I woke in darkness with the taste of blood in my mouth and something warm and smooth pressed up against my naked body. I lifted my eyelids with my fingertips just to be sure I’d actually opened them. That didn’t banish the darkness, so either I was blind or I was someplace where not even a glimmer of light could find me. My first instinct was to panic, kick whatever I was under off me, and then try to find a way to get the fuck out of there with all due haste.

Part one of my plan went swimmingly, and my heart and mind raced together toward a stroke and some very bad thoughts about my situation. I wondered if the crimson bear and I had died after coming to our agreement that I was, in fact, a badass. If I was in some sort of hell, that would explain the darkness that surrounded me.

It would not, however, explain the warm, slender body laying on my chest and against my left side. Whatever, or whoever, that was didn’t seem threatening, so I decided to investigate that part of the puzzle first.

My hand landed gingerly on a smooth shoulder that, thankfully, felt humanoid. Doing my best not to wake up what could easily be a homicidal spirit who’d dragged me off to its lair to feast on my core, I traced the outline of my cuddle buddy’s body. The arm connected to the shoulder was slender and slight, the smooth skin broken only by a random hatchwork of what felt like raised scars along the bicep and forearm.

Goose pimples rose under my fingers, and the arm’s owner stirred, mumbled something that sounded irritated and decidedly feminine, and then snuggled up tighter against me. If this was a soul-stealing spirit, it was a sleepy one.

“Hey.” I wasn’t going to become a shaman lying on my back in the dark, and I desperately wanted to know what in the Frozen Hells had happened. “Wake up.”

Mystery girl mumbled something under her breath and buried her face in the hollow of my neck. Her long hair spilled across my chest like threads of silk, and her breath was hot against my throat. She threw a leg over me, which put an intriguing and distracting pressure across my groin, and pulled herself closer with a hand over my heart. Satisfied I wouldn’t be able to dislodge her easily, she let out a long, low sigh and fell back into a deep sleep.

Okay, as nice and cozy as that was, I needed to get moving. If the crimson bear really was my spirit animal, I wanted to find it and seal the deal before it changed its mind and we had to fight again.

“C’mon,” I muttered and tried to pull the woman’s arm off my chest. “I’ve gotta go.”

Surprisingly, her thin arm was impossible for me to move. She didn’t tense or tighten her grip; the limb just refused to move no matter how hard I pulled or pushed on it. I might as well have tried to shove a boulder up the side of a cliff for all the progress I made. My struggles went on for a few minutes before she shifted against me and let out an aggravated sigh.

“I’m sleeping here, mortal.” Uh-oh. Any creature that calls you “mortal” isn’t something to fuck with. “Where do you have to get off to in such a hurry?”

“I’m on a quest.” That sounded ridiculous. Only heroes in fables told strange women they were on quests. Then again, only in fables did men find themselves lying naked under equally naked and curiously strong women. “I need to find my spirit animal and make sure it's okay.”

“I’m fine.” She moved her arm off my chest, though her leg slid across my crotch in slow strokes that made it hard to think about anything else. “But now I’m awake. And bored. Wanna fuck?”

The last syllable was more of a growl than a word. Her hand slipped under her thigh to grab hold of my swiftly stiffening cock, the ball of her thumb swirling across its tip. The sensation curled my toes and tied my thoughts into knots.

“You certainly feel fine.” I groaned as her fingers squeezed around me, relaxed, then squeezed again in time with my pulse. “I’m not sure what that has to do with my sprit animal’s well-being, though.”

“I am your spirit animal, man thing.” Her mouth latched onto the side of my throat and she sucked at my skin, tongue hot and squirming against me. Combined with the feelings that flowed from below my waist, she had me teetering on the edge of the ecstasy. “And as your spirit animal, I demand some bonding time.”

Well, who was I to ignore the needs of my new friend and guide into the world of all things shamanish?

The memory of my time with the crimson bear was a euphoric haze I only remembered in sharp fragments that pierced the muddled veil surrounding my thoughts. The coppery taste of her tongue as it flicked across mine after a meal torn from our prey. The impossibly smooth texture of her skin under my rough palm. The untamed scent of her hair dangling around my face as she rode me with a desperate, ferocious need that threatened to drown us both in crashing waves of ecstasy. The warm, slick grip of her sex around mine as I plunged my body into her depths in a rhythmic cycle that pushed the rin energy from my earthbound core into hers and pulled the shio energy from her celestial core into mine.

She taught me more about fucking, fighting, and feasting than I’d ever known existed. She was an insatiable lover, a peerless hunter, and a patient mentor who grew closer to me with every moment we spent together. It wasn’t long before we could hear one another’s thoughts as clearly as our speaking voices.

And then, one morning after we’d eaten half a caribou and slept for what felt like a week, I woke up a different person.

“Finally.” The crimson bear poked her finger at my solar plexus. “Your core has finally advanced.”

Well, I’ll be damned. She was right. Somewhere along the way I’d jumped from a puny two-node foundation core to an earthbound core with five bright-red nodes brimming with sacred rin energy. I’d also sprouted a strange, bruised-looking spot in the center of my now deep-brown core, which the crimson bear informed me represented the connection between us. I was turning into a real shaman.

