Chapter 23: Request
The guild contract arrived on a morning smudged with baby oatmeal and damp laundry. Rain unfolded the heavy parchment at the breakfast table, his eyes scanning the elaborate script while Kaelan tugged at his bootlace. “Listen to this,” he said, voice bright with opportunity. “The Barony of Threshwood. They’ve got a gnarl-root infestation in the old growth forests, threatening the timber lines and a nearby village. Pay is… stars above, it’s triple the usual rate.”
Briya, wiping Benn’s chin, didn’t look up. “Threshwood is a week’s hard ride. More.”
“I know,” Rain said, tapping the parchment. “But with this, we could put a down payment on that cottage with the herb garden. The one you liked. We could hire proper help. Get the children better clothes before winter.” He was already painting the future with the money, his face alight. “It’s a classic three-person job: tracking, containment, eradication. They specifically requested a mage for terrain analysis and a swordsman for front-line clearance.” He grinned at Snake, who was leaning against the hearth, whittling a new top for Elara. “That’s us. What do you think?”
Snake didn’t glance up from his whittling. The sharp little knife moved in smooth, precise strokes. “Triple rate pays for a lot of oatmeal,” he said, his tone mild. “And silence. I’m in.”
“Briya?” Rain turned his hopeful gaze on her.
The thought of being away from the children for weeks sent a cold spike through her gut. But another thought, darker and more insistent, uncoiled right behind it: the thought of being away from this cottage, from the cribs that felt like evidence, from the constant, suffocating performance. The thought of open air. Of being a swordswoman again, not just a mother and a liar. Of being alone with the two men who each owned a different piece of her.
“The children,” she said, her voice tight.
“We’ll hire someone,” Rain said, rushing forward. “Old Marta, from the village. She raised six of her own. She’s solid. We can pay her well from the advance. They’ll be safe.”
“Very safe,” Snake echoed softly, blowing a curl of wood from his carving. His eyes met Briya’s for a fraction of a second. A challenge. An invitation.
She took a breath, smelling the sour milk and the pine from Snake’s whittling. “Alright,” she said.
The journey was a return to a past life. The weight of her sword belt felt foreign at first, a familiar ghost against her hip. She wore practical leathers, though they seemed tighter across her breasts and hips, her body permanently altered by the births. Rain chattered about terrain theory and the symbiotic magical properties of gnarl-roots. Snake rode slightly ahead, scouting the path with a silent, effortless efficiency that made Rain’s prepared lectures seem childish.
They reached the fringes of the Threshwood as the autumn sun began to bleed into the horizon. The forest was a cathedral of ancient, skeletal oaks and twisted pine, the air cold and tasting of damp earth and rotting leaves. They made camp in a rocky clearing beside a thin, chattering stream.
The first two days were methodical, tense work. Gnarl-roots were insidious things—semi-sentient, carnivorous tuber systems that burrowed near game trails, erupting whip-like tendrils to drag prey into the earth to dissolve. Rain’s job was to detect their magical resonances, a faint, sickly shimmer in the local mana flow. Briya’s was to sever the central taproot once it was exposed. Snake covered them, his throwing knives a silver flicker, slicing any secondary vines that lashed out.
It was during the third sweep, deep in a gully choked with fog, that things went sideways. They’d located a large cluster, its central mass pulsing like a diseased heart under a mat of roots. Rain began his containment chant, hands weaving light into a humming net. Briya stepped forward, sword raised.
The ground didn’t just tremble; it vomited. Not just tendrils, but thick, muscular primary roots burst from the soil in a panicked, coordinated defense. The creature had sensed the true threat—Rain’s magic—and now it was fighting for its life, not just hunting.
A root, thick as a man’s thigh, shot towards Rain’s legs. He stumbled backward, his chant breaking into a yell. Briya’s sword sang, shearing through it, black sap spraying like blood. Another root wrapped around her ankle, yanking her off balance. She hit the ground, the air driven from her lungs.
A knife thunked into the root an inch from her leg, severing it. Snake was suddenly there, hauling her up by her arm. “Up!” he barked, his usual calm replaced by a focused ferocity.
The central mass was retreating, dragging its root system deeper into the rocky soil of the gully, a subterranean escape.
“It’s going to get away!” Rain shouted, scrambling to his feet, his hands already glowing with renewed effort. “If it digs too deep, we’ll lose the bounty!”
“I can stabilize the area here!” Rain panted, sweat streaking his temple. “But I need to focus. If I move, the whole network might bolt. You two—pursue the primary root. It can’t move fast if it’s damaged. Finish it.”
Snake was already moving, his eyes tracking the disturbed earth, a faint furrow rippling through the leaf litter and soil. He glanced at Briya. “With me. Now.”
