Jory Strong - Elven Surrender

None of that matters now, Silver told her herself as she reached the bar area. She wasn’t completely her mother’s daughter when it came to men. They weren’t an endless strand of polished gems to her, each as beautiful and interesting as the last—or the next. She might dream about having two men in her marriage bed—cocooning her in love and security—but she would find happiness with one rather than find loneliness in variety.

Theirs was a monogamous society. The marriage vows, once said, were permanent and binding to both parties. And given the need to strengthen the bloodlines, few witches or warlocks married for love though with the right pairing, it almost always took root and flourished as they built a life together.

Despite the fact she wasn’t as strong as some of the other blood witches, more than one warlock had made it clear he would welcome a chance to join his future with hers. They were men she could come to love. But she hungered—not just for tenderness but for a dominant lover who made her ache, who possessed her completely even as he protected and loved her.

Heat coursed through her veins thinking about it. Her clit stood erect and her cunt lips were swollen, wet, waiting for a lover’s mouth, a lover’s tongue. She dug the fingernails of her left hand into her palm and reminded herself that she still wasn’t free to have what she wanted most—not yet. Not until the coven met and the Rite was performed.

“What can I get you?” the bartended asked.

Silver turned to look at him. Fey. He was new to her but she still asked, “I’m looking for my cousin, Joelle. Have you seen her?”

“She an elf?”

His question startled her. The fey should know she wasn’t elf even if he couldn’t see the tips of her ears.

He pointed in the direction she’d just come from. “Saw five or six of them over there.”

Silver opened her mouth to correct him but gasped instead as pain lanced through her left palm. It burned so sharp and deep that tears sprang to the corner of her eyes.

Dread filled her. It chased the breath from her lungs and made her heart pound wildly. She stared down at her fist, willed herself to open her clenched hand.

The buzzing in her ears drowned out the sounds around her. The grayness at the edge of her vision formed a tunnel, blocking out everything but the sight of her hand. Slowly, one by one, her fingers uncurled to reveal The Mark .

Wraith In Shadows watched as his half brother, Tynan Carved From Stone, stepped from the thick forest and into the light-and-dark pattern of the moonlit field. So he came—alone. He hadn’t been sure Tynan would, but he’d hoped.

Years of intrigue and politics played out by others had all come down to this moment. They’d been raised as enemies, groomed to claim their father’s position. They could pass for twins but they knew each other only through rumor and distant regard.

It was on the basis of those rumors that Wraith had sent a message to Tynan, inviting him to meet, suggesting there was a way to keep their honor and yet avoid a fight to the death in order to claim their father’s position as Lord of the Southern Borderlands.

If one of them had been born before the other, the ascendancy would be clear. But whether truth or political fiction, their births were said to have occurred at the exact same time.

Elven law was clear and ruthless. When there was no absolute line of succession, those who would lead must be willing to fight to the death—either magically or physically. In their case, whether one of them elected not to fight or the victor granted the loser a stay of execution, those who’d spent years maneuvering for this moment would work to ensure that the one not claiming their father’s position didn’t live long enough to become a future threat.

If Tynan had been like their father, self-absorbed and pleasure-seeking, ruthless without the redemption of caring for the people under his stewardship above his own political and sexual agendas, then Wraith wouldn’t have proposed this meeting. He would have fought the man who was related to him by blood and only one of them would have left the battlefield alive. But he had reason to hope, reason to believe Tynan was honorable, driven to unite the various clans where their father seemed to delight in dividing them.

The earth could be capricious. It was capable of providing a wealth of abundance or harrowing depredation. The elves could be the same. These lands bordering on those invaded and settled by the humans had long been viewed as cursed and uncivilized.

Deep in the heart of elven territory the royal court was one of breathtaking splendor and gentility, of virgin forest and herds of winged horses. Fey creatures rarely bothered to hide themselves and unicorns were easily found.

Much of the magic on the southern, outer edge had leached away. Many claimed it was because of the humans.

Wraith suspected the true blame lay with the elves, and more specifically, at his dead father’s feet. But he also believed that if he and Tynan joined forces and worked together, they could free the borderlands from the disharmony gripping it.

Tynan studied the man who was his brother. They were of equal height, their raven-colored hair worn long and straight in the custom of their race. Almond-shaped eyes were outlined with a thin line of black, as though The Mother had wanted to draw further attention to the beauty she’d bestowed on her elf creations.

They looked alike except for the color of their eyes. Wraith’s were dark, like the forest at night or the shadows he could command, while his were the green of polished jade and moss.

He’d been curious and pleased by Wraith’s unexpected invitation to meet. Honor demanded they both step forward to claim their father’s title and position in order to undo some of the damage wrought during his reign. But the prospect of killing his half brother didn’t sit easily with Tynan and he’d hoped to find a way to compromise.

Tynan cursed himself for not searching for it earlier, for not anticipating their father’s unexpected and unnatural death. The answer was somewhere in the past, in another time, perhaps even in another elven territory. Then again, the outcome of his search probably would have been the same whenever he’d started looking for a solution in earnest.

He was no scholar. From the time he could walk his fascination had been stones, finding them, cutting and polishing them, offering them to the craftsmen who could fashion them into jewelry beautiful enough to sell to highborn nobles and members of the royal family.

As soon as he’d taken an interest in the scrolls documenting elven history and law, suspicion had fallen on him. He’d felt the surreptitious glances, would have laughed at the sudden onslaught of tasks requiring his attention if his heart hadn’t been heavy, weighed down by the knowledge his mother’s hand would be found in the scheming.

She was Earth Clan, but not the nurturing warmth of sun-kissed soil. She was barren tundra and hard ambition.

From his earliest moments of selfhood he’d pledged to be different than his parents. He’d fought not to let his mother’s plans for power etch themselves into him the way grooves formed from the continuous dripping of water on stone.

He’d turned away from offers of easy sex, had kept his heart shielded and his cock safely contained in his pants despite his desire for a wife and the fierce urge to fuck that had him waking morning after morning in twisted sheets with a seed-coated belly. It had gotten worse lately, his dreams remaining unfocused, the gray of storm clouds or barite, though the woman who writhed unseen against him was always the same.

Until he’d received Wraith’s message yesterday while in New Holyoak to trade the last of his stones, he’d never seen his dream lover. But this morning as he awakened with lava-hot semen rushing through his cock, he’d seen silver-colored eyes in a face so beautiful his heart cried with joy and pain.