Relief
Chapter twenty
Our quarters.
Skip closed the door behind us and turned.
“Sit down,” he said.
I sat.
He did not. He crossed to the fire and stood with his back to me for a moment, assembling the words he intended to use rather than allowing the first available ones to escape.
His anger was present and real. Beneath it remained the fear that had produced it.
He turned.
“You went beyond the wall after dark,” he said. “Into an open field with the command layer. What were you thinking?”
“I wanted to face the enemy. And, for the record, I handled myself and defeated one of them.”
“I am not angry that you defeated it.” His words came slowly, shaped with deliberate care to preserve the distinction. “I am angry that you placed yourself in that position to begin with. You went beyond the wall, at night, knowing the command layer was there. That was an unnecessary risk.”
“Because of Morvanna?”
“Yes, because of Morvanna.” His control broke around the words.
“She is looking for you. That is why Mira came here. That is why the creature in the ruins spoke to you. Morvanna watches this fortress through every pair of turned eyes she sends against the wall. She knows you are here, and she knows what you mean to me.”
His fear and anger moved together, too tightly intertwined to separate.
“I am not saying tonight’s incursion was staged for you,” he continued.
“Those vampires were moving toward a village. But Morvanna does not need to design every attack around you. She only needs to recognize an opportunity when one presents itself. The moment you rode beyond the wall, you gave her one.”
I felt his fear, stripped of performance and left entirely exposed.
“Skip, I am not going to spend the rest of my life confined inside a fortress. I am finished living that way. I spent my life on Earth retreating from danger, from decisions, from anything that might demand more of me than observation. I will not do that here.”
“I am not asking you to.”
“You are asking me to remain behind the walls while you face everything outside them.”
“I am asking you not to enter obvious danger without warning or a plan.”
“I can handle myself. Tonight proved that. This claiming is a mutual bond. I accept that your responsibilities place you in danger. You have to accept that I am capable of facing it too.”
“I do accept it.”
“Then stop treating me as though capability only matters when I am standing somewhere safe.”
His breath caught for a moment.
“That is not the woman I am, Skip. Not anymore.”
“I know.” His voice dropped. “That is why I love you.”
The anger began to leave his face. His eyes brightened, and what replaced it was tenderness, followed by grief.
“I cannot lose another claimed,” he said.
The words were quiet, as though they had been true for years and he had never before permitted himself to give them this exact shape.
“Not in the way I lost Mira.” He drew a breath. “I cannot lose you. I would not survive it.”
I looked at him.
I would not survive it.
The statement landed without qualification. Something inside me gave way, and the tears came before I had decided how to answer, as though my body had understood him first.
“And Morvanna knows that,” he said. “She knows what you are to me. She knows the bond between us is something she can exploit. Every force she sends toward this fortress gives her another opportunity to observe us. What frightens us. What draws us out. What makes us abandon caution. She is looking for weaknesses, and she has all the patience in the world.”
He crossed the room and sat beside me on the edge of the bed. His warmth reached me through the cold that remained in my clothes.
“You went out there because you needed to know whether you were ready,” he said. “I understand that. You needed to learn what the training had made of you.”
His hand rose to my face.
“You are ready. You were ready. I felt it.”
His exhilaration moved beneath his touch, bright and entirely unmanaged.
“But readiness is not safety,” he said. “And neither is the same as being invulnerable. You are claimed to me. Morvanna wants you, and she has resources we do not fully understand. I need you to treat that as a tactical reality.”
“I do.”
“I am not asking you never to leave these walls. I am asking you not to ride beyond them after dark without warning me, without coordination, and without a plan designed for the fact that Morvanna knows who you are.”
I held his gaze.
Through the bond came everything he had been unable to conceal: fear shaped by love, anger born from fear, and the pride he had not yet allowed himself to speak.
I understood. He had opened himself to me after losing someone once before. Mira had been taken by the dark bond, and the possibility of the same thing happening to me lived inside him as something closer to terror than memory.
As much as I wanted to embrace every dangerous possibility available to the new Meghan, I could admit that the patrol had not needed me when it left Ely.
I had gone because I needed to know what the training had made of me.
That did not make my decision to save Varia wrong, or my presence meaningless.
It only meant that the risk I had taken began as something personal.
“I agree,” I said. “I will not go beyond the walls after dark again without telling you and coordinating with command.”
He searched my face, making certain I meant it.
I did.
The tension in him eased by degrees. It was not something he announced. I felt it move through him, concern retaining its weight but losing its sharpest edge.
He brushed my hair back from my face. His thumb traced my jaw, his eyes holding mine.
“You are extraordinary,” he said.
“I know,” I said with a grin.
His smile was brief and unguarded, the kind that left warmth behind after it disappeared.
Then he kissed me.
His fear continued its slow transformation into something gentler. He had been holding himself together since the moment he felt my danger. Now, he allowed himself to release it.
Skip held me beside the window, his arms wrapped around me from behind and his chin resting near my temple. Together, we watched the snow fall over the white valley.
