39. A New Presence
A NEW PRESENCE
ELENA – THE HEART OF THE GREEN REACH
I’m sitting on the broad lip of the central pool in the heart of the Green Reach, toes dipping into the heat, watching the water swirl and flex in patterns. I’m trying to get used to the feeling of the connection before I use it again.
Rythar stands on the far side of the chamber, back to me, every line of him locked. Arms braced on the ledge, head low, the scar on his chin tight. He’s been like this for a full half hour.
I want to say something. But the words tangle on my tongue. My body aches from the last connection—Dana’s psychic pulse still ringing in my nerves.
Rythar finally moves, pacing the rim of the pool in light, graceful steps. Green lines under his skin light up, traceries of power running to his fingertips. He keeps his gaze fixed on the water, but I feel him looking. The bond tugs at my ribs every time he passes closer.
“You’re angry,” I say, to break the silence. My voice sounds small in the room.
He growls as he paces. “Not at you.”
“Then what?”
He stops, frowns. “At myself. At the world. At everything.”
I exhale. “That narrows it down.”
He shakes his head, then looks up at the ceiling, at the maze of roots, or maybe at the world above us. “I have never wanted anything for myself,” he says, voice raw. “Not since I was young. Everything I ever did was for the Reach. For the warriors. For my fathers and mothers before.”
I wait.
He comes around the pool, sits across from me, legs spread, arms on his knees. His head hangs between his shoulders, eyes burning gold in the half-light.
“When the Stone matched us, I thought I would break you,” he says. “Bend you to the Reach, make you my trophy for the world.” He glances up and meets my eyes. “But every time I tried, you bent me instead.”
I don’t know what to say to that. My face goes hot.
He reaches across the pool, scoops a handful of water, and lets it trickle down his wrist. “I thought I could control this. You. The bond. But you are my complication.”
I let the words hang. “Is that so bad?”
He grins, but it’s a flash of teeth, no humor. “Yes. For a warlord, yes. The moment you have a weakness, the world will conquer you. And the Stone is failing, Elena.”
He shakes the water off his hand. The drops bead on his copper skin, glow blue, then fade. “I am supposed to be the shield. But now, every time you risk yourself, every time you reach for the other Starfallen, every time you risk Jarrett seeing what you’re doing, I…” He breaks off.
“What?” My voice cracks on the word.
He looks up. The vulnerability in his face is hard to look at. “I locked you away to keep you safe.” He slams a fist into the floor. “I hid you from the world, even though you hate being caged. Even though you would never forgive me.”
I feel the confession hit me physically.
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, head bowed.
“It is not the Concord Stone I fear. Or the High Lord. It is losing you. I have never had a weakness before.” His voice goes hoarse, barely above a whisper.
“Now I do. And it is at the worst possible time. It is the time when you need my protection the most.”
I hug my knees to my chest, not for comfort but because my body doesn’t know what else to do.
He looks at me, looks into me, and the mate bond pulls so tight I almost gasp. “You can hate me for all of it. I would not blame you. What if the Stone should never have matched you to me?”
I swallow. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I chose you. And I could never hate you.”
His hand comes down on the ground between us. “I want you here. I want you to be safe. I want you to bear my children, and live in peace. But I know you are not built for this. That you are wild. Not engineered.”
My throat is tight. My eyes burn, but I refuse to cry.
His voice goes quiet. “And even though I am built to rule, I no longer know how to want anything but you.” He lifts his head. The gold of his eyes is steady, but the red ring glows. “I love you, Elena. I do not have a warlord’s word for it. Only the human one. It will have to do.”
I reach out and take his hand, examining the scars across the knuckles, the fine green veins from the jungle’s power.
Rythar watches me with an intensity that nearly unmoors me, but I’m not afraid. I’m not even uncertain.
I reach for his face with my free hand. His eyes close as my fingers graze the scar on his chin, then the older one at the corner of his jaw.
“You think I’ll break,” I say, “but I’m already broken.
And so are you. But I build new things out of broken pieces all the time.
” I trace the line of the scar, then drop my hand to his chest, where his pulse hammers against my palm.
“You think I don’t want the same things? You think I don’t want you?” I ask.
Rythar’s eyes are wide.
“I love you,” I tell him. I reach up and pull his head down until my lips almost brush his. “Not just for now. Forever. I want to build something here. With you. A future. Children. A life that isn’t just surviving.”
