Shifters, Beasts, and Monsters (72 page)

“Well of course, I’ve had it since we left Lotan.”

“Right, I mean did you
really
read it.” She held the
slip of paper up to the window, remembered we were in eternal dusk, and then
dangled it in front of a candle. “Do you see this? Jo, who is this guy again?”

“I haven’t a clue. He said his name was Shingo, and from the
sound of it, he was some kind of right-hand to the king. Maybe on his council.
Does King Morzan
have
a council?”

“Well I don’t know much about politics, but he certainly has
a second.”

“A second? What do you mean?”

“A stand-in, I guess. Someone who deals with his work when
he’s not around. A representative.”

“Oh, like someone who speaks for him when he’s indisposed?
That makes sense. But, Alix, why are you talking about all this? I didn’t know
you were interested in Zoran politics.”

“I’m not. But here. What is that, do you think?” She pulled
me close and used both hands to stretch out my note. “Look. You might have to
squint, but...”

“Are you talking about this little circle? What is this?”

“There’s a seal, looks very regal, and then some letters,
but my eyesight isn’t what it used to be,” Alix laughed. “Okay, it was never
any good. Can you make it out?”

“Oh, my,” I said and drew a breath.

“What? What is it?” Alix slapped me on the back four or five
times. “Tell me what it is!”

“As best I can tell, it says ‘royal court of Zor’ and then
has something below it in a language I can’t read.”

“So, it would seem that your friend is just as important as
he said.”

“Seems like it. But he could have just stolen a royal seal
or something like that.”

Sounds outside the door made me instinctively roll up the
note and shove it back in my little bundle. A knock, hard and fast, came.

“You ready in there? King Morzan, first of his name, emperor
of the Eastern Kingdoms, son of the Wolf, demands your presence in his great
hall. Are you ready for an escort?”

“Ah, sorry, not quite yet. Still dressing.” I said with my
face pressed against the heavy wooden door. “Give us a moment.”

As Alix and I compared clothes, rooted around in the trunks
for jewels and other riches the likes of which I’d never seen before, we
exchanged a glance and looked outside. The others from our wagon were going
somewhere as well, but they were bound at the wrists and being dragged along
behind a bronze-skinned Zoran who seemed tired of the whole thing. He grunted,
tugged the rope and a couple of the women fell, and then scrambled back to
their feet.

“What’s happening to them?” I said with my hand on my chest.

“Exactly what I
thought
was going to happen to us,”
Alix said in a low voice. “I’ve been there. Dragged around and prodded. Whoever
you are, Jovena, you seem to have a sort of luck about you. Hopefully it sticks
around.”

We dressed in silence. A time later, the knocks came again,
and so did the voice.

“Ready in there? The king’s not one for waiting. Hurry it
up!”

Alix and I exchanged a glance, and both took a deep breath.

“Well,” she said, “its dark out. I guess we’ll find out if
he walks upright, or if he’s covered in hair and howls at the moon.”

***

“This is-”

“Wow.” Alix said, mirroring my thoughts.

Paulit, the guard who escorted us through the strange glow
of dusk that hung eternally over the kingdom, pushed the door open the rest of
the way. The noise, so great, so wild, and almost unsettlingly jubilant,
spilled out in full force, striking me in the chest. Alix and I turned to one
another in unison, wide-eyed.

“Where are the rest of them? Of us, I mean.” she whispered.

I could barely make out her tiny voice over the wall of
sound, but Paulit heard her well enough. Wordlessly, he pointed to the center
of the space. A great bonfire raged so high it almost touched the ceiling.
Rather, it would have if it wasn’t open to the outside. The smoke billowed out
around the ring and every time a wind blew, was sucked away, out into the
night.

Alix shook her head, but I grabbed her arm. “There, look,” I
said. “There they are.”

Around the fire, a number of large muscled men, all of whom
wore beards like Shingo, if not as impressive, writhed. In the midst of the
pulsating heap of Zoran warriors, most of the women we’d travelled with were
doing things that I’d never seen. I’d heard about a few of them, but had no
idea people actually did things like that.

