Grayling: Nocturnal Creatures Book 3 Read online

  GRAYLING

  NOCTURNAL CREATURES BOOK 3

  AURELIA T. EVANS

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  Grayling, Nocturnal Creatures Book 3

  ©Copyright Aurelia T. Evans 2019

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  No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles or reviews and pages where permission is specifically granted by the author.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  * * *

  Cover Design: Covers by Combs

  Formatting: Keyminor Publishing Services

  Editor: Sarah Smeaton of Lighthouse Content

  My love letter

  to all incarnations of Dracula

  and Beauty and the Beast,

  my beautiful garden of undead roses.

  1

  “Asha.”

  “My lord.” She continued to peer out over the frozen lake, forest, and mountains, all unsettlingly quiet despite the hour. Leaves and needles did not rustle, nor did snow crunch or ice crack. She would have confused his voice with the wind had there been any. In the silence, his voice was clear in the shell of her ear, though he stood too far for her to feel him.

  “Are you not cold?”

  Asha ran her hands over her bare arms. The touch raised gooseflesh in its wake. It would be months before warmth crept into the frigid breezes and brought green to the dormant brown and gray that had sapped the world of color as surely as the Gray had drained her.

  Yet all she wore this midwinter night was her dressing gown, embroidered black velvet that draped over her shoulders like a priest’s vestments and brushed the floor, but she had not tied the sash and she wore nothing underneath.

  She lowered her hands to grasp the balcony railing until her knuckles turned whiter, and though she was chilled, she did not freeze.

  “No,” she replied.

  “Have wolves or men warmed you in the interim?” the king asked. “I scent both on your skin.”

  “You should come closer then, my lord. Perhaps distance distorts your senses. Neither have warmed me.”

  Finally, she felt his presence against her body, though he did not touch her, and he carried none of the warmth of the wolves within his substantial frame. He loomed over her with cold darkness that made the hair on her arms and neck raise deliciously. She heard him inhale near her shoulder and neck, but his breath did not disturb the air. He must have been wearing the cowl and mask he donned beyond his castle to hide his face.

  “Under the roses, I scent wolves all over, Ashling. What have you been doing in my absence?”

  “They break the fever for a time. But it always returns.”

  A whisper of skin on skin. He rested his leather gloves on the balcony rail and brought one hand to her cheek. He slid it up to her forehead before combing his black claws over her scalp and testing the back of her neck underneath the loose veil of her hair. “When did this fever begin?”

  Asha closed her eyes, leaning back against his cool hand, but he tightened his fingers around her neck to keep her still. “Why does my illness concern you?”

  “If you burn so and the fever has not waned, I may have to turn you sooner than the end of the year, whether it is your wish or not. I cannot transform a corpse.”

  “I have been ill before. It is not that kind of fever, my lord.”

  “What kind of fever is it?”

  She parted the front of the dressing gown and let it fall down her arms to the ground, leaving her perfectly bare to the winter cold and his gaze. Her skin and nipples tightened, but it was not unbearable.

  “Your wolves have helped all they could,” Asha said. “It does not last.”

  “Then it is desire that burns through you, that perfumes incense and oils from your flesh?” He trailed his claws down her spine, but restraint strangled his voice.

  “It is not mere desire, my lord. Even the wolves know it is not only that. It strengthens my scent, calls to them.”

  “And to men, my dear?”

  “My lord?”

  “Perhaps the wolves cannot smell it, attuned as their senses are to flesh,” the king murmured near her ear, yet still his breath did not brush against her as much as his voice. “But the blood of man lingers around you, over your mouth, your neck… Was one of my objects too disrespectful to his queen?”

  The king started to raise the mask over his face, but Asha shot grabbed his hand before he could. He had the strength and speed to deny her or crush her for the impudence, but he did neither.

  She brought his hand in a loosely curled fist to her neck, across her collarbone, between her breasts. She spread his long fingers. The span of them, with the long claws at the tip, covered the width of her waist, from prominent hipbone to hipbone.

  “I hope it does not anger you that I now keep several kingdom elders in the dungeon, including the chief elder,” Asha said. “I thought it would be best to save a mass execution of elders for your return. They await your judgment, whether that judgment sets them free or gives them to the appetites of your army or your future dead wife. However, the wolves shed many bodies of their blood, and I tore the throat from the chief elder’s vizier when he dared lay hands upon me.”

  “Where did he dare touch you, my queen?” His claws dented her skin, and he had to fan out his fingers in his uniquely graceful way to avoid pricking the skin.

  “The trouble was not where but with what intent.”

  “I am sorry the elders offended you. They rarely come to the castle, but when they have, the queen rarely attends them. I apologize that my absence forced you to confront the men who sold you to me to begin with.”

