“I don’t even know what to say about that,” I whispered, shaking my head. “I wonder how Nektas got to be on a first-name basis with him?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.” Ash’s fingers sank into my hair, and his chest rose sharply against mine. His features were stark—too stark. “I don’t like this, Sera.”

“Neither do I.” I swallowed, but my throat felt dry. “But it is what it is.” I tried to will my heart and mind to calm down so I could focus. “We know what Kolis will say. He’ll demand our loyalty and, I imagine, command that I relinquish any claim to the throne. Is that even possible?”

Ash didn’t answer as he stared at me, but the vadentia told me it was. Kind of. Instead of the true Primal of Life ruling, it would be the true Primal of Death. A first.

But a Queen of the Gods was also a first.

My fingers curled into the back of Ash’s shirt as I exhaled slowly. “And I…I guess I’ll tell Kolis to go fuck himself but in a more appropriate way. Then I’ll—”

“I don’t think I can allow this to happen,” Ash said, speaking so quietly I wasn’t even sure I’d heard him right.

But I had heard him.

I ignored it. “While I’m gone, you should go to Attes and tell him about Kolis. When I return, we will summon the Primals. Our plans haven’t changed.”

“I can’t,” he repeated. A faint glow of eather lit up the network of veins in his cheeks. “I can’t let you go through with this.” His eyes were full of so much essence the pupils were no longer visible as his gaze drifted to the doors behind me. The light in his veins ratcheted up. “I won’t.”

My heart stopped. “You have to.”

His diamond-bright gaze swung back to me. “The only thing I have to do is keep you safe.”

Letting go of his shirt, I grasped his cheeks. “If that’s true, then you must let this happen.”

Shadows seeped out from behind his shoulders. “That is the exact opposite of what I need to do.”

“How will you keep me safe if you’re dead?” I demanded, feeling my stomach pitch with each word. “Because that’s what will happen if you try to stop this.”

The line of his cheekbones sharpened. “You doubt the extent of what I’m willing to do for you.”

“That’s the thing, Ash. I don’t doubt what you’re willing to do.” Panic seeded itself in the pit of my belly. “Listen to me. Please. We just got a second chance. One we had to fight for and will have to keep fighting for. And I am terrified of losing that—losing you.”

His eyes went wide. “That is what you’re terrified of?” More of his flesh disappeared. “You will never lose me, Sera. Never.”

“Then prove it,” I whispered. “Please.”

He inhaled sharply, his nostrils flaring. His eyes closed as another deep, quaking tremor ran through him. “Kolis… I know he scares you.”

My breath caught as I dropped my hands to his chest. “He doesn’t.”

“Do not lie to me, Sera. Not now. Not about him.” The tendrils of shadows arced. “I know what I felt from you when he had you. I choke on the taste of what you felt even now.”

A part of me shriveled up right then because I didn’t want to remember that he’d felt what I had. The fear. The panic. The desperation. And—

I stopped myself right before my lungs seized.

Ash’s neck twisted like the Ancient’s head had moved. Inhumanly. Otherworldly. The similarities between them and the Primals were uncanny. “This,” Ash ground out, “is what I was talking about just minutes ago. You don’t always have to be strong, Sera. And you never need to pretend with me.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“Do you think I don’t know what you felt when you heard that Kolis had summoned you?” Ash demanded. “Do you really think I don’t know what caused you to scream in the middle of the night? Do you?”

My body flashed cold and then hot as eather rose. I stepped back. “I am afraid of him. I’m fucking terrified of him and how he makes me feel like I have no control over anything. Okay? Does it make you happy to hear me say that?”

Ash flinched, the shadows stilling.

Shame scalded the back of my throat. I shouldn’t have said that, but fuck. Now was not the time for this. “But I’m more terrified of losing you, and you know that is possible.” I closed my eyes for a moment, then reopened them. “It hadn’t occurred to me until Aydun spoke. Kolis’s return as the true Primal of Death made you vulnerable. But I’m sure you were fully aware of that little fact.”

Jaw working, he looked away.

“Yeah, you knew, and we’re going to talk about that when I get back,” I warned him. “Because I will be coming back, and I will probably be in a bad mood. So, be ready.”

His head turned toward me. A moment passed, and then the smoky eather gathering around him collapsed into nothingness once more. “This isn’t right.”

“I know.”

Ash held my stare, and then his mouth was on mine. His head tilted, and he parted my lips with a fierce stroke of his tongue. A desperate wildness claimed him. Us. We’d been here before. Too many times. So I recognized the madness in this kind of kiss. How it was a prayer and a curse. A promise and a release in a clash of teeth and tongues and searching lips. Desire flooded my senses. His. Mine. Pure, red-hot lust overwhelmed everything as his arm tightened around my waist. He lifted me onto the tips of my toes, and I could feel his hardness pressing against my belly. Desire pulsed through me, pooling between my thighs. I moaned into his kiss as I struggled to remember exactly what we were supposed to be doing at the moment. This wasn’t it.

But damn, it felt so wrong to stop.

I wrenched my head away, panting. “We don’t have time for this.”

His pupils were visible now, but his eyes were no less bright. However, need fueled them now. “Fuck if we don’t.”

I gasped as Ash’s hands went to the band of my leggings. He shoved them down, lacy undergarments and all. Somehow, he got one leg of the tight material over one boot.

“That was impressive,” I murmured.

Rising, his lips curled into a shadowy, silky smile as he drew his hand up my leg, along my inner thigh. His mouth returned to mine, muffling my cry as his fingers delved between my thighs, parting the slick heat there. The contrast between my warmth and his coldness was startling.

Ash groaned into my mouth, and between his touch and that sound, I was undone. “Fuck it,” I moaned. “We’ll make time.”

Gripping my hips, he lifted me. I wrapped my legs around his waist. His tongue danced with mine as he moved. My back hit the wall near the doors, as cold and hard as his body. I reached between us, grabbing the front of his breeches. Our hands fumbled until he grew frustrated and ripped the flap open. He shoved his pants down, and then he was filling me, inch by inch, his length and girth stretching me. The bite of pain was delicious, and we both shuddered.

There was nothing but an excess of pleasure and ecstasy, intensified by the deep, rumbling sounds he made as he thrust into me. Sinking my fingers into the soft strands of his hair, I reached up and clasped the shelf above me. Our mouths moved together, our tongues mirroring the pace of his hips. I thought I heard Nektas’s deep voice, and then there was a sharp rap against the door.

“Five minutes are up,” Aydun called out.

Holding me against the wall, Ash broke the kiss, his hips grinding against mine. “We’re going to need—” His head fell back as I tightened on his cock. The tendons of his neck stood out starkly. “We need another minute.”

“For fuck’s sake, if they’re—” His words cut off abruptly.

The inappropriateness of this. The ridiculousness. I bit down on my lip, but a short, high-pitched giggle snuck free.

Ash’s head snapped forward, his veins pulsing with eather. “I love that sound.” His hand curled around my chin as the fingers at my hip dug in. “I love your smiles. I love your throaty moans.” His lips brushed mine. “I love how wet you are right now. And I especially love the way your pussy clamps down on my dick.”