I don’t hear her answer. Two hersir, screaming in fury, plunge through flame. The furs of one catch fire as he rushes the children, and the flames make him crazed. He screams a war cry as he flies at us, and I rise, weave around his sword, and my blade takes his head.
The other is more cautious. “You cannot save them,” he spits, hanging back.
I don’t answer, don’t have time for this. I step forward, blade darting out, but he’s faster than his friend, and blocks my strike. He grins, triumphant, just as my other sword plunges into his mouth, shattering teeth as it erupts from the back of his head.
Behind him, through flame, Callista grins, and in it a see a hunger that sets my blood boiling, even amidst the insanity around us.
Oh Gods, I hope we survive this.
The ground buckles, and shudders like the punch of Heijl’s fist against the world. Chunks of ice and boat wood sail into the air beyond the west gate. I lay my body over the mound of furs and tiny bodies, sword ready, no idea what else to do.
A tail crests, high as a castle tower. It’s slick and leathery, two joined black teardrops that slap the ground, and where it strikes the ground, the ice cracks, split, a spiderweb across the earth. Waves of water wash across the ground, recede back into the split, taking flame with it.
So, that’s Cetus. A sound tremors on the air, primitive and sonorous, almost mournful. The whale slips from sight.
Everyone left in the village crouches, clinging to shattered ground in sputtering lamplight. Darkness swells. Sea water laps gently from the cleft.
One slender blue-green arm appears, then a pair, then more. The selkies glide from the waves soundlessly.
A hersir screams, crazed, and bounds to his feet. He charges them, axe held high. Callista unhinges his head with a zip of her axe and his body spins into the drink.
A lamp between two of the houses sputters out.
“No, no,” murmurs one of the women. She rocks herself, eyes darting. “The darkness.”
The children have stopped crying. I sit up as the selkies tiptoe close, eyeing me with their sea-gray gazes. They claim their skins and a child at a time my group of charges dwindles.
Two more lamps go out. Sobbing ceases. The villagers stay hunched, night filled with their collective hitching breaths.
Now there’s just the baby. I scoop it up like a man who’s never held a living thing and offer it to the selkie. But they each have a child.
There are only nine. I remember cutting, severing limbs, but none of these are injured.
Callista, keeping one eye on the prone men, moves toward the selkies. She meets the eyes of the first one we saw beneath the ice; at least, I think it is. They all have the same dark hair, lapping slowly in the air, and their lithe forms.
Callista nods at something silent between them. The selkie creeps her way around the bonfire’s dead ashes, to the woman thrown down by the hersir. She moves so timidly for a creature who could make short work of every person present, and it hits me how brutal the selkie’s time here must have been.
She offers the skin she holds.
The woman flinches away, shielding her face with a shaking arm.
“Elmany didn’t survive the ravaging of your men,” Callista says, speaking for the selkie. “Even though you tried to free her. But her sisters know what you did. They remember. You tried to save her. You can take her place and keep the babe.”
Light is thin now, a ring not much bigger than the remains of the bonfire, and so much dimmer. Villagers scoot surreptitiously into the fading glow.
The woman turns a tear-streaked face to us. The selkie nips a finger and paints a swath of blue blood over the woman’s lips.
“Is it a trick?” she asks me, one mortal to another. I remember what Callista said about the stupidity and cruelty of the human races, and think she wasn’t entirely right. This woman proves there’s something more.
Callista meets my eyes and shakes her head.
“No. No trick,” I answer. “You can live as a selkie and take the child.”
The woman struggles to her knees, casting a quick glance toward the rest of the villagers. There’s no hesitation in her, and in that glance, I see hatred, resentment for the others. She never approved of what they’ve done.
She comes to me. I’m so fucking grateful, for a lot of reasons, but mostly that holding this squirming, fitful thing is the most nerve-wracking test of my entire life. I’m ready for her to take it, ready to leave this gods-forsaken place.
“Traitor,” hisses another village woman. Another spits.
“I never agreed!” sobs the woman, stumbling through broken ice chips to reach me. “I never agreed to what was done!”
