Shifters After Dark Box Set: (6-Book Bundle)

by SM Reine

  She nodded, the exquisite facets of her eyes glittering in the firelight, nearly undoing me with their charms. I stilled the shuddering of my breath and bent to examine the hole the arrow had torn through her side. Only it seemed a mere blemish now, barely puckering the smooth perfection of the skin around it.

  “Does it hurt still?” I asked, carefully schooling my eyes from the delicious curves of her, and failing miserably.

  “A twinge only, nothing more.”

  “But you’re weak still.”

  “The arrow was iron-tipped, the bread milled, the torque hand-forged.”

  “Has anyone ever mentioned you have an annoying habit of not answering a question straight on?”

  “Was I unclear?” She seemed genuinely surprised.

  “Only about the arrow, bread and torque bits.”

  “You know so little of us. Understandable, of course. I wasn’t denigrating you. How could you know about a thing few men have ever seen? The head of the arrow was iron, a metal that can be lethal to the fae in large enough quantities or long enough exposure to it. It by itself is enough to debilitate. The flour in the bread you fed me was milled by mortal hands and mortal tools. That I ate it was enough to bind me to your world.”

  “We are warned as babes to not eat any food a faery offers,” I said, remembering tales of men who had disappeared into the land of faeries to never return.

  Brinn nodded. “The Old Magic works both ways. Had I had my wits about me, I never would have accepted anything but raw meat and bones from your hands.”

  “And the torque?” I prompted.

  “Layered gold over an iron core, yes?”

  “By its weight, I would say that’s right. But it’s an heirloom, wrought long years before I was born. You can sense the iron,” I guessed.

  “It is the hand-forged iron and the hammered gold that was the final lock to bind me to the ones who captured me.”

  “The torque keeps you weakened?”

  “Yes.”

  “And were I to remove it, you would no longer be bound?”

  She sighed. “Were it so simple. No. Releasing the bond requires far greater magic than the spells to bind.”

  “Like what?” I asked, adding quickly, “Were I of a mind to help you.”

  She hesitated. Long enough for me to suspect she was fabricating a lie.

  “I’m not entirely sure of the conduct of it. I’ve never known a fae be bound and then returned. We’ve sent men back into their world, but none I’ve seen myself. Herne will know. When he and The Hunt find me, he will release me.”

  “He knows you live?”

  “No. But he will.”

  “How?”

  She shrugged, and her breasts rippled alluringly with the motion. “We are fae.”

  Was she simply taking advantage of my ignorance? Or would The Hunt truly track her here? And if they came, what of Pel and me? Would we be hailed as her rescuers or reviled as those who’d bound her?

  Bound.

  I had no wish to have her cleaved to me because of some spell laid unwittingly upon her. “However I may help to free you, my lady, I am at your service.”

  Her expression softened and a look I took for regret flashed briefly by. So quickly gone it was, though, that I could not swear to what I saw. And what was there to regret? Surely she wished for freedom and our help to achieve it.

  “You are an honorable man,” though, was all she said.

  Yet I was certain there was much left hid behind her silence.

  For Pel’s sake and safety, I was determined to discover what it was.

  But the secret would have to wait.

  I returned to my bed and had only just fallen asleep when Pel’s cry pierced the night.

  14. Alain

  I was already halfway up, dagger in hand, when I realized it was one of Pel’s nightmares. With a deep sigh, I fell back onto my thin blanket.

  The danger wasn’t imminent. As soon as I realized that, my body betrayed me, sleep dragging at my limbs, weighting me to ground.

  Only a moment later, though, Pel began to thrash about, dream-caught. Fighting demons again, I thought, as I forced myself awake and slid the few feet between our blankets to pin him so he wouldn’t hurt himself.

  “Pel!” I shouted in my brother’s face, even knowing he couldn’t, wouldn’t, hear. More than anything, I shouted out of frustration, out of not being able to prevent my brother’s night-terrors nor control the situation when they surfaced. I could only ride them out with Pel and try to keep my brother safe.