He blinks, taking in the words.
I press on. “We are alike. Both remade. And I will fight with you.”
Rythar cups my face and runs his thumbs under my cheekbones. “I would give you anything,” he says, voice ragged.
I shake my head. “I don’t want anything but this. You. Us.”
He draws in a long, broken breath. “You do not have to say these things.”
I look at him solemnly. “I mean them.”
He bows his head, as if my words weigh more than the world above us. "I fear you will regret it," he says. Underneath his words, in a place he can no longer hide from me, there is a fierce hope.
I touch my lips to his gently. “Try me.”
His restraint snaps.
He pulls me against him, his mouth crushing mine. His tongue forces its way between my teeth. I bite down until he grunts. His hands roam, finding the line of my spine, the curve of my ass, the back of my neck.
I arch into him, hips grinding against the ridges of his armor. The smell of him fills my head, my lungs, my every thought.
He tears at my shirt, splitting it at the collar, exposing my chest to the warm air of the chamber. His hands cup my breasts, thumbs circling the nipples as they ache for more. I fumble at his armor, desperate to feel his skin, and he rips the chestplate off.
Our chests press together, sweat mixing, heat doubling.
He pushes me back, flat against the warm floor, and pins my arms above my head. His mouth moves down my neck, biting, sucking, leaving marks that will last for days. The mate bond roars with every contact.
He pauses at my collarbone, tongue flicking against the pulse there. His eyes meet mine, and they’re charged with the power of the jungle. They’re glowing red, wide, and inhuman.
“We’re in my heart now. This may be more than before. Too much of the jungle for a human. Say the word and I stop,” he says, breath hot on my skin.
I growl back at him. “I’d rather die.”
He grins, white teeth on display. He bites down, just above my breast, not hard enough to break the skin but enough to make me gasp.
His other hand slides between my thighs, finds me already wet and wanting.
Rythar teases, just once, then drives two thick fingers inside, curling them up in a way that sends pleasure through me. My back arches, chasing the sensation.
He tears the rest of my clothes away, then kneels, lowering his head between my legs. He swirls his tongue at the top of my slit, then down, as I gasp. His tongue is hot and slick and relentless, licking and sucking until I’m shaking, until my voice cracks and I’m begging.
Lifting me bodily, he stands and pushes me against the wall of the chamber.
He lines himself up, the head of his cock thick and ridged, and thrusts in, stretching me around him.
He holds me by the hips, lifts me up and down, using my body like a tool, like a weapon, like the only thing in the world that matters.
The wall of the nexus ripples, vines shifting around us.
He fucks me hard and fast. His usual finesse is replaced by pure drive.
I’m lost in it as his drive, his pleasure, howls in my head, louder than my own thoughts.
It’s the closest we’ve ever been joined.
Rythar is in my mind, the jungle is in my mind, and I can’t tell where they end and I begin.
My thoughts curl around his. The connection is as easy as breath, as desperate as the urgency I feel as I need him to pound into me over and over.
I come, hard, clenching around him, nails digging crescents into his shoulders. I’m in his mind, still, and he feels it, just like I feel his response. He growls, buries himself to the hilt, and I feel the flood of his orgasm inside me, pulsing.
He bites my throat, holds me through the aftershocks, then lowers us both to the floor, never letting go.
We lie there, tangled, bodies shaking.
He presses his lips to my forehead, then my mouth, then each eyebrow.
I laugh, shaky and wild. “You were in my mind,” I say. “Without the coil from the mating room.”
He holds me against him, murmuring. “You were in mine. You still are.”
The mate bond vibrates. In his mind, I see every sunrise alone. Every meal eaten across an empty table. Every night in a bed built for two, occupied by one. The nursery he carved by hand, room by room, for children he had no reason to believe would ever exist.
I pull my mind back. His arms tighten. “Watch,” he whispers. I see the entire Green Reach in his mind.
Under it, I feel the psychic connection to the others, wider than before, and something new threaded through it—his strength, running in my own veins now. I’m not only flesh and bone anymore. I don’t open the link. But I know I could, much wider than before. When I’m ready.
Slowly, we let the world shrink back to this room.
I wake up on the bed in the jungle house. Rythar’s body is a furnace behind me, arm a dead weight over my ribs. My skin is sticky with green-tinged sweat.
Green.
The mate bond is quieted, but under it, something sharp is building.