Chapter 39
SAPHIRA
No one had ever said that to me before, and I wasn’t sure I had heard the words right, some annoying part of me trying to convince me that I had misheard him as I blinked at him, reeling a little.
Struggling to absorb those three little words he had offered up to me with a flicker of nerves in his eyes, and a dash of hope, and a lot of warmth.
Shocked by the fact he had been the first to say them.
We had both danced around them, both afraid to put voice to them, because we both had our reasons to avoid speaking them. Me because of what the last person I had dared to love had done to me. Him because he had loved his parents dearly and they had been ripped from him.
But he had said them now.
To me.
He had said them to me.
Someone had said them to me.
I shook myself out of my stupor when it hit me that he was waiting, looking awfully nervous as he watched me. Someone hadn’t only told me that they loved me, but they were waiting to hear those three little words in return, and looked as if everything hung on them.
“I love you, too,” I whispered.
A handful of words that looked as if they had made his day as his now-silver eyes lit up and the tight lines bracketing his mouth faded to allow a smile to curve them.
“I love you.” He swooped on my lips, kissing across them, feathering his mouth over mine as he murmured against them, “I love you.”
Before I could respond with the same fervour, pouring out the words blazing in my heart and bubbling up my throat, he claimed my cheeks with his palms and drew back to gaze down at me, the intensity of that look rocking me.
“I needed to tell you. I know coming here was dangerous, that I risk everything, but I am willing to risk it all and more to have you, Saphira.” His eyes darted between mine, his low voice rough but filled with warmth that echoed inside me too as his words washed over me, sweeping me along in a wonderful current that lifted me up, bringing a smile to my lips and joy to my heart.
“I could not leave it unsaid any longer. I love you… and I am willing to give up everything, to be hated by my people, if it means that for these last few breaths I am loved by you—by my mate.”
Those words didn’t just rock me.
They shook me into stunned silence.
What Meiryn had helped me translate filled my mind, what he had said to me all those weeks ago that felt like a lifetime now.
And then I drifted further back, to that day we had sparred in the glade, when I had lost my temper and had bitten him, and he had bitten me in return.
I could still see his face as he had looked at the marks he had placed on me, that unreadable look that had puzzled me for days afterwards.
If we were really fated, that exchange of bites and blood might have been enough to forge a fragile sort of bond between us. Not complete, but in progress, the tender beginnings of a bond that we could turn into something powerful and beautiful in time. But not yet.
I didn’t want whatever was growing between us, this bond that felt so natural to me, as if it wasn’t fate but just two souls reunited like long lost lovers made whole by their other half, to be completed here, in this wretched court.
“Speak to me, Saphi,” he husked, worry flitting across his handsome face as he lowered it towards mine.
“Repeat what you said.”
He didn’t hesitate. “I love you.”
I shook my head. “Not that part. After that part. What did you call me?”
He frowned and then his expression relaxed and he smiled, one of those killer smiles of his that I wanted to hoard and keep to myself.
“Mate,” he whispered. Earnest. Eyes bright. “My mate.”
“I know what you said to me that night. Nyr ill’aeth ky’aethena.
” I reached for him when he went very still, as if he could disappear if he did that, even though he had no reason to fear me or what he had said.
Well, maybe he had a little reason to fear me.
“Did you know we were fated and keep it from me all this time? Did you keep me in the dark?”
“Goddess, no.” His eyebrows met hard as he bit out those words, his stern expression not helping my urges to climb him and kiss him.
He did look particularly gorgeous when he glared at me like that, all darkness and fury.
He didn’t seem to notice how my body responded to that demanding look on his face.
If he had, he certainly wouldn’t have paced away from me to shove his hands through his long black hair.
He stopped a short distance away and turned back to face me.
“When I called you my little mate, it was born of a desire for you to be mine, born out of my love for you. It was a term of endearment wrapped in a wish.” He made a strange sort of half chuckle, half scoff sound, as if he felt he had been ridiculous for wanting what he said next.
“A hope that you might one day be my queen and might come to love me as I love you.”
I couldn’t find anything ridiculous in that.
