Escaping Destiny

  I moaned, and the moment I closed my eyes, his hands left my leg and came to my jaw. I opened my eyes and was instantly captured in his golden depths. I licked my lips, but he didn’t move to kiss me. He kept pumping his hips at the perfect angle, the perfect beat that matched my heart which was increasing with each thrust, as it pushed me closer to the release I was reaching for. Each time I grew close to climax, he’d pull away and wait. Only to start his sensual assault again.

  “I need you,” I moaned as something burned hotly against the left side of my lower back, right above my butt. But my mind was focused on one thing, and one thing alone. Him.

  “I know,” he smiled, and claimed my lips in a scorching kiss. The only thing keeping me from melting was the gentle breeze that filtered through the bowers thin see-through drapes that did little to hide us, “but I’m not ready for you to come yet,” he whispered before he kneeled back on his calves and his hand stroked me where I needed him to fuck me.

  “Ryder, fuck me, please.”

  He grinned wickedly and his free hand skimmed over my lips and his thumb pressed in until I parted my lips to take it into my mouth. “Get on your knees, now.”

  I followed his command and got to my knees, even though they trembled with need. He lay back as pillows materialized behind him. He lifted his long arms and cupped both sides of my face before he pulled me down, until my mouth was inches away from his pulsing cock.

  I lowered my head the rest of the way, not needing a guide to tell me what he wanted. My tongue snaked out to capture the pearl of glistening moisture on the tip of his engorged head. The salt-tang exploded on my tongue with a sweet bitterness as a shiver of desire shuddered up my spine.

  The moment I took the head in my mouth, he groaned a long, low, animalistic sound from deep in his chest. I smiled with the warmth of his cock in my mouth, on my tongue and the musky male scent of Ryder’s arousal in my nostrils playing havoc on my senses.

  “Fuck!” he barked as I took even more of him into the haven that was my mouth. I curled my tongue around him as I tried to fit more. He was too big for me to take very much, so I opened my mouth wider, and dropped my jaw as I tried to cover my teeth with my lips and took even more of him into my hot mouth. I moved my tongue, even though it felt trapped under the heavy weight of his huge cock.

  Ryder was no longer holding still for me to see just how much of his heavy cock I could take inside my mouth. He started thrusting, moving his cock deeper and sliding it out again over my wet lips, steering my head to the steady beat of his passion as he took my mouth and held my hair to keep me there for him to take. “That’s so good, take more,” he ordered and I did.

  I relaxed my throat as he pounded his need in, battering the back of my throat until I pulled back and swirled my tongue over the salty tip of his cock as he moaned against me, taking him deeper as my eyes captured, and held his, until his head rolled back and his eyes closed as he filled my mouth until I was forced to swallow him.

  I moaned and fed from his passion, from his emotions that the release had given him. I fed until I was bursting, and he allowed it. He’d known I was hungry, and that was why he was on his back, and I was licking my lips satisfied, even though I had yet to come tonight.

  “My turn,” he growled and sifted. One minute I’d been a satisfied cat, and the next I was filled with him, and he was fucking me from behind. His hands gripped my hips as he drove himself in until I was sure I would explode. He didn’t allow it. Instead, he flipped me over and his mouth was ravishing my core hungrily.

  I exploded into a million pieces. My legs trembled as heat centered at my core, and shot through me. Sweat beaded at the base of my neck as he drove the orgasm on, until I felt it start to abate. He was inside of me before it had ended, and the moment he was, I shattered again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dawn broke, and he glamoured another dress on me. The moment I was fully clothed, the bower which we’d had hungry sex in—disappeared as if it had never been there. He’d given me so many orgasms, that I’d lost count; between kisses, he sweetly assured me that he was still on a strict diet—me. It was a reassurance that gave me comfort, and hope.

  “What happens now?” I asked, smiling since I’d been unable to remove it from my lips.

  “I take you to see my world, so that I can see it through your eyes.”