  “It was no mere offense that earned payment in blood, my lord. The executioner visited soon after you left, and when the elders sought audience and you were still gone, they believed your army had deposed and killed you. The elders’ attempt at a coup included transferring ownership of all assets from king to chief elder.”

  The king went rigid behind her, though he stepped away before she could sense anything more. Now she turned to him, regardless of her nakedness. There he was in the same mask, cowl, and robes that he had worn to stalk the kingdom’s streets on Longest Night—the guise of walking death, plague and dark angel in one, with his beautiful hands and terrible claws, visage so terrifying he could not show it to his own kingdom.

  Asha remembered it as surely as she remembered those hands, though it imbued her with none of the same sense of terror. She craved the sight of him more than that of the most handsome Tapestry son. She could see his monstrous beauty clearly despite the darkness that shrouded him.

  “I have not been away for so long in many generations,” the king said. “But a single extended absence should not have led so quickly to a coup. They have been colluding against me for longer than I would have expected. Monster I may be, but a man should know not to disturb a dragon. It is a mistake to think that because the dragon is not man, he will be easy to
slay.”

  “They will not make the same mistake twice, my lord.” Asha stroked the length of his claws with her own impotent fingertips. “Even if you were to release them, they would know better than to go against his army with anything less than all the kingdoms between oceans.”

  “Release them? Would you have me show them mercy, Ashling?” The king took her chin in his claws and raised her eyes to his, wherever they were in the shadow. Even when he removed his cowl, they would still be darker than the night sky.

  “I would have gutted the chief elder more thoroughly than I divested his vizier of a voice if I had believed it was my position to do so. He thought his kingdom kingless, but I knew otherwise. He is for your judgment. I fear mine would involve more terrifying implements than can be found in your audience chamber, for I have more compassion for the objects of your castle than the elders of my kingdom. I am not the one who should decide their fate, lest the servants gag upon the odor of blood every time they enter the audience chamber to clean the remnants of my revenge. So I saved them for you, my lord, to do with as you will.”

  “I have not been that kind of king for generations. Never have I been tempted as I am now to become that king again.”

  He took a cautious step toward her, although it could not have been her that incited his caution. She wondered what he believed a danger to her; she wished he would show her.

  “It is the vizier’s blood I smell upon you?”

  “I thought Callina and I had cleansed every trace.”

  He ran his claws down the length of her neck. Her head fell back to give him a smoother line.

  “Callina is one of my finest warriors.” He had come close enough now for his robes to brush her legs. “I would not have expected the bond, but I cannot deny the appeal she must have, my love. However, she is wolf, and I am something else. You and she cleansed it well, but it takes time for blood’s nearly imperceptible stain to fade. Were I to run my tongue over where the man bled over your skin, I would taste it, and it would sustain me better than the animal blood upon which I subsisted during my journey, upon which I could not feast enough, because I could only dream of yours when I closed my eyes in the caves and attics and within holes I dug into the ground—foul places never meant for a king. Yet the memory of you made those places a greater comfort.”

  “You have not even tasted me yet.” Asha grasped the sides of his hood as he caressed the places on her neck where her pulse throbbed.

  “I have tasted you a million times in my mind. I will taste you more.”

  Asha pulled him with her until the small of her back struck the balcony rail. He caged her on either side with his bracing arms. She held him and angled her head as though to kiss him, but the mask taunted them both.

  “Tell me we are not in danger,” Asha said. “Tell me that the threat up north has been neutralized and we have nothing more to fear.”

  “There is no threat to our kingdom. Some isolated monsters of my kind had lost their faculties and slaughtered in desperation. I ended their misery. You are safe—from threats elsewhere and here in our own kingdom.”

  “Then you need not be away from us one more moment.”

  His robes did not disappear or fall to the floor to join her dressing gown, but they shifted against her skin like tendrils of mist. It was the only warning given before he slotted his hips between her thighs and entered her. Wool and cotton stimulated her folds with maddening irritation. Asha cried out against his neck, the cowl muffling her more than it did him.

  “I have no memory of such heat inside you, Asha, even as a human woman burns to the undead.” He thrust deep and with patient control. His power lifted her from the ground. He wrapped an arm around her waist to keep her on the balcony rail, though she clutched at his robes as though they were all that kept her from falling.

  “It has tormented me since you left.” She gasped each time he took her, each thrust as intimate and possessive as the kiss he could not give her. The fever’s presence became even more apparent with his coolness penetrating deep in the center of the heat. Her mouth watered to imagine him without this darkness surrounding him, only the darkness in his eyes to pierce her, but his pale skin with the same moonglow that suffused hers in the night, and all of his heavenly coolness to soothe her.

