A Cast of Shadows: An Araneae Nation Story

by Hailey Edwards

  I couldn’t help it. I screamed loud enough to wake the dead. I think I had been holding it in for a while, and Brynmor’s appearance at my elbow freed it.

  “Do you feel better?” He wiggled a finger in his ear.

  It took a few tries to find my voice. “I do, actually.”

  He mirrored my position. We sat with our backs flush to the wall and our knees drawn up to our chests. His fingers drummed on his thigh. “I can go if it would make you more comfortable.”

  “Stay.” I laughed. “Being underground with the dead seems fitting somehow.”

  His hand slowed its rhythmic beat. “I can keep watch better from outside.”

  “No.” I let my head fall back. “I would rather have you for company than none at all.”

  “I’m pleased to be of service,” he said dryly.

  “Where’s Jana?” Even my scream hadn’t brought her running.

  “She returned to the bed her mother made for her.” He appeared grim. “She’s sleeping.”

  Sleep sounded divine. I closed my eyes again, or maybe they closed themselves.

  I covered a yawn. “I’ll start work on your net in the morning.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “That’s right. With the hunters gone, you’re no longer in need of my services.” Rubbing my eyes, I groaned at the dull ache behind them. Without the net, I had no easy reason for remaining.

  “I am in great need of your services.” His voice turned silky. “A good net has many uses.”

  “Oh.” I cleared my throat.

  “I only meant there was no need to rush.” He murmured near my ear, “You should rest.”

  “I am resting.” Cool air whispered across my jaw, traced a line down my throat. I swallowed my rebuke and froze, waiting for what Brynmor did next, but his fingers never strayed from their path. After a while, I grew frustrated with his game. He took too many liberties. “I can feel that.”

  “Can you?” he asked as if he knew very well that I could.

  “Was this your plan?” I opened my eyes. “Trap me in the den and take advantage of me?”

  “If you recall, you were the one who dragged the canis in behind you.” He risked a grin. “Besides, you have already taken advantage of me. I would simply be returning the favor.”

  Heat rose in my cheeks, and I hoped his night vision was poorer as a spirit.

  “Favors are gifts. They aren’t meant to be repaid.” It was the best retort I could manage while he looked at me that way.

  He leaned in closer. “I believe in squaring all my debts, plus interest.”

  “Have you contracted the plague?” My voice rose. “Or some other form of madness?”

  “No,” he said after a lengthy pause while he seemed to consider his answer.

  “Then what’s changed?” I pressed my back firmer against the wall. “What are you doing?”

  “It occurs to me that I might not see the sun rise.” He stroked the hottest parts of my cheeks. “It also occurs to me that I have nothing to lose by doing this…” He bent his head, brushing cool lips over mine. His kiss was whisper soft, and I saw through his face to the dirt wall behind him.

  Blinking broke the spell. “I can’t do this.”

  “Then don’t.” Brynmor cupped my face and claimed my mouth. “Let me do it.”

  With my eyes closed, I focused on sensation, on the tingle of his airy caress, and fire ignited in my belly. At the waterfall I might have been his for the taking. He was too virile then, too real. His touch carried the weight of too many consequences. Now Brynmor was as potent as ever, but he was more like a dream, so where was the harm? Pleasure found in dreams didn’t count, did it?

  Chill fingers trailed down my bare shoulders. “What are you doing?”

  He paused at my wrists, and gooseflesh rippled over my arms. “Helping you relax.”

  “Relax?” It was the furthest thing from my mind.

  Brynmor ignored me. “Lay down.”

  I did as he asked, and eased my body onto the worn floor of the den. He knelt beside me, a thin barrier between me and Errol. It was too much. I stared at the canis and his shallow breaths.

  “Look at me.”

  The command in Brynmor’s voice snapped my gaze to his.

  “Good.” He praised me with a pat on my thigh that was little more than a breeze.

  “How will this work?” I was genuinely curious.

  He sighed. “Must you always ask so many questions?”

  I glared at him, and he had the nerve to chuckle at me.

