Chapter 39
Rune
The world tilted.
Rune staggered back a step, blinking down at the searing pressure lodged in his chest, burning like a hot branding iron. The wooden handle of the crimson spindle protruded from his chest where it had been driven straight through his heart.
His shadows lashed against the floorboards, a sharp breath escaping him. The wind howled outside, making the cottage shake. Alora backed away from him, her eyes wide with horror at what she’d done.
“Songbird…?”
Alora covered her mouth with a trembling hand.
With a low, guttural breath, Rune gripped the handle, biting back a curse as he slid it free.
Blood poured down his pale chest like spilled wine over snow. The thick needle hummed with dark magic, glistening red. Mere wood and crystal, yet the damned thing had pierced his skin.
No. She had.
Rune stilled at the thought, caught between awe and disbelief. It wasn’t merely the attempt, but the truth it revealed.
His bride had tried to kill him.
He stared at the spindle in his hand then burst with laughter, making her flinch back. The sound twisted with his madness, delight, and something far darker.
This confirmed it.
“Oh, my deadly little flower,” Rune rasped, his glowing gaze lifting to hers. “You truly are made for me.”
Alora stood frozen, eyes wide. Afraid, maybe. Or shocked that he wasn’t a heap of ash at her feet. She stared at the wound as the flesh knitted itself slowly. Painfully. She had done something to him, introduced some magic into his veins.
A beautiful poison.
Her soft honey eyes were wide and glistening with unfallen tears. “You’re… still alive?”
The spindle had been driven through his heart with conviction. She had wanted to destroy him. And Seven Hells damn him, it made him hard.
A sound slipped from his throat, half-laugh, half-groan. The shadows carried the spindle away as he pressed a hand over the tender spot in his chest. “Are those tears of regret… or fear of what I will do?”
Alora’s slender neck bobbed as she looked back at him, a single tear spilling down her cheek. Her hands shook as did those sweet lips. “It’s regret…that I could not avenge my mother.”
Rune’s brow furrowed as he caught one of her tears on his finger. “Whatever you have been told, Alora, your mother did not die by my hand.”
She shook her head. “The fae cannot lie.”
“Neither can I. Not to you.” He held her gaze, seeing her waver. “It was a gods promise if you recall.”
“But you have still kept things from me, Rune!”
Yes, that much was true.
Alora’s lip trembled and she shut her eyes, exhaling a shaky breath. He heard her thoughts as she processed his words, believing him, but also acknowledging she had attempted to kill a god and that could not go unpunished.
“What will you do to me now?”
Indeed.
“Perhaps you were right to flee,” Rune murmured, something almost animalistic in his voice. “Go on, songbird.” His claw slowly stroked her bottom lip. “Run.”
She quivered beneath his glowing gaze and whispered, “Why?”
“Because I enjoy chasing my food.”
Alora backed away, her pulse fluttering wildly at her throat. But instead of running out the door, she dashed for the dagger’s hilt wedged into the wall.
Rune laughed.
His brave, foolish wife.
Shadows swept out and caught her waist, lifting her into the air. Then they bound her wrist to the beam on the ceiling, where she dangled, toes barely touching the floor.
“Wong choice.” Rune tsked as his claws slowly snip the laces of her bodice one by one. “I forgive you for stabbing me, songbird, but not for the agony I endured when you left me. It’s my turn to torture you now.”
She trembled, her breath catching quietly.
But instead of fear, Alora looked at him with challenge.
“I won’t scream,” she swore. “No matter what you do to me.”
“Oh? Shall we test that?”
His claws snipped the straps of her bodice, bearing her breasts to the cold air. A growl rumbled in his throat as her nipples pebbled. Her lips parted. He heard the flutter in her heart, the sharp catch between inhale and exhale. It thrilled him. Fear and want were kin, after all.
He prowled behind her, close enough for his breath to stir her hair. She dangled in the dark like a constellation he’d caught. The sound of her heartbeat was a drum in his chest, but fire shone in her eyes.
“Still not afraid,” Rune mused. “Even now.”
She lifted her chin, eyes flashing so defiantly it made him smile. “You vowed to never harm me, so what can you possibly do? Spank me?”
Rune snatched her throat and hauled her close. “Oh,” he rumbled. “I like that idea.”
Alora’s eyes widened, warmth flooding her cheeks.
Regardless of how hard he heard her heart pounding, she didn’t say no or stop.
One could argue she had no choice in the matter, but the truth was he would have let her go if she demanded it.
