by Ophelia Bell
The small distraction did little to quell his distress over his encounter with Aurum. Why had he wanted to hurt her so much? They were both trapped in Fate’s cruel web. It wasn’t Aurum’s fault Calder had deserted her any more than it was Nicholas’s fault he’d fallen in love with the only person to show him true kindness for two centuries. Reminding himself of this didn’t make it easier, though.
He filled the basin with scalding water and went to town on the beard. Within moments, his face was bare and clean. Then he inspected the mess Aurum had made of his hair. It wasn’t too bad, really. She’d at least gotten it even, although it was a little longer than he’d wished for. He wanted it gone … a fresh slate for his body and his mind now that he was free. But he wasn’t about to shave the rest of his body hair off, and at least the hair on his head wasn’t hanging in his eyes anymore.
He set the razor down and splashed clean water on his face, then stood staring at the stranger in the mirror.
In his mind’s eye, he could see Calder’s dark features behind him—the straight black hair and sea-blue eyes set in his dark olive toned skin. “Takes a century off in a day,” he could imagine Calder saying. “You remind me of the first day we were together.”
Nicholas closed his eyes, remembering that very day vividly. Or the parts where he was coherent, at least. He’d been barely eighteen and had no idea that anything was wrong with his life up until that point. His captors were merely his caretakers. His guardian—the Ultiori leader most of them called Sayid—was a strong, commanding man with an oddly shifting mood who was mostly fair with Nicholas, if not overtly kind. Nicholas had never been beaten, and he was always well-fed and safe, at least until he’d hit his first pheronesis.
Life in the clutches of the Ultiori was the only life he’d known. But they had no idea how to deal with an ursa male going through puberty any more than Nicholas knew what the fuck was happening to him.
About 182 years earlier …
The agony came in waves again, just like it had the week before. Nicholas rolled over in his bed, clutching his erection. He needed release but orgasms had stopped working to ease the pain about a week ago. Shifting to his true form helped, but his refractory period was practically nonexistent now, and he could only shift when his body wasn’t screaming.
He rose and stumbled to the locked door of his cell, fumbling for the lever that would ring the bell and alert the guards to his distress.
As a tsunami of pain crashed over him once more, he roared and slid to the ground, whimpering. With one hand still upraised, he continued to smack at the lever.
A shadow passed across the small metal grate in the floor that separated his cell from the adjoining one.
“Nicholas, what’s wrong?”
“It hurts, Calder. What do I do? Am I dying? I think I’m dying.”
“It’s your pheronesis. Remember your lessons from last month about your kind’s fertility cycles? Tell me again what you learned.”
Nicholas groaned and cursed. He wasn’t in the mood for a test right now. His balls hurt too much to think straight. “Some fucking thing about estrous, right? No … that’s the females. Fuck, Calder, I don’t remember!”
In his ever patient tone, the other man said, “Pheronesis is the ursa male equivalent to the female estrous. You know this, Nick. What age is the onset?”
Nicholas took a deep breath, still cupping his erection and trying to drag the knowledge out of his pain-addled mind. “Onset is late teens, early twenties. Frequency is every fucking day, apparently.”
“Nick …” Calder admonished.
Gritting his teeth through the throbbing that filled his entire body now, he said, “Female frequency is every four years. Male is every … fuck! … week at the outset … then … extending to monthly through maturity. I’ve gotta deal with this bullshit every fucking month? Why couldn’t I have been a female? I can’t, Calder … I’ll just stay in my true form after this. It’s easier to deal with that way.”
“That’s not the way it works,” Calder said. “For an ursa male, fertility is everything. You have to get through this. It’ll pass. Then eventually a female will choose you and mark you and you’ll never have to worry again.”
“What female, you asshole? Will I ever even see another ursa? And what the fuck do I do until that mythological female picks me? What was it like for you?”
Even the sound of Calder’s deep voice helped calm him, though the agonizing ache never really went away. He sat naked on the cold stone floor, stroking himself while the other man talked.
