Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight

The stars swirled around us in a vortex, my mind spinning with them as they transported us across land and space before spitting us back out again onto a harsh, windswept mountainside.

Lionel’s treasure was laid out all around us, the heaps of gold sparkling in the light of the rising sun warming my back, and I looked around at my family and friends in disbelieving relief.

We were safe. Alive.

A clamour of voices drew my attention up the mountain towards the ruins there, crumbling pale brown stone structures peeking out from between an endless sea of tents cast from earth magic, the leaves and vines making them up blending in with the grassy ground surrounding them.

“I can feel their emotions from here,” Max said and one glance at him told me that he’d already recovered his magic from the emotions of those surrounding us. He caught the train of my thoughts as my fangs prickled and held his wrist out obligingly, letting me drink from him and sating the ache in my chest.

I tried not to think of the Fae I’d been forced to feed from alongside that rift, of how brutally and deep I’d drunk. I’d been lost to the worst of my nature, and I didn’t want to teeter that close to the edge for a single moment more.

“The Queens’ Army have worked tirelessly to set up this camp,” Geraldine sighed, looking towards them as I released my hold on Max and stepped back.

“What-” I began, but Tory cut me off as she spoke.

“We lost the battle,” she said, her eyes on the ruins too, the wind tugging her hair away from her face and tossing it behind her. She didn’t look at any of us as she spoke and there was a brittle, aching tone to her voice which made my heart stall in my chest. She’d kept this from us until now, wanted us here before she delivered this devastating news, and fear bit into me as I thought of all the people I knew who had been in The Burrows when that fight broke out.

“What happened?” I begged, glancing at Max whose face paled as he took in the emotions of the rebels camping close by. There were hundreds of tents, thousands, but not nearly enough to contain the force we’d commanded at The Burrows.

“We fought hard, but there were so many Nymphs and…” Tory trailed off. “We lost too many people.”

“My sweet Papa and his Lady Love gave their lives to let our army retreat,” Geraldine declared, her voice catching and tears spilling freely down her cheeks as a mixture of pride and grief crossed her features.

“Fuck, Gerry.” Max had his arms around her within a heartbeat, the pain he felt over that loss crashing into me, even as my own sorrow made words feel impossible.

“Catalina,” my mom breathed, a hand moving to her heart as Dad took hold of her hand and squeezed tightly.

Antonia released a sorrowful howl and Seth and the rest of their family joined in, even the youngest of the pups who were barely past the age of two, their pain colouring the air as my lungs constricted with the weight of that declaration. The twins, Athena and Grayson, clutched onto each other and my younger brother Hadley gazed at them with pain sweeping through his expression.

But as I turned my attention back to Tory, that weight seemed to triple, quadruple, the threat of it crushing me entirely because she’d turned her hollow gaze on me, and even though she didn’t seem to have the words to say what was haunting her, I knew.

I felt it. I felt the emptiness in the world and the echoing void which would never be filled, its arms open wide as it beckoned me close, and I shook my head as I fought the urge to back away.

I shot towards her, gripping her arms so tightly I was likely bruising her, but I needed her to tell me it wasn’t true. I needed some other explanation for him not being here now to greet us, for him not coming with her to close the rift and save our sorry asses.

“Where is he?” I demanded, my voice so loud it forced everyone’s attention onto me.

Tory’s green eyes swum with emotion and I looked into them deep, finding nothing but pain and darkness there. Loss and sorrow.

“No,” I denied, shaking my head fiercely as I released her and took a step back like I could run from the answer I’d just demanded from her.

A cry escaped Max’s lips as he felt the truth, sensed it in her emotions. He dropped to his knees with a roar of agony so potent that it burst from him and crashed into all of us, the grief of it almost knocking me from my feet.

“No,” I snarled again, a fissure rupturing through me as I turned from the truth in those green eyes, turned from my friends and family, looking towards the camp which stretched away up the mountainside above me.

It wasn’t true. There was no world that I could conceive of without him in it. The four of us were blood-bound brothers, we would remain that way until the end of our days which would not come any time soon.

Seth howled again at my back and the pain in that single, unbroken note was like claws ripping through my fucking soul.

“No,” I damn near shouted it before I broke into a run, shooting away from them with the speed of my gifts as I sped up the hill and into the camp. He would be there, waiting for me, that smug and cocky grin on his face which always seemed to be taunting death and danger, daring them to try and take a bite of him. He was immovable, impenetrable, an utterly indestructible entity and I wouldn’t hear any truth other than that.

I shot through tents and crowds of rebels, shoving Fae aside when they made it into my path and ignoring their cries of outrage as I bellowed his name, demanding he emerge from wherever he was hiding and tell me this was some sick joke.

“Darius!” I yelled, my throat splintering with the force of that single demand while the campsite blurred past me so fast it was hard for me to even focus on the faces I passed. But none of them were him. None held that swagger, that arrogance, that damn immortal presence which couldn’t possibly have been torn from this world.

I shot out into a clearing which had been set between towering rocks, an infinite view of the plains beyond laid out before it and the sky wide open above.

Two ice caskets lay in the centre of that space, one twice as wide as the other, built to accommodate more than one person. Tombs for fallen warriors so precious that someone had brought them all this way rather than leaving them behind on the battlefield with the rest of the dead.

