Daeton's Journey (Wiccan-Were-Bear Book 10)
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Authors: R. E. Butler
Daeton’s Journey
Wiccan-Were-Bear #10
By R. E. Butler
Copyright 2015 R. E. Butler
Daeton’s Journey (Wiccan-Were-Bear #10)
By R. E. Butler
License Notes
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Cover by Ramona Lockwood
This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is coincidental.
Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is intended for those older than the age of 18 only.
* * * * *
I’d like to thank
Lisa Owens
and
Dana Watson
for editing the story.
To Joyce because she loves Daeton.
Many thanks to Shelley for beta-reading.
To BB & BL - I love you both.
Daeton’s Journey
Wiccan-Were-Bear #10
After returning to her new home of Cholas in the Medes Realm, were-bear Daeton settles quickly into married life with her two sexy mates, Perseus and Ekho. When the arrival of her former were-bear protectors, Rysk and Tyrant, triggers a vision, Daeton and her husbands must prepare for danger from an unknown foe. Will Daeton and her mates survive the battle to come, or will they lose everything?
This book contains two sexy males intent on keeping their mate safe forever, a silver-furred bear shifter with a big heart, danger from a new foe, rescues, reunions, growling, shifting, and plenty of love. Contains m/f/m interaction.
Daeton smiled as the sunlight glinted off of Ekho’s wedding band as he worked on their new home. Perseus, her other husband, had made the ring for Ekho so both of them could have wedding bands that matched hers. It was the first thing Perseus had done when they’d returned to Cholas from their long journey the month before, and she knew it meant the world to Ekho, too.
During that month, Perseus and Ekho, along with every available Centaur, had been busy building their new home. They were staying with Perseus’s parents, Elektra and Cosmo, in the meantime. Daeton enjoyed staying at their home. Elektra was sweet and patient, and had started teaching her how to cook traditional Centaur meals. Because life in the Medes Realm was so rustic, Daeton had to learn how to cook without the help of modern technology. She couldn’t reheat food with the microwave, or run to the grocery store for a forgotten ingredient. The Centaurs lived off the land and traded goods in town. There were no cars or electric lights, no refrigerators or televisions. It had taken a while, but Daeton had grown to not miss those things. She’d lived her entire life in the underground den, in the Mortal Realm with her parents and their bear den, and although some might think that was rustic living, they’d had electricity and most modern conveniences. But now, Daeton didn’t really miss anything except her family.
Perseus had surprised her the most over their journey, taking on a leadership role for their small family, but still including Ekho in all the decisions about their future. Perseus, a Centaur with a beautiful black horse body, was a natural leader and took being the head of their family seriously. Ekho, a leoneman with fur on the sides and back of his body and a long tail, had taken immediately to the role of caretaker instead, ensuring that everyone was happy and well cared for. Both of her husbands together made sure she could want for nothing, and she just hoped she could be an equally amazing wife to them. Even though she was only eighteen, she felt like she’d lived a hundred years since she entered the Medes Realm six weeks earlier.
Draya and Fontaine, the two slave girls Daeton had rescued from the palace in the kingdom of Reio, were living in Perseus’s parents’ home as well, in one of the spare bedrooms. When Daeton and her mates moved into their own home, Elektra had promised the girls could stay with them until they were ready to live on their own. They were young, only fifteen and sixteen, and their bodies were slim and frail from lack of food and years of oppression. Cosmo, Perseus’s father, had been very clear to the Centaurs that they were to leave the girls alone, and Daeton knew that the Centaurs understood how fragile the girls were. As their caretaker, Daeton was in charge of making sure they were safe and happy. It wasn’t going to be easy, but she wanted them to enjoy their freedom and find their own happiness. Although the Centaurs might like to spend time with the girls once they were old enough, they wouldn’t marry them unless they shared mate-dreams, like the dreams that Perseus, Ekho, and she had shared for several months before her eighteenth birthday. The Centaurs in the Medes Realm did not even think of marrying until they dreamed about their bride and went to find her. Often, they traveled to the Mortal Realm to search for their brides, using a portal between the realms, which opened once a year in the Centaur territory in Canada.
In fact, soon they would hopefully be on their way to Canada where she could contact her family and meet up with them. She knew that time moved differently in this realm, and the knowledge that her family would age at a faster rate than she would was strange and uncomfortable.
