We now return to the The Ancalite Wedding, already in progress:

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Skipio’s burns pulse in time with his heart. How many druids did he violate and butcher, punishing the Owl in effigy? An exact number stains his thoughts, every face clear in his mind, every act of brutality remembered in detail.

The real culprit behind his savagery stands before him now, with no mask or fiery crown. His milky skin shines beneath those coal-black curls. His raven eyes drift mischievously to Castor.

The lancer meets their challenge, unsheathing his dagger until Skipio extends an arm.

“No blood spills before the imperator’s tent,” he decrees.

Before Castor can protest, Caesar emerges from the tent and flaps with a voluptuous woman under his arm. Unlike most women on this island, her teeth are plentiful, and her braided hair is clean.

“Your son awaits you, Lady Avalin,” he says, seeing her off.

The woman moves with a Roman matron’s flirtatious grace, gently touching Titus Flavius’s clean-shaven cheek. “What a beautiful shade you are,” she says, her smile dying before Skipio.

“Traitorous cunt,” shouts the Owl’s mother.

Avalin avoids the seething woman and puts her hand on Skipio’s armored chest. She turns her eyes to the Owl. “Perhaps some time with this Roman will mature you enough to be worth something before you die,”

“I don’t deserve such kindness,” says the druid.

“I curse you, you traitorous bitch,” his mother snarls. “Your boy won’t live to see the first snow!”

Skipio comes between them. “And you won’t live to see her son’s death,” he promises as the druid’s lifeless eyes survey his frame.

“Yes, her blood will answer for Lucius Vitus Servius,” Caesar agrees, clutching Skipio’s shoulder. “And her death ends any further quest for vengeance against her bloodline.”

The bitch whispers to her son, keen to know the spoken Latin.

Skipio accepts Caesar’s mandate with a salute, while a seething Castor begrudgingly follows suit.

“Poor, pretty, Bitch Eyes,” the Owl taunts in his native tongue. “Now, you’ll never get to bleed me out.”

His mother laughs until Skipio cuffs her son in the gut.

“Animal,” she cries. “Attacking a man smaller than you!”

Avalin departs, passing the line of Bibroci prisoners led by a centurion. Filing past, the women thank Skipio for his protection, but their leader, the druidess, refuses, saying nothing until the widest of the chieftains emerges from Caesar’s tent.

The bearded man sets his beady eyes on mother and son as he embraces the druidess.

“Where’s Alon?” the druidess demands.

Skipio knows full well the mousy man travels with Castor, who steps up and answers her in her language. “He escaped to the countryside,” he tells her.

“Escaped my arse,” says the Owl. “Alon would rather be a Roman whore than a Bibroci son,”

Skipio punches him in the stomach once more, dropping the narrow man to his knees.

“You brute,” the woman rails. “Pick on a man your own size!”

“Where is he, Owl King?” the chieftain demands, lording over the druid.

His mother steps to the man. “Fuck you, you fat fuck,”

“I didn’t give you up, Chinny,” says the chieftain.

The Owl’s leg shoots up, and a loud crack comes as his foot collides with the chieftain’s nose. The portly man shrieks in pain, cradling his face. The Romans observing find it funny, but Caesar isn’t laughing.

*

Skipio snatches hold of Aedan’s delectable curls, and Luna whinnies as her master drags away her barbarian son.

Ciniod follows them, tripping over her ropes.

“My blood,” she sobs in language. “Not the blood of my boy,”

“She offers her blood,” Castor says, following them. “Not her son’s,”

Skipio wraps his free hand around the Aedan’s throat.

“Tell her that her boy owes me more than blood,”

Castor tells her this, grinning when she falls onto Skipio’s feet.

“Please,” she pleads. “Do not take my son’s life,”

Skipio pushes Aedan to his knees and yanks his head back. The druid’s hair smells like campfire, and kissing his forehead salts Skipio’s lips.

“He’ll take his own life by the time I’m through,” he promises, rubbing the kiss away with his chin.

Laughter rises among those gathering around them.

“You never caught me,” Aedan taunts in Greek.

Skipio releases him and stares down at the man on his knees with humored eyes.

“Yet here you are, caught!”

“Not by you,” Black orbs defy him. “Servius Tribune,”

Skipio backhands the insolent druid, and for this, he gets a stinging foot across the mouth.

Aedan kicks at the Roman again, but the handsome fucker snatches his ankle, knocking him to his back and dragging him over the grass.

The sinewy Ancalite poses no threat without his weaponized legs. Skipio merrily tows him to the archery field, a short trip made long by the druid’s resistance.

Planus and Castor follow, and Actus also arrives as word spreads among the departing legion of the Owl’s capture.