I skidded to a halt at the foot of them, unable to see the faces of those who lay within. Unable to face this bitter truth, though I already felt it right down to the core of me.

The wind seemed to cry out for this loss as it howled between the rocks surrounding the coffins, causing the sea of flowers and everflames, tokens of memorial and thanks which decorated the floor to shift back and forth within the grip of that wind.

My feet began moving without my permission, stumbling over each other as I closed in on the closest casket of unmelting ice.

I lifted a shaking hand and reached for it, my already numb fingers skimming over the frozen block of ice as I closed in on the head of it, on the reality which was racing towards me like a freight train, the blare of a horn droning through my skull, warning me to run while I remained tethered in place, unable to do so.

My gaze finally fell on the face of my brother within that ice, his features still and empty, his body bloody and battle-worn, his battle axe at his side and his fisted hand so close to it that it was almost as though he would reach out and take it up once more. But he wouldn’t. Never again. Even the strength of his powerful body couldn’t break through this wretched twist of fate. My life yawned out before me, void of this man and all he was to me.

My knees buckled.

I hit the ground hard, a sob rising in my chest before a roar of agony burned from my lungs, rattling through to the core of me and yet doing nothing at all to ease the weight of the pain that threatened to crush me beneath it.

I dropped my head forward, pressing my forehead to the pane of frozen ice dividing us, leaning towards the man who owned a portion of my soul. A grief so endless that I couldn’t even comprehend it rushed in on me from all sides.

I broke beneath the hateful sky, surrounded by tokens of sorrow from strangers who had never even known the beauty and strength of the man who lay dead here now. I broke into a thousand pieces which I knew would never again fix back into a whole.

Another powerful sob choked me as I dug my fingers into the ice, my gifted strength threatening to crack it open as though I could rip him from within it and wake him up, return him to us, to where he belonged.

I begged the stars in silent, hopeless anguish to change this spiteful fate. I begged each of them by name, listing every heavenly being and constellation that held even the slightest tie to Darius’s birth to change their minds on his death, but not a single one of them listened, if they even heard me at all.

A rush of feet over grass approached me, the world crashing down all around me while I remained in place, unable to think or breathe.

A broken howl filled the air as Seth joined me in my destruction. The thump of his knees hitting the ground beside mine resounded through my body, but I was unable to tear my eyes from Darius’s lifeless face in that coffin of ice.

Max joined us too, the despairing sound that escaped him echoed by the grief tumbling from his body on the wings of his Siren gift, soaring free of him and pouring over the entire mountainside as he collapsed down on my other side.

No words passed between us as we knelt there, our pain too raw and brutal to put into words as our love for our fallen brother broke each and every one of us beyond repair.

Their shoulders pressed to mine as we sought each other out in our darkest hour, and through the haze of my wracking sobs and the tightness in my chest which threatened to draw me into death’s embrace too, I felt the blaze of our power connecting.

The maelstrom of magic which merged between the three of us writhed like a tempestuous storm, crashing against the barriers of our skin and roaring for freedom from the pain it found within us.

Where my palm met with the frozen earth beneath me, it found that outlet, pouring from me in an unformed rush like it was desperate for release, the echoes of power remaining inside us following our escape from that rift, all racing away from me in a frantic pattern and sinking into the ground beneath us.

A rumble passed through the clearing beside the tomb of the man we all loved so dearly, and a tree began to grow beyond the ice coffin. Up and up it shot while our tears hit the soil and were absorbed into its creation, the bark twisting and growing into an unnatural and yet familiar shape as a Dragon of legend grew from the ground, one wing spread wide and passing over our heads.

Golden leaves sprung from its branches, and blossom sparkled beneath the force of the sun beating down on us, gilding every bough.

We relinquished every drop of our combined magic into the soil, our bodies trembling from the rush of power as it escaped us like water raging down a storm drain.

The tree grew and grew until it was the exact size of the enormous beast who had once resided within the man now lying dead in its shadow. The outstretched wing curved over both coffins protectively, the beast’s wooden face set in a firm and unyielding expression as it watched over this most precious treasure.

And there, beneath the wing of that wooden creature, curved over a casket of ice which held the worst truth any of us had ever faced, we broke. The four Celestial Heirs no more, a future we had been groomed for our entire lives torn from beneath our feet, and our brotherhood shattered in the most unthinkable way.

Hours we knelt there. Countless hours where none of us could find a single word or summon the strength to rise from our vigil. My skin was numb from the press of the cold coffin I’d fallen apart over, and I was filled with a hopelessness which had taken root so deeply within me that I couldn’t even make myself care about anything anymore.

Firm hands took hold of us as the stars spun above, the murmured voices of our parents tumbling over me and cascading away again as they tugged us from our grieving and pressed healing magic into our skin.

I leaned into the embrace of my mom, her arms banding around me so tightly that I knew she felt this agony too. I wasn’t even sure if I’d walked or been carried inside, the warmth of a fire thawing my frozen skin as she sat me down on a bed which had been cast into place within a room that looked like anything but a bedroom, the stone walls painted with ancient markings of worship.

I didn’t care. I let her pull blankets over me and run her fingers through my hair, the numbness sinking beneath my skin keeping me from so much as thanking her.

