We spent the rest of the day in conversation with Valda's parents and the general. Once they got over their hesitations about my girls’ ages, the three took pains to include them in the discussions and teased out details of our encounters that we hadn’t thought were important until the questions were asked.
Valda’s mother, Emilia, asked about what sort of tools or quality of equipment we saw in the campsite. That became important when she explained that we could guess at the relative level of technological advancement that the tribes had based on that information, and whether they’d been able to glean any new techniques from the ruins before we destroyed them.
Caleb, Valda’s father, was quiet except for a few simplistic questions about tribal markings on those leading the excavation, stating he knew which of the plains tribes those people belonged to and would set his scouts on watching that tribe.
General Earthshaker asked the most questions, almost entirely focused on ways to identify and neutralize the threat of weapons like the flamecasters. He was also the first one to push for a copy of the weapon, but quieted when Emilia hushed him.
“I appreciate everything your forces have done to help in this raiding season, Princess Rieka,” Emilia said as the meeting was drawing to a close and wine had been served by a quiet chambermaid dressed in bright oranges and reds. “The assistance of yourself as well as the student-mages from Juneau allowed us to pull our own mages back to the other two passes and lock them down tight.”
“I go where my mother commands me,” Rieka replied diplomatically. “Any thanks you might have should be directed to her, and I will happily carry your thanks to her along with the message you requested.”
Emilia’s lips turned up into a small smile before she continued.
“I am sure that Gemma will be happy to hear my compliments of her daughter’s actions in guiding her forces. You have earned your own accolades here, Princess Rieka. Just as your able companions have proved they are quite capable and skilled in their own rights.”
“Yes,” Rieka said, a bit flustered. “Well, we appreciate your kind words, Queen Emilia.”
“Mother,” Valda said, drawing the attention of the other lizard-folk to her with curious looks. “We have been on the road for some time and came directly here after arriving—”
Emilia cut her off with an upraised hand, her small smile slipping away and being replaced with an understanding expression.
“And I appreciate your diligence in reporting immediately. You and your companions are dismissed. Go and wash, rest, and recover. You will have a few days before your escorts from the Coldeye queendom are due to arrive for the next leg of your journey and we can catch up later.”
“Not that you need escorts,” snorted General Earthshaker. The sour older man’s attitude had shifted from his previous grumpy one to amused pride as more of the report had come from the girls and confirmed everything that had been claimed earlier. “Anyone foolish enough to harass your group would be lucky to end up as more than a smoking hole in the ground in short order.”
“Mistakes can be made, and even mages need to sleep. I will not discount the protection of able-bodied guards or risk my classmates for pride,” Rieka said with a polite nod of her head at the general’s compliment.
“Smart,” grunted Caleb, his thick features showing a hint of amusement as well.
“Shall we head back to the others, then?” Valda asked, turning to look at me and then Rieka curiously.
It was only because of how much time I’d spent around Valda over the last several months that I was able to spot the exhaustion lingering in her eyes. Her back remained straight and her posture locked, but the woman was burnt out on energy. The goblet in her left hand was trembling faintly, just enough to send a delicate ripple through the dark blue liquid inside.
“Yes,” Rieka answered with a nod before turning to bow towards the rulers once more. “I thank you for your welcome and accepting our report. If you have any questions, please let me know and I will rush to assist my family’s allies.”
The same silent serving maid appeared out of nowhere, relieving us of our goblets so we could leave without having to find somewhere to set them. Before handing mine over, I drained the container with a satisfied sigh that got a snicker from Caleb.
“Good to see a man that can hold his alcohol,” the big lizard-folk said, saluting me with his own goblet.
“It was delicious,” I said with a shrug. “I’d hate to waste a good drink.”
I wasn’t even lying. I’m not normally one for wine, preferring my dark beers or whiskey. But that wine had tasted wonderfully rich and thick, more like mead than wine really.
“I need to amend the missive I am sending along with you for your mother, Princess Rieka,” Emilia said, returning the bow to my blonde princess. “I should have it ready within the next day or two, definitely before you leave.”
“I will make sure that I come and collect it,” Rieka replied with another respectful nod before turning toward me.
Reflexively, I offered her my arm and Rieka accepted it, blushing faintly while her tail stirred happily behind her.
So she didn’t feel left out, I offered my other arm to Valda, who snickered but accepted it as well, allowing me to lead them back the way we had come and out into the afternoon sunlight.
My hearing sharpened automatically when I heard the murmuring behind me, my Shape-Shifting reacting automatically to help me with something it had just barely caught.
“He seems like a good lad, too bad he’s likely already tied to Princess Rieka, otherwise he’d make an excellent match for Valda,” grumbled Emilia quietly.
“Dear…” Caleb said, exasperation in his low tone, clearly having gone through this conversation with her multiple times in the past.
I coughed, urging my Shape-Shifting to return my hearing and my ears to normal.
A glance to my right told me Rieka must have also caught it from how her blush had intensified even further. Her tail, which had been only twitching before, was now rapidly stirring in happy circles.
Well, she doesn’t seem against the idea, I thought with amusement. Especially with how often she’s hinted at wanting children by me. Something else I need to eventually find out about here before an accident actually happens during our little interludes. I don’t want her to be shamed by catching a child outside of wedlock if that is a problem here.
I knew that in the cultures from Earth that would match the level Cortha was at, such an event would have been the height of shame for a royal like Rieka. But would that still hold true for a place like Cortha, with the animal-like kin as the primary race and no humans at all?
A problem for Future-Me, but not one I can entirely ignore. Not with a clear conscience, I thought as I towed the two girls through the afternoon light back to the comfort of our group.
<><><>
I’d learned to be comfortable in the strangest of situations, both from having to live in substandard conditions while I fought to get my feet under myself, and while I roughed it camping with the girls.
The fact they all seem intent on finding some way to cling to or touch me in their sleep doesn’t help, I thought, blinking my eyes open to stare up at the rough wooden beams supporting the ceiling.
Light was already leaking in around the wooden shutters to my left, sending dusty beams of glimmering gold through the air. It had been one of those beams landing on my face that had finally woken me.
Shifting my head to one side slowly so I didn’t dislodge Jane, I removed the offending streamer of light from my eyes while my mousy scholar mumbled under her breath and clung a little tighter to my head.
I don’t know why it is that she does that, I wondered with an affectionate smile as the small woman’s tail wiggled against my neck like a snake making itself comfortable. If she was cold-blooded like Kassandra, I’d assume that she was after my body heat. But every time we curl up like this, I almost always end up wearing Jane like a hat.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Thinking of my cold-blooded lover, I glanced down to find Kassandra draped over my chest. Her coils were piled over my legs and doing that unconscious, rhythmic squeeze-relax-squeeze thing that she always did to me. Her wealth of red curls blocked her face, but I could feel the wet spot on my chest that told me that my snuggle-spagetti had been drooling on me in her sleep.
Such an affectionate little fiend, she’s somehow managed to get me to fall in love even with getting drooled on, I thought with a roll of my eyes. I mean, what guy doesn’t like when their girl drools on them in that way, but waking up with her drooling on my chest in her sleep is entirely different from the sexy kind.
A soft sensation of something brushing against my right cheek drew my attention that way as one of Shayla’s soft antennae brushed over my face. Her pitch-black eyes glimmered faintly with reflected light in the dim room while she watched me. From the way her eyelids hung lazily above those obsidian orbs, I guessed that she hadn’t been awake too very long.
“Morning Liam,” Shayla murmured, her antennae stroking my cheek like a tiny, soft hand.
“Morning Shayla, been awake long?” I replied and she gave a sleepy shake of her head in the negative, blinking slowly.
“Want to go back to sleep?” I asked next when she didn’t do more and just continued to stare at me.
“Can’t,” Rieka murmured sleepily from my other side and I glanced that way to see my wolfish princess blinking owlishly before giving a cavernous yawn with her tongue poking out and curling like a canine’s.
Rieka’s long, platinum-blonde hair lay about her in a tangled mess. I know there are some folks that can wake up and look artfully messy, but my princess was not one of them. Her normally orderly and straight hair always managed to end up molded into some kind of absurd shape in her sleep. Her left ear was also inside-out, the pink inner shell stark against her pale hair. I fixed it, gently flipping the ear right-side out with the hand on that side by adding a few extra joints to the limb without thought.
“Errands to run,” Rieka said again, yawning a second time before rubbing at her eyes with one hand.
“Errands?” I asked curiously, quirking an eyebrow at my princess as Shayla began to stir and disentangle herself from the blankets. The beautiful artist didn’t release my arm from where it was trapped between her breasts just yet though, keeping one arm tight around it like she was worried I’d run away.
“Yes,” Rieka said, muffling a third yawn with her hand before giving herself a shake that turned her left ear inside-out once more. I fixed it without comment.
“Mmmph, dun wanna,” Kassandra mumbled against my chest, the rhythmic squeezing of her coils against my legs getting more emphatic.
“You were the one who made the plans,” Rieka prodded, sitting upright finally and letting the blankets fall off of her, exposing her pale, full breasts to the world while she finger-combed her hair in an effort to sort it out.
Kassandra let out another wordless groan of protest and rolled over on my chest, peeking up at me from amongst her curls.
“Liam, Rieka’s picking on me,” she whined petulantly. The cute look she was trying to give me was ruined by the fact she had to wipe the spit off her face when she realized she’d drooled in her sleep again.
I just watched her as her brain slowly chugged through what she’d done, and I was treated to a rare sight nowadays: Kassandra blushing self-consciously.
“I think that if you were the one who made the plans to be up early and do things, then you owe it to her to actually get up and do the things,” I teased her gently, giving her curvy butt a squeeze with the hand that Rieka had released when she sat up.
“Fiiine,” Kassandra pouted, pushing herself from my chest and letting her bare breasts hang down like two ripe, mouth-watering fruits.
Kassandra caught where my eyes went and her blush faded to be replaced with a wicked grin. She swayed slowly, making her curves swing alluringly while she ground into me, only to yelp in surprise when Rieka smacked her on the ass sharply.
“You were the one who insisted we go to the bazaar,” Rieka chastised. “You don’t get to try and seduce Liam so you don’t have to get out of bed. Now up!”
Kassandra pouted again, but wriggled down my body, making sure to brush every soft curve against me that she could as she went.
“Fine,” my dwarf lamia grumbled again. “Rieka, you are just making your hair worse, here, let me.”
I watched as the completely naked dwarf lamia rummaged in her bag for a moment, curvy butt wiggling back and forth, before producing a brush and ordering Rieka to sit down.
“Mmmm,” Jane murmured in my ear and I shifted to catch her sleepily blinking herself awake. “Time to get up?”
“Yup,” I said, turning my head just enough to catch her lips in a kiss.
Jane gave a sleepy giggle and nuzzled into my cheek after our lips parted from the kiss.
“Mm, that’s a good way to wake up,” she murmured into my neck before sitting up to stretch as well.
“Hmm, I want to try it then,” Shayla said softly and before I could turn her way, my beautiful moth’s chocolate mane was blocking my sight and she was kissing me as well.
Considering that I’d been sleeping in a pile of nubile female flesh and the casual sexiness of my girls, I was rather proud of the fact that I hadn’t done anything too embarrassing.
Yet.
While Shayla kissed me happily, humming into my mouth while her soft breasts pillowed against my shoulder, I felt Jane start to crawl down the bed. But rather than climb over the blankets and out the foot of the large bed we’d shared, instead she dove under the covers and I felt her hot breath against my thigh.
“Jane!” I mumbled into Shayla’s kiss, only for my current kissing partner to pin me down harder while Jane’s mouth set to kissing other parts of me that were awake this early.
A giggle from Kassandra and a sigh of amused annoyance from Rieka told me that the two of them knew what was going on beneath the blankets, but no one protested, so I decided to just enjoy my wakeup treat.
Jane didn’t try and drag it out, and within an hour all five of us were up, had a quick rinse in the water basin, and were dressed for the day. Kassandra had suggested we make a trip to the bathhouse first thing, but the others had all squashed the idea when they saw the lascivious grin on the dwarf lamia while she was staring at me.
Instead, my girls all agreed that we could make a trip to the bathhouse after we were done wandering the bazaar, since there was no reason to wash up just to immediately get dusty out there.
Apparently, they’d looped Valda in on the plan as well, because the lizard-folk woman was waiting for us in the main room of the bunkhouse when we emerged, as excited as the rest of us to go and explore the market.