“No,” screams Ciniod on their heels. “My blood, not his,”

A rowdy crowd gathers at the far field, where grass gives way to muddy earth. They surround Skipio and his prisoner, and he asks the mob what he should do with the mighty Owl King.

The suggestions fly, many violent enough to give a decent man pause. Skipio plants his sword in the mud and confronts the emotionless Aedan.

“Rome demands your life,” he says in Greek.

“You know my birth name, Skippy-oh,” Aedan taunts. “Say it!”

Ciniod falls to her knees beside her son.

“Why do you bait him?” she asks.

“His violence,” says Aedan, “it tickles my soul,”

“What did he say?” Skipio asks Castor, whose upper lip rises in disgust.

“He dares not translate,” Planus says. “Fuel is the last thing your lust needs,”

Aedan watches as the virile Roman strips off his armor.

“Curse me,” Ciniod hisses. “You’re in love with this fucker,”

Aedan turns to her. “Love. Is this what love feels like?”

“Oh, my boy, I never thought you capable.” His mother softens, and the corners of her mouth lift. “Is this really what you want?”

Aedan nods slowly.

“He’s going to kill you,” she warns him. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Someday.” Aedan’s crooked smirk appears. “But not today,”

Skipio kneels before them and cuffs him by the back of the neck.

“Enough talking, Ay-dawn,” he growls in Greek. “It’s time for my cock to poke that throat,”

Aedan lewdly pushes out his tongue.

“Oh, I should’ve known.” Ciniod swings her head as the crowd laughs. “Should have known you’d kill me one way or another with that narrow ass of yours,”

Joy sparks in Aedan’s eyes, the first she’s seen of it since he became a man. He wrenches free of the Roman and embraces her, and at that moment, her mind returns to their first walk on the beach when his toddling delight meant more to her than life itself.

Ciniod stands and undoes her sinew belt.

“He’s yours,” she shouts, taking the Roman’s arm and looping the cord around it and her son’s. “For better or worse, more times worse, I reckon.”

Laughter towers from Roman watchers versed in her language.

“Skipio’s a married man now,” Planus exclaims, inciting the crowd again.

“I’ve never been able to deny you, you little shit,” she says, her son’s head rising. “Get on with it. I’d rather you do it than them.”

Without warning, Aedan’s narrow blade drags across her neck. The crowd retreats a pace, collectively gasping as Aedan puts a hand on his mother’s seeping wound and lays her down slowly. Then, he flicks a handful of blood at the Roman, tainting the man’s eyes with stinging red.

Castor jumps into the fray, his dagger out.

“You’ll pay for killing Drusus,” he snarls, until a swift backflip strikes him in the jaw, sending a tooth skyward.

The mob cheers, and Skipio tosses an unconscious Castor into their arms.

Aedan rips off his smock, revealing his pale chest. With his smile bent, he yanks the waistband of his tartan britches to his navel and begins cartwheeling around the circle.

The soldiers move back with each cycle he rounds, widening the arena for the druid and their Tribune. No one dares touch the acrobatic man, while Skipio, his brawny arms folded, watches with steely calm when the druid liberates a sword from an unsuspecting infantry soldier.

Aedan tosses it at the Roman bastard’s feet. He flips over, vaulting backward over a horse and striking its rider’s back with both hands. The sentry falls, and Aedan swipes his lance.

Skipio takes his sword in hand, then collects the other given to him by the druid. He stands sure as the boney Owl prances toward him, spear twirling in a dexterous hand.

“You want to poke my throat,” Aedan says in Greek. “You got to earn it,”

Skipio begins their dance a thrust. The druid moves back as he drives forward, and they coast across the circle, exchanging deft swings, quick dodges, and cunning stabs.

The mob inhales together as the Owl sunders a sword from their Tribune, but when the nimble man vaults Skipio’s head, he catches an ankle and hammers the druid to the ground.

A spry leg sweeps the Roman behind his knees. Quickly, he recovers, crab-walking to a fallen sword before racing down the backflipping druid.

Both blades swinging, Skipio’s body burns like a struck flint as Minerva reveals something new; through the druid’s acrobatics is a bulbous ankle. Tossing aside a sword, Skipio reaches out and catches it.

The agile Aedan finds himself caught, but before the Roman slaps him ground, Aedan wraps himself around the man like a serpent, striking his taut backside with the spear.

Skipio growls from the sting and lobs the druid skyward, but as he comes back down, he twists around and tosses the lance.

Aedan sticks the landing before seeing that a slight miscalculation buries the spear’s iron tip between the Roman’s feet. Without a second to spare, he punches the man in his gorgeous mouth.

Skipio swings his sword, slicing the belt around the druid’s trousers. Another backflip allows the druid to quickly shed them and send them into Skipio’s face. He clears the tartan from his eyes and finds the scrawny Owl struggling to free the spear from the ground.

