Chapter 11

H is mouth is a drug—warm soft lips and probing tongue eliciting a delicious and delirious high.

The moment my mouth joins with his, I know this first kiss will not be the last. I can't help but reach up and palm his jaw, feeling the rough scratch of stubble on my skin as his tongue finds mine and delves, tangles, and pushes. His body is a hard hot wall of muscle against mine, all angled planes and sculpted curves, and I feel his manhood responding, unfurling against my thigh and rising, thickening and hardening until it presses against my belly, a thick hard ridge between us.

My breasts ache, hanging heavy, nipples pebbling and sensitive, brushing against the firm heat of his bare chest.

There are no thoughts in my mind but him—his hands roaming my spine, cupping my nape, slicking over the small of my back—his mouth eager and confident and tasting me, guiding me to a deeper kiss, sharing breath with me, giving and taking.

He growls a low pleased rumble in his chest, the sound more wolf than man, and his knee parts my thighs and his quad slides between my legs and brushes my naked sex, sending a shiver through me, unleashing a hot torrent of arousal that sets me to dripping, aching.

He stabs his fingers into the hair at the back of my head and pulls me tight against him, crushing his mouth to mine, and his other hand skates over my shoulders and down my spine, pressing against the small of my back, snugging my body against his. I feel his abs, his diaphragm expanding with each breath…his cock throbbing and pulsing, hot and hard and huge.

I tear myself away with a ragged gasp, pressing the back of my wrist against my mouth, panting, and pace away into the surf.

"I…god, Caleb. I'm so mixed up. I shouldn't. I can't. Caspian, I…" I turn in place and look at him—he watches me with heated eyes sparking his desire. "I don't know what's real anymore, Caleb. I'm…you…"

I turn away again, trailing off. The sea crashes, crashes, crashes, an endless expanse of molten quicksilver rippling and surging and receding, wreathed in grayish-white fog. Behind me, I feel Caleb. I feel his eyes on me. I can almost smell his desire—it seethes in the air between us.

"Sparrow…" His voice is close behind me, and I feel his heat, sense his proximity. " I'm real. I'm here. I'll be here."

Amber light flares just beyond my peripheral vision, and then a cold nose touches the side of my buttock, nosing my hipbone. I don't look down at him, just bury my hand in his fur.

"I'm so confused, Wolf." I swallow hard. "I have to find a way out. They're gonna kill me."

He whines in his throat, leaning heavily against me. His fur is warm, soft as silk, and comforting. his weight is comforting. His very presence.

He keeps the madness at bay. The voice of my mate, always echoing in my head, crushing me with his grief, his madness, his sorrow…it's less here, with Caleb.

What do I do? I love Caspian. I want him. I want to be with him.

But Caleb is the only reason I'm free of the cuffs. The only reason I'm sane, I think.

And…it's The Dreaming. It's… is it real? It's a Dream. It's more than a dream, but it's not the same kind of reality as The Waking….

Right?

I don't know.

I find myself surrounded by fog once more, the sea diminishing, the sand fading, the crash of the waves quieting. The fog becomes shadow, and then shadow becomes darkness, and the darkness becomes nothing.

And then I'm blinking my eyes open and I'm back in my cell, lightless, cold, empty.

And Caspian's voice echoes louder than ever— Maeve…Maeve! I'm here, Little Sparrow. Come back to me. Speak to me, Little Sparrow. I can't feel you. I can't hear you. Where are you? I need you.

Tears drip off my chin and I shake and shiver, aching with the effort to hold in my words, to keep his name behind the wall of my teeth. If I respond, I'll get hurt again, and I need to conserve my strength, I need to save my pain for getting out of here.

But gods and Blood, I miss him. His voice cuts my soul to ribbons.

I feel Alistair, Fin, and Stirling, faint and far, dim and distant; I hear them, feel their sorrow clanging and crashing on the walls of my soul.

I want nothing more than to go back into The Dreaming, back to Caleb's embrace where the voice of my lost mate is quiet and reality with all its problems is distant.

I have to get out. I have to.

I sit up on the cot and settle myself. Center my mind, quiet my prana. Pull a thin stream to myself, shape the golden-white light into a flat sharp blade. Flick open my eyes and adjust my sight to see the magic around me. The ward is a shimmering translucent bubble surrounding me, tinted blue and silver, and it smells of copper—of blood.

I look for weak spots, but there is no seam, so chink.

I have to get out. I have to get back to my mate.

My coven.

