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

by Harper L. Woods

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

“Stop eye-fucking your boyfriend and kill something already.”

Warmth spread across my back. I opened my eyes slightly to find Caldris pressed into the back of my right side, his fingers wrapped around the wooden shaft of the arrow. It rested only a breath from my heart, so close to finding the target that would end everything.

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.”

“Normal? You are my mate. I could spend an eternity buried inside of you and still want more, Little One.

“You are my mate. I will always protect you, min asteren. No matter what the cost,”

The absence of the circle on the back of his hand and shadowed tendrils covering his fingers made something inside of me long to touch him. I needed to caress his skin until the ink returned to what I had grown so fond of exploring with tentative fingers by candlelight in the tunnels.

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.

Maylea is the sole heir to the Spring Court, Rieka is the daughter of the Summer King’s best friend, and Lycus is the Autumn Queen’s nephew.

My throat burned, the acrid taste of bile swirling in my gut as I considered all the women he must have been with before me. All the centuries of history he must have had before finding his pathetic, barely-experienced human mate.

“I’ll be your toy any time you want to play with me, min asteren,” he said, his grin deepening as my cheeks flushed in response to the words.

You’ve got your head stuck so far up your own ass, you can’t see that he would do anything for you.

“He is the same male he was a week ago. The only thing that has changed is you.”

“Your human sensibilities do not matter, because there will quickly come a day when your mate wants to fuck you for everyone to see. When he wants to take you beside the fire while the Wild Hunt watches and listens to you scream his name. That is what the Fae do. We take what is ours and we claim it for all to see,”

“There was someone you loved. You said it was complicated even though you didn’t miss her anymore. If it wasn’t Mab, who was it?” I asked, staring up at him as he filled my gaze. He smiled down at me sweetly, lifting a hand to cup my cheek as he looked at me with so much affection and longing that I lost the ability to breathe. “You, Estrella.

While I’d been talking about the man who took my virginity, he’d been waxing poetic about… me?

“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.”

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 I would have waited a dozen more for you.”

“I will always choose you, min asteren,” he said, his brow creasing as he stared at me in something akin to confusion. “Your body is just the packaging that gives the other half of my soul a home. I have failed as your mate if you do not already know that.”

We are incapable of anything less than the complete melding of our souls.

“But that would mean that the human mates of the Fae become…” “Fae? At the root of it, yes. They become immortal and they share in their mate’s status and power. They become equal,”

“They’re watching us because they’re hoping I’ll bend you over and fuck the attitude right out of you, Little One.”

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.”

“And you want them to know that you’re the only one who will ever have my cock and my cum again.”

It wasn’t consent unless it could be given freely, without fear of consequences.

“I can say it one hundred times over and never convince you it’s the truth, but I would live centuries without knowing the pleasure of your body if you so much as asked that of me. 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. Do not deprive me of the mate I have waited centuries to know; not now that I’ve finally been able to truly know you.”

“Son of a witch,” Caldris groaned

To the one Fae I knew of who had come across the boundary just before the Veil was formed. “Maybe you need to consider that your mate and the female you’re looking for are one and the same,”

“She’s my mate,” I said, my brow furrowing as I glared back at the man who’d been my best friend for as long as I could remember.

I fought my way through the waves of emotion pouring off of him: affection, pride and satisfaction. Love. Gods, the love felt endless, as if it would continue through an eternity and never bend, never break.

There was so much warmth in his gaze 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 afraid there won’t be any sleep for you tonight, min asteren.”

“I want to feast on your pussy and fuck you until the stars in the sky fade and the sun rises on a new day.” He ran his thumb over my mouth, a teasing lilt filling his voice as he continued. “And I believe you owe me the haven of your mouth, min asteren.”

“That is entirely the point, Little One. I want you mindless with need for me.” “It’s working, you twisted bastard,”

“Even before you were born, I knew I was just passing the time while I waited for you.

“Mab killed his father and strung him up. Left his body to hang there, rotting in her throne room for weeks when Caldris was only a century old,”

“You can’t even fucking die!” I yelled, watching as he bowed his head and lowered himself to the ground. “That doesn’t mean it won’t hurt like a fucking bitch, you menace.

“If they can do that to a Fae female, what do you think they can do to you?” His chest rumbled with a growl, sounding like one of the wolves, making his entire body tremble with the force of it. “You who are so fragile, my vicious little mate.”

Encouraging him, I showed him that I accepted him and his nature. I couldn’t promise him forever yet, but I could give him this moment and bring him back from the brink in the way he’d done for me the night before.

My mind was his, my heart belonged to him, and my body was liquid in his arms.

“What have I told you, my star? I am your God.”

I’d been drawn to him from the first moment until this one, my soul recognizing what my mind couldn’t comprehend. He was mine. He’d always been mine. Since the dawn of creation, since I’d been born into this world for the first time.

because he saw what waited on the other side. He saw the beauty in the madness.

“You are not sticking your fucking cock in there,” I protested, shaking my head. First of all, ew. Second of all, just no.

“Show me,” he ordered when he opened his eyes once more. I opened my mouth, sticking out my tongue so that he could see it covered in his seed. “That’s my good girl,” he said,

I knew what it was to be out of control. To feel like a monster waited to take control of my body. I’d do whatever it took to bring him back from that brink. “Always.”

“Of course it’s alive. You’re tapping into the magic of the world, using the nature around you to do your bidding. If nature isn’t life, then I don’t know what is.”

He would be mine, and I think a part of me knew it, even if I wasn’t quite willing to accept it fully yet.

“You’ll leave me. I have taken Mab’s torment for centuries, and I will continue to do so until I am free. But you, she cannot have,”

He genuinely feared the Queen of Air and Darkness and what she would do. Not to him. But to me.