Copyright © 2025 by Sara Ivy Hill

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real gargoyles, goblins, people, places, events, or organizations is purely coincidental, and all are the creation of the author.

Cover Art by Phantom Dame

Stepback Art by Lana Banana Art

Contents

Content Guide

1. A Most Unromantic Proposal

2. An Unexpected Gift

3. An Argument for Taking a Husband

4. A Gesture of Gratitude

5. A Bit of Good Trouble

6. A Proper Goodbye

7. A Fitting End

8. A Dishonorable Task

9. To Hell with Men

10. A Faint Hope

11. A Dangerous Bouquet

12. A Promise Kept

13. A Wild Woman

14. A Long Story

15. A Happy Ending

16. A Year Later

Coming Soon

More Books by the Author

About the Author

Content Guide

DEPICTED IN SCENES

Animal mistreatment (mild, not by main characters), Arson, Attempted Assault, Birth Control Meddling, Biting, Breeding, Coerced Marriage, Heights, Illness, Pregnancy, Violence

REFERENCED

Amputation (threatened), Birth, Kidnapping, War

TROPES

Age Gap, Forbidden Relationship, Grumpy/Sunshine, Human Men Are Terrible, Knotting, Language Barrier, Mate Bond, Monster Hero, Pining, Plus-Size Heroine, Revenge, Size-Difference, Spice in Flight, Touch Her & Die.

Art by Lana Banana Arts

Chapter 1

A Most Unromantic Proposal

Maggie

The sharp little knife bit into her thumb deep enough to breach the callous. It was an unusual slip for her, given the number of shellfish she shucked nightly in Brinehelm’s only tavern. But this was an unusual night. She’d just been proposed to in the least romantic way possible.

She ignored the sting and offered the fresh oyster to the small, orange beast needling its way up Kaspar’s sleeve. It hissed at her and then sunk its tiny teeth into the delicacy, ripping it out of the shell with delightful ferocity before retreating to Kaspar’s shoulder.

“What do you say, Mags?” Kaspar drawled, already deep in his cups. Perhaps he’d overindulged to gather the courage to approach her. Two of his cronies stood behind him, smirking about the whole thing.

“Pretty sure I already said it.” Walk away, she urged him silently, as more and more of the tavern’s patrons took notice of them and the talk around them quieted.

“Come on, then. You don’t have to play the salty spinster anymore.” He leaned forward to brace his palms against the lip of the barrel, face inches from hers. The creature slid off his shoulder and clung, mewling, from his shirtfront. He cursed as he tried to free it from the fabric without getting scratched. He finally succeeded, holding the whimpering kitten up between them by the tail.

Maggie frowned at him. “Give it here. You’re hurting it.” He shrugged and passed it to her, where it curled up, shivering, on the shelf of her bosom, hiding its face in the ruffled edge of her chemise.

He took full advantage of the opportunity to peruse her cleavage. “It was for you anyway. It’ll keep you busy while I’m out at sea since your womb’s likely dry.”

Maggie threw her head back and guffawed, cupping the kitten so she wouldn’t jiggle it right off her chest. “What’s that?”

“Don’t expect you to throw any brats at your age,” Kaspar said, sounding serious. “You’ll be lonely.”

She was thirty-two, for goblin’s gold, not yet a shriveled-up husk of a woman!

“Hey Walther!” she called to the brawny tavernkeeper behind the bar. He turned toward her with an eyebrow lifted, golden-furred forearms flexing as he dried a stoneware mug. “Kaspar here thinks my womb’s dry. How did you find it?”

He shot her a cheeky grin that made him look half of his fifty years, no doubt recalling one of the times she’d bounced on his lap after a late night. “Juicy as one of your oysters, I’d say. I’ll give it another taste this eve to be certain, if you like.”

The patrons at the bar guffawed, and Kaspar’s sea-weathered cheeks colored a dull red. “You don’t have to make a joke of everything,” he muttered. “It’s a serious offer.”

“So is Walther’s,” she cracked. At his dour expression, she sighed and stroked the spiky ridge of fur along the kitten’s back. It began kneading her flesh with chilled paws, stoking her usually dormant maternal instincts. Dear little thing. Kaspar hadn’t been wrong to bring it along as a bribe. “How serious can your offer be when we both know you just want the Wolfhunter?”

He’d already bought the other two fishing boats in her father’s small fleet last season. The sale of those ships had kept her family in medicine and bread and lamp oil for the whole year. She was grateful to Kaspar for that, though it had been no favor.

The new wolf herring season was fast approaching, though, and her father’s lungs were still full of water. All of Brinehelm knew it. He had received generous offers for the Wolfhunter from a few parties, but he’d refused them all. Kaspar apparently thought he could get around the old man’s reluctance to sell by marrying his daughter and becoming part of the family.

“Why are you so averse to marriage?” he demanded.

Maggie snorted. “I’m not averse to marriage. Only marriage to greedy bastards who don’t even like me.”

“You want love, is that it?” It was Kaspar’s turn to laugh, the sound brittle and ugly. “You want me fawning and swooning over you?”

She tossed the empty oyster shells into a basket behind the barrel and began scrubbing roughly at the barrel lid with a wet rag, tongue protruding slightly with the effort. “Not if you were the last man in all of Tael-Nost.”

He glanced over his shoulder, grimacing at the wicked delight on his companions’ faces at the repeated rejection. He lowered his voice so only she could hear. “Tell ’em you’re joking, Mags. Just say yes, and we’ll sort out the details later. You’re not bad to look at, and I’m not hard to live with so long as you cook and clean. Not like you have a surfeit of offers or you’d already be tied down by now.”

She slapped her rag down, irritated to her soul. “All right, fine. I’ll marry you and mop your messes, but you won’t lay so much as one greasy finger on my father’s ship. It’s not yours, and it’ll never be yours. How’s that sound?”

Kaspar sputtered. Apparently, marriage to Maggie was not so appealing without the ship as her dowry. She gave a satisfied nod and tipped the empty oyster cask on its side so she could roll it out to her handcart. “Thought not.”

Chapter 2

An Unexpected Gift

Evrard

As soon as he lit the lantern above the village gate, the moths were there, flapping nonsense in his ear. He batted them away, but they kept circling back, gossiping about him so loudly that he couldn’t help but hear.

“When will he report to his watch? Everyone is there but him,” one whined. “I heard they’re already trying to replace him.”

“They’re going to leave without him,” the other chimed in. “The goblin horde is on the move. I heard they’ve devoured five southern settlements so far. They’re as far as Meravenna now.”

He doubted that. Moths would repeat anything, false or otherwise, and as long as he’d lived, he hadn’t heard of goblins in Meravenna. They typically stuck to raiding farms on the borderlands and didn’t venture near the fortified city where the gargoyles patrolled.

But there had to be some truth to the growing goblin threat, or the Zenith wouldn’t be calling the lowliest guards from the villages to serve in a new watch. Lowly guards like him.

“I’ll get there when I get there,” he crabbed at them, not feeling very accountable to insects. After they bumbled off to spread their stories, he settled on his heels on the gate pillar. He guarded the village as he had for the past ten years, his senses attuned to potential danger and dulled to the activity of the dirt-dwelling humans who passed beneath the gate’s graceful arch.

Like all gargoyles, he was bound by the heartstone vow to protect humankind from outside threats, whether from goblins or dragons or fae. But he didn’t concern himself with Brinehelm’s individual residents and the squabbles between them. They were soft and squeaky and short-lived, and he had little interest in them.

In his youth, he’d volunteered for the guard because it had offered a chance, however small, to rise from his upbringing in the cliffs and earn an eyrie in one of the cities. Thus far, that had not proved out. Over the past several decades, he’d guarded a half-dozen villages and still had no eyrie to show for it. It was dull, unrewarding work in a region where goblin sightings were few and far between.

But being called for a watch meant he’d finally gained the Zenith’s notice for his faithful service. He was finally being considered. He finally had a chance to do more than sit on a gatepost. Even the opportunity to die for a cause was a welcome novelty at this point.

He was due in Solvantis. He should be eager to leave this pitiful human settlement behind and fulfill a higher calling. So why was he lingering?

The reason for his reluctance appeared out of the fog. Maggie. The only human who’d ever held his interest.

She reminded him of agate, his favorite stone. Washed up from the sea, it glowed among the other pebbles, and she was the same. Her red-gold hair flashed in the moonlight, demanding his attention.

As always, she pushed a wooden handcart with a lantern hanging off the side, her head down so he couldn’t see her face. Soon, she would glance up at him, her plump lips curving as she passed through the gate. A red-gold eyebrow would raise.

“Hungry?” she’d ask as she always did, seconds before she flung a spare herring or cockle his way.

Evrard’s mouth watered in anticipation, both of the delectable seafood and the delectable sight of her merry green eyes.

He should not harbor these feelings toward her. He was so old, his hair had been eaten away by the moss and lichen that grew shamelessly over his head and shoulders. Maggie was ripe and vibrant and human besides. It was perverse of him to entertain any kind of interest in her. Certainly, she did not return it.

That’s why he would leave tonight for the city. Right after she…

She passed beneath the gate’s arch without an upward glance, her steps quickening as if she were trying to avoid him.

His usual stoicism failed him, his wide mouth drawing down at the corners. Had she heard he was leaving? Was she angry with him? His heart gave a heavy thud as he imagined stirring such emotion in her.

His wings flexed, his whole body longing to fly to her. To ask. To say goodbye, at the least.

Just as he was about to push off from his perch, three men passed through the gate, squeaking after her. Ah. That’s why she was hurrying, to escape their attentions. She hadn’t given him a thought.

Tendons strained and claws scraped the stone as he held himself to the gate, feeling stupid. His fantasy had gotten away from him. Maggie didn’t see his face in the moon. She fed him scraps like she would a dog.

He settled back on his haunches, tail flicking, to watch their backs recede, doing his best to block out their shrill voices. Worse than moths, humans were. Ungrateful earthcrawlers who never gave a thought to the gargoyle above the gate. Never considered that he’d sacrificed most of his life, given up any hope of having a mate or nestlings of his own in order to guard theirs.

He should leave now. Stretch out his wings and soar without a downward glance. So why wasn’t he already airborne?

Maggie. Little, glowing gem. He still hadn’t said goodbye.

“Give him back!” Her shout rent the night, and he pushed off from the pillar without thinking. Two beats of his broad wings and he found her, brandishing a stubby little knife at the laughing, leering men who were passing something between them to keep it out of her grasp. Her eyes glittered as she lunged for it, failing when one of them held it above her head. “You won’t be laughing when my knife is in your guts, Kaspar.”

“Show us your tits and you can have it,” he taunted. “Come on, don’t be shy! You have enough to share.”

Never mind that Evrard was forbidden to meddle in human affairs. Never mind that his feet hadn’t touched the dirt in decades. He wheeled sharply and landed between her and them with a thud.

The man holding the coveted item dropped it and pissed himself. Evrard curled his lip in disgust.

“Run,” he growled, and the three men scrambled away as fast as their weak limbs could carry them, likely headed toward Brinehelm to spread gossip like moths. He’d worry that stories about a rampaging gargoyle would cost him his post if he weren’t already assigned elsewhere.

Satisfied they weren’t coming back, he turned to Maggie, who’d sheathed her small weapon at her hip and scooped up what the pissing man had dropped. Some small animal, it turned out. She fussed over it, examining its limbs for injury, planting kisses on its head when she determined it was well and whole.

Maggie was even prettier up close, where he could note the reddish-brown spots scattered over her delicate human skin. It was so thin, he could see the blood running under it. How did she survive?

“Hurt?” he rumbled.

She shook her head and stroked the small, furry creature. It let out a pitiful squall. “I’m fine, thank you. They’re all bark and no bite.”

“I’m not,” Evrard said grimly, dog that he was. He struggled to piece together a human sentence. “If men return—” He broke off, stopping himself, because really, what would he do? He was leaving. And he wasn’t supposed to intervene in their affairs.

“Thank you,” she said again, adding, “Hungry?”

He eyed the four-legged creature she carried. It didn’t have much meat under its fluff. Skeptical it’d prove a good meal, he leaned forward to sniff it. Maggie jerked back with a huff.

“Not him! He’s not food. He’s just a baby.” She cupped her hands around it protectively, as though she’d birthed it herself.

Had she? Alarmed and a little jealous, Evrard pulled away, eying the soft swell of her belly beneath the gathers of her skirt before he remembered that human infants were hairless.

She laughed when she noticed the direction of his gaze. “Not my baby. He’s my pet, so please don’t eat him. I put a few mussels aside for you if you want them, though. I know they’re your favorite.” She tilted her head toward the handcart.

Evrard warmed all over. She’d thought of him. Saved him a portion that she could have sold. His mouth watered as he nosed the casks until he located the mussels. He tossed them up, snapped them out of the air, and crunched them down, shells and all.

Delicious. As delicious as being so near to Maggie, near enough to bask in the heat radiating from her.

She watched him swallow, an amused look on her face. “I’ll bring you more tomorrow.”

He grunted in pleasure. It wasn’t until she’d hoisted the handles of her cart and begun to trundle it away that he came back to his senses and realized he’d left the gate unguarded for far too long, long enough that his heavy heels had sunk into the sandy soil.

He pushed off and flew to resume his post, stone heart thumping harder than necessary. She wasn’t offering leftovers tomorrow. She was bringing him a gift.

He could stay at his post one more night for that, moths be damned.

Chapter 3

An Argument for Taking a Husband

Maggie

Her father howled when she recounted the story of the proposal. It set off his cough, harsh and unrelenting until her mother stopped her stirring, the laundry in her tub still swirling like a seer’s bowl, and brought him a hot rag for his throat. Maggie dumped the kitten in his lap and took up the worn-smooth stick to resume the work.

“What a fool!” Papa croaked gleefully, once he’d recovered. The kitten made a home on his chest, needling its tiny claws into the quilt that covered him. Just the thing to raise his spirits.

“Now, Lenn,” Mother admonished. “Love is a foolish thing. If I remember, you begged my hand twice before I agreed to marry you.”

“More fool was I, for look what it got me: two hands full of ass and brass,” he shot back, eyes glittering with fun. For all their banter, her parents loved one another deeply. In some ways, their love was a curse, because Maggie could accept nothing less from a potential husband.

“Kaspar’s not in love with me,” she objected. “He’s in love with the Wolfhunter. I wouldn’t call that foolish. I am, too.”

Papa sighed wistfully, the gusty exhale rattling in his chest. “Aren’t we all?”

Mother tucked an extra quilt around him. “Not all of us carry a torch for a boat,” she sniped dryly, though Maggie knew she loved the Wolfhunter, too.

“A boat,” Papa scoffed, startling the kitten who’d curled up in a fuzzy ball on his sternum. “She’s more than a boat. She’s a beauty. A dream. Never had a better night than the ones I spent inside her.”

“Have I lost you to that dinghy’s delights?” Mother pulled her careworn face into a dramatic frown, and Maggie laughed. Ass and brass, indeed.

“Dinghy?!” her father roared indignantly, setting off his cough again.

Mother fussed over him like a hen, clucking and tucking until he settled, sleep and illness dragging down his lids. Then she came back to the tub to help Maggie wring out the washing. They worked in silence, the only sounds the dull drone of the waves outside and the guttering oil lamp.