  He traced the waist of my pants with his finger. “Take these off.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  He stared down his nose at me, and I shivered. I had no trouble seeing him as the Mimetidae paladin, devious and cunning, now that he sought control of me.

  Grumbling as I worked the laces of my pants, I shed them and lay pliant before him.

  He drew in a sharp breath, as if scenting my arousal. I clenched my thighs tight together and swallowed past the lump in my throat. It hadn’t occurred to me that if he was substantial enough for even the feather-light caresses he teased me with so far, that his other senses would function as well.

  “Spread these.” He tapped my knees.

  I let my legs fall open a fraction.

  “More.” His voice crackled with desire.

  I did as he asked, bared myself to him in that most intimate way, and sank my fingernails in the ground to either side of my thighs. It tickled at first, the rush of icy air creeping over my toes as Brynmor crawled up my body. He stopped with his fists braced to either side of my hips and a wicked grin on his face. He still wore clothes, and a sharp rush of embarrassment made my knees clamp shut somewhere in the vicinity of his hips. Cold air rushed over my bare legs then, and his expression shifted from domineering to hesitant. As if he finally realized how foolish we looked.

  When he reared back, I leaned forward and grasped his wrists. My hands closed over air.

  It was enough. He paused, staring down at me, trying to read me as I had tried so often to read him. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. I lay back and resumed my indelicate position.

  His gruff acceptance of my obeisance showed in the slight crinkle around his eyes. Dipping his head, he nuzzled the valley between my breasts. Cool pressure made me gasp, a strangled sound that earned me a hum of approval. Brynmor ignored the fact I still wore my shirt and covered the tip of one breast with his mouth. I arched beneath his icy touch, the slow pattern his tongue traced around my nipple as if the thick fabric was no barrier. Perhaps to him it wasn’t.

  Frustration sank my fingers into the dirt. I had no lover to claw. The ground bore the marks I would have given Brynmor’s back, his flanks, any part of him in reach if I could only touch him.

  Sensing my loss of focus, Brynmor kissed his way down my chest, past my navel to my hipbone. He savored the skin there before nibbling his way across my abdomen and lower, until he tasted the fire he stoked in me. The flames in my gut, my lover’s icy caresses, made me writhe.

  His kisses grew colder as Brynmor’s efforts to manifest leached away the warmth in the air.

  While taunting my empty sex with airy strokes of his tongue, Brynmor caressed my ribs. His hands drifted higher where he brought my nipples to peaks I thought might shatter from the cold.

  He murmured a soft word against my skin my sensation-addled brain fought to comprehend. More pressure built until his next frigid exhale perched me on the edge of orgasm.

  “Come,” he demanded of me.

  And I did, with a shiver and a sigh.

  Brynmor rolled from between my legs, which sprawled limp and useless, to stretch out next to me. He lay on his side, facing me, watching my chest rise and fall in the frantic concert of my afterglow. He traced my bare hip until gooseflesh rose and he appeared to decide his touch made me uncomfortable. Amusing how moments earlier he wouldn’t have cared about my discomfort.

  He was too fo
cused on bringing me pleasure to mind the nip of pain his icy flesh delivered.

  “Well?” He leaned in close enough his cool breath fanned my cheek.

  I turned to face him. “I think you and I have very different ideas about what relax means.”

  My pulse thrummed, my core ached for more, for him. I longed for the fulfillment I sensed outside of my grasp. Or perhaps it was Brynmor being so far beyond my reach that stung.

  The way his lips curved made my heart lurch. “I much prefer my definition.”

  “You would,” I said on a tired laugh that stretched into a yawn.

  “Get some sleep.” Brynmor shifted onto his back and crossed his arms behind his head.

  I watched him stare at the den’s ceiling. “Can you—I mean—do spirits…?”

  “I don’t sleep.” He turned his head toward me. “I’ll watch over you until dawn.”

  “Wake me if Errol…” If the canis died, Brynmor would cease to exist. Anger had dulled my reaction before, but the dreamy haze where I drifted now, sated and secure, wrecked that barrier.

