Rebel Warlock's Wizard Mate: M/M Gay Fantasy Romance
Page 1
Rebel Warlock’s Wizard Mate
Gay Fantasy Romance
J.B. Black
Sign up to the J.B. Black newsletter for a free M/M Erotic Romance Fantasy and monthly updates on upcoming sales!
Rebel Warlock’s Wizard Mate by JB Black
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used.
REBEL WARLOCK’S WIZARD MATE
Copyright © 2020 J.B. Black
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Other Works By J.B. Black
Fated Mate Novellas
The Forest God’s Fertile Hunter
The Fae Prince’s Fated Mate
The Crown Prince’s Fated Mate
The Wandering Warlock’s Fated Mate
The Fae King’s Fated Mate
From Forest God’s Head Scribe to Fertile Bride
From Warlock’s Familiar to His Alpha Husband
Pining Rival to Virile Mate
Becoming the Incubus’s Fertile Mate
Proud Dragon’s Fated Mate
The Island God’s Fated Mate
M/F Fertile Fantasies
Fertile Fairytale Horde
Fertile Fairytale Horde 2
Major Explicit Short Bundle
Pleasured by the Demon Lord
Chapter One
From a young age, William dreamed of another world. His family lived in a sleepy town in New England, surrounded by mortals on all sides. Both his parents — a witch and warlock in their own right — spent more of their time working their mortal jobs. His father worked in web design. The only spells he did came when he stumbled around in the early hours of the morning, willing the coffee to brew faster or the pancakes to flip themselves. While William’s mother did a bit more magic, her wood carved furniture came out the same as if she had done them by hand, and often, she would do one in every three that way just to prove she could. His siblings — two younger sisters — wanted to study poetry and zoology respectively. Like more and more witches, they were content to keep their magic to their off hours — though Agatha often joked she would learn to spell the animals to speak with her when no one was looking.
William hated it. All these stories of the world-that-was spoke of continents overflowing with magic. Even mortal dreamt up schools for magic. They thought if it existed, it had to hide itself in between the mundane rather than sliding alongside and in and around like an errant thread. Of course, he loved his laptop, and he spent more time on his cell phone than both of his sisters combined, but having finished his apprenticeship early, William had the choice to go off to college and experience the easy life of a journeyman rather than rush through that to present his mastery. That — however — was the last thing William wanted.
Which led to his announcement in the last month of high school. “I’m going to attend Aelion Academy.”
His mother blanched, and his father nearly dropped his coffee. They looked at each other with confused stares, but whatever silent discussion they had failed to illuminate how this announcement came about.
“Aelion Academy? That’s the wizard university, right?” William’s father asked.
Nodding, William presented the pamphlets he had taken from the last regional magical meeting. Most wizards lived in secluded communities. They found adapting to modern life the hardest. Druids fit upon the outskirts of society well enough — some popping up with gardens that were the envy of their mortal neighbors while sorcerers often pretended to be stage magicians or other sorts of entertainers, hiding their magic in plain sight. Wizards, however, required long study and methodological practice to their powers. The university promised coursework on arcane arts the likes of which a warlock would never ordinarily study.
“I’m going to study alchemy,” he announced, pointing at the course details.
His father’s nose wrinkled. “Don’t they have a website?”
“They’re wizards, dear. I doubt they’ll let any sort of electronics on their campus,” his mother said, leaning over her husband’s shoulder as she read the details. “You have such a talent for healing. If you’re going to go there, why not take the necromancy courses?”
“Gretchen!” his father gasped. “You can’t seriously be humoring him on this?”
William’s mother shrugged. “He’s as stubborn as you, and if this is what he wants to do, I’m not fighting. Odds are he’ll be kicked out before Yule.”
“I appreciate your vote of confidence,” William drawled, glaring at his mother. “Anyway, I want to focus on alchemy as that’s the most easily modernized wizarding field. Transformations — I honestly think witchcraft does that better and I’m not entirely up for self-experimentation, so that’s out. Necromancy is interesting, and I’ll definitely see if I can balance both courses, but a warlock coming in for necromancy is guaranteed to get rejected.”
Both his parents nodded. Wizards suspected the worst of other magic users, finding them less reliable than the slow and steady methods of wizard-kind. Any magic where wizards focused would prove difficult for the more innate and instinctive paths which warlocks and witches used to practice their craft.
“You won’t have any friends there,” his mother warned, pointing the spatula at him before going back to the eggs on the stovetop.
“I don’t have many friends here. I’m not exactly popular,” Williamgrumbled, rolling his eyes.
His father hummed, returning to his newspaper. “If you didn’t rush through your apprenticeship, you would have had a better chance of making mortal friends.”
