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S he trembled in his grasp, her body still pulsing with the aftershocks of what he had given her. Her taste lingered on his tongue, a sweetness unlike anything he had known—warm, complex, utterly addictive. He hadn’t known such pleasure existed. He hadn't known he was capable of it.

Not as a Marak.

Not as a being created for power, not for want.

But now, he was undone.

Every instinct within him screamed to claim her. Not as property. Not as a prize.

As his.

And not even she understood what she had become to him. She believed she had surrendered—he could see it in her eyes, in the helpless tremble of her body suspended in his hold. But the truth was darker, deeper, far more dangerous.

It was he who belonged to her now.

The realisation struck him like lightning. A terrible, beautiful revelation.

He would never let her go.

Her warmth, her scent, her soul—she had pierced through every cold layer of control he had ever constructed. For the first time in his long, exalted existence, he felt alive .

With a thought, his lower garments dissolved into nothing. He lowered her slowly, reverently, until her bare skin hovered just above his, his tentacles adjusting to cradle her with exquisite care.

He looked into her eyes.

She didn’t flinch.

That alone nearly undid him.

He pressed his brow to hers—Majarin intimacy. A sacred gesture. One no other being had ever received from him. And then, in the space between breath and motion, he moved—finally, completely—into the heart of the fire he’d kindled.

Her soft gasp became a part of him.

The final tether of restraint snapped.

She wrapped around him like she was made for it. He found himself lost in the moment, lost in her.

Each movement fed something ancient and aching within him. She was so small , so impossibly delicate beneath the strength of his body, yet she took him— welcomed him—with a fierceness that shattered his final reservations.

This wasn’t conquest.

It was communion.

And when she moaned his name—his true name, not the title the stars knew—he buried his face in the curve of her neck, utterly consumed.

His human. His surrender.

His forever .