Page 31

Christmas Morning

TADHG

I jerked awake on Christmas morning in Sadie’s bed to the sound of her moans.

But she wasn’t in bed with me.

A low grumble erupted in my chest, and I flung my forearm over my closed eyes.

Without even needing to open them, I knew Declan was fucking her.

Yet again.

He’d managed to resist her for six weeks?—

DECLAN

Now it appeared we couldn’t make it sixty minutes.

After too short a sleep, I woke to the sound of her moaning and her strawberry scent thick in the air.

Her hips were squirming over the makeshift nest I’d built from my robes, coats left behind by our wedding guests, and tapestries I’d pulled down from the walls.

I’d wanted to fetch her a proper mattress—or at least some pillows—between her early cycles.

But apparently, it would’ve been too dangerous for me to leave the vicinity.

When I tried to access the hallway, I discovered the Shadow King had used infrastructure god tech to create new doors, effectively sealing us in by blocking off all exits from the throne foyer.

TADHG

The Shadow King had sealed them off in a scent and soundproof room.

More for our sake than theirs.

Just knowing she was in estrus was a complete and utter mind fuck, wasn’t it?

This was the part the Secret Kingdom history lessons never talked about.

The High King had First Claim of The Potential, but that left the other two kings in a state.

Leaving that throne foyer was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

The Shadow King and I had been sick with lust for days.

Not eating. Barely sleeping.

Just rolling around in the rapidly fading strawberry scent Sadie had left on her mattress.

While watching the High King fuck her so hard, it looked like punishment.

And felt like one, to the two kings watching from afar.

I refused to open my eyes this time.

It was too hard.

In several senses of the word.

It didn’t matter whether I opened them or not.

Even though I’d spent the lead-up to this holiday handshandying myself nearly raw, it once again rose to the occasion.

Like a soldier that refused to quit.

Dribbling pre-cum all over my thigh.

A few days ago, when I still had some pride left in me, I might’ve cleaned up.

Now I just let it leak.

Part of the recipe for the regret-and-jealousy stew I’d unwittingly signed myself up to bring to our three-king, one-wife potluck.

No wonder so many of the Mountain Kings had gone mad.

As I listened to him fuck her—probably between the sweet thighs I’d been dreaming about wrapping around my own waist—my eyes burned with mad bear-glow, and a spike of petulant anger erupted in my chest.

“Didn’t I tell ye to turn that off last night?” I asked the Shadow King, whose lemon scent now drifted from the direction of the couch where I’d taught Sadie how to properly binge.

The Shadow King, of course, did not answer.

And that turned out to be the thing that made me wrench my forearm from over my eyes and shout, “I told ye to turn it off. I can’t take much more of?—”

I cut off when I saw the whiteboard propped against a pillow, so it’d be the first thing I saw when I woke: Day 6.

Worried. Running analysis.

SADIE

Someone was moaning like a wounded animal in need of treatment.

That someone was me.

Something was wrong.

Declan had fucked me.

He’d fucked me for who knew how many days.

Servicing every estrus cycle.

But it still wasn’t enough.

Even though he’d only pulled out a little while ago, the world remained a fire pit of need.

Burning me from the inside out.

My hips mindlessly rocked against the nest, seeking relief.

Everything swollen. Heavy.

Desperate for more.

“Sadie…” Declan’s voice was somehow both too far away and too loud.

Like he was screaming through water, directly into my ear.

“How are you in cycle again? So soon? We just finished not forty-five minutes ago.”

I don’t know!

I don’t know!

But I sobbed into the fur stole of his robe, needing relief.

“It hurts!” I whined, feeling sick in the head—and even more so down below.

“Sssh, I’m here.” He rubbed my back with more gentleness than I probably deserved.

“I’m here for as long as it takes to get you through this.”

I noticed he was no longer talking about babies, and I got the sense he’d given up on that particular dream for himself.

We were both sore and tired.

And like me, he probably wanted this to be over.

CIAN

The Mountain King was shouting about something in the distance, but I couldn’t rip my eyes away from the screen, where Declan was once again mounting Sadie.

Something was wrong.

TADHG

“What kind of analysis are you running, then?” I asked the Shadow King.

No answer.

And my eyes went to the screen I’d been trying to avoid, like a feckin’ moth to a flame.

Holy…

Declan wasn’t between her legs, but on top of her back, rutting with the mindless abandon of an animal, until Sadie’s soft mews turned to faster cries.

