Found and Forged

by Ivy Asher

  My deep aroused breaths morph into short pants as delicious anticipation battles my pain-laced desperation.

  “Shhhh,” Siah whispers in my ear when I give an impatient huff. “I’ve got you, mate,” he reassures me, and when he finally has my pants unlaced and loose, he shoves his hand inside and strokes my folds.

  I whimper and move to grind against his palm, but Siah tightens his hold on my throat. He nuzzles my hair, his lips skimming the side of my neck and my ear. The feel of him is driving me fucking crazy. I need more, more to drown it all out. Can’t he see that? Feel it radiating out of my every pore?

  He spreads my lips and puts two fingers deep inside of me as he shushes me again. I gasp and lean back against him, tilting my hips forward so he has even deeper access. He circles inside of me slowly, the base of his palm firm against my clit as he does. Wetness pools at my core, and he spreads it around as he teases me and works me until my desperation for emotional oblivion morphs into desperation for him.

  I relax against him, relinquishing any desire for control, and Siah nips at my ear and starts to move his fingers in and out of me at a gradually faster rhythm.

  “There you go,” he huskily encourages in my ear when I melt against him. “Let your mate help make it better. I’ve got you,” he tells me as his other hand moves from my throat and dips into the top of my sports bra. He squeezes my breast and pulls his other fingers out of me to rub slow circles around my clit. “Your mates are here for you, standing guard, protecting you. Listen closely and you can hear their hearts, each beat in sync with yours at all times.”

  Siah pinches my nipple and then slips his fingers back inside of me. “We hurt when you hurt, laugh when you laugh, back off when you need it, and challenge and guide when you feel alone and lost. We will always find you, always bring you back. And we all know you’ll do the exact same thing for each and every one of us.”

  Siah kisses my neck with just a hint of fang, and I mewl.

  “So let go, my mate. Pass the burden on your shoulders to the rest of us, because we’re all here to help you carry it.”

  With that, he rubs my clit harder, and I explode into a haze of pleasure and gratification. Siah’s words hook themselves inside of me as he wrings every ounce of ecstasy from the orgasm wracking my body. Brick by brick I watch my walls crumble, and I stare at them, wondering why I felt like I still needed them. What he’s saying isn’t new. I know this about my Chosen. I wonder all the time how I could have gotten so lucky, but at the same time, I’m just so fucking sad.

  Siah rips off one of my boots to free my leg from my armored pants. He pulls my sports bra over my head and spins me until I’m facing him. He brings his stunning blue eyes level with mine and whispers, “I’ve got you,” against my lips before he leans in and tastes me. I close my eyes and do all I can to get lost in him, the feel of his tongue against mine, his hand in my hair as the other grips my ass and then dips down to my thigh to pull my leg up to his waist.

  I open for Siah in every possible way. He skillfully unlaces his pants and then positions his freed cock between my thighs. He presses into me slowly as I deepen the kiss and the connection between our souls. I let every fucked up emotion I’m feeling pour out of me in my kiss, in the way my pussy grips his length, and my hard nipples press against the armor of his shirt. It’s in the plea of my voice when I moan his name, the desperation in my fingers as I hold onto him while he fucks me vulnerable.

  He slams into me, each thrust timed with his words, “I’ve got you. We’ve got you,” whispered in my ear and dripping with the vow he’s making in this moment.

  In this moment, I’m not unworthy. I’m just his.

  Siah’s hands are tender and worshipping, while his cock is fast and punishing. It’s like his hands are reminding me of love and devotion, while he’s fucking me in a way that reminds me to never doubt the declarations of either him or my other Chosen. I throw my head back and focus on the sensation of him moving in and out of me. Playing with me. Sucking on me. My orgasm builds again. Siah backs up until he’s sitting on something, and control of his thrusts falls squarely in my hands. I ride him without missing a beat, grinding against his base when he’s deep inside of me, and then lifting myself up just to slam back down and repeat it all.

  He grabs the front of my neck with one hand and tangles the other in my hair. I hold onto him for leverage as I bury him deep inside of me over and over again.

