Chapter 64
Huntyr
Ifinally manage to pull myself out of bed and comb through my hair after the sun has been hanging in the sky for hours. Outside I can hear the laughter of the children, siblings. I watched them for a bit earlier, marveling at the way they chased each other.
Tyla and I never really had the opportunity to play with each other like that.
From the moment I met her, our lives were filled with difficulty and death.
We had to work to earn our keep with Kristona.
Then we moved into our own apartment, and I stepped out of our door each day not knowing if it was the day I’d end up on the wrong side of the blade.
I wonder if things might have been different had we ever been given a chance to play, to be children.
“I don’t know where I go from here,” I tell Kaia. She crawls up from the mound of blankets Derian set up for her next to my side of the bed and comes to sit beside me by the window.
“It will take time to heal.”
I nod. I know that.
This isn’t the first time I’ve lost a loved one.
“It’s not just that.” I wave my hand around Derian’s luxurious bedroom, our bedroom now. “It’s all of this. I don’t know how to live without violence and struggle. I don't know how to put that all away to be his wife.”
Kaia is quiet for a moment, and when I turn to sit on the foot of the bed, she follows me. “I suspect the prince does not want you to put it away. You will be as you are.”
Somehow, I don’t think it’s that simple. I stare down at my open palms, at the calloused skin and the thin lines of various scars that travel up my wrist.
“I managed to find a couple of apple tarts in the kitchen.”
I jolt slightly at Derian's voice, looking up to see him lingering in the doorway, a plate of pastries in his hand. He’s dressed simply, just a dark shirt and pants, not a blade or weapon in sight. His dark eyes scan over me, softening ever so slightly as they do.
I can’t help but smile up at him. It’s the third plate of desserts he’s brought me today. Apparently, his determination to ensure I’m well-fed does not require the food to be particularly healthy.
With a soft chuckle, I wave my arm towards the table and silently instruct him to just leave it there.
“You spoke with your brother?”
He clears his throat uncomfortably as he sets the plate down and remains standing by the window. I narrow my eyes suspiciously at the distance, and he crosses his arms over his chest.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Derian be awkward before.
“I did.”
“And?” I ask with a raised brow, rising to my feet and resting my hands on my hips expectantly. “You don’t have to treat me like I’m glass, Derian.”
He releases a heavy sigh, running a hand over his face. “I know that, but—”
“But what?”
Kaia pads towards the open door. “I suspect this is a conversation I do not need to be witness to.”
We watch her leave and Derian closes the door after her. He gestures for me to sit. I don’t. My nerves are too on edge, my heart too battered. I don’t have it in me to guess at what he’s hiding from me.
“Things are complicated, Huntress.”
Obviously.
Things have been complicated for some time now.
“Luceron doesn’t trust me?” I guess.
Derian’s snort implies that’s an understatement.
It’s not entirely a surprise. I did come to this kingdom with the intent of murdering Derian and his brother both, after all. I would be shocked if he welcomed me with open arms.
“Luceron is a King,” Derian says with a dark laugh. “There’s very few people he trusts. Some days I doubt even I’m included in that list.”
He avoids my gaze as he speaks, his eyes flicking from the bed to the window to the ceiling, settling anywhere that isn’t on me. For all his many strengths, subtlety doesn’t appear to be one.
“Just spit it out, Derian,” I snap.
Finally, finally, he looks at me, with an expression filled with such torment I almost go to him.
“You and I are to be married, Huntyr.”
“I don’t need you to restate the obvious.”
His eyes close for a brief moment, and I can’t tell if it’s with exasperation or soft appreciation of my sarcasm. Perhaps both.
He steps towards me, closing the gap between us in three easy steps before he stares down at me. Gently, he pushes my long hair back away from my shoulders and cradles the back of my neck, holding my gaze to his.
“This marriage may be required because of the Conclave, but I intend to honor it as you would any other. I will be faithful to you, Huntyr Lachlan. I will protect you. I will provide for you.”
“I have no need for your protection, and I care very little about your wealth.”
