5. Exploration

Ididn”t know how to deal with the concept of soulmates, let alone multiple soulmates. I didn”t want to deal with the concept of soulmates. What I wanted was to wake up again, this time in my hotel room with the Pollack safely tucked into its tube under the bed.

Since that wasn”t an option, I finished wrapping the loincloth around my hips like an Indian langot, tucked the tail away, and tied the robe closed. It gave me enough time to corral my thoughts, even though it also left a lot of dead air. Keilain didn”t fill it, for which I was grateful. Maybe he understood what a bombshell that was.

Taking a deep breath, I scooted back to face the hellhound and dropped down onto my side next to him, my head on the pillow and my arms tucked up in front of me.

Keilain settled a little closer, tail wagging and a smile brightening his face. I didn”t know about soulmates, but I would have had to be an idiot not to recognize that something arcane bound us together. I knew his name, and he knew mine, and no matter how hard I tried to find something unfamiliar, everything about him was as normal to me as my own body. That sharp nose, those high cheekbones, the coarse black fur, even the thud of his tail against the bed… all of it felt like things I”d known since before I”d been born.

”Soulmate,” I said, trying not to let the tightness of fear in my chest rule me.

He reached up, hesitating for a moment before tucking my loose hair behind my ear. He had pads on the underside of his fingers like a dog, the roughness against the shell of my ear making my skin tingle.

My hair was also strawberry blonde instead of brown. Motherfucker, when had that happened? Had I been sleeping for decades? That happened in Celtic myths more than I preferred.

”It”s faery magic,” he said, running the backs of his claws along my neck like I was a precious treasure. ”We can find balance together. Step into eternity together.” Key hesitated again, maybe seeing the unhappiness on my face. ”Don”t hate me,” he said, almost pleading with me. ”I love you. I”m a hound. Your hound.” He leaned forward, desperation marking his expression as I drew away. ”I can”t help it, Lexi. I belong to you, all the parts of me – teeth, heart, lungs, cock – I can run for you and hunt for you and mate you—”

”I don”t fuck dogs,” I blurted out, the words almost tumbling out of my mouth in a knee-jerk reaction to the image of having one of the great black hellhounds that had run me down mounting me like I was an animal.

Key flinched back, recoiling from the sharpness in my voice. ”Don”t send me away,” he said, a low whine in the back of his throat. ”I don”t mean to be the way I am. I can try to remember—”

Shame flooded me, my cheeks growing hot. I didn”t know him, but I did know dogs, and he was obviously enough like the wolfhound whose shape he shared that he shared the depths of loyalty. He believed he was my soulmate, and whatever else that meant, it obviously meant that loyalty was fixed on me.

”Hey, hey, you”re a good boy,” I said, cupping his face. ”I”m not mad at you.”

”I am?” he asked, his brows slanting and stress easing. ”…You”re not?”

”Not mad,” I said again, shaking my head. ”It”s not like you”re trying to eat me alive, y”know? Best dog I”ve met thus far.”

He winced, a very human reaction for a man who was anything but. ”This one is mine,” he said, pushing down the fabric of the robe to bare my shoulder and upper arm. Keilain ran his fingers along the dark blue lines of the bite mark, looking sheepish. ”I didn”t know until I tasted your blood. But then I stopped.”

Welp. I didn”t love that. But Key also very obviously posed me no danger anymore, and I decided to forgive him for trying to kill me. He was a hunting hound, and he”d been set on prey by his master. Of course he”d tried to kill me for the antlered man who commanded him.

”…How”d you get me here?” I asked, leaving the soulmate thing lie for other, more pressing questions. ”For that matter, where is here?”

”The Master brought you,” he said, putting his hand over mine and leaning his face into the palm of my hand. ”This is his place. It”s called the Ruined Palace, because it used to have a Court but the Court died. The Master”s power keeps the palace alive.” Key sighed, the sound very like a longsuffering dog”s gusty exhale. ”We live in the deep wilds of Faery. Time… wanders, here. I… I don”t think we could take you back. Not easily, at least.”

It was my turn to wince. I had enough familiarity with Celtic mythology to know how that ended, and I didn”t have a lot of interest in aging centuries the moment my foot touched mortal soil again. At least I was used to rolling with the punches; I”d grown up street smart and done a lot of thinking on my feet to get to where I was.

I guessed it didn”t matter much if I was trapped in Faery. The world wouldn”t even miss me. No pets, deadbeat dad, mom six years dead, and an aunt I barely spoke to anymore. The only people who would notice I was missing would be my fence and my fellow denizens of the forums I frequented. I”d already done my best to vanish; now history would swallow me whole.

