What Hunts Inside the Shadows (Of Flesh & Bone, #2)

by Harper L. Woods

“You know me as well as you know yourself, my star. The heart that beats inside your chest is mine. The soul that resides within your body has been mine for longer than you have existed,” I said, keeping my voice soft and gentle as I took another half-step toward her. “Everything you have felt is real. Everything you will continue to feel for me is real. You were made to be mine.”

I longed to give her the comfort a mate was destined for, if only she would accept me into her heart—if only she would allow me into her mind and recognize the other half of her soul.

Where she went, I would follow—immortality be damned.

“I will not have you suffer needlessly, my star. Especially when, no matter what you do, you will never be able to carve me out of your very bones. I own your soul. Nothing matters beyond that.”

“I care because I would want someone to do the same for you if the time ever came. I care because the witches cursed us to maintain the balance of nature after the Fae became too powerful. The cycle of life is all a part of that balance, and to disrespect it is to threaten nature itself.”

“There is something cathartic about watching your enemies dig their own graves,”

“You are mine, and I am yours. But I will not force you to be with me if you do not love me the way I love you, my star. You’ll be safe in the Winter Court, and you will die your true death when your natural time comes,”

I was ready to choose death once. I’m not sure what makes you think I wouldn’t choose that again, if it meant my freedom,”

“May you find peace in the Void until your next life calls you back to us, or may you find peace with The Father in Valhalla.” “Thought women were The Mother’s dominion?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. Caldris smiled at her even though she couldn’t see it. The first genuine smile I’d seen him give the woman he had been unable to tolerate. “Humans would think that, but The Father and The Mother are not the sexist constructs that you believe. The Father will welcome a warrior like you with open arms.”

This world was ugly. It was raw and bitter and filled with far too much death to be worth continuing on. The ghosts of my past and the people I’d loved would haunt me for an eternity if Caldris had his way, and I didn’t think I was strong enough to survive that.

“I am not a man, min asteren. You’ll have to stop holding me to the standards you would place upon a human,”

“If a human were to lose his wife, he would find another eventually. The Fae have only one mate. There is only one being in all of creation who can make us feel complete. Only one who can bring us the joy of children. What do you think a human man would do if he were placed under those circumstances?”

“Remind you that we are irrevocably bound, no matter what feeble lies you tell yourself? The Fates have chosen us for one another. Even with our bond incomplete, it is stronger than most.”

I have already waited centuries to feel the love we share. I would wait one hundred more.”

“You cannot hate me without hating yourself, Little One. Think of that the next time you want to blame me for this bond. I didn’t choose you anymore than you chose me.” His words lashed against me, harsh and hurtful and all the things I knew myself to be when I was angry. “I am just not spiteful enough to throw you away on principle.” I bitterly mocked him. “So fucking romantic, and you wonder why humans believe the Fae to be brutes.” “Is it romance you want right now?” he asked, trailing gentle fingers over my wrist. They teased me slowly as he released it, raising his hand toward my throat, touching it gently. “Or do you want me to be the monster you’ve already made me out to be?”

“There’s a fine line between love and hate, Little One, and you are looking at me like you can’t quite decide if you should kiss me or kill me.”

My life had been punctuated by many lows, but fucking my enemy was a new extreme.

He could have my rage and my anger, my betrayal. But he couldn’t have my pain.

“Is it selfish to protect you against your recklessness? Against how quick you are to judge me for something you do not even begin to understand? I told you once: I would burn the world for you if you so much as asked it of me. What do you think I would do if I lost you? What exactly do you think the purpose of a mate bond is? The witches created them to right the balance of the world—between the Fae and the humans—so that nothing was out of order. A mate is chosen to be our balance. You are my balance. Everything good that exists inside of me comes from you. If I lost you, you might as well burn the world to ash,”

I felt you fall in love all over again, but with me this time. I see in your eyes that you wish you could take it back more than anything, but you can’t. Because you and I both know what you felt; we both know you loved me with everything you were. More than you ever loved your husbands in all your past lives. You still do, and you can’t wish that away, because you were born to love me, whether I deserve it or not.”

