Chapter 24 #2
I rose on my toes and warmth spilled through me to chase the cold away as he met me halfway, dipping his head to capture my lips in a soft, tender kiss that felt as if it was repairing pieces of my soul and my heart, binding them back together so I could go on, so I could live as my parents would have wanted me to and not give up.
So I could be happy someday.
I eased back onto my heels and gazed up at him.
We stood in the midst of a storm, one that threatened to tear us apart at every moment, but there was no storm greater than the one in his eyes as he gazed at me. The tempest of his love was there for me to see, the wildness of it stealing my breath. I had never felt so wanted. So needed.
This was love.
Not some destined bond.
But a male who was the other half of my soul.
It was beautiful.
And frightening.
If I lost Kaeleron, I lost everything.
It was a good thing I didn’t intend to let anything happen to him, ever.
“The little wolf looks as if she might eat me,” he husked and gods it was good to hear that teasing note in his voice and see it in his half-smile that curved the corners of his lips.
“I was considering it. I do love the taste of meat,” I countered.
His right eyebrow arched and I swore a hint of colour touched his cheeks.
“If my little wolf desires meat to wrap her lips around, I am sure I could accommodate her hungers and see they are properly sated.” He slid his arm around my shoulder as he turned with me and I wanted to growl when he added, “With bacon of course.”
That wasn’t the meat I wanted in my mouth, and he knew it.
“Disappointing,” he muttered and slowly walked with me, heading into the woods.
“Disappointing?”
He shrugged. “I had hoped to make you blush.”
I touched my tear-stained cheeks, sure they were red enough already, and hiked my shoulders. “I think I’m overcoming being embarrassed about the things I want. Now I just want to take what I want and make no apologies for it.”
“Do you know what I want?” He stroked his fingers across the bark of one of the pines, a thoughtful twist to his lips that turned as wicked as the light that entered his eyes as he stopped to caress the trunk.
“I want to take you against this tree as we did before, on your knees, the rough bark scraping your face with each thrust I make into your desperate, greedy little body as you beg me for more.”
Fire burned up my cheeks at the memory of how he had pushed me to my knees, shoving my leathers down just enough to enter me from behind and trapping me against that tree as he had dominated me.
“There she is.” He feathered the backs of his fingers down my cheeks. “My blushing little wolf.”
I knocked his hand away from my face. “Bastard.”
I squirmed a little as I marched away from him, some buried primal instinct locking on to the image he had built in my mind and the memory of how good it had felt.
How alive I had felt in that moment of pure possession.
Alive. If I was greedy in any way, it was with a need to feel that way again.
To feel alive. That I had survived. And gods it made part of me feel terrible for wanting to celebrate that when I was meant to be mourning.
“It is only natural.” Kaeleron fell into step beside me again. “Facing death and surviving is a powerful aphrodisiac… a potent drug that enslaves us with a desperate need to fuck it out of ourselves.”
I arched an eyebrow at him now. “How often have you fucked it out of yourself? Actually, you know what… don’t answer that.”
I didn’t want to know about his past lovers.
I didn’t want to compare myself with them and I knew I would if he spoke of his past trysts.
“Rarely.” He grinned when I scowled at him for answering anyway.
“None were particularly satisfying. My mind is often on the losses I have suffered after a battle is won, and the measures I need to take to ensure such losses do not happen again. Sex in those conditions is functional, a clearing of my head so I can focus on more important matters.”
“Charming,” I muttered. “Let’s definitely not fuck then. I wouldn’t want to be a functional fuck for you to clear your head after the battle.”
Oh gods, I wanted to curl up and die as I threw those words out there, not recognising this snide and snappish side of myself.
Jealous.
I was jealous.
And the thought that sex with him at this moment, when I craved it so badly, might be nothing more than just a satisfying of base instincts and urges for him left me cold and aching.
He reached for me, and I leaped a step away from him, evading his hand, and earning myself a dissatisfied scowl for my insolence.
