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

25- Keliant

SAMI—

My mate wants me! I wanted to shout it from the tops of the trees, to tell anyone within hearing distance, random strangers I passed, that stupid wolf with his annoyingly kind eyes. I wanted to tell everyone that Robert was mine.

He wasn't embarrassed of me, and he wanted me. He had given me a home, and I had almost lost it. I had almost walked away from my mate, who was only trying to build me a den and provide for me, like a good mate should. And I didn't understand, because humans were confusing and they had to live in a separate place if they had a mate, and no one told me that. No one told me mates live in a different place from people who didn't have mates, and I almost lost my Robert because I didn't understand.

I spent the whole of the next few days practically floating as I walked, sore and sated and oh, so happy, but I was slammed back to the dirt when my mate came to find me when the sun was highest in the sky when we'd only been in our new den for less than a full week's time.

When Robert found me, I was in the stables with Mistress Silvia, where she was teaching me about how to ensure Honeysuckle and Horse stayed healthy and strong post-birth. How to measure Horse's growth and check her teeth and tongue and even her manure for sickness.

"Sami!" Robert called. I turned, excited and ready to tell Robert all about the babies that would be born to the dogs in the kennels within the fortnight. We'd just got done visiting them, so my excitement was still high about the big, pregnant bitches, but the look on his face had me freezing. Behind my mate, men began to pour into the stables, pulling out their tack and saddles and beginning to lead their horses from their stalls

Each of the men wore armor and had swords and bows and arrows tied to their bodies, and even more tied to the saddles of the horses.

My Robert wore armor. My Robert was covered in various battle weapons. My Robert looked grim and his eyes were just a little dark. Very serious and stern.

My Robert wore armor.

Gods, no, my Robert wore armor.

Armor like men donned when they went to battle. Like they wore when they were going to fight and bleed and maybe die.

Ravin, no, I begged silently.

"There's been some kind of violent uprising in Keliant, to our south. Emperor Riece has asked Prince Lhiam to send men to aid the governor there, as we're the closest military force."

"Will it be dangerous, mate?" I asked, terror climbing up my throat as I grabbed my mate's hand. Behind him, I saw Prince Lhiam saddling his own horse with a very distressed wolf by his side. If he'd had his tail shifted, it would have been tucked between his legs. Captains Nibley and Dasan also saddled their huge war stallions, and their presence with my mate was a small comfort. I had seen the fearsome men fight once before, and knew them to be valiant and terrifying foes for those whom they battled. I was sure my mate was the same. I was proud of the stories Dasan and Nibley had told me of my Robert's battles, but not now. Not now that he was my mate and I needed him. I needed him, and he couldn't leave me. He couldn't.

"We don't have a lot of information, Sami," Robert replied, motioning for me to follow as he walked to his own stallion, saddling him up as he spoke to me. "We hope it will be an easy negotiation with the commoners who have risen up, but only one person has managed to get out, and his reports were unreliable."

"Why unreliable?"

"He was hysterical, said a spirit witch and his giant black cat familiar were killing everyone with noble blood in the castle," Prince Lhiam cut in, the wolf clinging to his arm with wide, wet eyes. "But spirit witches have been extinct for centuries, at least in this part of the world. I'm sure it's just some magician with tricks, or terror making the man see things, but we're going in nearly blind."

"Let me go with you," I pleaded, and Robert stiffened, his eyes flashing with impatient anger. He grabbed my arm and dragged me away, towards the door to the tack room.

"Sami, it would be immensely unprofessional of me to bring my, ah, my man with me. I'll be fine, I'll be safe, and this is my job. Look, Edon is staying too, to look after his and Lhiam's son and watch over the castle. Why don't you stay with him, and we'll be back before you even realize we're gone?"

"Why can't I—"

"— Sami," my mate cut in, his hands tightening around my upper arms almost painfully. "Stay here. This is my job. Let me do my job, and you do yours. It's not appropriate or right for you to come with me. You're not a soldier; you're a civilian. Stay here."

His kiss was firm but sweet, and I whimpered against his mouth until he let me go, and then he and the other men— around 50 total— were gone, and I was left in the dust of their horses' hooves.

ROBERT—

We reached Keliant within two hours. It was technically in Ipsin, but it was on the border between Ipsin and Teren, and closer to Teren Keep than Ipsin Keep, which was why the Emperor sent for Lhiam's men rather than Prince Edgar's. Probably also because Edgar's forces had suffered as much as his people had in these last few years. Word of his aging mind and lack of heir had been the talk of the rumor mills for the last year or so as he retreated more and more into his home and left his kingdom to rot. Dasan, Nibley, and I had a bet going how much longer the Emperor would allow the prince to rule his kingdom before he took it and passed it to someone younger and saner.

We smelled the bodies before we spotted them, blowing in a morbid kind of dance from the trees, lining the path to Keliant Castle's gate. The wall around the castle had fallen into rubble as if from some kind of explosion, and the scent of blood and rot was thick in the air.

"Oh gods," Prince Lhiam muttered from just in front of me. I looked to what had caught his gaze, and my entire body seized in horror and fear. There were bodies hung up from the trees, set up as if they were ushers pointing the way to a ball. They were hanging by their necks along the path, some with their intestines and other insides hanging out of their bodies, their hands clutching them as if to put them back inside their bellies. They had been blowing in the light wind just a moment before. Now, though, they were eerily, unnaturally still.

Though I would have sworn they had hung limply only seconds before, their heads lolling on their chests or shoulders, each one now had their heads turned to stare us down. Agony lit in each of their eyes, but none spoke a word.

"My gods," Nibley muttered, his eyes widening in horror as Dasan reached out and they gripped each other's hands, silently offering each other comfort. They hadn't even had to look at each other; the move had been smooth, practiced, as they quietly drew strength from the other.

"They're still alive," Dasan finished for Nibley, just a bit of terror lacing his voice.

There were at least a dozen men, all with chests rising and falling as if in labored breaths, mouths wide in screams of agony, bodies twisted in various forms of torture. All hanging by their swollen, sometimes broken, necks. All frozen in morbid, rictus horror.

"They should be dead," I hissed, my entire body shaking as fear and dread settled on my shoulders like a blanket. An evil, horrible, vicious blanket. "How...?"

"Cut them down!" Prince Lhiam ordered, but just as he moved to dismount, Dasan yanked the prince's arm back and shook his head, then jerked it to the castle. Standing in the rubble of the castle's walls, an eerily, horribly familiar man stood, a black hood and cloak covering him from view. I couldn't even pinpoint how I recognized him, but there was something about just the way he stood that had familiar warning bells ringing in my mind.

"Touch them and you'll join them," the man called, his voice gruff and filled with a darkness that made me flinch.

Somehow, though I could barely see the man, with his voice I recognized him as the witch who worked for the slaver so many years ago. The one that warned me to send the girl-slave the opposite way to where he would lead his master. The witch who had practically oozed evil all those years ago now stood among the rubble of a town he had decimated, like a doomsday prophecy come to fruition.

At his feet, sitting on its haunches and licking a bloody claw, was a panther with eyes that shone with a broken kind of hatred that sent shivers of dread down my spine.

*****Don't hate me too much for this cliffhanger 🙈🙈*****