Page 37 of The King has Fallen (The Kingdom of the Krow #1)

~ MELEK ~

I staggered, my blood running cold just as I was about to grab her up. Just as I was about to take her mouth again.

“Yilan… it already is.”

She shook her head and her eyes began to well, simultaneously breaking my heart and making me want to roar with rage.

“We have not… nothing has cemented between us. We are not truly tied—”

“Yilan—”

She started to back away, a single tear tipping over her lashes and trickling down her cheek. But I wouldn’t let her flee. I followed her as she backed across the tent.

“Melek, it couldn’t be. God is testing us. We both know—”

“I know that this is nothing to be denied. It exists whether it is convenient or not!”

“But our lives… our roles… this war—”

“If God put us together, then he must have a plan for our future!”

“He does!” she whispered. “And you refuse it.”

I froze, but caught her wrist as she was about to step away from me again. Both of us stared in horror and pleading and… pain.

Doubt. Fear. Indignation. It all coiled through my thoughts, tightened my chest.

She stared at me with grief in her eyes and I braced, shaking my head.

This was not just lust. Not simple need.

This was two souls that sang the same song. And she was the one denying it!

“Tell me,” I growled, pulling her into the circle of my arms and not letting her go. Then I caught her hand with mine and put it flat on my chest, let her feel how she made my heart pound. “Tell me this is not real. Tell me that you will not accept me— tell me.”

She stared, shaking her head, her mouth opening and closing, her body tense… but she made no sound.

I could barely breathe, but hope took flight in my chest as I stared her down.

“Yilan… tell me there is no bond. Tell me your soul doesn’t sing when we touch?” I flattened my hand over hers on my chest and waited.

She stared back at me, that horror and fear roiling in her eyes, and yet…

She slumped in my arms and shook her head. “I can’t,” she whispered.

I descended on her with a tormented groan, with hands clawed, body shaking. The kiss was deep and brutal and a relief because she clung and clawed and gave as good as she got. And then she pressed herself against me, hooked her leg behind my thigh and gasped my name, and the leash I’d been holding so tightly for what seemed like forever, just snapped.

I was mindless, growling, devouring her. Clawing at her clothing, tearing it from her body, hissing when her nails scored my back as she tried to pull off my weapon straps.

Instead, I was forced to let her go long enough to rip the buckles loose myself—and open my leathers to free myself because my need was so great, I worried I would limit blood flow within the confines of my trousers.

There was no sound but our gasping breaths and the rustle and rip of clothing as I stumbled with her towards the bed, bit her lip between my teeth until she gasped, then picked her up and threw her onto the bed.

She bounced. She gave a small, breathless chuckle as she pushed up on her hands to sit, then reached for me as I crawled up after her. Unable to be apart from her for even the seconds it took to find her body, I gripped her hair and pulled her into a deep kiss as I lowered her back to the pillows and settled between her thighs.

But just as she writhed against me and her mouth opened, just as I would have muttered the vows and taken her right then, I froze.

She went still under me and her eyes flew open—and I saw the zing of fear there, the immediate question, the doubt—and shook my head.

“I will give no room for anyone to deny this, Yilan. Tell me how your people bind for the vows?”

Her eyes went very wide. She had both hands on my face, gripping me and she stared, breathless for a moment.

“Are you certain?”

All the questions, all the doubts, all the obstacles and complications we would face swirled in my head, but they were nothing in the face of this conviction deep in my chest.

She was for me.

She was made for me.

And I would never be complete without her.

“I have never been more certain of anything in my life,” I croaked.

She gave a breathless little laugh and shook her head, but she was smiling. Then she looked to the side, found the edge of the pillowcase and gripped it. I frowned, then realized she was trying to tear a strip from it.

Letting my weight rest on her so that she sighed, I reached over her head for the simple cotton and tore it, pulling a strip that ran the length of the pillow, yanking it off, then offering it to her.

She blew out a shuddering breath as she took it, then looked at me. “Give me your wrist.”

I offered her my right hand, knowing she preferred her right to be free, and her forehead creased. She stretched up to kiss me, her lips soft and plump and her tongue teasing so that I almost forgot what was happening, but then, after plunging the velvet depths of her mouth, I growled and leaned back again, bracing on my other arm so she could have that wrist.

Breathing quick and sharp, she tied the end of the cotton to my wrist, looping it twice, then tying it off with a complicated knot I’d never seen before.

She hesitated, and looked at me before she put her own hand near mine, and I knew she was considering what we were about to do. The bond that we would forge. The eternal nature of this moment.