Distantly, I heard Geraldine murmuring sweet words of sorrow to Max as she led him to another room, and the hazy press of sleep washed over me, the power of Tiberius’s Siren gifts taking hold of my mind.

I didn’t try to fight him off, made no attempt to cling to wakefulness as my pain ate into me and devoured pieces which I knew would never return.

A body hit the bed beside me, Seth’s earthy scent offering the smallest measure of comfort as I rolled towards him, my hand finding his, our fingers winding together and our faces turning towards each other on the soft pillows.

I pressed my forehead to his as Tiberius guided me into sleep, and even though the world had just fallen apart beneath me and cut me adrift into an endlessly dark sky, I found myself tethered by my grip on Seth’s hand, one tiny point of light amid a sea of misery.

It was impossible to know how long we slept, the room we’d been given holding stone walls with no windows, and the lack of sound coming from beyond it making it obvious that someone had cast a silencing bubble around us to let us claim as much rest as we needed.

I didn’t open my eyes though. I didn’t so much as move while I lay there, my forehead still pressed to Seth’s, his fingers still gripping mine tightly.

“We should…move, get up…something,” Seth breathed, seeming to know I was awake despite my lack of reaction to the fact.

“Why?” My voice was gruff, the word rasping from a throat thick with agony which didn’t wish to hold the burden of words.

Seth sighed and I opened my eyes, finding him watching me with the same pain that had broken me glistening in their depths. His long hair was pushed away from his face, the braids along the shorn side of his head falling loose of the magic which had held them in place.

“Darius,” he began, wincing at the name which drove a dagger through my heart, before forcing himself to go on. “Darius would want us to keep fighting. To help the rebels regroup and-”

I shot to my feet, abandoning him in the bed as I crossed the room in a blur of motion, carving a hand through my matted curls and shaking my head.

“No,” I growled, turning my back on him, and refusing those words. I couldn’t just get up and go on as if nothing had changed, as if his death made no difference to any of it.

“Cal.” The crack in Seth’s voice made me turn to look at him.

He rose too, his fists balling at his sides as he took me in, the catastrophic loss between us needing no words, though he’d clearly decided to voice them anyway.

“What?” I bit out, my anger irrational and unstoppable.

I knew he didn’t deserve any of it, but it was like I’d lost my grip on some leash within me, my emotions needing an outlet beyond agony, and rage was the simplest way forward.

“I know,” he said with the echo of a whimper to his words. “You know that. You know how deeply this cuts me, and I wish there was any other way that fate could have played out but…”

“But what?” I demanded.

My fangs were aching with my need for blood, and I had to fight to keep them from snapping out and ripping into his throat. I knew it would be pointless anyway, his magic gone just as mine was, but it didn’t stop the hunger that rose in me as he dared to take another step closer.

Seth’s jaw tightened and I could see that same anger mirrored in his eyes, but as he spoke, I realised that it wasn’t aimed at the stars or Lionel or injustice of this destiny the way mine was at all.

“He made that deal,” Seth growled, betrayal written into the tightness of his posture as he held my eye and spoke those tainted words. “He bargained with the stars and gave up his own life in the process. He chose this. He chose to do this to us, even though he knew what it would do to us. He gave up on-”

I slammed into him so fast that he didn’t even have a moment to block the blow before my fist crashed into his face and sent him stumbling back.

Seth’s lip split from the strike, red blood staining his mouth and making the monster in me snarl with starvation as my eyes locked onto that bead of red.

He took advantage of the distraction his blood caused me and launched himself at me, his shoulder colliding with my gut as he threw me back against the wall and sent bits of crumbling masonry cascading down on us from the ancient ruin.

“Take it back,” I snarled as I threw my weight into him, hurling him from his feet and landing on top of him as I swung another punch at his jaw.

“No,” Seth spat, furiously. “I won’t. He made that deal with the stars and bought himself a single year with it. He didn’t even give us the chance to change his fate. He wasted that time, letting the clock run down on his life without giving the people who loved him the option of fighting it. He kept it secret just like he always kept his secrets from us.” Seth’s fist crashed into my ribs.

He flipped me onto my back and straddled me, his long hair spilling down towards me as he gave me a Wolf’s snarl.

“I hate him for it,” he choked out, and I lost it.

A ferocious growl parted my lips, and I threw my gifted strength into him, sending him tumbling off of me and slamming into the wall behind him.

I was on my feet in less than a second, fury pulsing wildly through my veins as I bellowed at him. “Darius gave everything for this war! He gave everything for love and the hope of destroying the man who made his life hell for every moment that we knew him. And we just stood by and did nothing. We knew what Lionel was doing to him in that fucking manor. For years we knew, even if he couldn’t tell us outright, and we did nothing.”

A strangled noise escaped me as the guilt I felt over that threatened to consume me, but Seth’s fury matched my own and his was aimed squarely at the brother we had both lost.

“He never wanted our help. Never once even tried to ask for it. Always the fucking martyr, always standing between that monster and the world like he’d been waiting to die for us all his entire life regardless of any deal he made with the stars.”

“That’s not fair,” I hissed.