“Daeton, would you like some
lif
juice?” Perri, a mate of one of the other Centaurs asked, coming to sit next to Daeton under a large shade tree as she watched the men working on their new home. In her lap was a vest she was embroidering with the symbols of her name along with those of her mates. When she went to visit her family, she wanted the three of them to have clothing that matched. This first vest, a dry run of sorts, was going to be hers.
She put the needlework on the soft grass next to her and accepted the tall wooden tumbler of juice from Perri, who dropped down wearily next to Daeton, heavy with her first child. Centaurs were born in their half-shifted form, and the pregnancies lasted eleven months. At the ten-month mark, or sooner if the baby was particularly large, a midwife from the herd delivered the baby by C-section. If the pregnancy was allowed to progress all the way through, the baby would tear the mother apart from the inside out with its soft but deadly hooves. Although frightening in a way that human pregnancies, or even bear ones, weren’t, Daeton was still excited to carry a child for Perseus, as well as Ekho. She wasn’t sure what a half-were-bear, half-Centaur or leoneman would look like, whether he or she would be able to shift completely or not at all, but she knew their children would be well loved and cared for.
She took a sip of the sweet juice that reminded her of peaches and grapes, as Perri fiddled with a thick blade of grass and rubbed her belly absently. “Would you be willing to stand with me when I give birth tomorrow?” Perri asked quietly, surprising Daeton with the request. Although all the women in the herd were friendly, Perri had become Daeton’s closest friend, but Daeton had expected Perri would ask another woman, one with more experience with Centaur births.
Now she met Perri’s sky blue gaze and smiled. “I’d be honored.”
Perri grinned and wiped at a stray tear. “Dally said I shouldn’t ask you, because it might upset you so much you wouldn’t want a baby with Perseus, but I told him you were much stronger than that.”
Daeton thought she was right, at least in theory. She hadn’t seen a baby being born before, and this was a pretty primitive world. No nice, clean hospital to give birth in, or drugs to take away the pain. She looked over to where Perseus, in his half-form, was hauling a sled of wood toward their home, and smiled. No matter what, she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep her hands off her mates, regardless of how frightening the birth might be.
“Are you excited about tomorrow?”
“Nervous, mostly. Dally wants me to rest now, but I just can’t. The baby keeps wiggling when I lay down and I end up feeling more miserable than when I’m up moving around. He’s just being overprotective, like husbands tend to be.”
Daeton nodded in agreement. Perri had one husband being overprotective; Daeton had two.
When she finished her drink, she picked up her vest again and began to work on the symbol for Ekho’s name with shiny black thread. Perri talked to her about her life in the herd and how much she loved being here.
“Were you very surprised that Dally was a Centaur?”
Perri had been born in the Medes Realm, the child of a fairy and a human. “When I met him, I actually thought he was some kind of shifter. He just had a
presence
that reminded me of other shifters I’d met. He was very intense and growled sometimes. It scared me when he shifted because I’d never actually seen anyone do it before, but then I thought he was the most beautiful guy I’d ever seen, and I do love horses.” Perri wiggled her brows and Daeton laughed.
“Your son is lucky to have such a sweet mom,” Daeton said.
“And I’m lucky to have you as a friend.”
“Me too.”
The following morning, Elektra woke Daeton up before the sun rose so she could be there for Perri. She slipped out from between Perseus and Ekho, cleaned up quickly in the little bathroom, and slipped a dress over her head.
With a yawn, she left the house and walked to the midwife’s large home. Cyrene, the midwife, was mated to one of the Centaur elders and had served as midwife for over two hundred years. Centaurs, like other creatures in the Medes Realm and were-animals in the Mortal Realm, had
long life
, aging only one body year for every twelve years that passed. When a Centaur married a human, they performed a magical ceremony to share long life with their bride, allowing her to remain human, but with the ability to live a very long life. Daeton didn’t think there were any other creatures in either realm that could do that with a human.
Cyrene was short and plump, with long strawberry blonde hair caught up in a bun. The back of her home had two special rooms – one for the delivery and one for the recovery. Depending on how quickly a woman healed, she could stay at Cyrene’s for several days or even longer if she needed to.
After washing her hands, Daeton followed the sound of voices through the house to the delivery room. Perri was on a wooden bed with the head inclined, holding Dally’s hand. He’d shifted into his fully human form to fit in the room with everyone else. He nodded at Daeton, and Perri smiled sleepily. “He kept me up half the night kicking,” she said.
