The Mabon Feast (Wheel of the Year)

There were some things that transcended species, a lesson well learned in a place like Cambric Creek.
Not so different at all, Ladybug considered.

“Prepare for your feast night, little bug.”
Once the last of the water had drained from the tub, Anzan stood over her with the fluffiest towel from the linen closet, staring down at her bare form.
“Just as beautiful as the nights you sing your strange songs to the moon.”

He
had
been watching her.
A bubble of giddiness filled her chest, pushing the loneliness and grief aside, at least for the moment as she was lifted in his strong arms, the speed in which she was carried to her bedroom leaving her absolutely
certain
he’d been traipsing all about her house while she slept.
Her hair was plaited into intricate braids, criss-crossed and weaving, wrapped around her head and secured like a crown, a beautiful design she never would have been able to manage on her own.

“You’ll join me?”

His sharp nail was a cool pressure as he caressed her cheek once more, a pressure she leaned into, shivering beneath the weight of those eight, unblinking eyes before he inclined his head.

“If it would please you, my little bug.”

W
e give thanks to the
mother for her bounty.”

Athame, chalice, ring.
Apples and honey, sweet incense on the fire, crystals and elixirs charging in the bright white moonlight.
Ladybug breathed around tears as she stared up at the moon, full and luminous and ancient; stared up at the same moon that countless women like her had stared up at since time immemorial. The Aunts would be proud, she decided.

He stood behind her, tucked into the shadows of the makeshift covering on the flagstones.
The rain had come down earlier, but the sky was clear as she gazed up for a moment longer before joining her quiet companion.
Anzan was silent as she set the athame in its altar spot, arranging the key and the five-petaled vervain.
His many eyes had stayed locked on her form as she performed the ancient rights beneath the moon, watched when she’d slipped from her ceremonial robe to stand skyclad beneath the winking stars, watched as he’d watched her every month since the spring.
Now she smiled, lifting the chalice she’d been left by the Aunts, their mother’s before them, her mother’s before that.
Relics of the past that were her birthright, like her place beneath the moon.

The feast she’d prepared was small but hearty, the fragrant pumpkin soup overtaking, for the moment, the heady, musky aroma of the still-aroused araneaen beside her.

“Now what, little bug?”

“Now we eat.
Then you’ll need to make a web in the center of the yard, high enough to hold me .
.
.
is that something you can do?”

Anzan’s smile was sharp, the moonlight glinting off his fangs once more.

“I think I can manage that.”

“We’ll need to start planning our Samhain celebration soon.”
His smile remained as she reached to push a lock of shiny black hair from his face.

“It was me, you know.”
Ladybug wasn’t sure if she would ever get used to his absolute stillness, nor the sensation of his rippling eyes.
She took the opportunity to cut herself another slice of the apple tart, avoiding his heavy, weighted gaze.

“You?”

“Me.
It was me.
I’m the reason your heat was so .
.
.
hot.
I smelled you.
I wanted you.
But I didn’t know it was you!
I didn’t know I wanted
you
you.
I smelled you and I started dreaming of .
.
.
it doesn’t matter.
It was me.
I was the receptive female.
I think I would have smelled you from the other side of the world.”

The harvest moon made his blue eyes glitter,

The Mabon feast hadn’t been as lonely as she’d feared.
Ladybug yelped when he lifted her, strong hands at her waist picking her up as though she were a doll, his arachnid lower half raising, raising, until she felt half a story in the air.
Black eyes rippled, but his blue eyes had narrowed, a firm hand gripping her chin as he glowered.

“You?
You smelled me?”
She could smell him still, the primal scent of black musk and arousal, wondering how he might bind her that night.
“It took you long enough to let me know, little bug.”
His voice was a growl and her laughter was swallowed up by his mouth, sealing against hers in a kiss, the spark of his venom sweet on her tongue.

hen she was cut loose
at last, she was placed in the claw-footed tub in the bathroom across from her own bedroom, the water steaming hot as he gently rubbed feeling back into her limp, exhausted limbs.
Ladybug had her first thrill of fear when she directed him to her work kitchen to fetch the loose herbs that would bring down the inflammation in her well-used body.
The speed with which Anzan left made her jolt, the speed and the silence, returning after just a brief moment with the exact herbs she’d requested.
He could have been coming downstairs the whole time, she realized.
The silence of all those months before his heat had made him clumsy and heavy with need .
.
.
he could have been moving silently throughout the entire house, examining her work space, standing over her bed as she slept, his numerous legs moving over each other in a seamless, graceful ballet.

But I don’t care,” she continued after a moment, resolve replacing the despair.
“I’m not going to let them stop me from practicing.
I don’t miss them.
A witch does not need a coven, and I
am
a witch.”