“Not fair is him leaving us here without him!” Seth shouted, thumping the wall, and causing more gravel to tumble from it to the floor. “He should have fought that fate,” he growled. “He should have told us, should have let us help him. But instead, he embraced it. He let Tory love him, let us believe in a future he knew we would never get to claim and walked towards his death like a willing sacrifice while damning the consequences. He’s gone now. Passed through the Veil to the peace that awaits there and where are we? Left broken in the ruins left by his end, left grieving and bleeding from a wound which will never heal.”

“He didn’t expect to die on that battlefield,” I said, my voice cracking. “He didn’t expect to leave us yet. He thought he still had more time. He thought-”

“What difference does it make?” Seth asked, his eyes flashing silver as his Wolf paced beneath his skin. “Christmas is weeks away. He knew this end was coming, and he knew the stars offered no guarantees. They gave him a year, but they didn’t give him immortality for that time. He knew that and yet he walked willingly towards death all the same, just like he would have done even if his time hadn’t been running out. Because this sacrifice was acceptable to him, this destruction of us was a price that he was willing to pay because our pain didn’t matter to-”

I slammed into him so fast that I had barely even registered the movement myself, my fangs snapping free and plunging into his throat before he could so much as raise a hand in defence against me.

The taste of his blood washed over my tongue and my snarl deepened as I drank from him, my hand encircling his throat and pinning him to the wall at his back, my fingers squeezing tight as I cut off his air.

Seth fisted his hand in my hair, growling viciously as I drank from him despite the lack of magic in his veins. It didn’t matter though, the monster in me was hungry and the violence he’d invoked in me demanded this taste of him.

Seth’s muscles bunched as his grip on my hair tightened and with a furious snarl, he wrenched me back, ripping my teeth from his flesh and tearing his skin wide open in the process.

Blood ran freely down his neck, staining his shirt and racing over my fingers where I still gripped his throat.

“Fuck you, Cal,” he choked out around the tightness of my hold.

I bared my teeth at him, wanting his pain, his anger, anything at all other than facing the abyss of Darius’s loss which waited with open jaws, hungering for me with every passing second.

“Fuck you, Seth,” I snarled right back.

A moment hung in the silence that followed those words, one tainted with something so bleak and heart breaking that neither of us dared move. We just stared at each other, the heat of his blood warming my frozen fingers and my pulse falling into rhythm with the thumping beat I could feel beneath the tightness of my grip on his jugular.

My mouth was on his before I could think of anything else, my tongue breaching the barrier of his lips as I shoved him back against the wall, endless nights of fantasising about the taste of him, the feel of him all rushing into me and making me act without thought or reason.

I knew how this ended. Knew it didn’t mean the same thing to him as it did to me, but right now, I didn’t care. I was so lost in the sea of this pain that I just needed to feel something else. Even if I knew it wasn’t real, that his heart didn’t ache for mine the way mine beat only for his. Even if the words he’d thrown at me in this room made me want to destroy him, and the anger I felt towards him for them wasn’t abating one bit.

I didn’t care.

Seth groaned as I kissed him harder, his fist tightening in my hair like he sought to take ownership of me while my grip on his throat reminded him which of us was truly in charge here.

His free hand dug into the ruined fabric of my shirt and he tore at it as my tongue rode over his, the fabric parting beneath the force of his attack on it. I let him shove it from my left arm, leaving it hanging from my right where I refused to relinquish my hold on his throat.

Mine. In here, right now, he was mine, and I didn’t care what that meant for after. I didn’t care that this wasn’t the same for him as it was for me because he was submitting to it, giving me what I craved and letting me fall for this pretty lie while I worked to bury myself in it.

I broke our kiss and the rough stubble of Seth’s jaw grazed over my lips while I worked my way down to his neck, licking at his skin and savouring the taste of him while my cock hardened in my pants and a growl of longing built in my chest.

Seth tried to push against me, working to assert his own dominance with a growl as he yanked on my hair so hard that my mouth was ripped from his skin, and I was forced to meet the vortex taking place within his deep brown eyes.

“You want to fuck so you can feel something else?” he asked me icily, the question seeming so simple and so weighted all at once.

I licked my lips, tasting his blood on them as I panted in his hold, my cock throbbing with need and my blood pumping so hard it was difficult to hear around the whooshing of my pulse within my skull.

I was sure he could see it, this need in me for him, the vulnerability which I’d been fighting so hard to hide from him ever since the last time we’d been in a position like this, and he’d told me it meant nothing to him. What would he do if I admitted that this wasn’t nothing to me? Would he push me away? Remind me that that wasn’t the way he worked? That I was just another notch to add to his bedpost?

“Isn’t that what you do?” I replied darkly. “Fuck your feelings away so that you don’t have to deal with them?”

Seth’s gaze shuttered at those words and a growl rolled through his body, my fingers buzzing with the feeling of it where I still gripped his throat possessively.

“Yeah,” he spat bitterly. “That’s what I do. I just want to make sure we’re clear on that before you go making any dumb decisions like falling in love with me.”

Something burrowed into my chest at those words, sharp claws tearing through whatever part of me was left whole in the wake of losing Darius, but I forced the feeling aside. I didn’t need more pain. I needed something else.