I don't care about the revolution, or the cause, or whatever—Caspian's sorrow and grief and pain are too much. Even now, I hear him. His voice echoes in my mind, reverberating and shivering. Now it's just my name, chanted and chanted and chanted, each syllable drenched in agony.

I strike without warning, smashing the blade of my prana against the wall of the ward as hard as possible, pushing magic into the strike, pushing with all the force of my will.

Like a knife striking stone, the tip skitters sideways and leaves no trace of a scratch, let alone a dent.

That wasn't so bad…I was expecting the ward to—

The air leaves my lungs in a rush as I'm flung across the cell to slam against the wall. I feel something break again, and heat licks over me, and I see white flames eating my skin, igniting along my ribcage, between my toes, behind my eyes, and the agony is all-consuming, acidic and bitter and as heavy as the very heavens, smashing me to pieces, obliterating my mind—-

I scream, and I scream, and I scream, and the white fire consumes me by inches and I cannot stop it, and I hear Caspian weeping, pleading for the pain to stop—

… make it stop, make it stop make it stop…

Can he feel my pain? How can he feel my pain but not hear my voice?

Cas? I plea, silently, reaching for him, desperate. I'm here, Caspian. I'm here. I'm here.

I didn't think I could hurt anymore, I didn't think the pain could get any worse, but it does. I'm pinned to the wall upside down, and my ribs are cracked and shattered and my lungs are crushed and I can't think, can't breathe can't move—

…stop it stop stop it stop it stop it stop it—

darkness envelops me and sweet nothingness wraps around me—

and I'm laying on the fog, feeling the ghost of a beach not quite under my back and the waters not quite washing over me and I can't open my eyes because it hurts too much.

Oh, Sparrow, comes the rough deep voice of Wolf. What happened to you?

I don't have a voice, a body. The ward.

I blink and feel tears on my cheeks, running down into my ears. I look down, and see blood oozing from my skin, all over my legs and arms and chest and everywhere.

You should have let me go down into Death , I whisper. This is no kindness. I cannot get past the ward. I cannot bear the voice of my mate anymore. The madness, the bloodmate sickness, it's nothing but longing, Wolf, it's just sorrow, it's just misery, it's just grief on a cosmic, magical scale.

Death does not suit you, Sparrow-mine. You are stronger than this.

It hurts, Wolf. It hurts. Everything hurts.

I'm here, Sparrow. I'm here.

It hurts.

Do you feel me?

I feel fur tickle my fingers. A cold nose touching my palm.

Yes, I feel you.

Try to calm your spirit. Focus on me. On what you feel. Nothing else.

I feel a hot quick tongue lapping against my hand and between my fingers. I focus on the sensation, tune out the pain and the ever present faint echoes of Caspian's voice haunting me even here.

His tongue slides along my arm. My shoulder. My chest. And where his tongue touches, the pain lessens.

My mana is yours, Sparrow. Drink of it. Let it cleanse you. His voice is in my mind, in my spirit…in my body.

I feel him everywhere. All over me. Licking, licking, licking, and everywhere his tongue touches the pain ebbs, dissipates.

Don't make me go back, I plead. The Waking hurts. I'm scared, Wolf. I'm so scared. How do I get out? I've only been immortal for a few weeks and now I'm going to die. I don't want to die, Wolf.

His hot tongue washes over my face. You will not die. Your fate and mine are connected, and my fate does not end here. Neither does yours.

How do you know?

I feel it. I told you, the threads of fate are woven close to the surface, here in The Dreaming. Every time you enter The Dreaming, you come to me. Because you are meant to be mine, and I am meant to be yours.

But Caspian? He's my mate. I love him.

Does your love for your mother dilute your love for your mate?

My mother is dead, Wolf.

So you no longer love her, because she is dead?

I…no. I do. I love her. Of course I love her still.

And you love Caspian.

With all my heart.

And your coven? Alistair? Fin? Stirling? Do you love them?

God, yes. It's not the same as how I feel for Caspian, but I do love them.

All the while, his tongue finds hurts and soothes them.

Have you been with them?

It should feel like an intrusive question, but it doesn't. Yes. Well, sort of. I haven't been with them in that sense.

I feel his annoyance. We are adults, Maeve, and this is no church that you need to mind your words.

Fine. I haven't had sex with them. I've touched them and kissed them, and they have touched me, intimately. I…I haven't had intercourse with them.

Why have you not made love to them, if you love them?

It's a vampire thing. Caspian is my mate. They are not. There are boundaries.

Set by whom?

Biology? I don't know. Vampire culture? They told me it's a natural thing for me to want them but only to a degree.

