A Bond of Brothers Read online

  A Bond of Brothers

  by R.E. Butler

  Copyright 2012 R.E. Butler

  Smashwords Edition

  A Bond of Brothers

  by R.E. Butler

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  **Cover Design by Kameko Gay. Photography for the Cover Art: “Sword” by Rune S. Johnsson and “Red Barn, Winter, Grande Pointe, Manitoba, Canada” by Dave Reede**

  This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is coincidental.

  Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is intended for those over the age of 18 only.

  ****

  Thanks to Kameko Gay for her support - you are amazing. To my Aunt B.L., as always your cheerleading means volumes. To Jacq McNeill., my new beta-reader and friend - thank you for everything! Many thanks to Alex G. for setting up my Facebook site and for her friendship and support. And to the fans of the series: I haven't forgotten any of the characters, but Lynk and Tavian cornered me and demanded a mate. What could I do?

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  From the Author and Other Works

  Chapter 1

  I woke up from the nightmare with a scream lodged in my throat. My eyes roamed my bedroom wildly, looking for the wraith that had stalked me in my dreams. It wasn't just any wraith, though. The creature from my nightmares was very real - my uncle Tiamet. As my pulse settled and I willed my breathing to return to normal, I laid back on the bed and took a few deep breaths. He wasn't here. I was alone in my cabin in the woods, separated forever from my uncle by my banishment from the fairy realm.

  It wasn't so bad being here in the mortal realm. Humans were surprisingly tolerant of supernatural creatures, at least the non-scary ones, and I'd quickly made friends. I'd been grateful to find the cabin nestled away from the small town of Carriage Place in Northwestern Ohio. After growing up in the overcrowded fairy capital city of Rairna, Carriage Place was a sweet change of pace.

  My mother died when I was a teenager, followed shortly by her sister, my aunt and only living relative. As part of one of many royal families, I was the last living heir for my family line and that meant when my mother and aunt died, that I was expected to take my rightful place on the Seelie Court. At 15, I had no idea how to be part of the court and really no desire to do anything so boring as that, and my uncle had kindly offered to take my place until I turned 18 and came of-age. When I turned 18, he protested my place in the court. I fought for my family name and my seat on the court, certain that the court would side with me. He was a usurper to my place; they would see the light. I was younger then, naive and foolish to think that a group of esteemed princes, princesses, queens, and kings would side with a child over a man that had already wormed his way into their world.

  But while I fought the battle for my seat in front of the court, he went behind the scenes and turned them against me until he had secured the seat for his own and I was removed from the court. My family's name was stricken from the records and I had no political power and no allies. It had taken almost two years for him to turn them all against me, but when he did, his next plan to take everything from me started to progress. Stripped of title and family name, I had only my parent's home and their belongings. Soon, all that was gone, but I'd managed to hide what I could and planned to escape the capital city and start my life over somewhere in the country, far away from his reach. But it wasn't enough for him to take everything from me. He wanted me gone, completely.

  The first time he tried to kill me, he sent a few of his guards to do the job and it was unfortunate that the daughter of one of the other council members looked an incredible amount like me and she was killed instead. The council couldn't turn on my uncle who had become too powerful, so they chose instead to banish me from the land of my birth for all eternity.

  Even though I had been a princess, I was seen as a commoner now. They let me keep my wings, and the day that they opened a portal to the mortal world, I was warned that if I ever returned, I would be killed. The last thing I'd seen as I stepped through the portal with my belongings was my uncle's smirking face.

  It hadn't been so bad, though. Not as bad as I thought it would be. The portal opened in a wooded park and after a few days of wandering, I found people who were willing to help me. But sometimes, in the quiet of the cabin in the woods, my uncle returned to me in my nightmares, reminding me that while he lived, I really wasn't ever going to be safe.

  My mind refused to stop thinking about the past ten months that I'd been living in the mortal world, so I got up and took a shower. There wasn't a whole lot that I missed about the fairy world, but I did miss being with my own people. And I missed sex like mad. I hadn't had sex in well over year, not just the ten months I'd been here in the mortal realm.

  Toweling off my 5'4" curvy body, I brushed through my long hair until it shone like melted rubies and citrine gems and then tied it back in a loose braid. My eyes were fairy green, bright and light like a leaf in spring, fringed with thick black lashes. A small nose and a cupid's bow mouth completed my looks and made me feel like I was much younger than 18 plus 3.

  I puttered around the cabin for the day, unable to sit still for long. The book I’d been planning to read failed to catch my attention, the quilt I’d been working on sat untouched. The need to get out into the fresh air pushed at me, so I gave up the warmth of the cabin and decided to go hunting. More than the actual hunt itself, I enjoyed exploring the lush forest that was like my whole backyard. Although the cabin I rented lay on only a tiny piece of property, the woods belonged to the owner and I could hunt as I pleased.