I forced a hollow laugh and tightened my hold on him until his breath was cut off again, pushing him back against the wall as I used my free hand to unbuckle his belt and open his fly.

“How about we stop talking and you just come for me like a good pup,” I growled, my eyes on his as I pushed his boxers down and took the straining length of his cock into my hand.

Seth snarled at me as I began to stroke him, my thumb smearing precum all around the head of his shaft as I watched his pupils dilate at my touch.

I held him like that for several more seconds, watching the concoction of pleasure and pain blend together in his eyes, refusing to let him draw breath until he gave me an answer.

Seth glared at me defiantly and I began to draw my hand away as doubt crept in, but before I could release my hold on his dick, he sagged back against the wall and nodded, the ire in his expression melting into something unreadable as he gave himself up to me.

I let him breathe and he sucked in air, watching me hungrily as I teased his cock with my hand, a groan escaping me as the lust in his eyes set me alight.

“Use me then, Cal,” Seth panted in submission, the want in him peeling me open and making me come undone for him. “Take me and use me and make me forget all the shit in this world for a little while. I’ll be a good pup for you if that’s what you need. Just promise you’ll be rough with me while I’m yours. My heart can’t take tender right now.”

We stared at each other as I nodded my agreement to that, to fucking without feeling and forgetting everything else. I could do that. I could try.

I slammed into him again, taking his words seriously and letting my need to dominate run through me as I used the power of my gifts to press him back against the wall while I took a kiss from him which I wanted more than I’d ever dare tell him.

Seth growled into my mouth, his Alpha instincts refusing to let him submit easily even after he’d asked me to take charge, but I was more than willing to meet him in that battle.

My teeth sank into his lower lip, and he moaned as I sucked on it, tasting his blood from the punch I’d landed on him earlier before sinking my fangs in and making him hiss with pain.

I pumped his cock in my hand as I sucked harder, driving him back against the wall and moving my hand from his throat to grip his shirt instead.

I ripped the material from his body just as he had done to me, revealing the hard planes of his muscular chest before running my hand over every ridge and line. I wanted to commit every bit of this to memory, wanted to lock it all away so that the next time I thought of him while I was fucking my own hand, I could be certain of my fantasy.

Seth drove his hips forward as I continued to work his cock in my fist and I snarled at him in warning as I maintained control, kissing him deeply once again as I pumped him harder, faster.

His body shuddered where I pressed myself against him, his hand moving to my belt as he worked to free my cock too, but despite the bone deep ache I felt for his touch, I smacked his hand aside.

“When I make you come for me, I want to fuck that filthy mouth of yours again, Seth Capella,” I snarled in his ear, my hand rolling down the solid length of his cock before caressing his balls then pushing back further until I ran a finger over his ass, making his cheeks clench.

Want built in me as he groaned at that touch, the thought of me burying my cock inside him so tempting that I could have come at the mere thought of it.

I drew my hand back and Seth whimpered as I slowly dragged my fingers back up his shaft to the tip. I leaned in to lick the blood from his still bleeding neck, my tongue rolling in slow circles over his skin as I thought about taking him into my mouth to finish him instead of using my hand.

I wanted to. Had thought about it over and over again in the dead of night, aching to know what he would taste like, how it would feel to bring a Fae as powerful as him to ruin from my knees. But hesitation gripped me even as the fantasy taking place within my mind begged me to try it.

Seth’s hips pumped into my hand as I ran my fist up and down, his fingers grasping my forearm as I felt him moving towards the edge. He was so fucking close, all because of me and knowing that had me moving my hand faster, kissing him harder, crushing him against the wall and making him submit to this.

I could feel him clinging to the edge as he panted into my mouth, and just as his determination began to crumble, I broke our kiss and looked him dead in the eye.

“Come for me,” I growled, my voice a low command which he couldn’t refuse as he came hot and heavy in my fist.

Seth groaned loudly and I swallowed that sound as I kissed him again, my hand guiding him through his climax as his cum spilled through my fingers and onto the floor beside us.

I broke our kiss suddenly and Seth’s lips parted in lust as I sucked on my fingers and groaned at the taste of him there. It was salty and earthy and wholly him, and I was pretty certain I’d just found a rival to his blood for my favourite taste in the entire world.

“Fucking…fuck…” Seth panted, and I nodded as I shrugged the tattered remains of my shirt from my arm before moving with a flash of speed and yanking his hair into my grip.

My blood was pumping too fast, the need in me for him so potent that I was drunk on it. I wanted him more than I had ever wanted any girl, and the way I felt when we were together like this was so foreign and exhilarating that I wasn’t convinced my need for it could ever be sated.

“On your knees,” I demanded, tugging on his hair hard enough to make him hiss, but a groan followed the noise, making it more than clear that he liked it. “I’ve been dreaming about that mouth of yours and I need to feel it again.”

Seth sucked in a sharp breath at those words but instead of giving in to my demand, he yanked against my hold on his hair and took my mouth with his instead.

My heart leapt as he kissed me, his hands moving to cup my face between them as the passion in it rose and rose, his tongue wrapping around mine and his hold on me tightening like he didn’t ever want to let me go.

Just as I began to feel like I was losing all sense of myself entirely in that kiss, Seth jerked back, his molten eyes on mine and a dare in them that set my skin burning with desire unlike any other.

