Page 65 of Defy the Fae

Juniper’s moans escalate. Her fingers squeeze mine, so I brush my mouth against the knuckles to relax them.

When her grip unravels, I hoist myself up and return to standing. I sling my hips back and forth, riding her moans, claiming each of them.

Her knees clamp my sides. Her nipples point to the ceiling, breasts jolting softly. She rounds her waist with mine, taking me in.

My ragged growls scrape through the room. I cup her ass and pump us to the brink, until warmth climbs up my shaft, and my bones tense. I may have the branches fastening her to the desk, but she has me just as pinned to her.

Juniper yanks on the boughs. Then her eyes blast open, her pussy convulses and melts onto me, and she comes with a long cry.

While it happens, Juniper watches me unleash with her. I pitch my cock with short jabs of my waist, then pause and hurl my head back as liquid heat gushes from my crown. A roar vaults up my throat and grinds from my mouth.

As it does, the branches unfurl from Juniper. They shrink and vanish back into the oak tree, leaving not so much as a crevice in its wake.

With a satisfied sigh, Juniper rises to catch my mouth with hers, swallowing the sounds rushing from my lungs. I smirk against her lips, then inch back to plant kisses up and down her throat, snarling and nipping her every so often until she chuckles.

After that, we progress to the nearest reading chair.

15

While prowling through The Gang of Elks, I take stock of the forest’s state. Fir needles poke the night air, though a bunch of leaves and pinecones have fallen, crunching into flakes under my hooves. It happens for several months every year, but not this early, and not this amount.

I squat on my haunches, pluck one of the stalks off the ground, and twirl it between my fingers. In other areas, broken branches lack green rings inside the bark’s flesh, the contrary brownness a sign the trees are dying.

At this rate, it feels as though the woodland is being held up by sticks.

“Fuck,” I mutter, chucking the needle leaf. Worse, the soil is infertile in this area, like it was near our cabin when our band had returned from The Horizon.

Tinder’s reports have been yielding shitty news. He’s been scouting The Wicked Pines and The Swarm of Rats, both of which remain under my rule.

Cypress says neutral ground in The Heart of Centaurs is faring well. But as for the rest of this wilderness, who the hell knows? Most of the woodland has been claimed by our enemies—from The Roots That Take and extending all the way to The Skulk of Foxes and down to The Bonfire Glade and The Seeds that Give, plus everything south of where I’m standing. That arrangement has chopped our fellowship’s turf into two pieces, blocking off our travel routes and forcing us to manifest, thus draining allied stamina on a regular basis.

As a ruler, I should have access to every corner of this land.

As a traitor, that’s not the case anymore.

Still, there are obvious signs. Bears and badgers are roaming through this area. Residents of The Skulk of Foxes are migrating to Cypress’s home, searching for new dens because the old ones are caving in on themselves, for no elemental reason. That’s according to the foxes who’ve been willing to communicate as much to the centaurs.

My fingers spear through my hair. I set my free hand on the trunk of the evergreen beside me and close my eyes. “Talk to me,” I whisper.

The trunk’s coarse hide vibrates with life from within, humming like the inside of my cello. But the sound is feeble, its bark parched. I can’t hear a damn thing. Not a single crumb of information broadcasts from the tree, which would take energy it doesn’t have.

It’s preserving itself.

A grisly pang squeezes my chest. The trees in this wild are my teachers, my superiors, and my friends. And they’re fading.

My eyes clench tightly, then flip open with a vengeance. Everything went slowly those first years, but now it’s speeding up.

What will be left by the thirteenth year? Or will this just be a desolate wasteland, the last green stem straining for candlelight and starlight that aren’t there, that burned off before then?

Juniper. Our kid.

Sylvan. My brothers. Their women.

This land. The fauna.

Everything.

“Fuck that,” I hiss.

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