Chapter 39
JASSYN
Jassyn paced long after midnight, his restless steps carved into the reed-woven rug. Starlight glimmered silver across Asharyn’s skyline as the city slumbered—unscarred and impossibly serene, as if the havoc in the Maw had already faded into memory.
A warm breeze drifted through the open windows of his chambers, too gentle for a world still teetering on the verge of destruction.
Three days had blurred past since he’d collapsed on the Blackreach’s shore. He’d woken in his bed with Aiko curled beside him, the vulpintera the only evidence that Lykor had even been there at all.
Jassyn hadn’t seen him once. Not in the palace corridors. Not in the suffocating council chambers. Not even flashing through Aesar’s eyes when tempers flared between the factions during debates about what to do with the king’s surrendered forces.
Three days of absence and not a single word.
He hadn’t gone to Lykor either. Pride had nothing to do with it. His lungs cinched at the thought of meeting a gaze that might’ve finally turned cold.
Jassyn kept telling himself he’d made the right calls—sending Lykor to guard Asharyn, choosing mercy over vengeance, coercing minds to stop the slaughter when the battlefield descended into chaos.
But maybe a clean betrayal toward Lykor would’ve made this more bearable.
At least then he’d know which part of himself to hate.
Jassyn halted in the center of his chambers, fingers dragging through his curls. The silence pressed hard enough to bruise, broken only by Aiko’s soft purring from his bed, where she’d slept every night since the battle.
His gaze caught on the wall dividing his chambers from Lykor’s—rooms left dark and untouched for days. He knew Aesar stayed with Kal farther down the hall. Just like he knew he should let the impulse wither before it rooted and respect Lykor’s arrangement with Aesar.
But the ache in his ribs only jabbed sharper. Three days of pretending the distance didn’t gut him had stripped him past any pretense of calm.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Jassyn exhaled hard. The last thing he wanted was to intrude, to risk fracturing anything else. Yet the silence had turned predatory, leeching him dry one slow hour at a time.
Lykor had once mentioned, offhand and irritated, how Kal would brush against Aesar’s mind without even grazing his own. A telepathic channel threaded so precisely it bypassed Lykor entirely.
Jassyn had never tried to reach him that way. He didn’t fully understand why the thought rose now—madness, desperation, or both—but the hollowness gnawing at him had grown unbearable.
He could do it. If he was careful. Though he doubted Lykor would welcome anyone breaching his mind, no matter how gently they knocked.
But the distance between them had become suffocating, and Jassyn needed one breath—just one—to release the apology he couldn’t hold any longer.
And if he’s already this furious with me, Jassyn thought, heart pounding a wild rhythm. Then what’s left to lose?
Closing his eyes, Jassyn reached for Essence, coaxing a strand of telepathy forward. As delicately as sliding a needle through silk, he wove the magic outward through stone, air, and the muted hums of dreaming consciousness.
His awareness brushed against the one mind left open, turbulent and banked like fire beneath ash.
Jassyn hesitated before slowly pressing forward with the barest touch. A breath against a door that had every right to slam shut.
“Lykor?”
The connection sharpened instantly, snapping taut with a turn of attention. The sense of Lykor’s eyes flashing as he swiveled in the dark, bracing for impact.
A heartbeat passed. And then another.
Jassyn’s breath snagged, but he held steady and waited.
Lykor’s voice finally bled into his thoughts, low and rough. “Is everything alright?”
Jassyn’s pulse stumbled, the words he’d rehearsed unraveling. He’d been prepared for fury. A snarl. A venom-laced curse.
Not this. Not a question branded with concern, a door left half-open despite the fire still licking at the hinges.
Jassyn swallowed hard, thoughts tangling. Was everything alright?
“No,” he said before he could stop himself.
Alarm spiked through the link, Lykor’s focus locking on him with sudden precision.
“I mean—” Jassyn winced, scrambling to gather himself. “I’m fine. I just… Can we talk? Like this?”
He didn’t ask to see him, even though he wanted it more than he had any right to. Jassyn held his breath instead, waiting in the silence.
A knock shattered it, abrupt and urgent.
Jassyn flinched, his magic recoiling, the telepathic link severed with a jolt. Heart hammering in his throat, he crossed the room to unlatch the door.
The instant it cracked, Lykor stormed through the narrow opening.
Jassyn staggered back, words rising to explain, to apologize, to brace for the fury he’d clearly unleashed. The fire in Lykor’s eyes promised retribution, blazing with unyielding wrath.
But Lykor didn’t give him the chance to speak.
