Page 20 of Shannon in Sombra
There is a second moon, anunusualone. Not as large as the one that appears every night in Sombra, but bigger still than the gold moon that only rises once every cycle. It’s hidden behind one of the dark ash clouds—a mixture of smoke and haze that the ash fields give off—but I see part of the outline peeking through.
I don’t know why it has caught his attention. Especially when, just as I think I’m the only male feeling this sudden need for his mate, Dagon rips his head away from the sky, hand going to his crotch as he grumbles softly under his breath.
“Dagon?” The bold way he palms his cock through his leathers distracts me for a moment from how much mine longs for Shannon. “Are you alright?”
“It’s the mate sickness,” he grates. “I thought that I would never have to feel it again once I completed the essence exchange with Sierra. We are bonded. She is going to have our spawn. There’s no reason the sickness should have returned.”
Is that what I’m feeling?
I think about how eager I am to lay Shannon down on our bedding and bury my face in her cunt until I’ve passed out, her taste the only thing on my lips.
Then I remember how ill she was after I initiated the essence exchange, but before we were bonded. Because I had Shannon’s essence—not my finest moment, I admit, since I basically took it from her as she had no idea she was even offering it—she was the one who the gods gave the mate sickness to. It was to urge her to recognize me as her one true mate. The only cure? An intimate touch that led to my mate allowing me to kiss her cunt for the first time.
I never experienced the mate sickness. I always knew that she was meant to be mine, so the gods granted it to Shannon instead.
But if Dagonhasexperienced it…
“Is that what this is?” I ask, not sure what’s worse: the sudden horror I feel, or the lust.
Shannon felt like this? Because of me? I should be cursed with a cockstand that will never deflate for ever making my mate suffer such wild, painfulwant.
Dagon nods. “Yes. I remember it well. It’s worse, though, because I can sense it creeping down my bond toward Sierra. If she doesn’t feel the need now, she will soon.”
And so will Shannon.
I tap my fang with my tongue. My mouth is getting drier. My knees buckle again as though they’re propelling me to go toward my mate.
I brace my feet in the ash. No. Shannon has never shied away from accepting me. However, she rarely gets to do ‘girl talk’ with Sierra and Hope. They don’t often visit Sombra—Hope and Sammael living in Earth, and Sierra and Dagon only coming to check in with the healer—and it would be very selfish of me to interrupt her because I want to mate her.
So I stay with Dagon and Glaine even if my eyes keep slipping over to where Shannon is leaning comfortably against the house, legs crossed, arms folded behind her head, hair spread out behind her similar to the way it falls against our pillow when I have her under me…
A rough swallow, a stifled moon, and then a short gasp as, out of the shadows further down the village square, Lucian and Damien come stalking back into Nuit.
Damien, the quiet, more intense twin, veers right for the females. He doesn’t stop until he reaches his fire-haired mate, Tandy. Scooping her up easily, settling her over his shoulder, her throaty laugh cuts through the sudden silence as he whisks her away.
Lucian, meanwhile, heads right for us.
His arrival finally catches Glaine’s attention. The guard’s head swivels while Dagon frowns.
Lucian points up. “For ages, all I’ve seen is red,” he intones. “And now so do we all.”
I follow his point. The ash clouds have slipped away, leaving the second moon fully on display.
Before, when I caught Dagon peering up at it, I couldn’t understand why. Now that I see the deep blood-red moon shining out of the sky, I’m in awe of it. It’s striking. Beautiful.Terrifying.My first instinct is to return to my home, grab my paints and my brushes, and come as close to capturing it as I can on canvas.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
“What is that?” Glaine demands. “That’s not the gold moon.”
It can’t be.
Lucian agrees. “It is the fabled red moon.”Fabled…“The last time I actually saw one, it was on the night that Queen Alana and King Yelios finalized their mate bond.”
So distracted by the unfamiliar mate sickness, I didn’t really understand what I was seeing until Lucian confirms it’s a red moon and mentions Sombra’s former rulers. I wasn’t wrong when I said that I’ve never seen anything like it. I haven’t, but that’s because the last time it shined down on Sombra, I didn’t exist yet.
The story of Queen Alana and her mate is a tragedy in Sombran lore. She was a beloved demoness queen—the strongest and goodest of us all—and the namesake for my Alana. She ruled Sombra for centuries before finding her one true mate: a young soldier named Yelios. She invited him to share her throne, then bonded to him, before she elevated him to head of her guard, allowing him to lead her campaign to ward off Sombra’s enemies.
King Yelios had one moon with Queen Alana—theredmoon—before she was martyred in a skirmish when Cindralis tried to invade Sombra more than twenty-five hundred years ago. As our ruler, she insisted on joining the charge of soldiers, and though she pushed back the fire demons, her death was the one my people felt the hardest.