“I don’t want to mold the world. No one person should have that kind of power.” “Those who do not want it are the only ones who should wield it in the first place,” he said, his tone turning melancholic. I tilted my head, turning so that I could stare up into the sadness that had claimed him so suddenly. “Unfortunately that isn’t often the case, in my experience at least. Even if those who rule weren’t always evil, power like that has a way of corrupting even the kindest mind.”

“Dainsleif was forged by the dwarves and cursed to demand the payment of a life anytime it is wielded in battle. When drawn, it requires a life debt from you.”

“This mate of yours suits you. She’s vicious.”

I needed him to be the monster, the villain who would take and take from me, but there was no denying his willingness to sacrifice himself for my protection.

“Do me a favor, Beasty,” Holt called, demanding my attention while riding toward me. He pulled the knife Dainsleif from its sheath and tossed it to me. I caught it by the handle with both hands, the familiar pulsing warmth spreading through me as the cursed blade demanded the price for drawing it. “Stop eye-fucking your boyfriend and kill something already.”

“You’re all bloody,” Caldris said, reaching up to touch my chin. He paused, staring down at his hand as the skin knitted itself back together and slowly pushed the iron from his body. “Sorry, I don’t see a bath anywhere. Do you?” I asked, scoffing as I looked at him. The male was covered in gore from head to toe, but Gods forbid I be, too. “Did I say I wanted you to wash it off?” he asked, studying me. “Because that was not my intent, I assure you. I want to fuck you while you’re covered in the blood and death of our enemies who thought they could take you from me.” I swallowed, the intensity of his dark stare making my throat ache with sudden dryness. “That’s not—” “Normal? You are my mate. There will never come a day when I do not enjoy watching you bring men to their knees and cut their throats when they underestimate you. You would do well to remember that,” he said, raising his hands so that I could see the silver shining within his skin. “The only reason I haven’t already taken you is because I cannot touch you without hurting you.”

It took everything within me not to push up the sleeve of his tunic so I could touch the Mark under there and reassure the frazzled part of my soul that he was still mine. That part of me was nothing but a traitorous bitch, and I wanted nothing to do with her.

The desire to flee pulsed through me, my limbs tingling with the need for freedom. With the need to move, to wander in the darkness as I had always done. To roam beneath the stars.

He pretended to be human to give you time to get to know him before you had to deal with the pressures of being his fated mate. Stop acting like an unappreciative brat and see what is right in front of you.” He shook his head as he glared down at me, then he stepped to the side, holding out an arm. As if I would bolt past him and take the opportunity to run when he would be able to point Caldris in the right direction. “He is the same male he was a week ago. The only thing that has changed is you.”

“Your list would be mercifully short, my star. There has been no one since the moment you came of age in your first life and the bond snapped into place.”

“So that you cannot try to say I twisted my words, I’ll be clear. I have not kissed a woman. I have not touched or fucked or allowed any to touch me in that way since the moment I knew you existed. I would never disrespect my equal in that way,” he said, running his nose along the side of mine. “I was no innocent in the centuries before your creation, but after? I would have waited a dozen more for you.”

“Caelum,” I said sadly, reaching up to cup his cheek. “I don’t want this. I want to slit his throat myself. I want to be there to watch the life fade from his eyes the way my father’s did when Byron made me watch. I want him to know it was me who killed him. Don’t take that from me.”

“I wouldn’t dare to deprive the world of your vengeance,” he said, dropping his forehead to mine. “And when he makes his way to Tartarus for his crimes, I’ll have an eternity to make him suffer.” “You can do whatever you want with him after I’ve killed him,” I said, sighing.

“I have seen you attack a member of the Wild Hunt with all the bravery of a warrior and none of the fear that you should have felt,” he said, dropping to his side on the bedroll and snuggling into my back all over again. He curved his body around me until we fit like the perfect, seamless pair that he seemed determined to convince me we would be. “But the shadowed face of a shade is what drives fear into your heart.”