“You might consider it,” Mother finally said, once they’d finished and tied up the wet washing into a bundle to hang in the morning. “The old coot thinks he can captain this year, but he can’t. Even if he could manage her”—she meant the Wolfhunter—“he can’t manage a crew. Kaspar can.”

Maggie bristled. “Papa can captain in his sleep. He can give orders from his bed, and his boatswain will do the rest.”

Mother sighed as she tucked her skirts up in her belt to keep them out of the way. She squatted, waiting for Maggie to grasp the other handle of the wash tub. “Another season at sea will kill him. One, two—”

They heaved the tub in tandem and carried it outside to dump the dirty water into a stone gully that carried it over the cliff’s edge. They paused a moment to listen as it splashed down the rocks. It was the sound of a few more pennies in her mother’s pocket, ones they desperately needed to pay for Papa’s medicine.

“Is it really that bad?” Of course, she knew it was. But she had to believe that Papa could recover. It was too much to consider that he might not. “Surely we can scrimp enough to get through another year? I have a little cockle-and-mussel money saved away.”

Mother stopped on the stone doorstep to shield Papa’s sleep from the sound of their conversation. The pale moonlight cast silver shadows across her cheeks, hollowing her eyes. She looked tired. “We need a miracle, and when have we been able to afford miracles, Maggie? We can’t even pay the latest apothecary bill, let alone the moorage for the Wolfhunter to rot in the harbor. But Kaspar has the skills to run her. Even split with him, a good catch would settle our debts, and the ship would stay in the family.”

Maggie swallowed. It made sense when Mother put it that way, but… “Kaspar doesn’t like me.”

“Of course he does. He likes you enough to offer.”

“He likes the Wolfhunter.”

“Every sailor’s wife comes in second to his ship. What’s not to like about you? You’re young and pretty. Hardworking. From a good family.”

“Not that young,” Maggie pointed out.

“All the more reason to marry now. Anyway, you’re acting like marriage would be a bitter pill. There are plenty of things to enjoy about being a wife.”

Maggie grimaced, imagining it. All the ways she’d have to alter herself to please Kaspar. Holding her tongue, baking pies. Staying home while he sailed her ship. “Just what I need, another set of shirts to scrub.”

“Is that what you think marriage is?” Her mother was unable to suppress a smile. “For all the trials of marriage, don’t discount the benefits of a warm body in your bed.”

Don’t need marriage for that, she didn’t say. Her mother might be a salt-hardened fishwife, but she believed her daughter was innocent in certain respects. Maggie didn’t intend to correct that particular assumption.

“Plus, a husband would protect you. Did you hear that Jenny Peck disappeared night before last? Her family says the goblins took her.”

Maggie rolled her eyes. She knew for a fact that Jenny had eloped with the blacksmith’s apprentice. “What do goblins want with Jenny Peck?”

“Dellis says they have a taste for virgin blood,” her mother confided, quite seriously.

Maggie laughed, clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle the sharp noise. “Jenny is no more a virgin than—well, you.”

Mother cuffed her on the shoulder, and none too gently. “My point is that a husband could keep you safe. I worry about you out and about, alone, with all this talk of goblin hordes. I would go into town with you myself if it weren’t for your father’s needs.” Her voice was worn as the laundry stick, and Maggie cursed herself for not coming home earlier to help her with the chores.

She tried to make light. “The gargoyle will run off any goblins. You should have seen how he terrorized Kaspar and his stupid friends tonight. They were howling as they ran away. I think Kaspar wet himself,” she added, hoping to jostle a laugh out of her mother.

But of course, Corine Sparhauk saw right through the story. Instead of laughing, she frowned. “They were hassling you?”

“Teasing the cat. Nothing I couldn’t handle.” Maggie stepped through the door frame into the stone cottage, hoping her father’s snores would protect her from a tongue-lashing.

No such luck.

She endured a good half-hour of hissed scolding on the dangers of walking alone at night, the risks of being drained dry by hungry goblins, and the necessity of accepting life’s hardships. Hardships being husbands, apparently.

It all rolled off her like waves on the rocks until Mother’s last hoarse plea. “If not Kaspar, choose someone else. We need the help, Maggie.”

That stuck like a blade in her heart, quivering, as she finished the evening’s chores and crawled into bed well after midnight. For all the help she gave her parents with her cockle-and-mussel money, with her younger arms stirring the laundry tub and cooking breakfast porridge, it wouldn’t keep them all warm and fed, the roof thatched and the lamp full, clothes mended and apothecary bill paid. It wasn’t enough.

A small ginger lump lodged itself, purring, between her breasts. The sweet little thing was as loud as a grown man’s snores. She’d put up with the noise for the warm, maternal feelings it brought out in her. As sleep tugged at her eyes, she smiled, remembering the gargoyle’s momentary confusion that the fluffy little dear might be her own baby. His wrong assumption had given her the oddest pang.

Perhaps she was still raw from Kaspar’s comments about her potential inability to throw brats. That was the one thing she couldn’t do without a husband. The thing she’d mourn a little if it never happened. She’d like to set a cooing babe on Papa’s knee before he sailed off beyond the horizon of this life.

It might be worth putting up with a man to have a baby. Especially a husband who’d often be at sea and wouldn’t trouble her when he was ashore because he didn’t enjoy her company, anyway.

Kaspar could suit after all. Even if he didn’t love her, he loved the Wolfhunter, and that they had in common. Plus, the match would please her parents and give Papa a chance to recover, and that was worth more than anything.

She grimaced, remembering how humiliated Kaspar had been by her flippant refusal. She would have to humble herself to have any chance with him. But perhaps with a heartfelt apology, she could persuade him to propose to her again.

Maggie took advantage of the morning’s low tide and filled her casks to overflowing with the best shellfish she could harvest, putting aside a special selection to thank the gargoyle for standing up for her when she needed it. She’d rarely seen him leave his post at the gate for any reason, so his swift, fearless intervention and obvious concern had left her humbled.

Why had he chosen to help her? He didn’t regularly rescue humans from their own trouble.

She was a little ashamed of her plan to beg the same tormenters for forgiveness when he’d done her such a favor by running them off. What did it say about her character that she’d marry a man who’d treated a kitten so badly? She had her reasons for overlooking it, but part of her wanted the gargoyle’s good opinion.

She needed both hands to pull her heavy cart, so the kitten rode in the pocket of her apron to town. The gargoyle crouched, day-frozen, above the gate, his bulky shoulders bunched forward like he could launch off his perch at any moment. His stony eyes appeared open and intently focused on her, though he likely slept.

She waved at him anyway when she passed through the gate, just in case he could see her, and somehow it seemed like a little of his strength seeped into her.

She suspected she’d need it to face what lay ahead.

“Is Kaspar here?” she asked Walther after she’d unloaded her casks at the tavern and set up her table by the bar. He jerked his head toward the back corner, where a knot of men clustered around a table. She spotted Kaspar’s straw-colored head among them, a stack of coins at his elbow. Most of the others she recognized from his crew.

She untangled the unruly kitten from her hair and lifted it from her shoulder. “Do you mind watching him for a few minutes?” she asked.

“Course not,” Walther said, tucking the tiny cat into the crook of his arm. It immediately attacked his hairy forearms, clawing at the golden strands.

Satisfied her pet would be well-tended, she swallowed her pride and dried her hands on her apron, feeling like a gambler herself as she approached Kaspar’s card game. The odds were against her. His face darkened when she drew near, so she shot him her sunniest smile. “Can we talk? In private?”

Kaspar’s eyebrows rose, and his fellow card players whooped.

Maggie felt her cheeks burn. “It will only be a minute.”

“So said I to the farmer’s daughter, but our roll in the hay weren’t half as long,” one of them recited in a sing-song voice.

“Hey, hey, the farmer’s daughter, fair as a calf and twice as strong,” a few of the other, drunker men sang back, toasting their tankards and drinking deeply. They carried on with the call and response song, their recall of the lyrics getting worse and worse with each verse.

She should have waited to approach Kaspar until he wasn’t surrounded by a bunch of drunken, randy sailors. “I’ll come back later,” Maggie said apologetically, turning to go.

He caught her elbow. “Wait. What is this about?” He seemed genuinely curious, and at least marginally more sober than his crew.

“What do you think?” she asked miserably.

His jaw tensed. “I assumed you came to gloat.”

“About what?” She didn’t miss his swift glance down at his lap. She hid her smile. He thought she was going to tease him about wetting himself.

“Never mind,” he said crossly. “What were you going to say?”

She took a deep breath. “Your offer yesterday. I may have been too hasty—”

“So was I!” one of the loudest louts broke in, leering at her. “Hey, hey, hasty pudding,” he sang to the tune of their stupid song.

Kaspar elbowed him, and he shut up.

“Too hasty in my answer,” Maggie finished. “I should have considered it more seriously and replied with more respect. If you were to ask again…” She trailed off, humiliated by the smug expression growing over his face.

“Apologize.”

“Sorry, Cap’n,” the drunk man slurred.

Kaspar elbowed him again. “Not you. Her.”

“Sorry, Cap’n,” she parroted. From the way his jaw set, it was clear Kaspar didn’t like her joke, so she tried to salvage the wreck of the conversation. “I am. Sorry. Truly.”

“Try again,” he said softly. Dangerously. Even his tablemates sensed it, quieting around them. His eyes flicked from her face to the floor and back up again. Was he really indicating what she thought he was?! He smirked at the disbelieving look on her face and gave a slow nod. “On your knees, if you please.”

Damn him.

“Fine.” She picked up her skirts and kneeled in front of him on the grimy tavern floorboards, keeping her fury knotted in her fists so it wouldn’t show on her face. “I am sorry for my sharp tongue yesterday. Your offer was earnest, and my reply was not. If you would care to make your proposal again, it would be received with more…enthusiasm.”

“And why is that?” Kaspar prompted, looking gleeful at the prospect of her spelling out his charms.

“Because you’re a fair sailor and have a head for business. You’d sire strong children and you’re not bad to look at,” she gritted out, ignoring the hoots that followed every grudging bit of praise. “Because you would make anyone a fine husband.”

“One might say a better husband than a sharp-tongued spinster deserves.” Kaspar leaned back in his chair, hands laced behind his neck. He was enjoying this too much.

“One might, but one might also be consoled by the very large ship that comes with her,” she answered tartly, unable to restrain said tongue. “And I have tits enough to share, or so you claimed last night.”

That drew a few laughs from the table, and for once, Kaspar joined in. He seemed to be softening now that his pride had been coddled by her compliments.

Her knees were sore and so was her heart. “Can I get up now?”

“I don’t know, I like you like this, Mags. Begging for me and all.” He gave her a lazy leer.

She rolled her eyes and struggled to her feet, brushing the dust off her wrinkled skirts. “Sorry to ruin the view, but I have work to do.”

He jerked a nod and rose from his seat, pocketing his stack of coins before stepping away from the table. “I’ll visit your father to discuss the details.”

So that’s what they were calling the Wolfhunter now. The details.

She gave him a bemused look. “You can discuss them with me.”

“Fine. I will pay your father’s debts and keep a roof over his head, and in return, I expect a half-share of the ship,” he rejoined bluntly. “He will keep the other half. Should be plenty to support your parents until the end of their days, especially since I’ll be feeding you. That’s more than fair.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What about my share?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep you fine,” he grumbled, rubbing his jaw as he glanced over at his crew. They’d lost interest in the discussion and had resumed their card game.

“Is my share included in my parents’ half or your half?”

He stared at her like she’d lost her mind. “Why does it matter? Either way, you’re eating well.”

“Because they’re two vastly different deals, that’s why. I can pencil the numbers for you if you can’t work it out in your head.”

Kaspar’s nostrils flared. “I can work it out.”

“Then you understand why I’m asking. How much of the Wolfhunter will be mine?”

“You won’t own any of it,” he burst out harshly. “Your father owns all of it today, and I’ll own half of it tomorrow. This isn’t a negotiation. You’d better learn to hold your tongue, or you’ll talk yourself out of a husband again.”

She snapped her mouth shut, realizing she’d pushed him too far. She’d done her duty, and now she’d do her best not to spoil it. But it took every bit of her strength to smile.

Chapter 4

A Gesture of Gratitude

Evrard

“He’s still here,” the moth complained, dusting him with silver from its wings as it circled the lantern at the gate. “Moons in the water, what is he waiting for?”

He set his jaw, staring off into the night.

“Maybe he’s deaf and blind,” another moth goaded, transparently trying to drag information out of him.

“Or just stupid.” The first moth tittered at its own jab. “I heard they’re replacing him with a rock. They might as well. No one will know the difference.”

He swatted at them, and somehow they dodged his hand in their slow, fat-bodied way. He growled under his breath, which only made them giggle harder.

Silly creatures.

He was saved from their nattering by the gold-red glint of Maggie’s hair passing beneath his gate. Without waiting for her greeting, he dropped down from his perch and landed with a thump beside her.

She startled, a flush creeping up her thin-skinned cheeks as she stroked the orange kitten perched on her shoulder. Was she worried he might eat it? He took a step back so he wasn’t looming over them like a predator.

“Does the gargoyle have a lover? A human paramour?” the moths snickered overhead. He was glad humans couldn’t hear their soft, silly voices.

“Hungry?” Maggie reached into her handcart, brows raised.

His mouth watered, and he jerked a nod. Instead of a few leftover shellfish, this time she had a small cask for him. It was stuffed with oysters and mussels, separated by layers of fresh, green seaweed.

Evrard plucked out and discarded the weedy green bits, devouring the mussels whole. Then he crouched down to shuck the thicker-shelled oysters with his claws, pleased that Maggie didn’t seem in a hurry to leave. She merely leaned on the cart, watching him eat.

He licked an oyster out of the shell. Sweet and fresh. The best he’d ever tasted.

“Good,” he grunted, opening another and handing it to her.

She sipped some of the sea-liquor from the half-shell and then tipped it back. He watched, fascinated, as she swallowed the oyster, the luminous column of her throat rippling.

“Good,” he repeated, mesmerized by the most basic workings of her body. Why had he not learned more of the human tongue during the decades that he watched over them? It had never seemed important. He could understand most of what they said, but making the sounds himself was difficult, so he didn’t bother. But now, he wished he could say more to her. Wished he could explain what the soft pinkness of her pursed lips made him feel.

“I can bring you more tomorrow,” she offered softly. “Not as many, but whatever I can. You must be starving, sitting up there all night.”

He frowned. He was not so weak as that. He could survive indefinitely without food, as long as he didn’t exert himself too much. But he didn’t need to explain himself. He wouldn’t be here tomorrow night, anyway. She’d cross beneath an unguarded gate, with only her short knife to protect her.

“Or not,” she added lightly, noticing his dark expression.

He cleared his throat, desperately trying to shape his mouth into the unfamiliar shapes required for her type of speech. “Tonight, fly to Solvantis. Go…for war,” he explained haltingly.

Understanding dawned in her eyes. “You’re leaving to fight the goblins?” she asked, tilting her head. He nodded. “For how long? When are you coming back?”

He shook his head. There was no way to know. Six moons was the term of enrollment in the watch, but it could be extended indefinitely. The goblins and their war-bats were fierce, and it was possible he wouldn’t return at all. If he did, it would be to a modest tower eyrie, not a lonely village perch. Somewhere worthy of a mate. Nestlings, if he was lucky.