He strode back to me, palming my face again, bringing his close to mine so his breath bathed my lips as he said, “I do not care if we are fated or not. Fate is not responsible for this love that burns within me. It did not make me fall for you. You did that. With your ferocity. With your courage. With your warmth. With every look that tore another steel plate from the doors that guarded my heart, and every smile that wrenched them open a little more. You made me fall in love with you.”
“What if I’m not your mate?” I hated myself for putting that out there, for letting doubt still cloud my heart when I should be happy that he loved me.
The side of me that could have easily done that had been killed that night Lucas had rejected me, and even now I struggled against the trauma I still carried deep in my soul.
“Up on Noainfir… you mentioned never having your true mate because of your agreement… and you seemed so… sad. I—I just feel… fate would be too cruel to you to give you a mate like me, born of your enemy and the murderer of your parents.”
“If fate made you for me, and I for you, then I am blessed, Saphira, not cursed by it.” He brought his forehead to mine again, his earnest words beginning to wash the doubt from my soul as he held me close.
“I can think of no other female I would want to spend the rest of my days with. There is no other who could make me feel as you do, who could complete me so thoroughly.”
I cursed my fractured soul for making me doubt him, when he had shown me time and again that he meant the things he said to me. “I feel the same way, Kaeleron, I really do.”
He tilted my face up, his grave but soft as he brushed his thumbs below my eyes.
“In time, you will banish the darkness of those days that lingers still, and I will be there with you every step of the way, to help you heal that scar you bear on your heart and restore who you were before someone broke you, as you have restored me.”
“Gods, I don’t deserve you.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and he banded his around me, holding me so tightly, but carefully too.
“Fate might say otherwise, my love. Or at least the Great Mother does, because she guided me to you.” He brought his cheek to mine, drawing down a deep breath before he sighed it out.
“Some might say I do not deserve you, little wolf, but know that I love you, and I have for a long time now, even when I did not dare to love you. I convinced myself I could not, because I thought I would lose you too. I feared that I would lose you, that you would never want me because of the things I had done, because of what I was. I feared that someone would take you from me. Your mate. My enemy. Some cruel twist of fate. I did not dare believe… I was not strong enough or brave enough… to believe you might become mine.”
He pressed his lips to my cheek.
“My mate. Whether chosen or fated, that is what you are to me. You are my little mate.”
“My mate,” I whispered back at him, finding my courage in his confession, in how brave he was being. I could be brave too. “I don’t care if this is fated. I know what I feel and how I feel about you… it’s nothing like I felt with Lucas.”
“I find I want to kill him all over again when you speak of him like that,” he growled.
I silenced him with a brief press of my lips to his. “What I’m trying to say is, this feels so different. My wolf instincts didn’t snap into place as they did with Lucas. What I feel for you, it came on so slowly, sneaking up on me. I’m not sure if this is a fated bond or simply love.”
He feathered his fingers over the spot he had bitten, as if he had memorised it.
“I thought about that night when we were parted. When I bit you, and tasted your blood, I felt you were different somehow. It was only after Sylvan revealed your lineage that it fell into place for me—the reason you seemed unlike other shifters. Stronger. Brighter. How you responded to the lands of Lucia. Before I knew of your seelie blood, back then after I had bitten you, and perhaps even before then… when I saw you in that infernal cage… I felt you could be fae. Like some buried part of me recognised you were different. I felt drawn to you, protective of you, jealous of any male who made you smile or laugh. Deep in my soul, perhaps I recognised you as my mate, even as I was blind to it.”
He studied me intently, his silver gaze warm and soft, but somehow sharp and fierce at the same time, and then he shook his head and his lips curved into a tender smile.
“Or perhaps this is simply love. Love born of something more than a bond. Love that does not exist just because you might be my fated one, but because you are brave, and beautiful, and warm and kind—the light to my darkness—the moon in my sky. I do not care which you are, as long as I get to love you, because I understand now. Nyr an’sidwain—my heart—nyr ky’aethena—my mate. My little wolf. Nyr ill’aeth fenrys.”