30. Chapter 30
ERYNDOR
A roar split the air.
My head snapped toward the sound. Through the shattered canopy, a dark shape moved against the sky—wings beating unevenly, one stroke dragging lower than the other.
Umbra. She broke through the tree line and crashed into the forest floor, carving a trench through the undergrowth before coming to rest against a massive oak. Sides heaving. One wing folded wrong. But breathing. Moving.
Her eyes found mine. Held. Then she lowered her head to her forepaws and let out a long sigh.
Safe. Hurt. Resting.
I turned back to Amaria. Her fingers were still tangled in mine against her throat, her pulse frantic beneath my palm. Her gaze drifted toward the massive oak where our dragon lay.
"She's alive," I rasped, leaning my forehead against hers so she wouldn't try to sit up. "Her wing is banged up, but she's tough. The magic will do its work. She's going to be fine."
Amaria closed her eyes, a shuddering breath escaping her lips. "She's safe."
"We all are," I whispered.
The gold in Amaria’s eyes blinked out. Her gaze drifted toward the canopy. She was floating again. Slipping toward the void.
"Eryndor," she breathed.
"Eryndor, I need—"
"I know."
I did know. I felt it too—that primal pull, the fae instinct roaring beneath my skin.
We'd almost died. She'd almost dissolved in front of me.
My blood was still wet on the forest floor and her throat was still bruised from a creature's grip and every part of me screamed to confirm she was real.
To feel her skin against mine. To anchor us both to the world through touch.
The armor hummed between us. The Marks thrashing beneath the steel, reaching for her the way they always reached. For weeks I had measured every step. Counted every foot of distance. That ended now.
Still holding her, I disarmed her in pieces—swords first, then the hidden blades I could—until steel littered the ground around us.
I unclipped the suppressor cuffs I’d salvaged from the wreckage while the world was ending around us. They were my father’s tools, rune-etched iron designed to collar and cage magic, scattered across the battlefield like party favors from one of the destroyed caravans.
I savored the irony of it. The things he'd designed to make us powerless—I was going to use them to take what he'd tried to deny us.
"Give me your wrists, Amaria."
She didn't hesitate. Held them out, steady despite the tremor in her shoulders. Her eyes locked on mine—dark, desperate, understanding exactly what I was offering.
I snapped the cuffs into place, then reached for the second set. The iron closed around my own wrists and the runes flared cold, a bite of winter that blew through me.
The iron clicked shut, and the world died.
The screaming in my blood—the agonizing, constant pull of her soul against mine—simply vanished. The cuffs didn't just block the magic. They blocked her. The part of her that existed in the space between us.
Amaria let out a thin, hollow rasp, a sound of pure disorientation as her connection to me snapped. She started to sway, her eyes going glassy as she began to float back toward the void.
"Empty." She whispered.
"Amaria." A sharp command. "Feel my hands."
I gripped her shoulders. Squeezed until my fingers dug in—hard enough to bruise. Hard enough that her body had no choice but to register the pressure.
"This is real. I am real. Feel the weight of my grip."
Her breath hitched. Her eyes flickered—still lost, still searching for the connection that wasn't there anymore.
"Now match my breath." I stepped closer, my chest nearly touching hers. "In. Out. Don't stop until I tell you."
I took her cuffed hands and pressed them flat against my collarbone, right over the unyielding metal of the armor.
"I can't... I can't feel you," she whispered.
"Our connection is muted. I am not." I held her hands against me. Let her feel my pulse and the rush of my blood. The proof that my body still existed beside hers. "Track my breath, Amaria. In. Out. I am the only rhythm you need right now."
She gasped as she tried to fight the suffocating silence of the iron. I didn't let her go. I held her there, forcing her to feel the rise and fall of my chest until her own erratic breathing began to settle into the steady, heavy cadence of mine.
"Good girl," I rasped against her ear, feeling her whole body finally soften into my hold. "You don't need the bond to find me. You are going to feel the press of my skin and the grip of my hands. I am the only thing that is real in this forest. Am I clear?"
"Yes," she breathed, her forehead dropping to my chest.
The tension finally bled out of her, leaving her scoured clean of the fear and open for me to claim.
I didn't wait. Patience had been burned out of me the moment I saw her fading, replaced by a desperate, primal need.
I needed to feel her shatter beneath me.
If she could cry out, she was still mine and not the void's.