  I feared falling asleep. What if I woke alone with a dead canis and only the wisps of a lover I would never see or hear, never touch or taste again? For a male I had known so briefly, Brynmor had carved himself a place in my regard. Despite my hurt at his deception, I wanted him to earn redemption. I wanted him to tell me stories and spark my curiosity as only he could. For a male I knew the gods had granted a full lifetime to, I found myself praying they granted him even more.

  I found myself hoping they did have a purpose for him in allowing this strange, new life.

  And I selfishly hoped his purpose was me.

  Chapter Seven

  Waking underground with no pants on and no sign of your lover is never a good thing.

  What made it worse was the canis rumbling steadily in my direction. Errol’s eyes were shut, but I wasn’t foolish enough to believe I wasn’t in danger from him if I made a wrong move.

  “Errol,” Brynmor said. “That’s enough.”

  I sucked in a quick breath at the sound of his voice. Happiness, it seemed, was a sharper rush than I recalled. The den was empty but for me and Errol, and I supposed Jana waited somewhere.

  “I can hear you.” I hurried into my clothes and snagged my lariat. “But I can’t see you.”

  A hand appeared in the narrow gap left between the high point of Errol’s spine and the den’s ceiling. It scratched behind Errol’s shoulder blade until his growling ceased, then it waved at me.

  I leaned forward. “Brynmor?”

  “In the flesh,” he said, and I noticed his voice was muffled. “Stay back in case he snaps.”

  He didn’t have to warn me twice. I flattened my back to the wall and watched as Brynmor’s arm looped around Errol’s midsection and pulled until sunlight cut a swatch through the gloom.

  While I muttered at the chirping birds outside, Jana bounded from a dark corner with a yip.

  “There you are.” I rubbed her head, and she bit me for my trouble.

  “She’s hungry.” Brynmor had shifted Errol enough I could ease past him…if I dared.

  “What about him?” I pointed at the glaring alpha.

  “He’s in no shape to bother you.” He reached for me. “Grab on and I’ll help you out.”

  His hand was warm in mine, so real I held on tighter than I should have.

  Once I was on my feet, I stretched my aching muscles and forced my spine straight. Living among the canis was not for me. Much too rustic. I preferred my tent and my bedroll, thank you.

  The den’s entrance looked smaller at dawn. “Do you really stay in there every night? Cramped quarters and all that dirt… It was like sleeping in a tomb.”

  Laughter burst from Brynmor and startled the annoying songbirds from the trees.

  “I may be dead, but I’m not buried yet.” His brow furrowed. “Or, I suppose I am.”

  His gallows humor stung less today, and I scrounged up a smile for his wit.

  The creases in his forehead drew my fingers to smooth them. One touch led to another until I held his face in my hands. “Does this mean Errol will recover? Is this—are you—all right?”

  “I can’t make you any promises, but he is healing.” Brynmor covered my hands. “Last night, even when his spirit tugged at its mooring, it remained in him. It was as if once his spirit realized it was anchored, that the continuation of Errol’s life was inevitable, his body began mending.”

  “Good.” I stroked my thumbs across his cheeks. “I would have missed you.”

  A series of pup-sized sneezes saved me from uttering more embarrassing remarks.

  Jana barreled from between some trees and pounced on a loose string on my boot.

  “How did she…?” I stepped back as Brynmor coughed into his fist. “There’s another exit?”

  “Several,” he admitted. “They aren’t meant for people. They’re too narrow for us to use.”

  “So last night Jana wasn’t being an unusually well-behaved pup.” I should have suspected as much. “She waited until we were otherwise occupied, then slipped outside to play on her own?”

  “I kept watch over her,” he assured me. “A little adventure is good for the young.”

  “Hmm.” I watched her spin and attack a tuft of grass. “I suppose.”

  His eyes twinkled. “You like adventure well enough.”

  “I’m not that young.” I rolled my eyes at him. “And I can take care of myself.”

  “You’ll hear no argument from me.” His expression turned wistful. “I didn’t know what to make of you when we first met. A female who travels armed with nothing but her wits?”

  I set my hands on my hips. “I had spears.”

  “Which you left leaned against a tree.”

  Embarrassment flushed my cheeks. “You could have handed one to me.”

