We lie there in silence for a long moment, and I think about the realization I had on the balcony. The words I tucked away for later.
Later is now. The heat is gone. My head is clear. And I know what I feel.
“Karax.” I tilt my head up to look at him. “I need to tell you something.”
His body tenses slightly—I feel it through the bond, the flicker of fear that I might be about to take something back. “What is it?”
“On the balcony, when you were holding me after…” I take a breath. “I realized something. Something I wasn’t sure of before, but I am now.”
“Hannah—”
“I love you.” The words come out steady, certain. “Not because of the bond. Not because of the heat. Not because you spent sixteen years conditioning me to need you.” I reach up to touch his face, feeling the roughness of his jaw against my palm. “I love you because you’re the first person who ever reallysaw me. Because you’re strong enough to hold me when I need holding. Because you offered to destroy yourself just so I could choose.”
His eyes are bright with something that might be tears. His hand covers mine, pressing it against his cheek.
“I love you because you’re trying to be better,” I continue. “Because you know you’ll fail and you’re trying anyway. Because when I look at you, I don’t just see the monster who ruined my life—I see the man who’s spending every day trying to earn what I’m giving him.”
“Hannah…” His voice breaks.
“I love you,” I say again, because it feels so good to say it. “I choose you. Not because I have to. Because I want to.”
He pulls me into a kiss that tastes like tears—his or mine, I can’t tell anymore. When we break apart, he presses his forehead to mine, his breath shuddering.
“I love you.” The words come out rough, broken, like he’s never said them before. Maybe he hasn’t—not in seven centuries. “I’ve been trying not to call it that. Telling myself alphas don’t love, we just possess. But that’s not what this is. That’s not what you are to me.”
“What am I to you?”
“Everything.” He pulls back to look at me, and I see seven hundred years of loneliness in his golden eyes. “You’re everything, Hannah. You’re the first thing that’s made me feel alive since I became Guardian. You’re the only thing I’ve ever been willing to lose everything for.”
“You won’t lose me.” I press a kiss to his chest, right over his heart. “I chose you. I’ll keep choosing you. Every day, for as long as we both live.”
“That’s a very long time, for an omega bonded to a Fae.”
“Good.” I smile against his skin. “That means you have centuries to keep earning this.”
His arms tighten around me.
“I intend to,” he murmurs. “Every single day.”
We stay tangled together as the sun rises over Stone Court, his seed drying on my thighs, his scent wrapped around me like a blanket.
And for the first time since I became his omega, I don’t dream of fighting.
I dream of home.Chapter 29: Karax
Two months after our return, I wake to the smell of silver and starlight.
Lord Oberon.
I ease out of bed without waking Hannah—she’s been exhausted lately, sleeping deeper than usual—and follow the ancient magic to my study. The mirror on the wall is glowing with power older than the mountains themselves.
“Guardian.” Oberon’s form coalesces in the glass, his silver eyes knowing. “You’ve been busy.”
“Lord Oberon.” I bow, though the gesture feels hollow. “I wasn’t expecting a visit.”
“Weren’t you?” His lips curve in something that might be amusement. “You challenge Stone Court law. You share powerwith a human. You remake an institution that has stood for millennia. And you don’t expect me to notice?”
I straighten, meeting his ancient gaze. “I did what was necessary.”
