Chapter 13
Zyla
True mating bonds formed between two consenting drei adults cannot be broken. Mating alliances may be made for political reasons, but the bond itself is rare.”
— KARI SILVENDALE, AUTHOR OF A HISTORY OF THE DREI
The after-effects are cataclysmic. My body aches and Bael’s seed is still slick on my thighs.
I’ll have to take some moonflower seed, or find whatever the equivalent is here on this world, because I definitely do not wish to sustain any long-lasting implications from this night. Not with everything so turbulent.
I don’t know how my heart feels. There’s a part of me that’s still in shock, still reeling.
Aylin is alive.
She’s safe, at his home.
And I just fucked him.
I lie there in Bael’s arms, barely breathing as he brushes his fingers back and forth across my hip. I don’t know what this is, but I’m too afraid to make the first move and shatter the moment.
A hand strokes along my side, toying with the silk sheet that drapes over me. “Are we going to talk about that?”
“No, we are not.”
A kiss brushes against my bruised shoulder, right where he marked me. “She’ll fling herself into the teeth of a storm, or headlong into a pack of armed warriors without flinching, but the moment I want to talk about what’s happening between us, I have her on the backfoot.”
I turn my head, glaring at him. It’s hard to maintain when one is pressed intimately against each other, and someone is clearly not entirely finished with me.
“What do you want to discuss? The fact I slept with the monster who stole my sister from me? The fact I’ve spent nine years in agony, wondering if she’s dead, trying desperately to get her back, and then this is what I do? ”
I clap my hands over my face. My shields are down, my heart viciously scored. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I did.
No. I do know. I fucked him.
And I want to do it again.
The desire burning in my belly terrifies me so badly I don’t know if the world will ever stop reeling.
“I shouldn’t have kissed you,” he growls, cupping his head on his palm, his biceps flexing. “I should have let you come to terms with everything.”
In his defense… “I kissed you. And then you grew claws and decided to bite me.”
His gaze slides to the mark on my shoulder. I touch it shyly and find the indent of his teeth there. I’ll feel this mark for weeks, I think. That and the one branded between my thighs, where he claimed me.
His eyes narrow. “Why didn’t you tell me you were untouched?”
Oh, no. We’re not doing this.
I slip from the bed and haul his shirt over my head.
I can still feel him between my thighs. But I’m not going to think about that.
“Why is it that men always focus on that? I wasn’t saving myself for you.
I was saving myself for entrance into this world, because the Knights of Malus check for chastity amongst their tributes.
It was the only way I could come after her. ”
And wasn’t that an experience.
Bael pushes himself upright, the sheet draped over his bare hips.
Every inch of his gilded skin gleams beneath the torchlight, and part of me wants to return to the bed.
“Perhaps because I was rougher with you than I would have liked. If I’d known the truth of the matter, I could have prepared you. I could have been... gentler.”
“I don’t mind rough.” A little part of me liked it. “And I’m fairly certain you prepared me.”
“Why me?”
I can’t answer that. I stare at him helplessly. “Because it was the one thing I could control in the moment. And because when you kiss me, I do stupid things.”
He smiles a little, then it fades. “When you kiss me, I can’t think either.”
We stare at each other. It feels like a stalemate. We’re no longer enemies, I think, but we still haven’t entirely decided what we are.
“You haven’t asked about Aylin,” he says softly.
And there it is.
Her name brings me undone. I sink into an armchair before the fireplace.
I can barely dare…
“You said she was alive. That she was… safe.”
“She is. This isn’t my first hunt. I’ve claimed seven brides in total, taking them back to my family. Three of them made a match with my brothers. The others wished to return to their worlds, and so I barter with Kasaros to make it happen.”
“You… claim them for your brothers?”
He nods.
I can’t breathe. My ribs are a cage around my heart, squeezing tight. “Aylin?”
“Aye. I took your sister.”
I can’t bear to sit anymore. I push away from the armchair, wrapping my arms tight around myself, desperate not to hear more. Knowing I need to.
The others wished to return to their worlds…
But Aylin hadn’t.
Even with the chance to return, she’d stayed away.
“When she returned to Kerawan, she took a liking to my brother, Rowan,” Bael murmurs. “They are mated now. Knotted so tight, one cannot see where one’s soul ends and another’s begins.”
