Shadow Guardians: The Beast

“Eat,” Magnus said, holding out the spoon of porridge. Katherine leaned back against the dining chair with her hands on her stomach after three bites, like she’d eaten all four bowls of food on the tray.

“I’m full.”

“No, you’re not. I can sense your hunger. Let me feed you. Open your mouth.”

She frowned and crossed her arms. She was wearing Ophelia’s purple three-quarter cotton top and a pair of jeans with flats. He was dressed in a tan long-sleeve turtleneck with black jeans and boots. For once, they didn’t look like they were on honeymoon and walking around in nothing but silk robes.

“What do you mean you can sense it? How?”

“I’ll tell you if you open your mouth.” He brought the spoon closer.

She sighed and took the spoon in her mouth. Although Lizbeth had told her that the sauce had herbs and spices, it was oddly sweet over the porridge, which was warm. And she had to admit, she felt a delightful unknotting in her belly as she ate it—nothing like the usual cramping and nausea.

Since she surrendered, Magnus kept his end of the bargain, while spooning up more porridge. “Now that I have your blood in my veins, your body’s senses are tuned up for me. I can feel the hollowness of your stomach inside my own body and the heaviness of your limbs because you’re tired. If you go down the hall, I’ll be able to follow you even if I’m blindfolded. It’s like, ah, a homing system.” He smirked. “If you’d taken my blood in you, you’d be able to do the same.”

“That must be hell, having to feel two kinds of hunger at the same time. Or twice as much tiredness.”

“No. It’s just a sense. It doesn’t affect me. And I only feel it if I focus on it, which I am, because you’re sitting in front of me and I can see how concave your stomach is.”

She blushed and looked at the wall.

Magnus poured more sauce over the porridge and stirred it in. “And I can sense the slight sharp pains starting in your stomach, which is why I’m adding more sauce.”

“That’s kind of invading privacy.”

Magnus smirked and held out the spoon. She hesitated, then leaned in and took the bite. “You’re not eating anything.”

“I’ll eat later.”

She paused her chewing. “Nope. No way. I am not eating all this stuff by myself.” She searched for a fork in the cutlery container on the trolley. Then she took the bowl of fruit. Good grief, how much did Lizbeth actually think she was going to eat?

She forked up a strawberry and brought it to his mouth. He flashed those fangs, then took the bite. In turn, he fed her a spoonful of porridge. Then she forked up a piece of banana for him next.

“You know,” he said, “Feeding one another is another bonding ritual.”

She paused, banana in mid-air. “Little late to tell me that now,”

He chuckled. “It’s a little late for anything now. I’ve already marked you. You asked nice, remember?”

“Yeah, how exactly does that work?” she asked then. And she had the inkling it might’ve been better to ask that sooner, now.

Magnus observed her. “Bonded males don’t leave their mates. Ever.”

Her mouth dropped open. No way… Did she just marry the guy? “Ever?” she peeped.

“Not by choice. Unless you manage to kill me. Otherwise, I will follow you to the ends of the earth, Katherine.”

Right…oki doki… “You know, I could have used this information before I came into your bedroom.”

His expression hardened. “Why would you have changed your mind?” he asked, and Katherine could hear the bite of irritation in his voice.

“What, no! I mean, I wanted you. I just didn’t know I’d be signing a contract.”

“You wanted me? Like past tense?”

“That’s not what I-”

“If you just wanted a one-night stand, you should’ve gone to Draven instead of coming to me. You should have left when I told you to.” He leapt up from the chair and strode to the door.

“Magnus, would you just listen! I don’t know any of this stuff! Sure, I know a little, but it’s like I’m trying to see headlights in bad, foggy weather.”

He paused with his hand on the handle. Damn it. She was right. The bonding shit had happened so fast that he never even got a chance to explain it to her.

“Look, I was never even interested in men before I met you. I’ve never felt anything with them, not even with my ex-boyfriend Kyle, and I still hadn’t gone to get my stuff from his apartment. Actually, Kyle might’ve been what ruined men for me. He was the one guy I sort of became friends with, and then he pulled all sorts of crazy shit with other women and men.”

Magnus’ rage flared to boiling. He turned around slowly. “What did you say he did?”

Katherine lost her words when she saw his eyes had changed and heard the deep rumble in his voice. Her mouth was open, but nothing but air came out. Then he was in front of her, and she swore he just materialized there out of thin air.

“What did he do?!” Now it was a roar. The skin on his face was changing color around his jaws, turning dark. For some reason, her eyes drifted down to his forearm, which was supporting his weight on the dining table, his hand fisted. The skin was raised and contorted into the shapes of scales, appearing almost glassy. The same was happening in his neck.

That he would get so unforgivably angry at something another man had done to her, and he didn’t even know what it was. It could have been an insult, and it would have set him off. Shit, maybe telling him she had to watch the gangbang thing wasn’t such a groovy idea... She had to calm him down.

She gently placed her hand on his forearm, caressed upwards gradually, over his shoulder, over his neck. And then she remembered that rubbing thing he did to her and instantly wondered if she could pull the same trick. She drew her thumb to where she thought his jugular vein was, then started rubbing up and down.