He didn’t let me get far. He appeared before me, sweeping me into his arms and turning with me at a dizzying speed, and I gasped as my back met the trunk of a pine and his hard body pressed me against it.
He planted his hands on either side of my head, trapping me.
“You are never and could never be a functional fuck for me, Saphira.” The intensity in his eyes stole my breath as he gazed down at me, his growled words a fierce vow I felt all the way down to my soul that called out to him, howling that I felt the same way. “You… what we… it is different.”
I wanted to ask him how different it was, to press him to say the things I desperately wanted to hear, but the mask was slipping back into place, the barriers rising again as he looked at me and drew back.
He felt he had said too much. I recognised that flash of vulnerability in his eyes before he looked away from me, because I had felt it many times myself around him.
“There is magic here—a spell on these lands.” Kaeleron busied himself with looking around the pitch-black forest.
I let it go.
One day, we would be brave enough to face our feelings and admit them, but not today.
I didn’t want it to be today. I didn’t want to look back on the first time he had confessed his feelings for me and have it be marred by what had come before it.
I wanted it to be a bright moment in my life, not one shrouded in pain and blood and death.
“Maybe Lucas did something to the Harper Pack lands too in order to trap me if I came here first.”
Kael shook his head. “No. I believe that magic was a sort of emergency escape coupled with a dampening spell. Hence the prick’s disappearing act and how the ward faded after he had used that primary function of it.
This spell I feel is different. It does not prevent me from teleporting. It does not dampen my magic.”
He was right about that.
“So what does it do?” I watched him as he eased into a crouch and pressed his bare right palm to the dirt as he rested his left forearm on his thigh.
His eyes slipped shut as he lowered his head and drew down a slow breath. Concentration etched lines on his beautiful face and his nostrils flared, his fingers tensing against the ground as his shoulders stiffened. And then he relaxed a notch, his breath leaking from him.
“Barrier magic. A protective form of spell.” The dark slashes of his eyebrows met and his head twitched to his right, as if he had physically felt something else. “It is old. Intricate. Cast by a skilled hand.”
His eyes opened and he slowly lifted his head to look at me.
“Why is there a protective spell on my pack’s lands?
” I looked at his hand where it still pressed into the dirt, trying to puzzle out the answer to that question.
“My parents never mentioned such a thing to me. Do you think it was… do you think maybe the witch who came to my pack after Chase’s father challenged the Hunt alpha did it?
Maybe to protect those in my pack who were to be mated to the Hunt pack? ”
To protect me.
I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
Kaeleron’s face darkened and he shook his head, but he didn’t look sure about it.
“If you studied it more, could you tell who cast it or what it does?” I wasn’t sure how it worked or what sort of feedback he experienced when he studied spells and wards, but I wanted to know more about it and this skill he possessed, because as I watched him stare at the ground again, his fingers twitching in the dirt, his expression shifting constantly in response to whatever he felt, fascination gripped me.
I found myself crouching next to him and pressing my own hand to the damp ground, trying to see if I could feel something too.
Nothing.
That was what I felt.
Or maybe I felt like a fool.
Kaeleron arched an eyebrow at me, looking for all the world as if he wanted to ask me what I was doing or what I had thought would happen.
Rather than saying either of those things and mocking me, he shifted his weight and placed his hand on the back of mine, pressing it to the ground.
And I felt…
Something.
I frowned at the earth as sensations flowed through me, like tangled ribbons made of ether that dissipated like smoke as I tried to mentally grasp hold of them.
Their power brushed against me as a glow lit my hand, threads of shadow dancing around it, edged with violet light that reminded me of the blossoms of those ethereal trees of the Shadow Court and made me long to see them again.
“Do you feel it?” Kaeleron studied my face rather than our joined hands.
I nodded. “It’s so faint, but I feel it. It feels… beautiful. Warm. Like love.”
I met his gaze and instantly looked away, busying myself with looking at our hands instead, but there was no escape from what I had said there. The shadow ribbons twined around our hands, joining them together, binding us.
