by Alex Lidell
For a heartbeat, I feel Coal balking from the unfolding darkness. Then he draws a shuddering breath, braces himself, and plunges into the torrent with predatory intent, my own mind descending with him. Coal’s hips undulate, his cock filling my channel again and again as the dark cell comes into focus around us.
This time, instead of looking through Coal’s eyes, I’m watching the scene from just in front of him—from the same place my real body occupies. Coal’s face and the thick dank stone walls around us are beaded with moisture, the drip drip drip of something just out of sight both rhythmic and horrifying. Over Coal’s shoulder, I can see the gray qoru come closer to Coal’s back. Gray-skinned creatures of Mors, with lidless milky pink eyes and webbed hind legs. The first one stretches a round mouth of razor-sharp teeth into a horrid grin, ready to feed on Coal’s pain as it’s done for centuries.
Coal swallows, his muscles trembling. He can’t see the qoru, but he can feel them—even if the amulet’s magic keeps insisting that they are islanders.
I suddenly know the answer to Coal’s question. He has to turn. To look at the qoru. When I open my mouth to say as much, the tattoo marks on Coal’s skin, the footprint left when his body absorbed the amulet, glow a bloody red.
Coal’s body is rigid now, every fiber inside him doubtlessly screaming not to look back. Never look.
“Coal,” I call.
His glazed gaze shifts to me, his eyes filling with longing. Yet I know it’s not the real Lera he sees when he looks at me, but the woman from his magic-spun dreams.
I call his name again.
Behind Coal, the milky-eyed qoru jerks its attention away from Coal, its ire suddenly aimed at me. Terror pours into my blood, and I scream despite myself.
Coal roars, twisting against his own fear, as if his instinct to protect me over himself exists even in his nightmares. His breath stills the moment he sees the qoru, then returns with a vengeance.
“Don’t. Touch. My mate.” Coal tries to put himself between the qoru and me, yanking so hard on his chains that his arm breaks. He seems to care little about the arm, though. Care little about the pain or fear or anything—except me.
In the bedroom, the bedpost behind me cracks in two, a blaze of phantom pain shooting through Coal’s fractured bone as we spin to land on the bed. The mattress cradles my back, Coal’s blue-purple eyes fixed on mine. Our chests heave.
Coal’s gaze breaks away from mine and roves over me feverishly. My hair, face, breasts, shoulders, his eyes take me in thirstily, his pupils dilated with desperate wonder.
“Leralynn,” he says hoarsely.
“Coal?” I whisper, though I can barely breathe. Can barely fight against the rising hope.
He grips my face with his good hand. “Leralynn,” he repeats, his blue eyes glittering with specks of purple. With recognition. “Mortal.”
With gasping breaths, Coal pulls me until my backside is at the edge of the bed. As the tension-charged air cools my exposed sex and backside, he hoists my legs onto his shoulders and buries himself inside me so swiftly that I have to muffle a scream with my arm.
My swollen, sensitive channel throbs, stretching to accommodate the male’s great size and power. I bite back moan after moan as Coal—my Coal—thrusts harder still, the thick head of his cock hammering against a spot deep inside me, his motions driving me up the bed. He follows on his knees and pounds into me until the bed shudders against the wall, the slap of sweaty skin against my damp backside echoing through the room.
His face hides nothing from me, need and love and grief crossing it in lightning-quick succession. I reach up and pull him toward me until his bound arm brushes my breasts, our foreheads pressed together. His breath hitches, but he never lets me separate from him. Never backs away just because holding me hurts him.
“I didn’t know who you were, Lera,” Coal rasps, the hurt carried on his words’ wings so intense that it chokes me. “But I fought for you long after I stopped fighting for myself.”
Gasping for air, I inhale his metallic musk, not yet ready to answer, craving something, anything, to drown out the tearing in my soul.
As if sensing my need, Coal’s callused fingers invade my slick folds, tracing my inflamed bud. With the fullness and stretching from his cock already holding my every nerve hostage, the extra sensation shoots through my body so fiercely that gripping the sheet with my hands is all I can do to keep from screaming.
That’s when Coal brushes his thumb right over my apex.
My body spasms around him, my focus narrowing to nothing but the eruption of searing, agonizing pleasure exploding from my sex. The rising wave of sensation just begins to calm when Coal’s cock gives its own final spasm, spilling his warmth into me. My channel clenches all over again, milking the emptying cock inside it for every drop. Coal buries his face in my neck and whispers my name, nipping my neck as my second release shudders through me. Then his mouth is on mine, and nothing exists but our lips and breath and racing hearts.
16
Lera
I tremble against Coal’s bare chest, tracing each ridge of his abdomen with my fingers, the arm he has wrapped around me an iron band of reassurance. The amulet’s tattoo-like runes on Coal’s skin are a pale version of themselves, and I can almost swear I feel the conquered magic grumbling in disapproval.
