Hux
THIRTY-SIX
They lay in a tangle of sweat-damp sheets, Lunaria’s head pillowed on his chest, his hand drawing lazy circles on her back.
The bite on her shoulder had stopped bleeding. Already, he could see the mark taking shape—the distinctive impression of lion’s canines, raised and red against her brown skin. It would scar. Become permanent. A visible declaration of what they were to each other.
He ran his fingertip over the mark, feather-light, and felt her shiver.
“Does it hurt?”
“A little.” She turned her head to press a kiss to his chest. “Worth it.”
Marked. Claimed. Ours forever.
“It’s really there,” she murmured, her voice drowsy. “The bond. I can feel where you are even with my eyes closed.”
“Same.” He drew her against him, marveling at the sensation. After a lifetime of emptiness, the awareness was almost overwhelming. “It’s not strong. Not like what Theo describes with Avine, or what Wyatt has with Narla. But...”
“But it’s ours.” She tilted her head to look at him, and the love in her eyes made his chest ache. “We made it ourselves. Chose it ourselves. The curse said we couldn’t have this, and we took it anyway.”
“We did.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You did. You came to Haven Shores expecting to leave, and instead you stayed and broke a century-old curse through sheer stubbornness.”
“I had help.” Her fingers mapped the faded scars on his chest. “A certain insufferable mayor who made me want to stop running.”
“I don’t make jokes at funerals.” A pause. “I make observations. There’s a difference.”
He laughed—a real laugh, the kind he’d forgotten he was capable of until she walked into his life. She joined him, and for a moment they were just two people who’d found each other against impossible odds, laughing in the dark.
Then her expression sobered.
“Soon,” she said. “The stars are almost aligned. We’ll find out if all of this was enough.”
“It will be.” He rolled them, pinning her beneath him, bracing himself so he could see her face.
The starlight caught her features—the kiss-swollen lips, the mark on her shoulder that proclaimed her his.
“We have the orrery. We have the focus ring. We have the mated pairs and two dragons and a community that’s chosen to stand and fight. ”
“The most stubborn.” He kissed her softly. “I didn’t survive all those years of feeling nothing just to lose you to some ancient void parasite. Whatever it takes, Luna. Whatever the Convergence throws at us. I’m not letting anything take this away from me.”
“From us,” she corrected.
“From us.”
“When did you become such a romantic?”
“Sometime around the third time you called me Mayor Clipboard and I realized I was completely gone for you.”
“That was week one.”
“I spent three weeks pretending I wasn’t terrified of how much I didn’t hate you. There’s a difference.”
She dragged him down for another kiss, and the conversation was abandoned in favor of more pressing matters.
Dawn was breaking by the time they finally slept.
The skylight framed a rectangle of brightening sky—stars fading, the first hints of pink and gold creeping over the horizon. Soon, those same stars would align in patterns that hadn’t been seen in twelve decades, and the battle for Haven Shores would begin.
But not yet.
Tonight—this morning—there was only this. Lunaria’s warmth pressed against him. The soft pulse of their fragile bond. The mark on her shoulder that declared her his, and the answering certainty that he belonged to her.
She shifted in her sleep, nuzzling closer, her hand finding his chest and settling over his heart. Even unconscious, she reached for him. Even dreaming, she chose him.
Hux had spent his entire adult life feeling bereft.
Incomplete. Convinced his capacity for love had been stolen from him before he had a chance to fight for it.
He’d watched other people fall in love, watched them find their fated mates, watched them build the kind of happiness he’d convinced himself he could never have.
Now, with his mate in his arms and their bond flickering between them, he knew exactly what he’d been missing.
Not just love. Not just belonging.
Home.
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
The signs grew stronger with each passing hour, the stars aligning toward an inevitable dawn.
But whatever came next, one thing was certain: he would never be void again.
Luna was his.
And he was hers.
Forever.