And, even as desperate as I was, as deeply as I yearned to fight for this, I stayed silent.

I would not convince her. I could not take her against her will. I would not complete the bond that way.

She searched my eyes, then used that hand to cup my cheek. “Melek?”

“Yes?” I grunted, terrified she was about to retreat.

She bit her lip. “Thank God that you’re mine,” she whispered, and as my heart exploded, she laid her hand against mine, looped the cotton around both our wrists in a figure-eight, then tied it off on hers, using her teeth to pull it tight.

There was a strange, still moment then as she stared at our hands and her eyes went wide.

“My mate,” she breathed, her tone awed.

I laced my fingers with hers and pulled it to my chest, holding it there so that she felt my pulse against her knuckles, bracing on the other hand to keep my back arched so I could hold her eyes.

And then I spoke the words I’d so rarely heard of a Nephilim offering, and that I had spent most of my adult life wondering if they would ever cross my lips.

My body for your protection.

My voice for your champion.

My blood runs for you, my soul.

My mate.

Behold, you are my beauty. Behold you are my love.

Let me taste with my mouth because your kiss is richer than wine.

Let my body speak the words my tongue cannot form.

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your soul.

For my love is stronger than death, my jealousy fierce as the grave.

I burn for you with fire, the very flame of God.

I am your beloved. I am your mate.

My soul sings for you. My desire is for you.

I give myself in this world, and the next.

Before God… you are mine.

Her eyes welled and she reached up with her free hand, cupping my face as she whispered the words in return.

And my blood began to ignite, like a fuse, burning closer to my heart with every word.

~ YILAN ~

Strange things were happening in my chest. I couldn’t breathe—didn’t want to. My skin crackled and fizzed like fireworks. I’d been plunged from the fear of the King’s demand to this incredible, impossible, necessary moment and I wanted to weep—but I wouldn’t let myself, because I couldn’t bear to miss a moment of it.

He was here. He was real. He’d opened himself and my soul stretched for him, battering at me.

I had no idea how this would play out. No way of knowing if either of us would survive this. But I couldn’t keep fighting. He’d looked me in the eye and claimed me, and it broke through the last of my defenses.

He was my mate.

And that meant he couldn’t belong to anyone else. I wouldn’t survive it.

And so, with the echo of his whispered words still curling around my heart, I swallowed back my fear and embraced the joy of this moment. Of him. And I gave voice to the vows I’d been supposed to speak the day before—but to an entirely different man.

My heart for your safety.

My voice for your champion.

My blood runs for you, my soul.

My mate.

Behold, you are my strength. Behold you are my love.

Let me taste with my mouth because your kiss is richer than wine.

Let my body speak the words my tongue cannot form.

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your soul.

For my love is stronger than death, my jealousy fierce as the grave.

I burn for you with fire, the very flame of God.

I am your beloved. I am your mate.

My soul sings for you. My desire is for you.

I give myself in this world, and the next.

Before God…

I took a final breath as everything within me clamored to finish this, to claim him, to be claimed by him—and yet the roiling storm of what would come as a result of this day would not leave me in peace.

I sucked in a deep breath and Melek’s eyes shadowed… and pleaded with me. Looming over me, his thick chest and broad shoulders casting me in shadow deep enough to hide me from eyes…

And I knew I would never be the same. He was possibly the strongest man on the continent—in creation! If we could not defeat these demons together, no one else would bring me through, either. And so, I curled my nails into the stubble on his jaw and let the love I’d been so desperately denying blaze from my eyes, and I took him. Claimed his soul. The words rushed from me in a torrent.

…You are mine!

Like a fire lit to oil, need and love exploded in my chest, igniting my veins and rushing through me to burn every other thought or desire from my body and mind in a single, white-hot flash.

I stopped breathing, my heart stopped beating for a moment as it felt like the explosion within cracked my ribs and bared my chest.

But just when the pain should have begun, just when I was braced there, gasping and stunned, my ribs cracked and heart exposed, something within him rushed for me—fuel to the flame, and soothing ice to the burn.

At every point where our flesh touched his soul rushed from him and into me, coiling with mine, twining, twisting, braiding together, then yanking tight.

We both cried out as our hearts stopped—then rushed on, pulsing, filling, pumping in time and suddenly that space within me that had felt so empty, the spot where something had gone out from me to stretch for the darkness of him was bathed in light.

Mate.

Soulbond.

Mine.

I cried out as Melek bellowed with relief and joy. He gripped my hand so tightly, yanking it from his chest and pinning it on the pillow above my head as he descended like an avenging angel to take me.

Forever.