A sword comes down from above, splitting the lance’s hilt as Aedan hurls himself over the Roman’s head.

Before the Lion can turn, the Owl punches his spine with a dangerous foot. He swings his sword back through the pain, his elbow finding purchase with the druid’s face.

The lithe bastard strikes the ground with his belly, and as he lies there, regaining his senses, a kill shot reveals itself to the Roman.

Skipio marches toward him, sword raised with murderous intent until the druid rises to his hands and knees.

♡ Small white buttocks crown a hairless bridge to a clean-shaven ball sack and huge cock. ♡

Venus reminds Skipio that any man can fuck a face, but Skipio Servius isn’t just any man.

Aedan shakes the blow from his head, but before he finds his feet, the Roman’s thick muscular body crushes him back into the mud.

“Bring me some oil,” the brute cries, and the mob cheers.

Titus orders his archers to disburse, but most ignore him as their Tribune stands tall, lifting the flailing druid by his neck. The skeletal Celt flits about like a rabbit held at the ears, his girthy erection bobbing for all to see.

Skipio forces the druid to his knees. He crouches beside him and presses his burned chest to the little fucker’s face.

“Are my scars hot?” he growls in Greek. “They burn me every day, A-dawn,”

Teeth cut into Skipio’s pectoral, an agonizing reward for his cruelty. He bounces the druid’s head off his knee, grasping his black curls and yanking him back to stop him falling.

Aedan cannot contain his desire, so many blows coupled with the taste of blood. A strong hand grips his arousal, jerking it violently while forcing his hot breath into Aedan’s ear.

Titus sounds the horn, forcing most to disburse while Planus and Actus stand watching as the druid lustily arches his back and whines. Suddenly, the druid’s cock spits.

Hot spunk covering his fingers, Skipio releases the druid as if poisoned.

Aedan picks himself up from the mud, turning on his knees, he yanks aside the Roman’s lower tunic.

Eyes wet with desire, the bastard undoes the hip-knot of Skipio’s loincloth and slides his bloody mouth onto Skipio’s length. The druid’s tongue cracks every nerve Skipio possesses, the man’s hand working his foreskin with a whore’s masterful skill.

Aedan takes the man’s monstrous flesh to the hairs, choking and bringing up a thickness that he takes in hand and slathers onto his crack. He turns around and presents his hole, standing on his hands and knees like a bitch in heat.

Coarse desires vent like a volcano.

Skipio snakes an eager arm around those knobby hips and guides his cockhead in the darkened cleave between the druid’s buttocks.

Driven one last time to resist, Aedan kicks back, striking the man’s corded groin with his heel. He flips onto his back, eager for the fist that comes for his mouth. One strike follows another until Aedan’s senses become one with the clouds.

Blood masks the giddy druid’s face. And for Skipio, it is a siren’s song. He rolls the punch-drunk fool onto his stomach and hooks an arm under his waist. One shove takes him deep, his foreskin pinched by the man’s tightness.

Aedan eagerly bears down, swallowing the Roman’s flesh with a contented wail. Skipio’s soul croons within the druid. He dreams of being buried deep until the world ends and the heavens fade.

Lost in their violent tryst, the Lion and the Owl trade vile grunts and cling to one another like rutting animals.

Those still watching fall silent. This is not justice or retribution. It is an open door to a brothel room. Some leave in disgust, others follow with uncertain looks upon their mugs. Actus is one of them, undone by the sordid scene before him.

Skipio’s heart smiles when the druid’s cock spits without a coaxing hand. Aedan shudders, his mouth slack and his tongue tasting the air. Skipio’s desires crest stronger than they ever have before, and he empties himself in the druid with a guttural cry.

Aedan presses his face and his belly into the mud, content for the first time in his short, miserable life.

Skipio falls onto the mud, arms resting on his risen knees.

Castor crawls beside him. “What are you doing?”

Pearly juice drips from the druid’s ashy cleave, a vision that satisfies Skipio more than it should.

Castor shoves the dagger at him.

“Kill him, Skipio, and be done with it!”

Aedan lazily flops onto his back.

“My lion,” he murmurs in Greek, long fingers reaching for his Roman bride. “You’re as fierce as the day you came of the reeds,”

♡ Skipio loses his breath. ♡

“Am I fierce?” he whispers.

“The fiercest thing alive,” says the druid, baring his crimson-stained teeth. “And you’re mine,”

Skipio wishes to cut his heart out and feed it to the druid.

“If you ever cared for me,” Castor cries. “You’ll send him to the underworld,”

Luna is there beside them. She folds her front legs and lays her long muzzle across the druid’s neck.

“Looir,” Aedan whispers, arm crooking over her mane.

Skipio tosses the dagger away as Castor wails beside him. “Oh, Venus,” Planus whispers. “You conspire with Mars to test and bless our dear Skipio.”