by Aja James
“It was pure coincidence that I passed through this village on my hunting trek,” Papa began.
“My leopard spirit makes me want to avoid crowds, though the Pure side of me prefers the comforts of civilization rather than living in the wild with other Beasts. I’ve stuck to the same hunting routes and trade posts since I was a cub, the paths that my papa had shown me before he… passed.”
Titi nodded.
She knew that Papa’s papa had been killed during the ritualistic grand hunt that Queen Ashlu led every solar cycle. Papa’s mama had died shortly thereafter from grief. When a Pure One lost their Mate, their soul wanted to join the departed. And so she did, leaving Papa to fend for himself in the wild.
Titi knew this because she’d persistently hounded Papa with questions, hungry for every piece of knowledge he imparted. And though she was only five summers, he often spoke to her as he would an adult. He always told her the truth, as if she could understand.
Except, honestly, she didn’t understand.
She didn’t know why the mighty Dark Queen Ashlu had to have the grand hunts every solar cycle in the first place. But those wherefores were not the focus of Titi’s attention. She was much more interested in Papa and Mama.
“But this time,” Papa continued, “I’d been lucky in my hunts and had more than I could carry to the trade post I usually used to exchange the meat and hides for essentials. I encountered a caravan of wagons headed east, and the travelers told me of this newly established outpost. They made room for my goods in the wagons, and so I journeyed with them to the new town.”
“And you saw Mama and fell in love with her straight away,” Titi prompted, excitement coursing through her as Papa approached the best part of the story.
“Am I telling this or are you?” he teased and tickled her under the chin.
“I’m just helping you along!” she chirped, giggling.
Suddenly, the thick-furred tip of a tail slid under Titi’s nose, making her giggles turn to guffaws and sneezes.
“Papa!” she protested half-heartedly in between breathless laughter.
“Right then.” The tail disappeared from whence it came, and Papa focused again on the story.
“And I saw your Mama and fell in love with her straight away,” he intoned. “The end.”
“Papa!”
He turned towards her and arched a tawny brow.
She arched her own right back at him. But because she didn’t have perfect control of her eyebrows like he did, her comically contorted expression squeezed an amused snort out of him.
“Careful your face doesn’t become fixed like that,” he warned in a serious tone, belied by the mischievous glint in his eyes.
“Quit stalling,” she needled.
“Well,” Papa said, turning back to look up at the cloudless blue skies once more.
“It is no secret that your Mama is the most beautiful woman in the world,” he said softly. “You see her everyday. You know I only speak truth. But it wasn’t her outer beauty that entranced me when I saw her at first.”
“She was tending to the wounded and sick under an outdoor tent. I was browsing the blacksmith stand adjacent to pick up some hooks and a new skinning knife. I didn’t know why, but my eyes kept wandering back to her, over and over, as she cared for one person and then the next.”
He squinted his eyes a little in memory, as if he wanted to get the details just right.
“She was always so solemn, her face pale, her eyes dark. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I could see that her gestures were firm but gentle, her voice low. Those she bandaged and healed thanked her with gifts, smiles, other gestures of gratitude. But she never returned their good will, simply nodding when she was done. She looked so alone. Closed off. Separate from the bustling town around her.”
“And then…” Titi couldn’t help but whisper, anticipating what came next.
“And then, when the sun was setting, and the last little boy got his treatment, after which he threw his arms around your Mama’s neck and thanked her with a hug…I saw a sight more captivating than the burnished-gold skies of my favorite time of day.”
“Mama’s smile,” Titi sighed.
“Indeed,” Papa rumbled low, almost a purr.
“And suddenly, I felt it was my duty, my honor…my destiny…to make this woman smile for the rest of my days.”
“But you didn’t court Mama right away,” Titi admonished.
Papa huffed a breath and said wryly, “Recall that spotted leopards are shy. I was young besides, only twenty summers. I’d barely spoken to females my age much less held their hand or courted their favors, having spent most of my life in solitude in the mountains. All I knew to do was to visit the village whenever I could, and stay as long as I could with each trip, on the chance that she would see me…the way I saw her.”
“And she did!” Titi sighed happily.
Pap nodded.
“She did,” he said quietly.
“What did you see in Mama? How did you know she’s The One?”
Papa was silent for the longest while. So soundless, Titi couldn’t even hear him breathing.
She turned to peer over at his profile, but his eyes were shadowed by the shade of his lashes. There was an indefinable look on his face.
Part wistfulness. Part sadness. Half joy. Half pain.
Titi’s heart ached just gazing upon Papa’s beloved face. She didn’t know why, but she suddenly had the urge to throw her little arms around him in the tightest, fiercest hug.
And then he said:
“Darkness is in all of us. Just as there is light, hope and joy, there are those shuttered spaces in our souls, those whispers in the seething night, yawning chasms of blackness and doubt.”
Titi didn’t understand most of the words. Papa had never said these things before. This wasn’t how the story went. A tingle of apprehension snaked down her spine.
She opened her mouth to tell him to stop. She didn’t want to hear any more. She wanted only to hear the good bits, the parts that made her smile.
