Chapter 27
Jack had kept looking at the hourglass resting on the table across from mine, but from this angle, I couldn’t see how much was left—how much time we had left.
Jack fought with Diedre, hurling magic and foul words.
All I could do was scream, yell, and fly around until he somehow noticed me.
If it weren’t for Jack smashing those vases and making Diedre nervous, I wasn’t sure how long it would’ve taken him.
Diedre’s declaration on the spell cast within the globe confused me.
Why would she have stopped Jack from smashing the globe if it would have sent me somewhere Jack couldn’t reach me?
She’d have won. Plain and simple. Or why hadn’t she sent me there in the first place?
It was all a game to get into Jack’s head because of his devotion to me, his desire to be mine, and to have an eternal soulmate.
Diedre failed in her plans because, from this vantage point, I witnessed precisely why I, in turn, wanted to be his queen.
Jack’s magic frosting the glass made it easier to do something, anything, with my dormant powers.
I’d caused an avalanche, surely I could manage breaking the glass of a godsdamned snow globe.
Poising my fingers, I recalled the sensations I’d experienced when the icy spires shot through the trees because I willed them there.
A chilly sort of electric current had started at the base of my spine and surged its way into my skull that day.
I’d been elated that I’d found someone like me—another blessed by winter magic. Our touch brought us both comfort.
“It should’ve been mine,” Diedre shrieked, launching those same black vines as before, only now they were sharp on the ends like spears.
Jack, in half creature form, deflected them with his shoulder and forearm barbs. With every attack, more of the monster took over, making him taller, wider, and almost entirely composed of ice.
“You let the darkness consume you,” Jack roared back. “Did you not think there’d be consequences for your actions?”
Concentrating on the way my heart warmed whenever Jack was near me, the blissful chill he brought to my skin and bones, I willed my magic to my fingertips. My wings flapped emphatically as if aiding my power.
The blackness leaking from Diedre’s eyes grew more intense, traveling down her neck.
She threw spiny vine after vine at Jack over and over, only ever managing to nick some ice chips from his shoulders, which quickly hardened up.
“Winter itself bore you because it found me unworthy. If it weren’t for you, I would be queen of it all. ”
My arms shook from the effort, and I pinched my eyes shut, attempting to ignore the unfolding scene between this villainess and my mate.
Jack’s growls intensified to the point of rattling the globe that entrapped me. “It found you unworthy because you fucked up, Diedre. When will you understand that your fate was of your own doing?”
At the same time, Diedre responded with a shriek so shrill it could split mountains, my magic burst from my palms, colliding with the glass and cracking it.
The sound reverberated in my ears, and I gasped before risking fluttering my eyes open.
The pattern fell from top to bottom in zig-zag like an unruly lightning bolt.
My wings flicked taut, and I charged forward, wincing as I slammed my shoulder into the globe.
There was a blinding flash of white light and swirl of icy black dust before my knees thumped to the ground, my hands following. I kept my eyes shut from fear of where I’d find myself, but as my fingers grazed splintered wood against my skin, I smiled.
“Sylvaria,” Jack cried out.
My wings fanned out, flapping excitedly when I met Jack’s glacially glowing blue gaze.
“What in the freezing seven hells?” Diedre cried out, her attention turning on me, black claws raised.
Jack charged toward me in full ice creature form, his arms splayed wide. “Sylvie, hide your wings,” he roared.
His words caught me by surprise at first, causing me to hesitate.
As I folded them back, willing my wings to disappear, a black vine flew toward me over my shoulder, clipping one wing in the top corner.
I wailed, the pain striking into my neck and upper back.
Jack wrapped his arms around me, taking more of the voracious vine strikes into his own icy armor.
Snow, mist, and ice crystals swirled around us like a wintry tornado. Then suddenly—we disappeared.
Our bodies fell into a slump of chilly, powdery snow.
Towering evergreen and silver birch trees hung overhead, their branches weighed heavily with snow.
A cardinal perched on one branch, its bright red feathers a stark contrast to the blanket of white.
It tilted its head at us, giving a single tweet before a female cardinal flew beside it and the two blissfully took to the skies together.
Sitting up on my elbows, I felt my body as if Jack’s snowy magic still entwined me. “How did you do that? Can you appear anywhere you want?”
“No,” he responded, his jaw set, and a steely demeanor overtook his features. Jack reached for my wing, healing the torn tip. “I can only go where I can see and only in my realm.”
A cloud glided overhead, its shape bearing a striking resemblance to that of an hourglass.
Mates.
“Jack,” I shouted, scrambling to my knees and already fumbling with my clothes.
Jack stood still, the ice carved into his brow bone furrowing, watching me.
Pausing with my hands at the ties of my blouse, I reached for his mystical creature’s face instead.
The palm I pressed to his frozen cheek made the ice there shimmer from my touch.
“We’re running out of time.” Pulling the string, I opened the shirt, revealing my breasts to him before slipping it from my shoulders.
“You need to claim me, mate. I accept this. I want you. I want all of it.”
The glow in Jack’s gaze radiated as he roamed my bare breasts.
A square patch between his hip bones began to shift.
Gulping, because I had no fucking clue what I was in for, I removed the rest of my clothes and flared my wings.
The snow was comforting, settling between my toes and embracing my ankles and shins.
Jack moved closer, his height having grown an extra foot from his fae-form. This was the first time I’d seen him like this, when he wasn’t fighting, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t the least bit nervous.
“Sylv, not like—not like this,” he whispered with a pained wince, his voice in creature form deeper than the fjord valleys. The icy barbs on his forehead and cheeks sheathed in and out as if Jack and his creature were battling for control.