God, that was kind of pathetic, wasn”t it? I”d erased my own legacy, enjoying anonymity, and now nobody would remember my name.

”That”s okay,” I said slowly, my thoughts whirring. There were plenty of stories about mortals in Faery, and not all of them ended badly. With a hellhound by my side, I probably had a leg up on the average schmuck who ended up here. ”I”m guessing you”re going to take care of me?”

He nodded, his expression softening. ”I”ll try.”

”Okay. That”s good.” I took a deep breath and sighed it out, closing my eyes as I tried to figure out next steps.

The Master seemed to be the linchpin; if this was his palace, and Keilain had been his hound, he must have been on board with the whole soulmate thing for the two of us to be lounging on a comfortable bed together. And what hunter didn”t value his hounds? He”d brought me home for Key, after all, and must have been the one who healed me. That was a lot more than just clothes and a loaner bed.

”Okay,” I said again. ”So.” I looked back into Key”s garnet eyes, offering him a smile. ”You said your master brought me here?”

”Not my master,” he corrected. ”The Master. The Hunter. His name is Nuada. But,” Keilain added, with a rueful half-smile, ”you already knew that.”

I had to pause to contemplate that. He wasn”t wrong—as soon as he said the name ”Nuada”, a face I”d never seen and yet remembered with perfect familiarity rose into my mind.

Dark eyes, deep-set and a shade of mahogany-brown I”d never seen on a human man. A strong jawline and white teeth, the canines a touch too sharp for a tame human. Long auburn hair framing a hard face, his skin the same light brown shade as bamboo, with enough depth of natural darkness to not simply be heavily tanned.

I remembered him like he was a part of me, and I remembered him as I”d seen him in the darkness, silhouetted against the stars. I could forget none of it.

A man built for killing, his antlers scraping the sky.

I shivered, wrapping my arms around my chest. ”He”s…” I had to swallow, wetting my dry mouth so I could speak. ”My soulmate?”

Nuada Silverhand. No… that”s not quite right. I frowned, trying to listen to that strange sense of memory. Nuada was the name he went by… but his name, his real name… Nykhir. It came with a sense of water and cold danger; a dark horse with a dripping mane and a beautiful man with the voice of a siren.

Nuada had a horse”s tail. I could almost see it, feel the coarseness of the hair, hear the swish as he flicked it.

What… was he?

”You don”t need to be afraid,” Keilain said, his tone earnest. ”I”ll protect you to my last breath if I must. And I don”t think he wants to be your enemy.”

”Well, yeah,” I said, with an awkward little half-laugh, dragging myself away from contemplating my knowledge of him. ”We”re soulmates.”

The hellhound tilted his head to the side like a curious dog. ”Why does that matter?”

”Er.” I stared at him for a moment, but he just waited, so I added, ”Why… wouldn”t it?”

”Soulmates can mean anything,” he said, still with that puzzled expression. ”All relationships can be perfected. You can fight him if you want. Hate him.” Key cringed slightly, his dog”s ears pulling back. ”You can hate me, too, if that”s your pleasure. But I don”t think I could ever hate you back. It would be… hard. I don”t think we could find our balance that way, even if I tried for you.”

I pursed my lips, trying to parse that set of concepts. ”Hounds are pretty helplessly loyal, huh?” I said to buy myself time, reaching up and scratching him behind the ear.

Key melted into the touch, his lashes fluttering and lips parting in unfocused bliss. That look of raw pleasure on a man”s face really only meant one thing in my experience, but when I nervously glanced down between us, he wasn”t visibly aroused. Dogs didn”t really have a lot of self-control in that particular realm, so either Keilain had enough focus to control some of his physical reactions, or the tiny moans of pleasure he was making were platonic moans.

They weren”t all that platonic for me, but at least I wasn”t going to end up getting humped by a horny hellhound within an hour of waking up in Faery.

The ramifications of being able to choose – of needing to find a balance together – were a lot less unnerving than the insta-love I usually associated with the idea of soulmates. Keilain was obviously devoted, apparently from the instant he”d bitten me, but I wasn”t, and I liked that I didn”t have to be. We got to pick, and we got to do it together.

”I don”t want to be anyone”s enemy,” I said quietly, deciding I could be okay with him loving me, and after a moment of consideration pressed a kiss to Keilain”s nose, just as if he was a dog and not a man.

He looked up at me with adoration, licking his lips as he inched a little closer to me on the bed. ”You”re my soulmate, and I love you,” he said, angling his hand forward to rest his knuckles against my arm. ”I know it”s foolish. You aren”t like me, and I know it”s not that way for you. But…” Keilain hesitated, dropping his chin. ”But maybe you can let me stay anyway? I”ll try to be good for you. And maybe… that will be enough?”

