Page 27

TWENTY-SEVEN

SELENE

S elene woke to the scent of moss, iron, and him.

Kael.

He was close, maybe three feet away from where she lay wrapped in a spare cloak, but he felt farther. Distant. Still and braced like a man expecting a fight.

Moonlight poured through the canopy, catching on the edges of his jaw. He sat with his elbows on his knees, back hunched, head bowed. One hand clenched a dagger. The other flexed against his thigh like it didn’t know how to be still.

His body was tense. His shoulders knotted with unspoken words.

Selene slowly sat up, careful not to startle him.

“You’re brooding again,” she said quietly.

He didn’t look at her.

But his jaw worked like he’d ground his teeth down to bone.

“You scared the shit out of me,” he said finally.

She blinked, not expecting that.

“Which time?”

He exhaled. Shaky. Unsteady.

“Tonight. Last night. Every fucking moment since the bond chose you.” He turned toward her now, and his eyes were glowing faint gold. “You didn’t see yourself. You didn’t feel it the way I did.”

“I felt enough,” she said softly.

“You burned,” he said. “Lit up like a goddamn star. And then you fell.”

Selene drew her knees up to her chest, watching him.

He wasn’t angry at her.

He was angry at himself.

Kael always carried the weight of everything like it had nowhere else to go. Like if he didn’t hold it, it’d crush the whole damn world.

“I’m not a candle,” she said after a pause. “I don’t burn out that easily.”

“No,” he murmured. “You’re wildfire. And I keep forgetting wildfires don’t obey anyone.”

Kael finally looked at her and the storm behind his gaze wasn’t rage. It was hunger. Longing. That unbearable, bone-deep ache of wanting something he was too afraid to hold.

Selene stood and stepped toward him.

He didn’t move.

Not when she crouched in front of him. Not when she reached for his hand and peeled it gently away from his dagger.

Her voice was soft when she spoke. “I’m still here, Kael.”

He looked at her like he didn’t deserve it.

“Are you sure?” he asked, rough. “Because I keep watching you slip through my fingers.”

She didn’t respond. She just kissed him.

His lips parted against hers with a groan that vibrated through her ribs.

His hand found her waist first—calluses catching on the thin fabric of her shirt—then her jaw, fingers splaying against her pulse point as he dragged her closer.

She straddled his lap, knees sinking into damp earth, her cloak slipping off her shoulders.

The night air bit her exposed skin, but his palms skated over her collarbones like he could brand warmth back into her.

“Selene—”

His voice frayed at the edges. She caught his bottom lip between her teeth, gentle, before pulling back just enough to speak.

“I’m not breaking.” Her thumb brushed the scar cutting through his eyebrow. “And I’m not running.”

He growled, low and ragged, and crushed his mouth to hers again.

No hesitation this time. His tongue swept against hers, insistent, and her grip tightened in his hair.

The dagger clattered to the ground behind him, forgotten.

His hands slid under her shirt, rough palms scraping her spine, and she arched into him with a gasp.

Teeth grazed her throat. Her mark flared—a sear of gold beneath her skin—and his answering pulse glowed against her fingertips where they pressed his neck.

Magic coiled between them, thick as resin smoke. Not the jagged, splintering force from before, but something older. Deeper. The air hummed as their marks brightened, threads of light weaving a second lattice across their joined skin.

He pushed the cloak fully off her shoulders, fabric pooling around her hips. His breath hitched when she rocked against him, hands freezing mid-motion.

“Kael.” She nipped his earlobe, felt him shudder. “ Look at me.”

He did. Blue eyes flickering gold, hair mussed from her fingers, mouth reddened. A goddamn ruin of a man.

His thumb traced the edge of her mark. “This… it’s not just the bond.”

“No.” She pressed her forehead to his, their breaths mingling. “It’s us .”

He made a sound like a snapped wire, hands cradling her face as he kissed her again—slower now, deliberate.

His touch drifted lower, mapping the dip of her waist, the curve of her hip, as if relearning her.

When she tugged his shirt over his head, he didn’t flinch from her gaze.

Scars littered his torso, pale and knotted, but her fingers glided over them like they were scripture.

The forest blurred. Only the heat of him mattered—the way his heartbeat thudded against her palm, the hitch in his breath when she bit his shoulder, the shudder that racked him as their marks aligned.

He murmured her name against her mouth, her throat, her wrists—each syllable a prayer, each kiss a covenant written in salt and heat.

When she rose above him, the night air cool against her flushed skin, his hands found her hips with a possessiveness that bordered on reverence.

She sank down slowly, a gasp catching in her throat as he filled her, the slick ache of her need yielding to the exquisite stretch of him.

His breath hitched, a ragged sound that mirrored her own, their shared rhythm already faltering as she rolled her hips experimentally.

The friction drew a moan from them both, liquid and low, her wetness smearing across his abdomen as she leaned forward to capture his mouth again.

He didn’t look away. Not when she began to move in earnest, her thighs trembling as she rode him, not when her nails scored his chest and her head fell back in abandon.

The second seal blazed between them, its glow threading through their joined hands, but it was the rawness in his gaze that undid her—the way his eyes darkened with every shuddering thrust, as if he were memorizing the flutter of her lashes, the part of her lips, the sweat-slick hollow of her throat.

His thumbs brushed the peaks of her breasts, coaxing whimpers she didn’t recognize as her own, before sliding down to where their bodies joined, circling the sensitive bud that made her sob his name.

The world narrowed to the slap of skin, the creak of the forest floor beneath them, the molten coil tightening in her belly.

He sat up abruptly, arms banding around her as he shifted angles, and the new depth wrenched a cry from her—a sound he swallowed with a kiss that tasted like desperation and devotion.

Their pace turned erratic, grinding rather than thrusting, each movement dragging her closer to the edge.

She felt it first in the tremor of his shoulders, the way his fingers dug into her back as if she might vanish.

Then in the heat pooling low and urgent, her climax cresting like a wave as the marks on their wrists fused into a single searing line of light.

She shattered with a scream she didn’t bother to muffle, her body clamping around him as pleasure ripped through her in white-hot currents.

He followed moments later, his groan muffled against her collarbone, hips stuttering as he spilled into her.

For a heartbeat, there was only the echo of their ragged breaths and the hum of the forest—the rustle of leaves, the distant call of an owl—witnesses to the quiet, trembling truth neither could name aloud.

When she finally slumped against him, boneless and spent, his lips found her temple. No words. None were needed. The way his calloused palm cradled her cheek said enough.

They lay in silence after, her head on his chest, his arm draped around her waist.

The forest was still. For once, so were they.

“I think it’s always been you,” Kael said quietly.

She lifted her gaze. “Since when?”

He smiled faintly. “Since the moment you walked into my court and didn’t flinch.”

She let that settle between them. Then whispered, “You’re mine too.”

The Mark pulsed again. A second bond.

No one had told her this could happen. No one could. Because this wasn’t prophecy. This was choice.

And the world would have to burn before she gave him up.