“Never?” she breathed, face as pretty as the moon shining up to him. He shook his head, and her hands, which had been engaged in caressing her fortunate pet, dropped to her sides in dismay. “Who will guard Brinehelm?”

He shrugged. He did not like to think of an unguarded gate, but it wasn’t up to him.

The kitten cried in its sleep, squeaking sleepily until Evrard reached out one finger to stroke it with the back of his knuckle. Its fur was soft as moth-dust. No wonder it earned her affection. It was a far cry from his rough, stony hide.

Maggie caught his hand in both of hers, tilting her head to the side as she squeezed it. “I’ll miss you,” she said frankly, letting go of him too soon. “It won’t be the same without your handsome face above the gate.”

“Handsome!” he scoffed, rubbing his right ear, where one of his brothers had taken a bite out of it during their regular skirmishes in the nest. He was a battered specimen, to say the least. “Old,” he corrected her. “Mossy.”

She hummed, her gaze slipping over him from head to toe, taking him in. He couldn’t help stretching his wings under her perusal, showing off their proud span. He was a preening old buzzard.

“The moss is nice. I’ve always thought it made you look very wise.”

He made a sharp noise of disagreement. It made him look like the unkempt cliff-dweller he was. It showed he lived alone, without family to groom him. That he hadn’t had the coin to visit a mason and repair the damage caused by the tiny, acidic plants. “Nice for human, maybe. Not for gargoyle.”

Maggie stepped nearer to where he crouched, reaching out to brush her fingers over the lichen-spots that dotted his shoulders. Her touch sent a jolt of awareness over his skin, contracting his muscles and making his cock swell suddenly and painfully inside his leather breeches.

Lonely fool. He grimaced at his own wretchedness, lips peeling back from his teeth. Catching his expression, Maggie drew back, as well she should.

“I have freckles, too,” she murmured, tugging her chemise aside to bare her own shoulder. It was crowded with lichen-like spots, the same that were scattered across her cheeks and chest. “I get them when I spend too much time in the sun, which is always.”

She laughed, and Evrard, who’d only ever had glimpses of the sun when it rose and set, found himself jealous of that great, burning ball that touched her skin and left its marks. There was some base part of him, some deep instinct, that longed to do the same.

“Nice for human,” he repeated thickly, swallowing the saliva that had gathered in his mouth.

“Not really. Most women try to get rid of them. Someone once called me a spotted cow.” Maggie flushed in her remarkable way.

“Cow is tasty,” Evrard said. Then, thinking he might have offended her by comparing her to meat, he added, “Strong. Useful.”

She laughed, her head falling back. “You think it was a compliment, then?”

He nodded. Her beauty was so undeniable, even to his jaded eyes, that how could it have been anything else?

Chapter 5

A Bit of Good Trouble

Maggie

“I’ll try and think of it that way when I look in the mirror,” she said, still chuckling. The gargoyle’s innocent appreciation of her freckles was oddly charming.

He was right. Cows were lovely creatures in their own way. It was no insult to be compared to one. Her body was strong and useful. Her spotted skin showed her love of the outdoors and her dislike of large bonnets. What was wrong with that? Nothing at all.

She’d been carrying around that insult for too long, and it was time to let it go. A strange lightness came over her, and with it a wave of gratitude.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

A harsh tumble of his own language came out of him, a sound she couldn’t replicate. Then he repeated it again, compressing it into more human syllables. “Evrard.”

“Evrard. Thank you.” She wanted to return the favor and send him off on his adventure feeling a little bit better about himself. Her hand went to the knife at her hip, drawing it. “If you like, I can help with your moss. I promise, I have a steady hand and a sharp blade.”

He glanced behind him at the gate, and she followed his gaze. The fog had come in, obscuring the sleepy village beyond the stone walls. The lantern’s glow revealed little, save a damp wreath of mist. They were alone.

He jerked a nod, sinking to his knees and drawing his wings close to his body so they wouldn’t get in her way. She circled behind him to find the best angle of attack, a little short of breath at finding herself in such close proximity to a gargoyle.

It was one thing to see him perched on a wall or circling above, occasionally blotting out the moon. It was something quite different to stand close enough to smell his earthy, warm scent and hear his breath draw in and out. He was so much larger than she’d realized.

A thick, sweeping tail curved behind him. She had to straddle it to step near enough to work. He was so broad, his shoulders impossibly wide to support his impressive wings. Cords of muscle braced his powerful neck.

She started there, at the base of his skull, flicking the edge of her blade over the clinging moss in much the same way that she shaved her father’s chin. The gargoyle’s skin was different, though, textured and tough and less willing to give up its growth. It took more pressure to scrape away the moss than Maggie expected, but she quickly adapted.

As the offending plants began to crumble and flake away, a low sound ground out of Evrard’s chest. At first she pulled back, thinking it was a growl. But when he gave an irritated twitch of one wing, a clear direction to continue, she realized what he sounded like: a deeper, more resonant version of her kitten.

“You’re purring!” she exclaimed. She had to curl her fingers against the impulse to stroke him and draw more of the noise.

“Happy,” he grunted, sounding embarrassed.

“I’m glad. You deserve it.”

He snorted. “Deserve nothing.”

The gargoyle might be right about cows, but he was wrong about that. He deserved to be cared for. At the very least, he deserved Brinehelm’s gratitude for his long and faithful service. She’d never seen him thanked. Villagers mostly ignored Evrard as though he were part of the stone walls that surrounded the village. Many residents had little cause to notice their silent, watchful guard.

Worse, perhaps, were the ones who did. The ones who climbed the vines in the noonday sun to paint a crooked mustache across his day-frozen face or balance a pumpkin on his head. Maggie had once chased off a couple of rascals pitching apple cores at him during his morning slumber. A small abuse, perhaps, but he deserved a little more gratitude from those he protected.

Evrard’s purr deepened as she continued to work her way around his head with her knife. Technique mastered, she cleaned every speck of growth from his scalp and forehead before tackling his long, pointed ears. She’d need to take extra precautions to avoid nicking them as she wheedled scraps of moss and lichen from their complex whorls.

She moved around to his side so she had a better view. Leaning into him to reach his ear, her breasts pressed against his shoulder, and she felt his arm curve around her waist, supporting her precarious posture. She relaxed into his hold, trusting his strength.

It was an intimate embrace. Maggie was no shy virgin, but even she was flustered by the feel of him holding her up so easily. He was merely being practical, but his casual, competent help reminded her how lonely it sometimes was to be self-reliant. And the hard, masculine flex of his arm against her ribcage quickened her pulse, sending the thump of her heart straight between her legs.

His sculpted nostrils flared. Could he smell her?

Mortified, she took a steadying breath and fixed her attention on the delicate work, scraping her blade along the outer edge of his ear. Carefully, she navigated a ragged scar that marred its smooth curve.

The ear flicked out of her grasp, and she had to pause to avoid skewering it on the knife’s sharp point. “Hold still, please. I don’t want to cut you.”

“Tiny knife tickles.” His tail thumped the earth to underline his agitation, and his purr grew ragged and uneven.

She grinned to herself. A big, naughty kitten, he was. “You must bear it. I’ll be quick as an arrow.”

He obliged, his arm tightening around her slightly as he braced against the sensation. She finished evicting the moss as quickly as she could, then switched to his other ear. This side was more awkward to reach due to her right-handedness, and his ear more ticklish. He kept jerking away from her, angling his neck and holding her at arm’s length so she couldn’t reach.

Her breath huffed out in frustration. “You can’t go to Solvantis with one mossy ear. What will they think of you?”

Evrard snorted in what sounded like amusement. “Moss not nice? Not wise?” he asked, throwing her earlier compliments back at her. So the stoic gargoyle had a sense of humor! What a pleasant surprise.

“You’ll look half-wise, which is the worst kind,” she retorted. “Wise enough to get yourself in trouble but not wise enough to get out. Sound familiar?” To drive home the point that he was currently in just such a situation, she tapped lightly across his collarbone with the flat of her blade.

He roared a laugh like a small avalanche, holding her hips with both hands to keep her steady while his big body shook with mirth. “Trouble maybe good.”

With his fingers nearly spanning her backside, and his claws digging in slightly in a fair facsimile of possessive desire, Maggie couldn’t disagree. She might be in a bit of good trouble herself. Her cheeks heated even as she rapped him with her blade a second time. “Bend this way so I can finish.”

He acquiesced, tilting his head so the offending ear could be de-mossed, though a huge, fanged grin remained across his face. She hadn’t even known he could smile. It completely transformed his countenance from its usual grim expression. He looked…alive. No one could mistake him for part of the wall now.

It did something to her insides, seeing him like that. Turned her guts as soft as an oyster. If he wanted to, he could lean forward and slurp her up in one go.

She flicked away the last offending bit of moss and sheathed her knife. Impulsively, she pushed up on tiptoe to plant a brisk kiss his cheek, drawing back just as quickly. “There you are. All done.”

He didn’t let go of her waist. “Are we?” he rumbled.

Chapter 6

A Proper Goodbye

Evrard

He drew in a deep draught of her. She smelled of salt and lavender, and he tucked away that information like a gem into the purse of his memory. He’d never been close enough to scent her this deeply, and he wanted to hoard every detail for the long, lonely nights ahead.

Raucous human voices cut through the fog. A group must be approaching the gate, probably drunkards heading home after an evening at the tavern. Evrard felt a brief pang about leaving his post at the gate until he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to be in Brinehelm still, anyway. He had no duty to guard it.

Rather than releasing Maggie, he tugged her close, pulling her around the corner of the wall into the shadows where the exiting humans wouldn’t notice their presence. Even if the men turned back to look, with his wings wrapped around them both, it’d be easy to mistake them for another lump of stone.

Sure enough, the pair of stumbling sailors only remarked on the abandoned handcart and then carried on their way.

Evrard let out a shuddering breath when the men were out of earshot. It was only then that he realized he was cradling her to his chest…and she seemed in no hurry to get away.

“Good thing the kitten didn’t cry. I’m Maggie,” she said, color rising underneath her freckles.

“I know.”

“Good. I’ve always said you should know someone’s name before you kiss them, so I figured I’d tell you mine before you kissed me back.” She looped her arms around his neck, clinging to him.

He was speechless. Not that he ever had a lot of words at his disposal, but she’d stolen every last one.

“I just thought, since you’re leaving and I will soon be married, we should kiss while we can.” Doubt slipped across her face, fleeting as a cloud. “Unless you don’t want to?”

He stared at her pink, parted lips. They would be sweet, he knew. He wanted to devour her. How could he explain it?

“I want… to bite… the fruit of your mouth,” he translated haltingly from his own tongue.

She brightened. “Is that how gargoyles say ‘kiss’?”

“No. Not kiss. Not press mouth-skin on mouth-skin,” he said, feeling equal parts scorn and frustration at the limitations of her language. He dragged his thumb over her lower lip.

Her chest rose and fell as she stared up at him, eyes rounded and scent strengthening. “What does it mean, then?”

“Fruit. Soft. Ripe. Delicious.” He slipped his clawed thumb into her mouth to pry her jaw open, inhaling her quick exhale. “Crack open. Eat.”

Her tongue touched the pad of his thumb. Just one tentative, curious swipe, and he was done for. Her face cradled in his palm, his lips engulfed hers.

She was a revelation. Like nothing else he’d known.

Everything about her was soft: her waist in the circle of his arm, her wet mouth, her sighs and small, preylike noises. Her small fingers playing over the back of his thick neck. His protective instincts surged, and his tail curled around her ankle, anchoring her to him. His wings drew tighter around them both, blocking out the moths and lanternlight.

In that shadowed, secret retreat, Evrard pushed his tongue into Maggie’s mouth, unable to check his fervor. Any minute, he expected her to realize what they were doing, to stiffen and pull away. To scream. To call him a monster. Or at the very least, to bid him goodbye, forever.

But she didn’t. The longer he kissed her, the softer and more liquid she grew, until it felt like he was holding the sea in his arms. He soaked her up like the cliffs during high tide, knowing she would retreat eventually. When she did, her lips were red and swollen, her pupils blown. She looked well-loved, as she should be. His purr strengthened.

“Must you leave tonight?” she asked breathlessly, a crease between her brows. He nodded, arms tightening around her. She chewed her lip for a moment, studying his face. He wondered what she saw there. He’d always assumed she viewed him as an eroded old beast, but perhaps with his moss gone and his mouth fresh in her memory, she thought differently?

“Long flight,” he rasped. He hoped she understood that he was not eager to leave. He would happily devour her all night if he could.

One corner of her mouth lifted mischievously. “Spare me an hour or two to give you a proper goodbye?”

Maggie’s hand slid up his neck to stroke the edge of his ear where she’d so recently plied her blade to remove all traces of wisdom. Certainly, there were no thoughts in his head except the feel of her little fingers and how it was worth any price, any reprimand, to have it a bit longer.

Equally wisdomless, his cock agreed, swelling at the base like it had bred her already. He jerked his head in a nod. “Not here.”

Not in the dirt, where any human might stumble across them. Where the moths would tell their tales.

“Do you have a place?” she asked. “A…cave? A home? I’ve only ever seen you on the wall,” she added apologetically.

Shame curled in his belly. He had no eyrie. No nest. The best he could offer in the way of privacy was a cliffside ledge, spare and sea-beaten. What a fool he was. He shook his head.

“Oh!” Her breath caught, brows lifted. “Do you mate in the air? I’ve always wondered.” His cock jumped at the suggestion, and she must have felt it move against her, because a broad smile broke across her face. “I knew it. It’s a good thing I’m not afraid of heights.”

His kind did mate in the air—not often, though. It was the ultimate intimacy for bonded pairs because of the faith it required. One partner had to cease flying, held aloft by the other. Who would stop beating their wings and put themself at the mercy of the other was a source of disagreement for many couples, but of course, Maggie could not fly. She knew she would be placing her life in his hands.

“You…trust?” he asked gruffly, humbled by her blithe assumption.

She cupped his jaw and planted a too-brief kiss at the corner of his mouth. “Sweet gargoyle. You have never let me down.”

There were no words more fulfilling to his stalwart, guardian heart than those. If she had proclaimed love, he could not have been happier.

Threading his fingers into her vivid hair, he sought her mouth again, drinking in her taste. She leaned into the kiss, pressing the lush spill of her breasts into his chest. He wanted to bite that fruit, too, feel the juice run down his chin. His teeth ached for her. For more.

Without breaking the kiss, he untied his breeches in preparation for flight. His cock sprang free, prodding against her, and he felt Maggie smile into his mouth before she pulled back.

“Should I take this off?” She glanced down at her clothing, already moving to unlace her bodice. He stopped her with a hand over hers. As much as he’d like to see her bared under the moon once they breached the clouds, he was more concerned for her comfort.

He shook his head, gesturing upward. “Cold.”

“All right, then.” She lifted the hem of her skirt, tucking it between her bodice and waistband. He caught a glimpse of a pale, freckled expanses in the gap of her split drawers.

“Fruit,” he murmured, unable to resist reaching down to squeeze the exposed inner thigh. “Want it.”

