Chapter 7
Alina
Beneath the Elder Tree, The Barrow
The first thing I notice is his hands.
Strong. Callused. Careful.
They cradle my face like I’m something precious, not just the girl from Jersey who fell into a Demon world’s apocalypse.
“Alina,” he murmurs against my lips, like a prayer and a vow all at once.
My name in his voice does something wild to the air around us.
The earth seems to lean closer, the hum under my spine deepening as the purple grass cradles me, cushioning my back.
Soft white blossoms drift down from the elder tree overhead, glowing faintly as they land in my hair, on my shoulders, on his broad chest.
My heart is hammering.
Part fear. Mostly anticipation.
Because I know what this is.
The ceremony is technically done.
I said yes. The land answered.
But this? This is the part where we seal it.
“Promise you will tell me to stop, Oona,” Dagan says, his forehead resting against mine, voice low and rough. “If this is too much. If I am too much.”
I swallow.
Look up into those green-gold eyes, bright as wildfire and deep as forest shadows.
“You’re a lot,” I admit, my lips brushing his. “But you’re not too much.”
For once in my life, I don’t want less.
I want all.
His breath shudders out, and then he kisses me again.
Slow, deep, thorough.
Like he has all the time in the world and intends to use every second to learn me.
To map every curve of my mouth, memorize the way my breath catches when he nips at my lower lip, the little sound I make when his tongue strokes against mine.
Heat spirals low in my belly.
Moisture floods between my thighs, creating an ache I’ve never felt.
God help me, I want him.
My fingers find his shoulders, slide over hard muscle and the faint ridges of old scars.
He feels like living bedrock under my hands—solid, unyielding, safe. I curl my hands in his shirt, and the fabric simply unravels into dust, leaving nothing between my palms and his bare skin.
I pull back, startled.
He huffs the smallest laugh, eyes darkening.
“Perks of being Lord of Earth,” he says. “Stone obeys. So does cloth. Does this offend you, Oona?”
I answer by running my hands down his chest. Over the powerful lines of his torso, the flex of his abdomen as he fights for control.
His skin is warm—warmer than it should be—and the faint glow of the elder blossoms paints him in soft gold and violet.
“Not offended,” I whisper. “Very much the opposite.”
His answering growl vibrates against my ribs.
“Good,” he says, and his hands slide down, following the curve of my throat to my shoulders, then lower.
The gown Brianne chose moves like it’s alive, flowing where his fingers brush, thinning where he needs it to, until I feel the night air on my skin, cool against heat.
He doesn’t rush.
Every inch he bares, he pauses to kiss, to touch, to rediscover like he’s already obsessed and getting worse by the heartbeat.
“You’re trembling,” he says quietly, palm flattening over my sternum. His thumb strokes once over my racing pulse. “Are you frightened?”
“No,” I breathe.
Honest.
Dangerously honest.
“I’m not used to feeling like this.”
“How do you feel, Alina?”
“Like, I’m wanted,” I whisper, almost afraid to admit it.
Because what if I’m wrong?
What if that hardness pressed against me is simple biology?
My cheeks burn, and I duck my head, but Dagan’s fingers are there, on my chin, forcing my gaze to meet his.
“I want you, Oona. I swear it.”
“But do you want me for all of me? Not just for what I can do. But for what I am.”
His gaze sharpens.
He lowers himself until our noses touch, his breath warm against my lips.
“Alina Fawcett,” he says, each word deliberate. “Hear me now. Nothing is at is seems in Nightfall, but this you can count on,” he growls, eyes burning with something I’m almost afraid to name.
“I, Dagan, Lord of Earth, want your mind. Your stubbornness. The way you argue with every fault line like it personally offended you.” His hand slides to my hip, gripping, not hard, just claiming. “I want your laughter, your fury, the way you run toward danger instead of away from it.”
His eyes burn.
“And yes,” he adds, voice dropping, “I want every inch of this luscious, fertile body more than my next breath.”
My lungs forget how to work for a second.
The zareth between us pulses, a bright, thrumming tether along my spine, humming in time with the earth.
“But will you still want me in the morning?” I ask, half teasing, half raw.
He makes a sound that’s almost a snarl.
“Especially in the morning,” he growls. “You are not a passing tremor, Oona. You are a fault I will spend the rest of my life exploring.”
“Dagan,” I whisper, helplessly.