He did not hold me as he had after the claiming, or during the warm darkness of the pleasure soaked nights we spent together.
He held me as a man held someone he had nearly lost. There was nothing possessive or urgent in it.
Only certainty. His arms remained around me, quiet and steady, saying what words no longer needed to.
I did not move. I let him hold me for as long as he needed.
Outside, snow continued to fall. The garrison settled back into its nocturnal rhythm. Somewhere below us, Caen worked over the wounded soldier in the infirmary. The ring glowed with its quiet golden warmth in the dark.
Eventually, Skip’s hands found what they always found.
Skip’s desire reached me in a form I had never felt before. Relief sharpened it rather than softening it. He needed to touch me, to feel me respond, to confirm with every available sense that I was alive and still choosing him.
Everything I carried answered him: the remnants of adrenaline, the ache of my first kill, and the overwhelming love I felt for this man who had once seemed impossible.
He kissed me slowly and deeply. There was nothing tentative in it, but there was no urgency either. He tasted me as though committing the fact of me to memory.
His hands moved over my clothes, removing each layer until I stood bare before him. Then he allowed me to undress him. My fingers followed the familiar planes of his body—the heavy muscle, the old scars, the places I had learned by touch and now knew almost as well as my own.
He lifted me into his arms and carried me to the bed. I draped my arms over his shoulders while one of his hands cupped my ass and the other supported me beneath my thigh. He laid me against the blankets and remained standing between my parted legs.
I watched his cock harden as he looked at me.
The effect on my body was immediate. Heat gathered low in my belly, my pulse accelerated, and wetness spread between my thighs. His fear had not vanished. It had changed form, passing through relief and emerging as desire intense enough for both of us to feel.
He lay beside me and kissed me again. When he pulled back, he pressed his forehead to mine. Our eyes met. My heart pounded, and his breathing had lost its careful rhythm.
“I must never lose you,” he said, tracing his fingers along my arm.
“You won’t.” My voice thickened around the promise. “I’m here. I’m yours.”
His eyes closed for one brief moment as the words moved through him.
I shifted over him and rose onto my knees, straddling his hips. Reaching between us, I wrapped my hand around his cock and guided the broad head to my entrance. My other hand rested against his chest, directly over the hard beat of his heart.
He looked up at me.
I lowered myself slowly.
The first stretch drew a helpless sound from my throat. I continued inch by inch, taking him deeper until my body had opened around all of him. His hands closed around my hips, not directing me, only holding on.
When he was fully inside me, I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around his neck. Our foreheads met again.
For several breaths, neither of us moved.
His cock twitched inside me. I felt the effort it cost him to remain still, along with the need beneath it.
Then I began to move.
I rode him slowly, rolling my hips and sinking deep on every descent. The pace was deliberate, each movement allowing me to feel the full length of him sliding through me.
There was no need to hurry. We had already spent the night believing time might be taken from us.
His hands traveled up my back. One settled between my shoulder blades while the other supported the base of my spine, holding me close as I moved.
Every slow rise and fall gave him another answer.
Alive.
Here.
His.
Mine.
“Look at me,” he murmured.
Our eyes remained locked as I rode him. Nothing between us was concealed or managed. I felt the last of his terror loosen its grip, replaced by relief so profound it bordered on pain.
“You feel so good,” I whispered.
His hands tightened around my waist. He helped lift me, then guided me down again, drawing me onto him until our bodies met completely. My clit pressed against him with every grind, pleasure moving through me in bright, gathering currents.
The ring on my finger glowed steadily between us.
“I’m close,” I breathed against his mouth.
“So am I.”
“Stay with me.”
“Always.”
I moved harder, maintaining the same deep rhythm. Wetness coated him and gathered where our bodies met. His cock found the spot inside me that made my thighs tremble, and the pressure building low in my body became impossible to contain.
His name left my mouth.
My orgasm broke through me in a slow, powerful wave. My pussy clenched around him, each contraction pulling a rough sound from his chest. Skip dragged me down against him and came with my name on his lips, his cock pulsing deep inside me.
The shared pleasure surged between us from both directions.
For several seconds, there was no meaningful boundary between what belonged to him and what belonged to me. Relief, love, and physical sensation collapsed into one overwhelming experience.
We held each other through it, trembling, our mouths brushing between uneven breaths.
I continued moving gently as the intensity faded, drawing out the final contractions until neither of us could manage more.
Skip wrapped both arms around my body and eased us back against the bed, bringing me down onto his chest. His hands moved along my spine in slow, soothing passes.
“I love you,” he said quietly. “More than I thought I could love anyone.”
“I love you too.”
I pressed my lips over his heart and listened to its steady rhythm beneath my cheek.
The fire crackled in the hearth. Beyond the window, snow continued falling over the valley. The ring maintained its quiet golden glow.
We remained joined beneath the blankets, his arms secure around me and the bond warm between us.
We were home. We were safe. We were each other’s.