  “If I had, we wouldn’t be here now.” He grasped my elbows and pulled me into him. “And I very much want to be here, right now, with you.” He leaned close. “What have you done to me?”

  Tilting my head back, I accepted his kiss. “To you?” I nipped his bottom lip. “Nothing yet.”

  He groaned into my mouth, and it was easy to forget how odd a pair we made.

  “Oww.” Needle-sharp teeth sank into my ankle. I shook Jana off and wiped away blood.

  Brynmor caught the pup before she bit me again. “She must be hungrier than I thought.”

  “I could eat too.” I patted my stomach. “How about you?”

  “In this form I can eat or not.” He shrugged. “I enjoy a good meal, but it’s not necessary.”

  “I envy you that.” I huffed. “Think of all the time I could save if I didn’t have to hunt.”

  “Don’t deny you enjoy it.” He laughed aloud. “I watched you catching salmo.” The moment the words left his mouth, the tips of his ears turned red.

  I jabbed a finger in his shoulder. “You watched me?”

  His gaze drifted over me, leaving tingles in its wake. “I could not resist your siren song.”

  My finger slid down his arm. “Then perhaps we can make a bargain. I’ll sing. You hunt.”

  He grunted, but didn’t say no. “We can’t venture far. I thought we might hunt lepus nearby.”

  “I look forward to seeing a swordsman slay a cottontail.” I chuckled at his scowl.

  Catching my hand, he tapped my spinnerets. “I was thinking of using snares, actually.”

  “Then we better get started.” It took time to set snares and more time for prey to wander into them. “I can help you set them.” It was the least I could do to earn my meal. “We’ll have to work quickly if we want to avoid Jana springing the traps or flushing out the prey before we’re ready.”

  At the sound of her name, the pup began writhing in Brynmor’s arms.

  “Wait—hold on.” He set her down before she tumbled to the ground. Once her paws hit dirt, she bolted for the den. Seconds later, Errol’s throaty growl sent her r
unning back, tail between her legs.

  “Someone’s feeling feisty this morning.” She was wound tight and springing into the air.

  His lips twitched at her antics. “Hunting will be impossible when she’s like this.”

  We both knew she wouldn’t stay at the den with no one but Errol for company. She would trail after us, hoping for adventure and causing mischief wherever she went.

  “If you’d like to go it alone, I can keep an eye on Errol while you’re gone.” I sighed when Jana leapt onto my ankle and sank her teeth in with a ferocious snarl. “You’ll work faster without us underfoot, and I could get started on that net I owe you.”

  “I told you,” he said, peeling my attacker from my leg. “There’s no rush.”

  I kept quiet for fear he would read too much into my relief at spending more time with him.

  Glancing away, he dusted his hands. “I won’t go far.”

  “Stay in hearing distance.” I didn’t want to be caught with an injured alpha to defend and only a pup at my back if rival canis descended upon the den. The last thing I wanted to do was stand between Errol and a potential successor. One canis I could handle, maybe, but more than that…

  “Stay safe.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead.

  “You too,” I said before realizing the futility of that wish.

  Regret flickered across his face. “You stay safe enough for the both of us.”

  “I will.” I spun a slim thread then tied my first knot in what would be his net and dangled it before him. “I have plenty to keep me occupied until you return.” I waved as he left, and the movement drew Jana’s attention. When my hand fell to my side, she snagged the net starter and, with a toss of her head, bounded from my sight with her prize hanging from her grinning jaws. “Why that little…”

  I had to laugh. She was audacious, an admirable trait in any female.

  Tapping my fingertips, I began my work again.

  Kneading my empty stomach, I reconsidered the scrap of net I had woven. Tempted as I was to catch my own meal, Errol was still unfit to fend for himself, and I had accepted responsibility for him. Either I waited for Brynmor’s return or I broke my word. So wait for him I would. Since I saw no signs of canis, or anyone else for that matter, I shoved thoughts of food aside and wove the next row on my net. It seemed I finished each line slower than the one before. Each brought me closer to the end of my time with Brynmor. Each made me wish that wasn’t the case.