Chapter 20 Aisling
TWENTY
AISLING
Once we’re settled, I sleep for sixteen hours.
When I finally surface, the light slanting through Rurik’s chamber windows has shifted from dawn gold to late afternoon amber. My body aches in places I didn’t know existed. My fire feels like embers instead of flame—present but banked, recovering from being pushed past every limit I thought I had.
Rurik is pressed against my back. His arm drapes heavy across my waist, his breath warm and steady against my hair. Even in sleep, he holds me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
I don’t move. Don’t want to break this moment—the quiet after the storm, the peace after the war. Valdris is dead. The Relic is destroyed.
Niamh is okay. She was given something to help her forget everything she saw.
Once she was sent home, I called her to make sure she was okay.
It was strange to hear her tale of a car accident that never happened.
She’s safe. We’re safe. That’s all that matters.
For the first time since I woke screaming in the infirmary weeks ago, nothing is hunting me.
Well. Almost nothing.
The incomplete claiming mark on my chest pulses. Rurik’s mark, waiting to be finished. It started in the mountain during the final battle—fire meeting fire, his power beginning to twine with mine. But we were interrupted. Attacked. Nearly killed.
Now there’s nothing standing in our way.
His arm tightens around me. “You’re thinking too loud.”
“How can you tell?”
“Your fire.” His lips brush the back of my neck, sending heat cascading down my spine. “It flickers when you’re thinking. Steadies when you decide something.”
“And right now?”
“Right now, it’s doing both.” He rolls me onto my back, bracing himself above me. Those wild eyes find mine—fierce and wanting and unbearably tender. “What are you deciding, Aisling?”
I reach up. Trace the scar along his jaw. The stubble rasping against my fingertips. The hard line of his mouth that softens when he looks at me.
“Finish it.” My voice comes out steadier than I expect. “The claiming. I want it done. I want—“ I swallow. Force myself to say what I mean. “I want to be yours. Completely. No more waiting.”
His pupils blow wide. His breath catches. “Aisling.”
“Don’t argue with me.” I hook my leg around his hip, pull him closer. “Don’t tell me it’s dangerous or that I should rest or that we have time. I’ve had enough of almost dying. Enough of incomplete things. I want this. I want you.”
“Bossy.” But he’s grinning. That wild, reckless grin that makes my heart stutter. “I like it.”
“Then do something about it.”
He does.
RURIK
I’ve waited centuries for this.
Didn’t know I was waiting. Didn’t know what I was missing. Just filled the emptiness with noise and fire and reckless charges into battle, telling myself it was enough.
It wasn’t. Nothing was ever enough.
Until her.
I kiss her like I’m drowning. Like she’s air and I’ve been suffocating for three hundred years. She responds with equal desperation—fingers tangling in my hair, hips arching against mine, small sounds escaping her throat that drive my dragon to the edge of madness.
CLAIM. MARK. MAKE HER OURS FOREVER.
Soon. So soon.
I strip her slowly. Deliberately. Cataloging every inch of skin as it’s revealed—the freckles across her shoulders, the scars on her wrists where the manacles bit, the lean muscle she’s built through weeks of training.
She’s changed since that first day in the infirmary.
Stronger. Fiercer. Still broken in places, but healing.
We’re both healing.
“Rurik.” My name on her lips sounds like a prayer. “Please.”
“Tell me what you want.”
“Everything.” She pulls me down, captures my mouth. “All of it. All of you.”
I give her everything.
We move together—fire meeting fire, her flames rising to twine with mine. The incomplete mark on her chest blazes as the claiming magic builds. I feel it growing between us, ancient power responding to our need, our want, our choice.
This isn’t just physical. The claiming never is.
It’s souls tangling. Fires merging. Two becoming one in a way that can never be undone.
“Look at me.” I brace myself above her, buried deep, her body wrapped around mine. “Aisling. Look at me.”
Her eyes open. Green and fierce and full of things neither of us has words for.
“I love you.” The words tear out of me. Raw. True. “I love you. I’m claiming you. And I will burn down anyone who ever tries to hurt you again.”
“I love you too.” Her hands cup my face. Steady despite everything. “Now stop talking and finish it.”
I let the claiming fire loose.
It pours from my chest into hers—wild and red-gold, the essence of my dragon given form. Her fire rises to meet it. White-gold and fierce. They crash together, merge, become something new. Something that’s both of us and neither. Something that will burn between us until the end of time.
The mark sears into her skin.
She cries out—not in pain, but in completion. In relief. In the overwhelming rightness of finally, finally being whole.