This…this filled her with uncertainty and worry. The ache in her heart spread until her entire chest felt afire.
But her voice wouldn’t come.
“I saw those things in her,” Papa continued in that deep, low voice, though Titi was no longer certain he was speaking to her or to himself.
“My Mistress of Night. Most would be frightened by what they saw. Most would turn away and hide. Or try to overcome, control, and destroy that which terrified them. But to me…”
Titi saw Papa’s strong throat move vulnerably in a swallow.
Her hands grew clammy, but her voice was still frozen. She could do nothing but continue to listen, even though he barely seemed aware that she was there.
“To me, Darkness can be beautiful too.”
Finally, Titi whispered in the voice of a lost, frightened little girl, “Papa.”
He blinked and turned toward her, regarding her with those warm, amber eyes, overflowing with love. But also a strange sadness.
“Look at you, my sweet Ninti,” he said in his husky timbre.
“A child of Darkness and Light. You look so much like your mother. You have the best of us both. But you must also defend against the worst. One day, you will have to choose. Just as I have made my choice. No matter what happens, I will never regret it.”
“Papa…” she whimpered, well and truly terrified in this moment.
And then, suddenly, something soft and furry tickled her nose, making her scrunch up in a violent sneeze.
She shrieked with dismay, and then glee, when Papa pounced on top of her in his leopard cub form, pressing on all of her funny bones with each nimble bounce.
Worries instantly forgotten, Titi scrambled off the ground to chase after the giant kitten as it bounded around the hut to the hills beyond.
So immersed in carefree happiness, Titi could never have imagined that that very night, after supper, her whole life would chang
e in the blink of an eye. When the Dark Queen Ashlu took her beloved Papa away and forever extinguished the light in Mama’s eyes.
Until only Darkness remained.
Chapter Eleven
I need you.
I love you.
I choose you.
Choose me too.
Iloveyou Iloveyou Iloveyou…
Dalair surfaced from the midnight pool with a deep gulp of breath.
His chest shuddering. Heart pounding. Pulse racing.
Senses wide open.
It felt like the first breath of life.
And perhaps it was. For he had been dead inside for far too long. So long, he’d forgotten what it was to feel—
The cool air tingling on his damp, heated skin. The sound of wind whistling through the trees. The soft, bluish light from a crescent moon. And the various degrees of darkness in the cloudless sky.
That had been the problem all his existence: he felt too much.
On the surface, he was hard and implacable. No weakness, no emotion. He’d had to guard himself from an early age, the son of a royal concubine in the Outer Circle. Because of who his mother was, and the King’s preference for her despite her lowly station as a slave, Dalair and Vashti had only each other against the world. Whereas his mother chose a mask of smiles, Dalair’s mask was entirely blank.
He always held his feelings deep inside, buried and hidden where no one could reach them. Where no one could hurt him.
Was it any wonder that his Gift as a reborn Pure One was hyper-senses? The Goddess always amplified the strengths (or weaknesses) each individual already possessed. Because of this, Dalair hid himself even more.
He could not afford to repeat the same mistake. When the mere scent of Sophia in the air, a sigh of breath from her lips, a casual brush of her skin could harden him to the point of breaking…he had no choice but to make his masks even more impenetrable.
He would not survive loving her again. Even though he’d never stopped.
Ironically, he was exactly the sort of soldier that was perfect for Medusa’s armies. When they first started turning him, he almost welcomed the numbing of his senses, the silencing of his soul. If he didn’t feel any more, didn’t want or hurt any more, perhaps his existence would be somewhat bearable. Perhaps he wouldn’t relive the agony of hopelessly loving Kira every time he closed his eyes.
But he didn’t want the end of his suffering to come at the cost of others. He fought as hard as he could against his body being used as a weapon for their enemies.
Ironically again, it was the Creature who both tormented him and saved him from himself. Every time his soul wanted to give up, the Creature resuscitated him. He even injected Dalair with a piece of his own soul to keep him on the edge of life and death, to remind him of his deepest shame and regrets, heartbreak and hope, fury and vengeance, so that he never totally lost the ability to feel.
So that his soul never fully gave up.
Now, Dalair knew who the Creature really was.
Cambyses.
Erebu.
His friend. His nemesis.
His brother.
He stayed still, soaking it all in. Standing waist deep in the shallow end of a fresh-water pool at the bottom of the waterfall that hid the cave he found. Safe enough to rest in for a night.
His reawakened mind tried to sort through the convoluted jumble of thoughts, a mix of past and present, truths and lies.
At dawn, they would need to make up for lost time. Though he’d done his best to cover their tracks and create a diversion with the crashed helicopter, it wouldn’t take long for their enemies to pinpoint their location and come after them.
The moment he destroyed the navigation and communication systems, the tech master must have switched to high-alert, activating asset tracking protocols. Dalair had flown the copter as low as he could, using trees, utility poles, and other cover-rich terrain to camouflage the flight path.
He’d gradually turned inland away from the coast, where they would be more visible. But in case there was an auxiliary GPS on the aircraft, he didn’t want to suddenly veer off course, on the odd chance that his departure from plan hadn’t already been flagged.
