Chapter 39
Anya Delemond
Anya’s heart thrummed in her chest as the words hung between them.
“Y-you were there?”
“I wasn’t just there…” She brushed her cheek on his. “I was with you.”
He shook his head, blinking fast. “That’s—that’s not possible, I even—”
“You love pear custard, and herbal tea with lemon. And you said…” Her eyes welled with tears, bubbling up straight from her heart. “You said I have a heart bursting with wanderlust.”
His eyes stayed transfixed on her, unblinking. Anya’s pulse thrummed in her ears. This was it. He knew. He finally knew. Her palms began to sweat as she took in his inscrutable expression. Shock? Disbelief?
She swallowed hard.
Disappointment?
“You tap your claws when you’re nervous.”
She nodded.
“Your favorite constellation is Vulpecula.”
She nodded faster, the mist in her eyes finally spilling down her cheeks. He remembered everything about that night—about her.
“You’re afraid of horses, you hate shoes, you love—”
“Stop talking.”
Anya gripped his shirt collar and pulled him to her lips.
His breath hitched with surprise, but he quickly returned her kiss peppered with smiles she felt tugging at the heights of his cheekbones between every shift and gasp.
He traced a hand up her back, loosing the strings of her bodice until his fingers rested on a sliver of bare skin.
She tugged him closer, desperate for more contact, to make up for all the kisses she’d left unfulfilled—for all the running and hiding and fear-fueled hatred—for the little voice deep in her chest, whispering,
My mate…
When they finally broke away, Roderick’s eyes were misty with tears. He lifted a trembling hand to her cheek.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” The break in his voice made her heart throb. “Why did you run?”
“I didn’t know you then. And…I was scared.
Deep down, I was scared that if you found out it was me, you’d be disappointed.
The me you asked to court on the Lupus Star was just a shell of myself.
That’s how it’s always been. Every morning, I put on a mask to please my parents.
That was who you saw. So that was who I thought you wanted. ”
“That’s why I went to the masquerade,” she continued. “It was the one place I was finally able to be myself, indulge the wolf in me—run wild in the only way I could in those gilded halls.”
He cupped her cheek with a calloused hand. “I’ll run wild with you.” He pulled them both to their feet. “Right now.”
Even in the face of her deceit, her hiding, months of wearing a mask of haught and hate, he loved her. His genuine words were abundant with it, so much that they stole her own.
So she took him by the hand,
and they ran.
The forest floor squished between her toes.
Roderick’s footfalls echoed her own as they raced through the woods, trees rushing by in a moonlight-dappled blur of leaves and branches.
From log to moss to clover and grass, they ran and jumped and laughed like carefree children.
Fireflies pattered against their faces, smearing them both with a luminescent glow.
Unafraid, whole, and unabashedly loved, she shifted back and forth without fear or shame, playfully shoving Roderick and yipping him on.
He laughed and howled with her, loved and adored her like no one else had.
As different as they were, they melded with nature together, like animals in the underbrush.
They belonged to the cool night air, the supervision of the stars, and every thunder of feet and pump of hearts and breath of lungs and sheer experience of life itself until their legs gave out, and they found themselves back at camp in a tangled heap of passion.
She’d never felt such an intense connection with her wolfish instincts and her own heart. Together, they paved a new path within her, letting every emotion she’d buried bloom along the way.
“What about the future?” she whispered between kisses.
“What about it?” he said, burying his face in her neck. As she tried to answer, he pressed soft kisses to her throat. She shivered at the slightest prick of his fangs on her skin. Stars above, she wanted them in her, to mingle his scent with her blood…
“I”—she gasped as his lips roamed further down her neck—“I have to go back to Eteross, and you—”
“—I’m renouncing my title,” he murmured against her skin. “I can follow you anywhere.”
“You can’t mean tha—oh…” Her eyes fluttered closed as the sensations overwhelmed her, magnified by the chorus of nighttime surrounding them, made of the loon’s tremolo song, chirping crickets, even their own panting breaths.
She ran her fingers through Roderick’s fiery hair, desperate to rub her scent on him while instinctual, clipped, wolfish words flooded her mind.
Finally, finally, finally, my mate, oh, my mate…
He pulled back, hair satisfyingly mussed from her ministrations.
“Folk follow stars all the time. If you want the throne, I’ll be by your side.
I’ll be your prince, your knight, your footman, your stable boy, whatever it takes to catch even a glimpse of you.
I love you, Anya. I know now that I’ve never experienced love in its truest form. ”
She linked her claws behind his back and tangled herself with him, hungry to merge her body with his. By the time she wrestled her instincts into submission, she was drunk on moonlight and desire—eyelids heavy, pupils dilated, cheeks hot.
“I’m kissing a star. A wandering star,” he said breathlessly.
“You can do a whole lot more than kiss,” she breathed. “Bite me.”
She caught his eyes flick to her neck, then a quick swipe of his tongue over his pearlescent fangs. He sat there, mouth agape for a long, tortuous moment. She needed it. She needed him. She couldn’t explain it.
