Kaitlyn makes a funny choking noise and buries her head into my shoulder. I like it very much, and it makes my spicket stand to attention. I glare at Warden.
“My mate and I need to breed.”
Kaitlyn lifts her head instantly. “Linton!”
“I am not lying, my mate,” I respond. “That is what I wish to do right now.”
She pats me on my chest in rapid succession. “Warden doesn’t need to know.”
“Warden is leaving,” Warden says, getting to his feet with a chuckle. “Who’d have ever thought you’d get mated?” he adds. “But I wish you all the best.”
He changes into his Brag form and trots out of the hall. I find Kaitlyn staring at me intently.
“I thought he would never leave,” I say.
She continues to stare for a moment or two and then laughs. “You’re incorrigible.”
“I need to mate, my sweet Kaitlyn. What’s wrong with that?” I respond as I slowly nibble up her neck. “And perhaps she might let me feed.”
“Totally incorrigible.”
I lift her into my arms as I get to my feet. As much as mating is fun in different places, there’s one I will always enjoy most.
Our bed, in our sleeping room, with the moon high above us and its power coursing through me.
I thought I was lost forever. Instead I found my Kaitlyn. And my soul is complete.
KAITLYN
Linton insists I sit on his lap while I eat. He actually doesn’t need to insist. I’m happy to be there. I know he likes it, and he is surprisingly comfortable as well as smelling delicious.
I bite into an apple, and he represses a groan. It seems like me eating fruit is one of his particular triggers, and he’s getting lumpier by the second.
“Have you heard anything about my sister?” I ask him as a distraction.
We’ve been back at what he calls his lair for a month now, and during that time, Linton has taken steps to reestablish himself in the area as a place where the inhabitants can come, store their crops in his vast cool underground cellars, ask advice (in a move I was absolutely not expecting, Linton is extremely knowledgable about agriculture), and ask for scales, which he can now produce on demand. And occasional when he least expects it, making him one surprised mothman.
“I have put out some messages, but as yet, nothing has come back to me. If she is in the Yeavering, we will find her,” Linton says. “I like the idea of you having a sister.”
“You do?” I furrow my brow.
“I do. Because you cared enough about her to come here in her place. If you had not had a sister, we might never have met.” He nods.
When you put it like that, in mothman logic, I can’t fault it.
The underrealm doesn’t discriminate. Although it appears Linton and I were indigestible, as were Warden, Reavely, and unfortunately the Selkies, the shadow/mist creatures.
Meaning Warden and Linton have been hunting the things down night after night. Dispatching each one individually to the realm where they belong.
The Brag trots into the hall, hooves ringing as usual, loudly against the stone flags.
“It is time for me to return to the Shadow Keep, old friend. The Selkie last night was the final one,” he says, eyeing up my apple.
Linton growls at him, reaches out to the bowl in front of us, and throws one at the Brag. Warden catches it with ease, his hooves dancing on the stone flags before he transforms into his biped form and throws himself down in a nearby heavy oak carved chair and takes a bite.
“You want to go back there?” Linton says incredulously.
“You want me to stay here?” Warden answers in a similar tone.
