Chapter 28 #2
A sound escapes me. Not a moan. Something rougher, something feral that vibrates up from my chest and out my throat.
His rhythm stutters.
“Fuck.” His grip on my hip turns bruising. “Do that again.”
I don’t even know what I did. But I do it again anyway. Let that wild thing in my chest have a voice, let the sound tear out of me raw and unfiltered.
He snarls in response. Actually snarls, like an animal, and his hips snap harder.
“There she is.” His voice has dropped into something barely human, and when he yanks my hips back to meet his thrust we both groan like it’s punched out of us. “There’s my queen. Knew she was in there. Knew you weren’t just prey.”
His teeth find my shoulder and the bite sends lightning down my spine.
“Predator,” he growls against my skin. “Just been pretending to be tame.”
“Yes.” I don’t know where the word comes from. Don’t know why it feels like a confession.
“Then stop pretending.” He fists my hair, the silver-pink strands that keep shifting without my permission, and pulls my head back. “Show me what you really are.”
The bark scrapes my palms. His teeth find my shoulder again, biting down harder this time. The bond at my wrist blazes gold and hot, and I feel him through it. Not just physical sensation. The emotion underneath. The desperation. The relief. The terrifying, consuming certainty that this is right.
That we’re right.
That whatever else is broken, this isn’t.
“Ash.” His rhythm falters. “I’m close. Fuck, I’m—”
“Don’t stop.” I reach back, finding his hip, digging my nails in hard enough to draw blood. “Don’t you dare stop.”
He roars.
Not a groan. Not a moan. A roar that shakes the bark beneath my palms and sends something in the canopy scattering.
His hand slides around my front, finding my clit, pressing and circling ruthlessly.
“Come with me.” His voice cracks, barely human anymore. “Want to feel you break apart on my cock. Want the whole fucking forest to hear you scream my name.”
The words shove me over the edge.
I break apart, and this time the sound that tears out of me is feral. Raw. Something the forest recognizes because the trees shudder in response, the bioluminescent moss flaring bright around us.
He follows with another roar, his teeth sinking into my shoulder.
Not gentle, not playful, actually biting.
The pain-pleasure of it sends another wave crashing through me.
His cock pulses inside me, filling me, claiming me, and I feel it through the bond.
His pleasure, my pleasure, tangled together until I can’t tell whose is whose.
We come together like animals.
Like Wild Court.
Like we were always supposed to.
For a long moment, neither of us moves.
His forehead drops to my spine. His breath heaves against my skin. His hands, still gripping my hips, tremble slightly.
“Ash.” My name is a whisper now. A prayer.
“I’m here.” I don’t know why I say it. Don’t know why those are the words that surface.
But his arms wrap around me, turning me, pulling me against his chest until I’m surrounded by heat and sweat and the thundering of his heart.
“You’re here,” he repeats. Like he’s confirming it. Like he still can’t quite believe it.
I press my face into his neck and breathe him in. Smoke and pine and something uniquely him. For just a moment, I let myself have this.
My hand drifts across his chest without intention. Mapping him. Learning him.
Then my fingers find the ridges.
Scars. Not old ones. Not faded silver lines from centuries of guardianship.
These are new. Raised and angry, radiating outward from his sternum like something was ripped from him. Like something that lived inside his ribs was torn out by force.
His whole body goes rigid.
“Ash—”
“The Cauldron.” I trace the edges of the scar tissue, feel him flinch. Not from pain but from being seen. “You let it slip yesterday. When you were talking about letting everything fall away.”
His jaw works. “I didn’t mean for you to—”
“What happened?”
For a moment, I think he won’t answer. Think he’ll deflect or change the subject or pull away.
But he doesn’t.
“Dagda,” he says quietly. “The god who forged the Cauldron. He’s been hiding in the borderlands as a bartender for gods know how long. And he is Tadgh. When I was trying to reach you, when I was bleeding through every barrier Moros built, he pulled it out of me.”
That old bastard. Tadgh. The Daghda.
My stomach drops. “Pulled it out?”
“The Cauldron isn’t just magic, Ash. It’s physical.
It lived in my chest. Against my spine.” His hand finds mine, presses it flat against the scar tissue.
“He ripped it out. Said they needed it for something. Didn’t ask.
Didn’t warn me. Just—” He makes a sound that isn’t quite a laugh.
“I woke up on a bar floor with a hole in my chest and a god telling me it was necessary.”
“Orion.”
“I couldn’t heal after that. Not properly.
Couldn’t do half of what guardians are supposed to do.
” His voice goes quiet. “Couldn’t reach you.
Couldn’t protect the scouts in the eastern quadrant.
Couldn’t do anything except bleed and burn and hope you were still alive on the other side of walls I couldn’t break. ”
I don’t have words. Don’t have anything that could possibly be adequate for what he just handed me.
So I press my lips to the scar instead. Feel him shudder.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper against his skin. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”
“You’re here now.” His arms tighten. “That’s the part that matters.”
I want to argue. Want to tell him that my being here doesn’t undo the month of damage, doesn’t bring back the Cauldron, doesn’t resurrect scouts whose names he never learned.
But his heart beats steady under my cheek. And his arms hold me like I’m something worth crossing death forests for.
Something worth losing a Cauldron for.
“Orion?”
“Mm?”
“Did I really taste as good as you imagined?”
He laughs. Surprised and warm and so very him. He pulls back to look at me with those amber eyes that have finally gone normal again.
“Better.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. “So much fucking better.”
Every instinct says pull away. Put the walls back up. Remember where we are and what’s hunting us.
I don’t move.
The thought surfaces anyway, uninvited and dangerous:
What if I stayed this time?