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  "Aren't you going to ask me to go easy on you?" Sean teased and then grabbing his shirt he pulled it up over his head and tossed it on the floor.

  "Oh hells no! I expect you to work, lion-boy!" Daelyn giggled.

  Just then Roxy sauntered into the room, stark naked with four pitchers, two of which were filled with beer.

  "Now! Let's get this party started!" Roxy laughed.

  Sean picked up Daelyn, and carefully carried her to the center of the bed, while kissing her. Thankfully the bed here was rather large, so getting the four of them on it wouldn't be too much of a problem.

  He took his time with Daelyn, working her up slowly, making love to her. This would be her first encounter with tantric magic, as well as her first encounter with a spell this powerful. So he wanted it to be special for her.

  Roxy and Jolene were already romantically entwined, as they started to get relaxed and in the mood as well. Sean wondered just how this was going to work, but when he moved to mount Daelyn, Jolene had him lay on his back, with Daelyn on top of him, sitting upright. Roxy then straddled his face, only this time she was facing away from Daelyn and lying forward started in on Jolene as he started in on Roxy.

  Daelyn didn't seem to mind at that point, and Sean was massaging Daelyn's chest with one hand, while massaging Roxy's with the other, as they all climbed towards their heights.

  Sean brought up his monitoring spell and could see that Jolene was working her magic, and if what he was seeing was right, Daelyn definitely wasn't 'average' when it came to energy from a female dwarf. Pinching a couple of nipples and getting creative with his other efforts as well, Sean watched as they all started to rise to their peaks, as Roxy slipped a necklace into his hand, and then shivered as the cold metal pressed against her sensitive flesh, and then they were all there.

  Triggering the tarball to unpack into the necklace, Sean bucked up beneath Daelyn and Roxy as he went over the edge from the surge of magic, all three of the girls joining him as one.

  "Wow!" He heard Daelyn gasp, catching her breath when they all finally wound down from their orgasms. "What was that?"

  "Welcome to the joys of tantric magic!" Roxy giggled and squirmed on Sean's face as she took the first necklace from his hand and gave him a second one.

  "How many times are we going to do that?" Daelyn asked, still panting.

  "Eleven more!" Roxy giggled as Sean grabbed her hips and pushing her up a bit he noticed that she'd shifted as she'd orgasmed, and her tail was wrapped rather tightly around his arm.

  "Umm, can we try a different position this time?" Daelyn asked and glancing down his body, Sean could see she was blushing just a little.

  "We can try as many positions as you like," Jo sighed happily.

  Sean decided he should probably shift as well. He had a sneaking suspicion that once they'd finished the necklaces, that they'd probably want to put him through his paces a few more times.

  If nothing else, the next seven or so hours were definitely going to be ones to remember.

  Sunday

  Sean sighed and set his father's book down. There was a lot in it, months, probably even years, worth of information. The more he delved into it, the deeper it seemed to go. It was beyond advanced, it was damn near theoretical. Obviously his father had gotten very involved in theoretical physics, and had spent a lot of time studying some pretty advanced topics. Sean gathered that his father had started out trying to understand why silver effected lycans, and was hoping to find a 'cure' or a way to stop its effects on them. But somewhere along the course of his studies he'd changed direction and decided that rather than change lycans, he could more easily change silver instead.

  The spell to change silver, while complicated was the least involved thing in the device he'd been calling the 'silver tag'. Using it took a fair amount of energy, and that energy requirement increased quickly as more and more silver atoms hit the shield.

  That required an energy management spell, that took the energy that was released by the magically induced alpha decay, and then parceled the energy back out to the numerous functions of the tag, and there were a lot of other spells running inside it. The spell that kept the radiation down, the spell that managed the shield, the spell that increased the shield's power and effectiveness, another spell to deal with excess heat and energy.

  While going through them, he found that the device actually did rely on the lycan necklace his father had designed as well, using its power storage capabilities as well as its connection to the lycan wearing the necklace to determine the shield's coverage. There were even startup spells, or routines as Sean preferred to think about it, that ran when you first connected the tag. One of those swept the body for any silver inside the shield before building it. That was what had saved Roxy, but the function also had a tendency to drain the necklace of its energy and could in fact drain energy from the wearer.

  Apparently there were other side effects as well, which explained Roxy's extreme behavior when he put the tag on her, and the longer you waited, the worse they got.

  The tag also wouldn't work without it being attached to a collar, or a similar 'supporting' artifact, made specifically to accept it. The reason for that quickly became clear, because if you put one on top of a bar of silver, it would immediately start changing the silver, and without anything to regulate it, it would eventually heat up to the point where the silver became molten, followed next by the tag, which as soon as it started to melt and deform would cause the destruction of the enchantments on it.

  The tag would then explode, throwing molten silver and rhodium everywhere, with quite a bit of force.

  From the way it was described, Sean got the distinct impression his father had performed that experiment.

  But still, he was gaining knowledge about just how to take the energy from the alpha decay as the silver was transformed, so he could use it to make more tags and collars. Doing it himself would be dangerous, there was a lot of energy involved and the opportunity for errors was pretty large. But he was sure that he could make a device to handle it, it would just take time.

