Chapter 47
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
SANORA
Seeing the house brought another wave of emotion rolling through me, a mix of warmth and ache as Thrax’s scent wrapped around me the second I stepped over the threshold.
Gods, I’d missed it. Missed this. You’d think I’d been gone for a year with the way my fingers drifted over everything in the kitchen and living room, tracing edges like I was memorising them all over again.
We’d showered for what felt like hours, water and heat and hands washing everything between us away until my voice, the one I’d been fighting to find back in that house, spilled from me under the shower, bouncing off the bathroom walls as he moved inside me, as I told him how sorry I was, and as he told me how much he’d missed me.
I was sorry for nothing and everything at once — for leaving, for calling him a liar, for not letting him explain.
He’d told me I had nothing to apologise for, but when I didn’t listen and kept on with it, he’d just fucked the words right out of me.
It had been messy, chaotic, emotional, and afterwards we’d fallen into bed.
I’d been asleep before my head even hit the pillow, his arms a lock around me.
Now I sat on my usual stool in the kitchen, watching him do one of the things he did best — cooking.
It was like watching a sorcerer at work.
He faced the pot, but things lifted from behind him as if called, floating to his hands without him moving.
Drawers opened themselves, utensils rose and spun, ingredients lined up in perfect order.
He didn’t even glance around; his mind knew where everything was.
It was hypnotic.
“You keep staring at me like you want to sleep with me, Sanora. Do you?”
I tried to kill the smile tugging at my lips, but it was impossible. “Every. Single. Time.”
As he stirred, I watched the ingredients float back to their places once he was done, the plates dunking themselves into the sink.
“I was giving you time to adjust to the soreness from last night,” he said casually, “but I think I don’t need to worry. You’re more than ready to go again.”
My eyebrows shot up to my hairline. “No, not yet. I can’t even shift on my seat without a pang shooting through me.”
His low, throaty chuckle followed as he left the food to cook and came to stand opposite me, the counter between us. “Another sex can fix that.”
“I don’t think ‘fix’ is the right word.” I could deny it all I wanted, but my body betrayed me.
Even as I stared at him, my walls clenched at the reminder of last night, warmth pooling low in my stomach, creeping into my panties.
“I think the right word is ‘ruin.’ That’s what will happen if you even stick as much as a finger inside me. ”
A smile tugged at his lips, his gaze flicking down my body, lingering, then back up again. “I bet she’ll beg to differ.”
“The she doesn’t know anything.”
He held his smile back, eyes glinting. “I can feel you getting aroused, Nher.”
“You can feel that too?” I asked, recalling he’d said in the letter that he could feel my emotions.
“I can feel everything you feel,” he said simply. “It weakens with distance, though. But if you’re very close, I can sense literally anything.”
Whoa. I’d thought he could read minds. Apparently not.
“And it’s just me? You can feel only my emotions?”
He nodded. “Just you.”
Instead of reacting like a normal person, I found myself loving the thrill that he could feel what I felt, and that it was just mine. “That’s how you always know where I am. It leads you right to me, like you said.”
“Now you believe me. Incredible.”
I laughed at his sarcastic tone, going quiet for a while, filling the silence with the weight of our stare.
That was until I remembered Winifred knew all about this. He knew all of it from the beginning. How? He wasn’t even a researcher. I’d always seen him as someone who liked telling stories, surrounding himself with books. Or so I thought.
“What’s Winifred’s deal? He knows all about you.”
The calm and mischief drained from Thrax’s face, his features hardening to stone. I’d never seen two people hate each other so deeply that even a name could sour their mood.
“His ancestors were tasked with keeping me away from you when the time came. That task was passed down until you were born in Winifred’s time. And he’s been watching you very closely ever since.”
I shook my head. So there was another crazy bloodline like the twin’s. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more out there.
“Let me guess, Selvanyra made them.”
He confirmed. “A back-up plan.”
So he had wanted to keep me locked up so Thrax wouldn’t have his chance. Because he was carrying on his bloodline’s mission. “And you didn’t tell him you had no intention of going through with the prophecy.”
His eyes darkened. “I have nothing to discuss with the old fucker.”
Sure, they were enemies. “So the medallion really kept you away. You only came close to me and moved in when I lost it,” I murmured, then froze, realisation kicking in. “You took it away!”
“You were dying near the Pylath and I couldn’t come close because of it.”
“Then how did you eventually—” I trailed off as my question answered itself. “Your telekinesis.” The look in his eyes told me I was right. “Then where did you drop it?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea. I just flung it far away from you. Probably buried somewhere there.”
“That was Selvanyra’s perfect chance to send something to erase me from this world.”
Thrax reached forward and tucked my hair behind my ear. “There’s a limit to what she can do to humans. If she could do anything, you’d have been dead the second you stepped foot in Nimorran. That’s why she’s using tricky ways to get to you.”
“Like the monsters and the way The Crater used to call me to it.”
“Yes.”
I sighed, the realisation that Selvanyra had been the villain going against everything I’d read and been taught. It was insane that she did this to one human, and what the world knew was a whole different story.
“Thank you, Thrax. Really,” I said sincerely, from the depth of my heart.
His hand under my chin moved, thumb pressing softly against my bottom lip. “I can think of several ways you can thank me.”
I couldn’t help the smile stretching my lips, my mood shifting like the tide. “I bet.”
His hand lingered on my face for a heartbeat longer before he turned back to the fire demanding his attention.
I kept staring at him, contentment wrapping itself around me again, this time with a string of sadness.
Sadness at how temporary this all was, how none of it would last until I was old and grey.
Gods, I’d do anything to live in this moment forever, to live in a time where I didn’t have to constantly worry about our future.
I just wanted him. But apparently that was too much to ask.
It was bittersweet, this moment.
Erasing those thoughts before Thrax could feel them, I teased, distracting myself. “And also, I’m older than you by a year.”
He’d stopped growing at twenty-two, though no part of him looked that young.
If I were seeing him for the first time, I’d guess he was brushing close to his thirties.
Humans in the past must have had some kind of fast-burn youth because he certainly didn’t seem twenty-two with the ragged way he’d looked in the dream.
“I’ll make you repeat that once your soreness is gone.” He glanced at me as I burst into laughter. “Which should be in one hour.”
That made me laugh harder, the weight in my chest easing, if only a little.