He pressed inside, sinking all the way up to his knot in one brutal movement. Before now, it had taken foreplay and adjusting to even get this much of him inside me. But now? It was nowhere near enough.

Wylfrael rocked into me, his knot grazing my folds with every thrust, a teasing kiss of sensation that made my fever spike higher. I was a desperate thing, wild and writhing, trying to drag him harder into me.

“I give you everything, Torrance,” Wylf rasped, punctuating each word with a hard thrust. “My knot. My life. My death.”

His words cut through the manic heat in my brain.

“Wait!” I gasped. “If you do this, you’ll be mortal. You’re asking me to cause your death! You’re basically asking me to kill you someday!”

“Good,” he growled fiercely. “So, kill me, then.” He grabbed my hands, holding them high over my head, twining his fingers between mine as he pumped into me. “This is what I want, Torrance. I want to be mortal with you. I won’t survive the loss of you – not again.” The motions of his hips grew more chaotic, less controlled. Every thrust drove his knot a little harder against me. Not all the way inside, but almost, a maddening press that made my eyes roll back in my head.

“This is what I want,” he said again, directly against my ear. “I’d rather live for half a heartbeat and make it count than live ten thousand empty lives without you.”

I wept, overwhelmed by his words and the starburn and him. I nodded over and over again, my hair tangling under my head.

“Yes, Wylf, yes. We’ll make it count. I swear, we’ll make it count.”

Wylf buried his face in my neck. His thrusts quickened, as did his breathing, until I was a sopping wet and sobbing mess, desperate and whining when I’d never whined during sex in my entire mortal life. His knot pressed close, so fucking close, teasing me, torturing me, until, with a sudden forceful movement and a guttural cry, he plunged all the way inside.

I gripped Wylfrael, my eyes so wide but seeing nothing, hearing nothing, sensing nothing except him, above me and inside me, his knot hitting some desperate place, stretching it, soothing it, until I was coming like I’d never come before. I quivered and clenched, milking him, my passage fluttering around his knot as he drove it slightly deeper and then froze.

“Torrance, beloved, I give this to you now. Yours and only yours,” he moaned against my ear. I nodded jerkily, tipping my head to the side, searching for his mouth. He started to kiss me, then stopped, his entire body arching as he came, his knot twitching and vibrating inside me with the force of his pleasure and what it meant, what we’d done.

I sobbed again, the beauty and the heaviness of the moment pressing down on me. Wylfrael was mine. And now, he was mortal. Bound to me, his life forever fused to mine. He’d live by my side and die by my side. And we could have a child.

I wept and held him and trembled with the poignant, ephemeral beauty of the future that awaited us. Short, perhaps, by his standards. But absolutely perfect by mine.

Wylfrael remained inside me for a long time, his knot locking us together until it slowly began to return to a more normal size. I fell asleep with him like that, exhausted and filled and never having felt more safe in my entire life. At some point in sleep, I was aware of him easing out of me with a grunt, and when I moaned, half-asleep, he made soothing sounds, kissed my hair, and drew my back close against his chest.

When dawn’s light filtered into the room, the starburn returned in full force, a chilled heat, a primal need that made my already weak limbs into weights I could barely lift or move until I was shivering in Wylf’s arms, whimpering and whining.

“Will I always feel like this?” I moaned as Wylf pressed into me from behind, his shaft hard, the centre swollen and ready.

“No,” he groaned, sinking in up to his bulge, wetting the thick swell with my fluids before pressing it fully inside with a hiss. “The starburn is temporary. I don’t know if yours is lasting so long because you’re human, and you’re sensitive, or because the first time it started, it was interrupted.”

Interrupted when I died.

I didn’t want him to talk about that anymore. Didn’t want to think about death or grief right now. I just wanted my husband to take care of me.

And he did.

He stroked over my breasts, belly, and clit, making me come mere seconds after he’d filled me. He tumbled into bliss soon after, exploding into my shuddering core.

I wanted to stay like that all day. Lying there, with him inside. I would have stayed like that forever if he’d let me.

But as soon as he could, he pulled out. With a flat voice that belied the hate and sorrow beneath, he said, “I must return to Sceadulyr today.”

“No,” I whispered, rolling towards him. “Why?”

He caressed my face tenderly, his expression grim.

“It was the deal I made to save your life. I cannot go back on it now.”

“Don’t go,” I begged, my eyes filling with tears yet again. The starburn had completely fucked my hormones, and I couldn’t control my extreme swings of emotion.

“I must, beloved,” he groaned. “He has made it enormously clear that what he has done for you he will undo if I do not hold up my end of things.”

“But he doesn’t have a star map! He can’t reach us here!”

“He will find a way,” Wylfrael said venomously. “His cleverness is only outweighed by his vengefulness. I have no doubt he’d make both of us pay dearly for abandoning him in the Shadowlands.” His fingers on my jaw hardened. “I absolutely refuse to do anything that puts your life in danger, Torrance.”

I didn’t say anything, just looked at him, my beautiful, agonized husband, my mortal husband. I placed a clammy hand over top of his, nudging my face harder into his touch.

“Alright,” I murmured thickly. It wasn’t just my life in danger, now. If I died, he’d die too. I doubted he was even thinking or caring about his own fate, solely focused on me, but I cared.

“I will return as soon and as often as I can,” he promised, regret clear in his voice. “Aiko and the others will take care of you in my absence.”

But they won’t love me. Not like you.

I kept the words inside, not wanting to add to his pain as he washed and dressed and prepared to leave again.

And when he actually did leave, I knew the stabbing in my chest had nothing to do with my scars.

ONE MONTH BECAME TWO, then three, then four. Eventually, my starburn faded, replaced with a connection to Wylfrael stronger than anything I’d ever felt before. Wylf spent most of his time with Sceadulyr, but as promised, he returned whenever he was able. He brought gifts from other worlds he’d escorted the Shadowlands god to – clothing and gems and spices. He brought me gorgeously scented oils that he massaged into my legs and feet before tenderly sliding his knot into the place I needed it most. He gave me exotic food, too, and when he insisted on feeding it to me, despite my growing strength, he’d inevitably murmur something about husbands and bonbons while dropping sweets between my lips.

During my recovery, I spent a lot of time learning about the Sionnachan writing system and knew enough to make some of the simpler stitches, but when I mentioned in passing to Wylf that I’d like more human-style writing and drawing tools, he brought that back next. They weren’t pens, but paintbrushes, the handles jet black, the bristles red. “From Maerwynne’s world,” he’d told me, handing them to me and then bringing me Sionnachan ink and small squares of silk stretched over frames to draw and write on.

I wasn’t much of an artist. Never had been. But I couldn’t read Sionnachan well enough to spend much time reading, and the effort of reading the alien language made my head hurt after a while. My recovery was going well, all things considered, but my energy was still depleted easily, and I had to rest a lot more than I would have liked. So, I used the paintbrushes. I wrote journal entries in a messy, ink-smeared script, and doodled, drawing flowers and planets and stars. I painted things from my past, too. Blue skies and white clouds. Leafy trees. Maps of Earth. My father’s house.