  Yet with each passing moment, her fever burned hotter, brighter, as though the wolves had done nothing. She moaned against his neck, the woolen cowl scratching against her cheek, tried to bite him through the mask, but it softened her already unthreatening teeth. His skin would not yield as easily as the vizier’s; she had tested it before.

  “You have already changed so much in less than a month’s time.” Wetness barely dampened the cowl when the king tried to mouth over her neck in return, though he would not dare use his teeth if he wished to maintain the integrity of the cloth. “I am sorry I could not be here to witness it.”

  Regret slowed both their movements, but Asha wound her legs around him and pulled him in closer, until they had almost merged but for the layers of cloth between them. The burning inside flared so hot, Asha trembled, and her skin became slippery, especially over the balcony rail, where she had melted the fine frost that coated it.

  She had missed him from the moment his journey had begun. But if he had not journeyed away, she would never have gained the trust and respect of the wolves, might never have known Callina or Lysan, might never have confronted the captain, might have left any ferocity to the king and his army rather than trust her own. She might have never burned the way she did now, or known why she did.

  The melted frost and the sweat dripping down her body made her slide on the balcony rail, but she had no fear that she would fall, as she had when depending solely upon her own strength and ingenuity to climb down to the den. The king carried the power of his entire army, and he showed no sign of letting her go. Even if he had fallen over with her, she would have trusted his ability to halt their fall.

  However, when she slipped and he almost lost his footing, he turned them around to hold her on his own. She tightened her thighs over his hips to help him move her body, urging his cock into her of her own volition. She buried her face in the shadow under his cowl and bit back a cry. The mountains were so sensitive to echoes, and there was no den of wolves to conceal her moans.

  “You are the reason I burn,” she whispered. “And you are the only one who can freeze me, the only one to allow me to embrace the cold. Please, my lord.”

  “Asha.” His breathless exclamation hit her as strongly as the hissing scream that could call all his wolves to him from the forests and mountains, that beckoned the ferocious places in her, as the alpha’s howl beckoned the wild.

  She rocked violently over him as her cunt closed around him like a vise. He could still move through the wetness and softness of her arousal, but he could not escape from her when she pulled him in like this, milking him as he would one night drink from her. He did not hold himself back as he had in the audience chamber. He ground within her through her climax, urging it to its completion, before scratching at her flanks as he came. To come and have him come was like ice water on a skillet. Mist from her skin swirled around them, smoke that carried the scent of the castle cemetery, of deep earth and stone.

  “My beautiful Ashling.” Only he could call her the same name as kingdom folk and strip away all the mockery with which they had imbued it. He smoothed his palms over the places his claws had drawn welts but not pierced the skin. “Just wait until I make you bleed.”

  “I already bleed for you, my lord.” She slipped her hand under the mask, guiding it over his head without pushing back the cowl. She enjoyed sharing its darkness with him.

  He appeared to her from the shadows like a face emerging from a nightmare. She traced the prominent cheekbones, the strong line of his jaw, the ridge of his brow, the points of his ears, the delicate blue veins that webbed over his scalp. She had already committed them to memory—her touch was a reminder that she remembered tr
uly.

  “Yes. I believe you do.” He traced her lower lip with his claw, conjuring blood to the surface without breaking skin. He inhaled, and his mouth curved with pleasure. “I much prefer your scent without obstruction.”

  They remained there for more than a few moments, time Asha could not pin down—his cock hard but uninsistent inside her, her warmth seeping away with the dispersal of the mist, his body like marble through the robes and their mouths parted, so close but not yet drawn together. The urgency had passed; significance had taken its place.

  A fist seemed to tighten in her chest. His eyes had narrowed, and though she could not discern the exact direction of his gaze, she felt it upon her and her alone, as though their entire world had narrowed to the darkness he carried with him. The moment she began to shiver, her dressing gown slithered up her body and wrapped about her shoulders. She had to relinquish her hold around his neck to shrug it on, but his magic meant she was never without his touch.

  She shattered the moment like an icicle upon stone, leaning forward to press her lips against his, proving intent, desire, devotion without the slightest reluctance or ambiguity. His beautiful thorns had sunk all the deeper while he had taken his journey. How strange that opening herself to the wolves, developing fondness, attachment, affection, a different kind of desire, would temper the bond she and the king had first forged—in resignation on her part and pity and intrigue on his.

  He had always offered his touch so freely to her, but she needed to show him that she could offer hers just as freely to those she trusted and that, of all the rest, he alone could possess the deepest center. The outside of that core might have been wrapped in a wolf pelt, but the center was where no light could reach, where she burned and froze and pricked and soothed, where the velvet of cloth and velvet of rose met thorn and blade, where the perfume of stone intertwined with that of human blood.