother’s side even in that moment I lay paralyzed by grief.

  “You can’t go,” Alain said, reasonably enough, even while Pel fumbled into his breeches.

  His attention on The Beast alone, Pel didn’t answer, instead sliding his tunic over his head. Alain grabbed his shoulders and shook him—hard.

  “Think about what you’re doing. Think about what that thing did to you. Your leg may well be maimed for life because of it. You should be putting all the distance you can from it, not running to it like some besotted maiden.”

  Pel shoved his foot into his boot, drawing the lacings tight about his calf.

  My stomach knotted.

  From the frown of pain that deepened Alain’s expression, I knew my feelings were his.

  The Beast’s keening cry wailed closer. Tethered nearby, the horses whinnied in alarm. At the edge of firelight, wrapped in shadow, a dark silhouette lurked, waiting.

  Waves of Old Magic washed over me, settling bone deep. Though I wasn’t even its target, the compulsion to follow pounded like surf against the rocks in my veins.

  I pushed my way to Pel. Hands on cheeks, I forced him to look at me, forced him to stare into my deepest grief and feel it for his own. “And what I feel is as the sapling to the towering rowan that is your brother’s pain in this.”

  The Beast’s song deepened, lengthened, its plaintive melody in full counter to the song of abandonment that my heart now sang.

  The look in Pel’s eyes echoed the hollowness of my heart. “But you have each other. The Beast—my other half—has no one else.”

  The words trembled on his lips, as if only half-believed.

  “No!” Alain fell to his knees beside his brother. “You are thralled. The Beast compels you to believe that. It is evil. And there is no evil in your birthright.”

  The soft smile of compassion that strained the young prince’s features twisted in my gut. “You might as well point to a storm cloud and call it evil,” Pel said. “The Beast is not evil, it just is.”

  “He’s right in that,” I agreed, reluctant though I was to add to Alain’s pain. Evil was a thing more easily fought than nature ever was. “The Beast is Old Magic, born with my folk, in days so distant even we fae strain to remember them.”

  “It deliberately attacked my brother, perhaps maimed him for life, and you would still say there is no inherent evil in it? Look around you. Evil settles itself in nature every day. Most dogs will kill only what they need to live, but the odd beast will indulge in killing for the joy of it. Neither the farmer nor the hunter can allow such a mad dog to live. They are unnatural. As there are unnatural creatures in every animal kind.”

  “By that measure, then,” Pel said, “I too am unnatural and should not be suffered to live. The same Magic that runs in The Beast runs in me as well. And in Brinn. Why do you not slay us both and be done with it?”

  Alain’s face crumbled, in the same way I knew his heart was crumbling.

  Pel placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, a gesture of benediction. Closer now, The Beast mewled its plea. Alain was right. The same Magic sang in me. Had it been me The Beast desired… “I would not have the strength to resist,” I whispered.

  “You understand.” The gratitude in Pel’s simple words nearly undid us both.

  “No.”

  I didn’t want him to go.

  “Yes.”

  I knew he must.

  It was not The Beast’s fault my heart was breaking. Nor was it Pel’s fault. Or Alain’s. Or even my own.

  “It simply is.”

  Pel nodded. Then he rose beside his brother, his hand never leaving Alain’s shoulder.

  Pel was breathtaking by moonlight. Shimmering and golden. In part, it was the Old Magic I was seeing in him. In part, it was his passion and his love that shone like deity upon his face.

  Tears gone unfelt for many years brimmed my eyes, then gently washed my cheeks.

  He had come into my world as a beacon of Magic, an impossible light in a world gone dark of the thing that sustained me, sustained my fae. There in the moonlight, I knew he would leave in the same way. It was not him that had changed. It was me. And Alain.

  I rose to my knees and laid my hand on Alain’s free shoulder, feeling how he trembled. In the dark, Pel’s touch on my shoulder completed our little circle. We bent our heads till our foreheads touched and our breaths mingled as one.

  Even The Beast respected the moment, its song silent but clear, like the anticipation before a storm.

  “This isn’t goodbye.” The catch in Pel’s voice betrayed his doubt, but he wanted to believe it as much as Alain and I.

  “Go to Arthur, to Camelot. I’ll be there … in time.”

  “Make it soon,” Alain whispered, his voice hoarse with grief. “We can’t change the world without you.”

  Pel’s gentle smile was heartbreakingly beautiful. “You can, and you will. My faith in you is everlasting. With all the malleable things in this world, you are a constant. You and Brinn and the love we share. Nothing—not Magic nor Beast nor distance between us—will ever sunder that.”

  The Beast whuffed once, so close I could almost swear I saw a strand of Pel’s hair wave in its wake. A breathspace more and The Beast retreated. Then two, then three, and then The Beast keened, sharp and insistent, from the forest’s edge, luring Pel away.

  He kissed us each, soft and chaste upon the cheek. Then his hands were gone from our shoulders, taking with them all the warmth of the world, leaving us naked and barren in the night.

  We were too stricken to move, Alain and I, as we watched Pel lumber like a vulnerable old man to his horse. Once mounted, though, what vulnerability he had on the ground fell away. Mounted in the moonlight he was magnificent, a Roman centaur of old.

  “A true B
riton knight,” Alain murmured beside me.

  “Just as you too will be, my heart,” I assured him as knight and horse sprang away.

  The soul-rendering wail of The Beast shifted. Bright and pure it belled as it ran in the dark, Pel galloping behind.

  We listened till Beast song and hoofbeats were swallowed by the night.

  45. Brinn

  Collapsing against one another, we sank into the rich loam letting the earth absorb our tears.

  Sol whinnied for Lleuad, his lost companion, a plaintive question that neither Alain nor I could answer.

  “What happens now?” Alain asked.

  I opened my arms and held him to my breast.

  Thunder rumbled from a distant storm. As its growl trailed off, the sweet baying of a pack of red-eared hounds hot on a scent filled the space it left behind.

  Alain stiffened at the sound. “Is it Pel they’re after?”

  The sweet notes of Herne’s Horn drifted to us. Give chase! it commanded. With wild abandon The Hunt ran, lifting their voices in celebration of their work.

  “No.” I soothed Alain’s brow with one hand and trailed down the ridges of his chest with the other. “Not Pel,” I assured him.

  “As for what happens now…” I caught him in the circle of my fingers and he twitched to life in my tender grip. “We celebrate what time we have together.”

  He shifted his hips and I welcomed the life of him, flooding me with its ancient, rhythmic tide.

  When it ebbed, I held him inside me and said, as gently as I could, “There will be a new life soon to celebrate.”

  “New?”

  I searched his face, half in fear, half in anticipation.

  His hand traced the tiny swell between my hips in wonderment. When his eyes sought mine again, they were alight with awe.

  Only to cloud with the question I knew must come to him. “Mine or his?”

  “Does it matter?” I touched his cheek. “Ours.”

  “We can’t really know, can we?”