Wild Magic Three: The Shade of the Earth- a M/M fantasy shifter romance

20- Hark and His Asa

*****TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of sexual slavery and gang rape. Just mentions, not too descriptive. Also, if you don't follow my blog or anything, the two characters in the following chapter have their own book— it's book 2 of the Strange Magics Series, and their third is someone you all know if you've read my Far From Home Series :):) *****

HARKYN—

Decades, I'd walked the earth beneath me. Decades, and decades further, for more than three centuries, I'd walked all of Nefiir alone. My family lost when I'd been but a child in the scheme of my immortal life, my sister Ash lost to me when she was only just coming into her power, my father and mother and baby brother and sister all killed.

For me. For my idiocy and arrogance. I was young, and thought myself invincible. I was a spirit witch, after all, my power given to me by Vunei herself.

For my arrogance and immature power lust, my family had been massacred. I'd been nearly invincible, but they had suffered in my place.

I had spent centuries now traveling Nefiir, no destination in mind but one: find another. Just one other like me, whom I could spend my time with, maybe not be so fucking alone. Not even romantically, just... someone to talk to, someone who didn't fear me when I walked into a room. Someone who didn't flinch when I looked their way.

Someone I could talk to and not feel afraid they had an ulterior motive for spending their moments with me.

For three centuries I had failed.

Until today. Yes, Vunei willing, I had found him. Not whom I had expected, to be sure. I had thought to find another spirit witch, not a young panther shifter, terrified and broken and disfigured. But gods, after three centuries alone, he was godsdamned perfect.

The shifter, eyes the color of the dark leaves beneath our feet, slanted in huge eyes that were heavy lidded and dark with despair, was naked, his ribs protruding from his warm ivory colored skin sharply, his legs and arms long and lanky and too thin.

He was maybe in his late teens, possibly early 20s, I wasn't sure exactly, his light black hair hanging in tangled locks down his back. He had an almost androgynous face, his jaw sharp but his cheek bones prominent and soft. His brows were thick and hung heavy over smoky eyes lined with smeared kohl. He was tall, and I could see he was young enough that he may grow even taller, already only a handful of inches shorter than my six-foot-four frame.

His lips were a perfect, pearly pink, and they looked kiss-swollen— possibly bite-swollen, too— and trembled with the tears that still leaked down his cheeks, smearing the makeup around his eyes even further.

He stared me down, his eyes assessing me as mine did him. There was something about his soul that called to mine, and when I saw the proti collar around his throat that held his panther locked in chains within him, I wanted to rip it off and throw it into the brush behind me, but I knew that violent move would frighten him.

Especially since he smelled of the dark pleasures of men, wore naught but his skin and the marks of hard use, and had smears of blood on his thighs and mouth.

Rage the likes of which I hadn't felt in almost three centuries coursed through my body, and it took everything inside me not to do what I knew would frighten him so much: tear that damn collar from his neck and give him the power to end those who had so obviously violated him.

"I won't hurt you," I whispered in Common, hoping he spoke the language. He looked as if he had just a little bit of Akaran blood, and with the panther tied up inside his soul by the binding collar, I knew that to be true, so I prayed he didn't speak Akari. It was one of the few languages I didn't speak fluently, only a handful of words. "My name is Hark. What is yours, dear one?"

The boy met my eyes for only a moment before he shifted his feet, as if to run. But then his eyes were narrowing and he was sniffing the air, confusion marring his brow.

—Asa— he replied with his hands, the fingers spelling out the letters, cocking his head and licking his lips. The sight had my prick twitching in my trousers, and I cursed the damn excitable appendage. The boy was clearly brutalized, and I was a disgusting man for the way my body was trying to react to him. I'd never pretended to be a moral, or even a good man, but not being a complete monster was something I strove for. —My name... is Asa.—

I'd learned Common Sign Language years before because it was a language spoken by many slaves. There were plenty of masters who didn't like their slaves to talk or gossip about them, or who just thought a slave's voice was pointless, so their vocal chords were cut. This man, then, must be a slave, though I knew slavery was outlawed in this part of the world and had been for years.

"I can help you, dear Asa. I can free your cat. Would you like that?"

His nod was immediate, and within a breath the collar was clanking to the earth at his bare feet. He stared down at it, as if horrified and shocked all at once. Then he was glancing back up at me, moving closer, his nostrils flaring with heaving breaths of my scent.

—What are you, Hark?— he asked, his fingers shaking with his excitement at the release of his beast.

"I'm a spirit witch and, I suspect, your mate," I replied, shuddering as the young man moved so close to me we shared the same body warmth. And then his mouth and nose were pressed against my neck as he took my scent inside his body.

There is one missing, he thought as his lips and teeth brushed against the sensitive skin below my ear. I heard the thought, carried loud and clear across our bond, made more tangible, nearly a physical link, by my magic.

"Yes," I nearly moaned at the feel of him against me.

We have a third.

"Yes."

We will find them, but not for... a time. They are not yet ready.

"Yes."

He pulled away and looked into my eyes in wonder at my replies to his silent thoughts. Then, he grew serious and bit his lip.

—My mate,— he signed. —You are powerful, and your magic is great, is it not? Will you avenge me?—

I growled and pulled away, brushing my thumb down the young man's cheek, rubbing at the smears of kohl where tears or sweat, or both, had carried it from his eyes to streak down his face.

The sounds of men on horses came nearer and I glared towards the sound before turning back to my new mate. My strong, broken, hurting and anguished mate.

With my fingers on his skin, I allowed myself to see the last few hours he had endured at the hands of evil men.

Flashes of being dressed up in pretty, sheer, women's clothes, forced to dance and entertain a hunting party of noblemen, a thing he was used to in his years as a sex slave to a local lord. Though the practice of slavery in this empire had been outlawed for over a decade, my Asa had never been freed, being seen as less than human, because of the beast in his soul. Flashes of rape after rape, the nobles taking turns violating his body as he screamed with pain and begged them and the gods for mercy.

Then finally, their laughter as they made him run, as they decided he would be their final entertainment. For what was more enjoyable to hunt than a man? What more dangerous than a man who shared his soul with a wild beast? What better sport than a wild mage, for a challenging hunt?

I let my fingers drift down, rubbing at a dried flake of a rapist's cum on my mate's neck before meeting his eyes. Behind him, the sounds of the men on horseback came clearer, their hounds bugling as they neared the source of the scent they hunted.

"You should understand, dear Asa, I am not a good man. I am not a merciful man. I have lived a long time, killed many, innocent or not, I cared not. I will admit to you I even enslaved some, working with men who made slaves out of the free.

"For all this, these men will not die well. But you are mine now, and I protect what is mine. I will end them, and I will not stop until you have been properly avenged. Do you accept this?"

—Yes,— he answered without a hint of hesitation. —I accept your claim and your vengeance. I see the darkness in your soul, I smell it, and I accept it. Use it to make them hurt, as retribution for the hurts they have bestowed upon me for so long.—

"As you wish, dear Asa."