“If you want me on my knees for you, Caleb,” he said low and deep. “Then you’d better put me there. You’d better make me take your cock like a good pup. You’d better make me taste every damn drop of you and use me like you promised me you wanted to.”

Any restraint I’d been clinging to snapped at those words and I gave into that demand with no resistance whatsoever.

I growled at Seth as I took hold of his shoulders and shoved him to his knees before me.

Seth snarled right back, glaring up at me in challenge as I slowly wrapped the length of his brown hair around my fist and released my cock from my pants.

I licked my lips as I looked at him down there, running my hand up and down my length as I stared at his mouth and tugged on his hair enough to tilt his head back.

Defiance flared in his eyes as he watched me jerk myself off before him, the tip of my cock a bare inch from his lips as I released a low groan and made no attempt to move it closer, simply stroking and teasing myself.

Seth drew in a shuddering breath as he watched me, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth and looking so fucking hot that I knew I’d have been happy to just finish myself like this, to spill myself over him and mark him as mine even if he didn’t take me into that sinful mouth of his.

“Tell me how much you want me,” I commanded, my heart hammering to a rampant tune as I pumped my cock so close to that mouth.

Seth hesitated for a moment, his eyes moving from my dick to meet my gaze and my heart leapt as we looked at one another like that.

“Too much,” he breathed. “I want you too fucking bad and I can’t help it. Can’t stop it. I’m yours to do whatever you want with. I’m your fucking Wolf, Cal, and the thought of making you mine is too much to bear.”

“You want it that bad?” I panted, his words pushing into my overrun mind and falling to ash against the lust which was set to consume me at any moment.

“Yes.” He nodded, licking his lips. “So give it to me.”

I groaned loudly as I finally gave in, thrusting my hips forward and sinking my cock between his lips, making him take me all the way to the base.

Our eyes remained locked the entire time, and I knew I was already done for as I looked down at that perfect sight. I gave up on restraint, on making this last and savouring it. He had offered me a respite from the pain that had crippled me, and I was beyond the point of holding back now.

My fingers knotted in his hair, and I began to fuck his mouth hard and fast, the perfection of his lips and tongue worshipping me too much to resist as I gripped him tightly and took what I needed from him. He was so good at this, so skilled it was like he was made to pleasure me.

Faster and faster, I pounded into his mouth, a purely male sound escaping me as I lost control entirely and gave in to the speed of my gifts. I did as he’d begged of me and I wasn’t gentle as I took from him, fucking his mouth until I was coming down his throat and his name was bursting from my lips like a prayer and a curse combined.

Seth groaned as if my release had been just as good for him as it was for me, and he swallowed down every drop of me with a glint of hunger in his eyes which made me feel like he had barely even begun with me.

I staggered back a step, panting heavily as he rose to his feet while I tugged my pants back up again.

I could already feel the pain of grief pushing in on me. That stolen moment fading all too soon and the things he’d said about Darius rousing some embers of anger in me once again.

“So that’s it then?” Seth asked, righting his own pants as he glared at me like he wanted me to say something. “You got what you needed?”

“Did you?” I asked in return, the taste of him still lingering on my tongue and my cock practically solid again already as I thought over what we’d done. I wanted more but the tightness of his posture told me he didn’t anymore, even if I could see how hard he was through the tightness of his jeans.

“Oh yeah,” he replied scathingly. “You know me, fucking is like breathing for me. It was really a toss-up between sucking your cock or going to find myself a drink and I wasn’t all that thirsty, so…”

“So?” Words burned on the back of my tongue, but I didn’t know how to form them, and I was pretty certain he didn’t want me to form them. We’d just lost our brother and whatever the fuck that had been was the least of our problems, but still…

Seth tightened his jaw and gave me the most aggressive peace sign I had ever seen in my life.

“Right,” I said as something akin to a lead weight dropped through the hollow remains of my chest. “I guess I’ll catch you later then.”

I returned the fucking peace sign, feeling like a damn idiot, not to mention all kinds of used. But that was what he’d offered me, wasn’t it? He’d said we should use each other to forget for a little while and we had. So peace to that.

I turned and shot from the room before I could say something that would restart our argument from earlier, knowing in my soul that Darius wouldn’t want us turning on each other over him. But every step I took away from that room felt heavier, every inch like a mile I would never be able to cross again, and as I ran into a wide room filled with the Councillors, Tory, Xavier and Geraldine, I had to wonder what the fuck I’d been thinking when I’d agreed to something so empty with the one person I cared for more than anyone else in this damn world.

It took me a few seconds to realise that everyone seated around the large, round table was now looking at me expectantly, and I cleared my throat as I took in the tension in the room, the subtle divide.

My mom was sitting to the left of the table between Antonia and Tiberius, their unity and ease with each other clear from everything about their posture to the small looks they exchanged. To the right of the table, Tory sat on a chair which was bigger than all the others with vines curving up and over the back of it, forming a design which looked suspiciously like a crown just above her head. I didn’t need to look at Geraldine to know who was responsible for that little bit of earth magic, but a single glance her way showed her sitting as upright as a lamppost at Tory’s right hand, her chin set with defiance and eyes blazing with passion.