He kisses me again, and this time there’s nothing careful about it.
The slow build continues, but it’s coiled now, charged.
His mouth traces a path down my throat, lingering over the place where my pulse flutters like trapped birds.
His teeth scrape there lightly, a promise more than a threat.
I arch into him.
The ground responds, lifting, shifting under me so I’m cradled at just the right angle.
The grass is impossibly soft, like moss, and velvet blended together.
Blossoms cushion my hair, their faint glow bathing us in pale light.
The air is sweet with the scent of freshly packed earth, flowers, and clean grass.
Dagan’s hands skim my sides, memorizing every line and curve, every place that makes me gasp or sigh. My dress crumbles away, like his clothes did earlier, and I gasp.
“Easy, Oona,” he rumbles. “Let me see you. Let me worship.”
He runs his palm down my cheek to my throat, between my breasts, and over my soft belly.
He is so pale against my tanned skin, he practically glows. And it’s beautiful.
He’s beautiful.
Next, he pushes my thighs apart, and I shiver, wanting him closer to where I need him most.
My pussy is dripping with arousal. And I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or proud because no one has ever caused such a reaction in me.
When he finally settles his weight over me, bracing some of it on his forearms so he doesn’t crush me, the rightness of it slams through me.
Like I was cut for this.
For him.
He pauses, eyes searching mine, waiting.
I wrap my legs around him, pulling him in.
“Yes,” I whisper, no hesitation left. “Please. I want this. I want you.”
Something hot and fierce flashes across his face.
“Then I shall give you what you want. All that I have,” he vows.
When he finally moves, when he aligns us and eases forward, there’s a moment of breathless, stretching ache—and then he’s there, deep, filling, grounding me more completely than the earth ever has.
The burn is so good. His thick cock is so big, so long, and he pushes deep. I feel my body stretch to accommodate him.
“So tight, Oona. Gods, so fucking tight.”
A sound rips out of me that I don’t recognize as my own.
He shudders, eyes squeezing shut, jaw clenched so hard I can see the strain.
“Let me in,” he grits out. “That’s it… gods, you are… perfect.” His forehead presses to mine, sweat beading along his temple. “Tell me if it is too much. If I am hurting you.”
“No! Please, don’t stop. You’re exactly enough,” I manage, fingers digging into his back as he holds still, letting me adjust.
I rock my hips experimentally, and the groan he gives me is obscene in the best way.
After that, there’s no thought.
Just sensation.
Dagan moves slowly at first, deep, measured strokes that make the air spark around us.
His mouth hovers over mine, just out of reach.
Goddamn tease.
“What do you need, Oona?”
“Your mouth. Please, I need you to kiss me,” I moan.
He moves then, swallowing my gasps and whimpers, rocking his hips with increasing fervor.
The zareth flares with every thrust, bright threads weaving tighter, binding us to each other, to the tree, to the humming roots below.
His hands skim my sides, the bed of grass and earth we lay on seems to move, accommodating us as he rears up and locks eyes on my heaving chest.
“Gods, your body was made for this. For me. Feel that, Oona? Feel how your sweet slit is trying to suck me inside? Like it wants me to stay right here, buried deep inside you.”
“Yes, feels so good, Dagan.”
And it does. I feel him everywhere.
In the building ache between my thighs, in the heat blooming under my skin, in the pulse that keeps time with the subtle tremors traveling up through the stone.
He leans in, braces one hand by my head, fingers buried in the grass. The other roams—my hip, my ribs, my breast, my throat, like he can’t decide what part of me he needs to worship more.
“Look at me,” he rasps when my head tips back.
I force my eyes open.
Green-gold meet mine.
And something inside me just clicks.
This isn’t just a body moving over mine.
This is the Lord of Earth’s walls coming down.
Stone and storm peeling back to show me the man underneath—lonely, furious, loyal to a fault, and looking at me like I’m the one thing he ever truly wanted and never thought he’d have.
My chest aches.
I lift a hand to his face, thumb brushing the scar along his jaw.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper.
His pace stutters.
“Oona,” he says, voice breaking on my name. “You do not know what that means.”
“I think I do,” I say, because I feel it—the way the Marches have ridden him like a burden for years, and how the weight shifts, just slightly, when I say the words.
“You’re not alone anymore, Dagan. Not in this. Not in anything. Let go. I’ve got you.”
I feel his answer in his body before I hear it in his voice.
