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“You need me to pleasure your body over and over again. This is just the beginning, little demon, and I don’t plan to waste a second of it where you aren’t screaming my name.”
Flipping us so he’s on his back and I’m on top, he guides my hips to sink down on him. “Take your pleasure, Emma,” he says in a softer tone. “I’m not going anywhere.”
And I do. I scream his name repeatedly, even after the sun wakes along the horizon.
EPILOGUE
Emma
One Year Later
Warmth blankets my body as I wake to Draven’s arms and legs curled over me, his entire front pressed into my back. This past year has been deliciously addicting and the hardness of him poking into my backside is proof of that.
The snowfall outside the mountains is light this morning. The sun shining against them looks like glitter falling from the sky. Very slowly, I untangle myself from Draven’s sleepy embrace, taking the sheet with me to wrap around my bare body, and pad toward the cave’s opening.
In a couple days, this cave will be a place where Draven and I sneak off to and visit from time to time. But it’s time I take the throne as queen, with Cora as my right hand. Draven said he will rule by my side, passing down his crown of Asiza to Emil.
Together we will be king and queen, and the thought makes my heart swell with everything we can change to make the world better. And those haunted palace walls will be painted with new memories, layered with strokes of love and family.
Already, the chosen wyverns have found their loved ones that have been grieving them, starting life anew. And for those that came back to empty homes, we welcomed them into ours. The palace always had so many empty rooms, but now they can be filled with a new kind of family.
The people of Deyadrum have been welcoming to the shifters living among them again, bowing in respect when they pass one another for the way they fought to protect them. It’s easy to see they mean no harm when there aren’t any vile lies being spread about them from those whose only love is power.
There has also been a lightness to Draven since being reunited with his people. The first couple months we came to this cave was us being solely consumed with desire for each other. We still are, but the desperate need started to fade long enough for us to leave the bed, and we began adventuring. Whether flying just the two of us, or alongside fellow wyverns, Draven took me to every court. He let me freely explore each shop and every inch of land, while showing me all the things I’ve never been able to see.
As I stare off at the snow-capped mountaintops, strong arms wrap around my waist. I turn my head to nuzzle against Draven’s cheek, loving the slight scrape of his beard that dusts his jaw. When I peer up at him, his smile stuns me to the spot, his dimple on full display and I smile back, still not believing that this is my life now. That he is my life.
He grabs hold of my left hand, the one with our mate mark that now carries a ring he had made for us. His is a circle that represents the full moon and mine is a crescent, and when you put our rings together, they fit perfectly in place to one another. I had cried when he surprised me with them during a small celebration with our closest friends and family.
He twists the ring around my finger, always playing with it because he says he loves the sight of it decorating my hand. Which is good, because I’m never taking it off.
His lips brush the curve of my neck, sliding his hands down to palm over my stomach, causing my heart to flutter. “Our little angel,” he says softly.
I lace my fingers over his, looking down to where a second heartbeat lives inside me. “Our little angel,” I repeat on a single breath.
Looking back out to the frozen sea, I can’t hold back the single tear that slips free. Because as I stand in the arms of my home, with our future growing inside me, I realize for the first time in my life, I’m finally free and I have my very own family.
THE END
BONUS EPILOGUE
Kye
One moment, Emma’s tear-streaked face is looking down at me, and the next, I’m sucked into utter darkness before waking up to twin suns shining down at me. This must be where a soul goes after death.
Everything is too…perfect. Vibrant in color with a light shimmering over every inch. With unsure steps, I start walking through the lush, grassy field, making my way towards the trees in the distance. As I near the border of the forest, a figure stands between two oaks. Her hair is streaked with russet red strands, and two skinny braids catch on the breeze. Her golden skin shimmers even beneath the covering of the trees.
She slowly takes a single step toward me, causing my feet to root to the spot. An ivory dress dances over her curves, the hem getting picked up by the wind, showing me a peek of the skin above her knees. Another step toward me, and I suddenly find myself closing the distance.
Green flecks glimmer in her eyes, deep and radiant.
My lips part as I become entranced by her, watching the way her lips move and how her delicate hand is held out in front of her.
She laughs, and the sound brings me back into focus as I shake my head to clear the spell I must have been lost in. It’s only then that I realize her lips were moving, speaking to me, and her hand is between us so I can shake it.
“I–I’m sorry,” I say, quickly and with a furrow of my brows. What the ever-loving fuck is wrong with me? I haven’t been dead for more than a few minutes and I’m already becoming a stammering, frozen mess in front of a female.
“I’m Elira.” She nudges her hand higher between us and instead of shaking it, I pull her hand up so I can press my lips to the top. A spark flares against my lips, causing my eyes to widen and my heart to hammer in my chest. Her cheeks tint a light shade of pink when I hold my lips against her skin, looking down at her.
I pull away from her hand, take a step closer, and pick up one of her braids between my fingers, twisting it. “You’re my mate,” I say it so softly, I’m afraid she won’t hear. Afraid I could be wrong, even though I can feel it in the marrow of my bones.
