Lord of the Forest (22 page)

Where were they taking him? Ravelle had said something to the man at the table before he’d killed him, but Marius hadn’t heard it. Too many flies buzzing in his ears, which rang anyway. His head had hit the stone stage of the amphitheatre when he’d fallen in the last battle.

If not for the thought of Linnea, he would have been happy enough to die.

The cart came to a juddering halt and he prayed as he often did that Quercus was keeping her safely hidden. Then an eye pressed itself to a knothole in the side of the cart and looked at him. Dully, shutting off the constant pain in his body and head, he looked at it.

A lustrous eye, it was. With long, feminine lashes.

Linnea whispered to him, “I am here, Marius.”

He trembled all over, dumbstruck. And terrified for her.
Go away
, he tried to whisper. Ravelle’s pitch held fast. His lips did not move and his dry tongue heaved inside his mouth.

She disappeared. Was she safely away?

When the hostlers backed him out, he saw nothing on either side of the cart but the glaring white stone of the houses and a flash of a bird, black and white, just before he was led into the mill.

So Esau was with her. How had they come to the land of men?

His mind racing with confusion, Marius allowed himself to be yoked in the circular yard inside. He was led beside two immense millstones, one atop the other, grinding, ever grinding. The blind oxen doing the work were taken off and he, put on without the massive stones stopping. He hardly cared. The fleeting sight of her brought him the wild joy of knowing that he could die, having seen her.

But it was not to last, that joy. His next glimpse of a living being made the centaur want to stop but the momentum of the grinding stones prevented it. His legs were still shackled, front and back, permitting him a measured stride but nothing else. The heavy yoke fastened to the wooden structure through which the stones turned prevented him from rearing.

Ravelle stepped back as Marius stepped forward, extending a claw. Dangling from it was the amulet. He held it in front of Marius, stepping back on cloven hooves so the centaur could see what he was about to do. Then he dropped the amulet to the stone floor of the mill and put his hoof upon it. The crack echoed through the mill.

“So,” he sneered, “you will die a beast. I wish I had more time to enjoy your torment here. The monotony will make you go mad in the end. Around and around and around. Beaten and—”

Marius interrupted him, making an unintelligible noise in his throat that almost burst his sealed mouth open.

“Let me finish, will you? Beaten and blind.” Ravelle gestured to a man to stop the millstones, but it took three revolutions before they did. It was almost with tenderness that he sealed Marius’s eyes shut, very quickly. “There. In a little while Linnea will be brought in. She too will be yoked but to other gigantic stones hard by.” He gestured to them but the centaur could no longer see. “She will witness your torment with every revolution of her wheel and you will be able to hear hers. A fitting revenge, I think.”

The centaur’s nostrils flared. He smelled her. She was nigh.

“Trying to find her?” Ravelle asked. He gestured for the stones to begin their ceaseless grinding once more and the centaur stumbled under the yoke. “We have captured her,” he lied, “but she is still under interrogation. Linnea will be dragged in only when she is close to death.”

Above him on a beam Linnea heard the centaur struggle to breathe. She dashed away her useless tears and unrolled the spell that Quercus had sent with Esau, along with—the old healer could not help himself—an explanation. It was now or never. She chanted the spell soundlessly.

The ancient words stirred the souls of trees and rocks in their natural form and more so after they had been cut and shaped by the hands of men. Its enchantment brought both back to what they once had been. She clung to the wide beam, feeling it vibrate. The supporting timbers vibrated too and the centaur felt it through his hooves. A low, booming sound reverberated through the mill and the man in charge of the wheels made them stop.

The great stones began to slide, the top one off the bottom, the moving weight of both cracking the giant pole at their center. Ravelle looked frantically around but the men of the mill had run outside, fearing an earthquake, screaming a warning.

Marius’s muscles tensed and bulged as he braced himself against the collapsing wood of the complicated yoke, snapping its heavy timbers. He scraped his mouth against the gritty millstone nearest him and unsealed his lips, roaring with inchoate rage. Ravelle stood aghast as the centaur charged directly at him, finding him by smell.