It wasn’t a request. It was the voice he used in the dark of their cottage when Rain was asleep. She followed.
They crashed through the undergrowth, chasing the subterranean ripple. The sounds of the forest—the chittering of fleeing birds, the rustle of small creatures—faded behind them, swallowed by the dense, ancient wood. The gully gave way to a denser copse of pines, the air thick with the smell of resin and decaying needles. Here, the ground was softer, and the trail of the fleeing root became a clear, muddy trench.
Snake stopped, holding up a hand. He listened. The forest was silent. The ripple had stopped.
“It’s hiding,” he murmured, his voice low. “Digging in. Waiting for us to pass.”
Briya’s sword was still in her hand. Her heart pounded from the chase, from the adrenaline of the fight. She scanned the shadows between the thick pine trunks, her body coiled, every sense screaming. This was what she knew. This was clean.
She didn’t hear him move. One moment he was five feet away, a statue of alert muscle. The next, his body was pressed against her back, his heat searing through her leathers. One hand came around her waist, flat and possessive on her stomach. The other swept her crimson ponytail aside, his mouth finding the sweat-damp skin of her neck.
She moaned sexily, almost like she's the one seducing him
He breathed against her ear, his teeth grazing the lobe. His hand on her stomach slid upwards, palm rough and demanding, covering one breast through the leather. He squeezed, not gently. A sharp, familiar heat shot through her, entirely at odds with the cold forest air. “You’ve been wound tight since we left. Like a bowstring. All this,” he gestured vaguely at the woods with his chin, “playing house, playing hero. It’s not what you need.”
She shamefully nodded, a burning desire lit inside her womb.
His fingers made quick work of the buckles on her sword belt. It fell to the soft earth with a heavy thud. He turned her in his arms, his hands moving to the clasps of her leather vest. “But first, you need to remember what you are. Not Rain’s wife. Not the children’s mother. You’re the woman who moans into a pillow so her husband doesn’t hear. You’re the woman who comes back to camp with her hair full of leaves and her thighs shaking.”
His mouth crashed down on hers. It wasn’t a kiss of seduction; it was a claim. Hot, deep, and bruising, swallowing her gasp. She tasted the bitter pine on his lips, the metallic tang of his sweat. Her hands came up, fingers curling into the tough fabric of his tunic, not to push him away, but to anchor herself as the world tilted.
He broke the kiss, his eyes black and consuming. “Take it off.”
Her fingers trembled as she greedily obeyed, unfastening the rest of her vest, letting it drop. Then the tunic underneath. The cold air pebbled her skin, her breasts swelling, the nipples hardening painfully. She stood there in the dappled gloom in just her tight leggings and a thin, sexy lingeries, almost like she's waiting for this moment. He admired her figure for a moment before continuing.
“All of it,” he said, his voice a graveled command.
She hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her leggings, pushed them down over her hips, stepping out of them. She undress her bra last, the release making her shiver. Now she was naked in the heart of the forest, the golden afternoon light filtering through the high canopy painting tiger-stripes on her skin. She felt wildly exposed, vulnerable in a way a swordfight never made her feel.
Snake’s gaze was a physical weight, traveling over her with a slow, approving thoroughness that made her skin burn. He reached out and traced the silver streaks on her belly, the scars left by the three lives that had stretched her. “Mine,” he said, simply.
Then he closed the distance. He didn’t lay her down. He backed her against the broad, rough trunk of an ancient pine, the bark biting into her shoulders. His mouth was on her neck, her collarbones, then lower. He took one peaked nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, his tongue working a cruel, perfect rhythm. She cried out, her head thudding back against the tree, her fingers tangling in his dark hair. It was too much, too sharp after so long, the sensation obliterating thought, erasing the forest, the job, Rain waiting oblivious in the gully.
He switched to her other breast, his hand kneading the wet flesh he’d just abandoned. Pleasure, raw and undiluted, coiled tight in her core, a tension far more acute than any battle-ready stance. She was panting, little clouds forming in the cool air, her hips shifting uselessly against nothing.
He finally released her breast, his lips glistening. He looked up at her, his own breathing slightly ragged. “Turn around.”
The order vibrated through her. She turned, pressing her cheek and her hands against the rough bark, the moss cool and damp against her skin. She felt him behind her, the heat of him, the sound of his own clothes being shoved down. Then the blunt, massive head of him was pressing against her, not where she expected, but lower, probing the tight furl of her other entrance.
