He shoved me down onto our bed. I squeaked, tumbled into the blankets, and his hands seized my calves and yanked me to the edge of the mattress. He moved over me with hands on either side of my body. I smiled at him anyway, enjoying his strong hips moving against my thighs.
He growled, “Control? You want control when I am about to tear off my own skin?”
It wasn’t his skin I was worried about. “Yes.”
The tip of his cock pressed against me, and I squirmed against the taunting brush of his flesh. My body moistened for him, and he kissed between my breasts, his own breath faster, harder. He rasped, “I could take you right now. Maybe I should. To remind you who you belong to, so the Moon knows I have no intention of humoring Her whims. Pleasure be damned.”
I suppressed a moan. “Maybe you shouldn’t punish the wrong woman, Lord-Alpha.”
“That title sounds like honey dripping from your lips.” He nipped my ear and purred, “Lord-Alpha. Say it again.”
“Earn it.”
He bit my neck, a sharp quick nip, then ducked backwards, quick as a serpent, and buried his face between my thighs. I yelped in surprise, then moaned as his tongue slid along me, slow and taunting.
He chuckled and used his fingers to spread me a bit to expose my jewel, drew his tongue around it, over it. Shocks and lashes of lightening danced over my nerves. I whimpered. Another skilled finger slid just inside me, pressed upward. I squirmed against his hand, wanting more.
His other hand looped around my thigh and pinned my hips to the bed. “Hold still.”
I whined at him and bucked my hips against the restraint. His fingers clenched down like iron, and a warning nip stung the softest part of my thigh. I gasped. Fresh dampness rewarded him.
He inhaled my scent, kissed the stinging skin where he’d just bitten me, and kissed a light, breathy trail of kisses along my inner thighs while his teasing finger carved a shallow, slow path just inside me.
His tongue bathed me again and I moaned in tormented relief. Warmth spooled within me as my core ached for him. He shifted up onto one arm, the other hand still moving between my thighs. I reached up to meet his lips, and he offered me his tongue.
“Taste yourself, buttercup,” he murmured.
I twisted my tongue against his, catching my scent and taste against his. A second finger slid into me, and he gripped me, the heel of his palm rubbing against my jewel while his fingers stroked my core. He looked down at me, reeking of triumph and desire, as I turned molten in his grip.
I melted around him as he replaced his fingers with his cock. He sighed against my neck, ragged and trembling. I pulled my thighs higher on his hips, drawing him deep into me.
“You are mine, buttercup,” he panted raggedy as he drew back just to fill me again. “Mine, and I swore it, and I will tear the cosmos apart to be with you.”
I mewled in response, trembling with starlight as he drew back once more, his cock angled just so it sent sweet fiery agony through my whole body.
I scratched deep gouges in his shoulders as I clung to him, dizzy on the howling between us and his body within mine. I arched up to meet his thrust. The reflection of the stinging pain on his skin throbbed along my awareness of his pleasure. He groaned.
“Again,” he rasped.
“Beast,” I whispered back.
“But yours. Always…yours…”
Starlight tore through my body and I cried out around my release. A moment later he met me, his body spasming within mine while he growled something I didn’t understand by my ear.
We collapsed onto the blankets, sweaty, damp, and exhausted. Neither of us spoke for quite a while. I got up to rinse off. Returned to find the blankets straightened. Curled up next to him.
“Gabel,” I murmured. “You need to know something.”
He twisted onto his elbow and looked down at me. “What, buttercup?”
“There is more going on here than appears to be.”
“You won’t convince me.”
“Humor me a moment.”
He grumbled, “A moment.”
“Do you know the old rune, the Comet?”
“No, but comets are historic symbols of destruction and divine wrath. Is this any different?”
“Not really. It’s fallen out of use, I didn’t know it the first time I saw it, but Flint recognized it, and Anita has seen it as well. It means the Moon’s anger and wrath, something She has flung to Earth to destroy what has corrupted and angered Her. I started seeing the Comet in my visions almost as soon as I got here. One of them was the rune appearing on a hastily constructed pup-ring. It was in a battered lock box, left in the ruins of an ancient farm house.”
