Epilogue Part One #2
A gust of wind blew through the open doorway and swept across the room, stirring the curtains and bringing with it a very welcome sense of cleansing and renewal.
“Thank you, Goddess,” I murmured.
Terolon pressed a kiss to my hair. “You are radiant wearing the blood of your enemy, my shelshi.”
“I feel less than radiant at the moment, but thank you.” I turned my back on Vedast and let Terolon wrap his arms around me as I burrowed my nose against his chest. I wanted to smell clove and sweet wine rather than blood and spilled brandy. I sighed deeply into his scales. “It’s done.”
“It’s done.” He stroked my back. “How do you feel?”
“Relieved and satisfied.” I grimaced. “And like I need clean clothes and a long, hot bath. And food. I’m so hungry.” And my feet hurt and my back ached. And I was tired. But I kept those complaints to myself. “Shall we go, then?”
I started to pull away, but he squeezed me very gently.
“Don’t hide what you need from me, my love.
You are not a burden—especially when you are using so much of your energy and strength to grow our basilings inside you.
” He caressed my stomach, rubbing lightly in circles until I sagged in his embrace.
“Let me carry you back to our home for the night. We will be able to share a hot bath much faster that way.”
I chuckled tiredly into his chest. “How shameless you are in your manipulations, shelshan. Will you also massage my feet and my back?”
“For as long as you like,” he promised.
I nearly moaned at the prospect of such pampering. “Then you may carry me,” I said with all the dignity I could muster.
With a laugh, he swept me up into his arms.
I took one last look at the corpse of the human monster who’d finally reaped what he’d sown, and then we glided out through the open doorway and disappeared into the night.
Some hazy time later, I lay against Terolon’s chest in our hidden cave, panting and quivering with his hands on my hips. His thumbs were lightly stroking my scales, sending shivers down my spine.
“I can’t,” I moaned, my fingernails leaving little half-moons in the scales over his hearts. “Terolon, please…”
“You can, my love,” he murmured, his hands tightening on my hips. “You will give me one more.”
I let out a ragged gasp as he lifted me and both his sartras throbbed inside my channels. “Oh, Goddess, that feels so good,” I groaned.
“Better than good,” he said, his coils wrapping around me. “There is nothing better than filling my mate. Nothing better than seeing you come undone for me.” His eyes went to my rounded belly, bare in the soft lamplight. The visible proof of our mating and our love. “Nothing better than this.”
I braced my hands on his chest and my feet on his coils, but let him do most of the work of lifting and lowering me on his slick cocks.
His upper sartra stroked in and out, dragging his breeding rings across every pleasurable place inside me while his lower shaft, covered with soft nubs, made me cry out with every movement within my back channel.
There truly was nothing better than being completely filled by my shelshan, and yet our future promised even better days to come.
Soon I was crying out and shaking in Terolon’s careful but firm grasp, my body clenching and writhing with pleasure that always felt like it was too much to bear.
His lower body churned in the hot spring, sloshing water across this unfamiliar cave that threatened to reach our things on the far side of the chamber.
I found I didn’t really care.
And when I threw my head back with a silent scream and shuddered in my mate’s hold, Terolon buried himself as deeply inside me with both cocks as far as he could go and groaned his own great release.
Heat flooded me in both channels, wrenching a hoarse cry from my lips as I collapsed into his arms once again. His mating rings only partially swelled now that I was with basilings, so most of his spend gushed out into the water to be swirled away by hot spring’s current.
“Tero,” I gasped, shuddering in his arms. “Shelshan. Thank you.”
His chest shook, and not just because his sartras were still pulsing inside me. “What do you thank me for?” he murmured, smoothing my wet hair back from my face.
Too exhausted and sated to explain, I simply waved my hand. “Everything.”
Chuckling, and still trembling with his own release, he stroked my hair and cupped one large hand under my bottom to hold me to his chest. “It is all my very great pleasure, I assure you. Everything I do for you, I do with gladness in my hearts. You are my light.”
“And you’re mine.” I let myself go limp in his embrace, trusting him to take care of me—to take care of all of us—tonight. “How many more days and nights of travel before we reach the border and cross into Izaelon?”
“Five.” He raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. “And then three more days to the village where our home waits for us.”
“Mmm…our home by the sea.” Despite his descriptions, I still couldn’t picture what it would be like to look out my windows each day and see the sun glimmering on the vast waters.
If all went well, in just eight days, I would see Izaelon and the warm sea for myself.
As I rested, he hummed the same sweet melody he’d sung for me when he’d first brought me home to his cave after finding me in the ravine. It had become a habit because in the early weeks and lunars of my pregnancy, I’d had trouble sleeping and his voice was one of the few things that helped.
I’d started to learn the language of Izaelon not long after we’d become mates—first so I could read his books without him having to read aloud and translate for me, and then because I wanted to learn more about his culture and homeland. Thankfully, Terolon was a patient teacher.
Once we’d decided I would stop drinking my morning tea, he’d reached out by letter to his sister the queen to ask if he would be permitted to return to Izaelon with his human mate so our basilings could be born and raised among their own kind.
Afelia’s joyous reply came swiftly, along with an offer to help us find a home near the palace. She’d also offered to send a garrison of the royal guard to escort us. We’d accepted the assistance with securing a home, but declined the escort.
We’d already sent most of our possessions ahead when word reached us via Stosior’s spy network of Lord Vedast’s relocation to an outer province after a disagreement with the king.
And when we’d heard rumors of what took place in his cottage, Terolon was only too happy to plan our route to Izaelon such that our path took us through Allhurn.
As for persuading him to let me go into that cottage alone and deal Vedast’s death blow myself, that took a little more doing, but in the end I’d prevailed. Even a protective serpentae male worried about his beloved shelshi and our unborn basilings understood my need to avenge myself.
Justice had found Lord Vedast at last. And now I could put this kingdom behind me for good and turn my feet toward the warm sea.