Shared Between Them (20 page)

They looked about, seeing bodies now, but no other footprints. “Killed two,” Draevan panted.

“Yes,” Taric nodded. “Me… too…” It settled upon them both at once that their count was off. Yet there was no one around them… “Kyra?” he called, swallowing.

Then one of the horses whinnied and stomped forward, exposing two shadows in the darkness, the vision clear. Kyra had a knife to her throat.

It was odd—the knife was at her throat, but Draevan and Taric were the ones having trouble breathing or swallowing. It felt like the knife was at theirs.

Taric felt horror akin to illness.

“Drop your weapons,” the elf seethed, his pale yellow eyes looking demon-like in the moonlight.

Draevan and Taric couldn’t have dropped their swords with any less hesitancy. “If you hurt her—if you put a scratch on her— by the gods, I will rip off your balls, shove them down your throat, and fuck you up the ass!” Draevan snapped angrily. His pulse could be heard in his tone, causing his voice to break every beat.

“I’m not going to get out of here without her—we know that. Just stay where you are and she might live a little longer,” the elf hissed like a cornered animal. “Now move out of my way.”

“What… where are you taking her? You can’t just take her,” Taric snapped. “We won’t allow it. Let her go, and we will let you go.”

The elf snorted. “She goes with me. We will let her go as soon as you turn yourself in to the king’s mercy.”

That was a bleak alternative; none of them would make it out alive that way…

Draevan swallowed and glanced helplessly at Taric. They weren’t prepared for a hostage situation; neither of them had any idea what to do. They watched dumbly as the elf stepped forward, grasping their wife by the throat.

Kyra’s eyes were wide as saucers, terrified.

“Keep moving, whore,” the elf hissed at her, making sure to keep his eyes on Draevan and Taric the whole time. “Else they’ll find you in pieces, or hanging from the highest tree where your kind belongs. Lord knows it dirties me just to touch you.”

Kyra’s eyes filled with pain and misery. Gods, Taric hated to see her pain. He knew her well enough now to know that all she wanted to do was gain the smallest measurement of acceptance and respect… Taric shuddered a breath, feeling worthless. There she was—led away helplessly while her husbands stood there like dick-less—

They were at the tree line already. Draevan grabbed his sword. “I don’t care what happens, he’s not getting another fifty paces with her,” Draevan swore between clenched teeth.

“Hyah!” There was a tightening, whip-like sound, and a shadow flew upside down from one of the trees.

Draevan and Taric raced over, watching Kyra pace around the flailing body, hanging by a noose tied around his heel, exactly like the trap they had ensnared Kyra with when they’d met. Kyra picked up the man’s dagger from where it had dropped on the ground, coldly walking up to him. “It dirties me to touch you too,” she told him, and slit his throat.

“Kyra,
gods
!” Draevan panted, slowing down and clamping his arms around her to drag her away from the hanging body. “You… You didn’t have to—we would have killed him for you,” he said, fretting. He eyed the noose. “I don’t remember you making that booby-trap.”

Their old response finally came back to them. “You weren’t watching me closely enough.” She shook her head, looking quiet and very, very tired. “I wanted him to know,” she said quietly, “in case he was the last of my kind I will ever see… that I’m not untouchable.” She looked up at them, looking like a warrior goddess in the moonlight. She was incredible. She straightened, her posture impeccable. “I’m a Giantsbane.” She eyed the swinging body. “And I’m better than him. I’m better than them all.”

With that, she dropped the dagger onto the ground and headed back to camp.

Draevan and Taric watched her as if spell-bound for a moment. Taric was the first to cut the silence. “Did you ever for a moment think that she might have not been mother of The One to Kill the Dark Wizard?” he asked him.

Draevan frowned. “I’ve doubted it before, yes. I thought, for a time, that there might one day be other giant-killers, and other elves… that the prophecy had nothing to do with us, or with her.” He turned his head, and then patted his shoulder. “But I don’t worry about that anymore. It’s her, Taric. It’s about her.”

