In a heartbeat, Ulfrik had transformed from his wolf form to his human one, and though one arm hung useless at his side, he could use the other to scoop her up and hold her close as he leaped off of the hill and started to run.
It took long moments of fleeing before they realized that the monster was not pursuing them, and when they halted, Tonna turned into her human form as well.
“What was that thing?” Ulfrik asked, gasping for breath.
“A monster,” Tonna replied curtly. “Didn't you smell? It had Bors' stench all over it. He must have created that thing.”
She reached for Ulfrik's arm, and for a moment, he was in enough pain that he tried to snap at her as if he were a wolf. She insisted, however, and she pulled aside the shredded pieces of his sleeve to look at the wounds. Despite the depth of the wounds, and they were certainly bad enough, she was relieved to see that his arm was not broken.
There was a brook nearby, and so she pressed him down so she could clean out the wounds.
“Ugh, cold,” Ulfrik complained, and she smiled a little at him, pleased that he had the energy to complain. She had worked with her own clan's healer, and he always said that it was when the wounded grew silent that she should worry about them. She found some bandages in her pack and bound up his arm. It would have to do until she could find some healing ointment to help him.
They were resting a moment, and Tonna noted with dull curiosity that dawn had begun to break. The sky was lightening, and now there were the faintest streaks of pink. Then she noticed something else.
“Ulfrik, Ulfrik, tell me what you smell!”
“I smell blood and my own particular odor of defeat, why do you ask?” he muttered, but he sat up when she transformed into a fox again and started sniffing the ground.
“It's her!” Tonna cried. “I can smell her, she's close!”
On the bank, like a miracle or a ray of sun bursting through the clouds, she could smell her cousin, and it was all she could do not to simply start barking with joy.
“Aja, Aja is close, we need to find her!”
Ulfrik nodded, and though he could not run in his wolf form, he followed her in her fox form as she worked out the trail.
It was mid morning when she found the tower. It was a tall and monstrous thing, and they circled it three times only to find that there was no way in.
“Her trail ends here,” Tonna said, turning into a human again, and she shook her head. Was her cousin in this tower? Her scent was all around it, and it was fresh, but the circle of stone was such that there was no way to penetrate it. The tower stretched high into the sky, and Tonna wished for the wings of the heron clan or the golden eagle clan, which would have brought her straight up to the window she could see overhead.
Ulfrik shaded his eyes against the morning sun, squinting at the tower's window.
“Tonna, Tonna, I think I see her, she's... she's dropping something...”
In confusion, the pair looked up, and a tiny spiraling speck drifted down to them. It was a feather, Tonna realized, and with a frown, she grabbed it.
The moment her fingers curled around the feather, she found herself being shot upward as she shrieked in dismay. She had just enough time to wonder if she was going to catapult into the sky and come down just as hard when a pair of arms grabbed her and pulled her into the tower.
“Oh, Tonna, Tonna, it's you!”
Tonna saw her small and slender cousin, and she sobbed with relief, throwing her arms around the other woman. For a moment, they only held each other, both crying, and then Aja pulled away.
Now that Tonna could see her cousin more clearly, she was shocked. Aja wore a plain white dress that made her look like a virgin sacrifice, and there were fresh bandages around her wrists. Despite that, her cousin looked determined, and if not happy, then resolute.
“Here, your wolf king is probably blind with worry.”
Tonna watched as Aja repeated the measure with the feather, and despite Ulfrik's size, she caught him just as quickly and easily as she had Tonna.
“Aja, what magic have you wrought here?” Tonna asked in awe. “What has happened to you?”
“Many things,” Aja said unhappily. “I have learned a great deal, and I am glad you are here to help me.”
Ulfrik shook his head. “I'm sorry you have been drawn into this,” he said to Aja. “It is my clan's quarrel with Bors that has allowed this to happen.”
To Tonna and Ulfrik's surprise, Aja started to laugh. There was a bitter tone to it, but something triumphant as well. “It is to your credit that you are concerned, sir,” she said, “but as I have learned about my captor, I have figured out how very little this has to do with any of us. We are nothing more than castaway tools to him, not victims or enemies at all. He thought I was unconscious, and so he spoke to himself, and to his compatriots.”
“Aja, what is he?” asked Tonna, dreading the answer even as she clutched her cousin's hand.
“He is a demon, Tonna. He wears a man's face and a wolf's form, but he feeds on pain and suffering like we eat meat and drink water.”
“The battles Ulfrik fought, the discord he wrecked at that moot,” Tonna whispered, and Aja nodded.
“He creates strife wherever he goes, and so he feeds and grows large. Now his game is greater than ever, and he has created a monster that will carry out his whims in the greater world.”
Tonna shuddered to think of the monster that had attacked her and Ulfrik.
Aja nodded grimly. “Think of how frustrated he must have been when he realized he needed fox blood, and the only clan in the area had withdrawn,” Aja continued. “He spent years waiting for us to come back to a place he could reach, and in the meantime, he amused himself by trying to destroy the wolf clan.”
Ulfrik growled, because he more than the others knew how very close the demon they called Bors had come to succeeding.
