The Third Son Book 2
Copyright© 2026 by G Younger
Chapter 7
Fantasy Sex Story: Chapter 7 - Thomas Mycroft thought the border’s monsters were a far‑northern problem—until soldiers and children vanish from his own barracks and a cold, clever thing begins to pull at men’s minds. Bound to a direwolf pack and a weaponized knowledge stone he only half understands, Thomas rides north to rip the rot from the ground. But while he hunts the heart of a ruin that feeds on the living, merchants and nobles conspire in the city below. His wife, Princess Regent Catherine, faces knives.
Caution: This Fantasy Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Romantic High Fantasy Horror Mystery Magic Slow Violence
Thomas stood in the dim staging room, a piece of chalk heavy in his hand. He pressed it to the slate board, the grit scratching loudly in the silence as he marked the hours.
Eight in the morning until high noon: Drill in the Yard.
Noon until one: Mess as a Group.
One until five: Maintenance in the Armory.
He stared at the lines and every hour was accounted for, every movement tracked. It was a net woven tight enough to catch life itself and hold it still.
“You’re squeezing them too hard, Thomas.” Roger leaned against the heavy oak table, his arms crossed over a chest weathered by more winters than Thomas had years. Roger smelled of leather and pine resin, scents that usually brought comfort, but now, they only reminded Thomas of the woods they weren’t patrolling.
“You’re running them like prisoners serving a sentence,” Roger continued, his voice rough but not unkind. “They need wind in their lungs; pen them up like this, and their spirits will break.”
Thomas didn’t look up as he scrubbed a smudge beside Hyde’s name and rewrote the time, pressing until the chalk squeaked.
“They aren’t prisoners, Roger; they’re prey.”
“They’re Rangers, or trying to be.” Roger shifted, and his jerkin creaked, the leather protesting. “Lock a hound in a kennel too long, and it loses its nose. Keep these boys bunched up like sheep, and they’ll start acting like sheep. Fear spreads, Thomas. It’s a disease.”
Thomas finally turned. He dropped the chalk into the tray.
“Sheep get eaten because they wander off,” Thomas said quietly. “Kael is gone, vanished from a locked room. Until I know how, nobody moves alone, not to the privy, not to the mess, and certainly not to the walls. If they breathe, they breathe in pairs.”
Roger held his gaze. The older man’s face was a ledger of the wild, scored by decades of sun and wind. He didn’t like it. Roger believed in instincts, in the freedom of the woods, in a man’s ability to handle his own survival. But Roger hadn’t searched Kael’s room and felt the cold drain from the air, hadn’t tasted that metallic tang of magic gone wrong.
“Two by two,” Roger conceded. “I’ll tell the duty sergeants. But young Brann is already acting strange, jumpy; put him in a box, and he’ll claw the walls.”
“Better he claws the walls than vanishes through them.” Thomas grabbed his gloves and pulled them on with jerky movements, hiding the tremor in his hands. “Keep the rotation tight. If anyone’s late, even by a heartbeat, sound the horn. I don’t care if they’re just tying their boots; sound it.”
“Understood.”
Thomas checked the hang of his sword and stepped into the corridor. The air pressed thick and damp from the weeping walls, heavy with things unspoken. He’d built a cage of rules to catch a ghost, and deep in his gut, he prayed the bars were close enough together.
In the council chamber, Thomas sat at the head of the long table. Catherine was to his right, her hands folded on a stack of grain reports, her spine impeccable, and her eyes scanning the room the way a hawk watches tall grass. To his left, slightly behind him, Lady Maria stood by the window. Her presence kept the scribes and junior ministers from whispering.
Master Hollen wasn’t there, and neither was Lord Varric. Their absence spoke of backroom deals and sharpened knives.
Thomas focused on the clerk at the foot of the table.
“The western granaries,” he said.
His outward appearance was level, calm. He needed to be stone in the current: unmoved, unremarkable.
“Yes, my prince,” the clerk said, fumbling with a ledger. “Stocks are adequate, but the Merchant Guild suggests a hold on military requisition until the autumn tithe is verified.”
“Denied. Requisition proceeds as scheduled. The garrison at Montrose requires winter stores. Release the grain.”
“But Master Hollen has—”
“The grain belongs to the Crown.” Catherine’s voice was lighter than his, but it cut cleanly through the clerk’s hesitation. “Master Hollen manages transport, not supply. If his wagons are unavailable, we’ll use the royal levy. Ensure the order is drafted by noon.”