Taric smiled weakly, for the first time not skeptical of the prophecy. What a crazy life they had in front of them now. There was so much to do yet that it was nearly overwhelming… But for now, Taric could only nod and say weightily, “I know.”

“We should tell her about… You know. The prophecy,” Draevan told him. “Our village knows it. She’s strong now—she can handle knowing.”

Taric took a deep breath. “I don’t want her to think that’s the only reason we married her.”

“That is the only reason we married her,” Draevan replied strongly, then softened. “It’s not the only reason we
love
her, and it’s even not the only reason we take her into our bed. We’re proud of her… We can’t live without her.” He frowned and shrugged weakly. “At least I couldn’t. Could you?”

Taric sighed heavily. “No,” he admitted. “I
couldn’t
imagine it.”

“Then the least we can do is tell her. Trust her.”

Taric raised an eyebrow, smirking a little. “So you’re the one telling
me
to trust her now?”

Draevan agreed that it was odd. “I guess that’s what they mean when men talk about women turning their world upside down, huh? Gods know, I barely know up from down anymore.” He straightened. “To tell you the truth, I’ve gone sort of insane. I’ve even thought about killing you in your sleep.”

Taric’s eyes widened, but not with terror or even surprise. “I’ve thought about killing
you
!” he said, somehow relieved that he wasn’t the only one who’d lost his mind since Kyra. “Just so I can have her to myself!”

“Exactly,” Draevan nodded, but then smiled. “Our wife probably needs ten men just to keep her in line and keep her safe, yet she only has us two.”

“That was also my conclusion,” Taric admitted. He punched his cousin in his brawny shoulder. “So I guess I’ll just have to deal with you.”

“We’ll have to learn to enjoy sharing.” Draevan sighed and then waved his fingers around, adding, “That is, if she even speaks to us again after realizing that we’ve kept sort of… you know… Kept from her the fact that the Northern hemisphere depends on her.”

Taric nodded and looked over at her, where she was kicking the river water with her toes as she sat on a boulder on the water’s edge, dripping her legs over the side. “I’d rather fight the giant then tell her we’ve kept that from her for this long.”

Draevan gave a wry laugh. “Me too, but unfortunately… We killed him already.” Draevan gave him a shove in her direction and said, “Come on. Let’s get this over with…”

Chapter Seven

Kyra pulled off her coat as she walked her horse inside the long tunnel within the Crystal Mountains. She hadn’t spoken for five days, now, and she could tell her husbands were getting worried.

They were quiet now too, although they wasted no opportunity to coddle her. They’d even stopped at the dwarf village at the foot of the mountain, loaded up with supplies, and even bought her cake, hoping to get a smile out of her.

She had no smiles to give. Something about the weight of the world resting on her womb successfully getting fruited and her being able to raise some sort of ultimate warrior sort of put a halt on the ability to move her face that way. Her brain kept rotating it in her mind over and over and over… She didn’t know how to use a fork for gods’ sakes. How was she supposed to handle this sort of responsibility?

Hell, last week she didn’t even think she could get pregnant by them. Now… There was a prophecy. The Northlands were known for their soothsayers… She might actually be able to bear children… It was technically very possible that she was pregnant already.

It didn’t even matter if the prophecy was true. She was going to be going to a place where they very much believed it, and she would be watched and subjugated for the rest of her life… Or until the Dark Wizard was slain.

Draevan had begged for her to just ‘be mad at them’. About what? If she was one of them, she wouldn’t have told her either! And when they told her, she’d just taken a life for the first time! She was near tears, emotions broiling on the surface, still shaking from the sensation of having a blade under her throat.

The added news made her head feel like it was going to explode.

Now, she could still barely enjoy the Crystal Mountains… which she had never gotten to do before, because she’d never actually been in them… Walking through the caves of the Crystal Mountain was like walking around in a diamond. One lantern made the room as bright as day. The inside was also quite warm—a vast contrast to the outside.

“Let’s camp here,” Taric advised, pointing to a place along an inner-mountain stream as he jumped off his horse. “It’s not like we have daylight to worry about. We should stop when we’re ready, or else we’ll be going all day and all night.” He took her horse’s bridal and led them both up to the stream before he put up his arms and helped her off.

