“Say my name again,” he commands, his lips crashing down on mine, his tongue plundering my mouth as his hips continue their relentless rhythm.
“Eoin, Eoin, Eoin!” I sob against his mouth, my climax building into an unbearable, searing pressure.
He drives into me one last, final time, deep as he can possibly go, his own release coming in a powerful, flooding surge. The psychic link explodes into a supernova of pure, white-hot light, and my world dissolves. My climax hits, a violent, endless wave that consumes me, my scream swallowed by his own possessive roar.
The world slowly comes back into focus. We are a tangled mess of limbs and sweat-slick skin, our ragged breaths the only sound in the small chamber. He is still buried deep inside me, a warm, heavy weight that is an anchor.
As our bodies quiet and our heartbeats slow, I lie on his chest, my ear over his heart. I trace the line of a new, angry red scar on his ribs, a wound he took for me. A mark of his choice. A brand of his devotion.
“Mine,” I murmur, the word a reverent, possessive whisper against his skin, an echo of the thought that once started his downfall and has now become our salvation.
32
EOIN
The day after the battle is a quiet, somber affair. The air, no longer thick with the scent of blood, now carries the smell of woodsmoke and medicinal herbs. I stand in the shadow of a crumbling archway and watch Elza. She moves among her wounded people, a queen in all but name, her hands glowing with a soft, golden light as she mends torn flesh and soothes the fevered. Her quiet strength is the undeniable heart of this new, broken community, the force that is holding it together.
My gaze drifts to the bodies of the Vrakken I killed, laid out in a neat, separate row by the humans. Cailan. My second for two centuries. I look at his still, pale face, and I feel… nothing. No remorse. No grief for a fallen brother-in-arms. Only a cold, quiet finality. The Enforcer who served the Matriarch, the being who knew these warriors as kin, is well and truly dead. My old life is a foreign country to which I can never return. My entire world has shrunk to this small, defiant pocket of life huddled in the ruins.
They are building funeral pyres. Elza directs the construction, her voice weary but firm. Tarek approaches her, his expression grim.
“My Queen,” he says, his voice low. “Surely we do not waste firewood on these monsters. Let the beasts of the forest have them.”
“They were soldiers, Tarek,” Elza replies, not even looking at him, her eyes on her work. “They were following the orders of a tyrant, just as we once followed the orders of cruel masters. In death, there are no sides. We will honor them as warriors.”
Her compassion is an illogical, inefficient, and utterly magnificent thing.
I move from the shadows and begin to help, lifting the heavy logs for the pyres, my strength making the work of ten men simple. The humans flinch as I approach, but no one tries to stop me. As we lay the bodies of the Crimson Wing upon the wood, I pause beside Cailan. Vrakken do not burn their dead. We return to the stone, to the cold, silent earth from which we were forged. But this is not my world anymore. It is hers. Before the pyre is lit, I perform the old rite, a silent gesture of farewell, my hand tracing the sigil of passage in the air above his chest. A final, quiet severing.
As I watch the flames consume Vrakken and human alike, their ashes mingling in the evening air, an unfamiliar, unwelcome tightness forms in my chest. A pressure behind my eyes. It is grief. An illogical, chaotic emotion. Not for the Vrakken I killed, but for the humans who died protecting what has now become my own.
Later, Tarek finds me at the ruins, where I am observing the perimeter. He holds two blunted practice swords.
“She trusts you,” he says without preamble, tossing one of the swords to me. I catch it easily. “I do not. Not yet. But if you are to be our shield, as she believes you are, I need to know the measure of you.”
It is a challenge. A test. I give a single, slight nod of acceptance.
We take our stances in the clearing. Tarek is a skilled warrior for a human, his movements strong and sure. He attacks, and I parry, the clash of dulled steel echoing in the quiet twilight. The spar is not a true fight. I am not trying to defeat him. I am demonstrating.
I move with a speed he cannot possibly follow, my movements a fluid, economic blur. I do not strike him. I simply disarm him. Again, and again, and again. His sword clatters to the ground for the fifth time, and I am standing perfectly still a foot away before he has even registered the loss.
He stands there, panting, sweat beading on his brow, his face a mixture of frustration and disbelief. “Gods,” he finally breathes, shaking his head. “You truly are a monster.”
“I am what she needs me to be,” I reply, my voice even.
He looks at me then, and I see not just fear or hatred in his eyes, but a new, grudging respect. He has seen the chasm in our abilities. He understands what a powerful ally he has gained, and what a terrifying enemy he has made of my people. The trust is not there, but a foundation for it has been laid.
That night, I stand watch alone at the mouth of the cave we have claimed. I look out at the life they are building from the ashes—the soft glow of the central fire, the low murmur of voices, the fragile, defiant hope. I know the Matriarch will send more hunters. The threat is not over. But for the very first time since this began, I do not feel the cold, logical dread of a coming battle. In its place is a fierce, burning purpose. I have something to fight for. Something to die for.
My hand closes around a small, smooth object in my pocket. The stone Lyren dropped in the chaos of the fight. I pull it out, my thumb tracing the Vrakken symbol for “family” that I carved into its surface. The boy’s whispered word echoes in my mind.Father.
The bond we have forged—between the three of us—is one of circumstance, of blood, of shared battle and whispered confessions. It is powerful. But it is not unbreakable. The laws of the Vrakken, the laws of the human world, they do not recognize this. The Matriarch would see it as a contamination to be purged.
But there is one way. An ancient Vrakken rite, a vow so sacred and so binding that not even a Matriarch’s decree or a god’s wrath can sever it. It is a ritual of permanence, an eternal and unbreakable claim. The mating vow.
I close my fist around the stone, the symbol for family cool against my palm, and my resolution settles, cold and hard and absolute. I know what I must do.
33
