Wonder spreads through me, light and tingly. I wasn’t left out. I have a fated mate, too. “So it’s true? I’m your Alara?”
“You are. I’ve known since the first day we met in the palace on Irra. Many priests died because I caught your scent,” he adds grimly, hands going to where his knives would be strapped to his thighs.
My wonder fades dramatically when I remember what happened after that. He took me to a spaceship and made sure I was on it. Made sure he wouldn’t see me again. My eyes sting at the implied rejection. “Why keep it a secret? Why didn’t you tell me? Was I not—did I ruin it somehow?”
“R’Hiza take me,” he swears, and folds me up in his arms, kissing all over the top of my head. The simple, sweet gesturemakes my stinging tears spill over. “You’re perfect, Delphie. I didn’t want to trap you unfairly. Usuri is a dangerous, unhealthy place to live. I have accumulated many enemies over the course of my life. You’d be better off far away from me. Do you really want to be the queen of this place? Trapped here in a hole in the ground?”
“I’d like the option at least,” I croak. “Anyway, if I’m gonna be stuck in a hole, I want to be in it with you. I think I’ve been looking for you my whole life.”
His arms tighten around me. “What do you mean? You didn’t know I existed.”
I smile, remembering when I was little and my grandma would do my hair on the front porch. While she plaited, she’d sometimes tease me that I was a round-headed child.Always rolling around from place to place,she’d say.Just like your mother and me.
I asked her what was wrong with that, if that’s how she and mom were, too.
Nothing at all, baby. But when you get big, find yourself a square-hearted person to keep you steady, she’d say, winking at Grandpa. I didn’t understand what it meant back then, chalked it up to some old-people foolishness. But I get it now. Nik has a square heart. He can’t be rocked because heisa rock.
“I knew I needed someone like you. Someone strong and principled, who doesn’t break under pressure. Also you’re hot as hell. When you sleep in my bed, I’m worried I’m going to wake up humping your arm or something.”
Nik’s sharp laugh soothes me. I’m good for him, too. He needs someone to care for him the way he cares for everyone else. Someone to remind him that he’s not a bad person just because he’s done hard things. Someone to force him to have a little fun sometimes, too.
“You can do anything you want to my arm.” His low, gravelly voice sends a pulse of heat to my core.
“Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.” I tickle under his armpit, then remember Irrans aren’t ticklish.
He catches my hand, dwarfing it in his huge, clawed one and drawing it to his chest. “What I wish for is your happiness. I am bound by fate, but you are not. The universe is yours, and I want you to have the best possible life.”
I don’t love the idea of being stuck anywhere, but I love the idea of having a teammate. Someone to face the universewith. “Thought experiment. What if life with youisthe best for me?”
He scoffs and drops my hand to gesture at the ceiling. “You really want to stay here?”
“Who says we have to stay here?” I’m joking, but also not. He didn’t apply for this job. He didn’t seek it out. It was forced on him by his complete asshole of a dad. That guy’s dead, so in my mind, Nik has no obligation to him anymore. But I need to give him a serious answer, because it’s a serious question. “Honestly? I don’t know. I haven’t seen much of life on Usuri because someone kept me locked in a room by myself with nothing to do and no one to talk to.” I poke him gently, still teasing, but also not.
He groans and folds me up in his arms again. “I will never forgive myself for that, but I would do it a hundred times again. The goddess presses on me constantly to keep you and protect you until my claim is fulfilled.”
“It might settle you down to go ahead and bite me, then.” I saw it in Lothan when he and Ada hooked up, and in Kyaal and Fen when they finally accepted their fated queens. Once they solidified their relationships, they were able to think more clearly.
“You accept the bond, just like that?” I can’t see his face because he’s holding me so close, but his voice is saturated with surprise.
I roll my eyes. “You think your star goddess can drag me across the galaxy as a present for you, and we can just sayno thanks? In my experience, that is not how goddesses work. I don’t know what our future holds. We might not be happy. We might not be together. But we’ll always beconnected. There’s no point pretending we won’t.”
I lean my head to the side to give him better access to the spot he already nibbled. He presses his face into my neck, lips brushing the spot he scratched before, and a wild rush of sensation plunges from my neck to straight between my legs. I can tell, somehow, that this is the right thing to do. That it will fulfill something in us both.
“Lesson Two,” I prompt, swallowing hard in anticipation. “Ask for what you want, and I’ll give what I can.”
His breath whooshes out. “Can I claim you? Sink my teeth in here? It will hurt, Delphie, but I want it. Ineedit, and I hate that I do. I hate that this is forced on you. I hate that you’re burdened with a bond to—”
“Stop.” I put a finger to his lips. His head is still not on right about this. “Nothing has been forced on me. You asked, and now it’s my turn to answer. I accept your claim. Your bite. And I can give you my body. Feel this.” I grab his hand and shove it down the front of my sleep trousers. When his fingers encounter the slick wetness that had built between my thighs, he jolts, and I feel his cock jump against my thigh. “See? You’re not the only one who wants things.”
His fingers curl slightly, slipping between my folds as he nuzzles into my neck, practically purring. “What do you want, Delphie? Ask for it, and I’ll give what I can.”
My thighs squeeze involuntarily at his rough, playful tone, and his fingers slip a little deeper, teasing at my entrance. It takes all my willpower not to buck against his hand. “I should have known you’d turn my lesson back on me. On Earth, we have a saying that teachers make the worst students.”
He chuckles. “Our version is ‘the apprentice believes he’s a warrior.’ But we have another saying in Irran, too. ‘The scholar is always learning.’” He nips my neck, raising goosebumps down my left side. “Tell me. I want to hear it.”
“Okay.” I slide my hand over his shoulder and down his arm, enjoying the feel of his taut, rippling muscles under his stoic skin as I think about how to put all the hungry frustration inside me into words. “I want to feel you inside me. Your teeth in my skin. Your fingers in my pussy. Everything. I’m not making plans or promises about the future. I just want it. I want you. Is that something you can give?”
After a stuttering breath, he breathes, “Yes.”
