Chapter 48
SAPHIRA
The growl that left me was unholy and dark as Lorien strode away from me, disappearing up the steps. I struck at the bars that kept me from him, fangs clashing with the metal and leaving a tinny taste in my mouth.
The doors at the top of the stairs slammed shut.
“Saphira,” Kaeleron murmured.
I halted my attack and twisted my head towards him, and trotted over to him, sorrow welling up inside me to make me want to throw my head back and howl.
As it was, I whined.
He seemed to know the path of my thoughts, because he pushed his fingers through my fur and palmed my nape as he said, “It was not your fault. We shall find a way out of this mess.”
I wanted to stay as a wolf, wanted the way it dampened my feelings so I didn’t have to face them, but I refused to be a coward, not when these might be my last hours with him.
I shifted back, rising before him, and gripped the bars that separated us, my brow furrowing as tears filled my eyes and wretched misery tore at my heart. “I’m sorry. This is all my fault. I’m so sorry, Kael.”
His hands closed over mine and he smiled for me. “It will be fine, my love.”
It wouldn’t be. I knew it. Deep in my heart I knew it and I couldn’t stop the feeling that warred within me, tearing me between crying and raging.
He calmly removed his tunic jacket and passed it through the bars to me, and I took it, grateful for it as I slipped my arms into it and fastened it over my bare chest.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I should have let you take me home. I shouldn’t have come back here. If I hadn’t… If I hadn’t—”
I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
We were going to die.
We were going to be executed and then the Shadow Court would be attacked, and it was all my fault.
“I’m sorry,” I croaked, the pain winning, bringing tears into my eyes that spilled down my cheeks as I looked up at him.
He lifted his hands, framed my face, and tilted it towards him, his expression stern and unyielding, his voice firm and hands steady. “This is not the end of us, Saphira. This is not the end.”
I tried to nod. I tried to believe him. But what hope was there? Meiryn had betrayed me. Sylvan had tried to kill me. Lorien was going to kill me.
After he had forced me to watch Kael die.
“Oh gods, I’m so sorry.” I reached for him, hiccupping on a sob as I clutched his bare arms, as I clung to him. “I wish you’d never met me. I wish—”
He pulled me to the bars and kissed me, silencing me, and then he husked against my lips, “Never wish that. Never. If I must die tomorrow, then at least I had this time with you. At least I found my way back towards the male I should have been, because of you. I do not regret any of it. I could never. I love you, Saphira. I love you.”
I nodded, tears blurring my vision, and sniffled, trying to hold them back and not break down entirely.
It was impossible as I looked at him, as I thought about everything I had and stood to lose, and all the pain I had caused everyone I cared about. Not just him, but everyone back in the Shadow Court.
“I love you, Kael,” I whispered, needing to tell him, needing him to hear it, and hating fate once again as I added, “I don’t think our love story has a happy ending either.”
He pulled me into his arms, wrapping them around me, one hand clutching my shoulder as the other pressed to the back of my head.
The bars that separated us were cold against me, frustratingly unyielding as they kept me from the depth of contact I desperately needed with him.
I breathed him in, so I would always remember his scent, so I could find him in the afterlife.
If we were destined to be parted in this life, I would find him in the next.
He shook as he held me, clinging to me as fiercely as I clung to him, his breathing unsteady.
“I love you,” he whispered in my hair, “Nyr ill’aeth ky’aethena.”
His little mate.
I wanted that so badly. I wanted fate not to screw me over just once. I wanted to be his mate.
I would be his mate.
I pushed back from him, lifting my steady gaze to lock with his. “Mate me.”
His silver eyes flared wide, but darkened with heat at the same time. “Here?”
I looked at our damp, grotty surroundings, and then back at him. “I admit, it’s not the nicest place for it, but if I’m going to die, I want to die as your mate, Kael.”
“You are not going to die,” he growled, his handsome face darkening.
“You don’t know that.” I shook my head. “If you won’t mate me, at least let me feel you again. Let me feel again. I need to feel you… I don’t want to die without feeling that way with you one last time.”
His eyes rapidly darkened as I spoke, that heat in them becoming an inferno of need that echoed within me too, matching this desperate wild hunger that consumed me. I didn’t care if we were caught. I didn’t care if someone saw. I just needed him.
I just needed to feel him.
I needed to live.
He made a low noise in his throat and dragged me up against the bars, his mouth coming down hard on mine. The cold press of the steel bars tore a growl from me as they hindered us, stopping me from kissing him as deeply as I wanted to.
He spun me away from him before yanking my back to the bars, his mouth finding my nape as his hands found my thighs.
I groaned as he laved my nape, teasing that spot that ached to feel his fangs in it.
I pressed my backside against the bars, trembling as he skimmed his hands around the front of my hips beneath my tunic, raising it slightly.
“Saphi,” he murmured between kisses, his breaths uneven, his need pouring off him as he delved one hand between my thighs.
My eyes slipped shut as I reached one hand behind my head, cupping the back of his as he kissed my nape, and covered his hand on my pussy with the other, holding him to me as he teased me.
On a ragged groan, he tore his lips from my nape and broke contact with me, and for a heart-stopping moment I thought he would stop and make me die without feeling him one last time, but then his left hand claimed my hip and his right pushed into my lower back, pressing me forwards.
A long trembling moan escaped me as he angled my hips, positioning me where he could reach me, and inched into me, slowly, making me feel all of him as he stretched me.
I reached behind me, gripping the bars as he set a punishing pace, one hand on my right shoulder and the other on my hip, pinning the backs of my thighs to the bars.
I didn’t bother to stifle the moans that fell from my lips, didn’t care if the guards heard me as Kaeleron took me, driving me towards a climax that shattered me completely when it hit me, making me howl.
I howled again as Kael pulled me upright, still thrusting into me, and twisted my hair into his fist.
And sank his sharp fangs into my nape.
Heat rolled through me, a wave of pleasure that detonated like a series of lightning bolts racing along my limbs, all sweeping upwards towards that point where his fangs sank into my skin, holding me in place as he took me harder.
I grabbed his arm, recalling what he had said about fae, and followed my instincts, needing to strengthen this glorious connection blooming between us.
I sank my fangs into his forearm.
Kael grunted against my nape, his rhythm faltering for a moment before it became more brutal, every fierce and wild plunge of his cock into my trembling body something I cherished and craved. Bliss. This was bliss.
My mate inside me.
That connection that had always been there between us forged into something unbreakable that filled my chest, chasing all the darkness from it.
Flooding it with love.
Love that came from Kaeleron.
I shattered with him this time, lifting my head from his arm and howling long and loud, unleashing every drop of my pride as my release swept through me, and he howled with me.
My breathing was ragged as tender warmth and glittering starlight rolled through me, flowing in powerful waves, and the connection that slowly continued to build within me revealed the truth to me.
Kaeleron was my fated one.
“Nyr ill’aeth ky’aethena.” His breath bathed my nape as he gently licked the marks he had placed on me.
“My beautiful mate.” I did the same, sweeping my tongue over the ragged puncture wounds on his arm, wishing it had been his nape I had marked.
It would be his nape.
I turned in his arms, smiling as he fixed my tunic, covering my legs, and lifted my hands to frame his face, letting him see how happy he had made me. Letting him see I was done crying, and I was ready to face whatever came next, because it wasn’t over.
It wasn’t done.
I would mark my mate, showing the world that he was mine.
We just had to rewrite the ending of our love story into a happy one.
The doors at the top of the steps opened again and footsteps sounded.
We just had to survive this.