His lips quirk slightly. “Believe me, I know that. Still, if we are to spend the rest of our lives together, lives that I suspect will be exceedingly long for both of us, I will not enter into this marriage with secrets between us.”
Ice trails down my spine, both at the suggestion that whatever Fae magic runs in my blood may give me the long lifespan of the Fae and at the confession that he is in fact keeping something from me.
When I prepare myself to step away from him though, I pause.
Because there’s nothing in Derian’s expression to suggest that what he’s about to tell me is bad. And if I try to think of whatever secret he could possibly be hiding from me, I can only think of one.
The very secret I have been holding onto for days now. Not because I felt like I needed to keep it from him, but because in the wake of my enormous grief, I hadn’t given myself the space to come to terms with it.
“You’ve had so many changes in your life,” Derian goes on, his words coming too rapidly. “I hate to spring another one on you, but you deserve to know. You deserve to go into a marriage knowing everything about our relationship.”
A bubble of laughter escapes from the back of my throat.
It’s the first time I laugh in what feels like an eternity.
Derian shuffles his weight on the balls of his feet, but when he steps back, I grasp onto his hands, refusing to let him go.
“I’m your mate,” I say to him.
His brows raise, shock darting across his features. “You know?”
Since that day in the Wastelands.
Truthfully, I had started to suspect the day that Rhen explained mates to me, but I didn’t know for certain until I saw him in the Wastelands and felt that impossible connection between us. And when Tyla started killing him, it felt like I was watching myself die.
There was nothing I wouldn’t have done to save him.
I nod slightly, biting my bottom lip gently as I give him my first genuine smile in days. The tension in his shoulders lessens ever so slightly as I do.
“Why else would I want to be around a Fae bastard like you all the time if I didn’t have some magical mating bond clouding my judgement?”
Derian folds his hands around my lower back, tugging me sharply against him as his mouth descends on me. His kiss is filled with longing, desperation, and so much more that we haven’t given word to yet.
“I don’t know how it took me so long to notice it,” he says when he finally pulls back for air. I lean into his touch slightly when he tucks my hair behind my ears.
“Probably because you’re terribly self-obsessed.”
His thumb traces over the pulse at my throat, the touch sending jolts of anticipation through me. He’s been so respectful since Tyla’s death. He’s barely touched me outside of the times I’m begging for him to distract me from my pain.
Now, I feel like I’m burning alive with need for him. Not for distraction. Not for physical release.
For him.
I pitch my hips into his, grateful to feel hardness against my lower stomach and see that the feeling is returned.
Something jerks my attention away from lust, though. The small indentation in his lower lip. As if he’s biting down on it, even though he isn’t.
Frowning, I place my thumb there and pull down slightly, gasping when I see his two elongated canines. Derian lets me explore, pulling back only when I tap my finger on the tip and hiss when it draws blood.
He sucks my finger into his mouth, licking the wound with a flick of his tongue, and wetness rushes through my core once more.
“When did you get those?” I ask, the sound nothing more than a breathy whisper.
“The mating bond has to be accepted by both parties. Typically, through a claiming mark.”
My brows raise, and I suppress the urge to giggle again. “You want to bite me?”
“Yes.” He winks. “And I want you to bite me, too.”
He pushes forward, walking me back until my knees hit the edge of the bed.
Derian jerks his head, instructing me to crawl back.
Though I expect him to crawl on top of me and undo me with his fingers, mouth, and body, he simply takes the place next to me, propping up his head with his hand and staring down at me.
“Do you want this mating bond, Huntress?” His voice is soft, his eyes wide and focused on me, more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen him before.
“If you don’t want this, if you don’t want me, that’s okay.
I’ll release you from all of it. I’ll send you back on a ship to Kristona tonight, if that’s where you want to be. ”
I see it then. For the briefest of moments, I see what that life would look like.
No Fae. No Velkai.
I’d tell Kristona all the ways his lessons had come in handy in the Fae kingdom, and maybe I’d even find it in me to forgive him for the hell he put me through.
