THIRTY-EIGHT #3
Warmth blooms in my chest, sudden and fierce. Gods, I’m completely and utterly lost to this man.
“I love you, Thane.”
I say it without hesitation or fear, because it’s the truth. In every touch. Every look. Every unspoken thing between us.
His mind brushes against mine. Fully. Deeply. A presence I feel all around me. A storm of emotions, raw and unchecked, folding around me like a shield. Like the way he held me last night after my nightmares.
I press closer, my forehead resting against his.
“I am yours,” I whisper through the bond.
His fingers slide through the wet tangles of my hair, his touch softer than I expect. He sits back, pulling me into his lap. My bare skin presses against his wet, clothed body. His arms wrap around me with no intention of letting go.
When he speaks, his voice is gentle, as though the weight of the words is almost too much to bear.
“This is the first time I’ve ever felt like I am home.”
I still.
Thane doesn’t say things like this. He is a man of action, of sharp edges and quiet strength. The Warlord of the realm.
But now, with his body still wrapped around mine and his mind cradling mine through the bond, he is just a man.
My man.
And the way he says it, so softly, with so much quiet hurt beneath the words, makes my chest ache.
I lift my head to look at him, but his eyes are already on me. Shadowed in the dim light. I can see the emotion flickering there. The fear he tries so hard to hide.
“I have lived in castles,” he says, his fingers brushing absently over my ribs, tracing the shape of me. “I have walked through gilded halls, stood on battlefields, led armies. I have worn a crown.”
His voice turns hoarse, a quiet rasp that splinters through me.
“And yet, not once in my life have I ever felt like I belonged.”
The words gut me.
“Not in the Pyre Keep. Not in the war room. Not in my father’s house.”
His gaze drifts away for a moment.
“Even as a child, I knew. The walls were tall, the halls endless, but they were never mine. Not really.”
His breath shudders.
“And now, even this . . . ” His voice roughens. “Even this, I fear it is not mine to keep.”
A cold prickle creeps down my spine. Because I know what he means. I know what he fears.
The curse.
The shadows moving beneath his skin. The force that stirs when he does not command it. The same thing that took his mother piece by piece. The same thing that might one day take him from me.
But is it a curse?
The question has been haunting me ever since Thane wielded them for the first time in his office at the outpost. They felt like a caress, not a curse. Since then, Valen has uncovered fragments of a history that no longer fit the stories we were raised on.
The shadows sometimes answer to Thane and sometimes act of their own accord when his emotions run high. They also react to the bond.
And to me.
Every new discovery seems to raise more questions than answers.
We know so little about the Shadow Warden. So little about what the gods intended. So little about what Thane is becoming. Maybe the darkness inside him is exactly what we’ve always feared. Or maybe we’ve spent generations calling it a curse simply because we didn’t understand it.
Uncertainty offers little comfort when the stakes are this high. Because whether the shadows are a curse, a gift, or something far older than either, the fear inside Thane remains the same.
One day he will lose himself—he will look at me and not remember who I am.
His jaw tightens, his grip flexing against my waist.
“I want to believe I can have this,” he admits, and gods, his voice sounds destroyed. “I want to believe I will stay as me.”
Because this is the truth of it. It isn’t just about duty. Or war. Or the Pyre Keep. It’s about him. And the thing inside him that might take everything away.
I press my palm to his cheek, my thumb brushing just beneath his eye, and he leans into the touch as though he’s starving for it.
“It was never a place,” he continues, his forehead resting against mine, his breath warm against my lips. “It was never stone walls or a throne or a name.”
His arms tighten around me.
His voice breaks.
“It has always been you. Even before I knew you.”
Tears burn at the edges of my vision, but I don’t let them fall.
“I love you, Thane. All of you,” I whisper through the bond.
And this time, he doesn’t just let me in. He pours into me through the bond. A flood of emotion. Devotion. Longing so deep it steals the air from my lungs. The bond fills with him, wrapping around me, holding on as though I am the one thing keeping him tethered to this world.
Then his voice comes, quiet in my mind and filled with reverence.
“You are my home, Amara.”
I press my lips to his. Desperate. Aching. Trying to pour every ounce of love I feel into the kiss. Every unspoken promise that he will never feel alone again. That he will never have to question where he belongs.
That he belongs with me.
When he kisses me back, his hands tangling in my hair, his body pulling mine closer, I know he believes it.
He is home.
And I will spend the rest of my life making sure he never forgets it.