Her laugh was musical as she spread her legs a little to allow him more access. He slid the flat of his hand up to wedge between her legs. She was warmer at her center. Much warmer, like he’d traveled deep into a tael-mine, somewhere hot with magic—except this was magic even a gargoyle could not resist.

She was wet for him already, primed by their kisses. Curious to learn how she was made, he bit off a few of his claws so he could safely explore her anatomy. For all his observation of humans over the years, he knew very little of their bodies or mating habits. He only knew that their men pissed against the wall with pitiful little cocks. But that must mean there was somewhere to put them.

He found it, a small, grasping softness at her center. Unsure she could accommodate him, he pushed inside her. She took his finger with a sigh, digging her harmless, blunt claws into his upper arms as she clung to him. If anything, her insides were even softer than her outsides, soft beyond reason.

He felt for her pleasure spot, for surely their kind had them, too. She squirmed on his hand, whimpering, though no place seemed better than another until he rubbed her upper wall.

“That’s it,” she gasped, grinding into his touch. “Right there, that’s good.”

Though his needy cock leaked jealously down his thigh, it gave him a grim satisfaction to please her this way, so he didn’t stop. He merely clasped her neck with his free hand and drew her back into a kiss. His tongue stroked hers as his finger pumped into her until she was a wailing, shuddering mess, back bowed with her pleasure.

Chapter 7

A Fitting End

Maggie

He was so serious and determined, she had to laugh. Never had she had a partner with such single-mindedness when it came to delivering her enjoyment. It took that sort of focus to guard a whole village, she supposed.

“This was intended to be your goodbye, not an argument to keep you around,” she teased, thighs still quivering. “You’d have done better to leave me dripping and unsatisfied. Then I’d be glad to see the back of you.”

Evrard huffed, burying his face in her neck, rubbing his head against the side of hers. This, too, reminded her of how cats scent-marked the people they liked. Big kitten. He was such a dear. She hoped she could make him feel half as good.

She reached down to grasp the heft of his cock, which had been making itself known. She’d expected the same stony, textured hide as the rest of him, but his skin there was soft as moss over the stiffness of his erection. A luxury. He was full of surprises.

Guiding him between her legs, she notched the head at her entrance. He sucked in a breath, his hips bucking forward automatically so the head slipped inside.

The stretch when she sank down on him was glorious. She wound a leg around his thigh, holding him to her, urging him on. “You’re going to be hard to forget, Evrard-at-the-gate.”

“Then remember.” He pushed in further, then paused to let her body relax enough to take more.

She moaned, lids fluttering with the strain of the stretch. It was too good. No man would compare after this. She’d always known marriage would be a disappointment, though. As it would comprise the rest of her life, the only solution was to fully enjoy this while it lasted.

She was only vaguely conscious of more voices nearby. Evrard froze, squeezing her hips in a harsh reminder to be quiet. Thank goodness for the privacy of his wings that hid her abandoned modesty. At this point, she didn’t care if someone saw her with her skirts rucked up and half-speared on a stone cock, as long as she could stay that way.

She giggled helplessly into his chest even as he growled at her, which just made her giggle more. She clucked at him playfully. “Don’t fuss, they’re gone and none the wiser.”

He flipped them around so her back was pressed against the wall and seated his cock all the way inside her in one swift thrust. Another surprise now that she could feel it fully: the base of it widened, the swell making her toes curl and her mouth go slack.

It felt so good, she couldn’t even think, let alone hang onto him if he flew through the air. At this rate, they wouldn’t get there before she fell to pieces again, anyway. Maggie cursed the sea and sky like the fishwife she was.

“Slow down,” she gasped, worried he might finish before they were airborne. “Don’t rush it.”

“Don’t fuss,” Evrard said slyly, stroking in and out of her and giving her no respite. What a delicious brute.

“Aren’t you going to take me flying?” Not that she minded it like this, pinned up against the wall in the shadows. Furtive and frantic, it was nicer than it had any right to be. Pity he was leaving. She should have availed herself of the gargoyle long ago rather than wasting her time with village men.

He grunted in the affirmative and released her, withdrawing his swollen cock from her depths. It left her feeling off-balance, like she’d just returned from a moon at sea. Abruptly, he tugged the front of her chemise down, baring her breasts to the cool night air. She supposed it was only fair since his breeches were open, his lush, velvety cock on full display, still dewy with her moisture.

For the first time she understood what he’d been about earlier, with the fruit. She wanted to eat him up. Sink her teeth into him. And from the way he was looking at her, he felt the same way.

Her nipples contracted to painful points under his hungry gaze. He dipped his head, pulling one breast into his mouth in a deep draw that she felt to her core. He gave the other side the same thorough treatment as she clutched him to her chest, crowning him with kisses until he pulled away, leaving her wanting yet again.

“Now,” he grunted, turning her so her backside was nestled against the cradle of his thighs. He tugged up her skirts and parted her drawers so his cock could seek her center again. He pushed inside without ceremony, and she was so grateful to be filled again.

The stretch was just as good as before. Maybe better, for now his strong arms banded around her, one hand cupping between her legs while the other crossed her chest to squeeze her exposed breasts. So that’s why he’d pulled down her chemise—so he could touch them while he flew. She was oddly charmed by his forethought.

She would not be able to hang onto him this way. She had to rely on him completely. She clutched his forearms for dear life, anyway, mere moments before he pushed off from the ground.

Wide wings lifted them up, up, up in breathless beats. They were high in the air in a matter of seconds, his hold on her thrillingly tight. She knew he wouldn’t drop her, but the sensation of her feet dangling in empty space was new and disconcerting.

She forced herself to look down. The village lanterns were tiny, winking stars below, the sea like an endless black night to the east. Then they broke through the low, damp clouds, and the whole world disappeared.

It was just moonlight above and mist below, the whisper and snap of Evrard’s wings the only sounds.

He was right—it was cold. But with his large, heated body at her back and his firm grip on her most intimate parts, she was warm enough.

“Good for human?” he rumbled in her ear, one of his fingers already stroking into her folds that were still stretched around his cock. His touch felt good, and his concern heated her even more.

“Mm,” she agreed, letting her head loll back onto his shoulder. “And for you?”

In answer, he squeezed her mound, using it to push and pull her on his cock, handling her easily. Fallen gods, it felt good. He felt good. And the slight seasoning of danger was exhilarating, like standing on the prow of a ship and leaning into the wind.

Evrard seemed surer of himself up here, with a lazy confidence to his rhythm that alternated with the beat of his wings. He was slow, almost languid in his strokes. This felt like the real him, this powerful creature who could look down on the world.

The gusts from his wingbeats tugged at her hair, whipping it around her face. The sensation of the air against her skin was incredible, and she felt awake in a way she didn’t except at sea—free and wild and uninhibited.

The cold was a distant memory, chased away by the heat of his body and the hypnotic warmth of his cock sliding in and out of her, the stroke of his fingers against her clit. He knew just how to touch her, just how to make her mad with desire.

He curved down to nip at her neck, his purr strengthening until she could feel it through her whole body. His teeth grazed her skin again, leaving a stinging line that his tongue traced back up her throat.

Maggie felt his cock thicken inside her, stretching her to her limit. His breath hot and ragged in her ear, she knew he was close. She ground her hips back against him, eliciting his groan.

“Want…seed?” he asked hoarsely.

It was shameful how much she wanted it. “You can spill inside me.”

His grip on her tightened, fingers digging into her flesh, and the base of his cock expanded dramatically inside her, far beyond anything she’d anticipated. The new girth stretched her to the very edge of pain, but the added pressure sent her over the edge.

Deep waves of pleasure rolled over her, slackening her muscles and stealing all her thoughts as his hot release poured into her, and hers gushed over his hand.

“Mine,” he hissed. “My Maggie.”

Then his wings contracted around them, blotting out the stars, and they fell.

Plummeting through the night, speared through her center, Maggie couldn’t draw a breath. It all felt like a dream, everything heightened and absurd. To feel so powerful and so helpless, so satisfied and so terrified all at once.

They would hit the ground soon. They would shatter against the rocks or splash into the sea. But what more fitting end? She couldn’t imagine one.

Chapter 8

A Dishonorable Task

Evrard

The moment he felt an updraft, his wings snapped out, arresting their freefall beneath the cloud layer. Maggie was limp in his arms. She’d trusted him enough to fly with him. To come apart in the moonlight. To take his seed. He’d never felt more honored.

His little gem whined, writhing on his still-pulsing knot as they glided, held aloft by the air currents.

“Shhh,” he soothed, holding her still so she wouldn’t pull off and damage herself. He adjusted her chemise and skirts to cover her and keep her warm. “Rest. Wait.”

“How long? I don’t know if I can bear it,” she whimpered, clutching at him.

“You can. Not long.” He tucked her head under his chin and wrapped his tail around her waist for extra security, wishing it would take longer to part from her. Soon, he would have no more excuses to stay.

She calmed as he wheeled in easy circles above the village. Her breathing became more regular, and she began idly stroking the ridge of his tail where it crossed her body, which did nothing to help his cock soften. “Do you suppose the kitten’s still sleeping?”

He snorted, having spared not a single thought for the kitten. Crawling creatures could take care of themselves… most of them, anyway. Humans seemed to be the least capable.

“That’s my family’s cottage there.” She pointed below, where a lonely stone building hugged the edge of the cliff to the south of the village. Plain and sturdy, it wasn’t too different from the nest he was raised in. The thought comforted him. Its worn walls would protect her from the wind and its thick thatch from the rain while he was gone.

“Good,” he rumbled, flying nearer to it. A trickle of smoke from dying coals seeped from the chimney, and the windows were dark.

“They must be asleep already,” she murmured, sounding sleepy herself.

His knot loosened. Easing her off it, he lit on a tumble of boulders not far from the cottage. He held her up until her legs could bear her weight. Then, nerves still sparking through his cock, he resisted the urge to bite her and tied his breeches instead. Biting was for mates. A bite would bind their minds and hearts irrevocably. She’d promised him a proper goodbye, not a whole life together.

“You fucked me so well, I lost one of my shoes.” Maggie grinned up at him as she adjusted her skirts, smoothing them over her temptingly plump thighs. “I hope it didn’t land on anyone. Can you imagine being kicked by an unoccupied shoe?”

He chuckled, tucking a lock of her wind-tousled hair behind her ear. How tangled her amber locks had become. Frowning, he ran his claws through her hair until he was satisfied with the smooth waves. It soothed him to groom her this way, as she had groomed him. “Wait here, Maggie.”

He pushed in the direction of the village. He meant to retrieve her cart and kitten, but he scanned the area for her missing shoe on the way, though he didn’t expect to find it.

Improbably, he spotted it caught in the high branches of an elm. He swooped down to collect it before visiting the village gate.

The moths were still there, giggling when he landed in the dirt for the third time in a single night.

“Why does he have a little shoe? It won’t fit him. He’s got feet the size of barrels.”

“I saw him kidnap a human. Snatched her up and flew off with her.” A second moth dusted the air with silver from its wings as it careened around the lantern, smacking into its glass panes before spiraling dizzily away. “Now she’s gone. I suppose he ate her.”

“Maybe he dropped her bones into the sea,” a third suggested, tittering.

“I did,” Evrard growled, making them all howl in their mothish way. “The shoe is all that’s left of her. Now go spread your tales about it somewhere else.”

They ignored him, of course, so he returned the favor, turning his attention to Maggie’s cart. He lifted the canvas cover, relieved to see the little orange kitten yawn and bristle at him. She would be happy to have her creature back. He tucked her shoe beside it and covered it up again so neither shoe nor kitten could escape.

The cart, though… its casks and barrels empty, it was light enough for him to lift, but the shape and size made it too unwieldy to carry while he flew. He would have to pull it like a beast of burden if he wanted to return it to her.

It was a dishonorable task, one a tower-born gargoyle would not stoop to perform. He’d never be granted an eyrie if any of them saw him dragging a load through the mud on behalf of a human. It was too low, too slavish.

Gargoyles might be bound to protect their kind, but they were not bound to serve them. The concept was repugnant. Oddly, he didn’t mind doing it for Maggie. For one, she had not asked it of him. He had volunteered. And some part of him was honored to help her this way. He was returning her livelihood. Her pet. The things she held dear.

He put himself in the traces as Maggie did every day and hauled the cart to her seaside cottage on foot, each step driving the dirt under his claws. A journey that would take him minutes by air took more than half an hour, crawling on the earth like this.

He expected she’d have given up on him and gone to bed by the time he returned, but when he reached the cottage, she was on the boulder where he’d left her, staring out at the sea.

She turned at the clatter of the wooden wheels on the stones and smiled when she saw the cart. Smiled even more when he produced the kitten from under the canvas and laughed aloud when he handed her the shoe as well.

“I can’t believe you found it.” She hopped on one foot while she put it on, neglecting the laces, and then took the kitten from him. It curled up on her shoulder, purring loudly. Seeing them reunited made him want to purr, too. “It didn’t land on anyone?”

He shook his head. “Tree.”

“Good. I’m glad to have it back. Otherwise I was prepared to stuff the toes of my father’s boots so I could wear them. He has no use for them anymore.” She sobered, gaze slipping to the horizon again as she stroked her kitten. “Thank you. For everything.”

He flexed his wings, unsure what came next. For so long, nothing had happened, and now it seemed everything was happening at once: He was leaving. He was going to fight an unwinnable war. And he was falling in love with a human.

Chapter 9

To Hell with Men

Maggie

This was supposed to be a celebratory send-off before Kaspar inflicted a second proposal on her, but she’d cocked it up. Instead of enjoying a filthy little fling, she was having feelings. If only Evrard had been less sweet, less strong, less generous. Less well-endowed. Less kind. Then her heart wouldn’t be stinging at the thought of never seeing him again.

“Are you off?” She cupped her hands around the kitten, grateful to have someone to hold.

He grunted in the affirmative, and her stomach hollowed. Why did his answer disappoint her when she knew it before she even asked? Maybe some silly part of her was hoping he’d changed his mind. Like one dip into a human cunny was going to weigh in the balance.

She kept her eyes on the waves and swallowed hard, holding back her silly tears. “I wish you well with your time in the watch. Please, try not to die.”

“Maggie.” He rasped her name in a way she couldn’t resist. When she turned, he said, “I’ll come back.”

She gave him a sad smile. If he survived the war, if he made it back to Brinehelm unscathed by goblins and their war-bats, it would be too late. She’d be married. Scrubbing the floors in Kaspar’s house. Carrying his child if she was lucky.

Lucky. An odd word for how she was feeling, which was that she’d much rather quicken with Evrard’s winged little offspring than Kaspar’s brats. No possibility of that, though.

“You needn’t feel obligated to come check on me. There’s no chance your seed took. I have a charm,” she said bluntly, holding out her arm so he could see the tael-infused clay disc that she wore on a string around her wrist. She dropped her arm to her side.

Evrard scoffed at her, grabbing her hand. With a flick of his claw, he cut through the string. “Weak magic,” he muttered, pocketing the little clay amulet. “Means nothing.”

Her heart thumped as he pressed her palm against the center of his chest, holding it there so she could feel the rise and fall of his breath. She was suddenly conscious of the fact that his seed was still inside her, the proof of it cooling on her inner thighs.