My own amulet lies on the floor amidst the wreckage of the room. With the enhanced strength of magic that surged when we mated, Coal’s native healing gifts went to work on his broken arm, searing the shards together enough to let him remove the sling despite still wincing at the movements.
My mind is still stunned, disbelieving, not quite knowing where to start. I’ve been on the outside of my males’ lives for so many weeks now that I’ve forgotten how to be a bonded quint mate.
Trust still hasn’t settled into my bones—trust that this is real. That it will last.
Coal squeezes me tighter as if reading my thoughts, leaning down to search my gaze with piercing blue eyes before taking a deep kiss that plunders my mouth. Part reassurance, part fae’s primal possession.
“You don’t like hugging,” I remind him stupidly, my mind and soul still spinning wildly to process what’s happened to bring us to this moment.
Coal flashes his canines. “I’m not hugging you, mortal. I’m ensuring you don’t race off to save the world before I get my full fill of your presence.”
“What do you remember exactly?” I whisper.
“I remember a reckless mortal being too brave for her own good.” Coal’s callused thumb traces the pointed top of my ear, which is nearly as sensitive as my sex. “Everything that I did and knew in my veiled human form is just as clear in my memory as what came before it, though I’m now aware that parts of it are fiction. When I think of my role as instructor here, I feel the amulet’s footprint around my neck grow warm and insist that I believe its tale.”
“That’s what I feel like when I wear the amulet.” I burrow myself deeper into his hard chest, the magnitude of the night’s consequences falling onto my shoulders like drops of rain that quickly morph to a downpour. Did Coal’s conquering of his amulet’s magic break the veil? Or will the humans continue to see him as one of them? Will the effects last? Without the mental connection that Coal and I share, will the other males ever come back? What should I—
“Stop it, mortal.” Leaving off caressing my ear, Coal grabs it instead, pulling my head back to find my eyes. “Whatever you are thinking, you no longer get to think it alone. Understand?”
Heat fills my blood, though I’m not sure whether I want to kiss the bastard or kick him. I settle for sticking my tongue out at him.
Coal snorts, then glances out the window. “First things first, you can’t stay here in the instructors’ wing and I can’t go out there until we know whether my veil is still effective on humans. I presume that the walking disaster you call Arisha is in your rooms?”
I nodded, chewing my lip. “You want me to try to bring her her
e?” The thought of separating from Coal just when I’ve gotten him back is ridiculously difficult, but the male is right. I can’t stay in his bed—or what’s left of it with the post broken—forever. “Now that I know where your room is, I think we can use the window and avoid the corridors.”
“Good stars, no,” he mutters. “I don’t trust that girl to walk across clean raked sand in broad daylight without tripping over her own feet, much less prance to the instructors’ wing in the middle of the night. Nor can we use the Gloom… I can feel the curtain between the Light and Gloom being thinner than it should be, but it’s still there.”
I frown, somewhat stunned. All these weeks of trying to figure out what’s happening with the wards, where their weakness is originating from and what’s causing it, and Coal can feel what’s happening with his body. Like a bloody divining rod. “I didn’t notice that,” I say dumbly.
“That’s because you are about as good at stepping into the Gloom as Arisha is at negotiating stairs,” says Coal with no hint of exaggeration. Yes. The bloody bastard is certainly himself again. He rubs his face, then studies me critically, his beautiful, chiseled face heartbreakingly precious even when it’s annoyed. “Find one of my shirts to call a dress, and let’s move. You follow my steps exactly.”
Coal proves to be right on both counts. Not only does he successfully guide us through campus without getting caught, but the moment we enter my bedchamber through the open window, Arisha starts walking toward us and trips, falling face-first to the floor. As soon as he’s settled my friend into her chair with a rag to catch the blood seeping from the nose she hit, Coal recaptures me against his solid body, his large hand splayed possessively along my ribs.
“Well?” Coal asks Arisha. “What do you see?”
“I see an instructor pawing my friend,” she tells him, before turning to me with a protective slant to her freckled face. “Do we approve of him doing that?”
“We very much do. Especially since he remembers who he is now.”
“Interesting. He still looks human to me.” Arisha shrugs, characteristically unimpressed, and glares at Coal, her frizzled hair and bleeding nose somewhat diminishing the intended scolding look. “This means you are finally going to start being nice to her?”
Coal runs a warm hand over my hair, brushing it behind my ears and off my neck so slowly and steadily that I have to fight to keep my eyes from fluttering closed. I know he needs the reassurance of physical contact just as much as I do. “Of course not. If you think I’m a bastard under the veil’s magic, you won’t likely enjoy getting to know the real me.” Coal looks down at me. “Morning practice continues, mortal. We’ll have to keep our disguises until we accomplish what we came here for. But I’m a little worried about that.” His face changes. “You’ve done well keeping everything together, Leralynn—both on the mission front and in keeping our thick heads alive. And you’ve done it all on your own.” Coal grins when Arisha clears her throat loudly. “Mostly on your own. Do you have it in you to keep going?”