  Sean was surprised that his father hadn't seen the possibility there, of using the power from the silver to enchant items, but then, Sean's tarball spell appeared to be something completely unknown to the magic using community. He wondered briefly if it ever would have occurred to him if he hadn't been going to school for computer programming? Probably not, most magic users apparently shunned a lot of technology, because they didn't like the idea of wasting their time and energy on anything that wasn't magic or magically related.

  "How's it going?" Roxy asked coming into the room in her hybrid form, stretching and drawing his appreciative look, as she wasn't wearing anything other than a smile.

  "Slowly, but I think I'm starting to make headway," Sean said and putting down the book, he stretched as well. He'd come out here about an hour ago, after waking up. The girls had all still been sound asleep; yesterday's marathon session had really taken a lot out of all of them.

  "Where's Dae and Jo?" he asked looking around confused.

  "Oh, they're still in bed," Roxy grinned.

  "You left Dae alone with Jo?" Sean asked a little concerned. Daelyn had unbent a fair bit last night, during the antics of what had taken place while they'd been making necklaces, but Sean was still a bit concerned.

  "Jo's giving her a massage," Roxy smiled, "Dae's finally starting to get used to having other people's hands on her and I think she's starting to trust Jo a bit more after what the four of us did yesterday."

  "I was still surprised she let the two of you do some of the things to her that you did," Sean confessed.

  "Well, part of that was because you were there, and she knows you won't let anything bad happen to her, you're our alpha male after all, Hon," Roxy grinned. "And I'm sure part of that was because she got caught up in the heat of the moment after all of those intense emotions that Jo's tantric magic triggered in us. But I also think she's starting to understand
that Jo's very much grounded in the physical, and that she expresses her feelings rather openly."

  "Very openly," Sean grinned.

  Roxy snickered, "Oh yeah! But I've seen Jo with someone who she liked, but didn't love. Trust me; the difference is like night and day. Jo loves you, and she loves me."

  "And Dae?"

  "She liked Dae from the get go," Roxy smiled, "and now that she's getting to know her better, she's starting to love her."

  Sean looked a little surprised, "That quickly?"

  Roxy tilted her head to the side and shrugged, "She's got a lot of mind magic, last night when Dae joined with us while we were all having sex, I'm sure Jo turned some of it on her. I think it's just part of how the whole tantric magic thing works.

  "I don't know if you noticed it last night, but Jo was showing a lot of affection towards Dae after we finished with the last necklace."

  "Really?" Sean was surprised, because he hadn't noticed it. Then again, he'd been pretty dazed still when they'd finally let him rest. He'd fallen asleep not long after giving each of them a hug and a kiss and reminding them how much he loved them.

  "How did Dae take it?"

  "Not all that different than the way she took it from you when you first pursued her. I think it's kind of obvious that she had a rough childhood, growing up an orphan and being so tall and all. What she gets from you really affects her in a big way. Now she's starting to get it from Jo as well."

  "What about you?" Sean teased.

  "Oh, I'm sure she'll get it from me too," Roxy giggled, "once Jo's broken her in of course. As the senior wife in this pride, I have to maintain my dominance after all!"

  "Well, let's go make some food, I'm sure they'll be hungry when they get out here," Sean said. "Then we need to box up those collars and see about making a few deliveries."

  "It's Sunday," Roxy laughed, "the post office is closed."

  "Well, at least we can box them up. Dae or you can drop them off tomorrow then."

  "So what's the plan for today?"

  Sean pointed to his father's book, "I'm going to spend all of today relaxing and studying. I need to start thinking about that device to use silver to make magical items, and just how it's going to work. I think the first one is going to have to be something I'll have to use personally, but I don't know how well that will work."

  "Why not?" Roxy asked leading him into the kitchen where he helped her get out their meager collection of cookware.

  "Because it takes about a minute for me to enchant something, so if I want to enchant ten thousand tags, or ten thousand of anything, that's seventeen days at ten hours a day."

  Roxy nodded and Sean watched with interest as she bent over to get some food out of the fridge, her tail hiking up.

  "Yeah, I can see where that might be a problem," Roxy said, and then looking back at him under her arm she gave him a smile. "I thought you were tired?"

  "I can still appreciate the view," Sean laughed, "and if I didn't think they'd be out here looking for food soon, I'd show you that I've mostly recovered."

  Roxy laughed, "Apparently!"

  Standing back up she set the food on the stone counter. Every thing in here was made of stone, or metal. The place had definitely been made to last.

  "Well, let's get breakfast started, I'm hungry too!" Roxy grinned.

  When Jo and Daelyn came out of the bedroom, some time later, the first thing Sean noticed was that neither had bothered dressing. The second was that they were actually holding hands. Daelyn looked a little embarrassed and shy when Sean saw them, while Jolene just looked happy.

  Coming over they both kissed Sean good morning, and then sat at the table as he and Roxy served them breakfast, making more of whatever they asked for. Sean smiled and was just happy that Daelyn seemed a lot more comfortable with Jolene and even Roxy this morning. He didn't ask any questions or tease Daelyn about what might have happened. The last thing he wanted was for her to be self-conscious; they were all going to be together for the rest of their lives, after all.