That is normal. For vampires.

And I am—

NOT a vampire. Nor are you a fae. You are both and neither. You are new. The old ways do not apply to you. A vampire cannot cast glamours, and a fae cannot drink blood or move with the speed of shadows.

Yeah, true, but…

But what?

When we were together, at the cabin that first time—Caspain, Alistair, Stirling, and Fin, I mean—the only time, actually…I wanted them, but…I only wanted to have actual intercourse with Caspian.

So? You cannot want something now and not want it later? You must always want the same thing all the time? I like steak, but sometimes I don't want steak. Just because I do not want steak right now does not mean I do not like it ever.__

You're oversimplifying.

And you're limiting yourself. Caspian is your mate. You love him. You are bloodmated to him. That does not mean you cannot love another. Love is endless. It is infinite. It cannot be added to or subtracted from, nor multiplied or divided. It simply IS , Maeve. I loved, and still love, Susannah. Yet here I am with you, giving you my mana. Healing you. Protecting you. Waiting for you. Trusting the lives of my pack to you. That does not dilute or alter my love for Susannah.

But she's gone, Caleb.

Her spirit is eternal. I love her spirit. I feel her, here, in The Dreaming. I feel her in The Waking, too. It is different, true. I cannot speak to her, nor can I hold her. I cannot kiss her lips, or caress her body. I cannot make love to her, because her body has passed on from this realm and into Death, where I cannot go. But her spirit lives on, in me. In my memories. In my love for her that will never die, even though she has. That cannot be changed or lessened or altered.

So I should be with them? Alistair, and Fin, and Stirling? I should make love with them?

You should do what feels right to you. That is not for Caspian to decide, or them, or me, or your Aeldfar, or anyone but YOU . If you love them and wish to mate with them and bond your spirit to theirs, then you should do so.

And you?

And me.

But you're here. Or, you're not. I'm in the cell inside the mountain, and you're somewhere else. On the mountain, or wherever.

My tongue on your skin feels real, does it not?

Yes.

His fur nuzzles against my hip, and I feel his weight press in against my side. The pain is gone, now. I cannot see, because there is nothing to see, and I have no eyes in this place, in this part of The Dreaming.

Yet, I feel him.

I feel his breath on my shoulder. His fur tickles, brushes. His chin rests on my bicep, heavy, yet comforting in its weight.

You feel me, Sparrow? You feel the weight of my head on your arm?

Yes.

I am here. Real, not real—you ask the wrong question. You perceive wrongly.

There is something solid beneath me, hard and cool. Air wafts over my skin. Beside me, Wolf rests a paw on my belly. His breath is hot on my flesh.

You believe we're fated? I ask.

Yes.

What does that look like? What does it mean?

Only the Fates know that, Sparrow. All I know is that I have not desired a woman since the moment of Susannah's death. There have been many females who have passed through my life since then, but no women. Except you. And until I saw you in that alley, you were only a mortal who seemed to always find me here, in The Dreaming. And then I saw you, and I knew you, and you were not a mortal, you were real, you were of the Blood, and… he trails off.

And what? I prompt.

Nothingness becomes shadows, slowly, like a sunrise, imperceptible and inexorable. The shadows become fog, and the spark of awareness that is me becomes a self, and the fog swirls and the self becomes a body. My eyes perceive my skin, healed and whole, and my nerves feel only Caleb's nearness, not pain.

He is there, and his paw is on my thigh, and his chin is on my belly and his breath is hot and his eyes are bright and brilliant amber and they see all of me—my soul and my mind and my heart and my body, and I am comforted.

He quiets the sorrow of my mate's haunting cries, and I feel guilty that I wish to silence him at all, but I do. I cannot bear his sorrow, his grief, his pain, his fear; I cannot change it and I cannot escape it. If I am to die, here, in this cell, must I die mad and weeping?

Am I not allowed comfort? Am I not allowed to seek solace, even if it is here in The Dreaming, where all is real nothing is real?

Wolf's tongue is warm and wet and slow, licking over my navel.

It doesn't feel like being licked by a dog. He is Wolf, and he is Caleb, in the way of dreams. His tongue on my skin is a kiss, a touch, a comfort, a welcome distraction from pain and fear and isolation and worry and agony and madness and illness and pressure and responsibility.

I bury my fingers in his fur and feel the hard shape of his skull. I just breathe and lay in the swirling fog and watch it eddy and pool and play around me and above me. His tongue laps at my navel, and then lower, and lower, and I cling to his fur and suck in my belly in anticipation.