Fuck me…

Wishing it was me, I took my cock in hand again to make another deposit in the simmering pot of self-pity stew.

SADIE

I’d hated the High King so much six days ago, but I felt nothing but grateful when he fell back on top of my back and rutted me again, until another orgasm shuddered through my body.

But this time, when he pulled away, the need immediately flared up again.

Almost worse than before.

And the strawberry scent I’d grown sick of…

sprayed the air once more.

CIAN

The now-familiar slap of Tadhg trying to give himself relief filled Sadie’s room.

My cock spasmed painfully inside my boxer briefs, wanting me to do the same.

But I refused to abandon my analysis.

On screen, Sadie had come, and then Declan right after.

Her orgasms triggered his.

That much had remained consistent over the past five days.

What had started as hate sex had become the High King making up for lost time.

But this session had come only forty-five minutes after the last one.

Which had been just an hour after the one before that.

As I suspected, the time between her estrus spikes was contracting.

Declan collapsed beside her.

Spent.

But Sadie’s hips kept rocking back and forth over the nest of king robes, coats, and priceless tapestries she was dripping all over—even though Declan had just serviced her.

The slapping sounds abruptly stopped.

And Tadhg asked, “Is she…?”

Yes.

She was.

I rose to my feet, my protect(Sadie) protocol fully engaged, and headed toward the door.

SADIE

The world was only fire.

I couldn’t stop my hips from moving back and forth.

Then, suddenly, someone’s hands were on my body.

Turning me onto my back to reveal my dripping mound.

“Sadie… Sadie… open your eyes. Look at me, my darling,” a voice said.

A new voice. Gorgeous.

Like black silk sliding over my raw nerves.

But who…?

I opened my eyes and gasped when I saw the Shadow King’s worried face hovering above mine.

“Did you… did you just talk to me?” I asked, wondering if maybe I was hallucinating.

“Yes. You’re in thrall,” he said.

“I’d calculated for intervention on Day 7, but your current trajectory suggests system failure long before then.”

As wrecked as I felt, I still couldn’t help but smile up at him.

“You sound as ethereal as you look. Are you super-sure you’re not a moon god?”

A flicker of amusement.

“Sadie, I’m sure.”

Then he sobered.

“Your pupils are fully blown. Tell us what you need to complete the cycle.”

“I don’t know,” I sobbed, feeling so weak.

“Ask your bear, Sadie. She’ll tell you.”

TADHG

I felt like a true piece of shite, watching the Shadow King tend to her.

There I’d been, fapping off and feeling sorry for myself, while she was in real trouble.

“What are you…?”

Beside them, Declan blinked at Sadie and Cian—like he also thought the Shadow King might be a hallucination.

Then his cold gray gaze flipped like a switchblade to me.

I held it. Daring him to pull the First Claim card.

The Mad Mountain King bear inside me was stalking back and forth.

Just looking for a reason to punch him in his smug High King face.

DECLAN

All I felt was worry.

I’d already started suspecting something was seriously wrong.

And I knew I was right when the other two kings came charging through the new hallway door like paramedics on a human medical show.

Just as I’d suspected, they’d been watching.

And they wouldn’t have interrupted my First Claim unless they suspected something was wrong, too.

“What’s the matter?” I asked Cian.

“Why can’t we complete the cycle?”

The Shadow King didn’t answer.

I had a feeling this once-in-a-decade speaking event was reserved exclusively for Sadie.

CIAN

Only for Sadie.

I would speak for no one else.

Thank the gods, she’d taken my advice to consult her bear.

Her eyes were fully shifted to the side.

Like a child who hadn’t yet learned to hide when they were speaking to their bear.

In a way, Sadie might be the equivalent.

The bear who hadn’t known she was a bear was only seven weeks old as far as her consciousness was concerned.

I cursed myself for not thinking of this sooner.

I should’ve paid more attention to the interior nature portion of her education.

It likely hadn’t even occurred to her to speak with her bear until now.

“What is she saying to you?” I asked, drawing her gaze back to mine.

Sadie’s expression filled with apology.

“You’re probably not going to like this.”

TADHG

That was the only warning the Shadow King got before she bit the hell out of him, sinking her teeth into the flesh between his neck and shoulder.

Binding him to her forever with a mate bite.