She flinched. “Snake, no, not there—”
“Yes,” he hissed, one hand clamping on her hip, the other circling her throat, not choking, just holding, dominating. “This is where you take me when you’re pretending to be his. This is the proof. He gets your warmth. I get this.” He pushed, a slow, inexorable, burning invasion that stole her breath. She gasped, her eyes flying open, seeing nothing but bark and green moss. It was an overwhelming fullness, a stretching possession that bordered on pain before it melted into a deep, shocking decadence. He seated himself fully, a groan rumbling from his chest into her back.
Then he began to move.
It was nothing like the frantic, hidden couplings in the cottage. Here, in the open air, he took his time. Long, slow, devastating strokes that dragged every inch of his impossible length against her sensitive, clenching inner walls. Each withdrawal was a promise of return, each thrust a conquering. The sounds were obscenely loud in the quiet wood: the slick, wet rhythm of their joining, their ragged breaths, the soft impact of his body against hers, her own muffled cries against the tree.
He leaned over her, his chest pressed to her back, his mouth at her ear. “This is what you wanted when you whispered for more children,” he growled, punctuating each word with a deep, rolling thrust. “This. Not his feeble, careful love. This feeling. Of being full. Of being used. Of being mine while he thanks me for my friendship.”
Tears leaked from her squeezed-shut eyes. He was right. He was always right. This was the hidden center of her, the rotten, hungry core that Rain’s gentle touches could never reach. The betrayal was part of the pleasure, a dark spice that made the climax gathering in her belly feel illicit and profound.
His pace increased, becoming harder, faster, the tree shuddering with their force. One of his hands slid around her hip, his fingers finding the swollen, aching bud above where he was buried. Two strokes of his clever fingers and she shattered.
Her orgasm ripped through her silently, a violent, inward convulsion that locked her muscles and turned her vision white. She clamped around him, a pulsing, milking grip that tore a raw shout from his throat. He drove into her one last, brutal time, hilt-deep, and she felt the hot flood of his release, marking her insides in a way Rain never could.
They stayed like that for long moments, pinned to the tree by his weight, both of them breathing in shattered gusts. The forest sounds slowly trickled back—a distant bird, the sigh of the wind in the high branches.
He pulled out slowly, and she winced, her legs nearly buckling. He held her up, turning her, his hands surprisingly gentle as he smoothed her hair, wiped the tears and bark-dust from her cheek. He dressed himself with efficient movements, then picked up her clothes. He didn’t hand them to her. He dressed her, like she was a child or a doll, easing her leggings up her shaking legs, fastening her tunic, re-lacing her vest. He even re-buckled her sword belt around her hips, his fingers brushing her belly.
“The root,” he said, his voice back to its normal, calm cadence. “It’s about twenty paces north, under the big pine with the split trunk. It’s weak, stunned from the chase. One clean thrust down the burrow will do it.”
She stared at him, her mind blank, her body humming and sore.
“Go on,” he said, nodding northward. “Be the swordswoman. Earn your share.”
Numbly, she retrieved her sword from the ground. She walked on unsteady legs to the split-trunk pine. Just as he said, a faint, quivering movement disturbed the soil at its base. She positioned herself, took a breath that did nothing to steady her, and drove her blade down into the earth with all her strength. There was a subterranean jerk, then a final, limp shudder. A pool of black, viscous sap welled up around her sword.
It was done.
They walked back to the gully in silence. Her face felt feverish. She could smell him on her skin, under the pine and sweat. She could feel the lingering, tender ache with every step, a secret brand.
Rain was where they’d left him, seated on a rock, his magical net still shimmering over a now-quiet patch of earth. He looked up, relief washing over his face. “There you are! Did you get it?”
“Yes,” Snake said, his voice easy, affable. He slung an arm around Briya’s shoulders, a comradely gesture. Rain smiled at it. “She got it. Clean kill. Took a bit of tracking, though. The thing was clever.”
Rain jumped up, clapping Briya on the other shoulder. “I knew it! Well done! You’re flushed. You must be exhausted.”
Briya just nodded, unable to meet his eyes. She was sure the truth was screaming from her pores.
“We all are,” Snake said, giving her shoulders a squeeze before releasing her. “Let’s make camp early. Clean up this patch tomorrow and claim our pay.”
That night, by the campfire, Rain talked excitedly about the cottage again, about rooms for the children, about a proper workshop for himself. Snake listened, nodding occasionally, adding a practical comment about foundation stones or roof thatch. Briya sat silently, staring into the flames, feeling the ghost of every thrust against the tree, hearing his words in her head.
This is the proof.
When she finally lay down in her bedroll, the soreness a constant, humming reminder, she heard Rain’s soft, steady breathing from his bedroll a few feet away. She heard the rustle as Snake, on first watch, shifted his position on a rock overlooking the camp. She felt the sticky warmth still leaking between her thighs.