Anzan was silent as he rinsed the lather from her hair, and as it had been for the better part of the last four months, his silence was a balm.
It didn’t matter if they went back to their separate existences after this night, for he would be just upstairs, a silent, comforting presence as he had been all this time.
Alone, together.

“In the place where I’m from, marriages are of great importance.”
His voice was as serious as it ever was, and Ladybug raised her eyes, tipping her head back to watch him as he spoke.
A tightly brokered business, he explained, and the competing clans were vicious.
“A daughter’s bride price can lift a family from poverty,” he explained, “but a son might bankrupt a clan unable to pay a bride price.
Two sons is ruinous.”
There was no greater dishonor for a clan than having a son reach mating age without a secured marriage.
“When we come of age, unmated sons are cast out.
The elders do not want the smell of a younger, virile competitor near the wives, and the family who could not pay is rid of their shame.
There is no remorse for the sons who are sent away.
We’re not welcome anywhere we go, for the violence of our kind is well known to all, but it matters not.
They’re relieved to be rid of us.”

“Cast out?”
She craned her neck back, watching his black eyes blink in a wave, the dark fringe of lashes on his cobalt eyes lower as he dipped his head in a slow nod.
Cast out.
Just as she had been.

A baby?”
Anzan interrupted, hands stilling in her hair.
“That’s uncivilized even by the standards of
my
kind.
What kind of baby?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she shook her head, hands trembling beneath the bathwater at the memory of that night.
“There are places in the city that traffick in such things, but it doesn’t
matter
.
It wouldn’t have worked.”
She turned in the tub to face him, gripping the porcelain edges tightly with whitened knuckles.
“Real magic requires sacrifice, every true witch knows this.
If you’ve a spell that calls for rendered fat that must be human, you must carve it from your own belly.
The sacrifice of another will not work in your stead, every
true
witch knows this.
I would not compromise all I’ve been taught for the sake of their false smiles, so they cast me out.”
Her tentative composure broke, and Ladybug was unable to keep her shoulders from shaking.
“Cast out of the circle, the only woman in my family .
.
.
and they didn’t care.
What am I supposed to do?
Who am I supposed to be?
What am I, if I’m not a witch?”

What do we say, little bug?”

She twisted,
needing
his venom, the smell of his heat still fogging her mind.
It would be over soon, she was certain, and then she would wait, wait for the smell of his arousal to reach her when the seasons changed again, and then she would not make
him
wait again.

“
Please

No god has ever been gifted with such a sweet nectar.”

A strand was plucked and the web swung, positioning her in such a way that his mouth was suddenly beneath her, allowing him to drink from her pulsing cunt like a chalice.

By then she understood his request.
He wanted to bite her, for his venom to make her pliable once more; wanted to mount her again, to fuck her until she was practically unconscious, and it
should
have terrified her.
She should have been horrified, frightened that there was no end in sight to the way he used her body, for that intoxicating smell still weighed upon her and Anzan was nowhere near satisfied, his cock still heavy and erect — perhaps not as swollen as it had been in her room the previous night, but his climaxes still yielded a warm gush of silvery fluid into her at regular intervals, with no end in sight — but she only felt delirious with pleasure, his venom filling in the gaps of her body’s ability to withstand being fucked repeatedly.

It was her own fault, though, Ladybug reminded herself.
She’d asked, at some point the previous night, if araneaen heats always lasted this long, if he would ever find relief .
.
.
only to be shocked by his answer.

“It’s never been like this before,” he’d admitted darkly, remaking a portion of the great web to place her in a new angle.
“They come on twice a year, but without a receptive female the urge quickly passes.”

“Wh-what do you mean?
What receptive female?”

He’d pressed his lips in a grim line before continuing, lifting her like a doll to fit into the new configuration.

“Females in my culture are .
.
.
I do not know the word for it in your tongue.
They determine mating.
They are revered above all others.”
Ladybug swallowed, thinking of his deference from that first moment out on her sidewalk.
“Our males go into heat, but it is up to the female to decide if she is receptive.
If there is a female who wants to mate, our heats will continue so that she might find us.
But .
.
.
I don’t know why this happened,” he added wryly.

She
knew the reason though, gasping as he entered her from behind, a hand around her throat, a hand cupping her breasts, two hands holding her hips with a bruising force as he rutted.
She had lain in her bed, night after night, listening to him pace, her arousal growing as the smell of him increased.
He’d been putting out a pheromone for
her
.
And you left him wanting for

nearly a month
.
How could she deny him now?

