Page 29 of Tethered Thrones
Chapter 10
Bracken
It was a small grace that I didn’t return from the hunt empty-handed nearly two weeks after our rendezvous with Sun’s friends and their strange nocs. Winter had set in, in force, strangling what little life had been struggling to survive in the Celestial Forest. Kiar and I had separated this morning on the prowl, but the prey I brought back wouldn’t fill us for more than a night.
Thankfully, death and sex filled our bellies while tethered, and Sun had been on something of a rampage by the second day we’d been traveling to this General Hideyoshi. Fucking our brains out, that is, like he was worried he could never do it again. Not that I would ever complain.
At first, we hadn’t tried after that failed night when Clem had been acting so strangely. What did that human put in the wine? Poison? For a few days, Sun had been unable to stiffen his puny cock for us, prone to dizzy spells. He’d refused us, claiming he’d hurl until Clem nearly fainted from hunger, and then he’d been on us every night.
But not the complete, penetrative bliss we could usually partake in. I didn’t know what was worse, Sun the tease, partially for our survival, or Sun the slut who robbed me of any otherdesire but to fill him again and again until he wrung my balls dry.
So, we hunted as much as we could, so we wouldn’t all be driven mad from the kisses and touches and sliding of slippery cocks without ever getting to finish inside him. Sun cared more about reaching Hideyoshi before the whole of Naran’s standing armies got to us first. He was relentless about reaching him, and we all fell in line.
Oh, Sun, I thought as I gazed up at the sun, landing near the River Yang. It would never cease to amaze me how strange it felt to move during the day.
Despite my mounting sexual frustration, I was pleased that neither Kiar nor Hadi had been able to take him either. I’d enjoyed watching Sun get under Hadi’s skin and the sexual trysts we’d had since. The way Hadi received a kiss for his efforts to court Sun instead of lips wrapped around his dick infuriated our lord. Now, he was a perpetual bundle of cooling embers constantly ready to reignite, waspish at every turn.
Maybe it was my natural born sadistic temperament, but watching the king silently seethe as I had, unable to enter Sun or break through his defenses, filled me with glee.
Though eventually, he would have his turn, and Sun would cave. Goddess above I hoped I was there to watch Sun get split open then. It would be…
“Delicious. Delightful,” I said out loud. More so than the rabbit head I ripped off, eating the body whole, the crunching bones drowning out my thoughts.
But we had no time to think of sex, according to Sun. World-ending battles and the like should be our only concern.
There was so much to be concerned about; I knew this; I was not a fool. But damn if I didn’t care. Saving the world and nation-building after we burned it to the ground took away fromwhat I wanted to do—have my mates on their knees at my beck and call.
I felt nothing when I rampaged and slaughtered those little worms who used to defy Hadi. I needed a challenge. I needed to feel my blood pumping through my veins and guide my wings in battle. And the war of the flesh was the most sumptuous battlefield I’d ever met, better than all my kills.
In other words, the only battle I needed to win right then was taking Sun to bed.
“Who’s there?” I called out as leaves rustled beside me from within the forest. Sun had told us the clearing meant we were close to the human encampment, and I braced, not wanting to slaughter human vermin today.
Or ever again, if I could avoid it, the thought knocked the wind out of me.
“It’s me.”
Sun emerged from the shadows, and all my coiled tension unraveled all at once. His hair was slightly damp, and he smelled of soot. He must have heated snow for a quick bath. He did not like to be dirty, which I found amusing, seeing as Sun was some legendary warrior who’d dived head-first into naga pits and slashed his way through battlefields bloodied from head to toe.
It boded well for our future. Once this was all over, he wouldn’t have to fight anymore. He’d be more pampered and locked away. I thought he would enjoy that as I rubbed the backside of my furred hand down his hair, and Sun sighed, using it as a makeshift brush. He nuzzled me with affection, defenseless, and the low grumble I emitted signaled my pleasure at watching him groom himself against me.
I marveled at a flexing pec peeking from his robe, a deep bite mark embedded around his nipple, one part of me wanting to wrap him in my furs to stay warm, protective with the urge to pamper, and the other half that warred with me to force hisface into the snow and fuck him senseless. My blue balls were at historic levels. He had been with Kiar, maybe Clem too not too long ago, but not with me.
“Hence the wash,” I thought out loud.
“Huh?” he asked. I brushed his question aside.
“Where are the others?” I asked, not too concerned with finding them. The feeling of fullness before eating the rabbit meant the rest of the meal I caught would be put to use another day. Sun must have found them before me.
“By the river still, where the ice is thin and breakable. Clem said he needed a fish and water that flowed from the Ice Dragon’s left claw or something like that, for a spell.”
I sighed. The meeting with that fellow winged bastard had changed my sweet Clem into something approaching a fanatic. He would sit, snuggled in Kiar’s tail, and pepper the naga prince with questions he couldn’t begin to answer.
It would be endearing if it weren’t paired with a slightly crazed look in Clem’s solid black eyes as he read spells and spouted nonsense from his little black book of secrets.
One day I’d find that Nguyen and wring that chickenshit’s neck. I hadn’t caught everything he’d said but saw him mouth ‘pathetic’ to my mothian. Clem’s face had crumpled, and I almost tore off the nightwing’s head before Clem schooled his expression and walked away.
But now he couldn’t seem to get the other noc out of his mind, and I couldn’t untangle feelings of jealousy from my murderous intent. His thoughts should be filled only with us, and primarily with me.