Xavier also sat towards the right of the table, though his was the chair which stood closest to the middle, like he was aiming to bridge the gap between the various powers in the room. His gaze shifted to mine and I bowed my head in acknowledgment of his loss, the grief we shared. Xavier nodded in reply and though his eyes were bloodshot and several days’ worth of stubble coated his jaw, he seemed determined to take part in whatever this was without descending into the darkness of that pain.

“Caleb,” Mom greeted me warmly, her eyes shining with love and concern, though I knew she wouldn’t address those feelings now. She had been playing these games for long enough to know when the time for such things were appropriate and when politics had to come first. I’d always been able to tell which mode she was in from a single word or expression, and it looked like this meeting was going to take precedent over all else for now.

“Is this a private meeting?” I asked, though I had no intention of leaving.

“Stay,” Tory replied, speaking in place of my mom, and drawing the attention of the Councillors who bristled at the command in her tone. But I knew her well enough to understand there was no real command there at all, simply an offer.

I circled the table and took a chair for myself, only realising that I’d chosen the exact centre of the divide as my ass hit the seat and I found myself positioned as a bridge between the two groups. A fact that none of them missed. My mom arched a brow at my bare chest but said nothing on my state of undress, presumably because she was expecting an extra ally in the room now.

“We were discussing the best course of action from here,” Tiberius answered my unvoiced question. “Plans for our movements and where best to strike back-”

“And it has been pointed out more than once that there is no need for any command from a pack of gandergeese here,” Geraldine cut him off. “The rebellion has and always will be members of the Almighty Sovereign Society, followers of the true queens and servants to the crown-”

“A crown which now sits upon the brow of a usurper,” Antonia growled.

“It matters not where a trinket rests, whether it be upon the scaley slapper chaps of that most loathsome of cretins or down a dump shoot, covered in Griffin poop. The crown itself is an ideal and title which cannot be bandied about like a parcel at a children’s soiree. There is no doubt as to the true owners of such a headpiece, and you should all be taking the knee as you sit before one of those fine and beauteous ladies – not ruffling feathers like rats in a hen coop!”

“Solaria does not recognise the leadership of Roxanya or Gwendalina Vega,” Tiberius replied easily. “And neither do we. The three of us are honour bound and blood sworn to serve, protect and lead our people, so that is what we intend to do.”

They kept up that back and forth, Geraldine throwing all kinds of weird and wild names at the Councillors while they adamantly insisted on maintaining rule among the rebels regardless of their loyalties to the Vegas. All the while they argued, Tory said nothing, even Xavier offered a word here and there, implying that he stood with his sister-in-law on this, despite the fact it was clear that my mom and the others were looking to him to take up the fourth place in their ring of power now that Lionel had betrayed them, and Darius was no longer able to take it himself.

I looked to the girl who had been my friend, lover, enemy and so much in between, but I struggled to recognise much of the person who lived within those deep green eyes now. Her fingers traced a pattern over the solid tabletop, and I cocked my head to look at what she had burned into the wood there. A sea of stars sitting high above a mountaintop, the scene wreathed in a dark circle surrounded by markings which made my brow furrow. Runes. It was hard to see them all from my position, but I recognised a few, reading their meaning and shivering as a chill passed down my spine.

Runes held symbolic meaning which could change in divination depending on a number of factors, but from the combination she had etched into the wood, I guessed at the intention behind them and stilled.

Gebo for sacrifice, Naudhiz for resistance, Perthro for fate, Uruz for power, and Eihwaz for rebirth.

Were they meant as predictions or promises?

Tory’s eyes snapped up to meet mine and something glimmered there, defiance in the darkness which made a creeping sense of foreboding crawl up my spine.

“Where is Gwendalina anyway?” Antonia barked and the chord which had loosely formed between me and Tory snapped as her eyes shifted straight to Seth’s mom, fire flaring in her palm for a moment as she swiped it over the table and destroyed the image she’d been drawing there.

“That is what I intend to focus on,” she replied coolly, no question over whether or not that would be permissible, just a statement from a queen.

“We have all studied the reports from the battle,” my mom said. “There has been no trace of her since the fighting began. So far as I can glean, the entire flank of the army where she fought was wiped out by some monstrous creature under Lavinia’s command. You have to have considered the possibility that she fell-”

“She did not,” Tory said in a low, dangerous voice while Geraldine gasped and threw a hand to her head like the mere suggestion might be enough to steal her from consciousness.

“How can you be certain?” Tiberius demanded, his gifts reaching out across the table, probing towards her emotions, but I didn’t have to be a Siren to be able to tell that Tory had crushed that attempted intrusion with a mental wall built of solid iron.

“I simply am,” Tory replied.

My mom and the other Councillors exchanged doubtful looks, and I spoke up before any of them could try to counter her claim.

“I imagine you’re more than overwhelmed with all the information you’ve gathered since returning here, but there’s another fact you should know,” I said, wincing a little at the reaction I knew these words would earn. “Orion and I ended up in a bit of a situation several months ago. One involving another of those shadow rifts. He was in danger of being ripped through it, his soul dragged back to whatever dark hell they occupy. So to stop that from happening…well…” I cleared my throat, fighting off the feeling of being a little kid trying to own up to being bad in front of my mom. “We accidentally formed a coven.”