“Then have me,” she wheezed, head still spinning from her climax, an echo of her words from the previous night.
His tongue danced over the line of her femoral artery, his sharp fangs grazed her skin .
.
.
but still he refrained, toying with her

ny other partner might
have been flagging after two releases, but the black smell of his arousal was still great, and when he withdrew from her again, his cock still stood thick and hard.

She was reminded of the cat’s cradle game she'd played as a child when a long, talon-tipped finger plucked at a silky, sticky strand, swinging her around to face the floor, moving her like a puppet.
The braided webbing holding her legs was pulled, bending her in a way she didn’t realize her body could move, never having been that coordinated or flexible before, but in his hands, she was as graceful as an aerialist.

“No other will take you as a mate.”
His voice was a silky purr against her back, and she whimpered when long fingers pressed into her folds, seeking and circling around her clit.
A hand at her stomach, a hand wrapped around her throat, the fourth pressed to the small of her back — he was gauging her reactions, she realized, the digits moving over her aching pearl searchingly, repeating the motion whenever her pulse quickened or her breath gasped, zeroing in with precision when she moaned.
“No other will mate you while I draw breath, little bug.
I swear it to you.”

Threat or promise, she couldn’t tell, but when his cock pressed into her once more, those ridges dragging over the spots previously undiscovered, she nearly sobbed.
A promise, she decided, opening her mouth to suck him in, to choke and drown on the smell of him as he began to thrust, filling her so completely there was no way to tell when he ended and she began, filling her until they were one.
A promise that might be the end of her lonely days and nights.

She was able to hear the bells of the clocktower downtown ringing in the dawn all too soon, her body hanging limp in the intricate bonds.
He’d come into her close to a dozen times by then, the web-woven basin he’d created beneath her sloshing with his shimmering release.

“Do you need to sleep, my little bug?”

Fangs grazed her neck and she heard the
shink!
of his razor-like talon slicing her wrists free.
Several more cuts and she dropped, cradled in his many arms: one around her back, another under her legs as a hand smoothed at her hair, still a fourth wiping gently between her legs.
Her eyelids were weighted and heavy, her head unable to lift from his shoulder, but she was enormously pleased with herself.
She’d helped him through his heat, and the peace in her home could be restored.
She was a healer, after all, and she’d not even needed to employ spellwork.

Despite the sunlight streaming through the windows, darkness closed in steadily.
She was still cradled to his strong chest, and Ladybug thought that when she woke, after finishing the day’s chores, she would tap on the attic door to remind him to join her for the Mabon feast.

he was swaying when
she returned to consciousness later that morning, after sleeping for several hours curled in his arms.
She could not see.
Her wrists were bound securely in the springy web, and the sticky, silken strands moved down her body in an intricate diamond pattern, cupping her breasts and wrapping over her hips in a way that rendered her motionless.
Her ankles were bound as snugly as her wrists, her legs splayed open in a way wouldn’t have been able to manage for long on her own, her positioning reminding her of a carnival she’d attended long ago, and the beautiful, bird-like woman who’d used columns of silk knotted around her body to traverse the air.
Ladybug tensed when the web bounced with his movement, feeling him near, her eyelids fluttering uselessly beneath the blindfold.
She could feel the heat of his mouth hovering over her sex, could almost feel the wetness of his tongue sliding against her,
needed
to feel the tingle of his venom .
.
.
but he held back and she whimpered as his fangs scraped the delicate skin of her inner thigh, struggling against her bonds.

“Let me have you, little bug.”

She was unable to answer, unable to form coherent thought, as mute and insensible as she’d been a dozen other times before, although not for reasons as pleasurable.
His tongue was a molten heat, stroking against her slickened folds and licking her clit with a slow, tortuous motion.
It had been a very long night, and he’d proven a devoted student, as dedicated to his craft as she was to hers.
The delicate petals of her sex were a mystery to him, she’d discovered, so different from females of his own kind, and he’d diligently suckled and stroked, using fingers and tongue to bring her to climax in between his own until she was too over-sensitized to continue, earning another flash of that rare smile.

Now he did not hold back, employing the tricks he’d learned over the course of his study until she was writhing.
His fangs dragged over the delicate skin of her inner thigh as his tongue delved, fucking her in a slow undulation as her clit was trapped between two kneading knuckles.
A hand at her hair, a hand at her breast .
.
.
she had studied him as well, and learned his favorite places to lavish attention.
When his tongue carried a glimmering droplet from his fangs to her hooded pearl, Ladybug was unable to stifle the way she whined, nor the way she struggled against the webbing binding her.

“Let me have you, little bug,” he repeated, a whisper against her thigh before her clit was sucked into his mouth and flooded in venom, words dying her throat, supplanted with a half-strangled sob as he sucked and lapped until she was a quivering, boneless heap, thankful for the web as she came against his tongue.