  “Look at me when you come, Vinna,” Siah demands, and my eyes spring open until I’m drowning in his intense ice-blue gaze. I can tell he’s close, and I’m on the verge of shattering into another orgasm, when he leans forward and nips at my bottom lip.

  “We’ve got you,” he says one last time, and I burst into a million sensation-filled pieces as I come. Siah watches me, his gaze drinking me up, and then he lifts his hips off the bench we’re on and growls my name as he comes. His thrusts turn shallow, and I watch rapture streak through his gaze as his orgasm flares through his every cell. And then he bites me.

  I scream and melt into a puddle on top of him as his fangs punch euphoria into me. He pulls my blood into his mouth and swallows. I writhe on his dick and under his mouth, my body begging for more. He reaches up and slices open a spot on the top of his corded shoulder, and I attack the welling blood like I was born a creature of the fucking night.

  Siah and I feed until we’re full and drunk on each other’s sex laced blood, and then we both bite each other again at the exact same time. We tighten around each other and spiral into a new orgasm that leaves us both panting and pliant. He comes back down first, and when I open my mouth to fix that, he chortles and cradles my face in his hands so my teeth can’t get to him.

  “Talk to me,” he encourages. “And then I’ll let you bite me as many times as you want.”

  I laugh and then sigh. I run my thumb across his kiss-swollen lips and trace his features slowly with my fingertips as I sort through my thoughts, with Siah’s “I’ve got you” ringing in my head. I dig through all of my feelings to find the most overwhelming one. Maybe if I speak it, it won’t hold so much power over me anymore.

  My gaze is intense yet hesitant as I look from one ice-blue iris to the other.

  Here goes nothing.

  “I feel...fucked up,” I admit, and I’m surprised by the flood of sadness and emotion that pours into my eyes and my voice as I own those words.

  “I’m just so fucking lost,” I repeat again, and then I spill into a million tears on his lap.

  18

  All the frustration, sadness and loss that’s been building over the past couple months streams steadily out of my eyes. I feel like I’ve opened the floodgates and now there’s no hope to get them shut again. Siah steadily wipes away my purged emotions. He silently dries my cheeks and rubs my back until I feel spent and empty. I take a shuddering breath and chuckle hollowly at myself.

  I’m a fucking mess.

  “Sorry,” I offer him as I sit back and try to pull my shit together.

  “For what? Being a complex person with emotions and needs? We’re all like that. We all feel lost at some point.”

  I study Siah’s face as he dismisses my apology. “When have you felt lost?” I ask quietly.

  “Many times.”

  His gaze grows distant, and I can practically see the memories rise in his gaze.

  “I was seventeen when my whole family died from a plague that swept our town. I never got sick, but I was forced to stand by helplessly and watch as it first claimed my baby sister, then my little brother, my mother, my two older brothers, and lastly my father. We were a farming family, and there was no way I could plant the fields, tend to them, and bring in the crop all on my own. So the lord that owned the land put me out so that a new family could have the house and manage the crops.

  “I went from happy carefree son of a farmer to a beggar in less than a handful of months. That was my first taste of lost.”

  Siah’s eyes suddenly match how I�
��ve been feeling on the inside, and I run my palm down his cheek in an effort to soothe some of the pain I’ve asked him to dig up.

  “I met lost again half a dozen years later. I had managed to get hired on as a farm hand in another town, and I had worked my way up into the good graces of another lord. I managed several grain houses for him, and he invited me to accompany him to see about more land and a mill he was wanting to purchase. I was in a strange city, and I enjoyed the food and drink a little too much. I went outside to relieve myself, and that’s when a creature attacked me. It felt like it was tearing my throat open. I was choking on my own blood and couldn’t even shout an alarm. When I woke up, I couldn’t understand how I was still alive, but then I quickly realized that I wasn’t, or at least not in the same way as before.

  “I felt lost for years until I met Sorik, and then it slowly began to recede. Sorik felt lost until he found your mother, and then he felt lost again after he lost her and his compeer. You see, we all go through it at different stages and in different ways. It doesn’t make us weak, and it’s nothing to apologize for. It just is.”

