Page 104 of Solivagant

I loved every moment, as long as I got to share it with him.

“Fuck, you’re big,” he groaned, rocking slowly on my dick, which was still deep inside him, the knots swollen to keep in my release. “Feels so good.”

“You can have this anytime you want it. It’s yours, my Jo. I’m yours.”

“And I’m yours,” he told me, pressing his forehead against mine.

While we’d cleaned up in the cleansing cave, Jo had made me fuck him again. Then his stomach growled even louder as he pulled the tattered human clothing back on.

“I will go hunt for you,” I told him.

“No. We will hunt together.”

Together. I would have been happy to provide for him always, but my mate was strong. He was a hunter too. We would do it together.

It was only as we were leaving that Jo realized his soulless friend had not been around all morning. I’d heard her leaving before he’d woken up. Jo cared for her, and she seemed to care for Jo. But there weren’t any creatures from this world without souls that could be trusted, and I refused to let my guard down around her. I wasn’t sure if she was human or not. But it didn’t matter. She wasn’t natural. I would tolerate her, for Jo’s sake, but I did not trust her.

We stepped into the late morning light, the leaves from the trees a more saturated color than the sky they matched. The sky Jem had wanted to see.

His eyes cast upward, and he took in a deep inhale. A slow smile spread over his lips as his tail entwined with mine.

“It’s beautiful,” he told me. Then his smile widened and he chuckled.

“What?”

“I thought…” He tried to stop himself from smiling. “I thought it was going to be a color I hadn’t seen before.”

I looked up at the sky. It was a color I certainly hadn’t seen in his world before.

“Is it not?”

He cleared his throat. “It’s pink.”

“Pink.” I echoed the human word for it. The sky was a soft pink, and the leaves in the tall lunavia trees a much brighter pink this time of year. “Do you like pink?”

His fingers laced between mine. “I do, very much. He would have loved it too.”

My chest filled with pride at that.

The moment was broken by the hoof steps of a thurelk grazing nearby. Its three eyes blinked discordantly, its long neck lifting from the mana weeds to look in our direction.

Jo’s fingers tightened around mine. “Can we hunt that?” he asked.

I smiled. Thurelk were large, and didn’t have a lot of soul power, but their meat was tasty. “We can.”

Jo was a natural at hunting. He took down the thurelk almost entirely on his own, then feasted as his tail swished happily behind him. He fit into this world perfectly.

As I watched him, covered in the blood of his kill while he feasted on the raw meat, I had to acknowledge that I could never have pictured Jem in that position.

Jem was gentle. Soft. Light. I loved him deeply, and I always would.

Jo was fierce. Strong. Fearless. He was a hunter, like me. He thrived in the shadows just as well as the light. I didn’t have to keep my true nature from him, because he not only accepted it, but embraced it, without a second thought.

I loved Jem as the person I wanted to be, and I loved Jo as the person I was.

Despite everything it had taken and everything it had cost to get us here, my heart was full. I had experienced love and loss, and though the loss had been almost unbearable, I would go through it all again just to experience the love.

There would be no more loss now. I had Jo here with me, and he would grow stronger every day. His lifespan had already been extended far beyond that of a human. He didn’t yet have the lifespan of a Benygal, but soon I would tell him of soul binding, and when he was ready, we would share our lives and power, so we would never have to be without each other.