His tongue is hot and wet and hungry, and it finds my sex, and I whisper a word of wonder—his name.

Caleb? Wolf?

I don't know and don't care. Not here, not now.

Both hands in his fur, then, and his weight is between my thighs and his huge shaggy heavy head presses my legs apart and his tongue slides up my sex and then delves in and tastes me, and my spine arches. It is not an animal, it is *WOLF*, my Wolf, my companion here in The Dreaming, and this pleasure he gives me heals my soul and restores my hope.

As long as there is pleasure like this, I can hold on, I can find the strength to fight.

His tongue knows my sex, knows its folds and crevices and creases, and presses open my seam and touches my aching clit and shows me the heavens and the stars and the wild endless blue of the sky, through which I float and fly on the cusp of ecstasy.

He licks me and licks and licks, and pushes me higher and wilder, and I hold onto his fur and lift against his mouth,

and I come, exploding into a million pieces, screaming in a silent voice that shivers the swirling fog and shifting shadows, and his tongue does not relent but works faster and faster until the orgasm shatters itself within me and becomes something new, and I shake all over, spine arched, hips thrust high, hands holding him to me,

Speak my name, Sparrow-mine . His voice ripples through my mind,

and I cry out as I come, come, come— Caleb!

and his hands skate up my thighs and over my belly and caress my heavy, aching breasts, palms stuttering over my diamond-point nipples and I cry out at their rough, work-callused passage over my sensitive nipples, and then his hands cup my bottom and lift me to his mouth and hold me there, and his lips seal over my sex and his tongue presses in against my clit and circles and flits and flicks and he suckles and nips and kisses and kisses and I come still and come again, still and again, an orgasm unending and a thousand orgasms one after the other and all at once, impossible and undeniable.

His hair is soft as silk and cool in my hands as I clutch his face to my pussy, and I wrap my thighs around his shoulders and take pleasure, just take, and take, and take. I feel his finger find my entrance and slide in, and my sex clenches around him, and he adds another, and a third, and drives them into me, and I cry out and begin coming all over again as he fucks me with his fingers and I cannot stop—I have no thought for anything but this, this, this.

"Maeve, Sparrow-mine," he whispers, and the soft worship of his words washes over my flesh.

"Come here," I murmur.

His massive bulk moves, prowling up my body and now his weight presses me to the ground and centers me and his mouth is on mine, and I taste my essence on his lips, smell it on his breath, and I kiss it away until all that exists is us, our mouths, our tongues, our breath mingled and interchanging.

I kiss him, and I kiss him,

and the world around us solidifies, becoming firm and substantive. I hear a waterfall roaring, and its spray dots our skin, and we lay on a bed of moss and leaves, and trees sough and sigh a soft susurrus above us and the sun shines and wind blows and except for the song of nature there is only silence, and my moans and his growls of pleasure as he kisses me.

I reach down and clasp his cock, so impossibly huge and hard and yet so soft. My fingers barely meet as I caress his length, and he growls into my mouth.

Your touch, Sparrow-mine, he speaks into my mind, so he can kiss my mouth, it heals the pain of so many years of loneliness.

You've known NO ONE since that day?

No. I could not, even had I wanted to, and I did not want to. Not until you. Not until now.

I plunge my hand down around his cock and feel him throb, and I ache for him. He rolls, and I'm laying on his body, and he doesn't need to ask or hint or suggest—I know what he wants, I know what he needs, and I eagerly move to give it to him. I kiss his hard muscle and soft flesh, his chest, his abs, his hip, his thigh. I caress his length and pull it away from his body and I taste him, stretching my jaw around his massive girth, and my hands travel down his endless length and he is all salt and musk and flesh and hardness and so beautiful, tasting so good.

He snarls his pleasure and tangles his hands in my hair and thrusts into my mouth and I can take all off him somehow, swallowing around him as he pulses in my mouth, veins stuttering against my lips, and I taste his cum seeping from the tip and it tastes of cedar trees and smoke among the stars and water from a mountain stream and everything wild and male and primal.

He comes, roaring his release, and he floods my mouth and I swallow around him as he plunges down my throat and I don't need to breathe and his ecstasy is beautiful and perfect and fills me with peace and makes my sex throb with renewed desperation.

And then he's dragging me up his body and crushing me to him and kissing my mouth and claiming my lips, and his hands claw into the curves of my ass and pull me against his hardness, hard already, hard again, ready for me instantly and there is no waiting, no need for words or questions, because in my soul I know this is fated somehow, a knowing rooted in my very spirit, and I know I've known this since the moment I saw him the alley.

