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Because of this, Harok has agreed to leave Urynwud for a year’s turn. Tobi has explained to him what he saw when Diazuul left his body. And although Yaelin and the Solwen are celebrating the fact Diazuul has left the forest — a great blessing from the Triple God — Tobi and Harok have agreed they need to find out where the demon is now and what his great plan truly was. And Tobi is sure he knows where they will find some answers.

During his absence Harok has deferred the ruling of Urynwud and the Solwen to his mother and her Verilissia and, to Tobi’s surprise, Mereli.

But it seems Harok accepts what Mereli says, what he claimed to Tobi once. That he is bound to Urynwud and will advise whoever rules it. Whether that be Lal, Vahul, Harok, Lymok or Yaelin.

During the decisions and council about what would happen to Urynwud, Tobi spent his time in the forest, riding Embox and calling for Baby. He found her after two days of searching. Dirty and unkempt, but she knew him and whatever the Exceli had given her to make her a raging wild beast had clearly passed. Although Tobi notes she seems quite well fed.

Now, as they ride through the forest towards Riddlestone, Baby races alongside them. She seems to like Embox a great deal. And Embox, for her part, tolerates Baby’s playfulness.

As Embox sways onwards, Tobi twitches, still trying to get used to the strange sensation of wearing clothes. His own clothes. The ones he had worn on Alios Day almost six moons ago. His leather breeches and boots. His embroidered waistcoat. Everything that had been brought in his trunk had been thrown into the firepit, but the clothes he removed so long ago, to take his bath, had been found, shoved into a crate in one of the Urynwud laundry rooms. Tobi had almost hesitated to put them on, but he cannot ride all the way to Ceruleum in an alit.

So he wears his own clothes, with the addition of his cloak. His breeches feel strangely tight and uncomfortable, hugging his legs.

But under it all, he does wear an alit. One of the sheerest, silken ones. An underlayer close to his skin. A small token of the forest. Along with a pouch of zakol, the delicious tea which he does not wish to live without.

When they reach Riddlestone they take a room at one of the town’s two inns, Tobi performs a series of tricks with Baby to persuade the stablehands to keep her in a stall with Embox. He wants to be alone with Harok.

He wants to spend a sweet night with his Irgorye.

In a small room in the inn’s eaves, Harok curls his hand around Tobi’s throat and growls, “You are mine, Suskara. No demon will take you from me.”

“Demon?” Tobi gasps back. Harok’s naked body is stretched over his. Heavy and promising. He needs his Irgorye inside him. He aches for it like he has never ached for another. “Or Lymok?”

He sees Harok’s face cloud as Tobi purposely provokes his rage and jealousy. They have discussed at length how much of Harok’s anger and cruelty towards Tobi might have been due to his curse. To the demon inside him. Harok, Tobi knows, is sure that the demon caused his rages. Has suggested that the wound he took from the Exceli, the one that had torn across his sigil, allowed the demon more control. But Tobi does not know if that is true. Harok’s pride and desire to be seen as strong was likely behind a lot of his worst excesses.

Without the demon inside him, Harok is still Harok. Harok growls down at Tobi, “I have never seen anything so foul as my wretched cousin touching you. If I thought for a moment you had enjoyed it.”

Tobi gasps as Harok squeezes his throat, bucking up under Harok with wild desire. This is no demon. This is him. This is Harok, using his dark temper for Tobi’s pleasure.

Tobi reaches up and takes hold of Harok’s wrist.

In response to the touch, Harok releases his grip enough for Tobi to speak, Tobi says, “I hated every moment, Ereyek. But if you think I ought to be punished for it…” he bites his lip. “For ever allowing another man to touch me.”

Harok makes a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a growl. He raises himself up off Tobi’s body and swings into a sitting position. Then he grabs Tobi and throws him across his lap, “Very well, Suskara,” he growls, before bringing his hand down hard on Tobi’s bare ass. Tobi yelps, his cock pulsing. Pleasure, desire and sharp, harsh pain. Harok hits him once and then again. Again and again. Spanking Tobi hard and fast, with little warning, until Tobi is gasping and crying out, babbling in the hail of sensation.

“You are mine,” Harok says again, punctuating his statement with hard, stinging slaps to Tobi’s squirming ass. “You are my kushir and you belong only to me. You will not allow another man to touch you.”

“No, no,” Tobi gasps out, struggling to catch his breath under the intense feel of Harok spanking him, his cock growing so hard against Harok’s bare thighs he thinks he might spend, only from this.

Harok stops after a dozen hard blows and pauses to scratch over Tobi’s sore skin.

Then he stops, lowers his head and lowers his lips, kissing Tobi all over his freshly spanked ass, letting his tongue stray over Tobi’s hole once or twice, before he moves Tobi again, snarls, “Fuck now, kushessa,” throws him down on his belly and mounts him like a dog, fucking into him. So fast Tobi cannot catch his breath or prepare himself at all before Harok is taking him so hard the bed shakes, banging into the wall.

When they are spent and Tobi is curled in Harok’s arms, Harok says, “I wondered, for a time, if it was the demon in me that liked taking you so roughly. Hurting you and fucking you like that.”

Tobi presses closer. “And was it? Did you still enjoy it now that Diazuul has fled your body?” He says it, teasingly. Tobi has no doubt Harok enjoys what they just did.

“It is puzzling,” Harok says. “Why would I like your screams, your pain, when I love you above all others?”

Tobi laughs. “Some men do. And I am glad of it.”

“So you wish me to continue to bed you this way?”

Tobi presses close. “I would like it very much if you continued to bed me that way,” he says in lazy, easy Ambolk, the language now coming to him as easily as his own.

In the morning when they come downstairs the innkeeper gives Tobi a sour look and says, “Your horse and your beast are outside. Ready for you.”

Tobi frowns at the man. “We would break our fast before we leave.”