He went down under Marius’s slashing hooves, crying for mercy. Unseen in the dust near the demon, the pieces of the cracked amulet joined to become whole once more. It was forgotten in the melee. Again the centaur reared but came down to the side of the demon’s head when he heard Linnea’s soft gasp.

“Where are you?” he screamed, still blind, his wounded sides streaming blood from his mighty efforts to be free.

The sight broke her heart and steeled her resolve. There was a chance—the barest chance—that they might yet escape. She crept backward on the beam and down the timber that supported it, making an effort not to be seen by Ravelle.

He was struggling to his feet and he spied her instantly. Badly injured, he staggered toward, bloody froth dripping from his slack lips. The centaur made straight for him, guided by instinct and a hatred so feral that he was a true force of nature, a maddened beast bent on vengeance.

Head down, he slammed into Ravelle and threw him against the shifting stones with tremendous force. The top stone tipped and the demon slid off, barely alive. Linnea watched with horror as the massive stone came upright, wobbling.

Marius galloped around the obstacle, not seeing the precarious tilt of the stone. She gasped, calling to him over the demon’s shrieks and curses. He did not hear. Again he charged toward the foul odor that clung to Ravelle, broadsiding the wounded demon as he staggered away, sending him straight through the hole in the center of the stone.

There Ravelle stuck, screaming for help.

Tipping, the gigantic stone wobbled and she ran to Marius, shoving him out of the way of the millstone and grabbing his mane to mount him. She clung fiercely to him, kicking his sides, riding him out the door to the astonishment of the people who’d gathered in the streets, expecting an earthquake.

Not five seconds later, they scattered in all directions as the rolling millstone burst through the wall of the mill, Ravelle still stuck in its center, his neck whiplashed as his head banged against the stone with every revolution. It gained speed on the steep lane that led to the harbor, rolling and rolling until the demon’s horrified howls became faint, rolling into the sea, rolling along the stone road that the sea had swallowed with the first town centuries ago. Deep underwater, it slowed and finally fell over in a ruined temple.

Sand rose in obscuring clouds around the stone and its passenger, smothering the cruel ruler of the Outer Darkness once and for all.

Linnea could only guess at that. For a time, she watched the spot in the sea where the stone had finally stopped, finding it by the rising discoloration in the water. She shaded her eyes to see the billows of sand…and then, black whorls of demon blood.

Beneath her, she felt Marius’s hide twitch from the flies that had come to suck at his wounds and she slid off, tending to him at once, brushing off the disgusting flies, leading him to water and giving him it in her upraised, cupped hands.

“My love, my love,” she murmured, filled with desperate fear. “I am here at last.”

Marius took great gulps of the water before he spoke. “Eyes,” he rasped. “Can’t see.” He rubbed at them but she pulled his hands away.

“He did the same to me once,” she said. “Wait. If he is dead, then his magic will dissolve. Just wait a little.”

Marius lifted his face to the sun. Its warm rays did the rest. Tears came from under his eyelids, and then they slowly opened. The centaur blinked and beheld the most beautiful sight in all creation.

The woman he loved, her face lit with joy.

“Linnea…” he said softly. They were lost in an embrace. Neither saw the magpie flutter down into the ruins of the mill a little distance away.

Curious as always, Esau picked up a glittering stone from the rubble, and dropped it. It was only mica and he would have to carry it back. He hopped to another spot. There he saw something that he vaguely remembered: a small piece of smooth stone, carved in the shape of a horse. The magpie picked it up in his beak, then flew up in the air, where he spied Marius and Linnea.

The centaur looked rather the worse for wear, but he did have Linnea to take care of him. Esau decided to give him the small stone as a gift to cheer him up rather than fly back to the Arcan Islands with it.

E
sau had delivered the wedding invitations and all of Arcan had responded, it seemed. They waited but the bride was nowhere to be seen as yet. Simeon and Gideon were chaffing a side-stepping Marius, whose mane and tail were woven with flowers sacred to the nuptial rites of the forest folk.

“Stop,” Megaleen chided them. “You are supposed to stand by the groom, and remember what he forgets, not make him nervous. Do you have the rings, Simeon?”

“Yes.” Simeon showed them in his palm.