  Sean smiled as he thought about that. He had a family now. He'd have to find a way to let his mother know, he had a feeling it would make her very happy.

  "What's got you smiling?" Jolene asked.

  "I'm just thinking about us," Sean admitted, "for all of what brought us together, I'm just so happy that we all have each other, and I think we've all been blessed."

  "That may be," Roxy sighed, "but we still have a long and hard journey ahead of us."

  Sean shrugged, "Yeah, but like you told me the other day, we're not in a rush, right? Once we start producing the collars and the silver tags, we wait until we have a nice huge pile of them, and then we just pass the tags out all in a night or two. Fait accompli and the heat is off then, right?"

  "I don't know," Daelyn spoke up, "I think you should run that tactic past your friend Chad first. Remember, the last thing my uncle wants is a war. If suddenly all of the lycans find they have nothing to fear from the magic users, there'll be an immediate raid on the ones still holding lycans, and probably some reprisal raids even on the ones who aren't."

  Sean thought about that, "I'll talk to Chad. I'll also talk to Samis and even Roxy's dad first. You're probably right. But still, once we do manage to start making those tags and get thousands of them out there, I don't think they'll be interested in me any more."

  "We can only hope," the girls all agreed.

  Domestic Bliss

  Sean spent most of Monday studying his father's notes, there was a tremendous amount of information there, everything from advanced techniques for enchanting different types of items, to the spells he'd worked on while trying to figure out how to deal with the whole silver issue.

  Then there were the spells he'd developed in the process of developing his solution, as well as the ones involved in the actual solution.

  Sean could see that he could easily spend months, if not years, trying to learn everything in the book. But the first thing he really needed to do was just learn what was in the book, and after he had an idea of that, he could pick where he wanted to start his learning first.

  So rather than just diving in and learning any more spells from the book just yet, Sean thought it would be better to put that activity on hold for a few days while he figured out just where he wanted to start. The spell that converted silver was one he should learn first, as well as the energy management spell.

  But then there were a bunch of enchanting spells of his father's he should probably learn as well, then there were recharging spells, and bonding spells, and locking spells, and well, there was just a lot.

  Sean had been thinking of going back and learning a bunch more offensive spells to use in the fights that he was sure were coming, but if the did that, then he couldn't do this, he realized looking at the book. It just wasn't the whole requirement to devote a portion of his available power to learning a new spell or enchantment, it was also the devoting of his personal time in the studying and learning of those new things.

  He could definitely see why people specialized; you only had so much power and so much time in a day! Then on top of that there were casting power issues. Sure lycans have about six times the power of a human, but a human didn't have the power drain that shifting and regeneration took. Shifting took power, and if you didn't have enough, you couldn't shift. Or if you were wounded, you couldn't regenerate. Worse if your wound was serious enough, your body would use your life energy to try and regenerate, in effect eating itself magically and killing you.

  "Jo," Sean said, looking over at her as she and Roxy took turns painting each other's toenails, Daelyn was up in the garage tinkering on the van.

  "Hmm?" She asked looking at him.

  "How do humans manage their magic? I mean, they have so much less than I do, and looking at how much energy some of these spells cost to cast," Sean shrugged, "how do they do it?"

  "I thought you'd conquered that with those 'framework' spells of yours?"

  Sean
shook his head, "I'm able to cast most standard spells using less energy, but with trying to hold enough back to shift or regenerate, I'm still looking at trade-offs and wondering how you do it with so much less."

  "That's why they use lycans," Jolene sighed, "at least when it comes to fighting each other, or large organized groups of humans. You know the old saying 'In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king'?"

  Sean nodded, "Yeah, what of it?"

  "When it comes to dealing with mundanes, a simple sleep or paralyze spell is going to stop them in their tracks. They have no defense against it, and as spells go, those are pretty cheap to cast. Even some of the simpler offensive or defensive spells don't take all that much time or power.

  "Most magic users have a couple of good cheap spells to use against mundanes that they can cast a lot of. Then they have a couple of medium power spells that they can use against each other or lycans or even other supernatural or mystical creatures to keep them at bay. Most of which they can probably cast two, maybe three times, and they they're exhausted.

  But everybody knows at least one big nasty spell, that they can use when they're desperate. It may use up most of their power and they can only cast it once, but against most foes, that once will be more than enough."

  "Still," Sean said, thinking about it, "that doesn't really sound like enough, if you're caught in some kind of major fight."

  Jolene nodded, "No, it isn't. That's why they all wear rings, necklaces, and use wands of one sort or another. Some use batteries to store up energy to cast it again later, when they need it. A lot of stuff, like that ring of protection you got off of that guard, have vampire taps on them."

  "What's a vampire tap?" Sean asked, confused.

  "It sucks a very small amount of energy from the person wearing it, until it's full up. The wearer won't notice it, but it works faster than having a ring that just tries to absorb energy from the aetheric around us.

  "Remember those wands you said those guys came after you with?"