  “You want to see your world through my eyes?” I asked, a little confused by his words. He smiled and my breath caught and held in my lungs.

  He was beautiful, even as his powers caressed my skin and he changed forms. He did it effortlessly. One minute he’d been a handsome Ryder, almost human. In the next, he was anything but human. His huge wings hugged against his skin, and his eyes turned to midnight with the full galaxy of stars stolen from the sky, now locked inside of them.

  It still boggled my brain that my Ryder was the Horde King. It was a relief that he wasn’t Alazander, and that he’d killed him. Anyone with such hatred and evilness inside of them needed to be put down.

  I was entangled, caught, trapped in his obsidian depths. He lifted his hand, and held it out for me to accept on my own. A bevy of emotions pooled through me, deep and profound, and turmoil tried to rear its head among them. I didn’t want to think; there would be plenty of time for that later. So I didn’t think twice as I accepted his hand and drew in my breath as he pulled me against his naked chest.

  “I want to show you something, Synthia. It’s a special place I enjoy,” he whispered.

  “Oh really?” I mused with a smile that wouldn’t let up, glued to my lips.

  “I’d walk you there, Pet, but right now sifting is easier, and safer. I can’t take you everywhere I want to yet. The Mages have followed us here, which limits places I will allow you to see. They are trying to find allies with those who oppose the Horde. They’ve grown impatient, and have brought the fight to us.”

  “We should kill them, like quickly,” I said, placing a protective hand over my stomach without even realizing I’d done it until Ryder’s hand pressed firmly over mine.

  “Our child will be safe, Synthia. I vow it to you. I’d wipe every Mage off this map and that of your homeland before I let them get close to you, or my child.”

  Shit, that was actually sweet!

  “She will be protected,” I concurred.

  “She? You have decided on our child being a girl?” he asked, but there was no anger in his tone, only mirth.

  “Isn’t that what you want?” I asked, replaying what my mother had told me before I’d been given to the Horde King.

  “You are predicted to give me a son,” he whispered against my ear as he turned me in his arms until my back was flush against his chest.

  “So says the Demon, but, he’s wrong on things,” I said flippantly.

  He chucked, and said softly in my ear. “The Demon’s visions have never been wrong.”

  Ryder wrapped his arms around and me, and I smiled; at least until his wings whooshed, and we went airborne. I squeaked an undignified sound of fear and he took us back down the entire inch to the ground.

  “Face me, and place your arms around my neck, Synthia. I won’t let you fall,” he replied, and I did as he asked.

  I wasn’t afraid of heights. But then, I wasn’t accustomed to being in the arms of someone who could freaking fly either. The first time we’d only shot straight up in the air, and then he’d sifted us out of the Blood Kingdom. This time, he was actually flying. I rested my face against his chest, taking in his heady scent as I did so. I allowed his presence to calm me, and when he took off again, I was ready.

  He didn’t go fast, and eventually I pulled my head from his chest so that I could see where we were heading to. I smiled and squealed again, only this time, with excitement. “Holy shit, Fairy, you can fly! I thought you said we would sift?”

  “And miss you holding onto me this tightly?” he replied warmly.

  He laughed deep from within his massive chest and shook his hea
d as he landed on a long deck that couldn’t be more than a mile from the pool we’d just left. I waited for him to loosen his hold, and my feet to touch the wood deck before I moved.

  There was a long slanted staircase covered with moss, which led to an azure pool of water that was fed by a beautiful cascading waterfall. “It’s beautiful,” I whispered as I took it in. It was a cove with huge cliffs on all sides, except for the one with the winding staircase that led to the welcoming pool of water.

  Vivid emerald vines with white flowers that looked like lilies, but had more petals, hung from them. They covered the sheer rock cliffs. I took one step, and then another with Ryder close on my heels. When we reached the crystalline pool, he pulled me back against him.

  “I used to play here after training with my father. It’s heated from the rocks. We call them Core stones, natural rocks that were once dipped into the cauldron of life, they stay heated for millennia, or more once they have been removed from here. Kind of like the natural hot springs of your world.”