“And I would’ve been a journeyman still instead of a master, which means I couldn’t have voted in the last two annual meetings, and I would have had to go on that stupid retreat with the rest of the apprentices in freshman year instead of getting a job and buying the latest playstation.” He gestured between his two parents with the pamphlet in his hand. “A gaming console you both poo-pooed and now use every week mind you!”
“Gods, why is William ranting so early on a Saturday?” his youngest sister, Casey, asked as she came into the kitchen still in her pajamas.
Flipping the page of his paper as he took a sip of his coffee, their father told her, “Your brother wants to go to Aelion Academy.”
“What? Like that institute named after Ulric the Oppressor? I still think it’s freaky they named it that. You can’t reclaim a name. Aelion Academy led to a mass genocide of magic users, and bringing it back up is just stupid,” Casey proclaimed as she grabbed a glass and poured some orange juice into it. “It isn’t like wizards were the only ones affected by that. Just because the only survivor was a wizard doesn’t mean they get to make decisions about what is and isn’t insensitive!”
William groaned, throwing his hands in the air. “Nobody cares, Casey!”
“I care, and I’m somebody,” she retorted.
Dragging his hands over his face, William huffed, “You lot are insane. I don’t know how someone as sensible as me grew up here. I’m obviously the result of an affair. Mom, just admit you shacked up with a wizard on your journeymanship, and we’ll call this nonsense done.”
Their mother laughed. “Timelines aside, if you had come from my journeyman experimentation, you would’ve been half druid, sweetie.”
Chapter Two
Unlike William, Ælfweard had little choice in where he would go to university. The eldest of a household of seven children, his parents — fated mates and wizards themselves — hadn’t been able to provide their children with much exposure outside of the magical community where they lived. Every single person in their village was a wizard, and with as small as the community was in rural England, everyone knew everyone else.
For this same reason, everyone knew Ælfweard had six siblings with a seventh on the way that would make him the eldest of eight. They saw his marks — best in his class — and pitied that he had to spend so much time helping his parents with his younger siblings rather than expanding his education. Not that Ælfweard minded. He loved caring for others, and the happiness he found when they enjoyed the meals he cooked or liked the new braid he had taken hours learning with ropes while he studied meant more to him than any spell could.
All the same, all wizards went to Aelion Academy or another wizarding university when they reached the age, and despite putting it off far longer than he should have — being that Aelion Academy accepted students from high school onward and had twice tried to recruit him from his small loyal learning group — Ælfweard had refused. Part of his refusal came from knowing his family needed him, but the other side came from a desire to continue learning the bits of schooling that would allow him to survive in the mortal world. More wizards found such unnecessary, but as his family was poor and overtaxed by the fertility which came from fated mates and a lacking in education in modern preventatives which would not be as easily overcome as more natural means, he had more than once worked small jobs for a few of the mortal farmers who also owned land nearby.
“You can’t refuse them again,” his mother informed him, cradling her swollen belly as she bounced his littlest sister on her hip.
Scrubbing at the pots as his magic stirred the stew on the woodstove, Ælfweard frowned down at the murky water. “Dad’s got another month of duty before he gets back, and you know how the council is. They’ll want him back out at the dig site before you’re fully healed. You need me here.”
“You are a child. My child,” she replied. “You don’t get to use me as an excuse. You are going to Aelion Academy. You are getting your education and mastering your craft, so you can take part in the community.”
Her tone told him there would be no argument, and her blood pressure didn’t need the aggravation, so he bowed his head and gave in to her demand. “Yes, Mother.”
With a single curt nod at his agreement, she asked, “Have you thought about which course you’ll do? You have a talent for potions, so you could look into elixirs and brewery.”
“Alchemy.”
Her brows furrowed — as pale blond as his own. “Alchemy? That’s a terribly dangerous practice.”
Ælfweard could not argue with that fact. While battle magic and necromancy had their fair share of death and evil surrounding them, alchemy often led to disaster if not approached properly; however, the most prosperous of wizarding families seemed to have a talent for the subject, and Ælfweard suspected their ability came from early exposure rather than anything natural at all. If he could learn to transmute common metals into gold or even truly master it and learn the almost impossible skill of spinning straw into gold, his family would never have to worry about money ever again. His parents could live their lives in peace, and his father would no longer spend months away, working for the council using his telekinetic skills to sort through the earth and help them uncover magical relics before mortals stumbled across them.
The twins came running through with pointed sticks in hand, causing his mother to be distracted long enough for the subject to drop. He had a skill for alchemy, and though they could not afford the texts most of the other students at his school had, his teachers often let him borrow books from the library, so he could study late into the night. He had enough of the basics that he would be able to pass the extra tests to enter the alchemy path.
