Chapter 11: Alaric’s Confusion
The thermal springs deep in the mountain’s belly were a sanctuary of steam and mineral scent. The water, perpetually heated by deep volcanic veins, swirled around the two figures. Kragor lounged against a smooth rock shelf, the water lapping at the dense shelves of his pectorals. Alaric, his Second, a man dwarfed by his lord, paddled gently a few feet away.
“It never wears thin, does it?” Alaric asked, his voice echoing softly off the moist cavern walls. “The sheer… scale of you.”
Kragor opened one eye, an emerald slit in the gloom. “Wear thin? No. It is the sole truth of me. To be this huge, this powerful… it is to be a force, not a person. It is the feeling of stone cracking under your fist. Of a gate exploding into splinters because you simply walked into it.” A slow, predatory smile spread across his face. “It makes me an unstoppable beast. And I enjoy it.”
He flexed his arm, the boulder of his biceps erupting from the water, streams cascading down the corded veins. “There is a poetry to a rampage, Alaric. A rhythm. First, the thunder of approach. Then the silly, pathetic shouts of defiance. The ping of their little arrows on my skin.” He chuckled, a low, grinding sound. “The best part is bringing a city to its knees. Not metaphorically. Literally. Watching the last formation of soldiers buckle, their formation collapsing as they understand their spears are toothpicks. That moment of collective, piss-soaked terror… it’s sweeter than any wine.”
Alaric swallowed. “And after? When the walls are rubble?”
Kragor’s eyes gleamed. “The snack. A city is lousy with snacks. All that running, screaming meat. I’m partial to the plump ones, the merchants and nobles. All that rich living makes them tender. You grab two handfuls. Sometimes you bite the head clean off first, just to stop the noise. Sometimes you pop the whole thing in your mouth and crush it. The bones make a satisfying crunch. They’re greasy. Salty. Ideal.”
The casual, culinary detail was more chilling than any roar. Alaric felt a strange, cold thrill coil in his gut. “You sense things. The men you’ve gathered. Eamon, Cassian, the scholar, the pretty one. How do you know?”
“A tether,” Kragor said, sinking deeper until the water rimmed his lower lip. “Invisible, but stronger than iron. I can feel it. A pull in the blood. I can smell them on the wind of fate—their particular brand of hunger, their latent submission. I know who they are. I know how many there are. Five. Always five for this… configuration. Finding them is just walking the line.” He glanced at Alaric. “It wasn’t this clear before the imprisonment. The centuries in the dark… they didn’t weaken me. They tuned me. I was being prepared. For them. For this.”
Silence lingered, filled by the drip of water and the soft swirl of current.
“My ancestor,” Alaric ventured, the words careful. “Arthor of House Vaelmont. You knew him.”
Kragor’s expression shifted, the ferocity momentarily softened by something ancient. “Arthor.” He breathed the name like a relic. “My closest friend. My battle partner. He was drawn to my strength. I was drawn to his mind—a labyrinth of strategies and resources. Together, empires fell to their knees. We were a perfect engine of conquest.”
He fell quiet for a long moment. “He was an interesting fellow. Fascinated by configurations of power, of loyalty. Of pleasure.” Kragor’s gaze grew distant, fixed on the swirling steam. “He made requests. First, he asked me to take his wife while he watched. I did it. I didn’t like it. She was a mewling thing, all tears and porcelain. But I cared for Arthor. Then he asked to join, him and her and I. A tangle. Again, I obliged.”
Alaric was perfectly still, barely breathing.
“The final request,” Kragor continued, his voice a gravelly whisper. “Was for it to be just him and I. His wife would watch that. I…” The orc shifted, the water sloshing. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy that. Truly enjoy it. Him. His strategic mind, utterly undone. His noble bearing, shattered into pure need. Caring for someone… it complicates violence. It simplifies desire.”
He pushed himself up then, a leviathan rising, water sheeting off his monumental form. The conversation was over. “The fifth tether pulls. It’s time.”
He waded to the edge and climbed out, his body a mountain range etched in steam and scar tissue. He strode away into the tunnel without a backward glance, his footsteps fading into the deep rumble of the mountain.
Alaric was left alone in the swirling, fragrant heat. His heart hammered against his ribs. He tried to summon an image of his wife, Lara, her gentle smile, the smell of her hair. But the picture shimmered and broke apart, replaced by the visceral memory of Kragor’s muscles rippling under steaming water, the casual description of crushing bodies between his teeth, the raw, insatiable hunger of him that transcended destruction and encompassed possession.
A thick, aching hardness pressed against his breeches, intolerable.
With a groan that was part shame, part surrender, Alaric fumbled with the laces. He freed his cock, already fully erect and flushed with need. He leaned back against the rocky shelf, the warm water cradling his hips.
He tried again to think of Lara, of her slender body. But his mind’s eye saw only Kragor’s vast, granite back. His hand began moving, fist pumping his shaft with rough, urgent strokes. Not Lara’s small breasts, but the dense, powerful pectorals he’d just seen. Not her whispers, but Kragor’s voice describing the crunch of bones.
“Gods,” Alaric spat into the steam.
He pictured the harem—Eamon, broken and worshipful, Cassian desperate in the pit of Kragor’s arm. He imagined being in that pile, beneath that weight. He thought of Arthor, a legendary ancestor, brought to his knees not in battle, but in bed, begging for the very thing Alaric now craved.
His strokes became frantic, slippery from the mineral water. Pre-cum beaded and smeared. He wasn’t masturbating to conquest or even to sex, but to the concept of absolute, devouring power. To being chosen by it. To being used by it.
“Fuck… fuck…” he chanted, his head rolling back.
The climax took him violently, a seizure of illicit pleasure. His seed shot out in thick, white ropes, dispersing in the churning thermal water, a fleeting, milky cloud instantly consumed by the hot, unforgiving spring. His body sagged, spent.
He stayed there, breathing heavily, the water slowly cleansing the evidence. The shame was there, cold and sharp. But beneath it, hotter and deeper, was the thrum of the newly acknowledged truth. He was second in command. And he hungered for his commander in a way that had nothing to do with orders, and everything to do with the cryptic, terrifying tether Kragor had described.
He finally climbed out, trembling not from the chill, but from the seismic shift within. The mountain around him felt different. It no longer felt like a fortress. It felt like a waiting throat.