“Or when people think elves are the same as pixies and fairies.” Brick understood his faux pas. His latest in a long line. He closed his eyes in shame. This was why he’d be a disaster to any mate, anywhere, so to think of him at the elven palace…

  “No offense taken. In truth, we’re just like you.” Kevin looked up from where he was pouring hot water from the pan boiling on the fire into a pot warming on a stone at the side. “Well, not like you two exactly. Much feebler. And not so flamboyant.”

  In staring at them, he seemed to forget he was still holding a hot pan and jerked, as if burned. “No problem, not with the abundance of Sphagnum about,” he declared, grabbing up a handful of dark green stuff and curling his palm over it. “Nature’s antiseptic. You know, I always thought that as long as I had my moss, I’d be happy, and I am, but it’s nice to have company.”

  He shushed them with a finger to his lips as he counted down the time to let their moss tea infuse and pour it. “No clocks in the forest, as the Bard of Avon observed. And yes, all the stereotypes about Brits and their cuppas are true!”

  “I always thought moss would taste like dirty water,” Brick commented, taking a sip…and almost gagging.

  “Oh, it does yeah.” Kevin winced as he drank. “Very dirty water like sweaty underwear has been soaked in it, and then slugs frolicked in it, I’ve come to think.” He drained his cup. “More?”

  They both declined a second cup.

  “You’re staying for lunch, of course?” Kevin asked.

  Finally the human was speaking his language. Brick accepted the invitation happily. “Oh…it’s not moss, is it?” he asked, crossing his fingers.

  “No.” Kevin huffed as if offended. “Rabbit. Flavored with herbs.”

  “Not with herby moss?” Brick checked, and Kevin laughed. A lot.

  He laughed some more, crying fat tears at the joke, and finally wiped his face. “Come on. Lunch is roasting in the fire, so let’s go to the bar for a quick one while it cooks.”

  “Don’t go imagining a tavern or pub. I wouldn’t want you to get disappointed,” Jagger murmured to Brick.

  Brick was glad he had when Kevin showed them a tall plant with thick, curled-over leaves he slashed with a sharp stone to squeeze the sweet juice from. He squirted this into his mouth, to drink.

  “Meet Belinda.” Kevin introduced them to the faucet. “Named after a co-worker of mine who was always ready for a drink!”

  “I don’t think he means in exactly this way,” Jagger told Brick, who was trying not to imagine Kevin sneaking up on a human woman with his hand-ax.

  Kevin had tied bits of wood together with long, thin frond-leaves to make chairs and set them around the plant. “Now, if only I could get the daily paper, this would be perfect.” He sighed.

  * * * *

  Brick thought the meal Kevin served, with them all sitting cross-legged around the fire a little later was perfect. Roast kannin and brambor, or rabbit and potatoes, as the human called it, and, as Kevin had cooked two kannin, a whole rabbit just for him. He moaned in joy as he held it in both hands, ripping the meat from the bones with his teeth. He moaned louder when he chewed.

  “That’s the rosemary and sage,” Kevin said, beaming proudly.

  Brick burped.

  “And…that’s the garlic.” Kevin grimaced.

  “Sorry,” Jagger said, on behalf of Brick, whose mouth was full.

  “Oh no.” Kevin waved Jagger’s apology away with his knife. “It’s nice to see a hearty appetite. I imagine it takes a lot to fill him, keep him satisfied.”

  “I do my best.” Jagger winked.

  Brick half-twisted and half-jumped at that and dropped his kannin in the fire. With a howl of loss, he leaped up to get it, beating out the flames to snatch it back. “Oh, sorry,” he said, realizing he’d extinguished most of the fire. Typical Brick. His face heated at his clumsiness.

  “You know, I wasn’t meaning… I wouldn’t ask… Oh, gracious.” Kevin subsided into a heap of half-uttered twittering.

  “I’d like to explore,” Jagger said.

  “…the…surroundings, you mean?” Kevin said, eventually, waving a hand in the air to indicate the forest. “Not, well, anything else?” He dropped his gaze.

  Brick choked, trying to speak with his mouth full and this time spat meat into what was left of the fire.

  “Be my guest. Oh wait—you are!” Kevin grinned again, this time showing not only all his teeth, but the bits of meat trapped in two of them.

