13. Celina
THIRTEEN
CELINA
The firelight of the festival had faded to embers hours ago, but the warmth of belonging still glowed inside Celina’s chest. Now, lying in the dark of their bedroom, his arm a solid weight around her waist and her back pressed against the steady heat of his chest, she let the day replay behind her closed eyelids.
The laughter, the shared food, the genuine acceptance in every face she’d met.
No one had asked for an autograph. They’d simply welcomed her.
Not as Celina Bates, Oscar winner, but as Osias’s mate, fully herself.
For thirty years, she’d lived in a gilded cage of expectations.
Every relationship came with a script, and every interaction was a performance.
Even her grief for her mother had been stage-managed by Rennick, turned into a narrative of ‘bravery’ for the press.
Safety had always been a transactional thing—a bodyguard for privacy, a manager for decisions, a mansion for solitude.
It was protection that felt like isolation.
But today, safety had felt different. The pride was a genuine circle of protection.
A family.
Osias’s breath stirred the hair at her temple, and she could feel the powerful rhythm of his heart against her spine.
Here, in this bed, she was known. Not the persona, but the woman who stole kisses, who cried at authentic movies, who forgot to eat when she was working, who wanted to tell stories that mattered.
He’d seen the raw, unpolished truth of her and hadn’t flinched, but had leaned closer.
A week and a half.
In the grand, careful architecture of her life, it was nothing.
A blink of an eye. But time, she realized now, wasn’t measured in days.
It was measured in moments that changed your understanding.
The moment she’d walked into his office.
The moment he’d caught her hand across a restaurant table.
The moment she’d seen the magnificent truth of his lion.
The moment she’d stood before his pride and told a story about her mother without a single filter.
Fast doesn’t matter when it’s right.
Tonight, she was going to ask for his mate mark.
The certainty was a settled weight in her soul.
It wasn’t reckless. It was the most deliberate and authentic choice of her life.
She wasn’t running to something to escape something else.
She was walking, eyes wide open, toward a man who had built a space for her to simply exist. A man who asked, “What do you want?” and then waited for her answer.
She took a deep steadying breath, the scent of him filling her lungs, and she turned in his arms. His blue eyes were open, watching her in the dim light.
“I’m ready,” Celina said, her voice a soft certainty in the quiet room.
His brow furrowed slightly. “Ready for what?”
“For your mate mark.” She reached up, her fingers tracing the strong line of his jaw. “I’m ready to write the rest of my story with you. Because you were right. The best stories are the ones we write together.”
His eyes widened, the blue darkening with a shock that was instantly swallowed by something hotter and more primal. His entire body went still, the predatory focus she’d only glimpsed before now fixed entirely on her.
“Celina.” Her name was a rough scrape of sound. “Once I give you the mark, once the bond is complete… it’s forever. It cannot be undone. There’s no walking this back. No reshoots allowed.”
A laugh escaped her. “I don’t want a reshoot. I want the final cut. The one with you in every scene.” She held his gaze, letting him see the absolute certainty there. “I choose you now, tomorrow, and every day after that.”
The control he wore like a second skin seemed to fracture.
His hand came up to cup her face, his touch reverent and possessive all at once.
“I choose you too,” he vowed, the words a gravelly promise.
“Every sunrise. Every challenge. Every quiet moment in between. I want to write the most beautiful story with you.”
She knew what he meant. He didn’t mean a script or a film. He meant a life. A messy, complicated, glorious life built on trust instead of control, on partnership instead of performance. A life where she could be the author.
He leaned in and captured her lips with his.
But the kiss wasn’t like the others. It wasn’t the hungry, desperate clash of their first time, or the playful, soft brushes they’d shared since.
This was a sealing. His lips moved over hers with a devastating slowness that stole the breath from her lungs.
It was confidence and surrender intertwined.
He kissed her like he was memorizing the shape of a vow, and she kissed him back, pouring every ounce of her certainty into the connection.
Through the mate bond, a bond about to become complete, she could almost feel him now. Not just his desire, but his love, his joy, the absolute certainty that she was his. It wasn’t overwhelming; it was anchoring. It was the ground finally feeling solid beneath her feet.
When Celina finally broke their kiss, she pulled back just enough to see his face in the silvery wash of moonlight through the window.
He was hers. And she was his.
She moved her body over him, her naked skin sliding against his as she straddled his hips.
The moonlight traced the powerful lines of his chest, the ridges of his abdomen, turning him into a sculpture of shadow and silver.
He was breathtaking, a landscape of muscle and strength that belonged entirely to her.
Then his strong hands settled on her hips, his grip firm and possessive, grounding her in this moment of choice and surrender.
Not holding her down, but holding her there, present in the decision.
This is it.
Certainty, clean and sharp, replaced any lingering whisper of doubt.
She was choosing him, choosing this bond, choosing a future written in her own hand for the first time.