Two of the women were wrapped around the thighs of one
particularly large man. One of them had her lips wrapped around his member as
the other one squeezed him in her fist, dragging it up and down in slow,
methodical strokes. Both of the women were only partially nude, but it looked
as though their clothes had been ripped from them. Tatters of rough spun linen
hung from the sultry-eyed blonde girl’s shoulder baring one of her breasts, but
leaving the other mostly covered. The warrior’s big, lusty hand scooped under
her nakedness and cupped her. When he pushed his thumb in a circle on her, she
squealed in delight and dove back down his cock until he was all the way in her
mouth.

 “I can’t believe...”

Beside me, Alix giggled. “Never seen anything like this
before, huh? These easterners are a different lot than the prudish nobles
you’re used to, eh?”

“I’m not a noble, but...very different.”

“You can’t take your eyes off them, can you? So big and
covered in muscle. Look how they move.” She pointed to another pair that I
hadn’t yet noticed. A man with a fur cloak slung over his massive shoulders,
but who was otherwise naked held a handful of a girl’s hair. He yanked it, and
she’d scream every time he bucked his hips and drove himself deep. The flesh of
her thighs moved in tight ripples with each thrust. I put one hand against my
chest in an involuntarily sign of shock and reached the other out for Alix who
grabbed it and clutched it to hers.

“Feel this?” She said, brushing my hand up and down her
body. “Do you feel how excited I am? How stiff? I bet you are, too, huh?”

“How did you...?”

“It’s just something that happens. No reason to be
embarrassed. They’re beautiful, aren’t they? Just look at them. Oh wow, look
over there.” She clutched my hand against her, and I felt the hard prickle of
her nipple against my palm. A deep crimson flushed up my neck, but then I followed
her pointing finger and forgot all about where my hand was.

One of the girls we rode with – a red haired girl from
the Isle of Spring, who had a very strange accent indeed – was pinned
between a man and the wall. He had a handful of her stomach, squeezing her and
twisting her flesh. He entered her from behind, pushing himself in long, slow
strokes.

“Is he inside her...no, he isn’t. Is he?” I looked at Alix,
who was chewing her lip between her teeth and seemed to have a hand between her
legs.

“Look!” She jutted her head back to the two men and the
woman. “Look what he’s doing to her now. Oh, Jo, what I wouldn’t give for a
taste of that one behind her.”

A Zoran with a beard almost as decorated at Shingo’s walked
up behind the man who had his cock inside the redhead, and punched him straight
in the mouth. Shocked, the bleeding warrior tried to return the blow, but his
hand was caught and he was shoved aside. The bigger man bellowed with laughter
and shouldered past, shoving himself all the way in the girl with one long
stroke. He lifted her off her feet and turned her around. Her breasts smashed
against his chest, he bit her neck, licked her up to her chin and slammed his
hips upwards until she screamed out.

“He’s so...so
big
,” I said turning to Alix, who
insisted I look back.

As the huge warrior took his pleasure, and the lady did too,
the man who got punched in the face returned. I expected some resumption of the
violence, but when he circled the coupling pair, ran his hand along the girl’s
sex and then slicked his cock before pushing into her other hole, I gasped
almost as loud as she did.

Alix slid my hand down her body, between her breasts and
down to the belted waist of the dress she’d finally selected.

“I just can’t help it. I can’t watch all this and not want
someone to touch me, Jo. Look at her face. See how hard it is for her to
breathe with them both crushing her like that? Do you think she wants them to
stop?”

As I stared, I couldn’t help but notice that my body had
begun to warm. From deep inside I felt heat push out of my core, down my belly
and between my legs.

“Alix, why do I feel like this? What’s going on?”

“Like what? Does it feel like there are prickles running up
and down your spine? Are there fingers that you can’t see running up your belly
and tickling your neck? Right behind the ear?”

“Y-yes, sort of like that,” my lip trembled. I put it
between my teeth to keep it from moving, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the
two savage men pumping away at the little red-head. And I couldn’t stop myself
from wanting Alix to move my hand further down, or from wanting her to touch
mine.

“Does it feel like your stomach is fluttering, and your
stiff little nipples want someone to touch them?” She slid my hand down to the
front of her dress. Through the fabric, I felt her heat on my palm. “Does it?”

