Epilogue #2
Alexander pulled me against him, and his lips came down on mine. His taste exploded on my tongue, devastating and completely uncorrupted. I arched into him, shamelessly moaning into his mouth.
He walked me backward toward the bed. His hands gathered the fabric of my dress and pulled it over my head. As the evening air hit my bare skin, I reached for his belt. I freed him from his trousers and wrapped my hand around his hard length. His hips jerked forward, and he let out a loud groan.
“Andie.” His forehead dropped against mine. “If you keep doing that, this will be over before it starts.”
I tightened my grip and stroked him once, slowly, from base to tip. “Then you’d better keep up.”
Alexander growled, and the sound was pure Alpha. It vibrated through my ribcage, settling low in my belly. My body wept for him, a hot rush of slick pooling between my thighs to welcome my mate.
He lifted me off the ground, and I wrapped my legs around his waist. His mouth found my throat, my collarbone, the curve of my breast. He laid me on the bed and followed me down, his hips pressing mine apart.
He paused there. His arms were braced on either side of my head. His eyes were dark with want, but there was a question in them.
“Yes.” I pulled his mouth back to mine. “Stop asking.”
Alexander entered me in one slow, deliberate thrust that stole the air from my lungs. My back arched off the mattress. He filled me completely, and the stretch of it was exquisite. I dug my nails into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks.
He set a rhythm that was unhurried and devastating.
Each deep stroke dragged against every nerve ending I possessed.
A low growl rumbled through his chest whenever I clenched around him.
It screamed of sheer Alpha dominance. He wanted to own every part of me, and for the first time, his possession didn’t feel like a cage. It felt like an answer.
I rolled my hips to meet him, and his rhythm faltered. His thrusts grew harder, faster. The bed frame hit the wall.
“More.” I locked my ankles at the small of his back and pulled him deeper. “Alexander, more.”
Alexander complied. He buried himself to the hilt and held there, grinding against the spot that made my vision white out. The pressure built in spirals that tightened with each rotation of his hips.
I was close. The pleasure was a living thing coiling at the base of my spine, and his scent was everywhere. His heartbeat hammered against my ribs through both our bodies. Deep inside, my slick-drenched muscles spasmed, my inner Omega instinctively begging to take his knot.
Alexander shifted his weight to one arm and slid his free hand between us. His thumb found the swollen nerve at the apex of my thighs. He pressed down and circled, and I shattered.
The orgasm ripped through me with a force that bowed my spine off the mattress.
But it wasn’t enough. I needed one last thing to be complete.
“Now!” I pleaded, tilting my head back and baring my throat.
The bonding gland pulsed at the junction of my neck and shoulder, swollen and aching. “Do it now!”
His teeth closed over the gland.
The pain seared through me, white-hot and glorious.
His hips slammed forward one final time, and his release poured into me.
Driven by the violent force of his climax, his cock rapidly thickened deep inside my slick heat.
A massive knot swelled to life, stretching me beautifully wide and locking us together.
The bond snapped into place, so intense it was almost savage. His heartbeat crashed into my skull, sudden and enormous. His pleasure flooded through me, doubling my own. “Alexander!” I screamed.
A second orgasm tore through my body before the first had finished. His swollen knot firmly anchored my hips to his. It fused our bodies together so tightly I couldn’t tell where my heartbeat ended and his began.
The mark burned itself into my skin. Not the temporary lightning scar that had faded within days. This one set down roots, branching across my throat. It blazed with a permanent heat, one that would still be burning when I was old and gray.
As Alexander released my throat, his breath came in shattered gasps. His voice echoed in my mind, soft and worshipful. “Andie.” He pressed his lips to the fresh mark on my throat. “Andie.”
“I know.” I cradled his head against my neck. His weight was heavy on top of me, and I didn’t want him to move. His knot kept us anchored together, a stretching fullness that felt exactly right.
We lay there while the evening light turned the room amber, then a deep, quiet blue. His hand traced idle patterns on my hip. The bond hummed between us, impossible to ignore, like a second set of lungs breathing in tandem with my own. We really belonged to each other now.
The swelling finally subsided enough for him to gently slip out of me. He pulled me flush against his side, soothing the strangeness of the sudden emptiness.
I reached for the curse one last time. There was nothing there, only the sheer rightness of his presence. And that was when it dawned on me.
“Alexander,” I murmured through our bond, “I think I finally understand. I think… Hera’s Curse was never about Zeus and Hera hating each other.”
Alexander’s breath caught as he made the connection as well. “It was about learning to stand as equals.”
It made so much sense. The curse had broken on the yacht. Not because of Penelope’s gift to me. Or at least, not entirely.
Alexander and I had stood on that deck as partners. He hadn’t saved me. I hadn’t saved him. We had fought together, shoulder to shoulder. In that moment, the fundamental imbalance that powered the curse simply ceased to exist.
That was always what Penelope had wanted for me when she’d taught me the lesson of the past. To the very end, she’d made her own choices. That strength was what House Hera was all about. And the moment Alexander embraced it, Hera’s anger had nothing to cling to.
Alexander shifted against me, his arm tightening around my waist. “It feels a little ridiculous now that it took so long,” he said, this time out loud.
Through the bond, his love for me reached me like warm water. I closed my eyes and let it in. “I don’t think it’s silly. Whatever path brought us here, I don’t mind it. Not anymore.”
Outside, the orchard rustled in the salt breeze. Somewhere below, my mother, my fathers, and the people who had fought for us were drinking wine and talking too loudly. The mark on my throat pulsed with Alexander’s heartbeat, steady and permanent and mine.
We had work to do. A Council to face, alliances to rebuild, a world that would not stop demanding things from us. None of it was simple. None of it would be easy.
But we would do it together. And that, as it turned out, was the only thing that had ever mattered.
Thank you for reading Scarred by Lightning!