  I escaped his hold, and bent to my knees and placed my hand into the cove’s water. It was warm, like a hot tub, but there were no bubbles or big tub like the hot springs back home. “Where are the rocks?”

  “At the bottom, but you won’t find them. This waterfall has been here since before your world was created, and it flows throughout Faery. It is so deep, there are those that thought that there wasn’t a bottom. All bodies of water are connected in some way. Everything in Faery has a purpose, and normally works together.”

  I sat on the platform and dipped my toes into the water, and sighed with pleasure. It was eerily beautiful here, and yet even as I sat still, I could see the flowers moving closer to where I sat. “Are the flowers moving?”

  He laughed as he sat behind my body, and curled his legs around my frame, fitting perfectly. His feet joined mine in the water’s welcoming heat. “Everything in Faery is alive. Those are not flowers, they are Dagden’s. They keep this place protected, but expect payment from me, for doing so.”

  I watched as one got scary close to us, and then gasped as Ryder bit into the palm of his hand to draw blood. The white flower approached, and without needing to be told, quickly latched onto to Ryder’s palm.

  I watched in stunned silence as the white flower turned crimson red. It continued to stay latched onto Ryder, but soon began to fade in color, and as I lifted my eyes to the other flowers, I realized why. They were all feeding from the one attached to Ryder. Instead of the hundreds of white flowers that had been there, now hundreds of light pink flowers scaled the coves cliffs.

  I gasped and curled tighter against Ryder’s chest. It was a reminder that I was no longer home, and that this place was anything but safe. I’d have never known that those were not flowers, would never have even guessed it. When the flower had taken its fill of Ryder, it crept silently back across the water to slither up against the rock.

  Creepy!

  I pulled my toes from the water, wondering what else I had missed.

  “Synthia, nothing will touch you while you are with me. The water is safe,” he said comfortingly.

  “I’m tired,” I said, and I was. I had been getting over taxed easily, and I didn’t like it.

  “Come, you sleep with me tonight,” he whispered.

  He flew us back to the castle, yes the castle. A real life castle that looked as if had been picked up from Scotland in the 1500s, and deposited in Faery at Ryder’s will. Instead of taking me inside right away; he flew us to the hill that overlooked his home.

  The castle was built into three different levels of the cliff that it was embedded into. There were hundreds of stairs, maybe thousands that led from one castle to the next. It was lit up, but not from light bulbs, from torches that were inside the stone walls.

  “It looks like something I would read in a romance novel,” I said, because I knew he was waiting for me to comment.

  “It’s older than any of those books,” he said with a snort. He took pride in his world, and I wondered what it would look like through his eyes if he was seeing it as a child.

  “You should read some of them, Fairy. You might learn a thing or two from them.”

  “Like how to throw you over my shoulder and carry you home to pillage and plunder your sweet honey?” he teased.

  I snorted and rolled my eyes. “That’s a Viking. I was thinking more like a Scottish Highlander.” I smirked where he couldn’t see it.

  “So you want me in a kilt? Is that so you can have easy access, or so that I can?” he mused as his lips smiled against my hair.

  “Maybe it’s both?”

  “Does my lass want her mon to speak with a thick brogue?” he asked, and it sounded so natural off his tongue that I shivered with desire.

  “Nae she does nae.” I smiled, mimicking him which made him throw back his head and laugh.

  I grinned and turned in his arms. This was nice; this I could live with. We were happy and together—but it would be short lived.

  Zahruk sifted in silently. I felt the slight tingle in the air that came when someone sifted and quickly turned around.

  “Ryder, we got problems. The Shifters were just attacked. It was very bad; we think it was the Mages, and a message from Cornelius has arrived. He and Abiageal will be here soon to start preparing for your wedding. I think this is his way of forcing the issue now that you have ascended,” Zahruk said, but I’d noticed he wouldn’t look at me. He kept his eyes fixed on Ryder’s as if I didn’t exist.