I nodded.

She shifted her hips a little and my hand disappeared into a
pleat on her gown, where her hand had been a moment ago. She ran a fingertip
along my hairline, and then tickled my scalp as she traced a line down behind
my ear.

“Does it feel...” she put her other hand behind my back,
slid it underneath my tunic and touched the bare skin on the small of my back
before she pressed her lips behind my ear. “Does it feel like this?”

Somehow in all the noise and excitement of the hall, I could
plainly hear every single word she spoke, every syllable that slipped from her
lips. Her tongue made a hot circle on me that sent a shock down my knees, and
then she sucked a kiss.

“Alix, I...” I closed my eyes for a moment and felt her lips
warm my whole body. When I opened them, the two giant men had been joined by a
third. Wetness crept out of me, along with tingles that shot up my back. The
biggest of the three men, still taking the girl from behind, shoved her forward
and forced her mouth to open around the newest one’s cock as they all shifted
positions to accommodate. She tried to either scream or moan, but the only
sound I heard was a muffled “mmm...” as they all began to move at once, and
Alix split her legs open and pushed harder against me so that my fingers moved
between her folds.

She kissed me again behind the ear and then followed my jaw
all the way to my chin. We kissed gently, I unsure of what to do, and she
letting her tongue slip out and explore my lips, moist with anticipation. She
slid it between my teeth, and held me tight to her, swirling her tongue against
mine.

Again I closed my eyes, letting the feeling of her body
against mine wash over me. Her heat on my hand, her taste and her scent filling
my nose, I couldn’t believe what I was doing or where I was. The whole was just
so unbelievable and it all happened so fast.

And then I felt her hand on my heat. Two of her fingers
pushed against my sex, right on my button. I drew a breath around her kiss.
When I opened let my eyelids drift open again a moment later, the first thing I
saw was her face - her pale blonde hair and her sea-blue eyes and her brilliant
smile.

Nothing else existed. Not the noise, not the bonfire or the
roasting reindeer or the shouting warriors or the pleasured women. The world
faded and all the only two things left were Alix and I, our breath and our lips
and our bodies intertwined.

“I’ve never felt like this before,” I said as she touched me
with her fingertips. “No one has ever touched me the way you are.”

“I can tell. You’re as easy to read as you are nice to look
at.”

As her hand moved up my back again, fingertips slow-dancing
up my side, a heavy thudding sound from the back of the hall threatened to
break my concentration. Someone shouted unintelligibly in Zoran, but Alix
pulled me closer and snatched me back to the reality where only she and I
existed.

Three more thuds. I craned my head to kiss Alix, but she
whispered my name and turned her eyes to the back of the hall.

“Something’s happening. Hard to see what, though.”

I tried to strain through the darkness and the smoke and the
sweat to see what was causing all the commotion, but as soon as half the room
started to grumble and the other half fell to one knee and bowed their heads,
it wasn’t hard to figure out.

“Enough! Silence! King Morzan, first of his name, Emperor of
the Eastern Kingdoms and son of the Wolf, will not tolerate your noise. Any who
does not pay proper respect will find themselves in the pit!”

A hush fell over the crowd, and even the most vociferous of
the grumblers went to a knee. Tension hung in the air as the great king’s
harbinger issued orders in the Zoran tongue to someone near him.

“Oh good, here comes the debauched king. Here comes the man
who would bury the whole country if it brought him pleasure or got him drunk.”
A man beside me whispered, strangely, in Lotanese. “Psst! You, girl! You’re his
new two favorites, yes?”

“Us?” I said.

“Do you see anyone else to whom I would speak Lotanese?”

“Well, no, I suppose not.”

His eyes turned briefly to the back of the hall and then
returned to me.

“I can see why he chose you.”

“He’s never seen me before.”

“Oh, he hasn’t? Curious.”

“Listen closely. You are Jovena, yes? And who is this with
you?”

“My friend Alix.”

“Friend, ah?” He smiled. “You are being watched. Things in
the kingdom are not as they seem, Jovena. I don’t know what you did, but I’ve
been given orders to do what I can to keep you safe. You have friends in high
places, princess. Or at least one of them.”