A beat. That’s all we three kings got with our sanity.

A single beat.

Then the Shadow King bit her back, and all hell broke out.

DECLAN

There was an order to these things.

Rituals to follow.

Ceremony.

Vows. Process.

And my bear gave not one single fuck.

He roared inside me, lunging forward, maw-first.

SADIE

The Shadow King flooded into me.

All his memories. All his serenity.

All his moon knowledge.

He’d been born this way.

Quiet as the moon. Utterly without the desire to speak.

A human psychiatrist once tried to label it.

And that diagnosis had been the very thing that made him come out—as someone completely unwilling to talk.

It hurt him to speak.

Like knives scraping his chest.

But he loved me.

Loved me so much. He’d do anything to protect me.

To keep me safe.

Including biting me back.

So our telekinetic link would be established.

So I’d never be without his words again.

But there were only three words in his head when I made my mark on his neck: “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Over and over again.

A hard-coded script, running on an infinite loop.

Installed the moment our eyes locked across the dining room.

When my strawberry scent first triggered his internal recognition protocol.

And I’d mistaken him for Death.

For a moment, we were the only two objects in the universe.

Which I understood now, down to the calculations and theories.

Including The Big Laptop.

A story theory he’d developed to explain our existence: What he believed to be a written version of reality.

He believed in the bears’ three serpent gods.

But he also believed we were little more than story.

One that may or may not have a happy ending.

I stared at all his knowledge in wonder, giving him the little I had in return.

And then something else crashed into me.

TADHG

The High King’s teeth sank into the space on the other side of Sadie’s neck at the same time his hips plunged into her strawberry wet.

DECLAN

I drove into her like something possessed.

Biting viciously into her, in the same way she’d taken the Shadow King.

Then I drowned in the knowledge of her.

Her mind had been conditioned to be simple.

But it was also a Rubik’s Cube of ever-shifting wants and needs and instincts she didn’t understand.

I’ve always been rather good at Rubik’s Cubes.

And negotiations.

I rutted between her legs as my teeth marked her forever.

And inside this animal sex, my bear ran straight toward hers on a plane of existence filled with ancient stone circles.

“Let me in , ” I commanded.

“ Take my seed.”

Her bear walked toward me on the stone circle plane.

And my bear froze in shock.

She was gorgeous. Big and black, with a proud, gleaming coat and a muzzle of brown fur around her nose.

And she was wearing a crown.

Not the silver one I would have placed upon her head had she allowed the ceremony to conclude without protest.

This crown was older.

Deeper. Woven from something no forge could shape—braided gold wire, deep-rooted shells, and carved onyx beads that glinted like stories passed down through generations.

In the center sat a chunk of raw garnet, uncut and unpolished, but glowing with a fierce inner light.

“You’re a queen already.”

“I am. I will forever be. I was born this way,” the bear said, regarding me with a lofty tilt of her head.

“ Tell me, what does ‘álainn’ mean? My moon god does not know.”

The bite mark I’d given her let me know she was referring to the Shadow King.

“He’s not a moon god.”

“He is to me. And if he is to me, it must be true.”

My bear cocked its head.

Like recognizing like.

“ You’re confident, bordering on arrogant,” I realized .

“Not as insecure as your human seems.”

The bear’s entire body heaved with a sigh.

“I’ve been trying to tell her about our crown our whole life. But she kept pushing me down. Tell me, why does my beautiful moon god not know the meaning of this Irish word?”

My bear chuffed.

“Because, as literally quiet as it’s kept, he’s more stubborn than your Mountain King and I combined. He refused to learn the language as a child with the rest of us. Maybe he always knew he’d end up like this.”

“Hmm. Well…” Her bear responded to my explanation with a queenly shrug.

“Gods have no need of words. That’s why he understands god tech better than anyone else.”

“That he knows of,” I pointed out.

“That he knows of,” the bear conceded with a regal nod.

She looked my bear up and down.

Sniffed. “Will you tell me what ‘álainn’ means?”

“It means beautiful. Obviously. The most beautiful female I’ve ever laid eyes upon.”

“Oh… That makes sense.” The already-queen bear’s expression lit up with pleasant surprise.

But instead of gazing down shyly, as her human would have, she held my eyes and told me, “You should have led with that.”

I could feel the incoming orgasm barreling toward the two of us like a train.

“Let me in,” I commanded again.

“Take my seed.”