  “Do you feel lost now?” I ask, realizing that Tierit and everything that’s happening here isn’t just overwhelming for me. My Chosen are all here hoping for answers too.

  Shame ripples inside of me as I once again recall that I’m the reason we don’t have the answers we’re all looking for.

  “Right now, with you in my arms while I’m still buried inside of you? No, I don’t feel lost. But that night with Sorik in wolf territory, when you first walked through the trees and the moon lit up your face? I felt lost in that moment. Like somehow I was connected to you, but I couldn’t understand how. When our eyes met for the first time, you felt inevitable to me, but that made no sense.”

  Siah brushes hair back from my face and cradles my neck, his intense gaze locked onto mine. “When Sorik explained who you were to him, I thought that my purpose was finally clear. I would help him protect you. That felt right to me in a way I had been missing since my life was stolen from me in a piss covered alley.

  “But then you walked through the door after that caster had been working on me and offered me your wrist...your blood. Right then and there, I felt lost again, because I couldn’t just protect you from afar like I thought, I needed more. But you were mated, and I didn’t see how I could fit into any of that.”

  Siah looks away, and I can feel the pain radiating off of him.

  “I’ve been alone for so long. I’ve had Sorik, and his friendship has been a lifeline for me more times than I can count, but I’ve felt homeless and adrift since I was seventeen. I’m terrified I always will.”

  His confession wraps around me like a familiar blanket, because he’s just spoken into existence feelings I’ve been trying not to look at.

  “Every time I settle into something good in my life, it’s taken away. I’ve fought my whole life to be safe, to be strong, to be secure...to be worthy. And yet I feel like it all slips through my fingers like sand just when I think I have a hold of it. You would think, after everything, I would learn not to hope or think that maybe this time if I can just hold on tight enough, then I can keep the safety and the love and the belonging in my grip...but I never can,” I confess.

  My eyes sting with emotion, and I lean into Siah’s palm when he moves it to cradle my face. “I get so close, but it’s never enough. Beth got Laiken killed. Talon lied to me. My uncle was too broken to love me. The elders fucked with me. Adriel...he killed my mother. He shattered my father. And now, here I am surrounded by Sentinels. I’m not the last. I don’t have to be alone. But they don’t want me. I’m filth. I’m unworthy.”

  Tears stream down my face, and sobs bubble up in my throat.

  “I’ve tried so hard to be the best, to be the strongest, to find my place, but I never can. I’m everything to these people that Beth always told me I was, nothing, and it fucking kills me.”

  Siah lets me sob. He holds me as I fracture, and hugs me until I’m ready to figure out how the fuck I move forward now. He pulls my lips to his and kisses me softly, and then he kisses each of my cheeks and once again dries them with his thumbs.

  “I don’t know about the why of things, but I do know this... You are everything to me and your other mates. I have no doubt about that.”

  I try to shake my head, to remind him of all the times in my life that prove I’m unworthy of safety and love and goodness, but Siah cuts me off.

  “Can I make you a deal?” he asks, his eyes searching mine. I hesitate for a minute and then nod.

  “I’ll be your home if you’ll be mine,” he tells me, and the simple request makes me swallow any argument I held waiting on my tongue.

  He’s not force-feeding me lies about who I am and what I can be. He’s just asking for something he should have always had and that I could never deny him. I stare at Siah for a beat, overwhelmed by his quiet and steadfast offer. I’ll be your home if you’ll be mine.

  “Okay,” I answer simply, and just like that, I see a ray of light in all this darkness.

  I may not have been good enough for Beth not to torture or for Talon to be honest with. Lachlan couldn’t love me, and neither the casters nor the Sentinels could accept me. But despite all of that, somehow, I fit with Siah, Sabin, Valen and Bastien. I fit with Ryker, Knox, and Torrez. Maybe I’m not worthy, but they want me all the same.

  And it’s not just them. The sisters are waiting for me back home, so are Aydin and Evrin. Mave and Cyndol were blowing up my phone before we lost service on the hike here. And I’ve found Sorik, Enoch, Kallan, Nash and Becket. I have more than I’ve been acknowledging, worthy or not, and it’s time for me to see that and Sentinel the fuck up.

