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“Take this side, wrap it around you…”
Standing in front of him, I help guide the chiton around his body and show him how to tie the rope belt securely around his waist. As I’m adjusting it, my hands brush against the subtle swell of his stomach. He inhales, and I pause. What was that? Heat spreading through my fingertips? Was I imagining it, or did he feel it too?
From beneath the tunic, he drops the makeshift cloak from his waist and it crumples around his ankles. I step back to examine him.
Tyler lifts his arms and turns around as he examines himself.
“Not bad,” Alyx says. “Alright. Because I’m not using it, you can have it.”
“It’s temporary until my clothes are dry,” Tyler reminds us. He grabs the front of the tunic and wafts it back and forth. “It’s, uh, pretty breezy though.”
“You look fantastic,” I say without much thought. “Like you truly belong here.”
Tyler’s face turns red. “Don’t get used to it,” he says. “Seriously. I’m not ditching my clothes.”
I’ve not been around many omegas, especially not pregnant ones, and seeing Tyler like this is doing something to me. It’s the way the chiton wraps beneath his belly that has my eyes captured. Its sensuality is unexpected. I can imagine how his shape will change as the baby grows, and it burns hotly in my mind. I know it’s not something Ishould be thinking about, and I do what I can to banish it to a dark corner of my mind. But I am an alpha. It’s only natural for me to react this way to him.
And the question remains—how in the names of all the gods and spirits is Tyler pregnant? Is this all the doing of the Great Phoenix?
I make up a bed of grass and leaves for him and give him my spare cloak for a blanket.
“I’m sorry there isn’t something more comfortable,” I tell him. “This hideout is temporary and we don’t keep much.”
He nestles into the soft grasses and shakes his head. “I could fall asleep on a pile of rocks, I’m so exhausted. I know I ought to be freaking the fuck out right now, but I don’t even have the energy for that anymore.”
“Get some rest. We’ll be leaving this place tomorrow morning.”
Tyler pulls the cloak up to his neck. “Kalistratos… I have no idea what would’ve happened to me if you hadn’t been there today. So, thank you. I’m really glad you were chained up naked in that cell. I mean, not the naked part. God, I’m fucking tired, I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.”
I laugh. “Sleep well, Tyler.”
“Tell me you can read this,” Alyx says.
The map is simple, not much more than a collection of faded ink stains on the weathered parchment. I can make some connections to the landmarks depicted from their shapes and the lay of the landscape. There is a snaking line that looks to be the river Delos surrounded by the tooth-like Altair range, but there’s something about it that doesn’t seem correct, like it’s only partially complete. What is most confusing, however, are the strange runes that flow across the map like looping threads. I’ve never seen anything like them.
I stare for a while, but no matter how hard I look, no matter which way I turn the scroll, their mysteries remain concealed.
“I haven’t any idea,” I say.
Alyx spins around and starts furiously licking his inner thigh. He’s not happy.
“But look,” I go on. “These here must be the Altair foothills. And that means if we look south, we’ll find the swamps, and thus Aelonos.” I slowly drag my finger in a line down the map from what I believe are the foothills, looking for something that seems like a swamp, but I end up off the map and on the stone slab.
Alyx stares at me, his green eyes in slits. He had followed me on this quest with some reluctance. It’d been a year spent risking our necks chasing this down this map,narrowly dodging phoenix hunters, bandit gangs and slave traders. Before I’d set my sights on finding the Great Phoenix’s temple, he and I had a reliable thing going on moving between towns and cities stealing from the fat treasuries or storehouses of the greedy merchants and slavers we tracked, always moving unseen and in the shadows. It’d been that way ever since we were young, just boys on the streets of the great city of Athenos. But this has become my mission. Alyx would say it had consumed me, but finding the Great Phoenix had been a seed in my mind for a very long time.
7
TYLER
“Alright, maybe the swamps aren’t on here,” I hear Kalistratos say. His voice echoes off the walls of the cave. “Perhaps the landscape was different.”
“Swamps?” Alyx replies reluctantly. “How old does a map have to be for the swamps to not exist?”
“Anyway, I bet you these are the Altair foothills. We just need to make our way north towards them.”
“Kalistratos.”
“What?”