“Oh, Aja,” Tonna said softly. “He... did that to you?”
“He bled me,” Aja said grimly, showing her a bandaged wrist. “He wanted to keep me alive, though, so he could get more if he needed it, and so he has left me here. He made a mistake though. He thought me an illiterate savage, and so he left me here, with books and toys that he has long since forgotten.”
“With something like the feather, could you escape?” Ulfrik asked hesitantly. “Are we trapped here now?”
Aja laughed, and there was something chilling about it to Tonna. Instead of being afraid for Aja however, she was afraid of her. She was a different girl than the one who had been taken, and if Tonna had had the time or the energy, she thought she might have wept for her cousin.
“You may leave whenever you like,” Aja said. “There is a door at the tower's base that leads to a tunnel. The tunnel opens a mile away.”
“But you've not taken it,” Tonna observed.
Aja shook her head. “No. He is going to come back to complete the ritual, to make his monster a true demon, on the night of the full moon. That is a week from now, and between now and then, I will learn, I will grow more powerful, and I will be ready for him.”
“We'll stay with you,” Tonna said immediately.
“We will fight with you,” Ulfrik agreed, and Aja smiled. It was gentler than the maddened grin she had worn before, and Tonna knew that her cousin was still there, if hurt and exhausted and afraid.
“It is very well,” Aja said. “We all have our own debts to settle with him, and here I have the tools that will allow us to do it.”
***
No matter how furious they all were, it quickly became apparent that nothing was going to be done that day. Tonna and Ulfrik had been tracking and fighting for days, and as a result, they were starved and exhausted. Aja, looking more and more like herself with every moment she spent with her cousin, tutted over their condition, and quickly found a healing ointment that she smeared on Ulfrik's wounds.
“Now the two of you should sleep,” she said sternly, and Tonna, tottering on her feet, laughed at t
hat.
“You sound like yourself,” she said softly, and Aja smiled, kissing her on the forehead.
“I am myself,” she said a little sadly. “I've been through a difficult time, but underneath it, I am still myself.”
She showed Ulfrik and Tonna to a small bedroom two floors down, and though there were no windows, there was a glass globe that flooded the room with a soft blue light when Aja touched it.
“You've learned a great deal in a few days,” Ulfrik commented.
“I've needed to,” Aja said, and she left them alone.
Though Tonna was exhausted to the depths of her, she hesitated.
“What is it?” Ulfrik asked. “Are you all right?”
“It's our first bed,” she said, and she was shocked to feel tears at the back of her throat. Logically, she knew what it was. She had been overwhelmed for the past few days, and now her mind was trying to let some of it out. Ulfrik had had the release of battle, but she was wound up and tense. She felt like she was going to crack like ice in the deep winter freeze.
“Yes, it is,” Ulfrik said cautiously. “Do you... object to the idea of sharing a bed with me? I can take the floor, if it would please you...”
“No.... no....”
Something about the kind way he looked at her made her want to sob more and more, and against her will, she felt tears trickling down her face. She felt as if every muscle in her body was tense, and she shook her head hard, unwilling to give in to the emotions that were racking her frame.
Suddenly, Ulfrik was there, wrapping his arms around her and cuddling her tight to his body.
“There, there, love, let it out,” he whispered. “We have a great evil to fight in front of us, but right now, all you have to do is to let that poison out, to let it out so you can sleep...”
Sleep felt like the farthest thing from her mind, but she turned her face into Ulfrik's chest and simply cried her heart out. In a way, she was crying for all of them, for Aja and her bandaged wrists, for Aeson, her brother who had died so badly, for her mother who had died calling for her brother, for her and for Ulfrik...
It was all too much, and when the sobs started, they seemed like they wanted to go on forever. There was nothing in here that wasn't coming out, all of the rage and fear and shame she had felt and held on to, it came out now in great heaving sobs. She knew she was talking and she knew that she was babbling and struggling for words, but through it all, Ulfrik was only there for her and only told her that it was all right, that it was fine, and that she should let it all go.
She felt as if she cried for hours, but finally, she felt herself drifting towards unconsciousness, cradled in his arms. She felt him draw the blankets over her body, and she fell into a deep sleep that was merciless and dark.
When Tonna awoke, she heard voices talking nearby, then a soft laugh, and then the door shutting. There was no way to tell what time it was inside the blue-lit room, but she felt as if she had slept a day and a night away. She was sore, but despite that, she was rested. Her head ached a little, and when she thought about her crying fit from the night before, she blushed, but then Ulfrik was there, setting a large basin on the ground next to the bed.
“Good morning,” she said hesitantly. “Are you well?”
“Not terrible,” he said. “The ointment that Aja put on my arm is a miracle. My wounds are closing up.”
“You've bathed,” she said enviously, looking at his wet hair. “Is that water in the basin for me?”
“It is. If you strip, I'll take care of you.”
There was a hint of mischief to his smile, but she could see he meant it well.
“There's nothing we can do to hurry our battle with Bors,” Ulfrik continued. “If we spend an hour or so recovering, I can't see the harm...”
