Chapter 6 Raiden
SIX
RAIDEN
Lindsay is asleep in my arms.
Her breathing is slow, deep, even—each exhale warm against the skin of my throat where she’s tucked herself against me as though she belongs there. She does. She always has, even if we never made it this far before.
For the first time in too many weeks, the constant roar inside me is quiet.
No clawing at my ribs. No fire scorching my veins from the inside out.
No frantic animal need to shift-shift-shift just to feel something other than the gaping hole where my bond to her used to be.
The beast is still there, coiled beneath my skin, but it’s…
content. Sated. Curled around the knowledge that she’s here, real, breathing, finally mine.
I’ve mostly shifted back—human hands, human legs, human mouth that still remembers the taste of her blood and tears—but my tails remain.
All nine of them. They drape over us like a living quilt, white-gold fur glowing faintly in the dim light filtering through the cracked window.
One coils loosely around her waist, another pillows beneath her head, a third curls protectively over her hip.
They twitch every so often, instinctive, checking that she’s still pressed against me, still safe.
I don’t dare move.
If I wake her, this fragile peace might shatter.
She might remember the Council, the Veil, the revenge burning behind her eyes when she first stepped into my chamber.
She might remember that I wasn’t there when she needed me most. That my father’s wards held me like a leash while she clawed her way home alone.
So I stay perfectly still, heart thudding slow and heavy against her cheek, and I look at her.
Really look.
She’s changed.
Not just the power that hums beneath her skin now—dark, patient, ancient—but the way it clings to her.
Shadows pool in the hollow of her throat like spilled ink, faint and shimmering, tracing delicate veins across her collarbone where I bit her.
They move when she breathes, lazy and alive, as though the Veil itself is breathing with her.
The marks I left—claw tracks down her ribs, bite-bruises blooming purple and gold along her neck and breasts—are already darkening, but not fading.
The shadows weave through them like thread through fabric, stitching my claim into something permanent.
Her blue hair spills across my chest in wild tangles, longer than before, streaked with threads of midnight that catch the light like oil on water.
When she shifts in her sleep, a faint ripple of darkness follows the movement—shadows lifting from her skin in thin tendrils before sinking back down, reluctant to let her go.
She’s beautiful.
She’s always been beautiful.
But now she’s…terrifying. Not to me, never to me, but I can see the darkness that Kael mentioned. And while others may have reason to fear her, I don’t.
The thing that came back with her is still there.
I can smell it—cold stone and ozone and something older than time.
It doesn’t feel like an invader; it feels like an extension.
Like the Veil looked at her and decided she was worthy of wearing a piece of itself.
As though it gifted her this darkness the way I gifted her my mark.
My claws itch to trace those inky veins, to see if they’ll respond to my touch the way her body did earlier. But I don’t. Not yet.
Instead, I press my nose into her hair and inhale.
She smells like magic and me. It makes me want to wrap every tail around her and never let go.
I almost lost you, I think, the words too raw to send through the bond while she sleeps. I almost lost this.
My hand—human now, though the claws still haven’t fully retracted—slides up her back, tracing the line of her spine slowly. I feel the faint ridges where my nails scored her earlier; the skin is already healing, but the shadows linger there too.
She murmurs something incoherent and burrows closer, one leg hooking over mine, her hand fisting against my chest. A tiny, sleepy sound escapes her—content and trusting—and something inside me cracks wide open.
I’ve never felt this calm. Not since the first time our bond sparked and I realized she might be mine.
Not even then, really. Back then, there was still fear—fear she’d reject me, fear my family would drag me away, fear the Council would see what we had and crush it.
Or that she would figure out her own power and the bond would dissolve.
Now the fear is different.
Now I’m afraid of what she’ll become when she wakes. Afraid of how much darker she’ll let herself get to destroy the people who hurt her. Afraid that the Veil will ask for more than she can give.
And terrified—bone-deep terrified—that I won’t be enough to anchor her when it does.
But right now? Right now, she’s asleep in my arms, safe, marked, mine, and the beast inside me is purring so loudly I’m surprised the walls aren’t shaking.
I press my lips to her temple and whisper against her skin, too quiet for sound, too loud in my heart. “Sleep, mate. I’ve got you.”
One tail curls tighter around her ankle, possessive even in rest. Another drapes across her lower back, warm and steady. And the rest settle like a crown around us both.
No one is taking her again. Not the Council or the Veil. Not even the darkness she carries now.
Because she’s home.
And I’m never letting go.