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Showing her appreciation, she reached for him, pushing her hand into his waistband. He let out a throaty moan before his lips found hers again, and she gripped his cock.

She was impressed again. She didn’t remember him being that—

The door swung open, causing the both of them to halt every movement. Her hand whipped out from the band of his pants, and he whirled towards the door.

“Stryker!” she heard someone say, urgent and desperate, but his body blocked every view.

“Magin, my brother, I—”

“I don’t need an explanation. Get dressed.”

Although the man sounded collected, something panicked him. Something had his blood pumping.

“There has been a sighting.”

“A sighting?” Artem echoed.

A small shiver of danger waved through Breighly’s spine.

She knew what that meant. Having been so close to the Blacksteels all her life, she knew the terminologies.

“They are here,” the man confirmed. “An army of demons swallowed up the footpaths below the mountains. Brother, it’s hunting time.”

Sex had never meant anything to him before, not really. It was just another way to get lost in something that wasn’t fighting, politics, or pressure from his father. But as Torin Blacksteel lay with Emara in his arms in the blissful silence of the room, he knew something had changed.

Something had changed forever.

He didn’t know how long they had been intertwined like this, but he sure as shit wasn’t going to change it for the world. What they had just done, what she had just given him was…it meant more to him than he would ever be able to express. Before her, he had never lay with a woman afterwards and just let the moments they had shared together soak into their skin. He had never grown an attachment to a female before, not like this, and when he had seen her standing before him in the archway, offering herself, it had shattered him. Shattered his self-control and shattered the ice around his heart.

She had given herself to him, and what that meant to him was also beyond words, because he knew she had never lain with another man before. He couldn’t express how he felt for her in words. He couldn’t express what lay in his heart. He never could.

The nerves in his stomach reminded him that there was one way to express how he felt about her, and it lay in the lining of his tunic.

It had been there all night.

The mere thought of a proposal used to make his skin burn and sweat, his heart ache in a way that he never understood. But now, he realised, it was because he had never felt hope in this way before. He was so optimistic about Emara, and it felt strange in his heart. He had never hoped that a proposal would be anything other than alliance for his clan, an obligation to his duty, because he knew the chances of actually falling in love with the other party in the alliance was slim. As bad as it sounded internally, he wasn’t sure if he would have even found his betrothed attractive, let alone be emotionally connected to her.

But this, what he felt for Emara, was different altogether.

It was burning, and it was unmatched.

He could be his true self with her.

Torin didn’t have to separate his marriage and his alliance, should it be with her. He could be with her and be with her, not for what she could do for his clan, but for what his heart desired.

A thought stuck him hard, rattling his every foundation.

He swallowed as he played with a silk strand of her beautiful hair, her breathing sleepy against his upper body. Torin looked down at her as she hugged his chest, their naked skin resting on each other.

If he had to, he would give up his clan for her, dissolving his oath as a hunter to the Gods’ duty. And he knew at that moment it meant there would be no other woman or female in his life who would make him want to do that. No one else in this world would, but if he had to for her, he would do it. He would do it in a heartbeat, because what he held in his arms was so very real and legitimate, and he was prepared to do it.

However…

Here he was, his future laying in his arms, and he didn’t have to break an oath or be exiled from his clan. Because the woman that fate would have him wed was right here. She was the Empress of Air, and she was promised to him.

His heart pumped quickly and hard in his chest, and he knew it was all for her.

It would always be for her.