The Commanders Cat Ch 09

Hello friends. I am really sorry about the long wait for more Commander's Cat. I have been working on the second part of this story lately, including illustrations. Unfortunately I have recently found out that I have a rare form of neuroendocrine cancer and my progress and posting of stories will be sporadic until I am cancer-free. Thank you for your encouragement on previous installations of this story and for your messages encouraging me to post more. Hopefully soon I will have more time and energy. <3 Ava

NINE - Hanna

Once he realized we'd have to sleep on the ground Von finally relented and allowed me to see him in his bear-form without having to sneak up on him while he was already asleep. I didn't understand how it worked. Was he really a bear, and just making himself look vaguely human the rest of the time? Why didn't the other trooping fae turn into bears at night? And why were they so afraid of him? He waved away my questions and told me to rest. He held me like he had in the afternoon with one furry arm around me and the other underneath my head. Between the replenished coals of the tent heater and his dense fur I really didn't need a blanket, but kept it for privacy in case we were disturbed.

I'd heard the men cheering when he burned the cot and supposed that there would be gossip about it the next day. I tried not to worry about it otherwise. Von told me that it didn't really matter anymore and to let him deal with all of it, and I rapidly found I was in over my head with other things and didn't have time to worry about it anyway.

When the morning came we were awoken by Fentris. Von gently disengaged himself from me and shifted as he rose to answer Fentris. "Her clothes are not here yet," I heard Fentris muttering to Von as he put our breakfast on the table. "I do have fresh uniforms for you, and the men have found a river a short ride away for bathing. But I haven't the faintest idea how you'll get her there and we can't break camp with a nude woman in our midst."

"I'll just wear my dirty uniform to the river and wash it and myself," I interrupted their conversation. I didn't relish the idea of it, not because I'd have to wear a wet uniform until it dried. That wouldn't take long once the sun was in the sky. The dry desert afternoon would dry me to the bone in no time. I didn't relish the idea because while I'd thoroughly enjoyed myself and begged Von for more my body ached in a thousand different ways. My back and hips ached from the violent tumble from my horse on the battlefield and my enjoyable nocturnal activities had left me with a dull, feminine ache as well. Riding a horse would be torture.

"No, you won't do that," Von decided. "We'll wait for her clothes, I won't have her ride around in a wet uniform and get sick again."

Fentris left us and Von went to the table to eat. I didn't dare move from my blankets on the floor, curling up beside the tent heater with one arm holding my belly and the other bracing my shoulder that had taken the worst of the impact. Von seemed to notice something was wrong and had barely touched his breakfast when he knelt down beside me, bringing the plates of food with him. He gently fed me bits of honeyed bread, dried dates, and some of the meat left over from the camp stew.

I knew that he had seen the sheet of black and blue that my backside had become. Although I'd been deeply asleep I was still gently aware throughout the night that one of his paws massaged me whenever he stirred. "I can't make you ride a horse like this. I'll see about getting a cart. Maybe by the time I commandeer one they'll show up with your uniforms," he told me as he fed me the last of my dates.

He left for a little while before returning with coffee. His men had mastered making it the way my people did, boiling it over an open fire and adding in lots of spices and honey to cover any bitterness of the fire-roasted beans. I greedily drank cup after cup, the heat soothing me a little. Von was very quiet while he looked over maps and wrote things down at the table. I didn't ask him what he was doing. It really didn't matter. I'd started to understand that no one tells the cannonball what the plan is before they fire it off, and even Von still thought of me that way. It wasn't just how he thought of me, either, I realized. Every enlisted man was a cannonball with no say over his destination or how he would get there. Still, something about him seemed off. Each time Fentris came to our tent he asked him about a cart and my clothes, and told him we would delay breaking camp a little longer. I felt badly and imagined the soldiers waiting around outside eager to go home. I didn't realize we weren't going home.

At lunchtime Von sat on the ground with me again. I felt a little better by then, but moving still sometimes caused a sharp pain somewhere in my abused body. To my surprise he slid his hand inside the blanket and rested it lightly on my belly, frowning as he did. "Did I hurt you?"

"Not in a bad way," I admitted, blushing.