The biggest blockade ahead stood the other students within the course. Most would be wizards from larger communities. Ones who had come from far and wide for the hopes of learning beneath Wizard Workneh — the only alchemist who had successfully taught others how to spin straw to gold. Few students had the opportunity to learn from him, and even those who did often failed to master the craft before they graduated and went on in their lives, but they all had found wealth and prosperity afterward. If the man elected to take someone under his wing in the upcoming year, Ælfweard had to make sure that person was him.
Chapter Three
Flying across the ocean to the United Kingdom, William watched the world pass by underneath the airplane’s wing. His hands traced the edge of the coast as it appeared in the window, and his heart raced. Despite no sleep, he went through mortal security without problem. With a spelled backpack carrying his entire room inside it, he looked for all the world like a tourist rather than the student he was, but it didn’t matter. While most students teleported to campus, William wanted the experiment of going back and forth. From Edinburgh, he took a train northward, and when the stop came, he disembarked frowning at the dirt path and dark station. A single lamp lit the dark, hanging over the wooden platform as the train chugged, huffing and puffing as it headed off into the night.
The moon hung heavy over his head, and bright stars lit the pathway curling into the woods. Spells hid the castle from view, but if William tilted his head just so, he could see the spiraling towers where he would be spending the next three years of his life.
Striding off into the dark, William grinned as he studied the layers of spells which guarded the academy. Most of the wizards wouldn’t arrive until the following day, but some had attended the lesser coursework which would be similar to a high school. More than once, the head witch had warned him that the wizards would consider his mortal education — and even his warlock apprenticeship — to be poor in comparison to their rigid classwork. William didn’t care. He intended to prove to them that he wasn’t just a warlock playing at being a wizard. He had started to practice some alchemy in his mother’s workshop, and the skill worked easily enough on small materials. Equivalent exchanges were exhausting, but if one of the professors could spin straw into gold like Rumplestiltskin, William refused to believe he couldn’t master that skill too.
“Halt!” a voice called out in the dark.
Grinning, William pulled out his acceptance letter. “Hi! I’m William Belmont.”
From the dark, a man in a sparkling robe stepped out. “Belmont? Ah — you’re the warlock.”
“Yeah, I’ll be starting the alchemy course next week. They said I should come and move in early, so I can get settled,” William said as he folded the letter and put it back in his backpack.
The wizard frowned. His brow wrinkled as his golden eyes scanned over William’s face as if expecting to see something in particular in him. Perhaps madness. William would be the first warlock to attend the academy, and while he treated it like a university, they considered the academy like a way of life. Wizards kept to their own. A stranger amongst them would be distrusted until proved otherwise, and it would be difficult for him to show he could be trusted. Still, the warlock kept his smile in place and allowed the wizard’s magic to scan over him.
“I never thought I’d see the day that there would b
e a warlock at Aelion Academy,” the wizard drawled, crossing his arms over his broad chest. He was much more muscular than the few wizards William had seen before, and his dark skin seemed to meld right into the night sky. “Allow me to be the first to welcome you, Warlock Belmont.”
“William, please,” the warlock replied, holding out his hand to shake.
“Warlock William,” the wizard corrected, but William shook his head.
“Just William.”
The wizard frowned, narrowing his eyes before he took the offered hand and gave it a single strong up and down shake before withdrawing his hand. “You are a master of your craft. It would be a disservice to not acknowledge your accomplishment.”
“Yeah, but it’s going to be weird enough being the only non-wizard around. I’d like to not remind everybody,” William explained, and the wizard nodded in understanding.
“I will inform the rest of the faculty. It would behoove you to remember to call us by our titles. Though we are your professors, we are all wizardry masters, which places that title first,” the man explained, gesturing for William to follow him through the shields and over a bridge into the keep. “I am Wizard Workneh, and I’ll be one of your main lecturers; however, you will not be assigned an advisor until your third year unless someone takes a particular interest in you.”
William struggled to keep up. The wizard stood almost a head taller, and his long strides had the warlock jogging to keep up. Everything inside the warlock suggested this was the prime opportunity to push for a stronger relationship in hopes that the alchemist would take him under his wing, but the sight of the castle stole his breath away. Dark stone rose into the dark sky. Stained glass stood in the large windows at the front, and banners glimmered, shining like beacons in the dark as they radiated magic. Though he couldn’t see, William could sense the runework stitched into them. They were powerful markers. No one with ill intent could enter the keep, and mortals would wander straight through the stones without even noticing the castle or any of its residents.