Behind him, Kain and Selma followed, she glowing with the same golden light still flickering around Georgia, he with the full power of his demonic force billowing like a cape around them both.

Selma moved first. No hesitation, no fear. She stepped into the center and took up a stance in front of Georgia and Kesh, the Stone of Power raised in one steady hand. Light flared from it, golden and sure, echoing the pulse of light from Georgia’s stone. Kain followed her, one large hand on the small of her back as they stared down the few remaining European lords. A united shield.

“The old royals are dead. Your king is ash. The last of their princes is gone.” Kain’s voice boomed through the wreckage, his power swirling dark and solid around him. “We control two of the Stones of Power. If you bend the knee now, you’ll retain your territories. If you resist…” He let the sentence hang, sharp and terrible. “You’ll join your false king in death.”

A long moment of tense silence followed as the lords looked from the powerful demon and his magic-glowing mate to the half-vaporized, half-gutted remains of the lords killed by either Kesh or Georgia before the American King and Queen even arrived.

One by one, they dropped to their knees.

Kain began issuing orders. Georgia didn’t pay attention to what he said. Letting the knowledge that they were safe, that there were finally no more battles left to fight, settle in, she turned her full focus back to Kesh. His eyes hadn’t left her face since he first opened them. He drank her in as desperately as a thirsting man who has finally knelt by a fresh stream.

“The power of you…” he murmured, voice hoarse. “I have never seen anything so beautiful.”

She smiled softly at the reverence in his tone, her thumb brushing instinctively across his cheekbone. “You always did say you wanted me to grow a spine. I think this might count."

His eyes darkened, this time with guilt. “I’m… so sorry. For everything. For how I treated you, for… for letting you go. I thought I was saving you. I thought… anything would be better than eternity bound to me, to my darkness. But the truth is… I was such a coward, I nearly—” His breath hitched with pain. “Because of me, you were hurt.” His hand reached toward her neck, slow and shaking, and hovered just beside the burn there. Not touching, just near. “You were always meant to be mine, and I knew. In the most foundational parts of me, I've known since the first moment I saw you, and I let my cowardice hurt you. I will spend the rest of eternity on my knees for you. I will never stop begging for your forgiveness. Even though I know I don’t deserve it. I know I can’t ever undo⁠—”

She kissed him before he could finish. A press of lips, light as breath, trembling as she cupped his face. “You came for me,” she whispered against his mouth. “You gave up everything to try to save me, and in doing that… You unlocked the strength in me that everyone else has always tried to stamp out. Including me.” She pulled back enough to look him in the eye. “Your love unlocked this power. Your love saved me.” She touched her forehead to his. “I choose you, too, Kesh. Still.”

He let out a breath that shook through his whole body, eyes closing as his hand closed tighter around the back of her neck, as if every instinct in him wanted her as close as she could physically get. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she whispered, lips brushing over his once more.

For a long, blissful moment, nothing existed but the taste of Kesh’s mouth and the warmth of his touch. Finally, finally, for the first time in her life, there was calm, The background sensation of uncertainty and fear faded, replaced with a warmth that took her several heartbeats to put a name to.

Belonging.

She belonged here, to him, with him. In his world, by his side, soul bound to his. The magic his love had awakened in her flared, as if in agreement.

“What is this?” Kirigan’s voice, low and cracked, broke through the bubble of peace.

Georgia turned to see Kirigan make his way toward them, eyes fixed on her with an unsettling intensity. Disbelief mixed with something dark and unsteady. Kesh’s grip on her tightened, and a low, involuntary growl of warning left his throat.

The mad demon paused at his son's warning, hand half outstretched toward her. “You don’t understand, Kesh. Fate has marked our bloodline. That goddess knew—I need to learn how she knew before we did. How she knew. What is it about this girl that made you offer your life? The answer is inside her. It has to be.”

He took another step forward, as if proximity might help him understand what had taken root inside her. What had fused her to his son.

Kesh’s lip curled back, but it was Georgia’s magic that stopped him in his tracks. It flared up around her, gold turning white at the edges, and Kirigan froze mid-step.

“Don’t even think about touching me,” she hissed, anger curling in her gut as she glared up at him.

Kirigan’s hand lowered, just barely. His eyes flicked from her face to Kesh, then back again.

“I know what you did,” she continued. “You sold me to them! They told me. Mallorn was just the courier. You were behind it all. You traded me, like I’m just… a piece of meat? Like my life doesn’t matter, so long as, what? The people you love are safe?”

There was a moment of complete stillness.

Kain, who’d been busy with the other lords, turned slowly back around to stare at his father. Selma’s lips parted. Kesh…

Kesh went still as stone beside her. “You did what?” he whispered, breath like icy steel. His fingers tightened at her waist, barely restrained.

“It was… a mistake,” Kirigan said. His voice was soft, devoid of emotion, even if his disturbing gaze still held some unnamable darkness. “If I had realized what you were to him, I would have found another way, but I didn’t… You are Fate-sworn to my son, little Breeder, just like his brother’s mate was to him. Two in one family? It is… preposterous. An impossibility.

“You were supposed to be nothing more than instincts. And infatuation that threatened my family’s safety. I saw my youngest lost to desire, at the brink of shattering our support, had he acted on it and claimed you for himself. The gods are stirring, plotting… We wouldn’t survive a war on two fronts, so I did what I thought I had to, to secure peace with the Europeans.”

Kesh’s expression didn’t shift. He didn’t snarl, didn’t growl. He simply looked at his father like something inside him had gone cold and permanent. “You chose eternal rape and enslavement for the woman I love?” His voice was low. Quiet. Deadly. “You thought you knew best? You thought getting rid of her would… what? Make me a useful tool again?”

His nostrils flared with a deep, deliberate inhale, his grip tightening around Georgia’s waist as if she was the only thing keeping him from ripping out Kirigan’s throat. “You are dead to me,” he said flatly. “If you ever come near her again, I swear⁠—”

Kirigan cut him off. “This isn’t over. You have no idea what’s coming. The gods don’t care for love, or mates, or kingdoms. Whatever they have planned, whatever interest they have in our family, it will only have increased tenfold now that another Pure Breeder’s powers have been awakened by our bloodline. I acted only in the interest of survival—yours, and your brother’s.”

“You nearly cost my brother his soul,” Kain said. His voice rang out clear, sharp. He stepped fully into the ruined arena, eyes narrowed to slits. “You nearly cost my kingdom its strongest warrior. You nearly cost me my brother. That is not survival. That is cowardice. And in your hubris, in your arrogance, you miscalculated. You could have cost us everything, Father.”

“You sacrificed a Seer,” Selma seethed by his side. “You sacrificed one of my subjects, my sisters, to a fate so brutal, women have taken their own lives just to escape it.”