  “This couldn’t wait?” Ryder asked in an angry tone.

  “No, the Mages are getting bolder. This attack wasn’t on the colony of Shifters; it was on the pack that just left this castle.”

  I shivered and stepped away from Ryder.

  “We are not done, Synthia,” Ryder growled, noting I’d stepped away and dropped my arms to my sides. I’d let myself forget that he was marrying someone else.

  “Go be the King, Ryder. I’m tired,” I whispered past the tears constricting and burning in my throat.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ryder slipped in and out during the night, and I slept right through it. I had been a mess after the outing, and sleep had been escaping me until Darynda had brought in some soothing tea that had knocked me down for the rest of the night.

  Time was running out to make Ryder love me, and finding a way out of that contract so he didn’t have to marry someone else was weighing on my mind heavily.

  It sounded easy, but things with Ryder never went smooth. I was always expecting his mood to change, and with mine own, plagued with hormones, it was a simple matter. We were adjusting, but the pressure from those around us was also smothering. It would be nice to go back to the night in his arms before he’d handed me over to Adam.

  “He has to marry her. I don’t see what the big deal is. They have been betrothed for close to thirty years now. Alazander made the betrothal contract, but neither side was in a hurry to consummate it as they were each getting what they wanted without making it official. The Horde needs the alliance that they share to stay as it is. No offense, but I don’t see him getting that from your family.”

  “And what, may I ask, is that?”

  “Thirty thousand fighting warriors and ten thousand iron warriors who can wield iron with magic.”

  “Oh, is that all?” I snorted and shook my head. Okay, so Ryder was getting a lot from his soon-to-be bride.

  “I am the Blood Princess, and I have the cure to Faery growing inside of me. Can she say the same?” I shot back, because a twinge of jealousy roared within me. Shit. “I’m sorry, I just don’t understand why being the Blood Princess doesn’t seem to count for anything,” I amended, because I didn’t want to offend Darynda who had grown up in this world.

  “It’s okay. Being the Blood Princess is a very high station, higher than Abiageal’s. It’s just that her contract was negotiated first and the Horde got exactly what it wanted with both contracts,” she said thoughtfully, and then switc
hed topics so fast it made me dizzy. “Did you know that The King has called the Dark Prince into attendance? He’s supposed to be super-hot.”

  “Wait, Ryder called Adam here?”

  “Cadeyrn,” she said, narrowing her eyes in disapproval.

  “Um, no. It is Adam now, and he wants to be called Adam. It is the same as I was Sorcha, but going by a different name for so many years has a way of making the new name stick.”

  “You really should call him Cadeyrn. It’s what his mother named him. Anyway, he should be here later today. All the women in the castle are humming with excitement, because it’s known he is openly looking for the Light Heir now that you turned out to be Blood.”

  “Adam is looking for the missing Light Heir?” I felt my heart clench in a vise. Not because I wanted him to be mine, but because the thought of him being with someone other than Larissa felt wrong.

  “Yes, Ryder is helping of course. If all four heirs and the relics come into place, Faery could be healed. People would stop worrying about pregnancies, and dying infants.”

  I felt a chill snake down my spine.

  “I’m so sorry!” Darynda cried, placing her hand over her mouth with wide eyes.

  “It is fine.” It wasn’t fine. I was having a child in a land where they didn’t survive. Nothing was okay in this situation. I’d been so wrapped up in my own head, that I had forgotten the mortality rate of the children here.

  “How many infants have died in the Horde this year?” I asked hesitantly and very afraid of the answer.

  “One in twenty; that’s the odds of them making it through Transition,” she said watching my face.

  “That’s not so bad,” I said, feeling a weight start to lift off my chest.

  “One in twenty will live,” she replied, dashing it and placing the weight right back on it.

  I bolted to the bathroom and threw up. I was still kneeling, calves to ass, when Ryder picked me up. “Eliran has medicine for this,” he growled.