Faith Hunter - Host

His hand found my breast, stroking it into a tight point. Need raked its claws through me and I pulled at his jeans, whispering, “More. Now. Now!”

Thadd laughed, a low thrum of sound against me, his breath rapid as he worked the hooks, buttons, and Velcro straps of the dobok. I tore at his jeans, the buttonholes, the blasted buttonholes, too tight.

A polite knocking sounded.

Thadd grunted. The knock came again, louder.

“Thadd?” It was Lucas.

“Son of a seraph,” Thadd grated, swearing.

“You are a son of a seraph,” I said, giggling senselessly. “Which means you just swore by yourself.”

Thadd chuckled with me, raising his weight off, to brace on his locked arms, hands to either side of my face. “That’s your husband at my door,” he said. “My cousin. And his timing either sucks or is as lucky as the plague survivors. Either way, I hate his guts.”

“Ex-husband,” I said as he shifted to the left, scrabbling in the sheets, spotting the stone above my shoulder, nested in a pool of pillows. I realized what he intended and said, “No!”

“Yes. This may hurt.” Thadd picked up the seraph stone.

It did. Heat whipped from me. I cramped brutally, stomach muscles contracting, ovaries in a spasm as the hormonal impulse to ovulate stopped in an instant. I rolled from beneath him, curling into a ball, holding myself tight. “Tears of Taharial,” I whispered, knowing it was foolish to curse so close to the Trine, but not able to stop myself.

Thadd rotated in the sheets, pulling the top one to the floor as he stood. He bent over and supported himself on his knees, breathing slowly, his thigh muscles rippling beneath the denim fabric, his wings half-spread, plumage quivering.

The knocking came again, this time banging. Lucas had heard me. “Thorn! Open up!”

“Did you lock the door when you came in?” Thadd asked, his voice rough. He looked at me. “How’d you get in anyway?”

I sat up and rearranged my clothes, pulling the dobok in place. Thadd had moved everything around, finding my breast through a rent in the padded cloth. “I stole a key at the front desk. And no. He can get in any time he—”

The door slammed open, Lucas standing in the opening, his face twisted in righteous anger. He took in the tableau, me on the bed, fully clothed, even my boots still on. Yet, the bed was rumpled, sheets on the floor, and my hair was snarled in what the kind might call disarray, the way hair looked after a riotous romping. Thadd was standing, his shirt open, jeans partially unbuttoned, feet bare, his wings half-spread. Sweet Hail Mary. His wings were spread.

Behind Lucas, Eli appeared. His mouth opened in shock and he said, “Holy crap. He’s a kylen.”

We looked like something out of a decadent television series, one of the Pre-Ap shows they called soaps. Three men, only one of them fully human, and the woman they all claimed they wanted. Well, sort of.

Had Lucas followed me? How guilty and stupid would I feel if I asked? Better to ignore it. If I hadn’t been in so much pain from the interrupted heat, I might have laughed. As it was, I groaned in misery and pushed to my feet. I hadn’t felt this bad since the fight on the Trine.

I looked from Lucas and Eli to Thadd, to the stone in his hand, and chose my battles by picking the smallest and easiest—and the one that made me the most angry. The mage stone. “That was just pure mean,” I said.

“It’s not like I’m enjoying it either,” Thadd said, his voice tense with pain. “Between the stone and your men friends, I may not survive this.” Still holding himself rigid, he backed up as Lucas and Eli crowded in. “But if I live through it, you can beat me up.”

“Count on it,” I said.

I stalked out of the old hotel into the late afternoon light and turned uphill, trudging toward Upper Street, still adjusting the dobok, which had gotten turned on the bias against my skin. My lips were bruised, my cloak was loose over my shoulders and dragging on one side, and my hair was half up in a queue, half straggling down my back. My thoughts and feelings were just as snarled and tangled.

I was unable to separate the individual strands of thwarted desire, irritation with the three men still arguing in Thadd’s hotel room, logical interpretation of consulate protocol and diplomatic law, prophecy and predictions, and blasphemy. My life was a shambles. I wanted three men and could have no sort of normal life with any of them. If I chose Thadd, I’d have litter after litter of fourth-generation kylen who would probably be taken from me the day they were born and raised in Realms of Light. I’d stay in heat year-round, which would feel great, but turn me into a sex and baby-making machine.

With Eli, I’d dance a lot and have kinky sex, making half-breed babies, the physically anomalous, sterile, second unforeseen, like Audric. Bred for battle, perpetually unhappy, and probably ticked off at me for birthing them. I’d have a litter every time a seraph came near.

And if I chose Lucas, he’d cheat on me before the year was out, breaking my heart again. A small voice whispered to me that I couldn’t get my heart broken if I didn’t care for him. I ignored it. What did I know?

I had a sudden vision of Thadd tossing the seraph stone onto the mattress. Within easy reach. Then he tossed me up beside it. “Stones and blood,” I hissed below my breath. The son of a seraph had experimented on me. He had set up the heat, tested it with a full-body clinch, and then used the stone to make sure rut could be shut off at almost any stage. It had been a test. A game.

I wouldn’t just beat him up. I’d kick him so hard he’d be singing soprano for a year.

I stomped onto Upper Street and passed Waldroup’s Furniture Store, seeing my ridiculous reflection in the big windows. Smoothing my hair, I slowed, adjusted my cloak, and forced my steps into a normal walking pattern as I reined in the anger. In the window, beyond my image, was a desk and chair carved in rococo, an ornate Pre-Ap style.

Even through my pique, I liked the set. If I survived the next week, I would need to furnish the Battle Station Consulate /Realm of Light. The thought of something so mundane and normal as decorating brought tears to my eyes. I had lost the opportunity for anything in my life to be normal. Of my quiet, introspective life, working stone, making jewelry, having friends who depended on me to get out of bed each day and show up for work in a store, there was little left. Next to nothing, in fact. Nothing except the half-baked plan I had devised to keep us alive.

I stopped and moved closer to the window, splaying my hand open on the glass, not really seeing the rest of the furniture in the showroom. No matter what happened with my plan, it would result in suffering. My breath fogged the window and froze, creating a glazed circle, spreading with each exhale.

It was getting colder. The puffs of white breath were denser. Snow was coming. A lot of it.

I turned to the street, pulling my cloak tight around me, and surveyed the place I had called home for a decade. It bore only marginal resemblance to the Mineral City of my memory, burned, damaged, its populace decreased by war and Darkness. There were few people out and about. Only one snow-el-mobile churning along the street. Two horses and riders moved at a fast clip. Businesses were closed. Blood splashed the dirty snow. The sigil beneath the ice glowed softly in my mage-sight. A cloud of smoke raced between the buildings, carrying the scent of burned wood and the residual, rank smell of cremated spawn. Above the town, heavy clouds gathered on the western mountains, presaging a blizzard.

A cold breeze was coming off the Trine, its three peaks wreathed in mist and cloud, white caps on the summits visible occasionally through thinning gaps. To mage-sight, the left peak appeared yellow, shot through with black, the air itself hazy with Dark energies.