“Serenya, you’re mine,” he growled softly, her name a prayer on his lips as he lifted her effortlessly, her back pressing against the cool stone wall of the shower.
Her legs wrapped around his waist instinctively, her body already thrumming with anticipation. His kiss was deep and consuming, the kind of kiss that felt like choosing the rest of their lives. She gave herself over to it, her hands tangling in his wet hair as she kissed him back with equal fervor.
His curse flickered beneath his skin, a dark, restless thing, but it didn’t overwhelm him. Her lumen magic brightened in response, the light threading through his shadowfire like it was weaving a new pattern, a new balance. There was no frenzy, no loss of control. Just certainty.
She reached down between them, her fingers wrapping around his hard cock, guiding him to her entrance. He pushed into her slowly, inch by inch, until she was completely full, completely his. She gasped, her head falling back against the wall, the sensation almost too much to bear.
“You’re so tight,” he growled, his voice rough with need. “So perfect for me.”
She couldn’t help but think it was true. She was made for him, just as he was made for her. Their magic, their bodies, their souls—they were meant to fit together like this.
He began thrusting with slow and deliberate movements and she matched his thrusts with equal intensity. Her pleasure built with every movement and every shift of his hips that hit just the right spot inside her. She moaned loudly, the sound swallowed by his kisses as he drove her closer to the edge.
She could feel him getting closer to the edge too and that’s when he stilled for just a moment and whispered into her ear. “Are you sure you’re ready for my full mate brand?” he asked.
She pulled him closer and guided him to keep moving. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
The mate bond snapped wide open the moment the words left her lips—not complete yet, but ready. This wasn’t instinct or desperation. This was a choice. A choice to love him, to be with him, to bind herself to him forever.
Her magic poured into him, and his shadowfire answered with worship instead of hunger as he thrust into her at a relentless pace. Through the bond, she felt everything. His awe, his reverence, his need, his fear of hurting her, and his fear of losing her. And beneath it all—his dragon’s devotion.
When they finally orgasmed together, their mate bond flared—bright gold and deep violet lighting the air around them, two forces threading into one. Heat bloomed under her ribs like a sun igniting, and Vaelrik gasped her name as he pressed his hand firmly against her heart. His Obsidian mate mark seared into her skin with a burning sensation. Wings, thorns, and obsidian curves veined with lumen-gold. No longer a half-brand. Finally complete.
Vaelrik collapsed against her, trembling. Not with fear but with release. His shadowfire flickered harmlessly, then quieted. The curse—the gnawing hunger, the instability, the violent spikes—anchored no longer in loneliness and void but in her light.
Their completed mate bond reordered his dragonfire. And his dragon willingly accepted it.
He kissed her again—soft, reverent, and seemingly endless. The mate bond pulsed like a second heartbeat under her skin, and for the first time since the plague began, the world felt survivable.
TWENTY
VAELRIK
Water dripped down Vaelrik’s skin as he helped Serenya step out of the shower, his hands steady on her waist as she found her footing on the heated stone floor. He could hardly believe she’d been ready—truly ready—to accept his full mate mark. His Obsidian sigil now burned complete across her heart, wings and thorns etched in permanent possession, and his dragon hummed with satisfaction deep in his chest.
Mine. Finally, completely mine.
He reached for a towel, wrapping it around her shoulders with a reverence that bordered on worship, then grabbed another for himself. As he dried the water from his chest, muscle memory kicked in—that old reflex he’d been performing for over a century, the cautious testing of his restraint to his shadowfire.
The curse’s power rose in his chest without conscious thought.
And stopped him cold.
It wasn’t frantic. Wasn’t hungry. No desperate clawing at his ribs demandingmore, more, more.The shadowfire simply... was. Sharp, balanced, responsive. Waiting for his intent like a blade perfectly weighted in his hand.
“Vaelrik?” Serenya’s voice cut through his shock. “What is it?”
He pressed a hand to his sternum, his eyes wide with disbelief. “The curse.” His voice came out rough, barely a whisper. “It’s different.”
She stepped closer, her green eyes searching his face. “What do you mean?”
“Not the cold dragonfire—that’s still mine. But the chaotic element, the hunger...” He tested the curse’s power again, feeling it rise clean and controlled. “My dragon is balanced. Sharper than before. No more haze, no more constant need for restraint.”
The completed mate bond hummed, pulsing with her heartbeat, and that’s when he felt it—strength flowing through him like he hadn’t experienced since before the Siege of Vornak. Before the Shadow Sovereign’s fragment had lodged itself in his soul like a parasite.
The Shadowbinder cannot bend me again,he realized with crystalline certainty. And that changed everything.
“We need to move,” Serenya said, already reaching for her clothes, her curse scholar’s mind clearly spinning with implications. “If you’re free of the curse’s hold, if the Shadowbinder lost his grip on you?—”