Gods, it hurt.
I was sixteen, I want to scream. And you left me there alone.
And she what? Found a lover? Forsook me for a male?
I would never have done the same.
I wouldn’t have stopped until I could return to her, to ensure she was safe…
“Zyla.” He pushes off the bed, hauling on his trousers before he comes for me. Warm arms capture me, drawing me back against his chest, and for once, I don’t fight it. His body heat is a furnace, and I turn my face into his chest as he strokes my hair. “Are you alright?”
“Of course, I am,” I whisper.
“You’re upset.” His voice roughens. “I thought you’d be happy to discover your sister is alive and well.”
“I am.” Gods, I am.
I’d have given everything for her to be alive and well, and now it seems I got my wish, but it hurts. It hurts so fucking badly…
A frown pulls at the harsh contours of his dark brows. “How old were you when Aylin was taken for the hunt?”
“Old enough.”
“Zyla.” He warns, hand pausing on my hair.
“Sixteen.”
I see it written on his face. He understands some of it, at least.
Bending low, he lifts me into his arms and then sinks into the armchair himself, balancing me on his lap.
“You would have to ask her for her side of the story, but I will tell you this part of it myself. When she went through the portals with me, she was but a shell of herself. I don’t know what your knights did to her, but I caught a glimpse of some of the scars.
She only told me they despise women like her. ”
I nod, and he brushes a lock of hair behind my ear.
“They broke her, I think,” he murmurs. “It wasn’t an easy decision to make, and she sobbed on my shoulder the entire time, but she kept repeating one thing. I can’t go back. I can’t. I can’t. And I don’t think she was speaking to me. I think she was trying to convince herself.”
I swallow hard, because as much as it soothes the ache within my own heart—that of abandonment—I never want to see her hurt and I know the knights. I know what they do to women with magic, with power.
“It took her long months to find herself at Blackfyre Keep.” His fingers toy with a lock of my hair.
“I did not think she would take to it at all. But even as my brothers sought to woo her, it was Rowan, the studious one, who captured her heart. He has his own battles to fight, and I think they found some common ground, some sense of peace between them. It was friendship at first. And then… well, they’re sickeningly in love with each other now. And she’s happier.”
I nod hard, because I can barely speak around the lump in my throat.
“She spoke to me of you once,” he murmurs.
“She was crying the night before I left for the following bride hunt, and she told me there was a piece of her she’d left behind, a piece she could never regain.
A sister. One she loved. One she regretted leaving.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to return, but I fear her mind would have broken had she ever attempted it. ”
Tears spill down my cheeks, hot and salty. I can’t stop them, even as I brush them away. Aylin’s alive and happily mated, everything I should want for her, and I don’t know why I feel like such a mess.
Perhaps because my mission—the only thing that made me get out of bed on some of the darker days—is gone.
What now?
“This is my last hunt.” Bael strokes my hair. “I have but one brother to find a mate for.”
“Kari.”
He shrugs. “She would suit Flynt. You said yourself she has nothing to return home to, and the coupling might make them happy.”
“So your four brothers would be happily mated.” I can barely bring myself to ask. “And what of you?”
His lashes flutter down, obscuring his eyes. “My life is not my own. I made a deal with Kasaros. I cannot go back on that.”
“But if you could?”
“I do not dare look for a mate of my own, for drei males are territorial and protective. Were I to take a mate and sire little drei of my own, I would not be able to fulfil my oath to protect my brothers for I would never be able to tear my eyes from what was mine.” His gaze lifts.
“If I took a mate, I would never let her go. She would be mine. Mine, Zyla. And the world around us would cease to exist for me, for she is all I would see.”
“Mine,” he had growled in my ear when he came.
I shiver. “Tell me of your people. How did this bride hunt begin for you?”
“The drei have long lives. We live for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Our memories are long, and our lives are slow—filled with joy and family. When the Goddess Amara left, our people were insulated at first. Our women still gave birth, loved, and lived. Then a plague swept through my kind,” he murmurs, staring into the flames in the fireplace.
Little figures dance within the flames, males sweeping a group of laughing women in circles around a central pole. Suddenly the laughing faces vanish, and the women began to scream silently as they collapse. The men beg for help, trying to tend their women, but one by one they fall still.