He fills me, sliding into me as if puzzle-made for me, our bodies fitting together with jigsaw finesse. I ache around him, and he kisses my mouth as his cock drives home, and he cups my breasts as he thrusts up into me, caressing them as they sway with our movement, and I feel him watching them hungrily greedily possessively as they bounce, and he fucks me harder just to make them move, and I sit upright and roll my hips on him and ride him and I look down him, a huge primal hard mountain of a man spread out beneath me, and I feel him fucking into me, and I hold his amber eyes with mine and let tears flow, tears of joy and pleasure and (guilt I can't bear now, guilt I shove aside to deal with later).

" Maeve ," he breathes. " Sparrow-mine ." His voice is in my ears and in my mind, resonating in my soul, reverberating in my spirit.

"Caleb," I moan. "My Wolf."

We fuck for an eternity—his hands caressing my thighs and my breasts and my face and my hair and my back and my ass. He fills me to stretching, to burning, to aching, and yet I want more, and he gives me more.

Faster, and faster and faster we move together. His amber-glowing eyes hold mine. Refuse to release me.

"Come with me, Sparrow-Mine," he growls.

"I'm coming, Caleb. Come with me." I say it the same as he does, our words moaned in unison.

Our climaxes echo and tangle, and I feel them like a helix, braiding together in the wild fraught ether of The Dreaming, in a fiery pyre of united perfection. He comes, and I come, and we explode together, his voice and mine swallowing each other in the silence, and the waterfall is gone and the moss and the trees, the fog and the shadows and the nothingness.

There is only us, here. There is no here—only us.

He roars as he releases inside me, and his fingers dig into the skin at my back and the pain here is delicious, not even true pain but some primal Dreaming immortal place between pain and pleasure that can only exist here, in this place. His claws rake down my back and he is Wolf and he is Caleb at the same time, fur and flesh, man and animal, TwiceBlood selves both wrapped around me and in me and beneath me and everywhere and everything, and I am not vampire and I am not fae and I am not vaer and I am certainly not mortal or immortal—I am just a woman, being ushered into delirious oblivion with a man.

His claws dig in and sear across my back, five parallel grooves etched into my skin, pain that is pleasure that is perfection angling from right shoulder to left hip.

I burst into a kaleidoscope of orgasms, an infinity of mirrored, refracting, reflecting, shattering climaxes in parallel, in unison, all at once, fractal and innumerable, and I taste his soul and his blood—

loping across the snow, chasing a moose, a king of the forest, pack in pursuit, howling;

Susannah, shifting beside him in the cathedral halls of an ancient forest, sniffing the air, running for the pure joy of running, collapsing beneath a waterfall in man-shape and woman-shape, shedding fur for skin;

watching the South Tower collapse in a slow, stately, bizarrely graceful violence of rubble and dust, feeling the pack bond shatter, feeling her last brief cry of pain, snuffed out,

digging through the ten-ton shards of stone and spine-spikes of girders and weeping bones of lost OnceBlood souls, heaving and digging with superhuman strength, shedding blood into the hot gaps and smoking ruins and screaming down into the voids where fires smolder for weeks, just to find her precious corpse, or even a piece of it, something to bury at least, something to mourn, and finding only shards of sorrow, digging and searching without sleep or food, shifting into fur to wriggle into crannies and peering into the dark tight awful spaces and crawling past death and despair, searching for Susannah…

I taste all this in a heartbeat because he shows it to me, for his blood does not fill my mouth here, my fangs do not lengthen here, and I taste his vitality, too, his prana soaking into me even though I cannot pull it from him, here, for this is a place of mana, of maya.

Our climax fades, and I weep into his kiss, overcome.

He cradles me in his arms and I feel his clawmarks tattooed on my skin, and I breathe his wild scent, tasting our sex on the air, and (guilt gnaws at the edges of me, denied, ignored, buried, buried, buried).

He just holds me. We say nothing. What is there to say?

Waterfall spray coats my bare skin. Trees sing. Sun warms. Silence.

Comfort.

A sense of rightness, despite (guilt). A complexity of emotion—wild, peaceful, primal, gentle, perfect, doubt, wonder, joy, (guilt).

Silence.

His heart beats slowly under my cheek. I count the beats.

Fog wreathes me, cool and damp. Sky fades. Moss and leaves and waterfall and sun dissolve into shadow.

Shadows dissolve into endless dark.

Endless Dark becomes Nothing.

Nothing becomes everything,

and then: