Duck! (Avian Shifters Book 1) (25 page)

“And that’s what you want for him now?” Raynard bit out, barely keeping another wave of anger in check. “For a man who was never cut out for service to spend his whole life serving a man of lower rank and—”

“It makes him happy.”

Raynard stared down at him, his hand clenching around the handkerchief until pain shot through him. “It’s not the way things are meant to be.”

“It could certainly be considered an…unconventional arrangement,” Hamilton said.

“Uncon—!”

“Someone who will protect him, lead him, take care of him. Someone who will stand between him and the rest of the world and look after him. Some could say that’s the very definition of a good avian master.”

Raynard glared down at Hamilton, completely speechless.

“A man who loves without boundaries, an avian whose soul is so pure he wishes to give everything he is and everything he has to one person. A true submissive by any other name…” Hamilton went on.

Raynard shook his head.

“While he was under your care—”

“Swans are not suited to submission!” Raynard was sure of it. It was damn near the only thing he felt sure of right then.

Hamilton seemed to think about that for a moment. “While he was under your care, did you give any thought to what he needed, what he might want?”

“I thought he was a duckling,” Raynard yelled as guilt flashed through him. “So did you!”

Hamilton rose to his feet on the other side of the desk, his hands pressing against the old polished wood opposite Raynard’s. “Answer the question!”

“Yes!” Raynard spat out. “Are you satisfied now? Yes, I thought about what my submissive would want. I thought about what he’d need in order to be happy under my protection. I was wrong.”

“You’re sure about that, are you?”

“What?”

“Are you sure you were wrong?” Hamilton shouted.

Raynard stared at Hamilton as if he’d lost his mind.

“The elders have come to the conclusion that your initial instincts toward Ori may have been far closer to the correct method for dealing with him than we originally suspected.” Hamilton sat down, and modulated his voice. “It’s possible that, as a swan, he feels the need to please everyone. Having a master, one person to devote himself to, might be what he needs. Lord knows we’ve tried everything else since we found out what he really is…”

Raynard lowered himself to his seat.

“Do you really think this sort of arrangement was our first choice?” Hamilton asked, annoyance seeping into each word. “Everything we offer him only makes him withdraw further into himself. The only time I’ve seen a hint of life in his eyes is when he speaks about the time he spent serving you.”

“So you try something else,” Raynard demanded. “You don’t give up on a man like Ori just because—”

“You’re in love with him.”

For a moment Raynard could only stare at the elder in slack-jawed silence. “Irrelevant,” he finally said, dismissing the fact with a shake of his head as he pulled himself together.

“Hawks have always had a tendency to mate for life.”

“Equally irr—”

“So have swans.”

Raynard stopped short, meeting Hamilton’s eyes across the desk.

“Last night, when he was with you, he was happy?” Hamilton asked.

The whole evening played through Raynard’s mind. Ori had been so relieved, so grateful for his attention, so desperate, so exhausted. But yes, he’d been happy too, so happy to be back under his master’s care, if only for a little while.

“He’s a swan,” Raynard whispered, just in case the whole world had suddenly forgotten that fact.

Hamilton steepled his fingers once more. “The elders can’t actually force you to take him on, any more than they could force a swan to accept such an arrangement. However, they wished me to make it clear to you before you left, that we would, let us say, look very favourably upon any such understanding…”

Raynard rose to his feet, turned his back on the eagle and all his stupid ideas, and strode across to the door.

Swan. Submissive. Swan. Submissive.

The two words warred against each other inside his head with every step he took, refusing to resolve themselves into one character, one man, one future.

When the door to Hamilton’s office swung closed behind him, Raynard looked both ways down the corridor, toward the exit, then toward the swan’s quarters, then back to the exit again.

The decision was his and, submissive or not, in that moment, Ori depended upon him to make the right choice for them both. It was all very well for the eagle to say his instincts were right.

If only the two sets of instincts warring inside him would just agree with each other, it would be so very simple.

Chapter Thirteen

“Whenever you’re ready, sire.”

Ori stared down at his bare wrist. He’d promised. No matter how much he hated the idea, he’d promised Raynard that if they had one last night together, he’d stop putting off getting the swan’s mark tattooed on the inside of his wrist.

He ran a fingertip along the skin just over his vein, tracing out the mark Raynard had once painted on him in just the same way. That combination of waves and lines would have marked him out as a duck. And every time he’d reached out to shake another avian’s hand, someone would have realised what he was, and they’d have looked at him differently. Then the orders would have started to flow and…

Ori took a deep breath and forced himself to picture another kind of tattoo on his wrist. The second he did, it was impossible for him not to imagine the kind of life that would come with it. Whenever he shook hands with people and they saw the swan’s mark inked beneath his skin, that knowledge would also cause them to treat him differently.

No orders. There would never be any orders, or any work. There’d never be any chance of being taken back under Raynard’s protection either.

Ori looked up.

The peacock who acted as tattoo artist for the nest had already spent over an hour patiently waiting for permission to practice his art. Ori nibbled his bottom lip. The poor guy would have probably had more luck if he’d simply ordered him to stop making a fuss and bloody well do as he was told.

Bowing his head slightly, Ori called Raynard’s order to the front of his mind and nodded to the peacock.

A deeply upholstered chair stood in the middle of the room. The tattoo artist’s stool was placed next to it, a tray with all his equipment laid out just to its right.

Ori settled himself on the chair and placed his elbow on the little support built into the armrest. The arrangement held his wrist out toward the tattoo artist like some bizarre sort of sacrificial offering.

“It shouldn’t hurt too much,” the peacock offered, as he perched on the stool.

Ori didn’t bother trying to explain that his hesitation had nothing to do with that kind of fear. He doubted he’d have been able to explain the real truth of the matter anyway.

If it had been another man offering him a different sort of pain, Ori knew he’d have welcomed it. He pressed his back against the softly cushioned chair, but no hint of discomfort flared from the whip lines that had once striped his back. The marks Raynard had left on him were just a distant memory. Even his collar was gone.

Ori closed his eyes as the tattooist’s needle touched his skin for the first time, not wanting to see the swan’s lines appear. The machine whirred, the only sound in the otherwise silent space, until a sudden click on the other side of the room made Ori jerk his head up and open his eyes. The door swung back. Raynard strode into the room.

The peacock jerked and pulled the needle away from Ori’s wrist.

Ori launched himself to his feet. “Sir!”

He covered his right wrist with his opposite hand, not sure exactly what kind of mark had already been placed there. If he was lucky, it was something that could be converted into a mark that would please his master. If he was unlucky… Ori swallowed, terrified that he might have ruined everything at the very last moment.

“Out.”

Rank ceased to matter. The peacock didn’t look to Ori for confirmation. The elaborately dressed young man rushed out, closing the door behind him.

Ori stared across the room at his master, unable to bring a single word to his lips.

Raynard took a step forward, then another. Moving around Ori, he made himself comfortable in the chair that Ori had just vacated. Never breaking eye contact, Ori turned to face him and lowered himself to his knees at Raynard’s feet.

Raynard held out his hand. Ori remained frozen, the beginnings of the tattoo still hidden beneath his opposite palm.

“Show me.”

Ori reluctantly offered his wrist to Raynard for his inspection. Raynard’s grip was strong. He stared down at the curved line that had already been inked in place with a serious expression.

“Can it be fixed, sir?” Ori whispered, very softly.

“Fixed?”

“Turned into the kind of mark you’d like,” Ori translated.

Raynard looked back to Ori’s wrist. “What convinced you to come here and get this mark today?”

Ori dropped his gaze and stared at his wrist too.

“The truth,” Raynard pushed.

“You told me to, sir.”

“Hamilton told you to weeks ago—so did the rest of the elders.”

“They aren’t my master, sir.” Ori closed his eyes as he said it, knowing he didn’t have the right to call him that anymore.

Raynard slid his other hand through Ori’s hair, tugging his head back and tilting Ori’s face up to look at him.

“Tell me what you want—not what you think you should want, not what I’ve told you to want, or what rights the elders have said your station grants you. Tell me what you want.”

Ori swallowed rapidly. “For everything to be the way it was before. For you to be pleased with me. To be your… To be whatever I can be to you now, sir.”

Raynard peered down at him, even more serious now. His chest rose and fell as he took a deep breath. “You know that a swan has every right to request anything. Any man in the nest would be expected to do as a swan wanted—even if he asked for something other than what swans traditionally desire.” His grip on Ori’s hair tightened. “If you really wish to belong to me, you can have what you want.”

Ori dipped his head, suddenly desperate to escape Raynard’s hold on him.

Raynard’s fingers tightened around the silky white strands. Ori pulled away, as sharply as he could, tearing his wrist out of Raynard’s other hand at the same time. He fell backward, sprawling on the tiled floor, and scrambled away until his back hit the wall next to the door.

On the edge of his chair, Raynard froze, staring down at him, anger and confusion warring in his eyes.

“No.” It was the first time Ori could ever remember saying the word to Raynard. He’d had no idea he could ever sound so certain about a word, so determined.

“Ori?”

“No,” he repeated.

“No?”

Looking up, Ori stared, horrified, into Raynard’s eyes. “You really think I’d do that to you, sir?”

Raynard glared back at him, his expression unreadable.

“I don’t want you to keep me because you
have
to, sir,” Ori whispered. “I’d never ask you to do that and…and I won’t let you do that either!” The words flowed out, and there was nothing he could do to stop them. Panic flared inside him—a true terror that he couldn’t be strong enough to stop Raynard from making that kind of sacrifice for him. No. He shook his head. He couldn’t let that happen.

“Since when do you ‘let’ your master do anything?” Raynard asked.

There was a teasing note in his voice, but there was also an undercurrent. Ori immediately dropped his gaze, knowing he risked pushing Raynard past what he’d tolerate from him—whatever his species. “We both know you don’t need my permission to do whatever you want with me, sir.”

Raynard said nothing.