I couldn’t give him that part of me, not when even I couldn’t understand the mess inside my head.

It felt like he was unmaking me, unraveling everything I’d been raised to believe and forming something new in its place. My soul, my heart, couldn’t stand the constant battle of confusion. The mixture of want with the horror that followed it.

“You’re different from the rest of them,” Holt said, his voice dropping low as if he knew it was an unfair assessment. “You knew him before you knew what he was. You loved him exactly as he is, now he is just more. They did not have that benefit. They will go to their mates knowing what they are, and their own prejudice will stand in the way of their happiness. It is unfortunate for them because they will likely waste countless years to their own bitterness. You have the chance to find happiness before you arrive in Alfheimr. The chance to stand united with your mate before you face all that will try to tear you apart once you arrive in Faerie. You would be a fool to waste such an opportunity.”

“Sometimes, we fight with the most fervor against those things that we need most,”

“There is Valhalla, Folkvangr, the Asphodel Meadows, and Tartarus. Where you are destined to go depends on your soul, on the quality of it and the calling that runs through your very being.

“But we all know it’s only a matter of time before you embrace your true nature and all that goes with it. You want to lay your public claim over me just as desperately as I want to push you to your knees and shove my cock down your throat, so they can watch you choke on it. I want all the males to wish they were me, to know that your pretty, sharp tongue is mine to paint with cum.” I stilled, the image he painted causing heat to flush through my cheeks. He touched his lips to my jaw as he murmured the darkest secret torn from my soul. “And you want them to know that you’re the only one who will ever have my cock and my cum again.”

“You may find this difficult to believe, my star, but I did not react so negatively because you wouldn’t allow me to fuck you,” he said, giving me time for that to sink in. “What angered me was the way you shut me out of your heart, and the way you pushed me away when I got too close to you once again. I can be content without your body so long as I have you.”

Where darkness was our only friend—the only ally to bring about the end of all suffering. The end of pain.

“Her anger took the flames out of the air. It extinguished the stars in the sky without so much as a conscious thought. She cannot be human,” he said, glaring back at me as if I was in denial. But he hadn’t seen the stars glimmering in her eyes, the galaxy shimmering in the depths of her dark stare. With pinpricks of purple and golden light, an eternity stretching out before me and threatening to suck me in. There was nothing human in that gaze.

“The only time pain truly ends is when we enter the Void after death. To live is to feel pain.”

“You want to live,” I said, pressing my skin more tightly to her Mark. She flinched back again. “The dead cannot feel pleasure. Come back to me, and I’ll fill that emptiness in you with me for the night, min asteren.” I promised her the one thing I suspected could bring her back from the lure of the magic in her veins.

It was the knowledge that I would be inside her mind; I would see all the vulnerabilities she tucked away and tried to hide from my prying eyes. I’d infiltrated her heart. She’d given me her body. Her mind was her last stronghold—the one with the potential to change everything for us—and she damn well knew it.

There was so much warmth in his gaze, even despite that pain, I would never be able to question whether or not he loved me. Never again. This was the kind of love stories were made of, the kind that poets wrote sonnets about. The kind little girls dreamed of finding when they lay in their beds at night and tried to imagine the man who would one day become their husband.

“But I’m your monster, my star. Now tell me what I want to hear. I want to hear you say the thought that is rattling around inside your beautiful, twisted little mind.” He hooked his fingers forward, stroking over a place on the inside that made me see the stars as my eyes drifted closed. “Give me your truth,” he ordered. “I love you,” I gasped, the words coming out strangled. I hated the truth in them, hated knowing that he was aware they were far from a lie.

“If you are able to imagine your life, your future, without me in this world, then why would I want to live?”

“Claim your freedom, Estrella, because if you do not, I will never let you go. Do you understand me? I will not stop until you have accepted me—until you’re my mate in truth. I will take from you, but I will give you more love than you could have ever imagined. This is your moment to choose, min asteren. You can have your freedom or you can have me, but you cannot have both,”