If she was truly afraid. But Rune could smell her lust, he could sense the excitement in her veins as she waited for what he would do.
Rune chuckled, releasing his grasp. “Then I will take your silence as permission.”
He snipped the last lace of her bodice and Alora’s dress slid off her shoulders, pooling at her feet. Leaving her in a camisole and damp undergarments that made his nostrils flare with her scent. His entire body went rigid, something primal churning in his veins.
She was absolutely still.
Her shaky breaths carried in the quiet as shadows wrapped around her eyes. Then he circled her slowly, visually mapping every inch of her. The moonlight filtered through the curtains, brushing over her skin like reverence made light. A feast he intended to devour to the fullest.
Coming to stand at her back, her breath hitched as his shadows licked up her thighs.
He murmured in her ear. “Where shall I begin?”
His shadows caressed her as though they remembered her skin. They slid over her shoulders, down her arms, coiling around her waist, learning her all over again. She shivered, but her jaw stayed clenched.
“Defiant little flame.”
Rune let the shadows tighten enough for her to gasp. Enough for her to remember that every part of her belonged to his will if he wished it. But he softened their touch, the cool tendrils tracing her ribs like whispers of ink.
“I can’t help but want to ruin you,” he confessed.
She lifted her chin, daring him to continue, even as her breath betrayed her.
The shadows wrapped around her nipples and pinched.
Alora gasped, her thighs pressing together tightly.
“I want to mark you…” He gazed his fangs on her racing pulse. “So thoroughly that all whoever lays eyes on you will know never to touch you.”
And he did.
His fangs sank into her flesh, biting enough to sting. She panted, whimpering.
“So sensitive,” he hummed.
Yet Alora did not pull away. She turned her head, exposing the other side of her neck as if daring him to continue. He nipped her again before making his shadows to lift her higher, binding her arms above her head.
Tight, brushing the edge of discomfort and flaring toward a heated sensation. Each time she flinched, he watched her recover, the stubborn line of her jaw tightening. He wanted her to fight him. He wanted her to stand tall in her defiance so he could break it, slowly, beautifully.
“Tell me to stop,” Rune said, voice rough. “That is the one word I will permit you. Say it, and this ends.”
“I said I won’t—”
He struck her ass and she yelped.
Chuckling, he rubbed the sore spot, her skin hot beneath his palm. “Only one word, Alora.”
She didn’t answer. That refusal undid him.
And worried him, that this was too much.
Rune checked the bond, reading her defiant expression. Her cheeks were flushed, her chest heaving with shallow breaths, but the hint of a smile hovered at her lips. He really did underestimate her.
This was not the same Alora he knew.
Or could it be that he had never given them the opportunity to truly see each other.
The scent of her lust filled his lungs—sweet, wild, and threaded with the faintest trace of fear. He wanted to sink his teeth into that fear, to taste it until it melted into something else.
“Are you enjoying this?”
“No.”
He spanked her again and she squealed, and he scented the sweetness gathering between her thighs.
“I can sense your lies, Alora.”
Her lips curved, despite her trembling. She wanted him to continue, to do much more. His hands hovered near her hips but didn’t touch. He wanted her to feel the distance, to understand that what he withheld was more dangerous than anything he could take.
He leaned in, lips grazing her ear. “Do you know what I see when I look at you?”
She shook her head.
He smiled against her skin, a slow, sharp curve. “A creature trying very hard not to beg.”
Her breath stuttered. The shadows pulsated in rhythm with it, a heartbeat made of night. Rune’s control frayed another inch, but he reined it in. Barely.
This wasn’t about taking. It was about showing her how easily he could take everything, and how much he wanted to.
Every part of his being was feral to claim her, to sink himself so deep into her, she would never be rid of him. But he resisted. He would savor tonight. She was already his masterpiece, suspended between pain and pleasure, rebellion and surrender.
“Last time, I left you wanting,” Rune murmured as he drew her undergarments aside, exposing her heated slit to the cold air.
A growl of satisfaction rumbled in his chest at the sight of her already sleek and glistening.
Her breath trembled. “Tonight, I will drown you in pleasure until you can’t breathe. ”
His shadows coiled up her legs slowly, caressing the curve of her waist, her ribs, every inch of her like a prayer he’d waited too long to answer.
The pulse in her neck fluttered wildly, her lips trembling as the shadows drew near.
At the first stroke, her hips bucked and she stifled a strangled sound.
“Every tremor, every moan, is mine tonight,” Rune said. “You can hate me for it in the morning.”