Page 59 of Crown Prince’s Mate (The Old Ways #5)

The warmth embraces me. In the center, there is a stone bowl, filled with embers and pine that lets off the aroma of my forest home, smoke trailing up through the hole in the ceiling.

The ice glistens, dripping from the heat, and there are two rough-hewn wooden benches and thick, waterproof sleeping bags.

Underneath us, under over ten feet of ice, are the icy depths of the lake.

The heat washes over me, and I shrug off my coat, folding it and placing it on top of one of the sleeping bags. My uniform feels strange here.

I never in a million years imagined I would be on Frosthold, awaiting the royal triad for the final ritual. I thought I’d stop them on Magnar, that I would shrug them off, but even if they had given up there, they would be a constant presence on my mind.

When an Aurelian gets the scent of his mate, he will never stop. No matter how I tried to deny it, no matter how I tried to push them from my mind, from the moment I had the vision of them, I knew that I would one day face them, that I would one day have to come face to face with their essence.

Sweat drips down my brow, but I add more pine to the fire, the crackle filling the hidden sanctuary, a tiny speck of warmth in the expanse of darkness on all sides.

The furs are brushed aside as Doman ducks his soaking wet head in, his thick blond curls dripping.

Titus follows, the igloo feeling tiny as the triad returns.

His black hair is matted, and his cheeks are flushed as he lugs in a five-foot-long pike.

It’s been gutted and cleaned, and Gallien completes the triad, his platinum shock the only dry hair of the lot.

“You’re soaking!”

“It broke free of the fishing lure. We dove in to catch it,” says Doman, sitting across from me on the wooden bench, which creaks under his bulk.

I look down at the ice floor of the lake, imagining the dark undercurrents. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“Ten feet of ice, black as death. Gods, but it’s good to be alive,” says Titus, and he motions to Gallien, who helps him take off the top of his Orb-Armor, setting the heavy plates of it onto the ground.

“Idiots. You risked your life for a fish?”

Doman grins. “You told us to get the most dangerous, bloodthirsty fish in the pond. I only did what you asked. Help me get this off,” he says to Titus, who pulls the top half of his armor off him.

As he places it on the ground, it seems so inert, for when the aliens don their armor, it molds and contorts to their physiques, just like the pleasure dress that wrapped itself around my body.

“That thing is going to stink up the place, we’ll smell like pike for weeks. Can you put it on ice?”

“I’ll do one better,” says Gallien, grabbing the fish and leaving the igloo.

I hear his boots crunching against the ice as he climbs the outside of the structure, then his marble head peers through the top, coughing in the smoke as he puts the fish across the hole above to slow cook it in the hot smoke rising up.

Doman throws another log into the fire, which is crackling, the black rocks emanating waves of intense heat that makes my uniform stick to my body.

Rivulets of sweat are dripping down Doman’s perfection as he leans over, pulling down the bottom half of his armor.

It seems to weigh little, and he wriggles his way out of it, leaning back naked with his back touching the ice wall of the igloo.

He lets out a long, luxurious sigh, and I let my eyes run over his body, hardly believing he is real.

Enormous, near eight feet of pure, marble strength, chiseled abs, a demi-god in his own right. Titus strips and sits beside him on the bench, bending forward towards the fire, his thick black hair hanging in front of him as he luxuriates in the warmth.

“Room for one more?” asks Gallien, and I shift over on my bench as he strips and sits beside me. The smell of the three of them fills the room, the primal, animal musk that is only them.

“Let me help you with that,” says Gallien, and reaches over, gently unbuttoning my top and pulling it from my body, then my pants, so that the four of us are sitting around the waves of heat of the fire, breathing deeply, simply existing in the moment.

I never thought I’d be alone with these three.

Never thought it would feel so safe, so right to be surrounded by their might, their raw strength, their lithe, pent-up aggression.

They may be resting, but I’ve seen how quickly they can go from immobile to combat ready, completely at ease in their bodies after hundreds of years of life.

Doman’s bright eyes sparkle in the light of the fire. “Well, what do you think? Did we fulfill the rituals to your standards? Is the wedding on?”

I touch my smart-watch. “I got word today that the seed took root. You’ve won. I didn’t think you had it in you, but you’ve won.”