  * * * *

  “And guests shouldn’t do chores,” Kevin protested later to Brick, who insisted on helping clear away.

  “And royal-adjacent elves shouldn’t stick Ruby Throne wyvern shifters with clean-up,” Brick muttered. Jagger had gone to take a look around. Brick tipped the remnants onto the midden, the domestic waste pile Kevin had shaped in a heap.

  “Jagger, you’re talking about? The…man, sorry, elf, you’re in love with, yes?” Kevin sat back on his heels where he was patting firm the sides of his dump. “Oh, you…you did know? That you, well, as the poets might put it—”

  “Yeah.” Brick didn’t think he could stomach poetry. It might taste like moss tea. “I guess so.” He sighed.

  “Oh.” Kevin tilted his head to regard him. “Aren’t wyvern shifters happy when they’re in love, and by the side of the person they love?”

  “Well, that’s kind of the thing.” Brick sat. “He’s only by my side because he has to be. It’s a long story but there’s a foretelling that my people and his make an alliance through us.”

  “A marriage of state. Oh.” Kevin thought for a bit. “You know, it was through a marriage treaty that Britain got tea. So these arrangements aren’t all bad. I mean, obviously they shore up alliances between two nations or kingdoms or whatever as well. And bring territory, for instance. It’s not just about tea. Sorry to bring that into it.” He winced.

  “Make an alliance?” Kevin asked, a minute later. “You haven’t made it yet? Well, I mean, I can tell you’ve ‘made it’, as the kids say. Or used to say. They no doubt have different slang now. Or the same words, but they don’t mean the same. Like when ‘sick’ used to mean bad and now it means good.”

  “We’re trying to stop it. The agreement. Trying to challenge the prophecy. Yes, I’m in love with him. But him, and me? Him forced to endure me for ever more? I couldn’t force him to do that. I couldn’t trap him,” burst from Brick.

  He had more he wanted to say, and it was nice to have someone to talk to, but he glimpsed Jagger returning and shut up. He widened his eyes and jerked his head at Kevin, trying to convey the message that Jagger was nearby, then felt stupid. How many more times did he need to remind himself that Kevin was a thought reader!

  “Listener. I don’t read—” Kevin shut up. He stood. “I’m fascinated to meet a wyvern shifter! Can you tell me something about wyverns? I’m keeping a journal and there’s not really a great deal to write about. Apart from my moss hunting, I mean. But I get the feeling wyverns are mystical?”

  “That’s a polite way of putting it.” Jagger joined them and helped Brick to his feet. “There’s a lot of supernatural stuff associated with any shifter and especially the noble ones, the flying beasts. Yeah, there’s a thing to do with bonding, right? With mating?”

  Is there a reason he’s asking that? Brick’s heart stuttered, then sped at the thought that Jagger might be beginning to suspect the same thing Brick did. No, what Brick thought he knew—that the soul-bond had started. Soul blend, Brick had always thought of it, the way wyverns took on some characteristics of their mate.

  Cerise, for instance had acquired enough of Carnell’s color to become a beautiful red, unknown in the kingdom for a century, and Carnell had imbibed Cerise’s strategic way of thinking and prowess with statecraft. Brick’s grandfather, Garnet, had lost most of his tail in the Territory Wars, and yet once he’d bonded with Coral—originally Claryssa—it had grown back, looking like her slimmer one.

  Jagger was an elf, yet Brick had seen him assume wyvern form, and possess a wyvern shadow, just as Brick’s had looked elven. They’d also been able to see into each other’s minds, at times. It all added up. To trouble. To heartbreak. To guilt.

  “Brick?” Jagger was looking puzzled and a little concerned.

  “Breath.” Brick nodded, too fast and too much. “There’s a thing called wyvern breath we manifest when we’re bonded. It can do, well, something. My father has storm breath. Not like a dragon,” he clarified, anticipating their questions. “It’s not fire. It’s a strong, cold wind, like a hurricane, and sweeps away all in its path. Enemies, weapons…” He shrugged.

  Flad had said that with Brick’s luck, he’d get morning breath, but that would be good—he could annihilate his foes with a blast of that. The memory made him smile. A little.

