Sinner by Sara Douglass. Book One of The Wayfarer Redemption

“We’ll get to Minstrelsea by tomorrow,” Drago said as he regretfully regarded the well-chewed bone in his hand. “We’ll be safe there.”

Brave words, thought Zenith, but she nodded dispiritedly anyway.

Drago lifted his eyes. He could not imagine what it must be like to live with another inside you. Zenith had told him how she had been fated to be the reborn future of Niah, their grandmother. WolfStar’s reborn lover. Fate? Drago imperceptibly shook his head. SunSoar manipulation, more like.

Damn all SunSoars to eternal fire! Drago thought, throwing the bone to one side with a jerky motion. Both of us left to run through the night by events out of our control!

As Drago reached for the final morsel of rabbit flesh, Zenith dropped her face into her hands and began to cry silently. Drago dropped the meat, scrambled about the fire, and put his arm about her.

“Shush, Zenith. I am here.”

She let him hold her for a while, then she made an effort to wipe her eyes and sat up a little.

“I know what you have been thinking, Drago,” she said. “You have been damning all the SunSoars to a particularly nasty fate.”

Drago tried to smile for her, but the effort failed dismally. “And curse your Enchanter powers, too, Zenith.”

That did raise a small smile from his sister. “Drago, I hope you never know what it is like to have another being battling for control of you. There is this thing,” she hissed the word, “coiling about in my mind, trying to tell me that she is me, and I her.”

Drago was silent.

“But… no! I refuse to believe it. I am Zenith, and this thing inside me is foreign and unwelcome and completely apart from me. But she writhes and calls to me, and begs me to lay down in WolfStar’s arms!”

“Can you cast her aside?”

Zenith shook her head miserably. “I have tried every trick I know, used all of my powers. I have even begged her. But she has sunk such determined claws into my mind and soul that I do not know how to remove her.”

Drago thought of how death had changed Niah into the grasping demon she was now. “I do not ever want to die, if this is what death means,” he remarked.

Zenith shrugged a little. “She is determined for life, and she cares not that she snatches mine in the process.”

“And she calls to WolfStar?”

“Constantly. I try to dampen her call, but… oh Stars, Drago! I am terrified he will hear, and find us!”

“Shush, Zenith. No-one has found us yet, and soon we will be in the forest.”

She didn’t answer, and after a moment she turned away and curled up for the night.

Zenith woke in the early hours of the morning, shivering with the cold. She sat up, wrapping her wings more closely about her, and threw some more wood on the glowing coals.

She shivered again, and this time Zenith realised it was something other than the cold.

Something else. Somewhere out there in the darkness.

Coming closer.

Fast.

She whimpered and hugged her arms about her, and this time Zenith was so frightened she leaned over to shake Drago awake.

Niah! Ah, my love! I have found you!

Stars! Zenith froze in the act of leaning over to Drago. It was WolfStar! Close… very, very close, but not yet here.

She stared at Drago, knowing he was dead if WolfStar found him.

Without a thought for her own safety, she lurched to her feet and ran into the night.

She ran, not knowing where she could run, but knowing she could not outrun WolfStar. He was still in the ethereal, not the physical, and that meant she had a few minutes to put as much distance between the camp site and herself as possible.

His voice followed her, homing in on her, homing in on the Niah-voice’s call – now almost thundering through Zenith’s mind, threatening to swamp her completely —but Zenith knew she had to hang on as long as she could, hang on until she was far, far from Drago.

She tried to lift into the air, but she was weak, and her wings failed her, and the next instant her foot caught in a fox’s burrow and she was falling, falling, tumbling down an incline.

“My love!”

Strong arms grasped her and prevented her crashing into the rocks at the foot of the gully.

WolfStar.

“My love,” he said again, and Zenith knew she was lost, she could not fight him and Niah at the same time.

“My love,” he said yet one more time, and his hands ripped at her gown, bruising her flesh.

She bit her tongue, knowing if she cried out Drago might wake and come looking for her, and then she felt a knee force itself between her legs.

WolfStar grunted, and settled himself upon her. He had waited too long. Far too long.

WolfStar thrust, and Zenith moaned. Again he thrust, and Zenith twisted her head to one side, hoping that Drago had not woken, hoping she had run far enough.

She could do nothing but endure this rape. Something – someone – else now controlled her arms, her entire body. Appalled, Zenith found that her hands now grabbed at WolfStar’s shoulders and back, encouraging him, and her body writhed under his, her hips arching to meet him, her voice now strangely demanding that he expend greater effort upon her satisfaction.

And the true horror of it was that she found herself enjoying this, enjoying the feel of him, the fire of him inside her.

,’ wish he would never stop.

No! But she did not have the strength or the control for the cry. WolfStar was playing to her SunSoar blood, and playing to the Niah-soul within her, and so finally she gave up the struggle, and allowed WolfStar and her own body their independent ways.

He jerked and shuddered, and she felt the extension of his own life fill her womb.

And something else.

No, no, no, no…

Even as he withdrew from my body I could feel the fire that he had seeded in my womb erupt into new life. He laughed gently at the cry that escaped my lips and at the expression in my eyes, but I could see his own eyes widen to mirror the wonder that filled mine. For a long time we lay still, his body heavy on mine, our eyes staring into each other’s depths, as we felt you spring to life within my womb.

It was happening all over again! He lay hot and oppressive over her, the stickiness and dampness of his body where it touched hers repulsive, his eyes fixed on hers, and both felt the new life leap in her womb.

“Our magical, magical daughter,” he whispered, a hand now pressed into her belly. “Do you feel her?”

Zenith could not find the strength to speak. Again she turned her head to one side, trying to ignore him, hoping he would go away now that he’d used her.

WolfStar thought her movement only the languor of love. He kissed her, and rubbed and pinched her nipple, and he lay still longer, enjoying her warmth and what he thought was her love.

Zenith moved, trying to ease off his weight, but her movement only aroused WolfStar once more, and then again he was atop her and moving within her. Again she found her hands encouraging him, and her body writhing wantonly under his, again her voice moaning and calling out to him, and Zenith let go, the only thing she could do, and slipped completely into the pits of oblivion, leaving Niah to enjoy her lover.

Drago woke suddenly, thinking he’d heard a faint cry. He lay, wrapped in his cloak, watching the flames leap in the fire, listening.

There, again. The hoarse cry of a man – and Drago was old enough and experienced enough to recognise that cry for what it was.

Puzzled, he pushed himself into a sitting position, glancing over to make sure Zenith was asleep… and saw nothing but the flattened grass where she had once lain.

“Oh gods!” he whispered, appalled, and struggled to his feet.

Where had that sound come from? Where?

Ah, there… again!

Drago hurried into the night.

“Ah,” WolfStar breathed, and then cried, and then shuddered again.

Go away, go away, go away, Zenith thought in a litany of repugnance. Go away! When would he have done? When?

WolfStar sighed and rolled off her, leaning up on an elbow and stroking her face. “Under the stars,” he whispered. “Perfect.”

Zenith tried to smile, but found it difficult.

WolfStar smiled and kissed her. “Now that I have found you…” he whispered, then sighed again – in impatience this time – and sat up. “I wish I could stay, but I must away. Damn your brother – did you know he has escaped?”