Page 37

THIRTY-SEVEN

KAEL

S he was still weak, and he carried her from the blood-soaked clearing like she weighed nothing, tucking her against his chest. His wolf didn’t prowl under his skin—it howled , protective and electric, snapping at every shadow.

The old ruins nearby weren’t safe, but it didn’t matter. Kael found a shallow, moss-lined cave tucked under a fallen slab of stone, half-covered in ivy. The Veil ran thick through this place—he could feel it—but for now, it was theirs.

He laid her down gently.

She caught his wrist before he could step back.

“I don’t want space,” she said.

He swallowed hard. “You need to rest.”

“I need you .”

He didn’t argue again.

Kael stripped off his cloak first, then hers. Their fingers fumbled with buckles, laces, cloth soaked in blood and magic. There was no finesse. No performance. Just raw need.

And when she lay bare beneath him, eyes wide and full of fire, Kael paused.

She wasn’t broken. She wasn’t a relic. She wasn’t prophecy or power or a pawn in a war he never asked to lead. She was his. And he was hers.

Not because of a bond. Not because of fate. Because they fucking chose each other.

“I love you,” he said, voice low and rough, like the words scraped his ribs on the way out. “And I’m sorry it took nearly losing you to say it right.”

She didn’t cry.

But her hand shook as she reached up and touched his face.

“Show me.”

His mouth found the hollow beneath her jaw—an unspoken language written in salt and heat.

His teeth grazed the bond-mark’s ridge, that jagged scar where magic and betrayal had once fused them.

She tasted of night-blooming flowers, skin trembling under his palms as if daring him to memorize every curve.

Her fingertips dug into his shoulders. “You’re thinking too loud.”

A laugh rumbled in his chest, low and dark. “You’re alive . Let me savor it.”

He charted her body like uncharted territory—suckled the pulse at her wrist, lingered at the raised scar along her ribs.

She arched into him, gasping when his tongue flicked a nipple already pebbled from the cave’s damp chill.

Her hands fisted in his hair, not guiding, just keeping .

As if he’d vanish if she loosened her grip.

When he dragged his mouth lower, she jolted. “Kael?—”

He looked up, brow raised. “Changed your mind?”

Her throat worked. “Just… slow.”

But her thighs fell open anyway, surrender written in the tremble of muscle beneath moon-pale skin.

Worship took time—a sacrament he’d kneel for eternity to perfect.

He gave it to her, all of it: the languid strokes of his tongue mapping every secret fold, the heel of his hand grinding deliberate circles where she ached.

Her back arched off the stone floor, a choked sob tearing loose as she shattered.

He gentled her through it, lips sealing over her climax to taste iron-sharp need and the salt-sweet tang of her exhaustion.

Her thighs clamped around his ears, muffling the ragged symphony of her breaths, but he didn’t pull back—not until her grip on his hair went slack, not until the aftershocks left her boneless and shaking.

Even then, he pressed a final kiss to the inside of her knee, savoring the way her pulse fluttered there like a caged bird.

She yanked him up by the hair, crashing their mouths together. “Now,” she demanded, voice frayed. “ Now. ”

He sheathed himself in one thrust, her gasp swallowed by his kiss.

No finesse. No patience. Just need, raw as the Veil’s static clinging to their skin.

She locked her ankles at the small of his back, nails carving crescents into his biceps.

Each snap of his hips drew choked moans, her head thrashing against the cloak beneath them.

“Look at me,” he growled.

Her eyes snapped open, pupils blown wide. Firelight danced in them, or maybe it was the bond flaring—gold threads knitting beneath their skin, searing where their bodies joined.

“Still think this is just fate?” His thumb brushed her lower lip.

She bit down, sharp. “Fuck fate.”

He laughed, breathless, as she rolled them over.

Her knees bracketed his hips, strands of sweat-damp hair clinging to her neck.

She rode him with a predator’s rhythm, each rise and fall deliberate, her gaze never leaving his.

The bond’s glow pulsed brighter, seeping into their labored breaths, the slick slide of skin on skin.

When her back bowed, fingers splayed over his chest, he saw it—the exact moment the bond shifted .

Not a chain snapping taut. A blade reforged.

Her climax ripped through them both, white-hot and shuddering.

He followed with a groan, fingers bruising her hips as the cave dissolved into fractured light.

They collapsed sideways, limbs tangled, her forehead pressed to his pounding pulse.

Her laugh gusted against his collarbone. “You’re smirking. ”

He traced the new mark blooming over her heart—a spiral, alive with faint gold embers. “You’re stuck with me now.”

After, they lay tangled in silence. Her fingers traced lazy circles on his chest. His arms wrapped fully around her, jaw resting on the crown of her head.

“I meant it,” he whispered. “Every word.”

She smiled into his skin. “I know.”

After a lifetime it seemed, Kael felt whole.