He growled annoyingly, realizing what she was doing, but he didn’t pull away. She rubbed hard, really digging down into that thick, muscled neck.

He exhaled long, with that purring sound weaving through it. His face softened, and he blinked once slowly. She saw him return to normal as she rubbed, except for the eyes and the purring, and then he placed his hand over her own, pushed into her caress.

“I was just focused on getting through my illness before,” she said then, her voice breaking. “I never let myself dream much about finding someone...”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice changing from beast to man. Oh, now he just wanted to take a nosedive right into the Abyss into a swarm of demons and fight them until they’d whipped the stupidity out of him.

“I need to know stuff.”

He drew the back of his fingers over her delicate jaw, riveted on those gunmetal gray eyes. “And I need to explain. But I want you to be out of this room when I do. I want to take you on a tour of the house. Especially this floor, where you’ll be staying.”

He finished feeding her, and he pushed the trolley out through the door as they went out of the room.

He led her through the hallways and into the television rooms, the library. They briefly passed his brothers’ living quarters, kitchen, and dining room. He showed her the gym.

The rooms were all decorated in a vintage-modern style and still had all the modern comforts that she was used to—well, that she knew of. Gaming systems, flat screen TVs, and sound systems that blasted out some kind of drumming genre of music that strangely reminded her of Vikings.

There was a training center underground and a control room in which Draven often worked since he was good with the tech stuff. Zachiel often trained new warriors along with some seasoned nosferi instructors.

The lower levels were mostly housing for nosferi, and they had free reign to do whatever they pleased. The civilians very rarely bothered the vampires. Only the warriors often called upon them for aid, tactical or otherwise.

Katherine sat beside Magnus in a maroon Victorian armchair in one of the living rooms with a cup of tea in her hands. He seemed relaxed now as he leaned back with his left ankle crossed over his right knee. He seemed almost human.

"Wait, so... angels, demons, and gods?” Katherine asked, surprised.

“That’s right.”

“Are there werewolves?”

He started laughing. “Nope.”

“That almost seems unfair... Wait, so why don’t the gods of the Light Realm just destroy the Infernal?”

“The gods are not all-powerful. They do what they can.”

“So why would a Light Realm god make a vampire? That, you know, drinks blood?” She asked cautiously.

Magnus shrugged. “For the same reason they made lice, or lions who eat gazelles.”

“Okay, so why can’t you go out into the sun?”

“Because we haven’t worked in the sun for thousands of years. The daylight shift was given to the angels.”

“So it’s nothing but an evolutionary thing?” Her jaw slacked. All this time, she thought it was because their souls were damned.

“Exactly.” He smirked.

“So, how would someone kill you?”

“You want to get ideas? Now that you’re mated to me?” He winked mischievously.

Her head rolled back with laughter. “Maybe...”

“Behead me, though my beast body’s been designed to still come after you. So the next thing would be to tear my limbs off. Or plug a big, wide hole in my torso. And I mean, a human should be able to crawl through the thing.”

Her mind drifted back to her own gender. “Tell me about females.” If she was going to make up her mind, she needed to know what she was getting herself into.

“There’s not much different. You have your cycle every month. Pregnancy lasts ten months, rarely shows. Most females I know were pregnant and still fought. Your cycle’s two weeks off, by the way.”

She tilted her head and ogled him. “Ookay...thank you! Ophie told me you could smell that.”

He grinned. “I need you to tell me about what happened. With those khad.”

“The what?” She raised a brow and took a sip of tea.

“The people that took you.”

Katherine exhaled and started telling him everything that happened to her, from when they took her to when he found her.

“... I just couldn’t believe Chloe. I mean, I’ve known her for years. When I saw her there with the dagger, I knew it wasn’t her anymore. She was such a soft person, she would never hurt a fly.”

“It’s been a long time since one of us uncovered a crowd that big. Usually they’re stragglers who go around on their own. The last time we had something like this was three hundred years ago.”

Katherine paused with the cup halfway to her lips. “How old are you again?”

“Seven hundred years...or... something. It’s hard to remember at this point. I’m the eldest of my brothers, in case you were interested.”

“Whoa...” Holy moly. Talk about a sugar daddy. And man, did she land a hot one.

“Anyway, as I was saying, the last time we saw something like this, they were being remotely controlled. The actual demon in charge never came out of the Abyss. And we had to identify it and go in after it.”

“Into hell?!”

“Yes.”

He was dead calm as he said it, like it was the same as taking a walk in the park.

“He’s using pawns to do his dirty work for him. I’ve told one of the teams to go back to that chapel tonight and search for whatever seems relevant. We need to figure out where it will hit next.”

“You’re going out tonight? To fight demons?”

Magnus smiled and leaned in for a kiss. “As I do every night. But first, we’re going to go and get your stuff.”

“Yeah,” she said, laughing a little. “Just...try not to kill Kyle. He’s an idiot.”

“Hm. And I am just wonderful at controlling my instincts...”