Chapter 34
KAELERON
It was late by the time I stepped out of the teleport with Saphira’s hand in mine.
I held it tightly, my fingertips pressing into the back of her hand as I tilted my head back and bathed in the stars that filled the sky, a million glittering pinpricks that shone among the aurora.
I breathed deep of the night, letting it fill my lungs to banish the tightness from my chest. Returning to that place with Saphira had been challenging, every moment there marred by the thought that the fae might come for her, and watching her fight to keep from crumbling.
She stepped up beside me, so close her warmth eased the chill from my skin, and looked up at the sky too. My gaze lowered to her profile, lovingly tracing the perfect lines of her face, my focus on our linked hands—a physical connection I needed more than I dared to admit right now.
I loved her.
I loved her so much that the thought of losing her was a crippling beast within me, constantly battering my heart and my will, slowly tearing me down as those fae remained beyond my reach. Still out there. Still looking for her.
They would never take her from me.
No one would take someone I loved from me again.
“What are you thinking?” she whispered, her gaze not straying from the stars.
That I loved her.
I was thinking that I loved her.
“You are beautiful,” I said instead, the part of me that feared admitting my feelings, putting them out there and giving them form, stronger than I had believed.
It silenced that larger part of me that needed her to know.
That part that wanted her to see that I had never lied to her, that my heart was constant and my love unconditional, and nothing could change that.
It would be constant no matter what happened.
I would never stop loving my little wolf.
She slid me a look. “What are you really thinking? The no lying rules go both ways.”
Her gaze demanded honesty, a touch of fear and doubt lacing it that I wanted to banish for her.
“I was thinking you are beautiful. But also that… by the goddess…” I looked to the stars, seeking my strength there, and when I found it within me instead, I quietly confessed, “I have spent my entire adult life holding everyone at arm’s length, keeping my heart sealed behind a thousand fae steel barriers forged by my own hands…
afraid to feel anything in case it only caused the object of my affection pain and suffering. ”
“Because of what happened to your family,” she whispered.
I nodded and lowered my gaze to meet hers, my brows furrowing as I saw more than just my little wolf before me. I saw salvation. I saw love. I saw a future I wanted to grasp with both hands and never let go. Even when some part of me still believed it impossible.
I lifted our joined hands and turned them, raising them to my lips to press a kiss to the back of hers, the fearful part of me hoping it would be enough to tell her without words what I was feeling.
The ring I had placed on her finger caught the starlight and reflected it, snaring my focus.
She looked there too. “A little bird told me something about this gift of yours.”
I tensed and she half-smiled.
“That it’s the reason you almost levelled the Forgotten Wastes and endangered Vyr and others… because it changed to show you that I was no longer in your court.” She lifted her gaze to meet mine. “Was the ring a gift because you thought I would like it, or because you wanted to track me?”
“Both.” I did not hesitate. I looked at her, my gaze open and honest, nothing held back now.
“I thought you would like the design of the ring, and I wanted to craft it for you and see your face light up. But I also made it at a time I felt you needed my protection, and at a time I was becoming dangerously possessive of you. I admit… I was quite torn when I finished it and the only thing that remained was to inscribe the spell upon it. I stared at it for far too long in that forge, fighting with myself over something I would have done without hesitation before I met you.”
Because she had changed me. She had softened that ruthless part of me that sought to control everything and everyone, who refused to trust anyone other than my sister and my closest friends.
“I do not regret choosing to inscribe the spell. It was not done to control you. It was done to ease my own mind… and with fae hunting you, I am glad I did it.”
“You’re afraid they’ll take me from you… to a place you can’t go.” She toyed with the ring.
One that would reveal her location to me if someone stole her from me, and would either give me hope that I could still reach her in time or crush me with the knowledge she was in seelie lands.
My gaze dropped to the matching ring I wore on my other hand. “I am afraid you have become a weakness others might seek to exploit. I am afraid these feelings I hold in my heart might place you in danger.”
“Because you’ve fallen for me.”
My gaze darted up to clash with hers and whatever she saw, it brought a small smile to her tempting lips. Several feelings collided within me. Surprise. Fear. Confusion. Although I could probably erase that last one since I had done a terrible job of hiding my feelings over the last few days.
I had not wanted to conceal them from her any longer.
“It’s not hard to spot once you know what to look for.
I only need to reflect upon my own behaviour or look in the mirror to see the truth of your feelings in my own actions or expressions.
” She shrugged and her voice grew faint, losing its strength as the nerves I could sense in her rose.
She whispered, “I might have fallen for you too.”
“Saphira,” I murmured, my tone soft but commanding, luring her gaze back up to mine.
She met it a little too meekly for my liking, as if she feared what she might see.
She still struggled to believe this was real and that I had no intention of breaking her heart.
I wanted to hold it and cherish it, and would fight to the death to protect it.
But I could understand that flash of vulnerability, because it haunted me too. We both feared losing each other.
“I have fallen for you, my bewitching little wolf. It was impossible not to. From the moment I set eyes on you that dreadful but fateful night, I have been falling harder and faster than I wanted to admit, even to myself.” I smiled tightly as my heart thundered.