  When Pel woke at last, arms swinging at his demons, we were both drenched in sweat. As usual, for a small time after he woke, Pel was completely unaware of where he was. Watching the now-familiar transformation back into the moment, I saw clearly the recognition as it flooded him and melted the confusion away. Always it terrified me to see my brother struggling back into the world, unwitting and wholly vulnerable. A butcher, an assassin, a warrior in the night had only to bide his time to catch Pel naked in mind as well as body. My brother was not just good with a sword—he was great. In his right senses there were few who could touch him. But it only took one unguarded moment, such as that small stretch of time between waking and awareness, and Pel could end up quite dead.

  At the edge of firelight, Brinn too had wakened. I caught the dazzle of her uncanny flame-lit eyes—a glow of emeralds in the dark—regarding us.

  Pel came to in the familiar circle of my arms. He allowed himself a moment to slump within their safety and their comfort before forcing his eyes open to the quiet of the camp.

  “It’s taking longer to wake you.” The concern heavy in my voice weighted it more than I intended.

  “At least I do still wake.” The pallid attempt at levity hung naked in the air between us.

  “Don’t make light of it.” Real fear tugged at me.

  Pel sighed. The old argument was as familiar as my arms about him. “What would you have me make of it? Jesses to leash me to ground? To make me afraid to leave my room or fall asleep at night? Father says—”

  “Pellam has never seen you like this! He would have thought twice about sending you into the hands of Dinas if he knew you this way.”

  “Pellam is a wise king. He didn’t send me to Dinas alone.” Pel shrugged from the comfort of my arms and stood, the signal clear. This conversation was done.

  Pel laid another branch on the fire to keep back the real beasts of the night. I had a moment of unreasonable panic when he left the circle of firelight to relieve himself. When he returned at last to his blanket, he scowled at me for being there still.

  Chastened, I crawled back to my own bed. “When did the nights grow so short?” I asked of the stars.

  “They’ll be shorter still a few weeks hence,” Pel pointed out, needlessly as he knew well I didn’t mean their actual length at all.

  “Go to sleep.”

  I waited till my brother’s breathing evened, then tried to follow my own order, giving up despite how tired my body was, how it craved much-needed rest. I rose and crossed to sit at the fire, only to find Brinn watching my every move.

  It only occurred to me then that perhaps she didn’t understand my brother’s special plight. That perhaps we had frightened her and she couldn’t sleep for it either.

  I had to remind myself she was fae not human. Perhaps her kind dreamed not. As though to a child, I explained, “He has sleep visions. Vivid though they are to him, the events unfold only in his mind. There are not real. They are not anything you have to fear.”

  Brinn’s emerald stare glinted with a wisdom deeper than any man possessed. “Do you truly not know just how wrong you are?” she asked.

  I started to smile—a dismissive expression usually reserved for Pel and his foolish ideas when he was but a boy and I, the older brother, knew all the answers.

  “You know nothing of the magic that ravishes him like salt in a furrow rots the land. Are you truly so deaf you cannot hear The Beast belling ton
ight? That’s what invades your brother’s dreams. The Beast is on the prowl.”

  I shivered at the word. How many times had Pel himself used it? How many times had I indulged him by echoing it, as I echoed it now? “Beast?” I strained my sadly mortal ears to catch even a faint murmur from the world of fae. “Your hound ears are sharper than mine,” I finally confessed.

  Her expression softened. I should have taken offense at the way she looked at me now, with the indulgence of a horsemaster schooling a colt to the rein. But the exquisite lure of her cheek and the soft beauty of her skin evoked a far different emotion.

  “The Questing Beast.”

  The patience in her voice was that reserved for fools who should know a thing but don’t. I should have been infuriated with her—I was a prince after all, not some stableboy—but there was Pel to consider.

  There was always Pel.

  She slitted her eyes at my rather vacuous expression, but if she thought my obtuseness was deliberate, she was wrong.