After that, my training in the sacred arts really kicked into high gear. My spirit animal taught me to gather sacred rin energy into my core with much greater speed and efficiency through a trance meditation technique. She showed me how to weave threads of rin from my nodes to activate the Stone Shards combat technique. And, finally, she blessed me with the gifts of her body, the Crimson Claws and Bear’s Mantle.

“Each of those techniques will require a full node of your sacred rin energy to activate, my shaman,” she explained to me. “The claws will carve through your opponents’ flesh and the mantle will keep you safe from mundane weapons. But the techniques last for only minutes at a time. Be careful, or you’ll burn through your rin before the battle is over. And then you’ll fucking die and all my time training you will have been wasted.”

And all the while, my body grew stronger and my senses sharper. I couldn’t imagine how weak I’d been, how blind to the world around me.

Those were the best days of my life, though I have no idea how long they lasted. The sun was useless for tracking the passage of time because it was always twilight outside her cave. Meals weren’t much better when it came to marking the hours because I never really felt hungry. We hunted deer, elk, and even a moose or two whenever the mood struck and gorged ourselves on their meat more for the sensation and taste than any physical need.

Then, without warning, the best time of my life ended the same way it had begun.

The crimson bear tried to kill me.

We were fucking like animals when she changed. One moment, we were moving like a single creature, our bodies united in the shared goal of making us both feel fucking awesome. The next, just as we’d reached our peak and I was thrust deep inside her, she went feral and howled like someone had pulled her guts out with a hunter’s knife.

She scrambled away from me like a wild animal escaping a trap, a gleaming thread of our combined juices stretching between our bodies before it snapped into salty beads on the floor of her cave.

“What’s wrong?” I shouted and raised my hands defensively. She’d spun to face me, and the look in her eyes was a deadly mixture of raw anguish and murderous hate. The connection between us throbbed with confusion and horror, and I wasn’t sure where all this had come from.

“Mortals.” The scars that crisscrossed her arms flushed a deep crimson and her fingernails lengthened into bone-white claws. She curled her fingers as if trying to hang onto the earth and the natural weapons gouged chunks of stone from the cavern’s floor. “They’re killing it. I’ll destroy them!”

By them, apparently, she meant all the mortals. Including the one standing right in front of her.

The crimson bear slammed into me, her skin toughened into leather and her claws so sharp they screamed as they tore the air. Her roar revealed rows of blood-stained carnivore’s teeth, and she did her damnedest to tear my throat out with them. Madness danced in her eyes like wildfire, and her body burned against mine with this new, violent need. If I didn’t stop her, she’d kill me.

“Stop, please, stop.” I held her wrists out from my body and she writhed in a desperate attempt to escape. When I’d first come to the mountain, the crimson bear had been much stronger than me. But the bond we now shared had gifted me with strength to rival my spirit animal’s. She could struggle, but brute strength wouldn’t be enough to let her escape from me.

So, the bear decided to play dirty and tried to knee me in the balls. The shot was quick, but my reflexes were just a little quicker, and she only clipped the outside of my thigh. She let out one frustrated roared after another, until her throat was raw and hoarse.

“They’re killing it.” Her voice was ragged, and her body shook with the effort of trying to kill me. “I have to stop them.”

“Who?” I pulled my face back from her snapping teeth before they could take my nose off. “Let me help you, damnit.”

I leaned into my words and pushed them through the bond we shared. She was a bright and snarling presence inside my core, and I willed myself to be a stable anchor inside hers.

Moment by moment the madness receded from her gaze, until, at last, she fell against me, deep, wracking sobs tearing themselves loose from her body.

“You have to leave.” The crimson bear lifted her tear-stained face to show me eyes that were bottomless wells of sorrow. “You have to save them.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I wrapped my arms tight around her. “I’m not going anywhere. You still have so much to teach me. And I’m not ready to give up all that sexy bonding time yet.”

She chuckled at that and leaned back to wipe the tears from her eyes.

“There’s never enough time.” She offered me a slight, sad smile. “That’s the way of the world. Or it was. You’ve come as far here as you can go. It’s time to take what I’ve given you and use it where it will do some good.”

“I don’t want to go.” That was putting it mildly. The only reason I’d willingly leave that cavern was to hunt down another big old piece of meat to fill our bellies. “And you still haven’t told me what happened.”

“I don’t know, exactly.” She frowned and slipped out of my arms to pace the floor. “The sacred energy of the world has changed. It’s corrupted. Tainted.”

That didn’t sound good.

“I’m not sure a low-level shaman is the right guy to fix that.” The truth was, it sounded like the kind of job that could get a newbie shaman killed deader than shit.

“You’re the only shaman for the job.” She eyed me from across the cavern, face hidden in shadow, eyes bright as embers. “You’re the only shaman left.”

My mind reeled at that. I’d known there weren’t many other shamans left since the rise of the Celestial Covenant and the Thousand Gods had come to rule the world of men. I couldn’t believe I was really the last of my kind.

