Exile Empire, Exile The Second

Chapter 2 - Sorin

Two Weeks ago...

More trees than I could swing an axe at.

That's what it felt like out here in the middle of nowhere.

I laughed at my own joke and mentally prodded wolf so he'd chuckle along with me.

It was almost his time, and he was much more alert than usual, especially since we were approaching my thirty fifth year of life and that'd mean he'd take over completely.

Ever since Kairos Empire had come into my world two years ago, she'd anchored me in place with the dangling carrot of hope. I was a fool though, because she only showed up in her dreams and never in person. I never had a chance to find out anything about her, we'd kiss and talk and that was it. She'd never remember from one encounter to the next, and I was probably erased from her mind the moment she woke up in her bed.

I was thirty-three and had two years before I completely lost control. I'd come to terms with it and had even grown to accept the idea I'd never be a mate, never be a father, and never grow old as a man. I'd die as a wolf in the next decade or two, never knowing the joy of the mate bond.

And it was because of her. Kairos Empire and her reluctant indecision to proceed with our union. All I got was the slow drip of honey from her, the inconsistent flow of kissing and touches and no more.

I sighed and ran my hand through my thick hair, felt its shaggy heft in my hand and knew wolf would be in command in a few days from now.

Sometimes it felt like a blessing instead of a curse, and it was tempting to give up control and let it take over completely.

You should, it agreed. The wolf was always listening, always testing for weakness.

I sat on a log next to a pile of wood I'd cut down and needed to split in order to pile back at the cabin. I was certain the village council could have gotten together to purchase me a gas furnace, or even gone high tech and installed a geothermal system to make life easier out here. But life wasn't supposed to be easy for me, I wasn't supposed to have leisure time. Leisure time gave the wolf too much of a chance to plan something for the next moon, and when wolves had time to plan, humans often paid the price.

The reasoning was to keep the half mad, near feral shifter safely tucked away from the delicious morsels contained in their rows of houses. And keep him so busy staying alive, he didn't have time to pay them a visit.

Besides, they'd sprung for solar panels two years ago and I had electricity now. No Wi-Fi or anything, but I had lights and a laptop and they brought me external hard drives filled with information so I could continue my studies.

And it was reading on there that I'd learned as much as I had about my bond mate, Kairos Empire. Even her name excited me, it was so exotic and rolled off my tongue in a sensual fashion that I directly associated with her now. I enjoyed saying the whole thing, like I paid homage to her and our future every time I let it fill my mouth.

Kairos Empire.

I'd learned a lot though, about her family lineage and the problems she'd had with her mother's death and her father's reluctance at being a bonded mate. Before that, her grandmother had been forced to kill her grandfather when he'd gotten taken in by dark spirits and had tried to fill their Empire well source with concrete.

And before that, her great-grandmother had disappeared in her seventies. The great-grandfather had been lost in a boating accident years before, but the guardian Empire had gone for a midnight foraging session to collect some rare mushroom that only emitted spores at night. She had never come home, and there'd been no trace of her.