“I will come back,” he repeated slowly, each word its own sentence. “For you.”

She believed him, and not just with her silly, soft heart. Even her bones believed him. All she could manage was a nod.

Like it was permission he’d been waiting for, he leapt straight up, his wings lifting him away. In mere moments, he had disappeared into the dark.

That was that.

When she woke the next morning, there was a moment when she questioned whether it had happened at all. Maybe she’d imagined the gorgeous gargoyle who’d carried her into the stars and might very well have put a child in her. It was the kind of thing that only came true in dreams. It seemed easier to doubt her memory than believe it.

But when she rose, the beautiful, sticky soreness between her legs was proof it had happened. He had seeded her, made sure it would take, and promised to return. She would wait for him, as he’d asked.

“I can’t marry Kaspar,” she admitted to her mother, who was already standing over the washtub. “I told him to propose again, but I can’t accept him.”

Her mother sighed heavily as she bent to stoke the firebox. She straightened, rubbing the small of her back. “I’m not surprised.”

How did she know when Maggie had just decided herself? “You’re not?”

Her father answered from where he was nearly swallowed up by the pillows that propped him. “Couldn’t in good conscience recommend you as a wife. You think a child of ours would stay at home and be agreeable?” He scoffed, but it was a loving sound. An understanding one.

“We discussed it last night,” her mother added. “We’ll sell the Wolfhunter. It’s just a boat, after all.”

“Just a boat,” her father echoed with irony, shaking his head. But he didn’t contradict his wife. “If Kaspar wants it, he can pay for it like everyone else.”

A rush of tears stung. “You would sell it just so I don’t have to marry him?” Her voice splintered away at the end.

“Of course.” Her father seemed angry she would ask even half the question. “Of course.”

Her mother, balancing a bundle of wet linens in a basket on her hip, nudged her gently with an elbow. It was as good as an I love you. Maggie swiped away the wet tracks on her cheeks and took up the laundry stick, inflicting her maelstrom of emotions on the dirty water and swirling, stubborn fabric.

As she punched and poked the laundry, working out the stains, she tried to rationalize it all. The Wolfhunter was just a boat.

Just a boat.

But it was the one she’d been born on. The one that had fed their family for generations. The one that owned more than half her father’s heart—or she’d thought it did. It had always seemed to her that, while he might love his daughter and wife, the Wolfhunter was his truest love. But now he was ready to let it go with only mild reluctance, like his beloved ship was merely the remains of last night’s good dinner and not the jewel in his crown.

How could she be so loved? The stick splashed noisily, hiding her tears.

“I can’t let her go,” she declared when her mother returned from hanging the linens and took the stick away from her. Maggie dried her hands on her apron, ignoring her parents’ confused expressions. “We’re not selling her.”

The laundry stick banged down in surprise. “You’ll marry Kaspar, then?”

“No. We’re going to run her ourselves.” Out of the corner of her eye, Maggie saw her father brighten and sit up slightly in bed.

Her mother shook her head with a pointed look at him, and he slumped back into the pillows. “You’ve always been a dreamer, Maggie, but we have to be practical about this. Who’s going to captain?”

“I am.” She knew how a ship ran. How to keep accounts and ration the provisions. How to manage the sails in rough weather and how to raise morale in the doldrums. How to flay and salt the fish so it’d keep for the journey home. How to navigate by the stars. She didn’t need a husband for any of that, or even her father’s supervision. She could do it herself. “If I’d been born a son, I’d be captaining it already. You know it’s true.”

“The old crew won’t be loyal,” her mother protested, her forehead creased with worry. “They’ll see you as a woman first, captain second.”

Maggie’s heart sped up. “To hell with men, then. I’ll hire women. Plenty of girls around here grew up in fishing families and know how to sail.”

“It takes more than know-how. It takes a lot of strength to run a ship.” Her mother gnawed at her lower lips as she levered another load of sodden fabric from the tub into the wringer.

Her father had been silent, but now he spoke. “Look at yourself, Corine. You work harder than any man every day of your life. And you hauled nets alongside my crew when you were fat as a porpoise with that one. Worked right up until the hour Maggie was born. No reason the rest of these women can’t do the same.”

Her mother gave a deep sigh. “I know it. I don’t mean to be discouraging. Maggie will make be a fine captain. But I’m allowed to worry over the ones I love, Lenn. I married a boneheaded mule of a man who insists on worrying me night and day, didn’t I? And then I gave birth to an even more boneheaded daughter who’d swim across the sea if someone told her she couldn’t do it.”

“She got that ass and brass from you,” her father jabbed back.

As they continued their loving bickering, Maggie’s hand slipped reflexively to her lower belly. She could be growing a boneheaded child of her own, but the worst she might show for it this season would be some extra seasickness. By next year’s run, she’d either have Evrard’s babe in her arms or she wouldn’t. She could captain both seasons without any hindrance.

She could do this.

She would do this.

Chapter 10

A Faint Hope

Evrard

Solvantis sprawled out beneath him just as dawn leaked into the edges of the sky. He only had time to check in at the tower and find his roost in the watchcote before the sun rose and turned his hide to stone.

He had all day to observe the humans crawling about in the streets of the great walled city. They rarely lifted their faces to acknowledge the frozen figures looking down at them.

For so long, he’d assumed that the lack of recognition was due to his station. He was no one special. Cliffborn. Barely worthy of the village post. Maggie was one of the few who ever glanced up in Brinehelm. The rest ignored him like he was a mere fixture. Gate, pillar, gargoyle, wall.

But even here, where the most elite towerborn made their eyries and the Zenith ruled alongside the human king, the gargoyles might as well have been gutter spouts as far as the humans were concerned.

Gutter spouts who battled goblins for them.

Maggie wasn’t like that. She understood his devotion. She saw him. He hoped she wouldn’t forget him while he was gone, but it was a faint hope. She said she wouldn’t, but humans weren’t as patient as his kind. She might remember him for six moons, but ten? Twenty? It was asking a lot of her to wait for him so long. And she said she’d soon be married.

That’s why he’d seized her womb-charm, for the chance that his seed would take. Then she’d have a part of him with her, always. It wouldn’t be possible for her to forget him if he sired her child. It was selfish, and he didn’t care. That’s how much he wanted to keep her. That’s how much he wanted her to wait for him.

Even if she had a human mate when he returned, she’d be his.

As the day progressed to afternoon, his dread rose in anticipation of the reprimand he was sure to receive from his watch leader for being so late. He would be disciplined. But there was no point in putting off the inevitable, so when his skin finally cracked enough to allow movement, he shook off the fine layer of grit that had formed and grimly reported for duty.

“You’re the last to arrive. Slow flyer?” The watchminder, a female gargoyle with delicate, pointed horns and a beak that betrayed some dragon ancestry, eyed him with skepticism, but he didn’t stretch his wings for her. She looked faintly disappointed as she checked her scroll. “They’ve put the Sixth Watch under Brandt, winds aid you.”

That was bait, but he took it. “What’s wrong with Brandt?”

She clicked her beak, tail flicking. “Rough. Cliffborn. But I guess that might suit you.”

“It does.” He shrugged off her intended barb. An unmannered, low leader was fine with him. Cliffborn knew how to survive, and that was Evrard’s primary aim now, to survive.

It should have been to gain the satisfaction of fighting well if he lived—or the glory of devoted death if he didn’t. But now he didn’t care about any of that, only returning to Maggie. And for that, he had to make it through the war, not just fight it.

He followed the watchminder’s instructions to locate his assigned perch on one of the lower-level trusses that crisscrossed the hollow center of the tower. To his relief—and contrary to his expectations—his watchmates seemed strong, serious, and well-armored. They would fight well if they worked together.

The perch to his left was occupied by an obvious towerborn, who wore finely engraved pauldrons and gold caps on his horns, inexperienced enough that he didn’t have a single scar.

Evrard was suddenly self-conscious. His plain leather bracers and eroded hide looked shabby in comparison. Even his broad back stood out among the leaner, younger gargoyles. He felt his chewed-up ears heat with shame.

They muttered terse greetings to one another, then crouched to wait for their leader.

They didn’t have to wait long. Brandt must have been watching from above, because as soon as Evrard settled, he swooped down from an upper level, passing their ranks twice before settling on a perch that faced them.

The watchminder hadn’t lied. Though his armor looked new and he was young enough that the moss hadn’t eaten his hair, Brandt himself was rough—horns chipped and his body covered in dozens of deep, deliberate grooves to mark his lost watchmates. He’d seen plenty of battles and he hadn’t won all of them.

Evrard had instant respect for him. As Brandt traveled the rows of stoic gargoyles under his command, greeting each in turn, it was clear from his exchanges that he had respect for them, too.

“You’re from the south cliffs or the north?” he asked when he reached Evrard.

Evrard tensed, knowing his answer would only lower his watchmates’ opinions of him. “South.”

“My mother’s family is from the south.” Brandt’s granite gaze dared anyone to make a snide remark. “She lives in the tower now. Your family will do the same when you return victorious.”

Evrard had no family left, but Brandt’s assumption was a compliment. Evrard felt a surge of gratitude for Maggie’s patient grooming. He might be a relic, but at least he looked loved. He looked like he had someone to return to.

He fingered the small charm in his pocket. Perhaps he had two someones. The thought strengthened him and straightened his back.

Brandt led them in some simple grappling exercises before taking them out to practice formations. He demonstrated a maneuver and then roosted on the tower to watch them drill together in swarms of six. He called out occasional instructions or corrections, but for the most part, he just observed them working together.

Evrard was in his element when it came to the physical tasks. He even was able to help some of the younger ones with less flying experience master the complicated banks required to keep their spacing in the formation.

They were a friendly enough group, even the one with the fancy pauldrons, and by the end of the flying session, they were joking and smacking each other’s legs with their tails. It felt a little like they were hatchmates, even if he was the much, much older brother.

He noticed Brandt didn’t join in the more lighthearted banter, instead watching from the periphery with an inscrutable expression. It wasn’t exactly sadness in his posture. More like…resignation.

Evrard didn’t have time to think about it much until their watch joined with the others in an enormous banquet hall to feast on roast oxen provided by the humans who maintained the tower. They scurried about, eyes averted, carrying platters of beef and bone and flagons of mead.

He found himself perched on a narrow stone rail next to Brandt. The younger gargoyles jockeyed for position under chandeliers that dripped wax on their horns and ears. The light from them attracted swarms of moths, so many that their voices drowned each other out in a single, vivacious hum.

Evrard didn’t mind being pushed to the edges of the group. He was older and rougher. At least they hadn’t rejected him outright. And he was happy to focus on his meat, which was succulent to say the least. In combination with the sweet mead served along with it, it might have been the best meal he’d ever had, other than Maggie’s oysters. A big step up from the cold fish pies and cloudy ale that the village served him.

“Do they always eat this well in the tower?” he asked Brandt in the dialect of the southern cliffs.

“Yes.”

“Bastards.” Out of the corner of his eye, he was gratified to see Brandt’s mouth twist up.

“Bastards,” Brandt agreed. Companionably quiet, he still wore that odd look on his face as he tore into the food. Evrard recognized it now that he could study the male’s face up close.

It was dread.

“Something wrong?” He kept his tone light even as fear gripped him by the tail. What in Tael-Nost was he flying into? “I understand if you can’t tell the whole watch, but I’d rather know than not.”

Brandt shook his head, making a dismissive noise. “Nothing out of the ordinary. I always wonder which ones.”

He didn’t need to say what he meant. Evrard understood perfectly. They wouldn’t all return. Some of these laughing, celebrating gargoyles would meet their end, their lives reduced to grooves on their watchmates’ backs.

He hoped it wouldn’t be him, but that meant hoping it would be one of the others. No wonder Brandt was discomfited. Evrard was, too. Here he was hoping Maggie would bear his hatchling, and he might never see them again. He’d left them both without protection. Though he knew the watch protected all humans, that did not satisfy his guardian heart.

He tossed back his goblet of mead and held it out to be refilled by one of the tower keepers’ flagons, fingers gripping the short stem too tightly. As the mead filled the cup, it spilled over the rim, running over his knuckles.

“You have a human mate,” Brandt said accusingly, eyeing the mess.

He inhaled his mead, surprised. “How did you guess?”

Brandt nodded to Evrard’s hand and held up his own. His claws were bitten to the quick.

A look of understanding flashed between them. A mutual worry over the softness of humans.

“It will get easier once we reach Meravenna and build our mind walls for battle,” Brandt said. It wasn’t clear whether he was reassuring Evrard or himself. “We won’t be distracted by thoughts of our mates until we take them down again. Our focus will be single-minded.”

A stone hardened in Evrard’s throat. Somehow, forgetting Maggie seemed worse than worrying, like she’d be more vulnerable if he weren’t thinking of her. In reality, his protective thoughts would do nothing for her while he was gone. They would only be a distraction to him. Potentially his downfall in the midst of battle. If his goal was to survive, he would have to forget her for a while.

Fallen gods, he did not want to. Life without Maggie was meaningless. He’d been willing to die until she kissed him.

“I want to remember her,” he confessed. “I want a reason to come home.”

“You will, even with your wall up. The mate bond will call you back, even if you can’t recall her face or form. And she’ll be able to sense you through the bite. She’ll know if you’re alive or dead, well or injured. It will be a comfort to her, and your family will keep her safe until you get back.”

Evrard felt like he’d turned to stone even though the night was still velvet-dark. He and Maggie shared no bite. They had no bond. Only a mossy-eared promise, one he’d made but couldn’t keep, to return. But no one would care for her in his absence. He did not leave her any comforts, not even a nest to sleep in.

The mead soured on his tongue. He couldn’t swallow another mouthful. He set down his goblet.

“I didn’t bite her,” he rasped. “I wanted to, but there was no time. It would have been—”

“Impulsive,” Brandt finished heavily. His blunt-clawed fingers flexed into a fist, as though it closed on something precious. “I understand. We are not that.”

Evrard was, though. The little amulet in his pocket mocked him for pretending otherwise. How could he claim any high perch when he had forced a connection with Maggie regardless of a bonding bite? “I didn’t want to hurt her.”

“But you should have. You did her no favors withholding it.”

“I ignored the impulse,” he admitted, feeling very half-wise. “I didn’t know whether she shared my regard. But I did not ask, and now it’s too late.”

Brandt grunted noncommittally. “Does she dwell here in Solvantis?”

“Brinehelm. Southeast of here. It’s by the sea.” Meravenna, where the Sixth Watch would join the other five, was inland to the southwest, amid grassy plains dotted with agricultural settlements, within easy flight of the foothills where the goblins made their nests. The opposite direction.

“Hm.” Brandt’s tail drew designs in the dust. Then he shooed an eavesdropping moth away from the nearest candle and ensured none of the other gargoyles were listening before speaking. “Our watch deploys tomorrow. I’ll put your swarm on the outer wing. After launch, you can divert from the formation and fly through Brinehelm to bond with her, then meet us in Meravenna. Don’t dally or you’ll be struck from the watch. I can only make excuses for so long.”

Hope spread its wings in Evrard’s chest.

Chapter 11

A Dangerous Bouquet

Maggie

Kaspar came to the door the next morning, a handful of prickly sea-holly stems clutched in his fist. He thrust them into Maggie’s hands when she opened the door. The thorns pricked her palms and her conscience. She’d begged on her knees for him, and now she had to go back on her word. Even though it was for the best, part of her felt guilty.

