Page 21 of The Witch’s Fate (The Lunaterra Chronicles #13)

RYKER

T his is what it is like, then, to be lost in a mate. The scents of her, the sounds of her, the slide of her lips against mine— every little piece of her is perfect. I would not change a single thing about her. She was made for me and I for her.

I want her just as she is. All my senses sing, almost howling that she is a goddess. My goddess. The most perfect being I will ever touch. My powerful witch.

I want to mark her, too. I want every inch of her marked with my scent so there is not a creature in any land who would mistake her for anything but mine.

My wolf gives a low sound of assent which comes out of my own mouth as well. The moon is nearly full if not there yet. The need to claim my mate is strong.

I kiss the pulse point at the side of Idalis’s neck. I kiss the dip of her belly button. I kiss the curve of each thigh. I lick droplets of sweat from her skin. I find every curve of her, and trace it and lick it and suck those places until they are pink from my efforts.

I make her come.

I make her come again, then again, then again, so many times that she weeps with pleasure.

Still, I’m not sated.

I still want more of her.

My cock stays hard and throbbing and insistent. Too insistent to turn over and sleep. Far too insistent to pretend I can ignore it. My life has waited for her. For this moment. I need nothing else.

In an instant, as the feeling overwhelms me, I flip Idalis over onto all fours. With her on her belly, her head on one of the pillows, her hips lifted toward me. I nudge the head of my cock into her opening while playing with her clit and she lets out a long, quiet moan. Fucking perfect.

She is open for me, and ready, and I enter her again with a deep thrust. I love the way she grips the sheets and how her swollen lips part with my name.

Gripping her hips, I hold her in place. Idalis only rocks her hips a little, taking me deeper.

“Do not move,” I order. “Stay here. I need you to stay here.”

“Yes,” she breathes. “Yes.”

Her pussy clenches around me, hot and tight and slick with both of us, and I drop my head back and release a low growl into the air.

I do not know what to do with the sensation that overwhelms me.

I do not know how to handle so much pleasure.

I have handled pain many times, but this is so much more intense that it turns my thoughts to mud.

It’s a deep need that I cannot fight.

I curl back toward her and bend my head, folding forward to cover her. Idalis spreads her thighs wider to accommodate me, but she does not need to. I am already seated inside her, and she was made to take me.

My cock pulses inside her.

I balance myself over her, rolling my hips only because I must move, I must do something to handle this pleasure. I breathe deeper, my blunt nails digging into her skin.

Fuck, she’s gorgeous like this. Her hair is a mess and yet perfect. I can only see half her face, but the cheek visible to me is flushed pink. Her lips are slightly parted, and there’s a small curve to her lips.

“I need to claim you,” I tell her, and kiss the nape of her neck.

Idalis did not ask to be my mate. There was no way she could have predicted this would happen. We were brought together by fate.

She would probably say it was her spell that brought us here, not fate, but couldn’t fate have guided her hands?

Moving her hair to the side, she offers me her neck. “Claim me.”

I react instantly, biting her neck just enough to break skin and as I do, I fuck her recklessly. Forcing pleasure over her body as she cries out. The bed pounds against the wall as I lick and kiss the wound. My hips piston as the pleasure builds and I chase my climax.

Finally we come together, and I’ve never felt so complete.

Idalis lets me go with a soft sigh and turns into my arms when I lay on the pillow. She fits her body to mine and adjusts her head on my chest.

Her heart pounds. It takes a while for it to settle, as if she is waiting for me to give chase or go into battle with her or initiate another round. When her fingertips touch the mark, that’s already started to heal from my licks, she smiles. A faint beautiful smile. My heart swells.

My world revels in the fact that my mate is here.

She’s safe in my arms, and has been pleasured to the very limits of her body.

There is no threat outside the cottage. There is no threat for miles.

I do not know another place where we could have such complete solitude, though that makes me ache for her as well.

A woman like Idalis should not have had to keep herself so secluded.

We stay tangled in the sheets for a long time, avoiding the rest of the world.

When goosebumps cover Idalis’s shoulder, I tug the blankets up and make sure she is well covered, but first I plant on a kiss on her bare skin.

It’s a sin to cover her. I crave her skin against mine for as long as I can have it.

Until dawn. Until the next day. Until…until I’m forced to go back.

As quickly as I can, I force that thought to fade away. I wish I could stay right here for years, but it’s not possible for a soldier. I’ll allow myself the fantasy a little longer. As her soft hums surround me with tender touches, I do everything I can not to think of what will come.

It’s dark in the cottage, and the sounds outside are those of the deep part of the night.

I drift in the peace of the moment, entranced with the softness of Idalis’s skin and the warmth of her body in my arms. She’s not yet fallen asleep and makes no move to get up.

I wonder if her thoughts are where mine are.

If she has the same feelings I do, even though she’s not a wolf.

So many thoughts race in my mind and yet I feel peace with her.

Comfort and peace. She lies there with her hair spilling over my chest as I let my fingers slip over her curves.

After a while, I thread my fingers through her hair, inhaling the scent of her.

This is how it should be.

She doesn’t seem shocked to find herself as my mate. She doesn’t ask questions. I wonder how much my little witch knows. Perhaps she sensed something in the air the moment our eyes met.

I lose myself in her smallest movements. Every breath she takes. The soft touch of her fingertips on my chest. The heat underneath her palms.

As my head clears from the rush of such intense mating, another desire rises in me.

To allow her to see the parts of me I have guarded for most of my life. It was known in my pack. It was known to some in the army. But someone like Idalis?

I’ve never shared this with someone like her. And it’s clear to me that I should share now. Before the hours tick on. She needs to know of the curse.