I tore at the fastenings of her leathers with a violence that made my fingers ache.
She took a startled breath and caught my wrists, as if she could slow the sudden, frantic storm of my movements. Her mouth parted in question.
"Quiet," I rumbled. "You’re done fighting, Little Fox. Tonight, you are just mine. Untethered. Mine."
I ripped the ties free. She jerked, her body braced for impact even as I undressed her—trained to take blows, not touch. But the leather thudded into the dirt.
Her eyes flashed. For one heartbeat, the warrior surfaced—the one who didn't let anyone strip her defenses without a fight. Her jaw set. Her chin lifted.
I didn't flinch. Instead, I tangled my fingers in the hair at the nape of her neck with a firm, inescapable pressure that tilted her head back.
I forced her to look at me, to see the raw, unchecked hunger in my eyes that had nothing to do with war.
I waited, watching her pulse jump in the hollow of her throat, refusing to move until she acknowledged that the fight was over.
I held her there in that high-tension silence, demanding she exist only in this second.
Then she let it go. The fight drained out of her body and she melted into me. The surrender in her eyes was fiercer than any battle stance.
That’s what I wanted. The places she guarded hardest—not to conquer them—but to kneel before them. Kneeling before a wall is a farce. Kneeling before the savage truth of a female’s heart is true devotion.
When my bare hand finally met the warm skin of her waist—no Marks flaring, no prophecy screaming, just the searing, electric heat of a female I had starved for—I nearly buckled.
"Just like that," I breathed against her ear, feeling her shudder into me, her entire weight collapsing into my hold. “Let go, Little Fox. The war is not yours tonight. The Veil is not yours tonight. You are not yours tonight. Only I am.”
My hands swept down her arms—a slow, heavy trail of fire that ended at her wrists. I caught her as she swayed, forcing her to face the raw hunger in my gaze until my presence was the only solid thing left in her world.
"Hands behind your back," I rumbled.
She obeyed instantly. Her fingers laced together at the base of her spine, her chest arching forward, heart unguarded and completely vulnerable to me.
It was the same position I had made her take in our rooms, but tonight, there was no ten-foot gap.
Tonight, there was only the searing reality of her skin against mine.
I leaned in, my mouth hovering just an inch from the purple-black fingerprints on her throat.
"You are not a weapon tonight, Amaria," I breathed against the bruised skin. “You are just a ruinous, perfect thing that I am going to worship until you forget the void ever touched you."
I bit her hard enough to leave a mark that would stay long after the sun rose. A claim. A threat against the realm.
A raw, strangled sound tore out of her—half-sob, half-moan—and she sagged against me.
“Shoulders back,” I commanded, my hands sliding down the edge of her chest piece until they found bare skin at her waist.
“I want your damage. I want it honest.”
I caught her chin and forced her to meet my eyes. “I want it in my hands—so it can’t keep hurting you.”
Without breaking eye contact, my other hand slid lower, underneath her thin linens, cupping her heat, letting her feel exactly how steady I was.
She flinched at being held so gently. I bit her lip and curled my fingers into her at the same time.
I would consume that flinch and annihilate it.
I slowly pulsed my fingers into her, preparing her body while she stood before me like a goddess who’d stepped out of myth.
She was an altar with a pulse, too sacred to touch and too real not to.
“Beautiful. Now come undone for me, so when I take you, you’re ready,” I murmured into her skin.
I intensified the rhythm, chasing her breath until her eyes glazed over.
Then I shifted the angle, stripping away the last of her focus and forcing her to shatter.
She cried out in ecstasy and her body sagged into mine, liquid coating my hand.
"Perfect," I whispered. "Now, give me your legs. Wrap them around me and don't you ever let go."
I pulled my fingers out and she surged up into my arms. Her hands fisted in the hair at the base of my skull as her legs locked around my waist.
I caught her, the impact jarring the wound in my ribs, but the pain was a distant, secondary thing to the sheer, bruising weight of her body against mine.
I walked her backward until her back hit the rough bark of the oak—a wall of cold metal pressed between us.
Her teeth caught my lip. Drew blood. A small, vicious reminder that even pinned, even desperate, she could still bite.
I growled against her mouth and kissed her harder. Swallowed the copper taste on her tongue.
A hard, starving claim—like if I could force enough pressure into it, the Marks would remember how to speak.
But when I pressed closer, the cuffs answered instead.