Doman raises his hand. The blue-black ring drinks up the light of the fire. “I haven’t won yet. Not until I’ve truly been with you.” There’s a sadness in his eyes. “Why do you refuse us?”

“I still don’t know you.”

“You felt us. You know us better than my own family.”

I shake my head. “I felt your essence. Your rules. Your being. I still don’t know who you three are.

Do you like poetry? Rainy days? Do you take milk in your coffee, do you have a favorite color…

we’re still strangers, Doman. I know enough about you to wed you.

But if I let you three Bond me to you, that’s it.

Together forever, with three men who have lived hundreds of years of war. ”

Titus raises his head. He is unfinished, his slate-gray eyes too cold, too alien, needing me to fulfill him.

“All that matters to me. Everything you said. I want to know everything about you. But don’t you see?

With the Bond, we’ll have centuries. Thousands of years.

I want to know you so well I can tell what you’re going to say before you say it.

There’s no one else I can have that with.

No one in the universe, and even if there was, she wouldn’t be you. ”

Gallien puts his hand on my thigh. It’s so big he covers my leg.

“We’re at war, Adriana. And who we are now is not who we are at peace.

And who we are at peace is not who we will be when we are fathers, when we are old men.

People change. Even if you knew everything about us, we’ll be different one day. Grow with us.”

I sit in silence, contemplating it, when Gallien turns, his gray eyes finding mine. “I like autumn. I like watching the trees change. I like when a golden leaf flutters in the breeze and falls, the way it dances its final dance, its singular dance.”

“You’ve always been sappy, Gallien,” grunts Titus. “Me? I like flying a Reaver at full speed, I like leaping through the doors thirty feet off the ground with my blade in my hand. I like when a moment is so pure it etches itself on your soul.”

“And you, Doman?”

“I love you. I love to watch you. Sitting, eating, drinking, laughing, talking. Just breathing or sleeping. That’s what I love. Let me take this ring off and have you, Adriana. Let me show you everything I feel through the Bond.”

I shake my head. “When I was a child, I was told a story. A story of a beautiful land. I don’t remember the name of the land, or the name of the story, but it was an old one. One that came from Old Earth. We knew things then, even when we had not learned the universe.”

“And what did the story say?” Doman asks, all three of the Aurelians rapt.

“It was a land without suffering, of dances and wine, and drugs that made you feel endless bliss. But every person in that land was guilty of a great sin. Because to feel that bliss, they had to know true suffering. And each one of them went down into the cells, and they saw a woman, or a man, in captivity, fed nothing but bread and water, never seeing the sun. And that story might have been fiction, but Fay exists. She’s trapped.

In your castle, where you grew up. She’s trapped, and… ”

“And we are guilty of it,” growls Titus. “You’re right. Then that will be our final ritual, our final test, before we can win you. It is right.”

“I’m guilty of it, too. I never petitioned for her. I never used Pentaris’ resources to try to push for something.”

“It wouldn’t have worked,” says Doman. “You don’t know my family. You don’t know my mother. And you don’t know Obsidian.”

“You’re right, it wouldn’t have worked. And even if it could have, I wouldn’t have gotten the votes.”

“Such a strange system,” says Gallien. “You do the will of people you never met. Everyone gets a vote, when they turn of age, without ever lifting a finger.”

“It’s the same for your species, is it not? The Elites. They can vote to end the reign of any Imperial triad, and elect a new Queen or King.”

“They can,” he shrugs. “But they earned the vote with their lives. They fought. They bled.”

“And if they called a vote?” I look at each of the Aurelians in turn. “Would you accept it? Doman, if your family lost the throne?”

He thinks, long and hard. “If it was the will of the people. If it was time. One cannot lead without the support of the Elites. Not into battle. You need your troops to trust in you.”

“And if you didn’t feel it was time?”

He reaches down and picks up the hilt of his Orb-Blade, which he must have sent for before going out into the ice to fish.

“Then I would face the challenger to the throne in the arena of the Gods and let those above decide. If they saw my victory and still did not accept my rule… then I would be forced to leave the throne, for the good of my people.”

“You believe in all that? Gods watching over us?”

“I can feel them. In my veins. I have a purpose. There’s more to this world than we can see.” Doman’s eyes are wide, the blue inhumanly bright and clear.

“And you, Gallien? Do you feel the Gods running through your blood?”