Alphas of Black Fortune Complete Series (16 page)

They slept and took turns keeping watch. They had decided that at first light they would begin the journey back up the mountain to find the Keeper of the Jewel. It was unsafe to try and do the marking where they were. They needed to put more distance between themselves and the tribe’s hunting party first. Of course, Kelly had a hard time not pointing out that if the marking failed, they’d all be too dead to hunt anyway.

He sat at the mouth of the cave, the last watch, and felt the jungle around him shift and thrive, the changing guard of the nocturnal life easing back for the daylight creatures to have their turn. He had agreed, inspired by Cressida’s passion and faith in the three of them, but he had his doubt. Any man in his position would have his doubts. He knew for damned sure that Reza was doubting it all as well. Perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps their doubts didn’t matter so long as they had the same faith in Cressida that she had in them. But that seemed frivolous and naive, didn’t it?

He thought of his den, too. With the jewel, he could buy them a home. What would they think of Cressida? Of Reza? Would Reza be able to stand living amongst those not his own kind? Would his love for Cressida be enough to keep him loyal to the den? And what if they flat-out refused to accept him? Well, Kelly would make them. He had to laugh at himself, that he had even let himself follow this ludicrous line of thought down a path that had them all alive when it was done. Just
thinking
about trying to share the mark with Reza made Kelly want to rip his throat out while he slept.

When he heard the sound of the day birds, he stirred and got to his feet, ducking back into the cavern to wake them. Reza was already awake, sitting, watching Cressida sleep. He looked up at Kelly.

“She is determined,” he murmured.

Kelly nodded. “So it seems.”

“For her, I will try not to kill you.”

Kelly couldn’t help smirking. “Yeah, mate. Same.”

“We cannot dwell on what might happen after,” Reza added. “We have to be focused on simply getting through it.”

Kelly snorted. The marking was supposed to be one of the most sensual, erotic experiences in any alpha’s life. He highly doubted that either of them would be in a position to be thinking about anything else in the midst of it. It was just a tangle of sex and power and animal conquest. Kelly hadn’t even bothered telling Cressida that no human woman that he’d ever heard of had received the mark. It was widely thought that a human couldn’t survive it. But what she wanted seemed so wholly dependent on
everyone
not dying that one more additional risk felt empty and unnecessary. If they couldn’t keep from killing each other, it wouldn’t matter if she survived the mark or not. Kelly was attempting to make his peace with the universe and what was left of his own heart. Either they did this, and the future became the next problem, or they failed and they were dead and his den was doomed either way.

Reza roused Cressida gently, and once they were all awake, they started into the jungle with Reza at the lead. Along the way, he found them fruit that was safe to eat, a measly breakfast but one that Kelly was grateful for all the same. He couldn’t quite help but daydream about a last supper that was more in the way of roasted pheasant instead of ripe star fruit, but the rumblings in his stomach were enough to see him devour at least four of them in quick succession.

They took a break at the foot of a familiar hill. Kelly knew that on the other side of its gentle swell, they would find the Weeping Mother. He looked at Cressida, unable to
not
think of their tryst there the other morning, before the tree had come alive and attacked them. He thought she must have been thinking the same, because he saw her cheeks redden and watched her blush spread. He could vividly remember the feel of her bucking beneath him, the sound of her moans against the grass. He managed to cut those memories off before his body betrayed him, thankfully.

Reza led them over the hill, but they skirted the tree at a distance. Its limbs and vines stretched towards them, but Reza growled fiercely at them and they shrank back. Kelly hissed at them too, to less effect. He felt his heart constrict when he thought of how much easier it likely would have been, how many lives he might have spared had Reza come with them to begin with. But that wasn’t fair, and Kelly knew it, even as he felt that anger bubble up. Reza had needed to go to his tribe. Kelly only had himself to blame for losing his den members.

There wasn’t much conversation as they worked their way up the mountain. The tension between the three of them was thick enough that Kelly felt like his heart and mind were swimming as his body trudged along. Anything they might have said to each other would inevitably circle back to the mark, to Cressida, and the fact that he and Reza just didn’t believe it was a thing that could be done. Then they would fight again. And Cressida would win. It was a vicious circle best avoided.

They weren’t far from the Leap, Kelly thought, when Reza suddenly drew them up short. Kelly shook himself, lifting his head, and sniffed at the air.

“What is it?” Cressida asked, hushed.

“Tigers,” Kelly muttered. He could smell them, in between the scents of fresh green things and overripe fruit and the insects and reptiles the jungle was rife with. “Eight of them.”

“Part of the hunting party,” Reza said, nodding. “Waiting at the Leap, no doubt.”

“We have to get past them,” Cressida said.

“They’ll have cut our ropes,” Kelly predicted. “Cut our only avenue across.”

“It’s not the only way,” Reza said quietly.

Kelly looked at him sharply. “Just what are you saying?”

Reza sighed. “There is a bridge.”

“You sonovabitch,” Kelly hissed. He took a step towards Reza, his blood boiling, but Cressida put herself between them. “You knew there was a safe way across and you sent us to that fucking cliff! My man
died
at the bottom of that fucking valley!”