“My kind goes through a similar ordeal when we come of age. We have to do our first melding at your age before we are considered adults.”
“What’s that like? Is it like fucking?”
“It’s more than that. I mean, we have intercourse …”
“You fuck,” Nicholas said. “Don’t mince words when I’m about to die.”
Calder chuckled softly. “Fine. We fuck. We’re horny adolescents who can’t keep our hands off each other. When we come of age, they break us into quads—two satyrs and two nymphs—and we take turns with each other or we go all in and fuck our little nymphaea brains out. But before we have inter … before we fuck for the first time, our mentors tell how to properly meld. The right way is to taste each other’s essences when we first orgasm, and then we meld our consciousness with a partner the next time around.”
“You were my age?” Nicholas asked, his eyes closed. The throbbing ache in his body was no more than background noise but his hand still felt good around his cock, so he kept up the light, squeezing strokes even though he was well past the ability to orgasm.
“I was about your age, yes. A little older. Nymphaea go through their transition to adulthood in their twenties.”
“What was it like? Did you fuck all three of the others?”
“All three, and then many others in the years that followed. It was good. It always is for us, but the first time … as nice as it is, it doesn’t compare to when you find your mate.”
Nicholas opened his eyes and stared down at the patch of light coming through the grate. He thought he could see the outline of Calder’s hand right there, barely inches beyond the steel bars.
“What was it like that time? Being with your mate, I mean.” His throat felt tight, like it didn’t want him to ask the question, but he couldn’t help himself.
“I don’t know,” Calder said softly. “I haven’t met her yet.”
Nicholas swallowed. “Then how do you know it’s better?”
“The Diviner’s link to the River showed me who she is. Fate has chosen her for me already … I know it will be better because she’s a dragon.”
Calder kept talking, but Nicholas didn’t hear. Another painful wave rushed through him like hot lava had flooded his veins. He curled into a ball, crying out. The world around him swam, the edges of his vision tinged black while the very center was a bright, hot spike of pain that pulsed out through his extremities.
He begged for death in earnest because he couldn’t imagine finding relief any other way.
Consciousness flickered in and out for an eternity… pain, followed by nothing, followed by yet more pain. He was dimly aware, at some point, of two pairs of strong arms lifting him and carrying him into a torch-lit corridor. Another door creaked open, and his bare feet dragged across the cold stone floor until he was laid down again on a warm, straw-filled mattress.
He curled into himself, moaning and wishing yet again for death.
“Nicholas, it will be all right.” Calder’s voice, closer now, broke through the pain just enough for Nicholas to shed a tear.
“Please make it stop,” he begged.
Somewhere in the room he heard water pouring, followed by soft chanting, then a crackling sound that caused all the hairs on his body to stand on end.
Then a cool, damp cloth was pressed to his forehead and Calder’s gentle grip on his arm urged him to turn onto his back.
“I’m going to help you now. Lie still.”
Nicholas let out a groan as Calder ran the cloth over his heated skin. The relief was only superficial and the throbbing soon returned, but it still felt good to be touched.
Each nub of the roughly textured cloth hit every nerve of his stomach, his body growing hotter rather than cooler as Calder traveled south.
“Hurts …” he groaned, unable to keep his body from twitching.
“It will stop soon. I’m going to touch you skin-to-skin. When I do, it will feel different.”
The light press of Calder’s palm to his forehead sent a jolt of cool relief through Nicholas’s body. He opened his eyes and met the smiling gaze of a face he’d never seen before. Large, blue eyes peered down at him, the irises swirling in a mesmerizing pattern. Straight, black hair hung down long over strong, tanned shoulders.
“Thanks, that’s … ah, fuck.” The telltale tingle of heat in his balls flared again. Nicholas braced himself for a fresh wave of pain.
“Shh. Just breathe and let me take care of you.” Calder moved his hands down, cupping Nicholas’s jaw and tracing the contour of his chin. The cool touch moved lower, over his bare chest, down his abdomen. His belly twitched from the ticklish sensation, but when Calder moved lower, Nicholas froze.