  “That’s amazing.” Kevin had a small homemade-looking notebook in his hand and was scribbling notes on the dried leaves with a red feather he kept dipping into a container of dark-blue dye. It smelled like kholnfish and was probably extracted from its liver. “Oh, I hope you don’t mind…? Only this is so exciting!”

  He looked up after a minute. “Do elves have any mating, erm, bonding things, like that?”

  “There is!” It was Brick who spoke, not Jagger. “I think. Something about tears, right? I was trying to remember earlier.”

  “No. Maybe some past superstition.” Jagger turned. “That water reservoir back that way, it’s fine to use, right?”

  “Uh-huh.” Kevin nodded. “I do. It’s nice and deep.”

  “Brick, would you like to come there with me?” His grin was dirty, and Brick had no trouble understanding what kind of ‘coming’ Jagger wanted to do there.

  “‘Companions with benefits.’” Kevin was scribbling the phrase down.

  Brick tried not to feel sad at where Kevin must have ‘heard’ that. “Yes, please,” he answered Jagger.

  Despite his longing, his knowledge that the two of them could never be more than temporary companions and his guilt, he’d ‘come’ anywhere with Jagger.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Haven’t we had enough of water?” Brick asked as they walked. “The Welling River—and its weir—and that underground stream?”

  “This is different. Pretty.” Jagger gave up on explaining, Brick would see it soon enough. Sooner— “Race you! And no wyvern ways—”

  “And no elven magic!” Brick was already running.

  He was quick, considering he was so burly, and Jagger thought Brick might just have beaten him to the edge of the grassy bank, where he stopped and cocked his head, listening to what was down below.

  “It’s a waterfall?” he asked, turning to Jagger.

  “Yes, but nothing like the weir. And I checked it out just now.” Should he explain to Brick that he’d accessed his elven magic—the best he could, being far from an expert user—to try to sense any threats or other magic in the surroundings? “It’s fine,” he compromised by saying. “And probably not like you’re imagining, sheets of water roaring down a sharp rockface from shelf to shelf. Go on, take a look.”

  Brick peered and his jaw dropped as Jagger’s had earlier on seeing the round lake, its turquoise water calm and glinting with sunlight and scattered here and there with yellow flowers from the slim trees around the edges that were nodding their branches to it. Darting gleams suggested fish dancing under the surface of the water.

  But Brick was pointing at the far end, where a half-dozen streams of water sprayed out from among the leafy fronds of one steep side, cascading down the verdant wall like a row of showers. Sunlight made the stray drops into diamonds and where the streams hit the water of the lake, there was no angry churning or frothing, but instead soft splashes and thick ripples.

  “I see. And is the race still on?”

  Jagger didn’t need to ask what Brick meant—the wyvern was already half-undressed. He shed more of his clothes as he darted away from the grassy edge, and the remainder as he ran back to it, so by the time he launched himself into the air, he was naked. As was Jagger, their two bodies twisting in their descent so they both dived into the water head-first.

  The water was colder than its inviting appearance had made it look, but the impact was far from unpleasant. Jagger surfaced first, whooping in delight and shaking his hair back from his face. Brick’s head popped up seconds later, along with an arm, the hand of which he clamped to the top of Jagger’s head and pushed him under.

  Jagger emerged spluttering. “Why you…”

  But Brick was off, swimming with strong pulls of his arms through the water, leaving Jagger in his wake, to catch him if he could. Jagger preferred to watch, but then there was nothing to see when Brick duck-dived under.

  “I thought wyverns had affinity with the air, not this element!” Jagger called, using his arms to keep afloat and peering all around for Brick. He saw a flicker under the surface and twirled around, but not fast enough. With a roar, Brick soared free of the water and on top of him, dragging him down.

  They rolled and twisted, playing underwater and above-water tag. Jagger got in a sly hit and dived away, only to be caught by an ankle and pulled back, then held hard against Brick’s body. He slithered around to face him, curious how the press of Brick’s nipple piercing would feel against his damp skin. He didn’t get a chance to experience it before Brick slipped under the surface again, and Jagger yelled out in surprise as a hand cupped his balls.