He kept watching.
“Anita had the same vision. She doesn’t know that I’ve also seen the ring.”
“Your point?” Gabel twitched with impatience.
“You’re the Comet, Gabel. The Destroyer.”
Gabel frowned.
“This isn’t just about Magnes,” I went on very slowly. “This is about something else. You and I have—”
“a role to play? Be good little puppets?”
I tucked my lips together.
Gabel growled, “No. If She takes you from me, I will tear this world apart, build a tower from the rubble so I can crawl up to the sky and smash my claws into Her Eye. You are mine, and I will never let you go.”
So much for thinking Gabel might budge a degree if he thought the Moon had a purpose. If anything, it incensed him even more. He glared at me, face darkening, rage building. “I will not be used. I will not let you be used. She can’t make me, Gianna, and I’ve already resolved to not do Her bidding.”
Then he changed the subject entirely. “GleamingFang deserves our attention right now. I don’t trust Anders as far as I can throw him, but I still don’t know why. In the vision, you saw him wearing multiple collars. I wonder if when you can scry again how many of those collars he’d be wearing now.”
“You think many collars, many masters?”
“That’s the obvious deduction, isn’t it?”
“It’s your vision.”
Gabel’s fingers pulled at the sheets as he stared at the ceiling. “Your mind is already elsewhere. You’ve already left.”
“That isn’t true! It is an old vision, from months ago, a great deal might have changed, and it’s your vision. You know that! Only you can say what you think it means. I’m not putting you off, I just can’t help you like you want, and I can’t scry to check up on the current state of things.”
“You’ve met Anders. You have an opinion,” Gabel pressed.
Exactly three times. The first time I didn’t care to remember, the second time I had been introduced and only seen him from a distance, and the third time I had other things to worry about at Solstice. I hadn’t sat down and shared food with him, or any kind of conversation. “My opinion of him is I don’t have an opinion.”
“None.” Gabel’s eyes slid sideways.
“No. None. He’s just... there. Another face in the crowd. But he’s a powerful Alpha. GleamingFang is pretty large. Almost as big as Shadowless.”
“Big in terms of territory, their population is spread out. Not so many of them. But he has never impressed you when you met him.”
“No, I can’t say he did,” I admitted.
“Maybe that’s the key,” Gabel mused.
“You mean he’s gutless.”
“You weren’t impressed, were you? You didn’t sense his prestige?”
“No...”
“But what?”
“I’m not the best judge anymore.”
“Oh, am I that impressive?” Gabel smirked.
I rolled my eyes.
“So you no longer sense what you used to.”
“No. I guess I can only really sense those that rival you. All the others are…” I shrugged.
“That’s inconvenient,” Gabel said.
“I don’t know, perhaps I will only perceive the ones who
are the biggest threats, even if they don’t appear to be?”
“You mean Aaron.”
“You don’t need me to tell you that.”
“They’re all threats.”
“So kill them all,” I grumbled into my pillow.
“Maybe I will,” he said to the ceiling.
As if they had heard our conversation, a card from GleamingFang arrived the next day, affirming their loyalty to Gabel.
Gabel tore it up and flung it into the trash.
“Cowards,” he diagnosed. “Anders is on whatever side won’t get him disemboweled. Not willing to bleed! Dammit, buttercup. Why is it so difficult for these Alphas to understand? You fight, you bleed. You surrender when you’re beaten. You honor your agreements! What do they think is going to happen? That I’m not going to come back and beat them into the ground again?! Look at all of them,” he gestured to his map, “plotting and scheming, making agreements with each other.”
I shifted on the couch, annoyed.
“What?” Gabel asked me.
I pursed my lips. I had sworn to myself I’d never speak of Anders, Gardenia, or that entire horrible episode again, but like a sore that just wouldn’t heal, it was there again, raw and bloody.