“You are altogether too persuasive,” she muttered, but she did as he said and stripped off her clothes. She tensed when he reached for her with the damp cloth, but when the water revealed itself to be steaming hot, she relaxed. At Ulfrik's urging, she came to sit on the edge of the bed as he wiped at her soft skin with the cloth. There was something so soothing and so sweet about being thus cared for that she nearly slipped back to sleep.
She purred with pleasure as he ran the cloth over her arms, making sure to wipe between each finger and to clean her nails as well, and when she rolled over on her stomach so he could clean her back, she sighed as he used his bare hands to rub the sore muscles of her shoulders, her back and her calves.
Despite his impish expression, he kept his touch gentle and chaste until she willingly spread her legs for him. Then his breath caught, and she laughed a little.
“What's the matter, wolf king?” she asked daringly. “Are you too enamored with playing nursemaid to take every advantage?”
“I've been a fighter since I turned fourteen,” Ulfrik retorted. “I will take every advantage I can find.”
Tonna drew in her breath as he slid the warm cloth between her thighs, working his way slowly and tantalizingly up to her most private parts. He bathed her there with care, but then he started sliding the rough fabric against her folds, opening her with pressure alone. The bed groaned as he lay down next to her. He kissed her lips lightly and with the delicate touch of a born lover.
Tonna mewled with passion when his touch between her legs stayed light and delicate, and he nibbled at her ear gently and with care.
“We have time right now, love,” he said, and he didn't have to say that they might not have it later. “The battle with Bors...”
Tonna couldn't bear to hear him say it. She couldn't bear the thought that they might not last and that evil might triumph. Instead, she sealed her mouth over his, and she wished that their kiss could last forever, that she would never have to feel anything except this man and what he did for her.
“You're beautiful,” he whispered in her ear. “If I had thought to plan it, I would have wanted our first time to be in a bed like this one. To see you spread before me, clean and sweet and waiting. I must have replayed that night five years ago over and over again in my mind. It was something that kept me warm at night.”
“Did it?” Tonna asked huskily. She sat up, pushing him on his back so she could lie next to him. He grunted with surprise, but he lay still for her, watching her with eyes that she knew would always see straight into her soul.
“You sound intrigued,” he said cautiously, and she grinned.
“Show me.”
When he seemed slow to comply, she reached down and put his hand on his hard cock. Ulfrik hesitated and then, to her fascination, she watched him slowly wrap his fist around his erection.
“I've not done this for anyone before,” he said, and she kissed him lightly on the lips.
“Good,” she whispered. “I want to see.”
She watched his body tense and tighten; she watched the way he handled himself. He was rougher than she had thought would feel good, but it made his entire body tense in pleasure. She could see the pearly bead of liquid at the tip of his cock, and fascinated, she leaned down to swirl her tongue around it, tasting him and making him groan.
“Great gods, woman, the things you do!”
“Should I not?” she asked impishly, and he shook his head, his eyes shut with pleasure.
“Do... do what you like,” he whispered. “That's all I want for you, to do what you like...”
She purred with pleasure at the thought, and she leaned down to wrap her hand over his. She slowed his pace, fascinated by her control over him, and he allowed her, moving exactly as she pleased.
“You're so gorgeous,” she murmured, and she was pleased to see a blush suffuse Ulfrik's face. At that moment, she was so full of love for him, all she could do was kiss him, long slow drugging kisses that consumed him even as she continued stroking his own hand over his member.
“If you keep doing that, I'm going to...”
“No, you're not,” she whispered. “Not if you know what's good for you. I know you want to be in
side me, and if you climax, I won't let you...”
The sound that he made was frankly whining, and she laughed softly. Her hand continued its languid motion, and between her legs, she knew that she was getting wetter. However, it mattered far less than seeing his body twist with the pleasure that she was giving him.
Tonna could feel it when he neared his limit. His hands were grabbing at the blankets, and every muscle stood out. It was like having a hot-blooded stallion under tight reins, and finally, she decided to let him go. His eyes flew to hers when she pulled her hand away, but she was already slithering down his body to throw a leg over his hip.
“I want to ride you,” she said intently. “Put your hands on my hips, but don't you dare move me...”
He did as she said, and she took his cock in her hand almost roughly, bringing it to press against her opening. The tip was broad, and she bit her lip, bouncing herself gently on it until the tip was inside her.
“Please, darling, I want more,” Ulfrik said softly, and she laughed.
“Lucky you, so do I!”
She sank down on his cock, drawing a deep sigh from both of them when she was fully settled on top of him.
“Oh, oh that's good,” she breathed, and slowly, she started to rock her hips against his. From the way his hands tightened on her body, she could tell that it wasn't enough for him, but for the moment, she was seeing to her own pleasure, and that was simply about being so full of him and enjoying him to the fullest extent.
Slowly, at her own pace, she started raising and lowering herself on his cock. It was delicious to feel the full length of him push in and out of her tight, wet opening. Soon enough, she was moving faster, wanting more, and she drew his hand away from her hip and brought it to the apex of her slit, where he could strum the bead of pleasure there with his clever fingers.
Tales of the Golden Judge: 3-Book Bundle - Books 10-12 Page 6