I cleared my throat, a blush climbing my cheeks as I squirmed a little, struggling to think of something to say as Kaeleron stared at me, his gaze drilling into my face.
He lifted his hand from mine, severing those shadows that had bound us, and the violet light faded out of existence.
“The spell was woven from a feeling. A desire to protect. A practice commonly used by those capable of casting magic, and one that enhances the effect of the spell or ward.” He pushed to his feet and offered his hand to me.
“If I were to study it more, I would not be able to discern the reason it was cast. All I could do was unravel it, and that would in turn destroy it.”
“Maybe don’t do that then.” I slipped my hand into his and he pulled me to my feet.
And kept hold of my hand, his thumb against the backs of my fingers as he held it aloft between our chests.
“The world must feel so different to you than it does to me.” I resisted the urge to look down at my boots, struggling against the feeling of inadequacy that filled me, unwilling to let it bring me lower than I already felt this night.
“Not that different, and it does not make you less than me. Your wolf senses are sharp, allowing you to detect what humans cannot, but you do not feel they are less than you. There are things you can do that I cannot, but that does not make me less than you. You are merely different to me, and I am different to you.”
“That’s true, I suppose. You can’t do this.” I tugged my blouse and kicked my boots off and shifted, slipping into my wolf form and stepping out of my leathers.
I circled him, brushing against the backs of his legs and earning a husky chuckle from him as I almost knocked him over with my need to rub against him and make him notice me.
My wolf instincts wanted his eyes on me.
Only me.
He rubbed his hand through my scruff, massaging that spot at my nape that had me shivering in response to the feel of his strong hand against it, holding it and claiming it.
“Bring your pack to the Shadow Court. They are welcome there, and they will be safe from Lucas and the remains of his pack while we hunt him. They will not be able to capture them and use them as leverage against you.”
I stilled and looked up at him.
Stunned.
Kaeleron, who had closed his borders to outsiders, allowing none to cross them in the centuries since he had ascended the throne, was opening those gates to my pack.
I knew how big this was for him, and that this was only the first tentative step in making positive changes at the Shadow Court, ones that would greatly impact the happiness of his people, improving their lives.
Even if it couldn’t undo what he had done or the pain his actions might have caused, I hoped it would go some way towards making them forgive him.
I shifted back, rising naked before him, capturing his attention in a way I couldn’t as a wolf.
Hungry eyes raked over me, heating my blood and distracting me, that blistering look he levelled on me threatening to make me forget what I had wanted to say. I pushed the words out quickly so they didn’t burn away under the fire of passion that filled his silver eyes.
“Thank you.” I threw my arms around his neck, squeezing him tightly, not exactly the way someone should treat a king but I didn’t care, and I wasn’t sure he did either as he drew in a soft breath and leaned into me, as if he craved the contact between us as fiercely as I did.
I needed him to know how much this meant to me.
I pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you. I swear, my kin will earn their keep. They’re hard workers. ”
“They will be guests.” He wrapped his arms around me and gently prised me off him, pushing me back to arm’s length and diligently keeping his eyes on my face when the growing hardness pressing against my thigh said he wanted to look elsewhere.
“They will be taken care of as such, although they might have to camp in the glade or on the green.”
The twist of his lips gave his feelings away.
He was disappointed that he couldn’t offer my pack better accommodations.
I shook my head and smiled up at him, twining my arms around his neck to link my fingers against his nape. “It’s more than enough, Kael. They’ll be fine with that arrangement. I’ll tell them tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” He struggled to keep his eyes on my face as I inched closer. “Because of the rites?”
My ears twitched, picking up the sounds coming from the centre of the pack lands, where the fires were cooling and my pack had moved on to talking and drinking, celebrating the lives of the lost. I should be there, but I wanted to be here more, away from what I had done. I wanted to lose myself for a while.
I slowly shook my head.
My gaze hot on his.
“Because I have plans for you and that tree.”