Her entire life had been a performance for an audience of millions, but this, this was a truth performed for an audience of one.
She reached between them, her fingers wrapping around his hard cock, and guided him to her slick entrance.
Part of her wanted to draw this out, to savor every second.
But a deeper, more urgent part needed the completed connection now.
She sank down on him in one slow, deliberate motion, and the perfect fullness stole the air from her lungs.
He filled her so completely, a claiming so deep it felt like he touched her very soul.
A choked groan tore from his throat, and her own answering moan was raw and unfiltered.
“Osias,” she breathed, her voice thick with need.
His hands tightened on her hips, his eyes blazing up at her. “So perfect,” he growled, the words thick with awe and desire.
She braced her palms on the solid plane of his chest, feeling the frantic beat of his heart beneath her fingertips.
Then she began to move. It wasn’t the practiced rhythm of a staged scene.
This was something wilder and more honest. She rose up, taking him almost to the tip, then sank back down, setting a pace that was hers to command.
He met every descent with a powerful upward thrust of his own, his hips lifting to drive himself deeper.
The friction was delicious. Every slide, every retreat, every reunion was amplified by the mate bond humming between them.
But it was more than physical. It was emotional—a feedback loop of pleasure and connection that blurred the lines where she ended and he began.
She could feel the coiled tension in his thighs and the rigid control in the muscles of his abdomen as he fought to let her set the pace and let her take what she needed from him.
Within minutes, the pleasure built, a cresting wave inside her.
She started to move with a frantic, glorious abandon, lifting her hips high before plunging back down, chasing the sensation, chasing the peak she could feel just out of reach.
Then he hit a spot deep inside her that made stars burst behind her eyelids.
“Celina,” he gritted out, his voice strained. “I’m going to mark you now.”
The air around them seemed to crackle. She looked down and saw the change begin—the subtle elongation of his fingernails and the faint golden glow starting deep in his blue eyes. His right hand shifted on her hip, his touch becoming sharper and more dangerous.
Her answer was immediate, torn from the very center of her being. “Mark me, Osias. I’m yours.”
The words, her surrender and her claim all at once, shattered the last of her control.
Her orgasm detonated, a white-hot explosion that ripped through her with violent, convulsing force.
A sharp cry tore from her throat as her body bowed, her inner muscles clamping around his cock in rhythmic pulses.
In that exact moment of shattering pleasure, she felt the searing-hot rake of claws across the sensitive skin of her left hip.
The pain was sharp, bright, and instantaneous—a brand of possession and protection in one.
But it didn’t eclipse the pleasure; it fused with it, weaving into the ecstasy until she couldn’t separate one sensation from the other.
The shock of it triggered a second, deeper climax, a wave that rolled from the mark on her hip through her entire nervous system.
Then she felt him lose his legendary control beneath her, his own release roaring through him as he spilled himself inside her with a guttural shout.
She collapsed forward, her forehead dropping to his sweat-slicked chest as the aftershocks trembled through them both. For a few heartbeats, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing mingling in the dark.
Then she felt it.
A warmth began to radiate from the mark on her hip.
It spread through her veins, a gentle, pervasive heat that seeped into her bones, her muscles, the very core of her.
It wasn’t just a feeling. It was a knowing.
A profound sense of completion, as if a part of her she’d never known was missing had just slotted perfectly into place.
The mate bond snapped fully into being, a live wire connecting their souls.
His emotions flooded into her, not as a vague impression, but with stunning, crystalline clarity.
She felt the staggering depth of his love.
She felt his fierce, protective joy. She felt the simmering, satisfied desire that still hummed beneath his skin.
And beneath it all, she felt his excitement—a bright, hopeful thrill for the future they would build.
It was overwhelming, beautiful, and utterly right.
Then, she heard a voice, not in her ears, but in the quiet center of her mind. His voice, wrapped in a tenderness that made her heart ache.
I love you, Celina.
The wonder of it stole her breath. She focused, pushing her own joyful thoughts toward that new, intimate channel.
I love you, Osias.
She felt his smile against her hair before she saw it. He’d heard her.
His hands came up, cradling her face, tilting it up to his.
His eyes, still glowing with faint traces of gold, searched hers and then he kissed her.
The kiss was different from all the others.
It was deeply reverent and overwhelming, a silent conversation of shared awe.
His joy tangled with hers through the completed bond, a feedback loop of pure, undiluted happiness that was more intoxicating than any champagne and more glorious than any standing ovation.
When she finally broke the kiss, she rolled to his side, her body humming with a new energy. He gathered her close without a word, his arms banding around her, tucking her into the curve of his body as if she were the most precious thing he’d ever held.
She fit there perfectly.
For the first time in thirty-four years, Celina Bates felt no separation between the woman she was and the woman she was supposed to be. The performance was over and the audience was gone. There was only this man, this bond, and this profound wholeness.
She was free. She was known. She was finally home.