Her husbands had been too weary of her anger, or emotions, that they hadn’t taken her for days. She felt Taric’s unrelenting erection through the fabric of his trousers when he helped her onto the ground, and her brain finally focused on it—on him—on the need inside of her.

She had gotten unused to going this long without one of them inside of her. She missed it. She just didn’t know how to say that she wanted it, and that everything was okay, and that she forgave them for not telling her of the prophecy at all, and that she loved them.

She really, really did love them; it was impossible not to, especially now that she was used to their gruff words and ways in bed. She was used to threats of their firm-handed discipline, too. Once she’d gotten used to that, it was easy to see that they adored her, and she loved that they did.

She sighed, happy to be thinking about
them
for a change. Just them, and now, and not the future.

They glanced up as they built a fire just large enough to cook on and smiled hopefully at her, as if they were relieved to hear her make noise at all. Then, as if they were afraid of being rude by staring, they went back to their work. She closed her arms in front of her chest, chewing her lip, wondering how to start conversation after being silent for so many days. The silence was now beginning to feel awkward.

She walked around the nearest bend for just a moment, looking for something to do rather than hover over them, but as she heard them converse quietly with each other, seeming to be planning on ‘who was going to try to talk to her’ that day, she found herself pulling off the dress around her and letting it drop to the ground. She quickly braided her hair to pull it off the back of her neck, then straightened her shoulders and walked back out into the small cavern they had put the bedroll down in.

They looked at her, looked down, then seemed to realize she was naked and looked up, their eyes round, their muscles tense and glittering in the rainbow light within the cavern.

She put up her hand. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said when Taric opened his mouth to say something. “I love you, and I trust you to decide what I do and don’t need to hear. It’s not like you don’t have your own language, and I don’t mind that. You would never say or do, or
not
say or
not
do, anything except if you thought it was for the best.” She took a breath. “I want you.”

Draevan was the first one to find his tongue. “Which one of us?” he asked her.

She looked at them and blinked; she wasn’t sure. She didn’t want either one to just sit and wait his turn with her or to feel left out. “I’m not part of two families,” she told him, gesturing to her marriage-markings on her wrist—she noticed long before that they were completely identical to each other. “We’re all entwined; we’re in the same family. I don’t want you separately tonight. I want both of you, like I had you on our wedding night.”

Taric swallowed and said, “So… You want us both at the same time?”

She controlled her smile. She could almost feel an excited energy filling up the air again. “I want to lose myself a little. I want you both however I can have you, and much and as hard as you can give me.”

They were very still, and very thoughtful, just blinking excitedly at her like children about to receive a present. She couldn’t help but break into a laugh. “Well, if neither if you want me, I’ll just take care of myself…” she threatened, turning her hip.

She didn’t even get a foot entirely off the ground to step forward when she felt spun around and tilted over Draevan’s broad shoulder. She squeaked with excitement as Draevan exclaimed, “If we’re dreaming, I don’t want to wake up. Did you hear what our wife just demanded, Taric?”

“I did. And I won’t disappoint. Tonight, we’ll hump any residual silence right out of her!” He gave a laugh. “Put her down, you ass… I’ve been thinking of this pussy of hers like a man lost in the desert dreams of water!”

Draevan dropped her to her feet on the bedrolls, and Taric, who had apparently been in a rush to get nude, brought her down to lie on the mat. His eyes were so intense that she found herself embarrassed by his touches. He nipped at her breasts and the skin on her belly until her bottom was all the way on the padding; then he grabbed her thighs and with a yank and an “oof!” she found herself on the flat of her back with her thighs up in the air, presenting her dripping cunny to him.

He finished spreading her legs apart and pressed his middle and index finger deep into her until his knuckles hit against her clit. She bit her lip, watching the seductive, animalistic look on his face as he plunged his fingers deep into her. “You’re soaked,” he told her, which was surely obvious before they started; he just liked to say it to make her cheeks blush. “Does this feel good, my little elfling?”

She nodded, still chewing on her bottom lip timidly.