  I stepped from the warmth of my small cabin and shouldered my knapsack and my bow. I hadn’t been hunting in a while, but it was a skill that I knew I should keep up with. Snow blanketed the ground, but it was February in Ohio and according to the locals, that meant snow and ice and cold temperatures. There was a large supernatural population in Northern Ohio, which was what had enticed me to stick around. I hadn’t gone into Cleveland, which was nearly two hours East of where I lived, to try to meet any of the groups that called the area home, but it was nice to know I wasn't entirely alone.

  I scanned the woods for a few quiet moments. It was about two hours until dark and I was sure I’d be freezing well before that time and ready to get home. But just in case, I packed my knapsack with supplies. Always better to be prepared, period.

  I headed north, my insulated boots making a trail behind me in the fresh snow. According to the mortal calendar, their holiday of Valentine’s Day was just two weeks away. Last week, when I’d gone into town to buy groceries, I’d seen a display of cards full of red and pink hearts and seen shelves full of candies and stuffed toys with endearing sayings embroidered on them. Although Cupid was a fairy of legend, fairies didn’t have the same holidays as mortals, and there certainly wasn’t a holiday just for celebrating love. But I liked the idea of it all the same, even if I didn’t have anyone to share the holida
y with. Or even anyone that I loved. In fact, I had no one in my life at all. These last ten months had been supremely lonely, not only exiled from my home and my friends, but also from the only world I’d ever known.

  “What the hell is wrong with me today?” I groused out loud, my breath steaming around me in the chilled air. I cleared my mind by sheer force of will and settled into thinking about hunting and tracking. I had spent my childhood in the forests of the fairy world, hunting the small creatures that lived there. I never killed them because food was plentiful and it was unnecessary. But here in the mortal forest, I could snag a rabbit and have a nice stew and that would be a welcome addition to dinner. The packaged meals that mortals liked to eat and were abundant in the food stores weren't to my liking. I walked quietly through the woods, looking for any signs of life and found none. It seemed like the creatures had all gone to bed early. I turned to head back home after more than an hour walking when a strange scent caught my nose. I stopped and took a slow deep breath through my nose and smelled it again. It was a wonderful scent and it made my heart stutter. How strange! It was like the scent was calling to me.

  I turned in the direction of the scent and began to pick my way through the woods. It was a masculine scent that made me think of power and strength and caused an unexpected heat to bloom in my body. Curious and oddly turned on, I kept walking, following the scent that was suddenly very important to me.

  Finally, I came upon a clearing and the scent was so strong it nearly bowled me over. But what the scent was attached to seemed to be a dead bear. I shook my head to clear the wild thoughts. There was no way I'd just followed a dead bear. The scent in my nose was wonderful, like a tempting dessert or a perfect flower. A dead bear would just smell dead.

  Then the bear moved, just slightly, and I could see that its back leg was caught in a thick trap. My heart panged hard. I moved slowly to the bear and cast out a small bit of my healing power to see if it could be saved. Near death from blood loss, the bear was not long for the world and I decided to ease its suffering. Taking off my gloves and stuffing them into my pocket, I laid my hands on the hindquarters of the bear and closed my eyes. As a healing fairy, I could stop the flow of blood and close the wound, or, like I was going to do now, speed up the blood flow so the bear would stay unconscious and bleed to death quickly.

  I let out a small gasp as my power flexed from my fingers and I realized that the bear was not a natural bear, but a were-bear. Quickly I stopped the flow of blood to the wound and then I sat back on my heels and looked at the huge black bear. Scooting around to his head, I lifted one eye open gently and it didn’t respond. Still, I didn’t want it to be in pain, so I put my hands on its head and drew my power to send it into the equivalent of a drug induced twilight sleep. The person inside the bear may remember things when they woke, but they wouldn’t be in pain.

  After assessing the extent of the wounds, I knew it would take a great deal of my power to heal the person, and there was no way I could drag the bear through the woods when I was well over an hour away. Dark was coming, and the temperature was dropping further.

  “Right. Shelter first, then fire, and then healing.” I muttered out loud.

  All fairies had two powers. One that was a birthright and one that was part of being a fairy. My birthright power was healing. I could heal just about anything but the downfall of the power was that it drained me physically, which was what prevented me from just walking into a human hospital and healing everyone. My fairy power was the earth. I could control things that grew in the earth like plants and trees. There were also fairy powers of air, water, and fire, but the earth power would be very appropriate at this time.

  I brushed away the snow around me and put my hands on the cold ground and sent out my power through my fingertips to see what lay underneath that could provide protection. “Ah,” I said triumphantly several minutes later, “you’ll do just fine.” An ancient willow tree remnant was deep underground and I reached out to it with my power and entreated it to grow. The trunk grew from deep in the earth and broke through the dirt a few feet away from me, thick branches bending over as it grew. My power coaxed it to grow until it was about seven feet tall and thickened the leafy branches until the bear and I were cocooned in a circular area, walled around by the tree’s bent branches.