Tiberius paled and Antonia gasped loudly, my mom simply staring at me blankly like she was trying to figure out what I’d just said while denying the words I’d spoken clear as day.

“I’m only bringing it up because I know the tales of the covens of old, and I know that if Orion were dead, I would have felt the ripping of that bond from my soul. I have felt no such thing, meaning-”

“His shameless brutishness lives!” Geraldine gasped, placing a hand to her heart in thanks for that confirmation, and Tory’s shoulders fell just a fraction in relief at my words too. “And if that is so, then I know beyond the wiggle of a worm’s waggle bottom that he is with his Darcy love. That together they must be fighting the cur-” Tory cut her a look and she swerved midsentence “-ious call of fate,” she finished awkwardly, looking around the room at anything except the people who sat on the far side of the table.

I frowned as I tried to figure out what she’d just hidden from them, but my mom and the others didn’t even seem to have noticed, their ire focused on me as the news of what I’d done sank in.

“Caleb, this is beyond some minor mistake,” Mom hissed, her knuckles blanching as she curled her hand into a fist on top of the table. “We can’t simply overlook something so dangerous. You’ve gone against the oaths that were formed after the blood wars, betrayed the trust of the people in all Vampires – especially considering who you are and the power of your position. I don’t think you understand the seriousness of-”

“My sister and I pardoned them of all implied or real punishments that might have been expected for their bond,” Tory interrupted, though they definitely hadn’t done that, and I wouldn’t have recognised their power to do so anyway. “If you have an issue with it, then perhaps you should take that up with me.”

The challenge hung in the air, an offer I could tell Tory wouldn’t back down from. She was hungry for a fight, hunting for an outlet for all the pain and fury she was keeping contained so deeply within her. She may have been hiding it convincingly from the world, but to those who knew her well enough, that agony was clear to see in the vacancy of her eyes.

“No more fighting,” Xavier said firmly, his fist slamming down on the table and making Geraldine gasp dramatically. “Hasn’t there been enough of that already? Haven’t we seen enough blood spill the last few days?”

When silence met his outburst, I found myself nodding my agreement. A time would come for this challenge, but it wasn’t now. Not with Darcy and Orion missing and the fate of everyone in this camp in peril for every moment we lingered here.

“We need to prepare the rebels to move,” Tory said after a beat of silence let the tension in the air simmer down. “We can debate the location later. Geraldine can fill you in on everything else you need to know until then.”

The girl who could be queen stood, turning from the room despite the protests of my mom and the other Councillors, not even giving a shit as she turned her back on them and offered up that insult before striding from the room.

Mom’s furious eyes fixed on me before the door had even swung closed behind her and I shot to my feet too, muttering some vague apology before I sped away after Tory and escaped that particular lecture. For now, at least.

Geraldine spoke loudly before any of them could protest, my gifts picking up her words through the heavy door as she started telling them about the Atlas Tyler had just finished making untraceable and the fact that the rebels needed to be getting news stories out into the world again as soon as possible, to counter the bile spilled by that rag of a newspaper, The Celestial Times, in favour of the false king.

It sounded like the plans for that were already well underway and I didn’t hang around to hear any more about it.

Tory had already made it to the end of the ancient stone corridor by the time I reached her, and she didn’t even flinch as I appeared in her path, catching her arm to halt her.

“What was that about back there?” I asked, and we both knew I wasn’t talking about the discussion she’d been having but the marks she’d burned into the table.

Tory drew in a slow breath as she looked up at me, moving to take my hand in hers and place my fingertips against the jagged line of a scar now marking her palm. I looked down at it, the brand of lightning seared into her skin humming with an unfamiliar power as I touched it.

“I don’t accept this fate,” she said simply. “I refuse it, and I refuse the guidance of the stars over my life.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, my brows drawing together as I looked down at her hand between us and the heat of a furnace burning within her skin warmed me.

“I cursed them,” she replied simply, like there was anything simple about that idea. “Each and every one of them. I cursed them and I swore to rip my fate from their clutches no matter the cost to me or my soul. I’ll see them burn, Caleb. And I’ll find him again in this life or the next before I’m done.”

My lips parted in denial of that insane claim, but there was something about the power of that vow which stopped any protest I may have made in its tracks and made me do something unthinkable instead.

I took her scarred hand and placed it over my heart, against my bare skin, dropping my forehead to press against hers as I let her feel that unending grief in me too, let her feel how deeply I shared in her pain.

“Then I offer myself to you,” I swore in a low and steady voice, whispering my next words because they felt so important. “In any way that I can be of service to you in fulfilling that vow, I offer it. Through blood, duty, honour, or sacrifice, I am yours to command in pursuit of this end.”

Tory released a shuddering breath and a single tear fell from her eye, rolling down her cheek before splashing against the back of her burning hot hand where it lay over my heart.

“There isn’t a depth I won’t fall to for this,” she warned me, and I nodded.

“Then I’m ready to fall at your side.”

I wasn’t certain if it was intentional or not, but magic flared between us where our entwined hands lay against my heart, that promise becoming binding as the stars took note of it; and whether we sought their approval or scorned it, it didn’t matter now.

It was done.