Tracing my fingers over the overlapping ice flaps appearing like ab muscles at his stomach, I trailed upward until I reached his chest and pressed my palm there, pulsing warmth into him. “Diedre is probably already looking for us. It has to be now.”
Gulping again, I turned my back to him and slowly bent forward, grabbing my ass cheeks and pulling them apart.
My pussy was on full display to him now, and, biting my lip, I spread myself further, inviting him to take me.
Peeking over my shoulder, a long, thick appendage appeared from the rectangular slit.
His cock, too, was pure ice, still retaining the bulbous head, but down the length were several carved ridges.
At its base was another rotund portion, double the size of the head.
He lurched forward, but paused again, his chest heaving at the sight of me submitting to him.
“Take me, Jack. I’m yours,” I whispered, fanning my wings for him and making them sparkle.
Those words struck something feral in him, and he prowled forward, grabbing one of my hips and guiding me to my knees.
His other hand moved my head toward the ground, holding me there as the tip of his cock teased my entrance.
It was so fucking cold, and I already shivered with anticipation at how it’d feel inside me.
As he slowly pushed inside, I let out a raspy gasp, my knees buckling, but Jack’s hand on my waist kept me from collapsing into the snow. Just when I thought all of him was in, he pushed the rest of it, that final bulbous end slamming against my ass.
It was so deliciously cold and thick. I never imagined experiencing such a sense of fullness.
My insides pulsed and clenched around him, acclimating to the new intrusion, accepting it, wanting more of it.
Languidly, he stroked the apex of my wings, rubbing back and forth, making me squeak at the way it made my stomach flutter.
He rocked in and out of me, slowly at first, and picking up speed when he felt me relax.
“Oh, fuck,” I cried out.
His chilly palm moved from my hip, sliding against my stomach until it reached my breasts, grabbing and kneading one.
He thrusted, the icy protrusions at his hips rubbing against my ass, surprising at first but soon so welcoming.
The ridges on his cock rubbed on and off that sensitive, small area within my core.
Every time one brushed, it made me dig my fingers into the snow, grabbing handfuls, pleasurable moans and groans echoing from my throat.
Jack pulled me upward with a palm pressed between my breasts, his lips lowering to my ear. “No other female has taken this cock, Sylvaria.” When I tensed at that because how could that be possible, he added, “My creature’s cock. Do you know why?”
Shuddering, coming fucking undone at the seam for him, I shook my head.
“Because they weren’t my mate,” he declared, wrapping the words in a claiming snarl.
He plowed into me once, hard and rough at the word “mate.” “They weren’t you, faerie.
No one else could take my cock but you.” He brazenly thrust into me again a single time, pausing with our bodies fused, chilly skin to chilly skin. “And especially not enjoy it.”
Snaking a hand to the back of his neck, I scratched my nails over the ridges of ice that’d replaced his spiky hair. “Fuck me, Frost.”
A rumble vibrated in his chest, pulsing through my back, and he fisted my hair, unleashing a long dark blue tongue that I would beg him to use later—after we were mated and safe and eternally together.
He licked my cheek and lapped it over my lips, before giving me a frozen kiss and pushing my head back to the ground.
He wrapped a hand around one of my shoulders, the other snatching my wrist and holding my arm captive behind me.
His thrusts became positively animalistic, waves of pleasure twisting through me in so many tantalizing knots I couldn’t see straight, couldn’t think.
The climax built like a cracking glacier until it broke away completely, plunging me into frigid waters and sending rapture pulsing through my core.
I moaned his name through my release, once for Jack and once for Jakzair.
Jack kept thrusting, his claws pressing to the skin at my breastbone. “I claim you, Sylvaria. You’re mine.” At that, he pushed the bulbous end of his cock inside me, stretching and filling my opening. It hurt for only a moment before the dizzying pleasure had me going boneless.
Arching his back, he spilled inside me—a pleasuring river of chilly essence that had my knees shaking, plunging me into another orgasm.
Jack didn’t stop there. He kept us connected, his cock pulsing inside me, and an icy hotness sizzled over my skin from where he touched my chest. He leaned over me, his canines grazing my nape before they sank in.
It wasn’t so much as a bite, however, as it was him lapping and sucking.
Glancing down at my chest, a glowing blue tendril formed, creating an intricate pattern around each breast, up and over my collarbones, and didn’t stop until it reached just below my chin.
Below the dip where my collarbones met, an icy patch matching those of Jack’s creature formed in a diamond shape.
Jack’s rough nose nuzzled my hair, and he tapped the patch with his claw. “A piece of my true nature will now always be with you, Sylvie.” Slowly, he pulled out of me, allowing me to recalibrate myself from the unnerving emptiness it created.
Nibbling my lip, I turned to face him, running my fingers over the glowing patterns on me now, but mostly, the diamond. “This is your mark?”
“Yes.” Cracking his neck, he grunted, the monstrous parts of him gradually morphing back into the snowy blonde fae male I’d met in my bakery.
Snapping my wings, I gasped, panic replacing the contented satiation. “Diedre. Jack, we have to—”
Jack pulled me against him, sending snow pluming around us.
He wrapped one burly, secure arm around my waist and stroked my hair.
“It’s alright. We’ve been rushing through everything because we didn’t have a choice.
Now?” He kissed the side of my head. “We can slow down. She can’t do a fucking thing to us now. Alright?”
I believed him, and a relieved sigh melted from my lungs.
Resting my head on his shoulder, I cooed as he gently began to sway us.
The forest was quiet, save for the occasional bird chirping, branches rustling, and the subtleness of snowflakes collecting in the trees.
We stood naked in these snowy woods, newly mated, and finally had the chance to simply be.