One hand seized Jassyn’s jaw, the other slammed the door shut. Jassyn froze, expecting that anger to break over him.
Instead, Lykor’s mouth did.
Their lips collided, no forgiveness or restraint.
All heat and fury, Lykor hauled Jassyn into a kiss that ripped the air from his lungs, scattering every coherent thought.
His fingers curled behind Jassyn’s neck, anchoring him with a reckless desperation, as if this was the only language he trusted enough to speak.
Before Jassyn could breathe—before his hands remembered how to reach back—Lykor slammed him into the wall.
His shoulders struck hard enough to rattle the door, but the kiss didn’t break. Fierce and bruising, Lykor consumed his mouth in a way that didn’t ask permission, every movement simmering with intent that refused to soften.
Jassyn’s pulse stuttered, then surged. He met Lykor’s fire with his own—breath for breath, kiss for kiss—because gentleness had never been what he sought. Not when some long-buried part of him burned to be devoured by someone he chose.
He caught Lykor’s arms, lips parting as their tongues clashed in a spark that struck straight through his heart. Bare-chested from sleep, Lykor radiated heat beneath his palms—skin fever-warm, breath dragging harsh against Jassyn’s mouth.
Jassyn tensed when his beastblood reared its head, fire coiling molten behind his ribs. But he didn’t smother it or pull away from the hand Lykor curved around his neck—holding him as though the idea of Jassyn being fragile had never existed in his mind at all.
Jassyn slid his palms up the planes of Lykor’s chest, fingers weaving through sleep-tousled hair to haul him closer, every unspoken thing straining between their bodies. He leaned in, deepening the kiss.
For the first time in decades, he needed to know what it felt like to be touched without being taken. To be claimed in the ways that were right. And he wanted all of this with Lykor.
The wildness.
The forgetting.
The choosing.
The fall.
The fire inside his chest flared, and Jassyn didn’t fight the shift. Wings tore free from his spine, shredding through his nightshirt as the membranes spread against the wall.
Lykor growled into his mouth, and that feral sound obliterated the last of Jassyn’s restraint. He grabbed Lykor’s hips and twisted, driving them both into a hard pivot.
They crashed into an end table, toppling it with a splintering crack, the sound lost beneath the roar in his blood.
Breath tearing loose, he kissed Lykor as he steered him across the sitting room. They tripped over an edge of the rug and spilled into the couch. Cushions sagged beneath them as Lykor landed on his back with a low grunt.
Jassyn followed, settling over him, wings flaring wide as he braced one arm beside Lykor’s head and planted a hand on Lykor’s chest, feeling a frantic heartbeat thudding against his palm.
Then Jassyn kissed him again, slower and deeper, each press of his mouth a vow, choosing Lykor again and again, until nothing else in the world existed.
An answering snarl built in Lykor’s throat, dark and edged with hunger held on a fraying leash. His talons hooked in what remained of Jassyn’s shirt, slicing through the fabric in a single ruthless motion.
Flinging the scraps aside, Lykor bracketed his ribs, hot fingers digging in, and Jassyn ignited. Heat shimmered off his wings in wavering currents, curling into faint threads of smoke. Fire rippled through his veins in a molten wave, orbs of flame gathering between his wing claws.
Through the haze of wanting as Lykor’s mouth dragged a groan from his throat, Jassyn wrestled the beastblood for some semblance of control. Gritting his teeth, he curled the ravenous magic inward, smothering the blaze before it could leap free and scorch the couch.
Catching his breath, he rolled their hips together in a long, dragging grind that stole the air right back from his lungs. Their bodies collided again, heat searing through the last useless barrier of cloth, pressing want to want.
Desire flooded Jassyn’s chest in a white-hot rush, burning away the remnants of shame until only wild need remained.
Lykor suddenly stilled beneath him and Jassyn drew his mouth away just enough to look. Lykor’s eyes were already on him, wide and glowing, a dark flush climbing the sharp line of his cheekbones. He blinked once, breath leaving him in a ragged huff.
“That was…” Lykor rasped, voice deep like swallowed thunder. “Fuck. I came here to talk.”
Only then did Jassyn register the way he had Lykor pinned breathless beneath him, his wings spread in a possessive sweep.
A shiver ran the length of his spine as he shifted back, reining himself in before he forgot how. But he didn’t move or climb off Lykor. Didn’t pretend he hadn’t kissed him like a male trying to rewrite every regret he’d ever carried.
“You’re the one who barged in and distracted me before we could,” Jassyn murmured, aiming for levity, though his voice stumbled.