“Closest thing to flowers this time of year,” he mumbled, looking embarrassed by the half-hearted gesture. They both knew his visit had nothing to do with romance. “Came to speak with your da about amending the Wolfhunter’s deed.”

“He’s asleep,” Maggie lied, hoping to keep their conversation private. “But it doesn’t matter, anyway. We need to talk. I know I said that I’d welcome another proposal, but a lot has happened since then. I can’t in good conscience—”

“Your ma, then,” he interrupted, his eyes searched the darkened cottage interior behind her. He didn’t seem to have heard a single thing she said.

She stepped out of the cottage and closed the door, setting the dangerous bouquet on the porch rail. He reached for the door handle, and she moved to block it. “You’re not listening. I’ve had more time to think, and I believe it’s best if—”

Kaspar attempted to shoulder her aside. His expression darkened when she wouldn’t let him pass. “I’m not marrying you for your thoughts on every matter,” he snapped. “If you want to be a good wife, shut your mouth once in a while. It’ll cause trouble if you prattle on about every idea that pops into your head when I’m trying to conduct business. It’s wearing.”

She gave up on letting him down easily. “Fine, then. I’ll use short sentences so I don’t waste your time. Go away. I’m not marrying you.”

Kaspar’s eyes bulged at her defiance, his neck reddening. “Your father may have something else to say about that. Let me in.” He grabbed her shoulder, fingers digging in roughly, but she wrenched herself out of his grasp. He made a noise of frustration. “Your frigid little spinster act is getting old. You were begging on your knees for me yesterday.”

“That was yesterday. Things have changed.”

He froze, frowning. “Who will captain the Wolfhunter, then? Gus? Johan?”

She shook her head. “Does it matter? Not you.”

“Is it Walther?!” he roared indignantly. “That smug son of a sea slug. I’ll be faefucked before I watch him steal my wife and sail my boat.”

“Better bend over, then,” Maggie said tartly, and took advantage of his few seconds of gobsmack to push him off the porch. His wife and his boat, indeed.

Kaspar stumbled backward a few steps before righting himself. A thunderous expression swept over his face that destroyed any sense of satisfaction she’d been feeling at knocking him down a peg. “You’ll regret this, woman.”

Instinctively, she reached for her shucking knife, but her hand brushed air where the handle should have been. She’d been so caught up in her daydreams of Evrard that she’d forgotten to buckle it on this morning.

Panic unfurled in her lungs as Kaspar stepped toward her, menace in every muscle. She fumbled behind her for the door handle, but it swung open behind her of its own accord. Her mother stepped out, brandishing the laundry stick with the kitten riding on her shoulder. When the kitten saw Kaspar, it hissed and growled, its tail as straight as a mast.

“Walk away, Kaspar,” her mother ordered. “No harm need come of this. The world doesn’t end when a woman tells you ‘no.’”

“Last chance, Maggie,” Kaspar said, ignoring her mother. “Marry me. If you decline, my offer won’t come again, no matter how much you regret your choice.”

Her answer came easily because she’d already said it. “No.”

“No?” he repeated. “So be it.” Nothing in him seem soothed, though. Even as he turned to go, there was a dangerous glitter in his eyes. Her answer had only provoked him.

Maggie didn’t exhale until he was out of sight.

“I don’t want you going into the village alone anymore,” her mother said, setting the end of her stick down on the stone steps with a dull thump. “Not until he’s settled down. You’ve humiliated the man. Give him a few days to drink it off before you rub it in his face.”

Maggie picked up the bedraggled bouquet and marched to the edge of the cliff. She flung it into the wind, watching the blue-gray stems scatter into the sea spray. She returned to her mother’s side, dusting her hands. “No one will know about it unless he tells them. I don’t see why I shouldn’t go about my business. I didn’t take anything from him. Didn’t insult him.”

“You took a bit of his pride.”

“He wanted to take my whole life!”

“I’m sure he thought he was giving you one. Most girls would jump at the chance to be his bride.”

“That’s what I mean. His whole life, he only had to crook a finger at a pretty lass, and he’d have her in his lap. The sole reason he wants me is for the Wolfhunter. Once he got it, I’d be nothing to him. Less than nothing, because I’ll be a drain on his purse. An annoyance. It’d be me over the edge of the cliff like a bit of prickly sea-holly.”

Corine sighed, nodding. “Now that I’ve seen his temper, I’m not sure I’d wish him on anyone. A husband should be the dog that defends you, not the one that bites.”

“That’s why I’m going into the village today,” Maggie decided. “To hire all the prettiest girls as my crew. I’ll save them from Kaspar’s lap.”

Her mother laughed, shaking her head. “I wish you’d wait, but I know you won’t.”

Unburdened by her handcart for once, she practically skipped to Brinehelm. It was only once she reached the gate with its conspicuous absence of Evrard that she realized she’d been looking forward to seeing him there.

He’d taught her so much about her own capabilities in the few hours they spent together. She’d been convinced that the only way to have what she wanted was to put herself in a wife-shaped box. But it turned out, it had been within her grasp all along. Wherever he was, she owed him a debt.

With a purse full of her mussel money and her shucking knife at her hip, she visited Brinehelm’s docks, feeling as free and alive as she had above the clouds when she saw the Wolfhunter moored in the harbor, masts reaching for the sky. She could hardly believe it was hers.

Did she deserve to captain such a proud vessel? Could she even manage it on her own? It felt impossible.

The twinge of soreness in her core reminded her of Evrard’s rough encouragement in her ear: “You can.”

She’d done a few seemingly impossible things recently. She’d flown. She could do this.

Maggie checked their stores in the dockside warehouse, then walked along the streets that lined the harbor, visiting with women she knew. Within an hour, she’d hired a navigator, a quartermaster, a cook, and a carpenter, all willing to work for a share of the catch.

It was simple to find a seamstress who could make sails and repair nets as well. A little harder to find a boatswain with any experience, but a few strong women signed on as riggers and packers and promised to ask their friends if they’d be interested in the work.

Buoyed by her success at securing at least the beginnings of a crew, she ordered barrels and salt and rope and candles to be delivered to the warehouse. Her purse grew light, but it would all come back to her when she returned the Wolfhunter with a full catch in her hold.

She couldn’t help the secret smile that crossed her face then. She and her ship would both return with full bellies, if all went well.

After a long day in the markets and docks, she stopped in at the tavern for a meal before the long walk home. Walther slid her a bowl of stew down the bar. It was so full, some of the stew slopped over the lip onto the weathered wood.

Walther swiped up the spill with a flourish before flipping his rag back over his shoulder. “No cockles and mussels, eh? I expected you to come in with full casks given the ebb tide this morning.”

She tore off a piece of bread and dipped it in the bowl to soak up the stew. “Had other things to do.”

“I see.” He gave her knowing wink, like she’d just shared something naughty.

It was a tavernkeeper’s trick to keep her talking, but she couldn’t hold in her news. Her day had been too exciting not to share. “We’re going to run the Wolfhunter this season! Had to get her ready. Hired half a crew.”

“Is that so? Your pa feeling well enough?”

That sobered her a little. She shook her head, swallowing her stew-soaked bread. “I’m going to captain.”

“You?!” Walther burst out, planted both his palms on the bar, leaning forward in astonishment. His loud outburst drew the attention of some of the other customers.

She jutted out her chin, annoyed that even Walther was doubting her. “Why not me? I was raised on the boats just like half the men in this village. I’m stronger than half of them, too.”

“Aye, I’ve seen you handle a cask or two as well as any man,” he conceded, eyes twinkling.

“I’ll sail with yeh!” a grizzled old gent called from other end of the bar, his grin missing several teeth. “If we find yeh can’t captain, we can strap yeh to the spar and use yeh as a figurehead. Yeh got the bosoms for it.”

Maggie snorted, coughing on her mouthful of stew, as Walther and the others within hearing howled. When she recovered, she pointed at Walther. “And that is why I’m only hiring women.”

“You don’t say.”

“Signed half a crew already. Know any women who could boatswain?” she joked.

He tilted his head, considering. “My niece might. Tilda. Knows her way around a ship. Never been a deck leader, but she runs my uncle’s shipyard with a firm hand. Don’t see why she couldn’t manage your crew.”

“I’ll ask her.”

“Yeh sure you don’t need a gent aboard to service all those hardworking lasses?” the old sailor piped in.

Maggie snorted. “We hardworking lasses can service ourselves better than you could.”

Walther and the rest of the tavern howled again. Warmed by their laughter, Maggie scraped up the last of her stew and tapped the bowl on the bar so Walther would refill it.

She dug into the fresh helping with delight, but her seconds were interrupted when a wild-eyed man burst in from the street.

“Fire at the docks!” he shouted before darting out to warn the occupants of the next building.

The tavern was instantly on its feet. Nearly everyone in Brinehelm had a stake in the docks somehow, so it was a crush of people grimly running through the cobbled streets toward the harbor to put out the flames.

Skirts fisted to keep them out of the way, Maggie raced along with the others, picturing her newly bought candles melting into puddles, the hemp ropes charring. Even in the dimming evening light, the smoke was visible above the rooftops, lit by an ominous orange glow. When she reached seafront, her worries proved true. The warehouse that housed her freshly purchased supplies was ablaze.

Dockworkers and townspeople were already doing their best to put out the fire, pumping seawater into buckets and throwing them onto hissing flames. Maggie joined the long line of people passing buckets.

There was nothing she could do except dig into the work the same way she’d dig into stirring the laundry tub or hauling her handcart. It was a task for her muscles, not her mind.

She couldn’t think about how she could afford to replace the supplies. She just worked, biceps burning, until the sweat ran down her spine and her hair stuck to her sweaty brow and the evening turned to night.

It seemed all of Brinehelm was there, working together. Men and women. Bakers and barristers and barmen like Walther. Even Kaspar, who nodded at her from where he was directing another bucket line. He didn’t look angry at her. For once, they were united in purpose: to put out the fire. All of them needed it.

Slowly, the bucket brigade gained. Smoke gave way to steam, and the brigade broke up, some staying on the buckets while others went to shovel and rake away the burned portions of the building to separate the embers from the salvageable stores.

Maggie picked up two buckets to douse any small fires she might find on the way to check her supplies. Maybe the chandler would extend her credit. Maybe the salt could be salvaged, however smoky. Maybe…

New shouts broke out, and she jerked her head up to see the cause. She followed the pointing fingers to the harbor, to the dark silhouettes of the ships moored there. To her own ship, which she hardly recognized.

The Wolfhunter was on fire. Flames licked up the masts and spread across the forecastle, growing with every passing second.

There was nothing she could do to stop it. Something in her died. She sank to the charred ground and watched her dreams burn.

Someone blocked her view, dark and shapeless, until her eyes adjusted. Kaspar. He stood too close, staring down at her rather than at the spectacle in the harbor like everyone else. “I like you like this, Maggie. Quiet. On your knees. Full of regrets.”

Her lips went numb with realization. He couldn’t have the Wolfhunter, so he’d made sure no one else could, either. “You did this.” Her voice cracked painfully.

“What are you talking about? I was here, putting out the warehouse fire, just like you.” His voice was all coy innocence, but she could hear the triumph underlying it as he surveyed the smoking wreckage around them. He shook his head, clucking his tongue. “What a shame. What a waste.”

All this destruction around them, his earnest efforts alongside the rest of the townspeople had just been a distraction. Just an alibi. He hated her so much, he was willing to threaten the livelihood of the whole village to get his empty revenge.

He turned his attention to the harbor, showing her his back. He thought he’d won, but he still didn’t have anything he wanted.

He wanted her regretful, but he’d only proved why she’d made the right decision. He wanted her quiet and on her knees, and she wouldn’t give him that, either.

So she stood. And she screamed.

Chapter 12

A Promise Kept

Evrard

The Sixth Watch launched at nightwake, flying in formation toward Meravenna. When Evrard got the signal from Brandt, he peeled off from his swarm.

His heart ticked urgently as he beat his wings toward the sea, working against the wind. Would Maggie accept his bite, or would she need convincing? He wasn’t sure he had the words to explain how it would connect them.

He practiced his speech as he flew, making his mouth form the human words so he could deliver it when he reached her. You are my human. My mate. I must bite.

He sounded like a goblin straight from the mines. She deserved something prettier.

When he hit the coastline, he turned to follow it, knowing it was only minutes until he saw her again. If he could speak to her in his tongue, he’d tell her of her beauty. How she woke him to the beauty of everything he took for granted. How she gave him a reason to survive. How she was his only family.

He caught the scent of smoke on the wind before he saw the flames in the harbor that outshone the village lanterns. Before he heard the screams that tore through the night. That tore through his heart because they were her screams.

Heedless of anything else, he dove for the sound. He spotted her at the end of a long pier, next to the smoking remains of a wooden building. Tears streaked through the charcoal smudges on her face as she wailed at the sea.

Whoever hurt her would pay.

Her eyes went wide when she caught sight of him swooping silently toward her. And then she was in his arms, and he lifted her up, desperate to get her away from whatever was causing her harm.

“Evrard,” she gasped, clinging to him as he wheeled above the village at a safe altitude. Her hair came loose and streamed like a flag in the wind. “What are you doing here?”

“Came for you,” he said gruffly. He held her close, burying his face in her hair so he could breathe in her familiar scent beneath the layer of ash and tears. “For my Maggie.”

She burst into noisy sobs. He should never have left. If he’d stayed, he could have protected her from whatever had happened. Dragons swallow the goblin hordes, this was more important.

“Hurt?” he asked, aching all over to stop her sadness. “Fire burned you?”

“No.” Her body jolted with the effort of suppressing her sobs. “Not me. My supplies. My ship. He burned everything to get back at me. There was nothing I could do to stop it. It’s all just…gone.” Another cry tore out of her.

Now Evrard was burning. “Who did this?”

“Kaspar,” she gasped out. “The man you chased away that night. The one holding my kitten. He wanted to marry me, and I refused him. This was his revenge.”

His lip curled, remembering how the cowardly human had run away, soiling himself. “I’ll kill him.”

“Don’t.” She turned her face into his chest, muffling her voice. “It won’t fix anything. I still won’t have the Wolfhunter. I won’t have anything.”

“Have kitten. Have me,” he insisted, scanning for a place to leave her while he went to strangle this Kaspar. It would go against every guardian instinct in him to hurt a human. But his loyalty was no longer to humankind. It was to Maggie alone. If that made him a traitor, so be it.

He spotted a pair of sea cliffs that jutted out into the water, bracketing an isolated, sandy beach. A rocky break created a calm little cove and made the beach unreachable by any means but the air. She would be safe there until he returned. His heels sank into the sand as he set her down, and he had to use his tail to regain his balance.

He didn’t want to let go of her yet, but he couldn’t give Kaspar the chance to find a good hiding place. “Stay here,” he rumbled. He nosed affectionately against her neck before pulling back, a purr rising in his chest.

She refused to let go of him. “Take me with you,” she begged.

“Maggie safe. Strong.” He pried her hands off, holding her tiny fists inside his. He hated to leave her alone again, but he wasn’t sure he could carry both her and a reluctant Kaspar at the same time.