“I blamed everything I could for this pull I felt towards you. Everything but the truth. Your heat. My lust. Being too long without female company.”
She looked as if she wanted to slap me for that last one, her blue eyes flashing with her wolf side as she glowered at me.
I bent at the knee and swept her up into my arms, eliciting a squeak from her as her arms flew to my shoulders and she leaned her body into mine. Maddening.
“What are you doing?” Her breath bathed my cheek as I focused on a point in the distance.
I lowered my gaze to meet hers. Goddess, she was beautiful. Bathed in starlight. Eyes bright with desire. With love aimed at me.
The ball loomed like a spectre on the horizon, the fae hunting her a shadowy wraith at my back that gave me no peace and no rest, that constantly flooded me with the thought I would lose her. That something would happen and she would be taken from me.
“I need to be alone with you,” I husked and her expression shifted, echoing that need that blazed within me and demanded I take her away from this place, to somewhere we would be alone—the only two in this world.
She looped her hands around my neck, pulled herself up in my arms, and kissed me. My heart sang and soared, warmth spilling through me from that first tender brush of her lips against mine that resonated with everything burning within me.
All the need. All the hope. All the fear.
All the love.
I summoned my shadows and slipped into them, reappearing with her in the middle of the single open room of the cottage.
She did not protest as I carried her to the bed, as I gently laid her on it and my magic swept outwards to ignite the fire and close all shutters and lock the door.
My gaze remained fixed on hers as I shut the world out for us, as I took my time slowly peeling her corset from her, and then removing her boots.
I gently lifted her blouse, exposing the flat plane of her stomach and then her breasts, and she helped me pull it off.
I cast it aside and unlaced her leathers, gripped them and eased them down her shapely legs.
Until she was bare.
“Goddess, you are beautiful,” I whispered.
Rose kissed her cheeks.
“You are beautiful.” I lowered myself over her, my hands pressing to the mattress on either side of her ribs, my gaze locked with hers as that bewitching blush darkened. “Beautiful and mine.”
I had never felt so blessed.
Especially when she lifted her hands and framed my face, and said, “Beautiful and mine… and wearing far too much clothing.”
She nudged my leathers with her bare foot.
I chuckled and pushed off the bed, coming to stand before her, and took my time stripping, savouring the way her gaze followed my hands and darkened by degrees as I revealed myself to her. When I shed the last barrier between us—my leathers—her teeth sank into her lower lip and her gaze lingered.
Making my cock kick.
I swept her up in my shadows, tugging another delicious squeak from her, and settled her in the middle of the bed with them. I covered her with my body, pinning her to the mattress, my weight settling between her thighs as they opened to cradle me. Goddess, just the feel of her beneath me.
It was my undoing.
“Forgive me,” I whispered against her lips as I held myself, as I guided my aching cock into her slick heat, biting back a groan as she tightly gloved me. “I am too greedy for you to worship you properly.”
Too greedy for this connection to her that bloomed the moment we were joined, a melding of souls that warmed every shadowy and cold space within me, chasing those spectres from my mind.
“I need this more,” she breathed against my mouth. “I need you.”
Bewitching words that bespelled me and had me slowly withdrawing to fill her again, plunging deeper this time. I kissed her as we moved as one, as I wrapped her in my arms and she held me close, both of us falling together even as we soared higher and higher.
My little mate.
Not in the traditional sense of the word, but she was my mate. Not chosen by fate, but chosen by my heart. A heart that called to her, as hers called to mine.
The female I would spend the rest of my days with if that fate was kind to me. A female I would do anything to keep. To love.
It rang in my soul.
She was mine. Made for me. And I was hers. Made for her.
She held me closer and the walls between us seemed to fall away, until I felt like one with her.
One heart. One soul. A complete merging that stole my breath and filled my heart.
I kissed her deeper still, pinning her to me as we soared higher still, until I felt I could touch the stars that streaked the sky.
“Kael,” she breathed against my lips, her body tightening beneath mine.
“Saphi,” I answered as I drove deeper into her, moving faster, obeying her soft demand.
Her fingers tightened against my shoulders, short claws pressing in to anchor me in place, as if there was anywhere else I wanted to be. I groaned and clutched her shoulders, my body sliding against hers as I curled my hips, as I clung to her just as fiercely as she clung to me.
She threw her head back and howled as her body quivered around mine.
I buried my head in her neck, my claws coming out as she trembled beneath me, and pressed the fronts of my fangs to her throat, barely leashing the urge to bite her as I followed her, spilling my seed in thick, hot jets that robbed me of my breath.
Our hearts thundered in unison.
The stars spiralling from the sky, softly raining down on the Shadow Court as I held her to me.
I gently kissed her throat and breathed the words of my heart against it, punctuating each one with another kiss, binding them deeply with my magic, so she would know the truth of them in hers.
“Nyr an’sidwain.”
My heart.
“Nyr vel’aerhys.”
My queen.