I feel it too. Feel her inside me in a way I’ve never experienced. Her heartbeat echoing in my chest. Her emotions bleeding into mine. Joy and exhaustion and fierce, overwhelming love.
MATE. OURS. FOREVER.
The dragon settles. Not quiet—never quiet—but content. Satisfied in a way it’s never been before.
Home. We’re finally home.
AISLING
The claiming mark burns.
Not like pain. Like completion. Like a puzzle piece finally slotting into place after being held wrong for too long. I feel it spreading across my chest—Rurik’s fire writing itself into my skin, branding me in a way that has nothing to do with ownership and everything to do with belonging.
When I can finally breathe again, when the world stops spinning and the fire settles into a steady glow beneath my ribs, I look down.
The mark is beautiful.
It covers my chest from collarbone to the curve of my breasts—intricate lines of red-gold that shimmer when the light catches them.
A dragon in flight, wings spread wide, flames trailing from its scales.
Rurik’s dragon. His essence. Permanently inked into my skin like the world’s most intimate tattoo.
“It’s gorgeous.” The words come out awed. Reverent. “I didn’t expect it to be so...”
“Chaotic?” Rurik traces the lines with his fingertip, watching the mark shimmer in response. “Wild? Reckless? Slightly terrifying?”
“I was going to say beautiful.” I catch his hand. Press it flat against the mark. “But those work too.”
He grins. That wild, bright grin that makes my heart flip. “Matches its owner, then.”
“Flatterer.”
“Truth-teller.” He leans down, presses a kiss to the center of the mark. Warmth blooms where his lips touch—the claiming responding to its creator. “You’re mine now. Officially. Permanently. The whole territory will know it.”
“Good.” I stretch beneath him, feeling loose and sated and more at peace than I’ve been since before I was taken. “Let them know.”
He settles beside me, pulling me against his chest. We lie tangled together in the fading light, his heartbeat steady beneath my ear, the claiming mark pulsing in time with both of us.
That’s when I notice.
I sit up. Stare at my wrist—the wrist where Valdris’s brand burned for weeks. The wrist that ached and whispered and marked me as the Crimson Queen’s property.
The skin is smooth. Unmarked. Nothing but faint freckles and the pale remnants of manacle scars.
The brand is gone.
“Rurik.” My voice comes out strange. Hollow. “Look.”
He sits up beside me. Takes my wrist in his hands, turning it toward the window light. His thumb traces where the brand used to be—that ugly, burned-in mark that Valdris seared into my flesh to track me, to own me, to remind me that I was hers.
“It’s gone.” Wonder fills his voice. “The claiming... it burned it out.”
I stare at the empty space. At the absence of the thing that haunted me for weeks. The mark that let Valdris whisper in my dreams, that let her find me no matter where I ran, that branded me as prey.
Gone. Completely gone.
“Your fire replaced hers.” Rurik’s hand moves from my wrist to my chest, pressing against the claiming mark—his dragon, permanently etched into my skin. “The claiming doesn’t share. When I marked you as mine, it destroyed any other claim on you. Including hers.”
My breath catches. “I’m free.”
“You’re free.” He pulls me into his arms, holds me tightly against his chest. “She’s dead, her brand is gone, and you’re mine. No one else’s. Never anyone else’s.”
“Promise?”
“Eternally.” He pulls back just enough to meet my gaze. Those wild eyes hold steady—no jokes, no deflection, just pure truth. “You’re stuck with me now, Aisling. For centuries. For millennia, if we’re lucky. Every nightmare. Every dawn. Every moment in between.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It will be.” His grin flickers to life. “I’m told I’m very annoying.”
“Incredibly annoying.” I press a kiss to his jaw. “Obnoxious. Reckless. Boundary-violating.”
“Keep going. This is doing wonders for my ego.”
“Also kind.” Another kiss, to the corner of his mouth. “Brave. Loyal. The only person who’s ever made me feel safe enough to fall apart.”
His breath catches. “Aisling.”
“I love you.” The words come easier now. Truer. “All of you. Even the annoying parts.”
“Especially the annoying parts.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
He laughs—bright and free, the sound filling the chamber. I feel it echo through the claiming mark, feel his joy bleeding into mine until I’m laughing too, tangled together in his massive bed while the sunset paints the mountains gold.
Valdris’s brand is gone. In its place—Rurik’s dragon, flying forever over my heart.
I’m free.
I’m claimed.
I’m home.
RURIK
Later, after we’ve dressed and eaten and proven that the claiming makes everything better—including arguments about who hogged the blankets—we emerge into the fortress.
