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“I will determine my own Destiny,” he stated resolutely. “No one will dictate my future for me. We are nothing if we cannot be free.”
She raised herself to look down at him at that, her eyes saddened by a memory. He knew what she was thinking before she spoke.
“I am sorry I ever enslaved you, my beloved Shai,” she husked, her eyes shimmering with tears.
“I—”
“Stop,” he said, hushing her with his finger.
“I do not regret it. Nor do I blame you, or have ever resented you for the only way of life you knew. I would never have met you otherwise. My family would likely have suffered a terrible fate if our paths hadn’t crossed.”
She pulled his finger away and entwined their hands.
“I freed all of the slaves I could during my reign,” she said. “I tried to teach Ehab to do the same.”
Shai’s heart ached and squeezed with both joy and sadness.
“How is our son?” he rasped, his voice deep and ragged with emotion.
The tears now slid down Heba’s cheeks, unable to be contained. But they were happy tears, if a little bittersweet.
“He grew into a great Pharoah, my love. A greatman. You would have been proud of him.”
“I am,” he said. “I always have been.”
They talked softly for a long time, meandering from one topic to another. Sometimes, they shared in each other’s sadness and pain; sometimes, in each other’s laughter and joy.
Always, they shared the love beyond love between them, a connection so deep and a need so great that it defied all description and couldn’t be contained.
They made sweet and tender love again and again, and rutted and fucked with vigor too. Almost an entire day had passed before both their stomachs protested their emptiness too sonorously to ignore.
“I have not felt physical hunger in so very long,” Heba laughed when her belly growled and gurgled loud enough to wake the dead.
“All of my hunger has been for you,” she said, kissing him lingeringly on the mouth, even though she hadn’t reallystoppedkissing him since she awoke.
A purposely loud throat-clearing came from a good distance away.
Shai immediately sat up, closing his arms tightly and protectively around his Mate. They were still naked and intimately joined. And despite the intrusion, instead of disengaging, Heba only pulled him deeper into her, clearly afraid she would lose him again.
“I can’t see anything, don’t worry!” a voice Shai recognized called from the distance.
It was Ere.
“Figured I’d give you two some time to, uh, reconnect, as it were. I brought clothes for both of you if you want to make yourselves decent and rejoin the real world. I’ve been tasked to invite you to a family dinner at my parents and my twin’s house. Lots of food to be had, because Mama Bear cooked. And believe me, you don’t want to miss a meal my mother made. It’s to die for. But, if you want to stay here longer, I can always save you some leftovers for later.”
Shai and Heba looked at each other. Their stomachs growled loudly to veto any inkling of any thought that didn’t involve filling them.
Now.
“Dinner!” they both decided at once.
Ere’s amused chuckle floated to them on the breeze.
“Dinner it is. I’ll just leave the clothes here and wait for you at the edge of the clearing, shall I? We can walk the rest of the way to my parents’ house. It’s only half a mile away.”
And that was how, some time later, Shai and Heba found themselves seated at a long, polished oak table with an eclectic extended family and close group of friends.
Conversation and laughter buzzed around them while they focused on filling their stomachs with delicious food and drink.