A hersir throws out a leg to trip her. Callista rectifies the move with a lazy, almost contemptuous blow of her axe, and his entrails fall like ropes onto the ice.
I hand the baby up to his new mother, relieved but not glad. Like Finna’s realm, this is a place where no amount of good can soften what’s happened.
She wraps herself and swaddles the baby in the seal skin. She looks to the selkie who offered it. “Do I just…?”
The selkie demonstrates, sliding into fur that I’d swear a second go was little more than a pelt. She collapses to the ice a creature rather than a woman, and tips over the crack’s edge into black water.
One lamp flickers now, flame like a moth’s wing.
The village woman gives me and Callista a last uncertain glance, and tucks into the skin. She and the baby transform and disappear as one to cries of outrage and a handful of ice and charcoal hurled by the others.
The last lantern begins to smoke.
Callista strides past me. “Time to go.”
“You’re not going to…?”
She doesn't look back or slow her pace. “I don’t have to.”
“Wait! Wait!” The villagers shout now, struggling to follow us.
Callista is deaf to them. She grabs rungs on both halves of the gate and heaves it shut with the strength of ten men. Bodies thump against the planks. Shouts raise to animal braying, and screams.
Above the walls, it goes black.
The sound, the darkness, the horror and reckoning are how I imagine Helheim in my nightmares.
Callista twists the iron hardware like string, sealing the villages fate. “We should go,” she says. “Quickly.”
“You don’t want to see the end?”
“I do,” the whole floe shifts beneath our feet and she takes another step back, “but I also want to live.”
Ice groans and wind howls with a sudden fury that drowns the villagers.
“Run!” Callista slips into bear form in the breath it takes her to turn from the gate. Her claws tear long drags in the ice and her soft paws move with soundless ease.
I keep pace, but my boots struggle for traction. The terrain’s heave and buckle stumble me. A sucking sound rises up, hungry lips being licked in anticipation. A bullseye shatters in the ice. Its impact sends me sprawling and I hear the fracture of ten more ripple at my back.
My last view of Verdajln is a moonlit ruin tipping, bobbing and sinking half into the floe. My feet scramble; I get my balance and catch up to Callista, who hasn’t waited.
Over my shoulder, Verdajln raises up on a water spout, hovering like a banshee, and then it falls. It’s swallowing-up churns a tidal wave. The ice beneath me bobs, separating into chunks. Ten paces from shore. Nine. I hear the grit and scrape of frozen plates. It plows closer.
Seven. Six.
The floe parts and I plunge beneath the cold-fire surface. It’s black, blacker than any depth I can imagine. It’s not cold that steals my breath; water presses around me like a fist, squeezing, dragging me deeper. My lungs spasm, starving for breath. My legs pump fruitlessly, and unlike last time, there is no icy floor to push off from. Stiff lips part against my will and the last air of my lungs bubbles out. They fill, and I know it’s the end.
But when they fill, I can breathe. The water is ic
y, but I don’t cough, choke. I would laugh, if my mouth wasn’t filled with liquid. I can fucking breathe underwater. Finna’s gift.
Even so, the icy water steals my strength, locks my muscles. I’m still going to die.
And then, something twitches, inside of me. It moves up my throat, to my mouth, where it spreads across my skin. A globule of slime, part of Finna, coating me in the thinnest layer of protection, armor against the deep. Warmth coats me, and the sea’s grip lessens.
I’m getting that back. Finna words echo in my mind.
I’m so fucking glad she didn’t.
I strike for the surface, glide free and roll onto the hard shore. I don’t rest or look back, don’t even feel tired. I run for the narrow pass leading up to Callista’s den.
I round the bottom rise and run full into her coming back down.
“Faster! We’re not clear yet.”
When we cross an invisible line, about the place where she caught me and Freya on the ledge, she stops loping. “We’re inside the ley lines,” she pants.
The goo on my skin liquifies, soaking into my pores. “I don’t care where we are. I can’t believe you left me!”
“Artaois are instinctual, not sentimental. And besides,” she gives me a once over. “I turned back. But you clearly didn’t need my help.” She vaults from the ledge into the crevasse, done with me again. For now.
