Tavrin
Dark.
Cold.
Falling.
I had been falling for a long time. Minutes or hours or years, I couldn’t tell anymore. The darkness had no edges. No bottom. Just the endless sensation of sinking into nothing.
Somewhere far away, my body still existed. I could feel it distantly, like a memory of warmth. The fever burning through me. The stone under my wings. The small, desperate sounds someone was making.
Wren. The sounds were Wren.
I tried to reach for her. Tried to climb back up through the dark toward her voice. But I had nothing left. The wall had taken everything. Holding myself together while her uncle threatened her had taken everything. The flight back had scraped out the last dregs of whatever I’d been running on.
Empty.
I was so empty.
Her voice again. Closer now. Words I couldn’t quite parse, but the shape of them was familiar. My name. She was saying my name.
I wanted to answer. Wanted to tell her I was trying. But the darkness was heavy and I was so tired and it would be easy, so easy, to just let go and sink the rest of the way down.
Then.
Heat.
Pressure.
Something pressed against my chest, and it burned like a brand, and the pain was exquisite because pain meant I could still feel. Pain meant I was still here.
Her hand. Her hand on my chest. Over my heart.
“Feel,” I heard myself say, though I didn’t remember deciding to speak. “Find me. Pull me. Back.”
And she did.
The bond blazed through me like sunrise.
One moment I was drowning in darkness, and the next there was light.
Golden. Warm. Pouring into all the empty places, filling me up from the inside.
I felt her heart beating against my palm, strong and fast and alive, and I felt my own heart stutter and then catch, finding her rhythm, syncing to her pulse.
I felt her.
Not just her hand on my chest. Not just her body pressed against mine. I felt everything. The fierce determination that had carried her through her uncle’s house. The terror she’d swallowed when she saw me on the balcony. The love she had been hiding even from herself.
She loved me.
She loved me and she was choosing me and she was pulling me back from the void with nothing but her heartbeat and her stubborn, magnificent will.
My eyes opened.
She was above me. Bare skin and loose hair and tears streaming down her cheeks. The most beautiful thing I had ever seen in any form, in any life.
“More,” I heard myself say. “Need. More of you.”
She understood. She always understood.
Her hand between us. The brush of her fingers against me, and I was already hard, had been hard since she’d pressed her body to mine, some part of me responding even when the rest was dying. She positioned me. Rose up on her knees.
Sank down.
I stopped breathing.
Only felt.
The tight, slick grip as she took me in, inch by inch. The way her face changed, concentration and discomfort and then something else, something that looked like wonder.
She was so small around me. I could feel her body stretching to accommodate, feel the effort it took her to take all of me. I wanted to tell her to slow down, to be careful, but I couldn’t speak. Could only lie there and feel her claiming me with her body.
“Wren.” Her name finally broke free. “Wren. Wren.”
She took all of me. Settled into my lap with me buried inside her, and for a moment neither of us moved. Just breathed. Just felt.
The fullness. The heat. The strange, perfect rightness of our bodies joined. She was overwhelmed. She was aroused. She was terrified and exhilarated and she had never wanted anything as much as she wanted this.
“Move,” I managed. “Please. Need to feel you. Move.”
She moved.
And the void began to release me.
Every roll of her hips pulled me further from the darkness. Every slide of her body around me anchored me more firmly to the world. Her pleasure rose, a rising tide that fed back into my own, and I felt something else too: her determination. Her fierce, stubborn refusal to let death have me.
She was saving my life with her body. With her choice. With her love.
I found the strength to move with her. Weak thrusts at first, my body still fighting the exhaustion. But she felt so good. So impossibly good. The tight grip of her around me, the small sounds she made when I hit the right angle, the sharp inhale when I thrust deeper.
Mine.
Not the beast’s possessiveness. Something older. Something that had been waiting since she’d walked toward me that first day, fearless and decided. I had just been waiting for her to know it too.
I pulled her down against my chest. Buried my face in her neck and breathed her in. She smelled like ink and old paper and something sweet underneath, something that was just her. Her small sounds of pleasure vibrated against my skin while she rode me.
“Wren.” Her name again. I couldn’t stop saying it. “I can’t. I need...”
“Take it,” she gasped. “Whatever you need. Take it.”
The last of my control snapped.
My wings rose without my permission. Spreading wide, then curving down to cage us both. A shelter. A wall between her and everything else in the world.
I wanted to tell her she was mine. Wanted to demand she say it back. But the words wouldn’t come, so I said it with my body instead: driving into her, claiming her, making her feel how much I needed her.
She knew. She always knew.
“Yours,” she gasped without being asked. “I’m yours, Tavrin. Always.”
I set a pace I couldn’t have managed five minutes ago. The bond was feeding me her energy, her life, her fierce and stubborn vitality. Every thrust drove me deeper into her body and deeper into the bond and further from the darkness that had nearly claimed me.
My fever broke. I felt it go: the frantic heat banking to something sustainable, the fog lifting from my thoughts. I could think again. Could feel again. Could see her face clearly, really see her, not through the haze of desperation.
She was close. The tension building. The pleasure coiling tighter. Her eyes half-closed, her lips parted.
Beautiful. She was so beautiful.
“Let go,” I said, and my voice was mine again. Clear. Present. “I want to feel you. Let go.”
She came apart.
I felt it happen. Felt the orgasm crash through her, felt her body clench around me, felt her pleasure cascade until I couldn’t tell whose sensation was whose. She cried out my name, her nails digging into my shoulders, her whole body shaking.
And I followed.