Reza put up his hands, grimacing. “I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you, but Sajja wouldn’t let me. Crossing the Leap is the outsider way up the mountain. It is one of the challenges set forth by the Jewel’s keepers, which my people are obliged to enforce. I’m
sorry
, captain. I wanted to tell you.”

“Kelly,
stop
,” Cressida said, turning to look up at him, her hands on his chest.

He pressed against her fingers and then growled furiously and stepped back, trying to calm the rage burning through him.

“It’s not his fault,” Cressida insisted.

“Fuck this island,” Kelly seethed.

“We will take the other bridge,” Reza said quickly. “It will be guarded. We’ll have to overpower them.”

“
Gladly
,” Kelly said.

He watched Reza duck his head a little and head off the path into the underbrush. Cressida looked at him a moment, but he just waved her on and fell into step behind her, bringing up the rear, where he could boil and bubble and let his anger fill his ears for a time, along with his grief.

Reza could feel Kelly’s anger at his back like a vibration through the entire jungle. He truly regretted that he could not have told them about the bridge. He knew he had to fix this somehow; they were surely doomed to die if they tried to mark Cressida while Kelly wanted so plainly to murder him already. Reza knew that he could not bring back Kelly’s dead pirates. He hoped that the blood of his own tribe would serve to even the score, else he didn’t know what could be done about it.

He had thrown his lot in with Cressida, and Kelly by extension. He intended to survive this marking, he was going to
make
Cressida survive it, and therefore he knew he needed to win Kelly’s respect, and his trust. Though it made his heart throb with enmity, he was going to kill members of his own tribe to prove it. Cressida and Kelly were his tribe now. They were all the tribe he had left, he thought, and all the tribe he would ever have again.

Sharing a mate. It did seem impossible, but Reza had faith too in the island itself, in the spirits that inhabited it, in the magic that lived in its jungle, its river, its heart. If the Keeper of the Jewel had deemed Cressida worthy, then who were they to contradict her? He had to believe that it could be done. He had to make Kelly believe that it could be done. No matter how wrong, how unnatural, it truly felt. He found himself getting heated just thinking about marking Cressida, about being marked by her. The feel of her teeth on his flesh. The taste of her blood in his mouth. The scent of her, the sweat of her body, the feel of being inside her. He had not been with her in so long, it felt like he might explode just imagining it. He shook his head and focused on the path ahead of them instead, willing his body to calm. She was not yet his. Theirs.

He stopped them, sinking down to a crouch, and peered through a snarl of vines to where another path cut through the jungle and led right to the edge of the cliff, and the rope bridge that crossed it. There were only four sentries. Sajja must have thought that Reza still respected the rules of the tribe enough to cross the Leap instead of the bridge. And had it not been for Cressida, Sajja would have been right. Reza felt, more strongly now, that he was making the best possible choice he could.

Kelly and Cressida settled at either side of him, peeking out at the sentries as well. They were warriors of the tribe, in their garlands, holding long spears. But Reza knew that they would abandon the spears at the sight of them, and it would be a fight in claws and jaws.

“They’ll shift,” he whispered.

“So will we,” Kelly whispered back.

Cressida just drew the rapier at her hip in reply and leaned over to kiss Kelly on the cheek, and then back to kiss Reza on the cheek as well. The spot where she’d kissed him burned bravery right down into his heart. It was all worth it. It had to be worth it.

He and Kelly slipped out of their trousers and left them in the bushes, bursting between the vines even as they shifted. He felt the heavy air of the jungle slide across his skin as he changed, the tiger roaring awake in his heart as he dove to the ground, landing with his claws scraping through the earth. Kelly changed alongside him, broad shoulders bowing as bear fur sprouted through the skin. The sentries were so startled that they wasted precious seconds before tossing aside their spears and lunging into their tiger forms.

The fight was quick and brutal. Reza tackled one of the tigers and Kelly knocked another into a third, while Cressida slashed at the fourth with her rapier. Once Reza got his jaws on the first sentry’s throat, he locked down his fangs and ripped until flesh tore and gave way to blood. Kelly went down beneath the two tigers, roaring and swiping his massive claws, and Reza jumped into the middle of that, having already caught the scent of a tiger’s blood on Cressida’s blade. She cried out when the tiger slashed at her, but she slashed back, nicking an artery, and in short order that tiger went down with a dying moan.

When only the two tigers remained, they hissed and snapped, backing off of Kelly, and then the bear raged back up off the ground and slammed one great paw onto one of the tigers’ heads, crushing its skull against the ground. The second tiger bolted into the forest, and Reza turned to give chase but heard Cressida call for him to stop. The tiger in his heart wanted more blood, but the man wanted, as he ever wanted, Cressida. So he turned from the hunt, to her.

Kelly lay down in his bear skin but shifted quickly into his man skin. He was covered in slashes and blood. Reza went to the bushes and fetched their clothing, carrying it back in his mouth. He dropped their trousers beside Cressida and then shifted back into his man form. With human eyes he could see that Kelly’s wounds were not mortal. He grabbed his pants and climbed into them as Cressida hovered over Kelly, who was breathing hard.