”Be whoever you are,” I said, tension pressing against my chest, the weight of all of this digging into me. ”Stay by my side, if that”s where you want to be. I”ll probably need the comfort.” I took a deep breath, closing my eyes. ”This is a lot,” I admitted, to him and to myself. ”I”m pretty adaptable, but… this is a lot.”

”I know,” he said, sounding sad. ”I would have stayed with you in the mortal world if I could have. But…”

Controlling my breathing so I”d stay calm, I rested my forehead against his. ”Nuada chose for us, huh?”

”We would have died, I think.” Keilain sounded embarrassed about it. He scooted another inch closer to me, his legs touching mine. ”The Master is from the tribe of the gods, but there are much older gods in Faery. He killed one of the mortal sons of the Great Stag a very long time ago, and took his antlers. You”re his… punishment. Or at least the Master said he thought so.”

Keilain fell silent for long enough that I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could put together a sentence, he sighed, wiggling a little closer.

Just like a dog, I thought, amused despite myself as Key crept his way across the bed. Another few inches and he”d be in my lap.

”The Stag ran us,” he said, again with a tinge of embarrassment. ”We don”t think while we”re in chase. We just… run. And the Master is…” Key shook his head, making a low whine. ”I”m wild. We”re all… wild. We”re hunters. Predators.” He swallowed, slowly oozing closer to me, until his bare chest was pressed against my arms and the hard muscle of his stomach leaned against my soft tummy. ”But we”re only the hounds of the Hunt. The Master is the Hunt. He…” Keilain stopped again, tension in his whole body. ”I think he… couldn”t stop? Except he did. Because of… you.”

”I don”t know anything about that,” I said, almost laughing at the absurdity of being able to stop the Wild Hunt when they”d run me down and savaged me. I was only one person, a chubby girl who”d grown up in a trailer park and turned her teenage shoplifting into a rather more exciting career. ”Pretty sure I was fully unconscious.”

Key made a happy sound, dropping a kiss onto my fingers. ”Even unconscious, you changed my world.”

God, that was a weird and romantic thing for a total stranger to say, but it didn”t come off as false. Keilain clearly meant every word of it—and of everything else he”d said.

Dogs are pretty bad liars, I guess, even when they”re fae.

My new best friend would probably have spent the entire day plastered against me getting his ears scratched, but there was only so much lounging in bed I could tolerate, and the itching need to figure out how to survive my new and bizarre life-path got me up and at ”em. Keilain transformed back into a dog as soon as I got up, giving himself a hearty shake before jumping off the bed to follow me out the bedroom door.

His tail just about didn”t stop wagging as I padded through the Ruined Palace, which did live up to its name. Large sections of the sprawling complex had fallen into disrepair, with caved-in roofs and trees growing in the wreckage. Nobody harassed us as we moved through the building, though the only creatures we encountered were hellhounds, the unliving servitors, and a few brave birds and squirrels.

Much to my consternation, I found that I couldn”t predict what would be around the next corner, even as I started mapping the place out. Hallways that I was sure would intersect with rooms led to entirely different wings of the palace, and the sun never seemed to be shining through the correct windows. It was unsettling, to say the least.

That was perfectly normal, Keilain explained in a happy tone, which probably had a lot to do with the fact that we were walking around with my hand resting on his shoulder. Faery palaces were connected as much by intuition and dream-logic as by natural geometry, and they answered to their Monarchs. Or gods, as it were.

If I didn”t like being lost, I was the Master”s soulmate, so the Ruined Palace was mine, too, he pointed out, red tongue lolling as he panted. If I wanted to go somewhere, all I needed to do was ask the palace to take me there.

”Even unbalanced?” I asked, running my fingers through his coarse fur.

”Even unbalanced,” he said, with total certainty. ”Everything he has is yours, too, unless you choose to separate from each other forever.”

”Huh.” That was kind of spooky—and also kind of cool. ”Does that mean the hounds, too?”

He dropped his jaw in an expression of amusement. ”You could try.”

So I did.

I whistled to the next hound we encountered, the same c”mere whistle I”d used on the neighbor”s rat terrier growing up, the closest thing I”d ever had to a pet. The dog picked herself up, giving me a longsuffering look, but wandered over with a desultory air, as if she was doing me a huge favor. Keilain licked her on the face, I scratched her behind the ears, and we moved on.

The hounds were willing to come, sit, and lie down, though they didn”t seem to have a great concept of ”fetch” or ”roll over.” Keilain even laughed at me, saying that they were hunting hounds, not pets.

We were still laughing, Key”s tail wafting through the air, with my attention on him instead of the palace, when we entered the throne room and encountered the Master of the Hunt.