Flannigan and I would go back to terrorizing local pubs.
I’d sell off the wretched Lachlan estate and move out of the apartment I’d shared with Tyla because I wouldn’t be able to spend a second inside without her.
I’d buy a beautiful new apartment and furnish it with the most lovely furniture and portraits. I’d spend my days reading and painting, and I’d spend my nights back in the shadows of Velia, hunting like I’d done every night for so many years.
Still, even surrounded by the people I considered family, living in a beautiful new home, and living adventurously, I wouldn’t be happy.
Because he wouldn’t be there.
And I need him more than I need my next breath.
“I do want this,” I whisper, before pushing up to look at him more clearly. “But it’s not just me who has to decide, Derian.”
He tilts his head at me, eyes warm. “That’s not even a question you need to ask, Huntress, and I think you know that. I think you’ve known that for a long time.”
Still, it doesn’t hurt to hear it.
I bite down on my lip, staring at him expectantly.
Derian laughs before shifting and wrapping my fingers in his, bringing my knuckles to his lips quickly.
“I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you, and I wasn’t able to look away,” he confesses.
“I want you now, tomorrow, forever. I want your attitude, your violence, your brilliance. I want you to call me your husband as much as I want you to call me a bastard. I want to stare at you when you’re asleep and relaxed, and I want to stare at you while you’re fighting and more alive than ever. All of it. All of you. I want it all.”
My heart seizes, unable to let myself hang onto words I didn’t know I so desperately needed to hear. This frustrating, impossible, beautiful Fae male laid out beside me, vulnerable, trusting, and loving. Loving me.
Someone who is so entirely undeserving of that.
I look away. “You’re just saying that because of some stupid magical bond that you can’t fight against.”
Grasping onto my chin with his thumb and forefinger, he forces me to meet his gaze.
“I mean that with every broken, battered piece of my soul. I know you don’t believe me because you think your past is too bloody for anyone to see beyond it, to love you in spite of it, but I do.
I love you because of it. My history is just as bloody, and whatever heart has managed to survive the past two hundred years of violence and pain is completely yours.
I am so fucking in love with you, Huntyr Lachlan, that I don’t even know who I am anymore if I’m not yours. ”
My lower lip trembles, and I work to fight back the wave of emotion.
When I watched my sister die in my arms, by my own hand, I didn’t think I would ever be capable of feeling joy again, but there it was, buried under all the hurt, pain, and trauma.
That spark of joy that was reserved for him alone.
“You love me?”
He smiles, pressing his lips to my brow for the briefest of moments. “I love you.”
“You want me?”
Derian’s eyes trace over my face, leaving tingles in their wake before he leans down to brush his lips against mine. “I need you.”
The warmth rushing through me is a feeling I never want to let go of.
“Good, because I still think you’re a Fae bastard, but I think I might love you, too.”
I pull him to me, melding my lips to his and opening to him. Opening all of me. Not just my body, but the deepest part of me. The part of me that’s felt unworthy since the second I heard my stepmother’s plan to give me away.
Our kiss is slow, filled with unspoken words and promises, and when we finally pull away, I place my hand in his, then twist it so that my wrist is turned up.
We stare at each other for a long moment, the silence heavy but not uncomfortable.
It’s the kind of silence two people can sit in comfortably because they know the other so well.
Finally, he moves, pulling both of us to sit up.
He holds my gaze for the entirety of the time that it takes to bring his mouth to my wrist.
We don’t look away from each other for a single second.
Not when his fangs pierce into my skin and he takes the first pull of my blood into him.
Not when light explodes out of me and unbelievable happiness overtakes every one of my senses.
Not when I feel a tingle of sensation in my own mouth as my canines extend.
Not when I latch onto his wrist and the darkness of a storm outside rivals the brilliance of my light inside.
Everything else fades away. There’s just him and me, our magic, blood, and souls completely intertwined. It’s a feeling so fulfilling and right that I can’t imagine ever having said no to the bastard Fae prince who asked me to join the Conclave.