  Brick’s hand. Just as it was Brick’s mouth sucking the tip of Jagger’s erect cock in, licking the crown then taking the length deep. Him doing this in a pool was a totally different blow job. Brick’s mouth on his shaft felt both hotter and cooler than usual—hotter in comparison to the water all around them, keeping them afloat, and cooler because them being in this pool lowered both their temperatures, including the heat of Brick’s mouth.

  “Brick…” Jagger said the wyvern’s name like a prayer when Brick deep-throated him. He forgot to tread water when Brick rubbed a finger over his hole and would have sunk if Brick hadn’t been clamped to him. He peered at Brick’s watery, barely discernible shape just as bubbles floated up and popped in a short string. So wyverns didn’t have gills.

  Brick pressed in the finger he was rubbing around Jagger’s hole, just a sly tickle inside Jagger’s channel, then forging deeper. Again, being in water gave this a different feeling, and doing it without lube made it…not hurt, because Brick was being careful, but made Jagger want more. He wanted Brick’s cock inside him hard and strong, taking him, making him Brick’s.

  And that thought had him rocking them both when he tried to fuck Brick’s throat and himself, on Brick’s finger. Jagger’s motions turned jerky, his release summoned from him. Gods, his orgasm was going to be epic—until Brick stopped that tight suction on his dick. He broke the surface of the water, with a massive heave of gasped-in breath.

  Jagger’s mouth dropped open at the sight. Brick looked like some god, existing in all the elements at once, water streaming from him, his lips swollen. The hand he’d cradled Jagger’s nuts with was now a tight band around the base of his cock, stopping him coming…and he was still penetrating Jagger’s ass.

  Stymied, stimulated, Jagger almost broke. He stared into Brick’s beautiful yellow-gold eyes, reading his own desires and needs there, until Brick closed them, took in another breath and submerged himself again.

  The torture started again too, Brick sucking him deep and penetrating him farther, enough to rub over the bump inside his channel that had him keening his pleasure-pain to the hills. But Brick showed no mercy, tearing his mouth free and bobbing up from under the water to tread water alongside Jagger just as Jagger’s climax started. Only this time, when Jagger was ready to weep with frustration, Brick, still locking gazes with him, inserted another finger inside him, their thickness stretching him.

  “Brick…” Jagger wasn’t too proud to beg. He writhed, as much as he could in the water’s embrace, his cock trembling, and when Brick bent his head again, Jagger almost screamed. Then, when Brick relaxed his fingers from the constricting circle they’d made around the base of Jagger’s shaft, the band that had held his climax at bay, and worked his cock like he owned it, Jagger did scream.

  He thrust, his body jerking with the force of the orgasm that ripped through him. His ass clamped on Brick’s fingers lodged in him, and cum pulsed from the head of his dick. It shot onto Brick’s face, which Brick was bending low to receive it. He caught some in his open mouth, on his ready tongue, but took the bulk of it on his face, even the last pulses he wrung from it. And all the time, he kept his eyes turned up to Jagger’s, even when he slid his fingers free of his channel.

  Brick dripping with his release was the most erotic sight Jagger had ever seen. No, he had to scratch that thought a second later when Brick flicked out his tongue to lick at the cum slipped down. And his tongue… Jagger blinked at its length and suggestion of a split in its tip. He’d thought before that Brick had… Whatever this was, he couldn’t believe it but fucking loved it. His entire body was trembling, and his balls hurt with how hard he’d come, but he loved that too.

  “You okay?” Brick asked, scooping water to splash on his face and wash Jagger’s release from it.

  “Yes.” Just about.

  “Good. Because you know what?” The pool splashed and rippled about them as Brick rubbed against him. Gods, he was huge. It seemed bringing Jagger to a realms-shattering orgasm and tasting his cum had enflamed him.

  “You’re horny?” Jagger guessed.

  “Yeah.” Brick rubbed a little more. “How about you?”

  Jagger pressed back. His cock was trying its best to fill. “I could fuck, yeah.”

  He was still catching his breath, and his heart was still slowing to its normal rate when they began swimming toward the far wall, where the water arced down. Well, paddling and making rowing strokes with their arms. Jagger was too spent for athletics and supposed Brick too pent-up. Huh, not for long. He raised his head to judge how far away they were when he caught sight of their reflections, cast ahead on the sun-dappled water.