“He’ll be fine,” Reza told her.

Kelly reached for his trousers. “I’m good.”

“You’re both covered in blood,” Cressida pointed out.

“So are you.” Reza pointed to her hip, where she’d been sliced into. There was blood, but not too much. “We need to get to the river and clean our wounds. But we will all survive.”

“That tiger you let get away,” Kelly growled, struggling up to his feet. Cressida got his arm across her shoulders to help him. “He’s going to tell the others where we are.”

“That’s why we have to hurry.” Reza sighed.

Cressida nodded and turned Kelly towards the bridge. It was narrow and rickety, but it would take two at a time. So Reza waited, watching her help him across, and tried not to look at the blood on his hands or the dead tigers that littered the ground around him.

Cressida had killed men before. The life she had chosen lent itself by nature to violence, and she could not afford to be passive if she wanted to survive in it. She had never killed a
tiger
before, however, and they were so beautiful, it hurt more than it usually did. Even knowing that she had not had a choice, she regretted it a little bit. And then she thought, for the first time in years, that perhaps the jewel would also buy her a way of life that had less blood in it. Adventure and freedom and all the wildness in her heart could be had without all the carnage they left behind, couldn’t they?

Kelly’s naked chest felt warm against her as they waited on the other side of the bridge for Reza. These two beautiful men both loved her. She kept reminding herself of that, because love was stronger than anything else. It overwhelmed the guilt and the shame and the fear. Reza met her eyes as he walked towards her, and he smiled a little as he got to their side of the bridge.

“The river isn’t far,” he murmured.

“I remember,” she assured him, and smiled back. “We’re almost there.”

“Give me your rapier.” Reza held out his hand, and she hesitated.

“Why?”

He indicated the bridge. “I’m going to cut it down.”

Kelly straightened against her. “You do that, we have no way back to the beach.”

“If I don’t, they’ll be on us in a matter of hours. They’ll find a way to get across, to come after us, and we’ll find a way back. But cutting down the bridge will buy us precious time.”

Cressida looked from Reza to Kelly and back. His logic was sound. She wondered if he thought that they didn’t need a route back, because they simply wouldn’t make it through the marking. She regretted thinking that as soon as she did. She had to believe in them if she wanted them to believe in her. So she drew the rapier from her hip and held it out to him, hilt-first. He took it and went to the bridge, sawing through the ropes.

Once the bridge was down, it took them another hour to get through the jungle to where the trees gave way to the riverbank. The air thinned, the sound of the water rumbling along an echo that bounced off leaves and stones and the shoulders of the mountain itself. Cressida found herself breathing much easier as they got to the river’s edge. They were far enough from the camp they’d set the last time they were here, but she didn’t want to waste time setting a new one, and it was too dangerous to head downriver to where they’d been. They agreed that they would clean themselves up, rest for a time, maybe eat something, and then continue up the mountain to find the Keeper again.

They also agreed that it was best, for the time being, that they should bathe one at a time, separately, once they’d cleaned and dressed their wounds as best they could with leaves and herbs from the jungle. Cressida wondered privately how they thought they were going to mark her together, which she had come to understand meant making love to her together as well, if they couldn’t stand to bathe together with her. But she didn’t want to push the issue. She believed that they would do what needed to be done when the time came. Still, she was personally a little disappointed that she didn’t get to see the two of them gloriously nude at the same time. As she soaked herself, she smiled a little, just thinking of it.

Kelly with his thick, bulging muscles and broad shoulders, the dark hair that curled soft across his chest, into that delectable vee, and downward. And Reza, all bronze and gold, muscles harder and more lean, with his clever hands and long dark hair. Cressida relaxed back against one of the stones that lined the riverbank, thinking of the two of them, and found herself incredibly aroused just by the water lapping at her thighs, and her imagination. A woman’s gift, to be sure, her imagination. Kelly had gone into the jungle to hunt for food and Reza had gone to scout their way up the mountain, and Cressida was alone in the sunlight and the river’s cool water.

Tilting her head back against the stone, she shifted a little, let one hand drift up to cup her own breast while the other slid down between her legs, caressing herself as she thought about her two mates, and the future they might have together. The ache of desire turned into a sweet pang of devotion, of love, as she fingered herself gently towards a climax. She imagined it was Reza’s fingers slipping inside her, curling lightly, his thumb rubbing gently at her clit. And Kelly’s hand squeezing her breast, massaging in rhythm with Reza’s clever digits. She could imagine it was both of them and not desire one more than the other. The fantasy didn’t feel complete without them both. The love didn’t feel fulfilled without them both.

She came with a soft gasp, arching her back in the sunlight, hips lifting out of the water, and then relaxed back with a contented sigh. Unlike her wedding night, when she had reached inside herself for satisfaction, this brief interlude felt more like anticipation, more like the beginning of something instead of the end. She could love them both completely, evenly. She smiled and began to believe that all things were possible, truly.