Page 78 of Beds and Blades

Glowing

Iwoke to sunlight streaming through the window at an angle that suggested it was later than dawn. Nine o’clock, possibly. I had no way to confirm this because my Casio and my iPhone had not survived the transition, which remained one of the more practically inconvenient aspects of my situation.

I got out of bed. I looked through the window at the sky that had seemed wrong when I woke in the field. Since then, somehow, it had begun to feel like mine.

At the treeline far below, I noticed the amber of turned leaves. The air through the gap in the stone carried the smell—cold underlining something organic, a crisp edge like a fresh apple cut open over dry leaves, the faint sweetness of things completing.

Autumn. At least that was the same. Although this version probably didn’t feature football, trick-or-treating, or pumpkin-spice lattes.

I looked at my finger.

The ring was still glowing. It wasn’t lighting the room or announcing itself. It was simply present, a quiet, warm gold that existed at the edge of perception, the way a candle exists in a room already lit. Constant. Warm.

I was claimed.

Skip woke and looked at me standing naked by the window. I felt his desire rise with immediate and flattering clarity.

He got out of bed, and the morning light moved over him with unnecessary generosity. I looked down at his cock, and my thoughts drifted to the way he had undone me earlier in the morning.

He held the back of my head as we kissed, his other hand warm at my waist.

“But I must get to work,” he said, pulling back with reluctance. His professional obligations and personal preferences were in direct conflict. “We must prepare. Morvanna will not wait.”

Morvanna.

In the post-claiming warmth, I had almost forgotten that I was living in a military fortress on the front line of a vampire war.

“She sent Mira for you,” Skip said. “Consider what Mira knew through the dark bond. Two years of it. This outpost. Every defense, every weakness, every rotation. What I know of the other outposts on the line. And she knew me personally. My habits. The exact way I can be reached.”

He drew a deep breath.

“If Morvanna had only wanted me—turned, recruited, removed—she had Mira. She could have attempted to recruit me at any point in the last two years.”

I had already run this calculation.

“But she didn’t move,” I said.

“She did not move,” Skip said. “Until after you arrived.”

The strategy was not complicated. Morvanna had held Mira in reserve after turning her. Mira was a significant asset, deployed once, at the moment an Earth woman appeared at the most exposed outpost on the line. Skip had never been the objective. He had been, at most, a bonus prize she might collect alongside the actual target.

The actual target was currently standing nude in front of a window.

“Caen told me something,” I said carefully. “About why Morvanna seeks women from my world.”

Skip was quiet for a moment. “I am aware that Caen keeps certain counsel to herself,” he said. “I have commanded this outpost for six years. She has been here for two. In that time, she has told me a great deal, and I have understood that there is more she has not told me. I do not know the nature of what she guards. I know that she guards something.”

“I don’t know how much I’m supposed to share,” I said.

“You are my claimed,” Skip said. “What you carry is mine to help you carry.”

I looked at the ring. He was right. This bond meant no performance, no pretending the weight of this was not there.

“Morvanna is interested in women from my world because they bring knowledge and abilities Mytharo cannot produce for itself,” I said. “Caen believes that too.”

Skip was very still.

“There is more,” I said. “The Sanctumspire mages have been weakening the barrier between our worlds. Deliberately. Creating conditions where women from my world can cross through.”