“You’re angry,” Gabel stated.
“Just that of all the Alphas I don’t want to ever deal with, it’s Anders. It’d have been better if you had presented Gardenia to an Alpha with some courage, but you put your stupidity on display for that gutless slug. To hear you incensed at his actions just angers me given the history there.”
Gabel’s expression darkened.
Well, I meant it. Being humiliated in front of Anders. Even Marcus would have been better, because Marcus had had the courage to call Gabel out. The SpringHide Alpha who had been willing to die (stupidly, but, well, it was something). But Anders. Humiliated like that in front of Anders.
A knock on the door.
“What?” Gabel barked.
The warrior was young, nervous at being in the Alpha’s private space, and surely bearing unwelcome information. “There is a messenger here for Luna Gianna.”
Gabel’s features stretched, and his biceps pulled at the seams of his shirt. “Who?”
“An- An Oracle. She is in the foyer.”
An Oracle. Gabel gnashed his teeth, and stormed past the wolf.
Technically our visitor wasn’t a SableFur, and she definitely wasn’t an Oracle. It was a young acolyte, still a girl, maybe fifteen at best.
Gabel stared at her with appalled disgust, and she shriveled before him, cowering, head drawn between her shoulders and a submissive whine drawing out her words.
“A girl! So Anita sends a little girl to speak to the IronMoon Luna?!”
The girl managed to whimper, “O-oracle Gianna.”
Every syllable she uttered incensed Gabel further. “Is that old bat delusional or has no one informed her Oracle Gianna is now Luna Gianna? Her attempt to stop our vows failed. Completely.”
“Anita knows.” Her voice quaked.
I put a hand on Gabel’s bicep. He clenched from jaw to ankle.
The girl stumbled on. “Gianna has been charged with violation of her vows—”
I gasped in horror.
“Go home to your corrupt mistress,” Gabel growled.
“K-Kiery sent me—”
Gabel’s growl deepened. “And we all know who holds Kiery’s leash, you stupid puppy. Get out of my territory.”
I squeezed Gabel’s arm harder, a sickness brewing under my heart, and I managed to just barely keep my voice from shaking. It was here. This was how it would happen. It was starting. “Gabel, she’s still a kid.”
“Which is why I won’t send her home in pieces. How dare that withered old bitch insult you this way! Stupid pup, in a few years you won’t have your youth to defend you. If you keep doing the bidding of corrupt bitches, you’ll die.”
The acolyte shook. Oracles were a tough breed, but Gabel’s presence was overwhelming, and his dark fury had eroded all her training and toughness. She opened her mouth to say one more thing.
“Leave!” Gabel shouted.
She shrieked in terror, spun, slammed into the front door. She scrambled back, yanked it open, then bolted out into the snow.
Gabel slammed the door behind her.
“Don’t say it, Gianna,” he warned me. “Don’t you dare say it!”
I didn’t say it. I asked, “Where are you going?”
“Outside. To train. To bleed.” He ripped at the button of his shirt and succeeded only in tearing a hole in the fabric. He cursed and ripped the whole thing off, threw it into the koi pond, then stormed upstairs.
This was how SableFur would come for me. Through my Oracle sisters.
Upstairs something shattered. Inside the Bond he shouted and howled at the Moon. No! I won’t! You cannot make me!
Maybe She couldn’t.
He came back from working out steaming with sweat, strips of skin peeled off his back and thighs, his lip split and a gash on his scalp stained his hair red. He growled, “So lovely to know where your true loyalties lie.”
Anguish pressed fingers against my throat. “It’s the Moon’s will. You’ve fought the Moon before, so you know—”
“I know what?” he hissed.
I bit my lower lip. “You need stitches.”
“Fuck stitches.”
“If you have to fight the SableFur you should be in good repair.”
He hissed something, and I sent for Ana.
As he sat there on our bed, bleeding, I asked, “How do your partners look?”
Gabel snorted, annoyed. “Flint is fine.”