Megaleen gave him a stern look and went off to join the women. A tiny baby girl peeked out from the gossamer sling around Rhiannon, who was helping Linnea to dress. A shift of pleated white linen adorned with colored ribbons flowed over her swelling belly, and the bride rested her bouquet upon it.

“How fares the babe within?” Megaleen asked. “And the blushing bride?”

“Both well,” Linnea laughed.

“This is a happy day in Arcan,” Rhiannon said, straightening. They moved to take their places to the left and right of Linnea, and led her with graceful steps through the crowd to her waiting groom.

It was Quercus who joined them in holy union, rambling on a bit about the meaning of it all, which gave Lord Vane a chance to conceal his late arrival and slip in to the back row of guests.

“Where there is true understanding, there is true happiness. And that is the basis for enduring love,” Quercus finished. Murmurs of gentle assent ran through the hushed crowd. “They are as one!” he cried. “Rejoice!”

Marius leaned down and kissed his bride. “For forever and a day,” he whispered.

“Yes,” Linnea whispered back, joy shining bright as the sun about her.

The Chanku chronicles continue
with WOLF TALES VII!

Turn the page for a preview!

On sale now!

Rocky Mountains, Montana

N
ight was all around him, and the darkness complete, but he sensed he wasn’t alone. It was unbelievably dark, considering his terrific night vision. He wondered, for a moment only, if he might be in one of the many limestone caverns nearby, but that didn’t feel right. He thought of turning around, to see if he could see who or what waited behind him, but he couldn’t move.

He tried to scream. His lungs expanded and his vocal chords strained, but he made no sound.

Why?

Impossible.

The voice in his head sounded smug. His own voice.
Well, of course. Anton Cheval knows everything.

Bastard.

Well, crap. Was it possible to curse oneself?

Okay…so if I know it all, why the fuck are my arms trapped? Why is my heart pounding? Why can’t I move. Why?

He fought whatever held him but fear exploded. Alive, a twisting, clutching thing, and it made its own horrible sound. His sounds. Heart pounding, blood rushing in his ears, the loud
whoosh, whoosh, whoosh
drowning everything.

Telling him nothing.

Keisha screamed.

My love! I can’t move!
His heart thundered, muscles strained.
Nothing. Not a damned thing. I’m sorry…so damned sorry. I can’t help you….

Scalding tears filled his eyes. They slid down his face. Hot, wet trails of frustration.

Lily cried. The terrifying sound ripped through him. The heartrending cries of an infant, of
his
child! He fought harder, battled through the cloying darkness, struggled to reach out with arms like lead, tried to run with feet trapped in thick, grasping mud.

The screams grew louder, more frantic. He ran blindly, free now, but the very air surrounding him was impenetrable. Gelatinous, thick, clinging stuff. Someone had his family. Someone was stealing his mate, taking his child, taking everything that mattered.

Everyone he loved.

Gasping, Anton struggled harder, cried frantically for Keisha. Called out to Lily, but he couldn’t run and he couldn’t see and his world was ending.

It…was…all…ending….

“Anton? Wake up! You’re dreaming. You’re having a nightmare.”

He blinked, shocked into awareness, surprised out of cloying madness by the gentle glow of sunlight filtering through the window blinds. It seemed so much at odds with the frantic pounding of his heart. He took a deep breath, relieved yet unbelieving, to see the lovely face of his mate peering down at him.

He reached for her, ran trembling fingers along her silken cheek. “You’re okay? Lily’s okay?”

Keisha laughed. “We’re fine. I was already awake or you would have scared me half to death, shouting like that. What were you dreaming?”

He shook his head. His body sagged back against the mattress as he realized his loved ones were safe. For now.

“It was nothing. I don’t remember what it was.”

But he did remember and he blocked his thoughts, hiding them away from Keisha. He remembered all too clearly the dream that had awakened him, and it was much too threatening.

It was the same dream he’d had, in one form or another, all this past week.

Someone wanted his mate and his child. Someone evil.

He was used to being a target. As the most powerful of the Chanku shapeshifters of the three known packs in existence, Anton was well aware of the risk of capture. There were those in the medical world who wanted his kind for study. Others in the government had hoped to create a secret army, breeding more Chanku to train and use for some unknown yet nefarious purpose. His race maintained secrecy as best they could, but enough humans knew the Chanku existed to make the threat of disclosure all too real.