He rolls his hips harder, deeper, and the pleasure spikes white-hot, stealing my breath.
The world narrows to the grind of his body against mine, the flex of his shoulders, the rhythm we find together.
Heat coils low and tight, building with every thrust.
The elder tree shivers, blossoms raining down faster, scattering over our tangled limbs. The glow intensifies, the sap veins gleaming like molten gold.
The zareth burns.
He grunts. Tossing his beautiful head back as his body starts to move in jerky, unpracticed motions. My pussy clenches, tightening as wave after wave of pleasure sneak up and hit me like a hundred tiny earthquakes before the big one strikes—and it’s so close.
“Oh Dagan! I can feel you,” I gasp, nails digging into his back. “The bond—Dagan, it’s—”
“Alive,” he pants. “Growing. Claiming us both.” His mouth finds my neck—just above my collarbone, where his magic has already brushed before, and I feel the brush of his teeth.
“When we fall, Oona, we fall together. You understand?”
“Yes,” I breathe, on a sob that’s not quite tears.
The pressure inside me edges toward unbearable.
He must feel it, because his hand slides down, helping, guiding, his movements sharpening as he chases both our releases.
Everything inside me winds tighter, tighter, until I’m sure I’ll shatter.
“Now, Oona,” he growls, voice low and relentless. “Let the earth have you. Let me have you.”
Something in me obeys.
I break.
Pleasure crashes through me, violent and consuming and blinding.
My vision whites out.
The bond detonates, a flare of molten light that surges from my center outward—through my veins, into him, into the ground.
Somewhere in that explosion of feeling, I feel his teeth at my neck.
He bites.
Not cruelly.
Claiming.
Sharp heat lances through my skin, followed by a pull that feels older than language—a sealing, a promise etched in blood and magic.
The zareth roars.
Dagan stiffens above me with a hoarse shout, his body shuddering as he follows me over, every line of him straining, his hands gripping me like he never intends to let go.
For a few suspended heartbeats, everything holds.
The tree.
The roots.
The stone.
Us.
And after all the aftershocks subside, it’s like the world exhales.
I sag back into the grass, boneless, Dagan’s weight heavy and comforting on top of me.
The hum of the Marches is different now—richer, layered.
There’s a second note woven through it, familiar and new at once.
Mine.
His.
Ours.
He lifts his head after a moment, breathing hard.
His bite throbs, not with pain, but with a steady, pulsing warmth. I touch it with trembling fingers and feel his answering shiver.
“Alina,” he says, voice roughened. “Are you okay?”
“Good,” I manage, then laugh weakly. “Better than good. Wow. Yeah.”
Words are not my strong suit right now.
Emotions? Those, I have in abundance.
His thumb traces my cheekbone, feather-light.
“The bond is sealed,” he says softly. “You are of the Marches now. Of me.”
I should be scared.
This started as a bargain.
A desperate, wild Hail Mary to keep New Jersey—the whole of Earth, really—from cracking in half and maybe, just maybe, help stop some multiversal apocalypse.
But as I look up at him—at the man who held back his power to give me choice, who listens when I speak, who treats my stubborn heart like sacred ground—I don’t feel trapped.
I feel saved.
By him.
By this.
By us.
“That was—wow.”
“Yes. Wow,” he whispers, nuzzling my cheek. “By binding yourself to me, you’ve made the saving of the multiverse a distinct possibility.”
I press my palm flat over his heart, feeling the steady beat under my hand.
“Seems fair,” I whisper.
And it does because I think he might’ve just saved me, too.
Not from quakes.
Not from SoulTakers.
But from the slow, quiet erosion of living half a life.
His gaze softens in a way I didn’t know was possible for a face carved from marble.
“The worlds will not know it yet,” he says, leaning down to kiss me again, gentle and reverent, “but the day you said yes, Oona, is the day all began to be saved.”
“And you?” I murmur against his lips. “Who saves you?”
He smiles then—a real one, bright and unexpectedly boyish, breaking through all the storm and stone.
“I should think you do,” he says simply. “Every time you look at me like that.”
The bond pulses between us, strong and sure.
What started as a bargain to save the multiverse might just be the thing that saves me.
And lying there under a bright full moon, wrapped in the arms of the Lord of Earth while the Marches hum their approval, I know one thing for certain. He’s right.
I’m not falling alone.
We’re falling together.