The Master of Arms was also indestructible, it seemed. What had he traded for those tattoos?
“Usually Flint doesn’t spar,” I commented.
“I was not allowed to play with the children today.” He barred his teeth at me.
“Flint giving you a tune-up doesn’t sound so bad.” I didn’t know what else to say, words failed me, and there wasn’t anything to mollify him. His smoldering anger was dark, but frantic at the same time.
Gabel scratching and clawing and grasping frightened me.
He knew.
Would it drive him mad?
Ana flung open the door and marched in. “Well fuck, this is why Violet is always doing so much damn laundry! You fucking bleed on it. I hope you got a rubber sheet under that. Flint’s got a few scratches and you look like you got into a fight with a hibachi chef. A losing fight.”
Gabel glared at her. “I am not in the mood for your colorful candor.”
“Just doesn’t bite me. You haven’t had your rabies shot.” Ana was not impressed.
“Do you not remember me ripping a man’s head off? Are you too stupid for that to have left an impression?”
“Gabel.” I swatted his shoulder.
Ana rolled her eyes. “Sure, I remember. But self preservation and intelligence are two different things.”
“You seem to lack one of them.”
“Hahaha. No. I’m a female. That guy was a man. You won’t touch lil’ old female human me. Nope.” She swaggered over to him, a twitch in her hips. “All these hips, you ain’t gonna touch ’em, one way or the other!”
Gabel and I collectively had no response to that.
She grabbed his neck, pulled his head down and pawed through his hair. “Yep. There it is. Still pumping blood. I’ll put a stitch or two in it and you can wash out this sexy hair dye. Strawberry blond is not your color.”
Gabel turned his head enough so that one blue eye glared at me, even more annoyed with Ana man-handling him and his honor making it impossible for him to disagree with her. As Gabel had said, we couldn’t be picky about certain things. A mouthy, crude human vet was a better addition than the doctor who liked to carve his name into female flesh.
“This has nothing to do with my loyalty,” I told Gabel quietly. “I made my promises, Gabel.”
“Yes, you did. To me.
Dammit, Gianna. There is always a choice. Or are you still looking for an escape?”
“No!” My voice cracked. How could he accuse me of that? “Me being here, us having made those vows, doesn’t that prove the Moon’s power and my loyalty? I wouldn’t have taken those vows if I hadn’t intended to honor them.”
“I know how hard you’ll fight when you want to.”
“That’s not fair! What am I supposed to do when She breaks Her own rules?!”
“Not submit! Wouldn’t be the first time. Maybe I should play along and give you what you want.”
“I don’t want this! I just know it’s going to happen. How horrible do you have to make it?!”
“You are my mate, and you will fight at my side, not Hers!”
Ana kept her focus strictly on her work.
I chewed on my lip, tears swimming across my eyes, threatening to fall. “The Oracles have accused me of violating my vows. Do you think I’m just going to confess to a crime I didn’t commit?”
“Are you?”
“No, you stupid prick!”
Gabel flinched, but it was from something else.
“Sorry,” Ana said sweetly as she tugged on the thread.
In the vision I had been fighting, it was Gabel who hadn’t, and had walked away. So I could say, without guilt, “I won’t go quietly! Remember what Flint says about the courage of females!”
Gabel smiled a bit at me, but there was no warmth to it. “Your courage is what frightens me, buttercup.”
Clinch
The next day another messenger arrived. Yet again from SableFur, but this time one of the full-fledged Oracles: Thessa. She was the Oracle from the far south of SableFur, and from the shadows under her eyes, she’d been summoned on short notice.
Thessa was about ten years older than I was, give or take, and I had only met her a few times. She hadn’t changed much, petite and curly-haired, sharp features and a keen eye taking in all of Gabel’s office. She didn’t have the schooled expression Kiery would have had, and it was easy to see she was surprised to see that Gabel was far more civilized than anyone cared to realize. She paid no attention to the blue tourmaline on his desk; she was more interested in the map and books.
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