Far From Home Two: The Monster's Heir-- a M/M/M fantasy romance

23- Mast'rin

*****I'm sorry for the lack of update!! My sister was in town & it just took all of my attention. She's gone now, though, so I'm hopefully back to regular updates :)

There are 35 chapters in this book, just FYI. so we're more than halfway I guess?*****

SAGE—

Fern and Count were adamant in their gratitude for my help, but I was glad to do it. It was good to be back to simple, hard work. Work that built and healed and made something beautiful— a place for a child who had never had his own space or family— rather than work that tore down and bloodied and devastated. It made me miss home, and for the first time it made me wonder if I was as sure as I needed to be that I wanted to make a life here.

So much had changed in so short an amount of time, it was overwhelming to say the least. While I had originally planned to return home, that had changed to bringing Llyric with me when I went, and now with everything that had happened last night...

Would I be happy here in Ember's tribe? Was that even an option? Ember had said nothing about us leaving, but he hadn't said anything about us staying either. He was open in his affections of both Llyric and me, but did that translate to the same thing here in Akar as it would in El'kahr— lifelong devotion?

When we left the Brin, Fern, and Count home, Llyric very reluctantly setting Kye back with his new mother, I led him back to Ember's home. The Akaran Tribal Chief's home seemed to run similarly to a noble's castle in El'kahr. There were a few who lived with the chief, who worked for him or the tribe.

Al'iya had a suite of rooms similar to Ember's which she now shared with Tristan; the chef and a handful of maids were a family unit who shared another suite of rooms, and a handful of others— hunters and farmers— lived either in the mansion or in small huts around it. The rest of the tribe was spread out for miles around.

After we had both cleaned up from the day's work outside in a water trough near the stable, we were met by Ember. He led us back to his room, where a meal was set out in the front living area.

Llyric gasped and giggled happily, clapping his hands like a delighted child, but my own reaction was based on years of meaningless, physical-only relationships with men who couldn't be seen in public with me. Years of secret trysts in back alleys and dirty, unmentionable places.

Now this man, who had sworn to hate El'kahrians with every breath, had set up a romantic meal for me. The fire in the hearth and the candles around the room had me stopping in my tracks, staring around the room and wanting to run.

I had never before had such a strong urge to escape.

In El'kahr, same-sex relationships were seen as something of a necessary evil. A way for married men and women to cheat on their lawful spouse and not produce bastard children. Men and women like me, who not only preferred the same sex in both romance and sexual encounters, but maybe couldn't even manage to fake being any other way, were seen as dirty and wrong, broken even. The men as weak, the women as cursed by the gods to never find a man to give them children— which was, of course, the only thing women were good for, as most El'kahrians saw it.

There was something very right about the way Akar viewed these same things so differently. As a normal part of life, as something not even discussed. No one even batted an eye when Count and Fern exchanged a kiss or a sweet caress, and there was something in that kind of peace that made it very easy for me to picture my future here, in this land of my enemies.

I had only ever been in relationships, if you could call them that, with married men, or men whom I knew had plans for marriage once their time of freedom was over. And so I had never had candles and sweet words and flowers. I'd had rough sex in the dark, rough hands and lips and tongues rushing to pleasure.