Chapter 40 #3
I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to walk. So I crawled along the mating bond toward him. Please tell me you’re really here.
I’m here. I’m coming for you, I swear.
He wouldn’t leave me here alone. I kept crawling along the mating bond, and my awareness of the pressure on my shoulders, and the fangs on my wrists, and the magus power locking my legs faded.
Carmine’s kiss faded from my mind too.
I see you, he said hoarsely. Syera, keep going. We’re nearly there.
I couldn’t glance up to check whether I could see him. I crawled as if my fate, and the fates of everyone I loved, depended on it.
More strength returned to me, and I staggered upright, at first hobbling forward to Carmine. But with each step closer to him, my stride lengthened and smoothed.
A shadow in the distance! My mate. I shook from the need to reach him.
I picked up pace, then forced my body into a jog. The sensations of my body in the realm fluttered at my senses, but I couldn’t recall what any of them meant or who caused them.
Carmine blurred toward me along the bond, and then—just as we were about to slam into one another—both of us froze.
He was here. My mate was here.
“Enamai,” he said sadly. “I’m so sorry.”
He was speaking within me, and I knew this conversation was for our ears only.
“We won’t leave this place,” I tried to say, but shaking sobs garbled the words.
I extended my palm forward, and Carmine set his against mine.
And then we were in each other’s arms, and I had no idea what was happening with our bodies in the realm, but here, our kiss was frantic, as if we’d be ripped apart at any second.
I clutched his face to mine in a bid to deepen our kiss. His hands pressed against my upper back to achieve the same.
“Syera.” His voice hitched.
My body trembled too much to reply.
In this space, we were already naked, and whether I’d jumped up or he’d lifted me, suddenly my ankles were crossed behind his back, and his hands were under my ass.
The air shimmered crimson and black around us, and the bond connecting us was so bright that all I could see was him bathed in our colors.
“Mate,” I whispered.
Tears coated his cheeks, and he could only nod in answer.
The emotion choking me was tenfold because my mate was broken—and not in all the ways I’d condemned him for over the years. He’d been hurt by years of the assault I’d endured for a mere matter of minutes.
Carmine entered me, and I cried out. He hooked his arms under my knees to bury his length deeper within me.
I used his shoulders to lift up—all the better to sink down again. Our mouths met and never parted. Here, we didn’t need to breathe. We only needed each other in this final ritual that we may not survive.
This final gift from the mother. Just us.
I stood upon the final tier of this sad, pointless war in Carmine’s arms, encompassed in our mating. And in this place, only beauty existed. Only hope.
My mate. All we felt for one another was here, along with all our future hopes to share everything we hadn’t been allowed to yet share.
The frantic edge to our lovemaking eased as the serenity of our surroundings swept away all sense of danger and harm.
Carmine’s movements slowed to a steady pulse, and then slowed more again to a pace that should feel impossible.
But instead felt timeless.
With his every push, and my every fall, our immortalities braided. Our souls aligned, and then pressed within each other. His every push, and my every fall, was the reverberating strike of a gong that radiated to seal our fates as one.
Another strike. Smoke.
Strike. Heart.
Strike. Scale.
The sensation of sex itself was insignificant. The union of our bodies was a tool to allow this final and everlasting joining of souls.
And upon the completion of our joining, we shuddered from all we’d shared, and the tightening of my body was the least of it.
He was my mate.
I was his.
If we died, then we would die as one.
I love you, I thought at him.
I love you, he replied. Nothing will alter that.
At his tone, I lifted my head.
He stroked my hair behind my ear. The end approaches, Syera, and I will be with you the whole time. We will be here together. I have you, and I won’t leave you.
Part of me dared to leave our special place at his somber words. White light and the faces of nismus along with the swaying and gigantic head of a butyker flashed in my mind.
Terror slammed into me, but Carmine took hold of my chin, dragging me back into the depths of our bond.
They are about to start, he acknowledged. But we are here.
My tears dripped onto his chest to cover the ink symbols of our mating. I rested my cheek over them. We are here. Together.
Yet how I wished to live with my mate and our son.
I so desperately wished to live.
But if that was never what the fates had in store for me. If I was only meant to free my mate in this tragic way, and to secure my son’s safe future, and save those I loved in the process too.
If I was only ever meant to do what a mother did best, in other words, then I’d done every one of those things.
So I’d rest in the arms of my mate.
And we would meet it together.