  “It’s part of the fae world,” Brinn said at last. “No reason perhaps you should know of it. Not if you didn’t inherit any of your brother’s gifts.”

  “But I heard The Hunt,” I protested. “At least, I think I did. Perhaps it was just the storm, though, and me wanting to hear the things Pel does.” Under the fae’s steady gaze I considered that. I did want to share my brother’s burden, that much was true. More importantly, I didn’t want him to be alone with it. And as I gave that thought, it occurred to me that with Brinn near, he was no longer alone.

  That thought frightened me more than I could credit. It was the world of fae I wanted to protect Pel from, yet here it was giving him the comfort of legitimacy that I could not. It wasn’t an idea I wished to consider for long. “What is this Beast?” I asked, and if Brinn thought the change in subject odd, the only sign she gave was a lift of her small but well-pronounced chin.

  “A manifestation, mostly. Strong emotion given shape and substance. It is part jealousy and anger, part futility and fear. Mostly it trolls the mortal lands for wretched souls. It feeds off hate and vengeance, and leaves behind darkness and depression.”

  “Then it has no physical being?”

  “It manifests in many forms. Absurd shapes at times. Bits of creatures out of legend. Fae bits. Parts from exotic animals that roam the deepest, darkest lands.”

  “Why here?” Why where it could torment Pel, I mainly meant.

  The lovely, seductive creature that was Brinn understood with an ease that stopped my breath. “You are more blind with love for your brother than any of my kind could know. He is bound in fate and magic that you cannot—will not—see. The Beast is here because the fae are here. And the fae are here—”

  She caught herself then with a startled silence, as though on the verge of divulging a great secret she was not allowed to share. And that bit of information that, till tonight, I’d never concerned myself with knowing became the focus of my attention. “They’re here…” I prompted.

  She sighed, as though the secret were not so great after all. “We’re here to support the new-made king.”

  “Arthur? But why?”

  “Because the fae need him. You need him. All of Britain needs him.”

  “But why him? What’s so special about some lackey boy who would pretend to be king?”

  “You may as well ask what’s so special about your brother. He and Arthur share a past, a fate and a future.”

  That was truth speaking—certainty and knowledge not to be denied. I recognized it for what it was, but—

  “Please, enlighten me. I don’t understand.” If there were some secret to be had, I would happily beg it from her, for Pel. “Tell me—what fate, what future?”

  She turned that slow, patient smile on me again, only this time it infuriated me. “Until you recognize it is the past that should concern you most in this, you will never understand.”

  She dismissed me to my bed then with a simple wave of her elegant hand.

  And like a lessoned schoolboy, I obeyed.

  15. Alain

  Three days passed while Brinn healed and grew stronger on rabbits Pel and I snared for her. We spoke no more of Pel’s fate nor of The Hunt sure to come. I hadn’t been able to persuade her to don clothes of any sort, and the only relief from the abiding temptation she was just by being came when she teased us by shifting to her hound form.

  The first time it happened I was left stunned and breathless at the transmogrification. But as she shifted easily, and often unexpectedly, from hound to woman to hound again, it became appallingly customary to see her doing so the more often we beheld it.

  “How many other miracles do we take for granted?” I asked of Pel late on the third evening as the hound, near healed, stretched by the fire.

  “I suppose more than we could ever dream,” Pel answered.

  The wist is strong in him tonight, I thought, knowing when he was in this mood his night-terrors were more wont to come.

  I braced myself for a long night, and Pel, waking dream-caught, didn’t disappoint.

  ~ ~ ~

  When I woke, morning was already far advanced. Remnants of fog clung to the ground and the world glistened dully in the pale sunlight. Pel was long gone from his blanket, as was the blanket itself. He had packed already, intuitively knowing we would be leaving this camp today. I welcomed our decision, eager to be riding again.

  Brinn seemed anxious but resigned. “If you’re not yet strong enough to travel—” I started to offer.

  “No, I’m quite ready to run again. I want to run again.”