Her green eyes etched into him deeper than any moss. “Promise you won’t get into any trouble you can’t get out of? I need you to come back to me.”

Overwhelmed by her concern, he nodded. “I’ll come back to you. Always.”

He launched upward before he changed his mind. It didn’t take him long to find the man. Kaspar was drinking on the docks, laughing and watching Maggie’s ship burn. He hadn’t even tried to hide. He was celebrating.

So deep in his cups, he didn’t seem to notice the dark wings swooping overhead. Evrard caught the back of Kaspar’s clothing and yanked him into the sky. The other humans on the dock shouted after him, but there was nothing they could do.

Banking around the thick column of smoke, Evrard gave the human a good look at the ruined ship he was so eager to see. “You did this?”

Kaspar didn’t answer, just screamed and struggled in his grip. Where did he think he was going? Did he really want to fall into the sea from this height? Evrard gave him a shake. “Enough squealing. Answer me.”

Kaspar only doubled his efforts, flailing his limbs. He twisted and turned enough that the wool fabric of his coat started to shred. He wanted to get away? Evrard dropped him to teach him a lesson.

Kaspar fell with a shrill exclamation toward the burning boat below. Immediately, Evrard clamped his wings to his back and dove, catching the man’s ankle just before he hit the deck. The flames seared the edges of his ears as he pulled them both through the fire and up out of range of the scorching heat.

Maybe it was resignation to his situation or the blood rushing to his head, but either way, Kaspar didn’t fight this time, just dangled there limply while Evrard located an eerily warm updraft to glide in and conserve his energy.

“Now. Answer. You did this?” Evrard rasped, tightening his grip. His throat was already sore from speaking so many human words, but he pushed past the pain. “Tell me or I drop again.”

“Y-yes. No. I sent my men. They did it.”

“You paid, they did.”

“Yes, yes. That’s what happened,” Kaspar said hurriedly. “Johan and Christof. I can point them out to you if you fly me back to shore.”

Evrard grunted. He didn’t care about whatever lackey had rowed the boat or lit the torch. It was all Kaspar’s doing. If anything, his cowardice made him more despicable. If you want to eat meat, you should be willing to hunt.

Kasper filled the silence with panicked babble, his voice thick from the blood running to his head. “Why do you care about the fucking boat, anyway? Is this about that Sparhauk shrew? You want her? You can have her. She’s nothing to me. I won’t stand in your way.”

Silently, Evrard agreed. He contemplated breaking Kaspar’s legs just to be sure he’d never stand again, even in the afterlife, but he didn’t relish the thought of inflicting pain.

The sad little human seemed to read his conflicted thoughts and resumed his struggle, as if escaping Evrard’s hold would earn him anything more than a deadly plunge into the cold sea. All the while, he never stopped talking. He was worse than a moth. “You can’t do this. You gargoyles aren’t allowed to harm us. If you kill me, your life is over, too. You’ll have your wings clipped when the Zenith finds out you broke the heartstone vow.”

The magical vow might stop Evrard from squeezing Kaspar’s neck, but it wouldn’t stop the force of gravity if Kaspar managed to wrench himself out of his grip. “Can’t kill. Might drop.”

The man stilled instantly. “What do you want? I’ll give you anything, just tell me. I have coin! Two ships. Barrels of salt herring. I’ll give you the wedding ring off my mother’s finger if you’ll let me go!” Kaspar whimpered. Weak little man. No gargoyle would whine and bargain when he was faced with the consequences of his own actions.

Evrard didn’t have an answer. What did he want from the man? Nothing, except perhaps his pain and suffering for causing Maggie distress. But if he harmed a human, even one that deserved it, he’d never again be trusted by his kind. Might even lose his wings. That would be trouble he couldn’t get out of, and he’d promised Maggie to avoid it.

Still, he couldn’t let Kaspar walk away. Not after what he’d done. He deserved to be punished.

Evrard banked out of the updraft, heading out to sea.

“What are you doing? Where are you taking me?” Kaspar begged.

A low, wind-scoured island interrupted the dark horizon. When he reached it, he coasted low over the rocks, skimming it with his tail before skidding to a stop on the highest promontory. He dumped Kaspar in an untidy heap to deal with later.

“Wait! Stop! You can’t leave me here! What about your vow?”

In fact, Evrard could leave him there. He felt no pull on his guardian heart except toward the little beach where Maggie waited for him.

Chapter 13

A Wild Woman

Maggie

As her adrenaline wore off, the cold set in. Her skirts were still sopping from the firefighting efforts, and the sweat she’d worked up in proximity to the flames now chilled her to the bone. Waves lapped at her feet, threatening to steal even more of her body heat, so she moved farther up the small beach, rubbing her arms to keep her blood moving.

The Wolfhunter was gone. Most of her cockle-and-mussel money was gone. She didn’t even have enough left for firewood to get them through the winter, let alone to pay the apothecary or patch the roof. She had nothing left, not even hope.

She was still glad she hadn’t caved and married Kaspar, though. If he could take this much from her in one night, imagine what he could take over thirty years.

Evrard had come back, though. That was something. Came for you, he’d said. My Maggie.

But Kaspar might take him from her, too, if Evrard would be punished for whatever he was doing to him.

A moon-shadow slipped over her, silent as a tear, and she glanced up in time to see her gargoyle silhouetted against the stars. He landed noiselessly in the sand nearby, and she fell into his arms in relief. He was so warm. So solid. So safe.

He picked her up and carried her to the base of the cliff, where he sat with his back against the rocks and arranged her on his lap. She let him peel off her wet clothing and hang it on the rocks to dry. Then he sandwiched her between the heat of his chest and the heat of his arms, murmuring in his own language until she stopped shivering.

“Did you kill him?” she asked when she could speak again. “Did you kill Kaspar?”

His lip curled. “No. He offer…payment. Gold. Ships. Fish.”

She sat up, surprised at her own relief. She wasn’t relieved that Kaspar was spared, but that Evrard hadn’t done anything irrevocable on her behalf that might take him away from her again. “Did you accept it?”

“No,” Evrard grunted, sounding offended. He pulled her back into his body, threading his fingers into her hair to hold her head close to his chest so his words vibrated against her cheek. “Not for me. You want?”

Her first instinct was to say no. She didn’t want anything from Kaspar, not even his attention. But then she remembered all he’d stolen from her in his reckless, petty pursuit of vengeance. All he’d stolen from her family. He owed her.

“I want his ships,” she said defiantly. “The ones that were my father’s.”

“You will have,” Evrard vowed, and she believed him.

“And the fish,” she added. “Not for me. For you.”

He chuckled indulgently, the rasp of his purr catching on the end of his laugh. He ran his fingers through her hair before bringing the ends to his face to smell them. His purr deepened. “My Maggie.”

“Yours,” she agreed, squinting at the sky to guess how much time they had left before dawn. Hours yet. She relaxed into him, kissing everywhere she could reach on the broad plane of his body.

What began as a gesture of simple affection and relief quickly heated into something else when she felt his cock nudge to life beneath her. Her body, remembering the feel of him, responded in kind, nipples tightening as moisture built between her legs.

Evrard’s fingers slid from her hair, playing over the sensitive skin above her collarbone, the muscle of her shoulder, and down her upper arm. Then he bent to graze his teeth over it, raising fresh goosebumps on that side of her body.

It made her want to crawl inside his skin. She wrapped her arms around his neck so he couldn’t move away. His deepening purr said he had no intention of leaving. She rubbed her cheek against his, knowing it meant something to him.

“Want to bite my Maggie,” he murmured against her ear, the deep vibration settling into her core. Every time he called her that, her insides melted like a tallow candle. “My mate.”

Now that was a surprise. “Your mate?!”

“Mate,” he agreed, his large hands bracketing her waist, thumbs drawing circles over her womb. “My knot, my seed, my mate.”

She couldn’t argue with that. There wasn’t even a speck of shrew in her that objected to his claim. She didn’t have to tell him so; he had to know she was his already. She simply tilted her head so he had better access.

Evrard’s breath rushed out as understanding rushed in, and then his teeth sank, stinging, into her shoulder. The pain was only momentary. He licked over the wound and a cool thread soothed her skin, then sank deeper. She felt it move into her blood, weave through her bones, and then something burst inside her brain. It was like opening the shutters and sunlight pouring in.

Evrard was there. She could feel his possessive purr in her mind. She could feel it in her body because they were still pressed together, but he was inside her head, too. Or maybe it was her heart, because it felt like it wanted to leap out of her chest.

She’d never wanted a husband, but this? This, she wanted. This closeness. This understanding. This connection.

“Mine now,” he whispered hoarsely. His arms slid around her waist, binding her. “Mine forever.”

The joy from him in her mind was so intense, it made her dizzy. She kissed his jaw until he turned his head and gave her his mouth. He still tasted of her blood—a faint, metallic tang, like he wore a wedding ring on his tongue.

He would wear one on his finger, she decided, feeling as possessive as his hands. Maybe on his cock, too, while she was at it. She would have no other women looking at him as she did. She might not be able to bite through his thick hide, but she would mark him all the same.

He must have felt her in his mind, too, because he laughed into her mouth at the same time that his warm amusement flooded her thoughts. “Yours,” he said, the word barely distinguishable amidst his rough purr. “Only yours.”

As if to prove it, he pushed her hips down so the tip of his cock, still trapped in his breeches, nudged against her bare, slick core.

She wanted it. Wanted him, now, here on the beach, in sight of the stars. He groaned, feeling her need through their mental bond before she said anything. “Please,” she added. “I might die otherwise.”

He released her only long enough to unlace his breeches and release his cock. It sprung out, and she immediately settled onto it, enjoying the slow stretch as he entered. She was still a little sore from before, but it was a good sore, like she’d earned it. She would never tire of how completely he filled her.

“I please you?” he purred, rubbing circles on her back that loosened her tight muscles one by one. When he reached the base of her spine, she’d loosened enough that he slid home completely.

“You know you do, you greedy gargoyle,” she teased back. “You can feel my state of mind and the wet welcome I offer, and still you beg for compliments.”

“Yes,” he said, quite seriously. “Beg for heart. For mind. Body. Eyes. Hands. Thoughts.”

“And for fish,” she added, grinning.

“For all.”

She couldn’t deny him any of it. “You shall have it, then.”

She could feel his deep satisfaction when she began to move. She rose and fell on his thick shaft, his confident grip on her hips propelling her more easily than she could have accomplished on her own. Though their place on the beach was shadowed by the cliffs that rose on three sides of them, it almost felt like flying.

She’d never have known from his stoic face or his steady movements that Evrard was anything but self-assured, but inside her mind, he was desperate, his hunger driving him to a precipice that he could only barely avoid. She could feel his effort to hold himself back and how crazed it made him.

It stoked something in her, a deep desire to push him over the edge. To make him lose control completely. She squeezed him with her internal muscles, and he growled at her.

“Wicked,” he rumbled warningly. Delighted, she did it again, grinding her hips against him until he was at his limit.

Abruptly, he lifted her off his cock, holding her well above it so they were eye-to-eye. She whimpered and writhed, the emptiness inside her begging to be filled again. She wanted to envelop him. Keep him locked inside her.

He purred, feeling her need. Sharing it. “Wild woman. Wild as the waves.”

She liked that image of herself, deep and unconstrained. She wrapped her arms around his neck, nipping at his lower lip until he opened for her and let her have his tongue. She toyed with it, stroking and sucking it until she felt his inner resolve weaken.

“If I can’t have your cock, I’ll make you come like this,” she threatened, knowing he was halfway there already.

His eyes gleamed at her for the briefest instant before she found herself on her hands and knees in the sand, his huge body curving over hers.

Chapter 14

A Long Story

Evrard

She glowed in the moonlight, his Maggie. Not an agate, pretty and uncommon though they might be, but a rare pearl. A treasure. He wasn’t a lowborn from the cliffs with a mate like her. Even on his knees in the dirt, he felt like the richest gargoyle in Tael-Nost.

Teeth aching from how hard he’d clenched them to ward off his release, he stroked down her back and over her sturdy haunches. She shivered, so he angled one of his wings to block the breeze blowing off the water.

The sand was cool under his palms as he braced over her, his claws digging grooves into the damp grains. His knee nudged hers apart, and she pushed back against him, the eagerness in her thoughts swelling his cock that he’d been trying so hard to subdue. His breath hissed out. “Slow, pretty pearl.”

“Why, when we both want it?” she whined. “If it’s over too quickly, we can just do it again.”

Chuckling at her irrefutable logic, he gave in and pushed inside her. She met him halfway, her body clutching him as he drove home. A groan dragged out of him, so loud that it echoed off the cliffs.

Nothing compared to the heat of her. The way she took him in, the way her body stretched around him. The way her thoughts burned. He didn’t need to see the sun when he had this.

“Please, Evrard,” she panted, rocking back and forth. When he didn’t respond, he felt a sharp flash of defiance burst in the corner of his mind reserved for her. “You have to move or I’ll find another cock to satisfy me.”

Her thoughts betrayed her unserious tease, but he was goaded all the same. So his mate wanted him to move? She thought she could bait him thus?

With a snarl, he abandoned his restraint and gave her what she asked for. Merciless strokes drove him too fast toward the inevitable. His knot swelled almost immediately, its girth hammering against her.

He didn’t ask if she wanted it this time. She would take it to remind her that she was his.

With a deep thrust, he held his knot to her snug opening, applying pressure until she was gasping, sparks of pleasure bursting through their mental connection. He leaned down, his jaw scraping against her shoulder as he found the red circle of his bite, already mostly healed from his saliva. The scent of the ocean and her arousal mingled around them, the salt air thick with her desire.

“Mine,” he reminded her, biting and sucking at the spot, testing her skin with his teeth as his knot tested her entrance. “My Maggie.”

“Yessss,” she breathed unsteadily. “Just like that. Fill me up.”

She tightened involuntarily around the invading pressure, her sighs pitching up when his knot slid home. Trapped inside her, he could barely move, but he shifted his weight to one arm so he could reach around her waist with the other. He found her pleasure spot, stroking it with a precision that had her bucking back against him.

Her orgasm crashed through his mind a split-second before he felt her shudder and cry out his name. The combination ripped his own release from his body. His knot swelled, locking into place. His seed spilled into her in almost painful rushes that made his fingers tingle and his head light and any cracks in his heart heal.

For a brief, blinding moment, they were one mind. One body. One heartbeat.

When he could breathe again, he circled her waist with his arm and eased them both backwards so he could lean against the cliffs with her in his lap. Maggie melted into him, limbs languid, while they waited for his knot to subside.

Evrard nosed affectionately against her neck, his still-indignant breath huffing in her ear. His was the only cock she’d get. He pushed the thought strongly into their connection.

She giggled, the laughter making her clench around him. “I know. I was just teasing you. None could compare.” She petted his forearm until his grumble turned into a grudging purr. He couldn’t pretend to be disgruntled when he was still inside the hot clasp of his mate. He was happier than he’d ever been.

He licked her shoulder, tending the bite mark to speed its healing. He hoped she’d wear the scar proudly. He’d felt her desire to mark him as well, and he was happy to show off her claim, whatever it might be.

She turned her head so she could look up at him over her shoulder. “You know you can’t leave now. If you thought you could give me this and then fly away again, you’re fooling yourself.”