Selene finds us first.
She’s waiting in the corridor outside my chambers, arms crossed, a knowing smile playing at her lips. Her gaze drops to where Aisling’s hand is laced with mine, then rises to study both our faces.
“Finally.” She moves forward, pulling Aisling into a hug before either of us can speak. “About time.”
“It’s been three hours,” Aisling protests. “You couldn’t have waited that long for us to—“
“I’ve been waiting since the first night you woke up screaming and Rurik refused to leave your door.” Selene pulls back, grinning. “The whole fortress has been taking bets on how long you’d hold out.”
“Of course, they have.” Aisling shoots me a look. “Your family is insufferable.”
“Our family,” I correct. “You’re stuck with them now too.”
Something soft flickers across her face. “Our family.”
Selene’s gaze catches on Aisling’s wrist—the one she’s holding out unconsciously, fingers spread as if still marveling at its emptiness.
“The brand.” Selene’s voice goes sharp. “It’s gone.”
“The claiming burned it out.” Aisling turns her wrist in the light, showing the smooth, unmarked skin. “Rurik’s fire replaced hers. There’s nothing left of Valdris on me.”
“Show me.” Selene’s demand is soft. Urgent.
Aisling hesitates, then pulls the collar of her shirt aside. The claiming mark gleams in the torchlight. Beautiful and fierce and unmistakably permanent.
“That’s...” Selene traces the edge of the mark with one finger, wonder in her expression. “That’s his dragon. Exactly. Down to the scar on the wing.”
“Scar?” Aisling twists, trying to see. “What scar?”
“Here.” I touch the spot on the mark that corresponds to an old wound on my dragon form—a tear in my wing membrane from a battle decades ago. “The claiming mark shows who I am. All of me. Including the damage.”
“I like the damage.” Aisling covers my hand with hers. “It means you survived.”
Something cracks in my chest. Heals in the same breath.
Selene’s expression shifts—relief and wonder and fierce satisfaction. She looks between us, then throws her arms around both of us, pulling us into an awkward three-person embrace.
“Good,” she says against my shoulder. “Good. That bitch doesn’t get to keep any piece of you.”
“Language,” Drayke says from behind us. But when I turn, he’s smiling—actually smiling, which is still rare enough to be notable. His gaze finds the claiming mark where it peeks above Aisling’s collar, and something eases in his posture.
“Brother.” He clasps my shoulder. Squeezes once. “Well done.”
“Was there ever any doubt?”
“Constant doubt. You’re remarkably good at sabotaging yourself.” But his tone is warm. Affectionate, even. “I’m glad you didn’t this time.”
Auren appears next, materializing from a side corridor with a stack of papers in his hands. He takes one look at us, notes the claiming marks visible on both me and Aisling, and nods once.
“Congratulations. When you’re finished celebrating, there are reports that need—“
“No.” Drayke cuts him off. “Not today. Today we celebrate.”
Auren’s brow furrows. “But the rogue dispersal patterns—“
“Can wait.” Selene links her arm through Auren’s, steering him away from his papers. “The world won’t end if you take one night off. Probably.”
“It might.”
“Then we’ll save it tomorrow.” She grins at Aisling and me. “Tonight, we feast.”
The great hall fills quickly. Word has spread—Valdris is dead, the rogues are scattered, and the wild brother has finally claimed his mate. Dragons pour in from across the fortress, from patrol routes, from territory outposts. The energy is electric—celebration and relief and joy.
I keep Aisling close. My hand on her hip, her body pressed against my side, the claiming mark pulsing warmly between us. She meets my gaze across the chaos, and something passes between us—not words, but understanding.
This is just the beginning.
There will be more battles. More enemies. The other Relics still wait in the dark, and whoever commanded Valdris might still be out there. The war isn’t over—just this chapter of it.
But tonight, none of that matters.
Tonight, I have a mate who loves me. Brothers who trust me. A family that, against all odds, has grown instead of shrunk.
Tonight, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Aisling leans into me as the celebration roars around us. “What are you thinking?”
“That I’m the luckiest bastard in three territories.”
“Accurate.” She grins. “Don’t forget it.”
“Never.” I press a kiss to her temple. “I love you, Aisling.”
“I love you too.” She turns in my arms, pressing her palm against the claiming mark on my chest—the one that pulses in time with hers. “Now. You promised me centuries of annoying me. Don’t think I’m going to let you slack off.”
I laugh. Pull her closer. Let the celebration wash over us while my dragon settles content and whole in my chest.
Centuries of annoying her.
I can’t wait.