Ori stared at the floor a few inches in front of Raynard’s feet as he frantically tried to make his mind work, to do what was right for Raynard rather than himself. “You said I could ask you for something, sir,” he remembered.

“It’s a swan’s right to—”

Ori shook his head. “No, sir. I mean months ago, when we first… You said I could always ask you for something if it was really important to me.”

Raynard nodded his acceptance of that fact.

“I’m not asking as a swan, sir. I’m asking as a submissive.” That was important; Raynard had to understand that. Not knowing what else to do, Ori glanced up to let his former master see the desperation in his eyes.

Raynard frowned, but he nodded his permission for Ori to continue.

“Please, don’t…” Ori dragged a shuddering breath into his lungs. “Please don’t take me back if you know there’s never any chance you’ll want me. If you know that I’ll never be able to please you then…”

When Raynard remained silent, Ori found he had to go on. He had to find words to fill the void. Picking at the seam on his trouser leg, he pushed each word out through a throat that fought each syllable.

“If there’s any way I can belong to you and please you, I’ll do it, sir. I’ll serve you, and anyone else, in whatever way I can. I’ll do whatever you want, and I’ll get down on my knees and thank you for it every second of the day, but I can’t be… Please, don’t take me back if you don’t want me. I’d rather be miserable here on my own, than make you unhappy thinking you have to own a man you hate.”

Raynard sat back in his chair, anger and confusion fading from his expression as if neither had ever existed. “Hamilton was right.”

Ori swallowed, waiting to see what that verdict meant for him.

“You’re stronger with your submission than without it.”

Ori stared past Raynard, at the bare white wall behind him. It sounded like a joke, but he couldn’t see any reason for laughter.

Raynard nodded to himself as if everything was suddenly settling into place inside his mind.

Ori watched Raynard’s chest rise and fall as he took a slow, deep breath.

“Come here.”

Unable to trust his knees to support him if he tried to rise, but equally unable to disobey his master’s summons, Ori crawled across the floor to the base of the chair.

Raynard tucked a knuckle under Ori’s chin, holding him still to be studied. “I never thought I’d fall in love with a swan.” The words were slow and musing, as if he was talking as much to himself as anyone else.

Ori’s eyes opened very wide as he stared up at him.

Raynard smiled slightly. “Are you really that shocked, fledgling?”

He nodded, making his master chuckle. Ori automatically smiled in response. As the rich, comforting sound wrapped around him, Raynard slid his fingers through Ori’s hair and pulled him closer.

“It’s not so unknown for a master to fall in love with his submissive.”

Ori buried his face in Raynard’s shirt, helpless to resist the temptation to nuzzle in against him, even as his brain desperately scrambled to work out what the hell was going on now. Suddenly, everything about Raynard, from his posture to the very fact he’d resumed using the word fledgling as an endearment rather than a stage in a man’s life, welcomed Ori close. But at the same time… “You said…”

Raynard stroked his fingers through Ori’s hair again, cradling him against his body and not even chiding him for wriggling the way he’d sometimes done when Ori had shared his bed every night.

“You said I wasn’t your submissive anymore, sir,” Ori whispered against Raynard’s shirt.

“Apparently, even masters are wrong on occasions—not often,” he stressed, his tone turning self-mocking. “But just on a few, very rare occasions.”

Ori glanced up.

“Perhaps I don’t know as much about what a swan’s nature might make him suited to as I thought,” Raynard whispered.

A slight frown appeared between Raynard’s eyebrows.

“I meant what I said, sir,” Ori offered quickly. “If I don’t shift—”

Raynard covered Ori’s mouth with his hand. “You will shift as and when you’re told to, and there will be no arguing with me when I give you that command.”

There was no room for negotiation when Raynard assumed that tone of voice. Pleasure rushed through Ori, just as it had every time his master had offered him that kind of certainty.

“I wouldn’t let you be ashamed of your species when you were thought to be an ugly little duckling. Do you really think I’ll let you hate yourself for being a swan?” Raynard demanded, his voice gaining more confidence with each word, until they began to sound harsh.

Ori traced the edge of one of Raynard’s shirt buttons, around and around, again and again.

“I fell in love with a swan. That means no one, not even my submissive, is going to insult that species in front of me.”

Ori blushed slightly as the words seeped into his mind, reassuring some instinctive part of him that didn’t care about anything other than his master’s good opinion of him. Something inside him sang out with joy and refused to care if anything made sense or not.

Raynard reached into his trouser pocket and took out a familiar length of leather. “The back of the tag will need to be marked with both our symbols.”

Ori simply stared at the collar, barely daring to breathe in case it broke some wonderful spell.

“Is this what you want, fledgling?”

Ori nodded very quickly.

Raynard had the collar around Ori’s neck in seconds. For the first time since it had been taken away, Ori felt his soul settle into some semblance of peace. His heart raced, but now, it was with pleasure, not panic. He looked up at his master, wanting nothing more than to make everything exactly as it was before.

“Take me home, sir?” he whispered, no longer caring if it sounded as though he was begging.