“Wh-what are you doing?” Nicholas asked, staring down at Calder’s hand where it lay across his upper thigh, the other man’s thumb lightly stroking the taut skin of Nicholas’s aching erection.
“They shouldn’t have forced you to wait this long, Nicholas. During your lessons, I left out the part about how ursa males need a partner from puberty on … another male to help them through the pheronesis. They don’t have another ursa male to help you here, and you can’t be with a female. I wouldn’t tell them this because they would use it to their advantage, but young ursa males are far more fertile than they know. I told them if you didn’t get help with your state, you would become infertile and would no longer be any use to them. Nikhil would rather not have an excuse to have to dispose of you.”
“Would I become infertile?” Nicholas asked, though his head buzzed with curious arousal now from the other man’s touch.
“I don’t know. It’s possible the build-up of raw energy you’re experiencing could break you … You would probably die first, though, and our captors care more about your fertility than they care about your life.”
“I don’t want to die,” Nicholas said.
“You won’t, not if I can help it. But this is not going to be an easy process. You’ve gone too long already without true release. I need to meld with you to take some of the pressure off. To do that, I need to take in your essence.”
Nicholas had no idea what that entailed. It was something Calder had only just mentioned … Had it been tonight, or was it ages ago? So far the lessons the satyr had given him through the little grate hadn’t even come close to discussions of any of the reproductive rituals of the higher races.
Now he was in the same room with the man who had been his only friend for his entire life so far. He gazed up at Calder in adoration. He had to be the most beautiful creature, with his silky blue-black hair and sea-blue eyes. His features were sleek and smooth, his chest sculpted and hairless. Calder’s muscles were lithe and sinewy, unlike Nicholas’s huge, bulky muscles that bulged in weird places and never quite fit right in the clothes they gave him. As a result, he preferred to stay naked.
Nicholas’s hips tilted up, involuntarily seeking out the gentle contact. Somehow it was nothing like how it felt when he touched himself. Calder’s thumb grazed the side of his cock again, then came to rest at the base, warm against the skin there. He looked at Nicholas with dark eyebrows raised.
“Please don’t stop,” Nicholas hurriedly said. “I’ll do whatever you think I should do if it’ll make it stop hurting.” In truth, the very contact with Calder had eased the discomfort significantly. He could at least see straight now, without the blinding throb behind his eyes and deep in his groin. Reluctance flickered in Calder’s gaze, and for some reason that hurt in a place that had nothing to do with his cock.
Calder nodded and shifted slightly on the edge of the narrow prison cot. With the hand he’d used to caress Nicholas, he cupped his balls, and with his other hand gripped the hard, aching length.
“Ahh, fuck,” Nicholas gasped, clutching at the rough woolen blanket beneath him and throwing his head back. He thrust his hips up into Calder’s fist, bent his knees, and spread his legs wider, digging his heels into the bed.
Calder watched him intently, never letting up the steady, deliriously mind-altering stroking. Nicholas’s pleasure built, and something changed in Calder’s gaze. His mouth opened slightly and his tongue darted out, leaving a glistening sheen on the surface of his lips. He swallowed and closed his eyes, as if bracing himself for something, but when he opened them Nicholas saw pure heat and hunger there.
Then Calder moved, as fluidly as a cat, settling himself on the bed between Nicholas’s legs. He bent and took the tip of Nicholas’s cock in between his lips and sucked him deep.
Nicholas let out a harsh yell and arched his back. His hands shot down to grip Calder’s head, but the other man grabbed them and pushed them away, pinning them at Nicholas’s sides while he slipped his mouth down the length of his cock.
Needing to hold onto something, Nicholas twined his fingers with Calder’s and gave into the pleasure, the release, and the sudden, perfect unburdening that followed. His cock kicked hard, his balls tightening before he exploded. He roared so loud bits of plaster came dislodged from the walls around them and hit the floor, birthing plumes of dust.