“Yes,” I say. “Of course.”
“How, specifically?” Arisha says over me.
Turning me around to face him, Coal lays his callused palm along my cheek, his blue eyes sparking as they scan mine. “I’ve a few ideas.”
17
Owalin
“You realize it doesn’t actually matter who wins the little Prowess Trials game, right?” Owalin asked, walking up to where Han was working up training schedules with the meticulousness of a general attending battle plans.
“Who wins the Trials competition matters to me.” Han looked up long enough to accept a stein of ale from one of the human serving girls that Zake had sent their way to make the Night Guard’s mountain range base camp more comfortable, then returned to his scribbling.
Settling in the chair opposite him, Owalin relieved the girl of the second stein and sent her on her way with a smack on her backside. He regretted it a moment later—the handprint would likely linger for days on the too-fragile thing, making the serving stuff sullen—and it was difficult getting a steady stream of replacements.
It would have been a great deal more pleasant if the native weakness in the wards had started somewhere more hospitable, but what the mountain caves lacked in luxury, they made up for in security. Most of Owalin’s guard could step in and out of the Gloom easily here—and, depending on the moon’s position, in patches of the surrounding forest as well.
Taking a swig of ale, Owalin shook his head and returned his attention to Han. All the Night Guard contingent that had come to the mortal lands with Owalin were shifters, but of all the wolves and birds and other common creatures, the lithe male sitting before him was the only one who shifted into a human. Which had made him terribly useful over the decades.
And more than a little eccentric.
“All right, Han. I give up.” Owalin put down his mug. “The Prowess Trials are just a lure for bigger fish. I agree that you were brilliant to foresee such an opportunity years ago and applaud your placement in the Prowess circuit in general and now the Academy in particular. But…at this point, exactly why does it matter how your little rats actually perform?”
“Call it nostalgia,” Han said, finally looking up, his eerily intense blue-gray eyes giving Owalin the shivers. “I used to race horses.”
“And now you race humans.”
“I like sport. You might enjoy trying a hand at it yourself once this is all said and done. It has a different flavor from the usual beasts. But it’s no less an art.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Han snorted, then pulled himself together, probably remembering the time. Being out too long was not good for an Academy instructor. “I’ve not found any fae on the grounds, though several of the mortals are feistier than I’ve marked in the past.”
“Or more of your ilk?”
Han frowned. “Possible, I suppose, though I’m unaware of other human shifters in Lunos. I don’t like it.”
Neither did Owalin, but at day’s end, he had near a hundred warriors. Even if a fae or two stepped where they didn’t belong, it would make little difference to his plans. Shaking his head, Owalin waved a hand at Han’s human features. “Are you going to stay that way all night?”
“I am,” Han said, putting down his stein. “Shifting isn’t the instinct I need my body to reach for too easily just now. I imagine your true intention is to show off Krum’s latest efforts in filing down the wards? I will take your word that he’s making progress and that I’ll find shifting easier when the time comes.”
“Am I that predictable?” Owalin smiled, then let the mirth drop from his eyes. “It won’t be just shifting you will find easier, Han. When the time comes, I recommend you have full control of your civilized faculties lest the magic sweeps you up right along with your pets.”
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Continue the GREAT FALLS ACADEMY adventure with episode 7, Enemy Tyes.
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Also by Alex Lidell
New Adult Fantasy Romance
POWER OF FIVE (Reverse Harem Fantasy)
POWER OF FIVE
MISTAKE OF MAGIC
TRIAL OF THREE
LERA OF LUNOS
GREAT FALLS ACADEMY (Power of Five world)
RULES OF STONE
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
SCENT OF A WOLF
CLOCK STRIKES MIDNIGHT
DUNGEONS AND DREAMERS
HIDE AND SEEK
ENEMY TYES
Young Adult Fantasy Novels
TIDES
FIRST COMMAND (Prequel Novella)
AIR AND ASH
WAR AND WIND
SEA AND SAND
SCOUT
TRACING SHADOWS
UNRAVELING DARKNESS
TILDOR
THE CADET OF TILDOR
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About the Author
Alex Lidell is an Amazon KU All Star Top 50 Author Awards winner (July, 2018). Her debut novel, THE CADET OF TILDOR (Penguin, 2013) was an Amazon Breakout Novel Awards finalist. Her Reverse Harem romances, POWER OF FIVE and MISTAKE OF MAGIC, both received Amazon KU Top 100 awards for individual titles.
Alex is an avid horseback rider, a (bad) hockey player, and an ice-cream addict. Born in Russia, Alex learned English in elementary school, where a thoughtful librarian placed a copy of Tamora Pierce’s ALANNA in Alex’s hands. In addition to becoming the first English book Alex read for fun, ALANNA started Alex’s life long love for fantasy books. Alex lives in Washington, DC.
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