  “You’re pretty good at this mate shit,” I tell him with a smile.

  “I am, aren’t I,” he teases, and I grin.

  I release a deep breath and lean in to kiss Siah softly. “Thank you,” I whisper against his lips.

  He smiles and runs a hand down my spine. “Like I said, I’ve got you.”

  My grin is blinding, and I move my lips to his ear. “Now fuck me again, mate, and then let’s go relieve the others from guard duty.”

  Siah growls and then palms my ass. “Don’t have to tell me twice. Let’s see how many times I make you scream my name.”

  And with that, the fucker bites me.

  Knox hollers triumphantly when he finally wins the epic thumb-war we’ve been having for twenty minutes. He puffs up about it like he’s just done something amazing, but my hands are a fuck-ton smaller than his, so really, can he be that proud of a win?

  “Gentlemen, I’ve finally found something that Vinna Aylin isn’t good at,” he announces jovially.

  Given the fact that I just fucked us all over by losing a battle with Mother Time, Knox’s innocent statement stings more than it probably should.

  “Too soon, Knox,” I tell him shaking my head. “Way too fucking soon.”

  “What? I thought ol’ blue eyes got you fixed up right as rain. You know, with his cock and his fangs?” he tells me, wagging his eyebrows at me. “Siah, we were counting on you, what happened?” Knox shouts, his booming voice filling the main room we’re sitting in.

  Siah peeks his head out of our room. “What are you shouting about?”

  I slap Knox in the chest. “Nothing,” I tell him and shoot a glare at Knox.

  “Killer is still feeling all fucked up about the old lady. I thought you got that sorted,” Knox tells him, ignoring my irritated eye roll.

  The front door opens, and in walks Enoch, Kallan, Nash, Becket, Sabin, and Torrez.

  “Thank fuck,” I mumble under my breath, their presence saving me from having to talk about the source of my eternal shame.

  “They’re back!” Knox calls out, and all the other guys join us in the main room.

  Torrez heads right for the leftover platters of food that are on the back table and starts stacking his plate with meat.

  “They not fe
ed you?” Valen asks him, eyeing the mountain slowly forming on Torrez’s plate.

  “No, they fed us,” Torrez replies, looking over at Valen like he doesn’t understand why he’s asking the question.

  I laugh softly and watch as Kallan plops down on the couch to the left of the one I’m sitting on. He runs a tired hand over his face.

  “Well, second impressions of our Sentinel, Suryn, are not really any more favorable than the first,” he announces.

  Becket gives an agreeing grunt and drops down on the other end of the couch.

  “I dunno, I kind of like it,” Nash argues, and he laughs when Kallan gives him a disgusted look.

  “You always like the bitchy ones, so no surprise there. You’ll probably jerk off to the way she looks at us like we’re shit on her shoes,” Becket flings at Nash.

  I choke on a cough when Nash just shrugs and admits, “Probably.” Enoch shakes his head and leans against the arm of the couch, a small smile playing at his lips. I try to decipher the look I see in his grey-blue gaze, but I can’t suss it out.

  “So what happened?” Ryker asks as he comes out of Sorik and Vaughn’s room.

  He walks over to where I’m sitting on the couch and wedges himself between Knox and me. I laugh, and Knox grumbles as Ryker makes himself at home and drapes an arm over the back of the couch behind me.

  “That’s better,” he sighs and relaxes against me.

  He starts playing with the ends of my hair and ignores Knox’s cockblock accusation.

  “They took us to this room that had a big round table in it,” Sabin starts.

  “It was very King Arthur Chic,” Torrez throws in before he begins to devour what I think is a pig’s leg.

  “We all sat down, and then Sauriel started asking questions. We were allowed to interject any questions that we also had, so it was just a back and forth until everyone had all the answers they were looking for,” Sabin finishes.

  “So what did they ask?” Valen queries.

  “They asked Suryn if she was born here. What her role was. They asked if she had ever marked anyone else, how it happened,” Sabin pauses and tries to remember if there was anything else.