The large market bazaar was held in the center of the city. Like the smaller markets I’d visited while in Kintos, it was a mixture of established shops, street stalls, and rolling carts with merchandise and food for sale. Unlike the market in Kintos, there was a large central plaza the size of several football fields that held a trio of stone fountains where even more of the pop-up stalls were located.
Everywhere we looked, there were bright colors, sizzling food, and music. It didn’t feel like the city was defending from a siege at the moment, even though there was still pressure from the barbarian tribes and you could even see the section of wall blocking the pass from the plaza.
People talked, bartered, argued, and sang all over. It seemed like the goal of everyone that day was to have a good time and find something interesting. I spotted more than one of the student-mages from Juneau doing the same thing that we were: looking for bargains and mementos.
I wasn’t any different from the girls, and picked up more than a few interesting tidbits to take home with me to earth. Strands of polished bone and wood beads would make for interesting accents I could add to my jewelry business. Small pendants of bone, shell, and stone joined the beads as well. I picked up several samples of local jewelry styles to keep for examples to try emulating or making my own spin on. All of them vanished into my Dimensional Pocket, the space mostly empty now after having shifted and split the weapons and equipment we took from the ruins. Valda helped me find the best vendors that wouldn’t rip me off.
Kassandra ended up purchasing a collection of delicate bone china that she carefully packed away into her bag with a smile.
“Mother and father will love them,” she explained when I gave her a questioning look. I nodded in understanding, during the brief time that I’d talked with her parents, I’d learned that Kassandra’s mother had a passion for tea and tea service, so I made a mental note to try and bring some nice loose-leaf teas with me to send along with her gift.
Shayla bought a collection of handmade brushes for her painting, cooing happily over their precise construction and how fine the materials were. She also discovered that one of the vendors had higher-grade paper for sale that would function well for her art, and bought up what the man had available. Kassandra made sure to take down the merchant’s information and introduce herself, insisting that if he could provide a steady supply of high-quality paper, then she would find a market for it within the Coldeye queendom.
Jane found a beautiful collection of fur-lined cloaks that the girls cooed over happily, buying two for herself in a dark blue lined with white mink fur and a wine red lined with dark brown fur. Each of the other girls bought one to match their outfits, with Kassandra also making overtures to the seller for a business connection.
Business snek is gonna business, I thought with a wry smile as I watched my dwarf lamia bargain happily and leave with a promise to make connections between the fur-trader and her estates.
Valda seemed content to just walk along with us, pointing out her favorite stalls and vendors as we went. The lizard-folk woman only spent a few coins on buying some of her favorite street foods to share, but from the smile that never left her lips, it was obvious she was enjoying herself.
Rieka bought two things: a molded horn comb that was decorated with bounding wolves and a hand-blown glass tumbler decorated with threads of blue- and white-tinged glass.
Returning with her purchases, she pressed them into my hands and leaned in close to whisper into my ear.
“For your friends back home. You need to make sure that your lady-friend who is managing your business knows you appreciate her, and while we’ve been monopolizing your time, none of us want you to lose out on those who support and encourage you back home.”
Rieka sealed the words with a soft kiss on my cheek before she turned to bound along beside Kassandra, her cheeks pinking faintly as she went.
I looked down at the two gifts. I don’t know how she managed it, but Rieka had picked two gifts that I was sure would be well received by both of them.
The comb is going to be great for Gloria, I thought with a soft smile. It’s obviously handmade and the caramel and brown of the horn comb will go well in her hair. Jameson will think the tumbler is cool as hell and probably keep it on his desk at the office. It’s just the thing to strike up conversations with the ladies at his architecture firm.
Looking back up at my girls, I watched as Kassandra said something cheeky and the other four burst into laughter. After the bloody fighting of the last several months, it looked like my girls were finally getting to return to a modicum of normal.
I have a ! Feel free to hop on and chat or ask questions.
website for links to my other work as well as updates on this one. It has links to all the other places to find this work too!
Amazon, I'll be editing and pulling down the files as time goes on, but I'll let folks know here ahead of time.
Patreon! Additional advance chapters will be available there as well as art and some future projects I'm working on.
