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Gave it?

Yes. My brother is no more. Serak now holds Edan’s power.

I breathed for a moment, feeling the truth in the silent words. Skadi wouldn’t lie to me.

My breath stuttered at the knowledge that this truly was Serak. Only him. My love, as I was his. “I am a thief, you know.”

Serak’s hand cupped my cheek. “You can’t steal from me, little thief. I would gladly give you everything I have just for a smile.”

A smile I couldn’t quite contain had my lips curling.

I’d stolen from this Alpha. I’d poisoned him and kissed him and longed for him for my whole life. And now, with Edan gone, I could take even more. “Maybe… I could steal your voice? Your breath? Your control?” I felt my channel open to him, the head of him entering, though he held still. Before he could reply, I thrust my hips and enveloped half his length inside me. “Steal your heart?”

He groaned. I shifted my hips, pulling away, then thrust harder so that his entire cock, up to the knot at the base, was buried inside me. The stretch was perfect. The garbled sounds he made as I fucked him into me were the highest praise.

“Yeah. All of those,” he rasped.

I thrust my hips up a few more times, letting the thick swelling of his knot press inside me a tiny bit more with each movement before his eyes opened, flaring blue light around us.

“Minx. Are you trying to knot me from below?”

“Yes,” I admitted, moving upward again. I couldn’t quite make it work, though.

He grinned. In the next second, he was on his back, and I was staring down at him, my hips bracketing his. “Try now, my love.”

His pulse raced in his throat, matching the pulse that throbbed in my core. I pressed my hands on his unmarred chest, mapping the muscles that moved under the skin as I fucked him into me slowly. One of his hands moved down, his finger finding the bundle of nerves that was already swollen, already trained to his touch.

“I’m going to claim you. Are you mine, Serak?” I gasped, sliding down harder, the first part of his knot entering me, stretching me so gloriously that I bit my lip to keep from crying out at the feeling of him. I held still, waiting for his answer.

Something in his expression softened. He reached up and caught a piece of my hair between his fingers, staring at it like it was spun gold. “I am yours, Ratter. I’ve been yours since the first time I saw you in the ballroom in Queen Vali’s castle, scowling at being asked to dance. Your hair was pulled back with a jeweled clip, and I thought there were no gems in the world as beautiful as you were, even then. Your eyes moved constantly, making sure that your siblings and the children of the castle were cared for. That’s what I love most about you. The way you protect the ones you love, no matter the cost.”

He brushed a finger over the tear that I hadn’t realized was on my cheek. “I’m sorry the cost was so high, Serak.”

He reached down to my hips, pulling me gently lower. “I would pay it a thousand times for you, my love. My fierce, sharp-edged, perfect Ratter.”

I closed my eyes and pressed down, his knot sliding easily through my slick-soaked channel. The feeling of his knot expanding as his climax took him triggered my own, and we cried out together.

“Mine.” I leaned down and bit his shoulder, tasting his blood, the bond already unfurling between us. His power entered me, blue flames licking my tongue and spilling down my throat.

“Mine,” he groaned when I released him, and he leaned toward me. His teeth found the side of my breast and sank deep.

It was like lightning pouring through me. Edan’s power, channeled through Serak’s love, was as immense as the fire that burned in the center of the world’s forge. As healing as any magic in the universe could be.

All seven marks on my body, even the one Edan had left, zinged with power as the sensation of energy draining away ended completely. Serak’s fire sealed the cracks in my soul.

Complete. I was healed and whole.

Well, mostly whole. My gaze flicked to the quiet volcano beside us, to the distant forms of my mates who had woken when Serak marked me, and the oblong stone in their center.

As Serak kissed me, I pushed the sadness back. This moment was ours. And when he flipped us over and began to move inside me again, I let go of the worry and fear about the future. There was no such thing as perfection. But for the next few hours, until the moon set, it felt almost perfect.

RADA

Ihad six mates, and not one of them was any damned use. I glared at their backs, wondering if they were all too powerful to poison now. The thought was appealing. I could experiment.

“Skadi, get over here,” I muttered, checking my own pockets. Every time I tried to hold onto something, that thieving god managed to take it. It chapped me that he was a superior thief, though I would never admit it.

Skadi, Kellin, Lachlan, and Goran were gathered around Lex’s sarcophagus, like whatever they came up with today would be any different from the past two months of effort. Two months of nothing but struggle to free Lex, even though none of us knew if he was still alive. Skadi insisted the Goddess wasn’t that cruel, and we all knew it was Her power that had sealed him away.