It was one thing to worry about his own safety. Another altogether to worry about those he loved. He’d been entirely alone for so long. Then, in such a short span of time he, Stefan, and Alexandra had formed a pack. His life mate, Keisha Rialto, had joined them, and Keisha had given him the ultimate gift of love, their daughter Lily Milina. Just as Stefan and Xandi had produced little Alex.

Anton had never understood the strength of the family bond. Now he knew it all too well. Knew how powerful it was, how all consuming.

Finally, he understood the meaning of unconditional love.
Even more, he understood the fear of losing what he’d not had before—that deep, immeasurable love of family. It weakened him, made him vulnerable. At the same time, the love of his packmates, of his child and his one true mate, made him more powerful than he’d ever been.

His abilities as a wizard had grown exponentially. He’d developed skills over the past couple of years beyond anything he’d dreamed of, among them a more powerful sense of fore-knowledge, an ability to sense what was to come.

The problem was figuring out if he was merely projecting his own neurotic fears into what should have been restful sleep, or if he was having a valid premonition?

His premonitions had been frighteningly accurate, yet he’d had dreams just as frightening that were nothing more than dreams.

The secret lay in determining which was which.

His thoughts slipped back to the trip they’d all taken to Tia Mason and Lucien Stone’s wedding in San Francisco, and the hijacking that had almost succeeded in ending their lives.

He’d worried about that flight for days. Had put his unease aside, assuming the graphic dreams were merely those of an overly concerned mate and Keisha’s advanced pregnancy.

Then he’d come so close to losing her. So close to never knowing Lily, to never again holding his beloved Keisha in his arms.

Anton wrapped his fingers loosely around the back of Keisha’s neck. He wondered if she felt his tremors. It took only a small amount of pressure to bring her close, to touch his lips to hers.

Lily slept on. The morning sun caressed Keisha’s dark skin with golden fire as Anton slowly kissed her full lips, nuzzled the tender skin beneath her right ear. He twisted his fingers in the silken strands curling against her throat and drew her close.

She arched against him, her body supple and sleek in spite of the extra pounds she carried since giving birth. Her full breasts, heavy with milk for their daughter, drew Anton. He ran his tongue across one turgid nipple, tracing the taut edge of darkened areola.

Keisha moaned and lifted her hips, pressed her mound against his burgeoning erection. The sleek brush of her pubic hair tickled the underside of his penis where he was most sensitive and forced his shaft up against his belly.

He reared back and slipped his cock down between her slick folds, sliding over her clit with his entire length. Raising up again, he dragged himself slowly back and then surged forth at the same measured pace, sensing her growing arousal with the increased heat and friction.

Keisha moaned. She spread her thighs and arched against him. With his hips maintaining a slow but steady rhythm, Anton’s tongue lightly circled the darker edge at the base of her nipple. He pressed his lips around the swollen tip and flicked the sensitive nub with his tongue.

“Ah,” she breathed, laughing softly. “Be careful, my love. I’m really sensitive and my breasts are so full they ache. Lily’s not fed for almost four hours. We could end up with a very big mess.”

He chuckled and gently ran his tongue around the taut curve beneath her right breast, then the left, careful now to avoid her tender nipples. Keisha’s fingers clutched at the tangled bedding beside her hips and he felt the rush of slick fluids between her legs. The knowledge that she was so ready for him sent a new surge of blood through his loins. His engorged cock, already aching and hard, grew even harder, stretched even longer.

Her desire was a potent aphrodisiac; the evidence that she needed him every bit as much as he needed her. Raising his buttocks, Anton carefully positioned the sensitive head of his cock
between her slick folds. He held still for a moment, savoring the heat and moisture, the soft clasp that teased him. Then he thrust forward, slowly entering her tight passage.

Amazing, he thought, how this rippling channel that clasped him so warmly could be the same passage their daughter had taken when she entered their lives. The same passage his seed had traveled almost a year ago.

Keisha enclosed him within her heat and sheathed him like a warm, wet glove, holding him tightly, drawing him forward.