  I cast a small protection spell to hide the tree. Only another fairy would be able to see the tree, and I was positive there were no fairies out here. I pulled off a branch and dusted the snow away, using it like a broom, and then I called to the moss that lay underneath the ground dormant for the winter, and caused it to bloom until a thick carpet of dark green appeared inside the small willow branch room I had created.

  A few feet from the bear, I sat down with a pile of branches I’d plucked from the tree in my lap. With a small expenditure of my nature power, I caused them to dry out completely, and I created a heap of branches, with small twigs and dried moss for kindling. Since I couldn’t control fire, I reached for my knapsack and pulled out a package of matches. Several minutes later, the fire was blazing, warming the enclosure easily. I took a few moments to thaw my fingers in front of the fire before turning to the bear. With a small tool pack from my bag, I began to take the trap apart, all the while wondering why I had found the bear in the first place. The scent was very strong around the bear, which meant that’s what I had smelled. Maybe my nature had known he was nearly dead and in distress and that’s what had called me to his side? Or maybe I was losing it entirely from being alone in the woods for nearly a year?

  When the trap was free, I put my hands on the bear to see just how extensive the damage was. It was as I’d thought. He was very close to death still because of the blood loss, and if I didn’t heal him completely, he would never walk right in his human form or his bear form.

  I fed the fire enough wood to last for several hours and then I took off my jacket and laid it aside. I could heal the injury without my wings, but using them would be faster, and if I used my wings, then I had to be naked from the waist up. As I stripped down to my jeans, I folded my clothes with my coat and then moved to the bear again.

  This time, as I laid my hands on the thick, soft fur of his underbelly, I called for my full healing power. I felt my wings push through my back and grow, stretching up to my ears and out past my shoulders. They were pink and yellow, veined with silver, which told other fairies that I was a nature power fairy. Water powers had blue wings, fire powers had red and orange wings, and air powers had golden wings.

  I began to heal the bear, pushing my healing powers to their full force to heal the man whose scent had called to me. The longer it took, the more physically tired I grew, but I continued to push myself harder. I felt his leg heal, the wound closing perfectly without scar, the broken bones and tendons knitting back together. And then I felt him strengthen slowly as the blood began to return to his body through the magick of my healing power.

  When I could feel that he was fully healed, I let my power seep away from him slowly. What I wanted to do was get dressed and curl up near the fire for a nap. What I ended up doing was falling over the bear’s upper body and passing out, nestled in the thick fur.

  Chapter 2

  A warm hand caressed my side in a slow motion and I hummed in my throat at the sensation. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been touched so tenderly, in or out of a dream. My eyes popped open as I remembered I was out in the woods with a were-bear that I had healed. I was greeted with the warmest brown eyes I’d ever seen, nestled in a devastatingly handsome face.

  “Are you the angel that healed me?” He said with a soft smile and a low voice that made the inside of my body go tingly warm.

  “Angel?”

  He frowned slightly, “I remember wings and feeling very warm. I thought I was going to die, but then I woke up with you in my arms.”

  I smiled. I’d never been called an angel before. “I’m a healing fairy. My name is Shaylee Tannia.”

  His s
mile returned. “I’m Lynk Stalking Horse. Thank you for saving my life.”

  “It was the strangest thing. I was hunting and I smelled something that called to me. I don’t really understand it, but I followed the scent and found you. I thought you were a real bear and I was going to help you die quickly. But when I touched you, I knew you were a were and I healed you.”

  He stared at me for a moment with a look I couldn’t decipher, and then he pressed his head to the crux of my neck and took a deep breath. My whole body lit up, shivers raced up and down my spine and I was speechless as my heart tried to pound out of my chest. He moved up my neck slowly, dragging his warm lips up my sensitive skin before crossing my cheek to my mouth.

  His plump lips stopped on mine and for a heartbeat I thought because he was a stranger that I shouldn’t kiss him or touch him, but in the next heartbeat I wanted to do both of those things. Months of loneliness surfaced like a raw wave of pain, the heated, delicious scent of him surrounded me, and I could no more get up from him than I could have stopped time. Fisting my hands in his hair, I parted my mouth on a moan and he slipped his arms around me, drew me closer, and rolled me to my back. Our tongues touched, that first gentle slide together like two creatures that were made for dark pleasure, and my body liquefied. His hair cascaded around us like a thick blanket as I released one hand from the thick locks and ran my fingers down his back. I traced the contours of his very naked body as he pressed on top of me, feeling the muscles tense and bunch under my exploration.

  I was shirtless but still wearing my pants and boots, and when I felt his fingers at the button of my jeans, I let out an involuntary moan. He lifted from my mouth and looked down at me. "Do you want me to stop, Shaylee?"