He swallowed hard as if the memories haunted him. “I’m grateful he was able to protect you and I’m grateful you have each other. You’ve been on your own for far too long. So...whatever other worries you have. Whatever guilt you feel or questions you have...those are all tomorrow’s problems.”
Letting me go, he ordered, “Focus. There’s a shit-ton more emotions we haven’t tested and I’m not letting you out of this courtyard until you do.”
Feelings surged inside me.
Panic and worry, disbelief and shock.
I missed Lucien.
The bond’s incessant tugging made me irritable and anxious.
I wanted him.
I—
The bond tightened without warning, wrenching. I staggered forward, clutching my heart.
“Rook?” Dillon reached for me. “You okay?”
Heat flared through the tether. Snippets of Lucien’s thoughts bled into mine.
The fear of what lurked in the mountain. The rage of his hate. The single-minded determination to exterminate all those who’d betrayed him.
If he got hurt.
If something happened to him—
I almost doubled over from the pain.
I loved him.
I’d admitted it to myself before, but now...now the very earth shifted beneath my feet. The words carved themselves into my bones, branding their truth into my soul.
I love him.
Something primal and insanely powerful unlocked inside me as if it’d been waiting for that final confession.
Love was cruel and kind, vicious and forgiving. It was domination and surrender, protection and savagery and the cold kept rising, rising.
The temperature dropped so quickly, the stone wall cracked. Ice spikes the size of spears erupted from the ground in jagged constellations. Sound warped. Light bent. Permafrost surged outward in violent rings, devouring the courtyard tile by tile. Snow condensed into razor blades. And a polar maelstrom formed above, its eye directly over me.
I cried out as a cryonic shockwave shot out of me, sending weaponised sleet in every direction.
Dillon didn’t stand a chance.
The blast hurled him backward.
He hit the pavilion’s doors as the stone lions turned into solid icebergs.
Bending over, I planted my hands on my knees and gulped air.
Stop it.
Stop it!
The storm dissolved above. Snow vanished. Frost melted.
With a groan, Dillon peeled himself off the frozen doors. The courtyard looked like the aftermath of an ice age. Adjusting his vest, he shook icicles out of his hair and came toward me with the slightest limp. “Whatever emotion that was...that’s the one I want you to remember how to wield if you’re ever in trouble.”
My bones started to shake.
I wanted to collapse and pretend I wasn’t capable of such destruction. That my love could cause such a catastrophe.
“I-I need to go see him. I need—”
“Not yet, you’re not. We’re not done.” Moving out of striking distance, he crossed his arms and commanded, “Again.”
Chapter Sixty-One
IT WAS ME WHO TURNED DESPERATE THAT night.
Lucien’s arms snaked around me, dragging me out of troubled dreams and pulling my back into his naked body.
I didn’t know what time it was. The exhaustion from Dillon’s relentless drilling ached in my bones, but the moment Lucien’s heat enveloped me—bare skin to bare skin—it felt as if I’d stepped into the heart of a flame that would never burn me.
We fit. Not physically, but existentially.
There was no me or him, just us.
The room was nearly pitch-black. I could just make out Whisper as he lifted his head, yawned, then settled down again as if knowing what we were about to do.
The love I’d unleashed earlier had nowhere to go. I’d choked it down and bottled it up but now...Lucien was here. He was here and I loved him and frost whispered across the blankets, thin veins of ice etching the walls to glitter on the ceiling.
My need for him sharpened into something feral.
Without speaking, I reached for him, my fingers inching down his scorching body, locking around his hot erection.
His breath caught against the back of my neck. His mouth found the sensitive curve beneath my ear, his lips branding me in the softest kiss as his hands moved over me like he’d already memorised every inch.
The fire in him answered the frost in me and it was as effortless as breathing to arch my back, bring him between my legs, and surrender to his domination as he slid inside me.
His husky groan as he filled me made every part of me come alive. My skin turned luminescent while his sparked with fire. Silver shine and golden glow, we rocked together in the dark.
Each time he thrust, he pushed me deeper into all those feelings of love and possession, devotion and connection. Slow and gentle, he took me from behind, drowning me in sweetest pleasure.
We moved together as if we’d rehearsed this in another lifetime. Every slow roll of his hips wasn’t just sex...it was a vow. A quiet understanding that we’d found each other and would never, ever let go.
My fingers gripped his forearms as he hugged me from behind. His rhythm turned deeper as he kissed the curve of my shoulder. His breath grew rough against my skin, his control thinning, his heat rising to meet my ice that transformed the walls with fractal patterns.
Ecstasy built, coiling tight in my core until I felt like I’d shatter into pieces.
And when he buried his face in my hair and whispered my name, I couldn’t hold on anymore.
My orgasm broke over me with heart-clenching waves.
He followed me.
His groan as he spilled inside made the bond between our souls flare brilliantly hot and scarily cold—as if acknowledging the horrifying truth that we were never meant to survive alone.
We’d tried and suffered through a lifetime of pain.
But now we had each other.
He was mine.
I was his.
And nothing—not mountains or monsters, rage or revenge—could break us.
Chapter Sixty-Two
LOVE LIKE THIS SHOULDN’T EXIST.
Not for someone...something...like me.
I’d done everything I could to run from affection. I’d spent my lifetime killing anyone who tried to get close.
Yet her?
I would never get enough. Never be worthy enough. Never have the strength to let her go.
I studied her in the dark—drinking in her black eyelashes and imprinting her honeyed cheeks. I memorised her perfect lips and inhaled her delicious scent.
Whisper never took his glowing eyes off me as I sat upright and tucked the blankets tighter around her. She mumbled in her sleep and rolled over, looking so small and fragile and mine.
The surge of possession and blinding, blistering love almost made me buckle over.
It was the same level of connection I’d felt bleeding from her earlier this evening. An echo of her fear had rippled down the bond, distracting me from my father’s maps.
I didn’t know what had made her feel so desperately, but I felt the same way now.
If anything ever happened to her.
If anyone ever hurt her—
Fuck.
Fire raced down my arms, external and dangerous instead of internal and smouldering. Being this close to her soothed me—I didn’t have to work nearly so hard to contain the power stalking within my veins, but...I couldn’t sleep.
Not after what I’d read.
The scribbled note to some unknown sender—that I’d found tucked down the back of a drawer—haunted me like a dirty secret.
It almost seemed like fate was taunting me. Not only had I narrowed the screaming mountain that Lao Li mentioned to a potential disused cave system in the east, but...the note proved something was going on.