Daeton went to stand on her friend’s other side and took her offered hand, giving it a squeeze. “Really, Dally, you should have let your wife rest,” she teased.
He snorted good-naturedly and lifted Perri’s hand to kiss it.
“It’s time, Dally,” Cyrene said. He nodded, bent to kiss Perri, and moved to the end of the bed. Daeton had heard from the other wives that the Centaurs learned at a young age how to apply pressure to certain points of their mate’s body to take away pain, but she hadn’t had a chance to see it done. Dally, brow furrowed in concentration, leaned over his wife and laid his hands against her waist. He moved slowly, reaching behind her hips with his large hands. There was a quick movement of his hands followed by a snapping sound, then Perri relaxed with a sigh.
“How do you feel now?” Daeton asked, smiling at Perri as Cyrene directed her in how to lower the head of the bed down.
“All numb from my ribs down, it’s wonderful.” She yawned and Dally returned to her side.
Cyrene adjusted the gown that Perri wore so her belly was exposed, and pulled a thin blade from a sterilizing solution. With a final glance at the prone mother-to-be, Cyrene slid the blade across the bottom of her distended belly. Daeton turned her head and concentrated on Perri.
“Have you picked a name yet?” she asked.
“Tanlin,” Perri said, grimacing a bit.
“Oh, that’s a cool name, what does it mean?”
“Mighty hunter. It was also Dally’s father’s name. He died in battle before we met.”
Daeton liked the idea of a name that carried such memory with it. It made her think of her own parents, and how much she missed them.
When Cyrene directed her to, Daeton laid fresh cotton towels across Perri’s chest, and then the first loud cry of her baby boy filled the room. Perri squeezed her hand and Daeton knew it had to be uncomfortable when the baby was pulled out. Daeton watched as Cyrene pulled the baby from Perri. First his human upper half, and then slowly, his pretty dark brown horse body appeared.
“Oh, Perri, he’s gorgeous!” Daeton grinned, tears stinging her eyes as she squeezed her friend’s hand tightly.
Cyrene laid the squalling baby Centaur across his mother’s blanketed chest and Dally and Daeton rubbed him down gently. Cyrene sewed Perri back up while they tended to the baby. When she was finished, Daeton cranked the bed up gently, put the dirty towels in a trash bin, and quietly said goodbye as Dally helped Perri settle the little baby against her breast to feed.
Perri’s voice stopped her before she made it out the door. “Thank you so much, Daeton. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”
“You too Perri.” She smiled back at her and left. Walking through the Centaur village on the way back to their temporary home, she thought about what she had just seen. It hadn’t been so bad that she didn’t want to have a baby. Standing beside Perri and holding her hand, much like a sister or mother would do in the same scenario. It made her miss her own mom even more. She knew that Perseus and Ekho would be there with her, but it wouldn’t be quite the same.
Thinking about how much she would love to have her mom here, made her start to wonder about the rest of her family. What had been happening while she’d been gone? And just how much time had passed? Were her parents well? Was the den okay? Had Griegs come home? Had Elizabeth and Daeton’s brothers had a child yet? Or two? The frustration of not knowing what was happening while she was gone ate at her. She decided that something needed to be done.
* * * * *
Later that morning, she sat in the home of the eldest of the Centaur elders, Barnabas, who was nearly nine hundred years old. He had
survived many wars and was one of the most respected men in the area, not just to the Centaurs, but to all the creatures who called Cholas their home.
Ekho and Perseus sat on either side of her at a large kitchen table in Barnabas’ home.
“I’m not asking to visit my family right now,” she said. “I’m just asking to send a message to them. When I left the Mortal Realm, it was after the September full moon and I’ve been here for almost two months. I know that time passes differently here, so it’s been longer for them than for me. They must be worried. We were told I could go through the portal when the single males travel through to the Centaur city in the other realm, but that’s not for another ten months.”
“While it was the end of September when you left and only two months have passed for us, almost two years have passed in the Mortal Realm. Our males are not scheduled to leave for the Centaur City in the Mortal Realm until September. At that time, nearly ten
years
will have passed for your family,” he said while brushing his fingers through his gray-streaked beard. Although time moved slowly in the Medes Realm, the days and months were the same.