We left the water, and I felt… wrecked. Maybe it was the orgasms; Shadow seemed to be about to wring more than one from me with next to no effort. Or, more likely, it was the fact that whatever this thing was between us, it was on a countdown clock.
“We still need to talk about the bet,” Shadow reminded me again as we got dressed, neither of us looking at the other.
I jerked my head up, my shirt half over my arm as I shrugged it all the way on. “Are you finally collecting?”
His smile was smug. “I’ve thought about it, and you know… I don’t think I have to. You’ve already stopped fighting me. You had long before your time ran out.”
I felt super offended by that. “Not true. I’ve never stopped fighting you!”
Shadow, dressed in black fatigues with desert-brown boots to finish off his hot jungle man look, strode toward me. I tilted my head back in our familiar dance. “You were fighting with me in a different way, Mera. Before we were adversaries, but then… it changed.”
Jesus, fuck. Did I just die? Because it felt like I’d lost control of my senses as those words left his lips, the stroke of his hand across my face so fast, I wondered if I’d imagined it.
Then he was done, backpack on, all business. This was the Shadow Beast who drove fear into the hearts of all who met him. The Shadow Beast who would kill his family and not lose sleep over it.
The one who would walk away from me and never think my name again.
Hurrying to catch up with him, a figure zoomed over our heads, and I reacted defensively, but Shadow clearly knew it was Angel, since he didn’t even turn his head.
“Find anything?” he asked as she landed gracefully, her wings tucking behind her.
Today she wore a rust-colored shift dress, which was covered in pieces of her armor. Her hair was braided down her back, the striking color shiny in the light here, and I had to marvel at how stunning she was. No one existed with such perfection on the earthly realm, and yet I’d never seen Shadow’s eyes darken or flames appear in them when he stared at her.
Which made no sense at all to me.
Oh, well. I wasn’t about to question the whys of what had happened between us. I was going to enjoy it. Live in the moment.
And mourn tomorrow.
“They have a training session in the field of the village this morning,” Angel reported. “A lot of their armed forces are out of the town.”
“And the creatures?” Shadow bit out, in soldier mode.
“They’re with them.”
I knew that the shadow creatures were mostly under the control of royals, with free ones rounded up by hunters.
“There are royals in this village?” I asked.
Shadow shook his head. “No, the royals of Fraple are a few days’ walk from here. Their compound is near the border of Trinity because we all like to keep an eye on our royal neighbors.”
“So what’s with the creatures, then?”
“Every city and village has creatures,” Shadow told me, looking out into the horizon. “Descendants of royals can control them, as long as a full-blooded royal has tamed the creature in question.”
“Not to mention that those with royal blood are often called into their armed forces,” Angel added.
“Okay, yeah, that makes sense.”
It did make sense, but every time I learned more about the creatures and how they were treated here, an uneasy feeling swirled in my gut. They were nothing more than possessions. Expendable. They were used and abused to keep the royals and the human-like freilds functioning.
“The creatures I pulled to Earth,” I said, “would they have been under the control of a royal?”
“I doubt it,” Shadow said. “I couldn’t feel the energy of another in theirs, so they were probably pulled from The Grey Lands, where the free beasts roam. The point of origin, where the two mists converge, is there. It was once a place of pure creation and power.”
“It used to be known by another name, that land, right?” Angel asked.
Shadow nodded. “Yes. As it changed over the years, parts of it dying inexplicably, it was renamed ‘The Grey Lands.’ But it was, once upon a time, a very different place. Still, it’s where the young royals make their journeys for their first creatures.”
This was what had me so riled. The creatures were just out there minding their own business when some punk-ass fucker sauntered in to steal their freedom?
Kind of made me want to kill a few royals.
Shadow smirked. “I know what you’re thinking, and trust me, when the unbonded creatures make it to our lands, they carve a path of destruction second to none. You don’t understand because you can control their energy, as can I, but for the regular citizen of the realm… there is nothing but blood and guts left by the time the creature is done.”
I wasn’t convinced. If it was anything like Earth, the reason that land was dying would be totally due to something the royals had done. And of course, as their land died, the creatures would have to search farther afield for nourishment and shelter. It wasn’t their fault.
The creatures I’d met over my time with Shadow had held a true intelligence and pure energy, and I’d grown pretty fond of them. Even the creepy ones with poison sap.
“I know some fault lies with the royals here,” I said, my disgust seeping out even when I tried to hold it inside. “I know it.”
Shadow didn’t argue, and I wondered if deep down, his personal thoughts on the creatures were more aligned with mine than with the royals’. In truth, Shadow had lived here for twenty-two years, and out of the realm for a thousand plus. How much of him still thought like the royals?
I sincerely hoped not a lot.
Since this world’s issues were not going to be fixed today, we started on our journey. Our path was the same as yesterday, and when we left the slowly growing oasis, we were back on the harsh black rock. I settled into the monotony of walking, feeling thankful that Shadow found a way around the first village, leaving us free and undetected to continue on.
And we did. On and on and on. Thankfully, Angel and Shadow both remembered my frailties, allowing me water, food, and a pee break more than once. Neither of them seemed to require anything, and as the day slipped away again, we had made our way around two more towns that stood between us and the royal compound. I saw quite a few of the inhabitants from a distance, and not all of them looked like Shadow. He was an overly enhanced, super fucking hot, giant version of a human. But some of the regular folk, the freilds, were quite different.
“Blue skin?”
Shadow turned to where I was looking at a small family having… a picnic? “Subspecies of the freilds,” he said. “Mixed with water sprites. They call themselves ‘fronds.’”