Anton sighed. Nothing in his world felt better than this.
Nothing.

Keisha raised her hips, inviting him deeper. Tiny whimpers escaped her parted lips when the head of Anton’s shaft touched the hard mouth of her cervix. He held himself there, immobile, relishing the enduring warmth of his beloved mate, the tiny sounds she made that told him she was lost in desire, caught completely in sensation.

He was caught as well, preternaturally aware of her halting breaths, her beating heart, her desperately needy cries.

Then she shuddered beneath him and her thoughts grabbed his, sharing the pressure of his cock deep inside, sharing the ache in her breasts and the urgent yearning of her body for the friction that would take her so quickly over the edge.

She wanted. She needed. She must have more of him. More of his heat, more of the fullness, the thick girth and filling length of his cock. She wanted the pain that so quickly leapt into pleasure when the flared crown of his glans pressed against her cervix. The pressure inside when he filled her, then slowly retreated, only to fill her once again.

Anton began to move, thrusting deep and slow, driving the solid length of his cock over her swollen clitoris with each deliberate penetration. Her growing arousal fed him, her need increased his own. He felt the rhythmic clenching of her powerful vaginal muscles as Keisha reached for her climax. She
arched her back, pressing him even deeper and he drove into her harder, faster.

Keisha cried out. Her fingers clutched his sides and her nails scored his back while Anton raced her to the next orgasm.

She won, shuddering beneath him once more. Her long legs wrapped tightly around his hips. Her heels dug into the hard muscles at the backs of his thighs and she strained against his lean torso.

Clinging to him, Keisha met him thrust for thrust. Anton wrapped his arms around her and reared back, carrying her with him. When he sat on his heels and felt the tight clasp of her vaginal walls holding him close, pulling him deep, their minds and bodies linked. Their thoughts blended into a single tortured flash of fire and light, and still he held on, still his hips thrust hard and fast against his mate…and his arousal grew, hot and demanding.

Anton groaned, caught on the precipice of climax. He buried his face in the silken curve of Keisha’s throat. He was enveloped in her scent, her warmth, the salty dampness of her skin. He existed only in the firm clasp of her rippling sheath, the rhythmic plunge of his hips as he drove into her warmth.

Then Keisha nipped his shoulder. The stinging pain from her sharp teeth sent him flying over the edge.

A white-hot flash of pure, indefinable power rolled from spine to balls to rock-hard cock. Burning a trail of pleasure so closely linked to pain, it coiled and struck him like a bolt of lightning. His body surged forward. He felt the hot blast of his seed and the familiar touch of Keisha’s mind to his.

Lungs bursting, lights flashing behind his tightly closed eyes, he cried out with his release. Still holding his mate in his arms, Anton’s hips continued their steady thrusting into her welcoming body. His heart opened to her love. His mind, all his thoughts and fears, were now an open book.

He could never hold a secret from his mate. No matter how
hard he tried, in this she would always have power over him. Taking his seed into her body, she took his fears and his love into her heart. They fell together, collapsing against the thick comforter and tumbled sheets, their bodies still linked, their thoughts as one.

Keisha brushed the sweat-tangled hair away from Anton’s face and kissed him softly on the mouth. Her tongue circled his lips and tangled with his for a brief moment, easing him down from such a mind-blowing climax. Her taste was ambrosia to him, the food of the gods, and it was his alone this morning.

Just as his thoughts, his dreams and all his fears, were hers.

Keisha’s lips moved once more against his mouth. She sighed, a soft sound of exasperation and love. “It was a dream, my love. When will you learn to share your worries? You have to learn to tell me your concerns, not hide them from me. We’re mates. You’re not meant to carry these unnecessary burdens alone. No one will ever take me from you. No one will take Lily. We are yours and you will always keep us safe.” Her fingers combed through his long hair. Her beautiful amber eyes glistened with tears. “We will keep each other safe,” she said, and kissed him once again.

That she would try to shoulder his fears made him feel small and vulnerable, but her thoughts laughed at his foolish notion. Keisha shook her head. Once again she kissed his mouth. Lily stirred in her crib. Keisha raised her head and smiled at their daughter. “I’m going to miss her being so close to us at night.”