But who the hell cared about explanations?
“Are you sure about this? About me? The Rhodias doesn’t fix me. Love doesn’t fix me. What if I ruin this, us, everything?”
She kissed him, then nodded wildly. “I’m sure,” she whispered.
Excitement coursed through her as he lifted her hand to his lips, slowly dragging the tips of his fangs along the underside of her wrist and up her arm, before finally coming to a rest on her shoulder. Everything in her pulled taut like a bow, ready for him to release with a single bite.
“Bite me,” she pleaded, voice shaky with anticipation. “Please…”
“I can’t just sink my fangs right in. I want you to be ready for me. And you’re getting there. Your heart is beating like a hummingbird.”
She melted under his touch, reveling in the hot sensation that followed wherever his lips trailed. A gasp escaped her chest as his tongue flicked her shoulder.
“Bend your neck for me,” he whispered.
She obeyed. The new height of vulnerability sent a thrill up her spine.
There was nothing but their panting breaths mingling, chests heaving, hands roaming and petting every curve and crest of one another as he kissed the spot.
After a minute, he pulled back just enough to hold her gaze, fingers tangling with the hair at her nape as if to ask her permission one last time.
He didn’t need it.
She’d never been more sure of anything in her entire life.
She tapped her forehead against his, breathing in his masculine scent. It was raw and real, sweat and soil, bark and leaves, the very essence of life itself.
“Do it.”
He ran his hands through her hair, kissing her lips, her cheek, her ear, working down to the soft crook in the side of her neck. His fangs grazed over the spot he’d prepared, drawing a needy whimper from deep in her chest.
With a single bite, her heart belonged to him.
The wolves howled and yipped in the distance, but it was muffled.
So wonderfully muffed. All she could hear was the low, rhythmic pump of her veins against his fangs.
It thrummed in her mind like a drum, an all-encompassing cadence that started in her chest and vibrated out the tips of her fingers.
The beat was joined by the tender suck of his mouth against her skin and the smooth bob of his throat as he swallowed.
It was hard to believe she’d once held a sword to this man’s neck. Now, he was fangs-deep in her own.
“Oh,” she moaned, sinking her claws into the log beneath them as his tongue dove deeper into the piercings.
He pressed himself harder against her. She answered with a whimper, arching her back, desperate to be closer to him.
Roderick was in her, on her, his scent practically dripping down her back.
The glorious pain satisfied the ache in her belly, the urge to be forever marked by her mate.
If she could bear his marks, a piece of him would always be with her, come what may.
“Anya, my Anya…” Roderick whispered, pressing a gentle kiss to the fang marks.
A hum reverberated in his chest as he spoke.
“I love you. Divine Almighty, I love you. You’re free with me.
You’re safe with me. You belong to the stars, yet you are mine, and by the moon you adore, I am yours.
I am completely, utterly, hopelessly yours. ”
“You’re my mate,” she whispered, brushing her cheek on his. “My knight, my North Star, my torch on the bow.”
He pulled back, gazing into her eyes. His pupils were dilated, cheeks flushed, hair mussed from her unbidden grip.
But best of all was his fangs. Those beautiful, damned fangs, dripping with strings of saliva and crimson as he panted, smiling down at her like she was truly a star he’d caught in his palm.
He chuckled with a disbelieving air. “I have a mate. I have a mate!” he called to the forest. His voice echoed back through the shivering leaves.
Anya cradled the scruff on his cheek and smiled ear to ear. “You’re stuck with me now, Bryson.”
“I sure hope so.”
She crashed her lips into his, tasting her blood on his tongue. A breathy gasp escaped his chest as he returned her kiss with tenfold passion. His fingers slid to the small of her back, pressing her body flush with his.
She smiled against his lips as they wove their fingers and their lives together.
Her blood was coursing through him, and his scent in her—but she needed more.
To make him shiver and shake and call her name for the whole forest to hear, not caring who heard or saw.
They were part of spring, laying together beneath the stars and coursing through each other in blood and scent and love, a testament to everything yet to be said and done and lived.
He slipped his arms around her waist, standing with a grunt as he hoisted her up. She locked her legs around his waist and rubbed her cheek on his over and over and over, unable to quench the demands of the wolf in her chest. She finally felt every bit the Lycanian she truly was.
He laid her onto the soft earth beside the fire, pinning her beneath his broad shadow. “If we keep going, I won’t be able to stop,” he rasped. “I can feel the moon, Anya, it’s singing in my veins, pulling me toward you like the tide.”
She slid her fingers between his stomach and trousers. “I took a tonic. You don’t have to stop.”
A fire lit behind his glacier-blue eyes.
The constellations shimmered through the canopy of trees above them. Her heart threatened to burst from her chest as he trailed his lips down her neck to her breasts, then her belly, until he finally looked up from the crest of her thighs.
“Lay back and look at the stars. I’ll take care of the rest.”