In my head, I was keeping a running tally of what beings I’d learned of here. Creatures, royals, and freilds, which included the Shadow Hunters, and now fronds. “How many other different races and subspecies are here?”
His lips twitched. “We also have the clordees, who are a mix of shadow creatures and freilds.”
I paused. “Uh, are you saying some of the freilds had sex with the creatures?”
Angel and Shadow both laughed, probably at the absurdity of my question, and possibly the look on my face. I hurried on. “I mean, I know that shouldn’t be weird to me. I’m a wolf and I’ve heard of more than a few having a go at fucking in their beast forms, but it feels weird.”
Shadow’s smile was slow and contemplative. “What did you think of the Brolder inhabitants?”
“Oh, yeah.” I nodded. “They didn’t seem unusual, but I guess there was some… interspecies breeding going on there?”
I really needed to get my judgy hat off.
“We don’t procreate in the exact same way as humans,” Shadow told me. “But you’re also not wrong. The different creatures all have varying levels of intelligence, and some are on the same par as freilds. Once you learn to communicate with them, it’s really not as… depraved as you’re thinking.”
I held both hands up. “Seriously, no more judgement from me. I can hardly talk when it comes to living an alternative lifestyle.”
I mostly hoped to see these clordees at some point so I could experience this particular mesh of two different species. It was an interesting concept, and as long as no creatures were taken advantage of, I was all for diversity.
This strange protectiveness I had for the creatures was growing with time. And now that I was here, seeing the beings of Shadow’s world, I could no longer ignore the urge to wrap them all up and keep them safe from those who would hurt them.
As we continued on, there were no more encounters with any of the realm’s inhabitants, and Shadow ended up creating another oasis for us to sleep in when night fell. I’d been worried that someone in this world was going to notice these sanctuaries, but Shadow reassured me that it was fairly common to see them pop up from those who crossed the lands. The oases would die over time, without nourishment, until eventually the black rock claimed them again.
None of us rested particularly well, especially not after Shadow told us we were basically on the border of Trinity and would soon be crossing into his family’s territory. Our days of moving undetected were numbered.
“Do you ever sleep?” I asked him when he settled in against another new tree.
“Someone has to keep watch,” he told me.
The sentiment was very noble, but at least half the times I opened my eyes that night, he was staring at me.
He made me feel safe. Safe and uneasy at the same time, the dual nature of my emotions toward him intense.
It was ironic that the beast who had starred in my nightmares for so long was now the one to bring me safety and peace. Life was funny like that.
“Sleep, Sunshine,” he said to me when I tossed and turned for the twentieth time. “Tomorrow we face the royals.”
I closed my eyes against his words and wondered if this was the last peaceful night I’d ever have. The thought that Shadow was going to go up against his asshole of a sister, who had thousands of years to amass power, and who’d destroyed his life in the first place, was terrifying and liberating at the same time.
“Do you think she knows you’re here now?” I asked him sleepily, keeping my voice low.
He nodded, a single hitch of his chin. “No doubt at all. She’ll be ready, but so will we.”
He was strong enough. He was not the same young royal who had been kicked out centuries ago. He would destroy them if it was the last thing he ever did, and I had no idea what would come after that.
“Do you think I’ll ever learn what I am?” I asked, my eyes opening again, despite the exhaustion pressing on me. “Will someone in your family know?”
He shifted, and in the low light of the moon above, I couldn’t quite tell what expression he wore. Possibly pensive or… worried.
“My sister is the first I have to destroy, but she’s not the only one in my family. I’ll have to wade through all of them to figure out who was involved in my betrayal, but I expect some will be left standing when it’s all over. If there’s information among them, I’ll find it.”
I felt satisfied with that. Shadow would do a thorough job in figuring out what I was, and how I’d come to exist, and when I finally had my answers… well, I’d deal with it once that happened.
Before Shadow had stolen me from Torma, I’d thought I’d had a pretty solid handle on who I was. Shifter; book lover; broken but fighting to stay internally strong; full of sarcastic quips; fan of old action movies and sappy romances; aficionado of flipflops and denim cutoff shorts; unruly hair of indeterminate color; good friend; sometimes terrible friend.
So many facets of me, Mera Callahan.
All the colors of my rainbow spread out before me, visible and vibrant. And I got them, I embraced them. Now, though, there was a new streak of midnight threading it all—kind of ironic, considering I was bonded to a mist called Midnight. I didn’t understand this darkness dripping into my colors, and I had no idea how to handle it. Did I embrace it and say this was me now? Or did I fight it so the darkness no longer bled through, muddying the blanket of my being?
“You’re overthinking.” Shadow broke through my thoughts as he leaned forward. “Whatever we find out about your new abilities, it doesn’t change who you are. You’ve always been you; some of it was just hidden. Like your wolf. You never shifted, but she was always there. It was only that you had knowledge of her existence that you didn’t freak out when it first happened.”
I nodded, rolling over to use my arms as a pillow, staring up into the starless mists above. “You’re saying that this affinity I have with your world, with the mists and creatures, was always part of me? I just wasn’t aware until it all rose to the surface?”
“Yes.”
Well, okay. That did make me feel a little less like a foreign entity was living inside of me, ready to burst free Alien-style at any moment. As cool as Ripley was, I didn’t have any ambition to live her life.
“Thanks,” I said softly. “I’m sure you didn’t sign up for keeping me sane when you already have a lot on your plate.”
He chuckled, a deep rumble that filled the night with warmth. “Who said you were sane?”
I laughed too. “Are any of us, really?”
“Fair point, little wolf. Fair point.”
After that, I was too tired for further conversation, so I let my eyes close, allowing consciousness to drift away.