When my statement only deepened his confusion he excused himself from the tent. A little while later he came back with a handful of warm towels and laid them over my belly and back. I didn't ask him where he'd gone or how he'd come up with the hot towel idea. It would probably just embarrass me when he confessed to telling someone about my issues.

Eventually the men arrived with my uniforms and various other things from the villa packed into a trunk. My surveying tools and other map-making supplies were safely packed in it, as well as what was left in Von's office. I could tell from the way his expression flickered that there was plenty missing. He told Fentris we would bathe at the river and then move on, and I was beginning to understand that we weren't going home.

"How many days will we be out here?" I asked him as we waded into the river. He winced, not used to the cold after years of hot water in the military bathhouse, but the sun was already hot and the icy water soothed my sore body. He didn't answer me. He watched me sink into the river up to my chin then shook his head, refusing to even go deep enough to submerge his manhood. Hoping the water hid me from prying eyes, I sank into it as deeply as I could and hoped it would soothe some of my aches. I didn't worry about being swept away or not being able to swim - I knew he would be there in an instant if I needed him. Von eyed me warily, watching out of the corner of his eye as he vigorously lathered himself and splashed river water over his body with his hands, still avoiding submerging more than his knees.

The water felt so good I closed my eyes and forgot for a moment all about him and the camp full of men waiting to leave. When I opened my eyes he was sitting on a rock watching me, the sun gleaming off of his pale, wet skin. Reluctantly I waded towards him, taking the soap and washing myself as well. It was time to move on.

When I was sufficiently dressed, and my hair braided a little less roughly than usual, Von, Fentris, and Reystra ordered the men to tear down our tent and what little remained of the camp. Next Von ordered the men to find a cart for me to ride in. Thankfully I had it all to myself. The bottom of it was full of loose hay and sacks of feed which someone had laid a blanket over. I laid on top of them like a cushion and tried to ignore the snippets of male conversation I heard around me that speculated either that Von had been too rough with me again, or that I was actually with child and that was why I was generally so frail. They seemed to have conveniently forgotten, or perhaps not witnessed, my disastrous tumble on the battlefield. Slowly I realized lying in the bottom of the wagon hid me from view and the men gossiped not suspecting I was within earshot. I still had no idea what was happening to my lungs to cause my frailty. I suspected it was a side effect of my power and my ignorance about controlling it properly. I didn't know who could help me.

As the days passed I heard other things that weren't meant for my ears. I realized that Von had been dealing with rumors about drowning me in the bath ever since the accident, and that some of the men thought he'd injured me again in the tent. I was small and perhaps easy to miss at times, my dark coloring not catching the sunlight or firelight the way their pale skin did, and I realized that if I didn't speak up the men often didn't notice my presence at all.

"I bet it's not easy to get fucked by a bear every night," one of the men said crassly as we all sat eating stew around the encampment one evening. I realized they all knew I was "getting fucked" every night and sometimes multiple times a day. I had work to do as well but the little battles that would break out when we came across the Seelie, the persistent rumors that Von was beating his disobedient woman, and Von's own bearish temperament resulted in me loudly satisfying his needs whenever his temper threatened to boil over.

"Especially when you're a cat," one of the other men said, all of the men around them laughing like it was the funniest thing they'd ever heard. Von and I sat a little distance away in the darkness, but it wasn't as if it were a secret we were there. Small fires dotted the landscape around the encampment. The coarse men sat at one, and we simply sat not far away at another. I couldn't help myself. I was already tired of Von taking the brunt of it on his own and never saying anything, of watching him set his shoulders and simply ignoring it.

"Actually, I quite enjoy it," I piped up, Von suddenly going rigid next to me. "Although, I'm sure you're not familiar with the sounds of a woman actually enjoying herself."

The men around the two assholes laughed and jeered, Fentris laughing the loudest just across the campfire from me. Von had promoted him so many times we'd all lost track and now Fentris just sat with the officers all the time. He couldn't read, which was problematic for an officer, but I had started teaching him how to survey and read words related to cartography. He was smart and I was confident he would catch on quickly and by the time Krana could get his hands on him again, he'd be literate and decorated.