He grunted his agreement. There was no question that he would stay with her. He might be marked a deserter, but he was low-ranking enough that they probably wouldn’t come looking for him. And as for any reward he might have earned, he didn’t need a tower eyrie when his mate walked on the earth.

“So you’ll stay in Brinehelm?!” Her whole body twisted now, and his knot slipped free. A warm gush of their combined liquids slid out of her, down his thigh, and into the sand. He was unreasonably proud of the quantity. If his seed hadn’t planted in her before, it would this time. He cradled her lower belly, enjoying its soft weight in his palm.

“Stay with my Maggie,” he corrected. The village was irrelevant.

She squealed and threw her arms around his neck, kissing all over his face and ears until he was embarrassed by the noise of his own purr.

“Mating me was the half-wisest thing you’ve ever done,” she informed him. “You’ll never get out of this trouble.”

“Good.” He could think of no duty more pleasant than watching over her. Than tending her and making sure she had every safety and comfort. And the fact that she lavished him with affection and deft teases in return? He would be her purring servant forever, loyal as her kitten.

“Do we have time for another round before daybreak?” She traced over his chest with her tiny finger in a maddening pattern that made his tail twitch with fresh desire.

Every impulse was to indulge her, but they had an unpleasant chore to finish before they could play. “Kaspar,” he reminded her, catching her hand in his.

Maggie groaned, her head falling back so her long, red-gold hair tickled his knees. “He ruins everything.”

Evrard snorted a laugh as he reached to pluck her still-damp clothing from the rocks. He handed it to her once she’d rinsed her thighs in the shallows. She should have something warm and dry, but it was better than nothing.

When she’d dressed and he’d laced his breeches over his stubbornly ready cock, she held out her arms. He scooped her up, and a few swift wingbeats later, they were in the sky.

Chapter 15

A Happy Ending

(For Some and Not for Others)

Maggie

Evrard lit on the stony beach of a small island, setting her gently down. It had few features to distinguish it, but it was the type of place that attracted sea birds to nest and sunning mammals to rest, and it smelled like it.

“Maggie!” Kaspar, who’d been crouched down poking at something with a stick, jumped to his feet, rushing over to them. Evrard gave a warning growl before he got too close. Kaspar slowed, then stopped, frowning. “You won’t let your brute leave me here to die, will you? You must have that much loyalty to our kind.”

She crossed her arms over her clammy, scorched clothing. “I don’t let him do anything. He does what he wants. It’s not as though I can make him carry you to shore.”

“What does he want to let me off the island? He must want something.” Kaspar stared ahead pensively, as though he could look right through her.

She waved her hand in front of his face until he focused on her. “It’s me you should be worried about.”

Kaspar’s lip curled. “You? Why?”

“Because what he wants is for me to be happy, and I’m very unhappy with you right now. If you thought I’d be an inconvenient wife? Trust me, I’m a much more inconvenient enemy.”

“When did I become your enemy?” he wheedled. “Our families have done business. You were content to have me as your husband for a moment. You begged to marry me! Surely some of those soft feelings remain in your heart.”

Evrard’s dark resentment flooded her mind, and she reached back to grab his hand before she answered Kaspar. “Any compassion I had for you went up in smoke when you set the Wolfhunter ablaze. You owe me a ship.”

“You can have one of mine,” he blurted, pouncing on the idea like a life preserver. Maggie felt Evrard’s fingers tighten around hers, then the movement of air as he stepped forward behind her. Kaspar quickly amended, “Fine, both of them. But in return, I’d expect any value you receive from the salvage of the Wolfhunter’s carcass—”

Evrard growled threateningly, and Kaspar broke off, eyes going wide. Maggie felt the smallest margin of sympathy for him. But she didn’t have quite enough sympathy to bend. Even added together, his two ships didn’t equal the Wolfhunter. He was getting off easy.

“And two barrels of fish from your stores,” she added, for Evrard’s sake.

“My stores burned in the warehouse fire, same as everyone’s,” Kaspar protested.

“This isn’t a negotiation,” Maggie reminded him. “I’m not stupid. You might have left a few things to burn for appearances, but you’re too greedy to have left them all. You stashed them somewhere.”

He dropped his playacting. “Fine. Two barrels. Take me back to shore, and I’ll fetch them for you, along with the ships’ deeds.”

Evrard stepped past her, picked up Kaspar by his collar, and gave him a stout shaking before setting him back down. Kaspar, who seemed to receive the silent message, staggered a little to regain his footing and produced a ring of keys from his pocket. He showed Maggie a small, numbered key to a second warehouse where the fish were stored, the heavy iron key to his rented rooms, and a third key to open the strongbox in his headboard where he kept the deeds.

“Collect what’s yours,” he said queasily, holding them out hesitantly, like Evrard might take his hand as well as the keys. “Just come back. Please, have some honor.”

“Honor,” Evrard scoffed. He snatched the ring of keys and presented them to Maggie.

“You’ve shown little of the virtue to be speaking of it with such conviction,” Maggie added tartly as she threaded the key ring onto her bodice laces, tying them tight for the quick sea-flight.

“Shrew,” Kaspar muttered under his breath. She was pleased to see that the backdraft from Evrard’s wings knocked him on his ass as they left him behind.

Once on shore, she and Evrard easily found what they were looking for. Kaspar hadn’t lied about the items or locations, and she was soon in possession of two seaworthy ships and enough fish to feed her favorite gargoyle for weeks.

Once everything was stowed safely, Evrard picked her up and flew them both toward the stone cottage where her parents slept. The keys jingled against her bosom as they landed on the edge of the cliff.

The horizon had lightened the faintest amount. Less than an hour until dawn. Just enough time for Evrard to retrieve Kaspar from his island imprisonment, although Maggie would have preferred to keep her gargoyle to herself.

She sighed. “I suppose we shouldn’t leave him there.”

Evrard shrugged, and she felt in her mind that it wouldn’t weigh on his conscience. She had to admit that she didn’t want to see Kaspar’s face again, either. But leaving him to another day of thirst and exposure was cruel. Though Kaspar deserved it because he was a cruel man, Evrard wasn’t. Neither was she. So she untied the keys, anyway, and handed them over.

“Send him somewhere far away so he won’t trouble us anymore. And kiss me before you go, my love, in case I don’t see you again before the sun rises.”

Evrard obliged on both counts.

When Maggie woke in the morning to her mother’s gasp, the bright light of newly opened shutters stung her eyes.

“Margaret Sparhauk, where were you last night? And why is there a gargoyle perched outside your window?!” A kitten was dumped onto her pillow.

Maggie smiled as she stretched her limbs, basking in sunlight that was almost as warm as her mate’s arms. She decided not to worry her parents with the long story and gave them the short one instead. “I was at the tavern, of course. And that gargoyle is my husband.”

Chapter 16

A Year Later

Evrard

The watch never came to look for him, or if they did, it was when he and Maggie were out at sea. They spent three months hunting the wolf herring aboard one of her new ships, she at the captain’s wheel while he perched atop the crosstrees, spotting schools of fish to follow. The kitten came with them, patrolling the galley for imaginary mice.

Being at sea had suited them all. He had a raucous female crew to watch over that satisfied his guardian heart, Maggie had her freedom, and the kitten grew fat on fish tails. When they needed more privacy than the ship afforded, it was a short flight to an island or sea cliff where Evrard could indulge his mate to the fullest. And they were never troubled by goblins or human men.

In their first season, they earned enough to afford matching gold rings, pay the apothecary bill, and build themselves a stalwart stone nest near her parents’ cottage. Within a few months of regular treatment, Lenn Sparhauk’s lungs grew strong enough that they expected him to captain the second ship when the wolf herring migrated again.

Evrard and Maggie finally had time to relax and play. Theirs was always an easy partnership, full of laughter and mutual regard whether they were on land or sea. But on land, they had fewer responsibilities weighing on them. No ships to sail nor gate to guard meant more time for language lessons. More time for making love. More time for long flights and gazing at stars—or each other.

But above all else, it was Evrard’s greatest pleasure to watch Maggie swell with his young. Her stomach seemed to grow daily. In fact, he made it a habit upon nightwaking to snatch her from their nest and fly away with her so they could spend their evenings in the privacy of their little beach. There, he’d spread a blanket on the sand and unlace her ever-tightening bodice so he could admire her belly and the miraculous way their hatchling’s tiny limbs moved inside it.

He'd lean in close, trying to scent the baby through her skin. When his breath tickled her, she’d squirm away, but she beamed at him through their bond. “I need to work this evening,” she would protest, unable to keep the smile out of her voice. “I can’t sit here with your head in my lap for hours. I have chores.”

He’d growl at her playfully, holding her wrists so she couldn’t push him away. “I’ll do them. Growing our child is your work,” he’d remind her. “Caring for you is mine.”

Tonight, he didn’t have to watch through her bellyskin, guessing at their hatchling’s movements like a seer. Because after many hours of Maggie’s labor, sharing her pain and his pride through their mental bond, their child was in his arms.

Her name was Anouk, and she was so new that her wings were still trapped to her back inside their thin birth casings. Like her mother, she smelled of the sea. She squeezed her eyes shut and waved tiny, green-gray fists at him.

“The gargoyle’s mate finally hatched their child,” the fluffy, white moth circling the bedside candle nattered. “It’s huge.”

The other moth giggled. “And so ugly.”

“At least it has wings.”

Evrard shooed them away with his free hand. “Don’t listen to them,” he whispered to his daughter in his tongue. “You are as beautiful as your mother. More beautiful than the sun and moon together.”

“She has your ears,” Maggie said fondly, reaching to stroke one of them to its little point.

“And bald head. Poor female.”

Maggie laughed. “Her hair will grow in. And probably her freckles, too.”

“Good,” he said gruffly, emotion welling inside him.

“Freckles are good for gargoyles now?” his mate teased him, climbing into his lap to join him and their daughter.

“Yes,” he said simply, not wanting to waste one of the minutes before dawn on argument, even in fun. He kissed the top of Maggie’s head, and she leaned back against him. The kitten, now nearly grown even though they still called him Kit, stalked over to inspect the new baby with a thorough sniffing. Then he curled up in the hollow of Evrard’s shoulder where he had a good view of the proceedings.

The three of them admired their daughter in silence for a few minutes, until Anouk opened her very human-looking mouth to wail toothlessly. He rocked her, but she just cried louder.

“She’s hungry,” Maggie said softly. “I can feel it in the bond.”

Evrard shifted the baby to Maggie, who’d already pulled down her chemise to nurse. Cradling them both, he watched his little offspring root between her mother’s pillowy breasts, grunting and squealing like a little pig.

“She gets that from me, too,” he joked.

Maggie laughed, helping the hatchling latch on. “You will have your turn at them, too, never fear.”

Evrard purred with contentment, the noise lulling both the tired females in his arms to sleep. And as his mate nestled closer and their daughter’s tiny tail curled against his chest, Evrard knew he had found the only trouble he wanted to be in.

His mate was his treasure, and he would be her anchor and her wings. He would steady her when the storms came and lift her when the skies cleared. He would chart a new course alongside her, wherever the tides of fate carried them.

For the first time in his long, solitary life, he wasn’t guarding gates or fighting battles. He was guarding something far rarer, far more precious:

A family.

A future.

A love he would protect until the stars went dark.

Coming Soon

The Nightfall Guardians Series

In a world where monsters guard the gates and humans guard their hearts… love is the most dangerous rebellion of all.

The gods of Tael-Nost are long dead, but their magic lives on—bleeding into the land, corrupting kingdoms, and fueling a war to take their place.

Goblins march from the south. Fae scheme from the north. Dragons wait in the west for their chance to conquer what's left. And at the heart of it all, humans cling to survival, shielded by the only creatures powerful enough to stand against the chaos: the gargoyles.

Bound to protect humans from all others, the gargoyles areas unbreakable as the stone they’re made from. Loyal. Impervious. Untouchable.

Until now.

When human women and their monstrous guardians cross forbidden lines, their defiant love could fracture an ancient alliance—one that has kept them safe for centuries.

A farmer’s daughter. A disgraced noblewoman. A captive queen. Each must face the choice: sacrifice their hearts for the sake of their people… or risk everything for the monsters who would die for them.

For fans of stoic monster heroes, Gothic fantasy worlds, and forbidden romance!

The first full-length novel in the series, The Gargoyle & the Maiden, launches Fall 2025!

She was his mate. The mother of his child. His betrayer.

Idabel never planned to be a traitor. But when survival inside the walled city of Solvantis meant securing a monster’s bite, she did what she had to do and seduced the stoic gargoyle commander.

She didn’t realize she’d become a weapon used to lead an army to slaughter. Nor did she anticipate that a single night of deception would leave her with child.

Six years later, watch leader Brandt returns from fighting the goblin hordes, victorious but shattered. His body bears the scars of battle, and his mind is haunted by his lost brothers…and his lost memories.

But as he heals, the truth emerges: He has a mate he left behind. A son he’s never met. And a betrayal that cuts deeper than any war wound.

Idabel expected his rage. His vengeance. But she never expected his relentless claim. Because despite everything, the bond between them never truly broke… and now, neither of them can resist the pull.

But can a love forged in lies ever be trusted? Or will their deep scars always mark it as fatally flawed?

_____________________

The Gargoyle and the Maiden is a steamy fantasy romance with a protective gargoyle hero and the resourceful heroine who captures his heart. It’s the first book in the Nightfall Guardians monster romance series about powerful gargoyle guardians who defend their mates against the world…at any cost.

Preorder Now: https://books2read.com/TGATM

More Books by the Author

The Salt Planet Giants Series

Protective, fourteen-foot giants find their human mates on a stunning fantasy planet in this steamy, size-difference monster romance trilogy.

The Giant’s Gift (FREE Prequel Novella) — Brinn and Katia

The Mountain’s Mate (Book 1) — Patrek and Maja

The Ballast’s Bride (Book 2) — Hinri and Mimma

The Ruin’s Revenge (Book 3) — Alrek and Raina

Read them for FREE in Kindle Unlimited!Also available in paperback, audio, and illustrated omnibus edition.

The Warrior Kings of Alioth Series

The Emperor of the Five Planets is dead. One of his sons will rise to rule. Abducted women meet their fated mates in this steamy, sci-fi romance series set in a solar system of barbarian planets ruled by arrogant alien kings!

Sworn by Starlight (FREE Prequel Novella) — Oljin and Rose

The whole six-book Warrior Kings of Alioth series is free to read in Kindle Unlimited!

Also available in two gorgeous collections:
Warrior Kings of Alioth Volume One (Books 1-3)
Warrior Kings of Alioth Volume Two (Books 4-6)

Monster Romantic Comedies

Spicy, hilarious, cozy monster romance set in the real world!

Dragon, Actually (FREE holiday novella)

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About the Author

USA Today Bestselling Author Sara Ivy Hill writes otherworldly alien and monster romances that prove love is limitless. When she’s not plotting ways for stoic gargoyles and fourteen-foot giants to win their human mates, she’s staying up way too late with a book in one hand and a precariously full mug of tea in the other.

Sara lives and writes in the foggy forests of the Pacific Northwest with her hellhound and her emotional-support spouse. You can find out more about her work at her website: http://www.saraivyhill.com or on social media.