He rotated his tense neck muscles and winced.
The downside of feeling was the undiluted agony that now flooded his brain. Though his wounds were mostly healed, as in externally knitted with internal bleeding stopped, his organs and bones were still regenerating. Without his program to compartmentalize and shield his consciousness from the soreness throbbing throughout his entire body, the accumulated pain was staggering.
The Creature—Erebu—must have stabbed him close to a dozen times to put him out of commission. Wrecking his physical shell as much as his soul had been beaten into submission. Only then, when body and soul were on equal footing, both weak as fuck and clinging to survival by a thread, in other words, did the latter have a chance to retake the former.
Crazy bastard.
A corner of Dalair’s lips twitched with morbid humor. He bet Ere enjoyed stabbing holes into his body even if the shapeshifter did it to give Dalair a fighting chance to recover his soul. After all, Dalair had stolen Kira from him in their past life together. When Erebu had been Cambyses, the Crown Prince of Persia.
But now that Dalair knew who he really was, what he was, that he could transform into any humanoid form, he doubted the man that he knew, the brother he grew up with and came to love, was the real Cambyses. The history books would never know the difference.
And then Dalair quickly sobered.
Could what Sophia said be true? Had Ere forgiven them? Forgiven Dalair for betraying his trust, despite the fact that Cambyses had requested the subterfuge?
But Dalair recalled the haunted, torn look in his brother’s eyes when he made the request. He’d been furious, frightened, and most of all, hurt. He hadn’t wanted it to happen. Perhaps he even expected Dalair to decline, as any brother would do when the other asked him to impregnate his wife.
Dalair had done it anyway.
Against his own honor. Betraying his brother’s love. Making Kira an adulteress. And forever shattering his own heart in the process.
He’d always believed that she didn’t know it was him during the two best and worst nights of his short human life. When he came into her bed chamber, she called him Cam. And after he’d given all of himself to her, she called him “her prince.”
He’d been devastated by the words he thought could only belong to his brother. It had felt as if he’d been flayed then smothered in salt.
But now he realized…she’d shown him with her own memories and thoughts…that all along, she’d known it was him.
In her heart, she’d always chosen him.
He closed his eyes and leaned back against the mossy edge of the pool, the pains of his flesh and bones numbed by the brilliant warmth spreading throughout his chest.
I love you.
I choose you.
Kira.
Sophia.
Whatever other incarnations she might have, as long as there was breath in his body, he would always choose her too.
And then, as if his thoughts conjured her, she came.
The scent of Lady of the Night orchid on the breeze, and the small splash of water on the opposite side of the pool alerted him of her presence, though he kept his eyes closed.
“Dalair,” she whispered, her voice so soft anyone else would not have heard.
But his hyper-senses picked up on the raspy sound. And even if he hadn’t, his heart would still have thumped with intense awareness. It was always this way between them. As if they were connected by invisible strings.
He didn’t trust his voice, so he didn’t speak. He didn’t trust his thoughts, so he tried not to think. His body wounded but fighting to get stronger, his heart raw but pounding with hope, his soul battered but finally alive—Dalair clenched his fists and waited for her to come to him.
If she chose him now, the way he was d
efying the Goddess to choose her, after everything he’d fought for and endured, there would be no going back.
He would never, ever, let her go.
*** *** *** ***
Sophia had been awakened from her slumber not by any sound or disturbance, but a soft yet persistent tug in her heart.
Even though she couldn’t have slept more than a couple of hours, she felt wondrously refreshed. Her muscles and bones protested against the discomfort of lying on hard, lumpy stone ground, but her senses were fully invigorated. She felt amazingly alive.
And terribly horny.
Quietly, she checked on Benji, tucked him more securely in his blanket burrito, and laid his head upon a makeshift pillow of folded clothes, now dry from the low-burning fire.
The little boy let out a deep, contented breath, his slightly open mouth drooling at one corner.
Satisfied that he was safe and well, Sophia navigated past the curtain of waterfall to look into the night-veiled pond and forest beyond.
All was peaceful and quiet. She trusted implicitly that Dalair would keep them safe.
Which brought her to the reason her body had awakened her—the sight of her Mate’s naked form half revealed above the surface of the fresh-water pool.
He was leaning against the edge, his profile facing her, his long, lean, muscular arms spread wide upon the mossy bank at his back.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could make out the hard lines of his face, neck and upper chest, illuminated barely in pale moonbeams. His eyes were closed, his throat slightly arched and exposed.
Her Pure female fangs descended from her upper gums at the tantalizing sight.
Ah, gods! How she wanted him.
He hardly seemed to be breathing, wreathed in silence and stillness. So hauntingly beautiful Sophia wondered whether she was still dreaming. How could this possibly be real?
That Dalair was here. With her.
Finally.
Without conscious thought, she doffed her blanket and stepped out of her underwear, leaving the coverings within the cave, behind the waterfall curtain. She climbed the short distance down from the cavern entrance and stepped into the pool from the far side, wading slowly, purposefully toward her prize.