The men licked their wounds for a little while before trying again. "I bet you don't let him take you in the bath anymore, though, eh kitty cat?" Von turned suddenly as if he intended to shove the other man into the fire but my mouth was faster than either of us anticipated.

"Well, to tell you the truth, I don't enjoy sharing the bathhouse with men like your mother does."

"Holy shit," Fentris sputtered. The jeering refused to die down now and when the man who started it finally got up and left the fire pit the men howled after him about his mother.

Von put his arm around me and squeezed. "That's hardly language for a lady," he whispered in my ear.

"I'm a lieutenant, remember?"

One morning Lieutenant Reystra finally explained the rifts to me and what they were. "Why can't we go through them," I asked, not for the first time, "just go back to the fae realm?" I don't know why I kept asking. Maybe I was hoping for a different answer, or just for details that tight-lipped Von wouldn't give me.

He shook his head. "The Seelie unleashed something, some kind of elder magick. It's slowly consuming everything on the other side of the veil and spreading here, like a plague."

I wrinkled my nose at him. "If it spreads like a plague, why are we out here fighting them? What if we catch it or spread it? Wouldn't it be better if we didn't--"

Before I could finish Reystra shook his head and rolled his eyes at me. "This is war, Hanna. War means disease. We're soldiers, that's one of the risks we take. What would the alternative be? We let the humans deal with it and certainly make a bigger mess out of it? No," he scoffed, "we steer clear of them until we can't, you and Von especially."

"Why?" I asked, not understanding what Von and I had in common that would make us both susceptible to the "corruption." He'd given me the same crap about war and disease, but had left out that he and I were more susceptible to this "plague." We were blessedly alone, or Reystra might not have told me. He frowned and leaned across the crate we were using as a table to whisper in my ear.

"He's the personification of winter. Surely he told you that?"

I felt my whole face crinkle up in confusion. "The what?"

Reystra's eyes darted around, clearly making sure that Von was nowhere around us. Von didn't like Reystra, but I did and often found myself depending on him for assistance when Fentris was busy. Reystra was younger, like me, and like Von had only ended up in this mess because his father died when the Seelie unleashed whatever they had unsealed. Reystra also had a softer, more feminine energy than the other soldiers, and he confided in me about his budding relationship with the Captain he'd been assigned to share a tent with. I kept his secrets and he kept mine, though Von didn't understand our relationship and sometimes seemed jealous. Reystra was always wary of giving Von another reason to dislike his younger cousin. It wasn't just their personalities that were complete opposites of one another, either; Von was dark and brooding in looks and personality, and Reystra was the golden child in every other way. Golden curls tumbled over his ears, his skin sun-kissed from the desert, even his eyes flashed hazel with flecks of gold. Where Von was hard and chiseled, Reystra had a boyish face and pouty lips, his childish sense of humor shining through every feature.

"Von is the personification of winter," Reystra tried again. "You know, the bear."

I didn't know, but some things suddenly made more sense than before.

"That's why other people don't turn into bears?" I asked.

He frowned again. "He doesn't turn into a bear, or turn into a man. He's just both."

"But he looks like a man except when he sleeps," I sputtered.

"Yeah, he looks like a man because he wants you to see him as one. I guess he's more like a bear inside of a man, but that isn't why he's so terrifying. Most of us were something else in our realm. Wolves, foxes, stoats."

I tried to imagine Reystra as an animal. I remembered seeing Fentris as a shaggy black wolf in the tunnel. If he crossed through the rift, would he look like a wolf always? What would I look like?

"There are other bears then, right?" I asked, but he shook his head.

"Bears, yes, giant bears that wield snow and ice? No."

I stared at him for too long. Von was like me? That couldn't be right.

"He doesn't have any powers, though," I said, my voice full of confusion.

"Not on this side of the veil, no," Reystra admitted. "He drew his power from the land, but there's nothing for him to draw from here. When we get close to a big enough rift, you'll see. It will snow like you've never seen it snow."

