HORNS (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 159

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Nine

There was something special about the air here.

My hooves crunched on the gravel road as I traipsed up the mountain, listening to the roar of the wind in the enormous mountain trees. The natural perfumes of nature were heavy in the wind and each breath I took filled my nose and brain with a storm of near-perfect tranquility.

I felt... calm. 

Weirdly safe, too.

"Maybe that isn't such a good thing," I muttered to nobody in particular, stuffing my hands in my jeans pockets as I slunk around the upwards mountain road. I went deep into my head, thinking about it intently, and kicked a stray stone before sighing, "if I feel like being safe is weird, I guess maybe my home life isn't as stable as I originally thought."

I lifted my eyes to the mountains surrounding the lake, taking in their massive peaks with appreciative eyes, and just like that I had a sudden urge to start climbing them. I blinked, ears twitching rapidly, heart pounding with desires to spring and leap and bounce.

To headbutt trees, grind my horns on them, and just scream that I was.

To announce that I was here.

I stopped walking, touching my chest, looking down through my lashes as the queer flutterings of unfamiliar instincts crested and ebbed through me the same way my wolfish ones did. And you know what? Instead of suppressing them, I decided to indulge myself for a change.

I stamped my hooves, grinding them like a mad bull about to charge, bent down low, tossed my horns, and screamed with raw delight as I charged at the nearest tree. My horns smashed into it with a resounding CRACK that echoed across the mountains and made my head spin, but I grinned and giggled lowly and rapidly, genuinely delighted, grinding the ribs of my horns against the bark and wiggling my ass like an idiot. My tail flapped so fast that I was sure I'd have chafe marks later from all the rubbing against my pants. 

I headbutted the tree twice more, scraping the bark off of it, and stood upright, touching the gouges with my claws, proud of them the same way I felt proud when Echo was covered in my seed and stuffed full of my love. The feeling was raw, primal, and extraordinarily dominant.

Territorial.

That was what it boiled down to.

Marking my territory, my property, the things and people that truly belonged to me, and I, in turn, to them. This land, while indeed belonging to other people, felt like... home. Or rather, it felt like this place was meant to be home for my entire family. 

Desire burned hot inside my chest, growing in intensity as I looked back down at the lake, glistening entrancingly, sunlight reflecting off of the water. The water of Crystal Lake was vast and grey and incredibly deep, with white capped waves. More boats were out now, and to be honest, even at my elevated altitude on the road I could barely see the other side of the shore.

I felt a crooked smile break out across my face.

"I want my family to live here," I whispered, scanning the water, then turning to look at the mountains, feeling it deep inside me. "We can have any satyrs who come here stay on this lake, too. Vampires can't break a glamour barrier... we'd be safe from harm."

Honestly, I had to wonder why nobody had considered a plan like this before now.

If a glamour barrier was impenetrable, even by the deadliest of vampires then why hadn't Bash set one up around his properties before now? It would have prevented pretty much everything that had happened thus far from happening, and that included the shit with Jasper.