“I am actually thinking quite clearly,” she replied calmly. “I have a feeling about it. I don’t think it is as bad as everyone thinks. I think there is hope for it to be good, and maybe to bring Baldur back from his dark path.”
“And what do you care about Baldur?”
“Nothing other than I see a man who is hurt and a life that might still be able to be saved.”
“Why can’t you just give up on him like everyone else has?”
“I didn’t give up on you when everyone else had,” she smiled.
“Ugh, but this is dangerous. This may cost you your life,” he pleaded. “Please, Kemma, reconsider.”
“This is what I have chosen to do.”
Leif was not good at dealing with emotion. He wanted to be there for Kemma, to support her in her time of need and to prove to her that the faith she had in him was not wrong. But this was just too much to ask of any man. He could not stand by and watch the woman he loved die a slow and agonizing death caused by her affliction of carrying another man’s child. He was angry that she could be so selfish, that she could so carelessly risk her life and hurt her parents and hurt him. He stood up, boiled over with emotion he didn’t know what to do with.
“You promised me,” he yelled. “You promised me that you loved me and would be with me.”
“I do love you, and I will still be with you. This changes nothing.”
“It changes everything. You are willing to die, to leave me. You are expecting me to stand around helplessly and watch as Baldur’s seed grows within you. I cannot.”
“What are you saying,” Kemma asked as tears filled her eyes.
“I’m saying,” Leif hesitated as though he knew he was making a mistake but couldn’t help himself. “I’m saying that I cannot do this. I cannot watch you do this.”
“Leif—” she called after him as he stormed back through the woods toward the fire, but he did not turn around.
If he had, he would have crumbled, and that was not something he would allow himself to do.
“Well, how did it go?” Jerrik asked as he saw Leif approaching them.
Leif drew his sword, and for a moment, they thought he had lost his mind and was going to strike them. But instead, he tromped past them and began to cut down the trees in his path as he walked further to the edge of the forest.
“He must stop,” Astra said in fear for the forest he was harming.
“I will see to him,” the Fate said. She stood and walked toward the same direction Leif had headed.
“You?” Brenna called as the Fate started to walk away. “What could you possibly have to say to him that would solve this?”
“Sometimes, words are not the remedy.” The Fate disappeared from view as she followed the path Leif had created from slashed tree stumps.
Leif had stopped just short of the forest’s borders and was sitting amidst the fallen tree branches with his head in his hands. The Fate heard him crying as she approached. She walked to him and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Leave me!” he screamed at her as he lifted his tear-streaked face, which was contorted in anger and pain.
The Fate didn’t move.
“Can you not hear?” Leif yelled. “I said, leave me!”
“I will not,” she said.
Leif knocked her hand from his shoulder and stood abruptly. He stood so close to her that his face was nearly pressed to hers. “Why do you persist?” he snarled. “Why will you not just let me be?”
“Because you need me,” she said quietly. “You are in pain.”
“There are many of us who are in pain now,” he said as he glared at her.
“Yes, but I can help only one, and it will be you.”
Leif felt his anger replaced with something equally as powerful.
“Why me?”
“Because it is you that I see in my future.”
He grabbed the Fate by the waist and pulled her close to him. She was barefoot and naked, with only her massive amount of long hair cloaking her body from him. He stared into her deep purple eyes, and his anger was replaced by an emotion that was equally as powerful. She did not seem apprehensive or shy at all; instead, she was calm and willful.
“If I have you,” Leif said with his lips almost brushing against hers. “You will lose your gift of sight. That is what is said about the Fates. Is this true?”
“Yes,” she answered. She was getting dizzy with her proximity to his body.
“I thought that for this very reason, you were forbidden to love and that you were forbidden to engage in acts of love.”
“I am.”
“Then, what are you doing?” Leif’s question was genuine.
The Fate would lose her ability to see into the future as soon as her virginity was claimed. She would lose all ties to her sisters and her destiny and would essentially be forsaken and outcast with nothing. It could not possibly be for him that she would give up everything; he barely even knew her. And it could not possibly be just for the mere sake of rebellion or adventure, not when she knew the inner workings of the universe. So why then, would she give up everything that she was to lie with an angry and broken man?
“I am making a choice,” she said simply and with great intent. Her mouth parted after she spoke her words, and as they did, Leif plunged his tongue into her.
Everything swirled around inside of him like a churning and raging sea of chaos. His love and lust for Kemma, his anger and pain at her condition and decision to choose a demon child over her promise to him, his throbbing desire for the beautiful Fate before him, and his complete lack of control over everything going on in his life. Leif felt the Fate wrap her tongue around his and urgently laid her back against the ground beneath them. The moonlight reflected off her cat-eyes and made her tendrils of hair seem like a web of shadows surrounding her milky-white body against the forest floor. Leif kissed her mouth, and then her breasts, and ran his hands along every inch of her untouched body. Her soft lips beckoned for his, and her eyes bade him to have her. She let her hands run along his muscular torso as he undid his pants. He pulled his cock free and, without hesitation, thrust himself into her.
The sensation he felt was nothing short of bliss. Every inch of his body needed this and needed her. Leif let every emotion and every thought in his head be replaced by the physical stimulation of being inside of her. The Fate let out small, pleasured gasps as he thrust into her, and she quivered at his strong and constant pace within her. It made him even more aroused to know this was her first time, that he was the only man who had ever been inside her body. He found the most delicate and sensitive spots within her and rubbed himself there until she convulsed into an orgasmic fit of shaking, and then he pushed on for a moment more as her muscles clamped down around his cock and drove him insane with physical utopia.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“What do you think is taking them so long?” Erik asked. “Maybe we should go check to make sure Leif hasn’t killed the poor girl.”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” Lopt said as they all sat around the fire.
The children drifted in and out of sleep. Tara slept with her head in Cai’s lap and Button held tightly under her arm. Brynlee didn’t sleep at all; she just stared into the fire, and Astra wondered what was running through the girl’s mind. The boy and his mother were curled up together on a soft patch of moss, and he snored gently as he laid against his mother’s chest. Lopt stoked the fire with a stick as Celeste leaned against him and held his free hand. Colby, Jerrik, and Erik spent much of the night keeping watch, just to make sure the plague didn’t somehow sneak its way into the forest and catch them off guard. Helia and Matt sat beside Brandt and Brenna as they waited for Kemma to return to the group. Brenna had fought against the urge to go check on her several times throughout the night, but she refrained from invading the space she knew Kemma needed.