Page 8 of Bull Moon Rising

My skin practicallyitches as more and more humans crowd into the main guild hall. It’s recruitment day, so it shouldn’t be surprising. Today’s the day we try to find enough students to make a Five—a trained team for exploring the ruins. Only half of the people who are here will actually apply, but it feels like everyone in Vastwarren shows up to gawk at the normally closed-off guild buildings. It’s like this every time, but this year it’s particularly irksome because of the way the calendar falls.

“I hate the Conquest Moon,” Raptor says at my side, his tail thrashing almost as wildly as mine. “Makes me want to come out of my skin. Or rip someone out of theirs.”

I snort with amusement, because I know just what he means. Humans are blissfully unaware of such things, but Taurians are sensitive to the god Old Garesh, and the Conquest Moon is meaningful for every person with a drop of minotaur blood in their veins. Once every five years, the Blood Moon crosses over the White Moon, just as Old Gareshtook to wife the queen of Old Prell. It’s called the Conquest Moon amongst the Taurians, because the god conquered the queen’s army and then kept her in his bed for five days. When she arose, she was pregnant with five sons.

And until the Conquest Moon passes, every Taurian is going to be agitated and on edge…or leaving the city entirely. Every Taurian female goes into heat, and every Taurian male is hit with the need to rut with abandon until the Conquest Moon passes.

It’s not convenient.

If you have a wife, I’m sure it’s fine. Fun, even.

But I don’t have a wife. I don’t even have a lover. My work in the tunnels takes up my days, and there’s no time for a woman or a family. The only female I’m ever around is Magpie, and the thought of falling upon her in a rutting frenzy makes me shudder with horror. We’re friends and business partners, but that’s as far as it goes.

I scratch at the fur on my neck and try not to snarl when another hopeful scholar tries to push forward. Baring my teeth at him, I manage to keep myself in check—but just barely. The Conquest Moon is almost a month away and yet I’m already short-tempered and impatient. I’m going to be an absolute wreck by the time the moon gets here. “Timing is awful,” I tell Raptor as the human moves past me with a quivering look. “I need to be here in the city.”

“You’ll murder someone and then rut their corpse if you stay here in the city,” Raptor tells me with a smirk not even his nose ring can hide. “And then they’ll lock you up and throw away the key.”

He’s not wrong, but he doesn’t know the half of it. Magpie needs students…yet she can’t be trusted to guide them on her own. If I count on her to pull things together, we’ll find ourselves with two students (ornostudents) instead of the standard five, and then they’ll quit because there’s no way a team of two will pass, and then there will be no income for either of us, because Magpie will be booted from the teaching program. Magpie will spend all her time at the bars, getting laid out and moping about the past, and I’ll find myself without a job.

I flex my magicked hand, the fingers aching despite the fact that they’re not real. If Magpie doesn’t get students, I’ll never get out of my indentured contract. So I have to stay. Magpie can’t be left to run thingsalone. “Can’t leave,” I say absently, flexing my hand again out of habit, just to make sure it’s there. “I don’t have a choice.”

“I always forget,” Raptor says, and there’s a hint of sympathy in his hard voice. Raptor works on a Five for Lord Nostrum, with a constantly rotating roster. Lord Nostrum is cheap and also neglectful, and I’m pretty certain that Raptor only stays because he can sell some of the artifacts he pilfers on the black market. Everyone else realizes that Lord Nostrum is paying pennies and so his team constantly switches out, leaving Raptor to do all the work. Sometimes I think it’s not about black-market sales, but just that Raptor would rather work alone than have to babysit the fools he’s normally saddled with.

“You’re leaving? Soon?” I ask, crossing my arms as another scholar pushes his way in out of the rain. It’s well-known that Taurians make the humans nervous, and we know to stay at the fringes of the room or in the shadows. They can’t do without us because we’re far superior in the tunnels, but we also know when to make ourselves scarce. I remain in the doorway instead of pushing my way inside. It lets me see the entire vicinity while also letting me leave easily…or so I tell myself.

Raptor shifts on his hooves. “I shouldn’t, but it’s pretty bad this year. I keep waking up sweaty, and I can’t sleep. It’s either stay or spend my entire fee on whorehouses, and then another fee for the delousing I’ll need after that.”

I wince. If I don’t leave Vastwarren for the Conquest Moon,I’mgoing to be the one in the whorehouses. I hate the thought. There’s something cold and impersonal about having a stranger with you through your rutting. I had to utilize a sex worker last time, and it left me feeling vaguely unsettled. Took me months to feel like myself again. The whores do their job and don’t discriminate between human men and Taurians, but it doesn’t mean I like it.

Maybe I’m particular, but I’d rather be touched by familiar hands than a stranger’s, no matter how eager the stranger.

But that’s not looking like an option. Maybe I can slip away for a couple of weeks once Magpie has a team of fledglings established. Take the fastest coach I can—or find someone with a teleportation stone—and head for one of the Taurian festivals out in the plains to the south and just fuck everything moving for a week straight.

The odds of that happening fill me with a vague sense of despair, but I’m low on options. At least the Taurian festival is free. Any sex worker in Vastwarren City during the Conquest Moon is going to charge a premium. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I admit to Raptor, gazing out at the sea of people crowding into the benches in the hall. I turn back to my brother Taurian, considering. “I think—”

An umbrella comes out of nowhere and smacks Raptor on the arm. His eyes flare with anger and he turns so hard and so fast that the stranger—a woman—immediately stumbles into me, a mouselike squeak in her throat.

I automatically grab her and save her before she pitches to the floor. Perhaps it’s all the years of practice with Magpie. My arm goes around a sturdy, corseted waist, and I haul the woman against me like a bride, because it’s either that or dump her on the floor.

This isn’t helping the latent heat pulsing through my veins. The Conquest Moon might be a month away, but I’m already feeling the effects.

The stranger’s eyes go very wide and she takes in my features. I’d bet a handful of pennies that she’s never seen a Taurian this close before—there’s something about her demeanor that speaks of being sheltered. She gapes at me, at my bull-head and horns, at the jewelry on my ears and nose. I scowl in her direction, releasing her.

“Watch where you’re going,” I snap. “You could get trampled.”

“It is rather crowded,” she admits, straightening herself and then shaking out her umbrella, which causes water to rain all over me and a few others. “Oops. My apologies.” Her gaze goes to me again, and then to my shirt. “Oh dear.”

I look down. Soaked orange fur clings to my sleeve in clumps, transferred from her clothing.

“Sorry,” she says quickly, plucking the clump I hold up out of my grasp. “That’s from my cat. She’s quite the shedder. Just ignore all that.”

Raptor muffles a snort of amusement, looking at me over the woman’s head as she continues to pat my arm, pulling off bits of wet fur from my linen sleeves. Maybe it’s just the oncoming rut making my mind focus on all the wrong things, but I can’t stop staring at her.

She’s interesting, I think, in the way unexpected things are. Her cheeks are flushed pink, her clothing well-made if drab, and it’s allsoaked and clinging to what looks like a fine, plump, sturdy figure. She’s tall, nearly coming to my chin. It’s a fine height for a female, and the fact that she’s built solidly makes me think about her in lascivious ways that are most definitely rut-influenced. Her face is human, so I don’t know if she’s what they would consider pretty or not, but her eyes are big and dark and expressive, and her fingers are blunt with short nails.

And busy. She has very busy fingers. If she pets my sleeve one more time, my cock is going to act up.

“Leave it be,” I tell the drenched woman, and then because everyone in the hall is staring at her, I add helpfully, “You shouldn’t be here.”

---