“There have to be others.” I didn’t want this responsibility. I wanted to go back to the good old days of fifteen minutes ago when my whole life was about fucking and eating my fill.

“They killed them.” Her voice was as cold and sharp as a knife’s blade. “They’ll kill the rest of the world, too, if we don’t stop them.”

“You’ll come with me?” That was a relief. She knew a hell of a lot more about this shaman business than I did.

“I’m always with you.” Her words rang through my core. “But my place is here. I’ve given you my gifts, and together we’ve transformed your core from foundation to earthbound. The rest is up to you.”

“I can’t do it.” That was just the truth. I was a shaman, okay, but I still had the lowliest of all practitioner cores. I could hold five nodes of sacred rin energy, enough to use the totemic gifts of the bear’s claws and hide and ignite a simple technique or two. I could beat the shit out of your average guy and hunt like a mad motherfucker, but saving the world was a whole different ball of wax.

“You have to.” She crossed the cavern to hold my cheeks in her hands. “There’s no one else who can do this.’

“Tell me what, exactly, you think I’ll do when I leave this cave.” I closed my hands over hers and held on for dear life.

“I can’t see the details through the veil between worlds.” Her eyes clouded as she looked at something far, far outside the cave. “Something new has risen in the world of mortals. Its afterbirth has unleashed a nightmare disease. You have to kill the abomination and heal the Earth, before it’s too late.”

I lifted the crimson bear into my arms and carried her out of the cave. I laid her down in the snow under the sky, right where we’d almost killed each other what seemed like an eternity ago. She shivered, not from the cold—she was impervious to the effects of weather—but with a need so deep it ached in both of our cores.

She threw her legs wide and dragged me down with her ankles hooked around my back. Her teeth clamped on my shoulder as I eased into her and she groaned beneath me. Her tongue, hot and greedy, flickered over my flesh as her teeth pressed into my skin with a pressure a fraction of an inch from pain. Her strong arms looped over the back of my neck, and her hands tangled in the dark mane of my hair. Her hips bucked against mine with an urgent need and our pace quickened.

There was nothing easy or gentle about our last time together. Her nails drew red scratches like broken wings across my back. Our love bites raised bruises and welts from our ecstatic struggles to experience everything our bodies could offer. My shaft sank deeper into the crimson bear’s flesh than I’d thought possible, and she groaned and thrust back against me with a frenzied hunger.

I seized the firm globes of her ass and pulled her dripping cleft against me with bruising force. Her smell, wild and feral, flooded my senses and drove me into a berserk fit of lust. My howls shredded the mountaintop silence, sending every animal within a mile of her cave fleeing for their lives.

The crimson bear’s eyes rolled back, and she bit her lip with gleaming ivory teeth. Her back arched and pushed me toward her core. With a shout, she pulled her body up against mine, arms clutching my shoulders, breasts flattened against my chest, hips grinding along my length with relentless fervor.

We lost ourselves in that moment, our bodies slamming against and into each other, our breaths mingling in our lungs, our cores colliding and unleashing a burning wave of sacred energy that inflamed our blood. As a flood of pleasure rose higher and higher within us, we were one for a timeless breath.

I never wanted it to end. I wanted to bury myself in her warm depths, to plant myself where she couldn’t dig me up and cast me out.

But there was no denying her passion. She came screaming into the night, the muscles inside her squeezing, dragging a final burst of pleasure out of me and pulling me down into a dark and fathomless sea of savage ecstasy.

Later, as we lay beneath the wheeling stars, I caressed the long, red strands of her hair with one hand.

“What’s your name?” We’d never needed names for each other before, but I didn’t want to leave without knowing hers.

“You’re supposed to ask a girl’s name before you fuck her a hundred times, you know.” She nipped at my throat with her straight, white teeth. “I’ve had many names, mortal, but I emerged from the heart of creation’s shadow as Mielyssi.”

“Mielyssi.” I liked the way the syllables tasted on my tongue. “Don’t you want to know my name?”

“I already know, Kyr.” She giggled at my surprised look. “I know everything there is to know about you, my love. You are mine, and I am yours.”

“Not fair.” I groaned. “When will I know all your secrets?”

“Never.” She stood and pulled me to my feet. “That was lovely, Kyr. Now you must go.”

“Rude.” I crushed her against me, not wanting to hear what she had to say. It wasn’t time for me to leave. It couldn’t be. Not yet.

Mielyssi slipped out of my arms and guided me back to the cave without another word. She found my club against the wall and lifted it in both hands.

“You’ll need this.” She kissed the war club’s handle and offered it to me. Sinuous threads of silver light unfolded from where her lips had touched the iron, wrapping the weapon in her essence. “I don’t know exactly what’s happened down there, but I do know it won’t be pretty.”

“What am I supposed to do with this?” I took the war club from her and was surprised by how light it felt. I was so much stronger now than I had been when I first came to the mountain.

“You’re supposed to accept my gift and keep it close. Your responsibility is to heal the world.” Mielyssi’s voice grew gruff and hungry as she continued. “But your second responsibility is nearly as important. Find the people who poisoned the dream, Kyr. Find them and kill every one of those motherfuckers.