Reystra's prediction would eventually turn out to be right. In the meantime, I obediently drew maps, but even I often had no idea where we were going. It felt like we were wandering in circles in the desert searching for something that wasn't there. I'd never been so far from Damaqas or spent so much time outside. As the spring gave away to summer the sand storms returned and we all donned robes and sand-blocking veils over our uniforms. The officers would all stand around and wait while Von stared at a map, focusing on something I couldn't sense. He would point at some rocky formation or a gully and the entire camp would move in that direction. Fentris and I would sometimes ride ahead, surveying and recording details that were missing. Some copies of Shadeem's sloppy maps still existed outside of my firebombed office and we found ourselves working from them every day while we wandered in places I had never been. I spent too much time cursing him and fixing his work. It was as if he was still alive, lying to my face and making more work for me every day.

The morning Reystra's prediction came true started out the way it always did. Shortly before dawn Von woke me, tied me to the pole in the center of our tent with the precious mage-rope, then tasted me while I squirmed. "You don't have to," I murmured as he made his way between my legs, but he shook his head and kissed the insides of my thighs.

"This is my treat," he whispered, and I had to shift my attention from arguing with him to controlling myself. We had learned the hard way that I could easily wake the entire camp, especially once he was on top of me filling me with his cock. He explored me gently with his tongue, sometimes nipping with his teeth, then sucking the most sensitive part of me into his mouth and rolling his tongue over it. I bucked against his mouth, my back arching against him as I tried to press myself into him more and more. One of his hands roamed upward until it found a nipple and pinched it, hard, just as his tongue swirled into my core. Once his tongue dipped inside of me he went feral every time, panting as he probed deeper and deeper inside of me, desperately tasting every bit that he could reach. I tried to clench his tongue and cried out in spite of my best efforts to keep myself quiet. He didn't stop feasting on me to warn me to be quiet, instead he clamped my nipple even harder, a punishment I had come to expect for not being good.

My teeth sank into my bottom lip as I hummed with pleasure, every muscle in my body contracting harshly as another wave of intense pleasure washed over me. I couldn't take much more of it without screaming and tried to push him away with my legs. I knew it would only inflame his appetite for me but still I pushed until he growled at me. He paused only long enough to gag me with a rag and his belt, then harshly pushed my legs open. "Mine," he snarled at me then dove back in, fucking me with his tongue and fingers while my body shook beneath him. I watched as he dug his fingers into me, then pulled them out and licked them clean. He reminded me of a bear with a beehive each time he was like this and I came on his tongue as it roughly explored me for more. Once he'd had his fill, and not a second before, he grinned up at me from between my legs and kissed his way back up as he rose. When he stood and left me there I tried not to whine. Over time he'd become more aggressive, possessive, and demanding, and I let him get away with it because I loved it even though he often seemed a little embarrassed afterward. I tried to wait patiently while I wondered what he was up to, but I didn't have to wait long.

He returned quickly with rope and I watched as he wrapped the first length of rope around the thigh and calf of one of my legs, then did the same to the other, keeping them bent and open for him. It wasn't enough for him to tie up my hands and take my power from me; he had to own my body in every way and as time went by he surprised me with the ways he found to exert control over me. I could tell his resolve was shattering when he roughly yanked the gag out of my mouth and straddled my face. I obediently opened my mouth and allowed him to use my throat however he wanted to while he feasted on me again. Some mornings we spent so much time like this that it never went further. Once in a while, Fentris would come to wake us and find Von using me roughly, then would leave without a word. Von was in charge and could have given the order to break camp whenever he wanted, but on those mornings when Fentris walked in on us he would quickly finish and leave to apologize to Fentris.

This morning, however, he had woken me much earlier than usual, clearly intent on getting everything he wanted out of me. I tried not to gag as he slid into my throat, but when I did he moaned loudly and bucked a little, triggering another gag and a small flood of pre-cum as I struggled beneath him. He withdrew just long enough for me to catch my breath, then plunged back in and rapidly rocked his hips against me, showing me exactly how he would fuck me once he was done with my mouth. I squeezed my quivering lips around him and wiggled my tongue against his shaft as much as I could with my mouth pushed to its limit. He kissed and bit my thighs in excitement, growling and groaning and praising me before he dipped his tongue back into my center. I yelped and moaned, vibrating his cock as it reached the back of my throat again, drawing out all sorts of wet noises as he reached new depths. I felt like he was always pushing my limits, trying to see what he could get away with, and he was once again trying to break me a little more for his own pleasure.