His fingers still tangled with Calder’s, he finally relaxed, enjoying the way his entire body thrummed with strange energy, but most of all enjoying the absolute lack of pain or discomfort.
Calder’s head still bobbed slowly over his hips, the warm, wet softness of his tongue teasing little tremors from Nicholas for a moment. Then he pulled back until his lips grazed over the thick tip, gave his head a small lick, and sat back on his heels.
“Feel better?” he asked. His gaze lingered on Nicholas’s wet cock, like he’d like to keep sucking it.
Nicholas closed his eyes and bit the inside of his lip, too overwhelmed with both confusion and gratitude to make sense of what had just happened. The heat that pulsed in his cheeks now wasn’t from his pheronesis—he knew that much. All he knew of sex thus far in his life came from the snippets of books Naaz and Sterlyn and Nikhil had given him over the years after he’d grown bored with the children’s books he’d taught himself to read with.
Calder had taught him to read, he amended. Most of the lessons had occurred through their tiny grate, where there was just enough room for them to see a page in a book, but not enough to see each other. Calder had taught him everything, and most of it Nicholas had been commanded to solemnly swear never to tell their captors.
In none of those books had there ever been any suggestion of an act like what had just occurred. Calder had only ever given him the caveat that those stories were about humans. That among humans, it was most common for men to only pair with women, and it was strictly taboo for any other pairing to occur. But all he’d said about their own races was, “It’s more complicated with our kind.”
If this was what he’d meant by “more complicated,” he liked it.
Emboldened by that thought, he released a long breath and opened his eyes, smiling up at his friend. “That was amazing. What …” He stopped short when he saw the dark look in Calder’s eyes and the way his friend’s gaze darted to the door as if he wanted to escape—or call the guards to take Nicholas back to his cell. He wasn’t sure which.
He sat up, his heart racing. He wasn’t ready to leave yet, not so soon. “Was that it? I thought you said we had to meld or something for you to help me. Why do you look like that? Are the guards coming or something? I don’t hear them.”
Calder turned back and regarded him silently for a moment,
a deep frown etched on his face. He seemed to come to some decision and the expression turned resigned.
“No, the guards aren’t coming and they won’t for a few more days. Your first pheronesis needs more than just a single round of release before you’re out of danger. I can’t let them lock you up alone again so soon, but they can’t know how your cycle really works. I’ve placed a temporal bubble around my cell … time is moving at a different pace outside than it is inside. By the end of a week together in here with me, only a few hours will have passed out there.”
Nicholas stared at him, uncertain whether the strained expression on Calder’s face was good or bad. He had a sinking feeling it wasn’t good. “Why do you look so unhappy about it? A minute ago I could’ve sworn you wanted to … to do what you did.”
Calder grimaced and Nicholas’s throat tightened. The ache that grew in his chest was decidedly not related to his stupid cycle, but at the moment, he wished it was his balls that ached instead of his goddamn heart.
“I’m not unhappy about it, Nick. Your pain needed to be eased and you weren’t capable of handling it alone. Ursa males rely on each other this way until they are chosen by a mate, and many of them long after.”
“But you aren’t like me,” Nicholas spat. “And you hate that you’re the only one here who knows what to do, don’t you? Do you wish I was female? Or do you wish I just wasn’t some hideous, hairy bear-thing? Fuck you, Calder.” He launched himself off the bed and banged his fists against the steel door as hard as he could, yelling out for the guards to come let him out.
Calder protested but Nicholas ignored him, shouting louder and pounding harder to drown out the other man’s voice.
“Stop it, Nick!” Calder bellowed, his mouth right against Nicholas’s ear. Calder grabbed both his hands and held them still. His fists clenched and throbbed from beating them against the hard steel door. “I don’t wish you were different … and I definitely don’t think you’re hideous.” His heat warmed Nicholas from behind, his breath tickling against his neck. “And for the record, I am honored to be the one to help you through this rite of passage. Will you settle down and talk to me?”
