I blink, as if I must have imagined it. But then she says it again, lower this time.
“No…husband.”
The title should bring closeness. Instead, it carves a canyon between us.
I flinch, staring at her in a haze of disbelief. “What must I do, then?” I ask, barely breathing. “How do I earn your forgiveness?”
Slowly, she pushes against my chest. I stagger back like a man struck.
“I don’t know,” she says, and there’s sorrow in it. Sorrow and truth. “But you won’t earn it tonight.”
Even as she speaks, even as she denies me, my eyes are helplessly drawn to her neck. That warm, tawny flesh. The throb of her pulse. The rush of blood running just beneath the surface.
The urge to pull her to me, to make my mark, is almost as strong as the darkness inside me, always pressing closer, always waiting to take hold.
Just one bite.
That’s all it would take to claim her.
To make her mine beneath the stars and moon and night. For now. For always.
She can keep denying me. Keep fighting. Pretending what’s between us is anything less than an inevitable fate.
But if I bit her… if I marked her… I’d never lose her again. I’d find her anywhere and the world would know what she is.
Mine.
To protect.
To love.
Then her hand glides to that tender spot, and it’s as if she senses where my thoughts have strayed. I force my eyes away.
I’ve already done enough. Given her enough reasons to despise me.
To take her now, to sink my teeth into her flesh without permission… it would only drive her further from me. Would only harden the fury already simmering in her gaze.
Instead, I lift my eyes to the sky, to the crescent moon against the stretch of black velvet. My Amara follows, tilting her head toward the stars.
Her brow furrows. “That’s not the Lover’s Moon, is it?”
I laugh, low and quiet, my chin dropping to my chest. “No, my love. There’s no spell on us tonight. No Fae magic in the air. Just you and me.”
She exhales slowly, relief softening the edge of her voice.
“Good. The last thing I need is to be under the sway of more Fae trickery.”
She turns away then, toward the endless sea. The wind catches in her hair, and the moon spills across her skin like it worships her. And how could it not?
I don’t need to bite her.
Maybe I just need to tell her.
Tell her about the first time I saw her in the Grove. How I knew, even then, that she was mine. How I tried to stay away, to protect her from the life that would follow. From me.
Because if I claimed her, I knew how it would end. I’d seen it before. I watched it kill my mother.
But Amara, my wild, fierce bride… she wouldn’t care for words. Not now. Not after everything I’ve done.