The climax tore through me with a force that whited out my vision. I spilled into her with a sound that was half roar and half sob, my hips jerking, my wings snapping wide. The bond blazed between us, golden light pouring from my skin, from her skin, turning the nest into something holy.
I felt something lock into place.
Not just physical. Not just the pleasure still pulsing through both of us. Something deeper. Something permanent. A thread connecting my heart to hers, unbreakable, eternal.
The mate bond.
Complete.
The light faded slowly. The pleasure ebbed. I became aware of my body again: the sweat cooling on my skin, the sweet ache in muscles I’d pushed too hard, the woman beneath me still trembling with aftershocks.
I was crushing her.
The thought penetrated the haze, and I shifted my weight, tried to roll off her. She made a sound of protest and pulled me back.
“Stay.” Her voice was wrecked. Hoarse. Beautiful. “Don’t you dare move.”
“Heavy.”
“Don’t care.” Her arms tightened around my neck. “Stay.”
I compromised. Shifted to the side just enough to take most of my weight off her, but kept myself half-covering her, one wing draped across us both like a blanket.
We lay there. Breathing. Coming back to ourselves.
I could still feel her, the warm glow of her satisfaction. The drowsy contentment settling over her thoughts.
I never wanted to move again.
“Hi,” she said after a long moment. Her voice was soft. Almost shy. As if we hadn’t just done what we’d done.
I laughed. Rough. Wondering. I hadn’t laughed in days.
“Hi.”
She turned her head to look at me. Her cheeks were flushed. Her hair was tangled. Her eyes were bright with tears she hadn’t quite shed.
“You came back.”
“You called me.” I caught her hand, brought it to my lips, pressed a kiss to her palm. “I will always come back when you call.”
“I thought...” She swallowed. “On the balcony. You weren’t breathing right. Your heart was stopping. I thought I’d lost you.”
“You saved me.”
“I didn’t know if it would work. The books said the bond required both parties to be, to be conscious, to consent, and you were barely there, and I just..
.” She was crying now. Quiet tears sliding down her temples into her hair.
“I couldn’t lose you. I couldn’t. So I just decided it would work and I wouldn’t accept any other outcome. ”
That was so perfectly her. My practical, stubborn, magnificent mate. Deciding that the rules didn’t apply to her because she refused to let them.
“Wren.” I brushed the tears from her cheeks. “It worked. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.” I kissed her forehead. Her closed eyes. The tip of her nose. “The bond is complete. You’re stuck with me now. For the rest of our lives, however long that is.”
She opened her eyes. Searched my face.
“However long?”
“Rocs live a very long time.” I traced the line of her jaw, marveling at the softness of her skin. “And our mates live as long as we do. You may come to regret this choice in a century or two.”
She went quiet.
“I spent years counting days until I could escape,” she said finally. “Rationing hope like it was coin I couldn’t afford to spend. And now I have centuries?”
“Does that frighten you?”
“Maybe. In a way.” She pressed closer, her hand flat against my chest. “I’ll outlive everyone I knew. Everyone except Elspeth, maybe, if she...” She trailed off. “It should frighten me.”
“But?”
“But I keep thinking about your library. About all those books I haven’t read yet.” A smile ghosted across her face. “Three hundred years sounds like enough time to finish them.”
“Twice,” I said.
“At least.”
“I won’t ever regret you.” No hesitation. The brief uncertainty already resolved.
The certainty in her voice. The absolute lack of doubt. I kissed her. Soft. Tender. Tasting the salt of her tears and the sweetness beneath.
When I pulled back, she was smiling. Just barely. The exhausted, wondering smile of someone who had gone through hell and come out the other side.
“Your eyes are different,” she said.
“Different how?”
“Brighter. Less... feral. You look like you again.” She touched my face, traced the feathers along my jaw. “The feathers are still here. But you’re in there. I can see you.”
“I’m here.” I turned my head, brushed my lips across her palm. “I’m here, and I’m not leaving, and I’m going to spend the rest of our very long lives making sure you never regret choosing me.”
She laughed. Wet and shaky and perfect.
“That sounds like a lot of pressure.”
“I’m highly motivated.”
Her laugh turned into something else. A hitching breath. A fresh wave of tears.
“I was so scared.” The words came out broken. “When you broke through that wall. When you collapsed on the balcony. When your heart kept stopping. I was so scared I’d found you just to lose you.”
I gathered her close. Wrapped my wing tighter around us. Let her cry into my chest while I stroked her hair and murmured her name.
“You’re not losing me,” I said. “Not ever. You’re stuck with me, Wren. For better or worse. In sickness and health. Until death do us part, except death already tried and you told it no.”
She laughed again. Watery. Wonderful.
“I did. I told death it couldn’t have you.”
“And death listened.”
“Apparently I’m very persuasive.”
I smiled against her hair. Felt the bond humming between us, warm and golden and permanent.
“Apparently you are.”
She nestled closer. Her breathing slowed. I thought she might be falling asleep.
But her body still hummed against mine. The relief bleeding into something warmer, something that wanted.
Her hand moved. Slid down my chest. Lower.
“Wren?”
“You nearly died.” Her voice was soft but steady. “And now you’re alive. And I want...” She looked up at me, and her eyes were dark, wanting. “For once in my life, I want to feel you choose this. Not because you’re dying. Because you want me.”
I was already hardening under her touch.
“I want you.” I rolled her onto her back, covered her body with mine, felt her legs part to make room for me. “I will choose you every time.”
Her smile was slow. Satisfied. Wicked.
“Then choose me again.”