“Why should I?” she asked, tone haughty.

“You are not my moon god. Or my trusted teacher.”

“No, I am neither of those things,” I agreed.

“I am your king. Your devil. The male who will stop at nothing to make you happy to be mine.”

Her brown eyes flared with heat underneath her one-of-a-kind crown.

But then she reminded me, “I am already happy to be theirs. You have six weeks of catching up to do, Devil King.”

The orgasm had nearly reached the end of its climb.

And she dared to keep challenging her High King.

This female…

“Do not make me chase you,” I growled deep in my chest.

“What if I like being chased?” she asked, her voice liquid gold.

“Then I will chase you,” I promised, matching her tone.

“Because a moon god will grant all your wishes, but a Devil King will hunt you down and make your wishes match his own.”

Her bear blinked with a serene slowness that her bite told me she’d already borrowed from the Shadow King.

Then she said, “I will consider it.”

Just as our combined orgasm crested the cliff.

In the next moment, I slammed back to earth and then into Sadie’s strawberry wet one last time before exploding inside of her.

SADIE

I screamed into the Shadow King’s neck as the orgasm wracked through me.

Something was happening.

This wasn’t like a regular climax.

It felt as if my womb was pulsating, rushing and quickening, like it was taking delivery of fireworks.

Creating something.

“A baby , ” my bear informed me proudly.

“The High King asked me nicely.”

I wasn’t sure how biting me out of nowhere was “asking nicely,” but according to the new voice inside my head: “These are games we kings and queens like to play. Maybe you’ll understand in the years to come. Now, receive your Mountain King. I am not yet satisfied.”

With a gasp, I let go of the Shadow King’s neck and said, “Tadhg! Tad?—”

He was between my legs before I got the second call of his name out.

TADHG

Fucking her like I hadn’t let myself for six long, long weeks.

It was worth the wait.

Glorious. Druid songs layered on top of R&B until we both exploded.

My teeth tingled… but no.

Not yet... Maybe not ever.

Mad Mountain King. There had to be a discussion.

There had to be?—

Sadie came with a great intake of breath and a heaving arch of her back as her cunt strangled my length.

And though I’d wanted to last as long as I could, my cock kicked and spewed ropes of cum.

Emptying, transferring every bit of life-making material I had inside me…

to inside of her.

Every last drop.

That was what her cunt took from me.

I collapsed beside her, a male desiccated.

But she continued to shudder beside me, the orgasm still wracking her body, even after I was done.

SADIE

I could no longer see.

I suspected my eyes had rolled to the back of my head, but couldn’t bring myself to care that I was seizing as another deep womb orgasm overtook me.

And still, the new voice inside my head—the one I’d been suppressing for so long—said: “One more.”

And with that, I blinked back into the real world to inform the Shadow King over our new mental link: “She’s asking for you.”

Our irises were opposite colors, but our eyes looked the same now.

Black and blown out.

Everything could be a drug, my new Shadow King knowledge informed me.

Even pleasure. And especially intimacy.

And my moon god climbing on top of me, last but never least, was the best kind of intimacy.

He stroked a hand over my now incredibly messy crown braid, gazing upon me as if I were the most mesmerizing woman in his universe.

He held my black stare with his, then slowly pushed in until his piercing—I now knew it was called a magic cross—hit my back wall.

We both… oh goodness .

The bear bite bond made sure we both felt everything the other did.

Every sensation. Every contraction.

The utterly calm feeling of finally coming home after a long journey.

Holding my gaze, he started to move.

Taking his time. Letting me know over the bond of our bite that this…

me … was the best drug he’d ever known.

“Me, too.”

He was everything my bear wanted.

From the first moment she sat up in the glass box.

“Finish it,” she whispered inside me as we rode on each other’s pleasure, hearts filling up as the orgasm built inside both of us.

Then he downshifted his hips.

And… and… hello, outer space.

Supernovas formed and atoms collided.

We rocketed to his moon and gazed directly into the sea of sun-stars.

And then we jumped into the space between them and floated back down to our plane here on Earth.

“Core memory codified,” his black silk voice murmured inside my head.

It was amazing to know exactly what he meant as my body finally stopped emitting estrus.

And my eyes fluttered closed to the image of the four of us at the table, telling our three progeny about how I became the first queen in all of Secret Kingdom history to become pregnant with three future rulers on her First Claim wedding night.