  Maybe, but I could not credit her body’s ability yet to follow through on that desire. We left out at an easy walk, though we did let the horses have their heads for a few furlongs mid-morning to stretch their legs. Burdened as they were with food packs, bedrolls and us, though, the heavy stallions’ gallop was not so fast Brinn couldn’t keep up. When she came up winded at the end of the short run, however, some demon goaded me to say, “Even fae aren’t as invincible as they may think.”

  The growl I received in return spoke more eloquently than words.

  Not long after noon, we rode upon two young men—both of an age as we—accompanied by an older, bearded man astride a big-boned mare. Small bucklers, slung low over their horses’ withers—spirited destriers rather than sturdy palfreys—proclaimed the younger men nobles, dressed for hunting today, not battle.

  I arched a brow Pel’s way. “Errant knights.” He nodded. The men wore no devices to indicate who they might be oath-sworn to. Even their bucklers were blank.

  Brinn raced ahead to the point where we were likely all to meet, then sat on slim haunches to wait. The way her perfect tongue curled between her open jaws made me think she was laughing at us. Certainly nothing in her demeanor indicated fear or even trepidation. No, she seemed quite clearly amused.

  Sol snorted at the approaching stallions and laid back his ears. I firmed my grip on his reins, and though I could feel his every quiver and every step forward was exaggerated—half high, half pawed in challenge—his training held. Only when I pulled him to a halt beside Brinn, still several paces from the strangers’ horses did he bugle his disapproval and half-rear in protest.

  Clearly he had been too long without a battle.

  “Be easy,” I whispered. “You may have one yet.” I raised my voice to hail the stranger knights. “You trespass on borderland claimed by King Pellam. To whom are you sworn?”

  The smaller-framed of the two young men, though small was quite relative considering the breadth of shoulder on him, actually grinned. “The upstart Arthur has my allegiance. And I daresay the border here is in easy dispute where it might lie. Have you a map to validate Pellam’s claim?”

  “I shouldn’t think I’d need one. Glastonbury Tor to the south is clearly under Pellam’s rule. Or do you dispute that yonder hillock is the Tor?”

  “I have no quarrel with the name.” The man kneed his bay steed forward. “I
simply have a quarrel with the ownership of the ground upon which we now stand.”

  The second man kicked his horse to move alongside the first. I held Sol in check, unwilling to take the bait being dangled. These men were testing us, testing our mettle. I would not let them dictate this meeting.

  But I had forgotten about Pel. He reminded me a lot of Sol—brash, courageous, and in need of a steadying hand to keep him from leaping into folly. From the corner of my eye I saw him surge forward. With a curse I gave Sol his head, desperate to keep up.

  Somehow swords and bucklers appeared in all our hands as our horses drew within striking range. Brinn yelped as the great stallion hooves danced near. Ears laid back tight against her head, she withdrew, heading toward the old man with the beard who kept a sensible distance from the fray.

  We closed, and there was little beyond the labored breathing of the stallions and the dull clang of sword steel to be heard. Pel, first to meet the challenge, engaged the knight who had unsubtly offered it. That left the heavier-set man for me. Within a dozen strokes it was clear these men had been taught well. Their steeds too. The shock from each blow whether struck on steel or shield shivered through me.

  My confidence faltered. This fight would not be easily won. By either side.

  16. Brinn

  Even I knew that first clash of swords was a false promise. This was no battle for borderland control but a mere contest. To prove what, I could not be sure. Fae motives always seemed more pure, more elemental. Men seemed to create reasons to spar, with no purpose than the joy of the fight.

  What Pel and Alain did not know was just who it was they had engaged. A bit of sweet irony I could not be faulted for wanting to see played out. While I would likely not get the satisfaction of bathing in the blood of one who’d bound me, my anticipation heightened as the blows exchanged weakened.

  The man in the saddle above me chuckled. He too understood the riddle save, I supposed, for my own presence in it. Tongue lolling, I, the enigma, rose from where I sat when the old man dismounted.