The clerk swallowed and scribbled.
Thomas watched the quill scratch across paper; it was routine, logistics, and tedium. If he kept the machinery grinding forward, it gave conspirators less friction to grab. It was a performance of normalcy, a mask for fear.
“Next item: the armory inventory for the northern ride.”
He kept his sentences short, knowing that whatever he said would be repeated in the taverns by sunset.
’The prince is calm, the prince is planning a ride, and the prince isn’t afraid.’
The heavy oak doors boomed open.
A runner stumbled in, a boy from the stables, his chest heaving, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and rain, his boots skidding on the marble. His ragged breathing filled the sudden silence. He stopped ten paces from the table, his face gray, his eyes wide and yet blind. His mouth worked, but no sound came.
“My prince,” he finally gasped.
He choked on the next word, swallowed convulsively, and looked back toward the door as if something terrible stood just beyond it.
Thomas’s pulse spiked, and he shoved back from the table, his chair shrieking across the stone floor. The clerk flinched.
Thomas was moving before the chair hit the wall. He didn’t dismiss the council or close the agenda, just rounded the table, his boots hammering urgency against stone.
Catherine was already rising. Similarly, she didn’t ask, didn’t look for permission, just shoved her chair back and fell into step beside him, stride matching his, her face set in cold fury.
Lady Maria glided. Guards stumbled aside as her robes swept past.
Let them talk.
The main corridor was a tunnel of gray stone, lit by guttering torches. Thomas ran.
Not a sprint. Panic killed stamina, and he might need to fight. But he moved at a relentless, ground-eating pace, his sword hilt slamming against his hip with every stride. Servants pressed themselves into alcoves, clutching trays and laundry, looking at his face and quickly away.
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, quieting his mind even as his body moved. He pushed his senses out.
His wood sense.
It was harder here. The forests sang to him, alive and vibrant, but the castle was mute stone, layer upon layer of granite and mortar that dulled the living world. Using his sense there was like trying to see through muddy water.
Thomas forced the sense outward in short, sharp bursts, saving his strength as he reached for life.
A guard stood at the corner, his heart hammering.
Two maids were in the linen closet, their hushed whispers drifting like smoke.
Catherine was beside him. Her will wasn’t wild the way a wolf’s was, couldn’t be read like a beast’s instinct, but she burned beside him, bright and hard against the castle’s gray murk.
He reached for the Ranger barracks ahead.
The recruits were frantic, their chaotic fear swirling like a storm. Thomas sensed Roger’s steady rhythm underneath, like an old oak root anchoring a sliding hill.
But not Sera.
Her absence punched through him—not hiding, not sleeping, but a void, a hole where a person should be, silence where there should be breath.
He rounded the final corner, his boots skidding, and caught his balance, then surged toward the heavy barracks door.
Two guards stood there, their swords drawn, their faces pale, and their hands white-knuckled on their weapons. Griffin looked grim.
“Report,” Thomas snapped.
“No one in or out, my prince.” Griffin’s voice trembled. “My men stood the watch, and the door was barred from the inside. They heard nothing.”
“The shutters?”
“Latched. We checked the outside wall ... nothing.”
Thomas shoved past them. The door stood open now, the heavy iron-reinforced bar leaning where Roger had clearly removed it.
He stepped inside, and Griffin followed.
The Ranger barracks stretched long and low, lined with bunks.
Infuriatingly normal: the beds were made tight, their blankets smoothed; gear racks in disciplined rows, the bows unstrung, the quivers full. The stone floor was swept clean, and a fire crackled low in the hearth, casting dancing shadows.
It looked safe and secure, but Thomas knew better.
Roger stood in the middle of the room, staring at an empty bunk midway down the left wall.
Thomas walked to it. The wool blanket lay flat, and the pillow was uncreased; Sera’s gear hung on the peg.
Her boots were tucked under the frame.
She hadn’t fled. She had simply ceased to be.
“Timeline,” Thomas demanded. He studied the stone floor, searching for a scuff, a drop of blood, a crumb of dirt ... anything.
Roger didn’t consult a list.
“Last roll call was at nine this morning. Sera was on her bunk, fletching arrows, with Hyde opposite her and Brann by the fire. The guard shift changed at ten, and the door was verified as barred. At ten-thirty, Hyde called out to her, got no answer, so he got up, checked, and found her bed empty.”
Ninety minutes in a locked room.
“Hyde,” Thomas said, turning.