Chapter 48 Evander #3
Her head tips back on a moan as she finds a more urgent rhythm.
She rides me in uneven grinds, dragging a little on the downstroke, close and deep and absolutely devastating.
So warm and tight and wet for me. She’s something I never knew I wanted, but always craved.
I spent centuries in my grief feeling like I needed to bite and claw and fuck and ruin, but this—she—is everything I ever wanted.
The shackles bite into my wrists as my hands fist with the need to grab and claim—
“Keep using me,” I say. “That’s it. Ride me hard. Take everything you need.”
Her nails are a sweet, stinging pressure where they sink into the muscles of my chest for leverage. When she reaches my wings, I groan helplessly as she trails her fingertips along the bottom edge.
“Which part of these is most sensitive?”
“Coverts,” I manage between panting breaths. “Closest to my shoulder blades. Dig your nails in.”
The instant she curls her fingers into the short feathers there, everything whites out. Rapture screams through every nerve ending. My spine arches. My hips surge up to meet hers, chasing that blinding sensation.
“Fuck. Like that. Just like that, Chosen.”
“I love you,” she says roughly. Riding me harder, taking me so deep. “I love you so much.”
It only takes a handful of sharp, desperate thrusts before I’m falling over the edge.
I shudder through it, still arching into her.
She shatters moments after with a fractured cry.
I watch her shake apart on my cock, committing every detail to memory.
The spill of damp hair over her shoulders, the heaving swells of her tits, her lips parted.
Our breathing is loud in the hush as we come down.
“That’s three,” I say when I can speak again. “Let’s see if I can wring another four out of you before dawn.”
* * *
The stench of other demis clings to her skin, and it’s driving me out of my mind. Even after she’s bathed and fucked me, I can detect traces.
Bryony’s curled against my chest, finally peaceful after all that pain. I won’t disturb that. Not when she fought so hard just to make it back to me. Still, I have to know.
“You don’t have to tell me everything,” I murmur into her hair, hating how the chains keep me from properly holding her. From wrapping her in my wings. “But at least tell me how many there were.”
She goes rigid. I track the sudden spike of her pulse, the shallow draw of air. The bond between us pulses with echoes of remembered humiliation.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice is too steady, too controlled.
My Chosen has many talents, but lying to me sure as fuck isn’t one of them.
“Yeah, you do. The scents of other demis were all over you when you showed up in the cell. It’s still there.”
She flinches. “They didn’t hurt me.” She pulls away and sits up, hugging her knees. “They just…”
“Just what?” The words come out as a growl.
Bryony swallows hard. “Spat at me,” she says quietly. “Called me names.”
I count to ten in every dead language I know. Then I do it again, forcing myself to breathe and bank the inferno raging beneath my skin.
“Let me get this straight,” I manage. “Alexios made you march past dozens of hostile demis while you were barely conscious?”
Right. Alexios just earned himself top billing on my murder list.
“No one touched me. I handled it.”
So then why does she look so small? So fragile?
“You shouldn’t have had to,” I snap.
“They wanted to make sure I understood my place. That being your Chosen doesn’t erase what my family did during the war.” A bitter laugh. “And you know what? They’re not wrong. It doesn’t.”
“Don’t care,” I say. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to give me any identifying details you remember. Then I’m going hunting. Someone fucks with what’s mine, they answer to me.”
“You’d only make it worse.” She drags a hand through her hair, frustration bleeding into the bond. “You can’t just threaten people into accepting me.”
“The fuck I can’t. That mark on your wrist means you’re under my protection. Choosing you means you’re mine. An Eternal not doing anything to defend his mate shows weakness—”
“And it shows weakness in me to let you,” she says sharply.
“Do you have any idea how I’d look to them if I did that?
I’m not a demi Chosen who already earned their respect by virtue of being born with wings.
I don’t get to skip the part where I earn my place here.
What I need is for you to give me room to figure this out on my own and let me choose my own battles.
Your love can’t be another cage that denies me the right to fight for myself, Wolf. ”
I swallow around the sudden thickness in my throat. “I just want to spare you pain. Because no one in your life ever bothered to.”
Bryony’s expression gentles. “I know. But you can’t. Pain is part of living. You think I don’t know that by now?”
Her finger absently traces the scar on her throat—that silvery line that makes me want to burn the realms to ash every time I see it. Every time I remember how close I came to losing her before I ever had her.
“I never told you,” she says, soft like a secret, “how much I wanted to die after this happened.”
The words are a knife to the gut. I go still, barely breathing.
“My guards carried me everywhere when I was recovering. Not because I couldn’t walk, but because they were protecting me.
And I was so fucked up that I didn’t even care.
I was just a body to them, anyway. Why not let them treat me like one?
But one day, Theo snapped. She commanded the guards to put me down and told me to walk.
It had been weeks, and I was so frail that I collapsed over and over.
I was just… I was so angry. But that anger made me want… ”
She trails off, dragging in a deep, uneven breath.
“Want what?” I breathe.
When she meets my stare again, her eyes are blazing.
Defiant. Beautiful. “It made me want the world to bleed at my feet. I can’t tell you how many times people in my life have expected me to just…
endure. The Oracles, my people, Alexios—I wasn’t a person to them.
Being an Anchor was like being buried alive in my own skin.
When you came to my room in Hellevig and let me cut into you, I felt like an animal chewing off its leg to escape a trap.
Anger was something I could hold on to, something that made me feel like I could be more. ”
Slowly, she reaches out and settles her hands on my chest, right over my heart.
“You can’t deprive me of my anger, Wolf,” she tells me, calm and implacable.
“So you’re going to let me fall, and then you’re going to let me get back up and do it again.
Today, tomorrow, a century from now.” Her fingers flex against my skin.
“I’m going to be pregnant with our child one day, and you’ll have to keep your promises.
You’ll have to watch me hurt and scream, even if some of it ends up being directed at you, because I’ll be scared out of my fucking mind.
I’ll say awful, unfair things to you that I don’t mean because this”—a rueful twist of her lips—“is a process. Us being together is going to be messy and ugly and so damn hard sometimes. Because humans and gods are enemies, and everyone will want to see us fail and tear each other apart.” She wipes away a tear from her cheek.
“We’re both fucked up, and we’ve got more jagged edges than smooth, but anything worth fighting for is like that.
You have to mix the bad in with the good. ”
Her hands flatten more firmly against my chest, and I feel her certainty down the shimmering tether of our bond. “I can’t hide behind your wings forever,” she tells me. “You can’t shield me from every hurt. That’s not who I am. It’s not who we are.”
I love her. I love her so damn much I can’t breathe around it.
“Then be angry,” I tell her, voice rough with emotion.
“Scream. Rage. Break shit. Fall and claw your way back up as many times as it takes.” I lift my head, catching her lips in a gentle kiss.
“Have my babies. Burn this place to the ground. Just promise you’ll leave room for me to offer a hand when you need it. ”
A wondering sort of smile touches her mouth. “I promise.”
“Good.” I kiss her again. “You belong with me, Bryony Devaliant.”
“I belong with you,” she breathes.
“Shout it, nemesis. My queen doesn’t need anyone’s permission to take up space. She owns it. She takes what’s hers.”
Bryony inhales sharply. “I belong with you!”
A fierce sort of pride explodes in my chest. “That’s my Chosen. Never let anyone make you feel small and shut you up. Not those courtiers. Not Alexios. And sure as fuck not me.”