But she does hear because that smile fades and instead, a longing fills her eyes as she glances up at me, biting her lip. “Some find it harder to recognize their fated mate in the afterlife if they never met when they were alive,” she trails off, tilting her head as her eyes take in every inch of my face.
“I’ve stood here every day, waiting for my mate to join me.” She twists her head to look out to the field as if she’s ashamed she’s been waiting for her mate to die. “So many have entered the afterlife, and I’ve felt…nothing.” Those green eyes snap up to mine again. “Until you.”
Smiling, I let her braid fall as I brush the tips of my fingers over the delicate skin of her face. “I’m Kye.”
She bites her lip to hold back a laugh and I do the same. I’m not going to shame her for hoping her mate dies so she can be with him, because right now, I’m feeling fucking lucky that it was me.
Darting my eyes back and forth between hers, I let the silence settle between us. The way I feel more alive while dead is just pure fucking irony. The way the blood in my veins hums as if I was still alive at just the touch of her, and how hard my pulse is racing.
“All my life I have never felt what I’m feeling at this moment.” I accidentally let my thought slip free and speak it, but I’m glad I did because her smile is radiant.
“And what was your life like?” she asks.
I look off into the distance for a moment as I settle on the truth. “My life was worse than a death sentence.” I sigh and go on, wanting to explain my past to her. “My parents were accused of rebelling many years ago, and to save their heads, I offered up my life to serve the king that was ruling. Every day, I had to fight my instincts to slit his throat with every order he gave that I disagreed with. But my parents’ lives were on the line.”
I think back to every command I had to follow, and some were so bad that I couldn’t sleep for days. Only one thing helped make living as someone’s puppet more bearable. “But the daughter of that same king became a lifeline. The first person to make living in that hellhole not as bad. She became someone I truly cared for, as if she was a sister I never had.”
I glance back down at Elira, and she’s watching me with interest, hanging onto every word as I spill more than she asked for. I smile at her, loving that she wants to know about me.
With a shrug, I continue. “After that, life became better, and I got to feel what it was like to be a free male again and have friends who mean the world to me. But there was still something missing, I just couldn’t put my finger on it.”
She tilts her head, smiling softly. “Maybe that something was a someone?”
Swallowing roughly, I clench my jaw and nod. “I believe so.”
A comfortable silence settles between us, but then I ask, “What was your life like?”
She inhales nice and slow, quirking her lips to the side. “My life…” she trails off, seeming to get lost in memories for a moment before looking up into my eyes. “My life ended a long time ago,” she says softly.
I brush a loose strand of hair behind her ear as I wait for her to continue.
“My family died while I was young when our small village was raided. I hid, trying to hold my little brother back with me as our parents fought, but he ran out to them with arms wide open for a hug.” She swallows roughly. “He didn’t understand the danger, and it all happened so fast.”
She sighs, shaking her head. “So, my life has been…lonely. I lived secluded from any village, in fear of another raid, and just let the days pass as I learned how to take care of myself.”
She cups her small hand to my jaw, letting her fingers dig into my beard. “That’s why I’ve been waiting and standing out here alone; it is not new to me. But the hope of meeting my mate, knowing I will never be alone again, and having someone I can care for wholeheartedly, makes it all worth it.”
Her eyes bounce back and forth between mine, her chest rising and falling faster.
On pure instinct, I dip my head, lightly pressing my lips to hers. She won’t ever be alone, not with me. She sucks in a gasp before pushing up on her toes to press her mouth firmer against mine.
That alone has me growling and swiping my tongue over the seam of her lips, asking for her to let me in. But I don’t need to ask, because with one swipe, she’s already willingly opening for me. Tangling her tongue with mine, deepening the kiss as we become more desperate for the other.
I’m lost in her.
Our hands pull on each other’s clothes, as this bond grows stronger. Somehow, I have her back pinned up to a tree and I’m so far gone I don’t know how we ended up here. My hand grabs the back of her knee, pulling it up as the hem of her dress lifts, too, and I press the ridge of my hard cock to her center. And fuck, she is wet. The only barrier is my pants and the thin scrap of lace covering her.
She rocks over my length as I swell against the seams, and our teeth clash as I devour her. But I pull back, keeping my lips barely touching hers as we share the same breath. “Not here,” I rush out. “I need you spread out, wet, and ready on a bed for me for our first time. Where no one can see what’s mine, and what I plan to do to you.”
My fingers grip her thigh possessively, loving the feeling of having her silky skin clutched in my hand.
She leans forward, pressing her lips to my chest. “Then later, you will have your way with me, and after…” The tip of her index finger swirls playfully over my shirt. “I get to have my way with you.”
A deep groan falls from my lips on a drawn-out breath. “You will be the death of me.”
“Then good thing you are already dead.”
Fuck. In that case, she can kill me over and over again for eternity.