“I wasn’t supposed to have a mate.” My voice is more hoarse from the long silence than I anticipated. I clear my throat and peek down at her. Her gaze holds nothing but kindness and understanding. No shock. No judgment.

A weight lifts off me. As she licks her bottom lip, preparing to speak, Idalis repositions her head on my chest.

“You were not?” she asks, softly, as if she does not want to wake me from the spell of the night. She traces another circle on my chest. “Do not all shifters have mates? You didn’t know you’d find me one day?”

With my eyes closed, it could almost be that night again, with the troll who told me I was cursed.

Her eyes had burned with a strange light, and I didn’t want her to tell me of my fate.

She told me anyway. The words from her lips turned the world dark and empty around me.

What she said stripped me of any future I might have hoped for and left me to bear the burden in the privacy of my own mind.

I wanted to close my eyes so she could not look into them, but I could not bring myself to do it.

It was a warm night in midsummer until she spoke. Then it was as cold as the dead of winter. Alone in the woods in my teenage years, I’d stumbled upon her. Fear struck me first, but I could have never imagined what she would prophesize.

For years after that, I suffered, hiding it as well as I could. I was angry and resentful, and I couldn’t understand why the troll had done it to me. Of all my pack, I was destined to be alone and they knew it. Never to have purpose or love.

Guilt consumed me whenever I had those thoughts. With every season that passed, the anger inside me burned hotter and hotter until it threatened to burn every relationship I had to the ground.

The day the last of my brothers found his mate, I left the pack.

It was painful, to be so alone, but not as painful as being surrounded by all of them with their mates.

I was alone until I joined the army, but even then I was separated from the rest of my comrades by the curse.

Even those who knew nothing about it seemed almost untouchable.

It was pointless to form too many bonds with the other soldiers because we would live lives with nothing in common.

They would have wives or mates and families.

I would have myself. For all eternity alone. And so I became the best that I could be in combat. The strongest. The most fearless. After all, if someone were to sacrifice themselves, it should be me. I have less to lose.

“I was cursed,” I say, and more weight disappears. I had not known it was so heavy. “I was told that I would never mate with a wolf. A troll told me decades ago.”

There is a short pause as Idalis absorbs my words.

“That…does not sound like a curse to me,” she ventures. “It was a prophecy meant to shape you into who you are, perhaps.”

“It seemed like a curse at the time. I believed I would spend the rest of my life alone.” I stare at the ceiling as the pain ripples through me and the years of mourning flash in my mind.

“I told myself I was dealing with it, but all I was doing was burying any feelings I had so they could not tear me apart. But I had to make difficult choices to do that. I had to leave my pack.”

Idalis stiffens. “They did not accept you once you had been cursed?”

“No, they did. They never turned their backs on me. But eventually, I had to turn my back on them. It was tearing me apart to watch them find their mates and begin their lives when I would never do the same. It’s been years since I’ve had a pack. Years since I’ve seen my family.”

It’d always been so joyous for everyone when a member of the pack found a mate. It was only a reminder of my loneliness, no matter how much I tried to deny it. No matter how I attempted to hide the pain, it was always there, consuming me from the inside out.

Their excitement and passion swept through the whole pack. We would shift and hunt, howling our gratitude to the moon. I hated every moment of it. I hated how much I despised those celebrations. I wanted nothing more than to be happy for my brothers, but I couldn’t be. I was too jealous.

All those celebrations only served to remind me of what I was forbidden to have.

“When there was no other wolf without a mate, I set out by myself,” I whisper into Idalis’s hair, still unable to look her in the eyes. “I left.”

My voice breaks on the final word, and I bury my face in her hair.

Slipping her arm around my waist, Idalis holds me tighter. Her warmth and comfort soothe the brokenness inside of me. Her heartache and empathy thicken the air, but her pain and mine are eased by the bond between us.

It’s so strong and soothing that it washes away some of the worst pain I have carried with me. Like a spell of its own. Every breath Idalis takes seems to draw more of it away.

“I’m sorry, Ryker,” she says after a long while.

“There is nothing to apologize for.”

She lifts her head to look at me, her hand on my chin, forcing me to meet her beautiful gaze.

“I can’t change what happened, but I can be sorry nonetheless.

You shouldn’t have had to go through that.

It must’ve been terrible to spend all that time thinking you would remain alone.

” Another long pause. “I…know how it is.” Her tone lowers capturing my full attention.

She has a confession of her own. “My coven also left.” She swallows thickly.

“They’re gone forever.” Her voice cracks, tears pricking her eyes.

“And I could not see any other way to live than by staying here, alone.”

“I’m sorry.” I offer her my condolences and gently kiss her on the lips.

I hold her closer. “I had given up.”

“I had given up, too,” Idalis admits with a quiet laugh. “I thought I was content here until you came.” A simper slips onto her full lips. “Until you came, my fated wolf.” She caresses my jaw. “Even my cards didn’t see you coming.”

A candle burns to life nearby, lending us enough light that I can see her eyes spark with a delight I’d not seen yet. She is perfect. Soft. Lush. Like I imagined my mate would be, only better, because I had never imagined a woman like Idalis.

I pull her up from the pillow and run my fingers through her hair, then hold her face in my hands. There is one part of the future that I find I cannot ignore, no matter how much I want to. I would rather ignore it as long as possible, but this moment demands honesty.

“I will have to leave you,” I murmur. “To fight in the war.”

Idalis’s smile falters. “That is what my coven did. They believed some of us must fight in the war. We all did. But none of them returned with me. I watched them all die in the fire on the battlefield.”

Without knowing what to say, I can only hold her tighter. The tragedy of war keeps my throat tight, and my words choke me.

Idalis looks into my eyes in the faint candlelight. “What if I said I didn’t want you to go?”