-The Den-
One last look out over the landscape reveals nothing, nothing as far as the cliffs where Freya and I entered this realm. Moonlight dazzles on ice and snow and a gaping ring a mile wide where Verdajln once stood. No colors dance across the sky, and the stars have faded to pinpoints. The moon dims like a lamp slowly extinguishing. Astratempus aside, time here is dwindling. I make my way down to the cave.
An arm catches me in the chest, knocking my lungs flat with a flex of my ribs. Callista balls a fist in my furs and slams me back against the cave wall.
Freya is gone. The furs heaped around the fire are now neatly folded; she made her way back through the portal. And I need her now, because Callista has lost her mind.
Her big brown eyes glow amber, and her nostrils flare, twitching her softly flattened nose. Her shifting has been so sudden or come at such fraught moments that until now I hadn’t noticed her ursine features. Her palm cups my face, pads of her fingers and the heel of her hand soft and thick like paws. All I can think about, for a moment, is how they’ll feel on my cock.
Dull nails bite the skin of my cheek. Callista’s breath fans my face, eager.
She braces elbows on either side of my head and pins me against the cave wall. Her thick silver and sable mane curtains us, filling my nose with a smell like incense and sea air. Her face moves over mine, a breath apart. She considers me, inhales. Is she going to kiss me?
I should know better. Callista draws back without warning and snaps my mantle off over my head with a jerk that clacks my teeth. She tears away my armor, my leathers. My pack drops and tumbles away.
Callista drops to her knees, takes my hips and pushes them against the wall, hard. The pain is intense, but I ignore it. She makes a hungry sound when my cock thrusts out, half hard. She buries her nose at the base and inhales, rooting at my balls.
“You’ve coupled with a powerful female,” she murmurs against my thigh.
Freya, in the cave.
Callista drags the hot brush of her black tongue along my shaft. My knees give, and I grip stone at my back.
“Maybe you are worthy.”
“Maybe? I–”
She takes my balls in her mouth, rolling them in heat, and licks them. She moves upward, licks my belly, my thighs, her ruffed ears gently scraping my hips and cock.
I bury fingers in her hair, wanting her mouth and afraid of it. She’s wild, and even in her purely mortal form, Callista’s animal nature is just beneath the surface. On her knees, it’s still easy to appreciate how much bigger she is than me, how powerful and barely held in check she is.
She grips me, sucks my head between her pillowy lips with a pressure that makes me yelp. The little points of her incisors scrape my shaft, almost pain, but they ignite a feral impulse in me, too, something instinctual, base.
I don’t have to be gentle or restrained. I just have to survive.
I try for the thong of her chest piece, aching to see her tits. Callista has other ideas, grabs my hips and throws me to the cave floor. Furs barely break my fall and the fire sears my skin. She climbs over me, weight punishing, but I’m not about to complain.
Her hand works beneath my body. She jerks my cock down, pulls it up behind my ass, and mounts me. She thrusts my head between the soft lips of her pussy, and a wave of pleasure runs along my length, into my abdomen, and I moan into the furs. It’s only luck that I’m not fully hard yet, or this would be excruciating.
Instead, it feels fucking incredible, but if this works for the artaois, the males are built nothing like I am. “I don’t think this is–”
Callista plants one thick leg between my thighs, hooks her other knee up over my hip and grips my shoulders. She drops her hips and rams me up, and in. And still, I’m barely inside her.
“Uff.” My cock doesn’t bend this way, but I don’t care, not enough to stop her. The newness of it, how the angle of her passage scrapes my head on each stroke, it’s intense in a way I’ve never experienced. She lets out a cry as she thrusts, not unlike the one when we first crossed blades, and I realize that she’s not fucking me; she’s claiming me, overpowering me.
As good as this feels, it’s meant to test and humiliate me. A dominant male doesn’t let a female take him this way, and Callista wants a dominant male.
I try to buck her off. She only laughs, then pins me harder with her hooked leg, twists fingers in my hair and crushes my face into the furs.
I kick.
Callista’s growl vibrates against my back. Her claws dig my nape and she drags to my buttocks. She doesn’t hold back. Blood beads and trickles down my skin, excruciating, but I don’t want to her stop. I don’t know why. The feel of my cock pressing against her swollen lips coupled with the pain of my flayed back blends, mixes, is indistinguishable.
I think I like it.
I feel my skin knit, heal, and she growls in approval, breath hot against my neck. “I’m going to have so much fun with you.” I gasp as she takes another rake down my back, and new wounds open small slices that close almost instantly.
“That’s the way of it?” I growl. Reaching above, I dig my fingers in her hair and twist. My leg cuts hers and she loses enough balance that I slip free.
I roll to my back and she’s over me, towering. Her ears burrow through her hair, furred and engorged. She listens to my breathing, my heartbeat. She knows the second I hesitate. Her grin reveals her fanged incisors. I want to feel them again.
Callista takes a swipe. I’m faster by a second. Her breast piece tears free and hits the cave floor with a clink of iron and a whisper of leather. Her tits drop with a bounce, bronzed mounds with areolas so dusky her pert pink nipples look obscene. I knock her arm away to get one in my mouth and crush it with my tongue. Callista’s skin is salty with ocean and sweat; it’s supple in a way that no human flesh could match. But she doesn’t respond, not the way I want her to, so I take it between my teeth, and bite, hard. She moans, arches, and her breasts thrust up, smothering me.
She pulls her nipple free, and it scrapes against my teeth as it pops from my mouth. The noise she makes is half pain, half pleasure, and I feel the heat between her legs intensify, the wetness spread wild, as she throws her head back.
She rocks on unsteady knees. I take advantage and shove her back, and she falls on her ass. She hits the furs and her legs part. Like Kumiko, the thick hair of her legs stops at the knees. It leaves her hips bare and covers her in a downy layer up her inner thighs to her pussy, where it becomes a silky white thatch that runs part way up her belly. I imagine how that would feel beneath me, brushing and teasing as I fuck her.
<
br /> Callista leans back, muscles rippling and breasts raising high. She clutches my cock between her feet – her paws – and strokes, one decisive thrust. Her pads are fat and rough, and the fine hair between her toes feathers my throbbing head. It’s torture. I suck in a breath, letting her work me, until I sense her increase in pressure. Her legs tense, starting to push.
She’s trying to dominate me again. And she’s so focused that she’s not ready for my weight. I pounce, sprawling her onto her back.
I hook her thick thighs, an arm around each. Callista grunts, struggling, paws shuffling in the grit. The whole time she grins, beautiful white teeth mocking my struggle to hold her. Her thick-lipped pussy is inches from my face, musking each breath. The smell of her is overwhelming, robbing me of reason.
A ribbon of black skin glistens between her white fur, begging for my tongue. Callista stops fighting when I lick. Her clit’s black bud strains beyond her lips, eager. It puckers against my mouth and she shudders. She clutches my head, burying my face in her slick folds. She’s all I smell, all I taste and see. Her thighs crush my face like a vice and there’s no sound, nothing but Callista’s pussy. She fucks my face, dragging her clit over my lips. I suck on each pass, or nip, or lick.
My lungs spasm, I need a breath, but I can’t, won’t pull away, not until she cums. I rake her with my teeth. It pushes her over the edge, and finally, she cums, shuddering so hard I’m afraid her hips will break my neck. I bury my tongue deep inside until her trembling becomes a spasm that wracks her, and I swallow every drop of what she leaves on my lips.
She relaxes her legs, and finally, I take a long breath.
“I’ve found the only use for mortal men,” she pants, looking down on me through hooded eyes.
“Not the only one…” I slide over her, bodies lubricated with sweat from the fire, from fighting and nearly fucking. “Just the best.”
Callista laughs. “You can’t satisfy me. You’re lucky I’m letting you try.”
“You sound scared,” I murmur as I suck one nipple, then the other, circling with my tongue until she purrs, “almost like you’re afraid of being wrong.”
Temple of Cocidius: A Monster Girl Harem Adventure: Book 3 Page 6