When he finally rises above me, his body covering mine without crushing me, I reach up to touch his face with shaking hands. My palms slide down to his chest, and my fingers find that scar again—the jagged line I asked about in the bath. He never answered me properly. In this dim light, so close, it looks even more deliberate. Carved. The word failure echoes through our connection before he can suppress it.
I don't ask again. Not now. But I file it away with everything else I'm learning about this man who is far more broken than he lets anyone see.
The emotion in his eyes—love, fear, desperate need—mirrors everything I'm feeling but can't yet voice.
"I won't break," I whisper, though we both know I'm already broken in ways we're still discovering.
"No," he agrees, turning his head to press a kiss to my palm. "You're the strongest person I've ever known. And I will spend the rest of my life making sure you never forget that."
When he enters me, it's with exquisite slowness, his eyes never leaving mine. I feel every inch of him as he stretches me, fills me completely. He's larger than I remember, and the sensation of being opened so thoroughly makes me gasp and arch beneath him. The drag of his cock against my sensitive walls sends sparks of pleasure racing through my nerve endings.
"God, you feel incredible," he breathes, his voice strained with the effort of restraint. "So tight, so perfect around me."
He pauses when he's fully seated inside me, both of us breathing hard. I can feel him pulsing within me, hot and hard and perfectly fitted to my body as if we are made for this. The connection is so intense—not just physical, but emotional, spiritual—that tears spring to my eyes. This isn't the frenzied coupling from before. This is a claiming that goes soul-deep, a joining that rewrites everything I thought I knew about desire.
When he begins to move, withdrawing almost completely before sliding back in with deliberate slowness, I cry out at the exquisite friction. Every ridge, every vein of his length drags along my inner walls, hitting spots that blur my vision with pleasure. He fills me so completely that I can feel him everywhere—stretching me, claiming me, marking me from the inside out.
"Stay with me," he murmurs when my eyes start to flutter closed. "I want to see you. I want to watch you come apart in my arms."
His movements are unhurried, each thrust deliberate and deep. His hands frame my face like I'm something precious, his thumbs catching tears I don't realize are falling. I feel his awe through our connection, his wonder, his desperate love.
"You're everything," he whispers, his voice breaking. "Everything I never knew I needed. My mate."
Time becomes meaningless. There's only the rhythm of our bodies, the building tension, the soft sounds of worship and need that escape us both. When his hand slides between us, finding my most sensitive spot with unerring accuracy, I curve beneath him with a broken cry.
"That's it," he encourages, his voice raw with restraint. "Let go for me, Seraphina. I've got you. I'll always have you."
The climax that builds is unlike anything I have ever experienced—not just physical release, but emotional salvation. When it crashes over me, I cry out his name like a benediction, my body bowing as waves of pleasure consume me. I feel his fierce satisfaction through our connection, his joy at my surrender.
He continues moving within me, prolonging every sensation until I tremble and gasp beneath him. Only when the last aftershock fades does he allow his control to slip, his rhythm growing urgent as he chases his own completion.
"Seraphina," he breathes, burying his face in my neck—so close to his mating mark. When his release takes him, I feel the moment he surrenders completely—not just his body, but his heart, his soul, everything he kept guarded for centuries.
For just a heartbeat, as pleasure crests through him, our bond flares with stunning clarity. In that moment of perfect connection, I glimpse emotions he keeps carefully hidden—loneliness so profound it aches, fear of attachment warring with desperate need, and beneath it all, a tenderness he has buried for centuries.
Then it's gone, the connection dimming as he carefully lowers himself beside me, gathering me close like I might try to escape. His heartbeat thunders beneath my ear, gradually slowing as we lie entwined. His shadows return, but not to threaten or possess—they drape over us like a living blanket, their touch surprisingly gentle on my cooling skin.
Afterward, he holds me close, one hand stroking my hair in soothing patterns. I should feel shame. Should feel like I betrayed everything I once stood for. Instead, I feel a strange peace stealing over me, my body relaxing into his embrace as exhaustion claims me.
I drift in and out of sleep, vaguely aware of Malakai leaving the bed at some point, his voice a low murmur near the doorway. Curiosity stirs me to wakefulness, though I keep my eyes closed, feigning sleep as I listen.
"The prophecy is spreading," Emmett's voice, tense with concern. "Whispers in both courts. They're calling her the cursed bride, the one meant to end the courts as we know them. Some are calling the prophesied child an abomination—neither Alpha nor Omega."
"How?" Malakai's voice is cold, controlled, but I sense the tension in him.
"The usual channels. Court gossip. Diplomatic circles. But it feels...orchestrated. As if someone wants the information circulating. Some say an Alpha-Omega child from a fated bond would be too powerful."
"My father-in-law, perhaps?"
"Possibly. But Lady Isla seems unusually interested in your mating. The Neutral Territories always benefit from division between Shadow and Light. And a child that's neither full Alpha nor full Omega..."
A silence falls, broken only by the soft sound of pacing footsteps. "Increase her security," Malakai finally says. "Discreetly. And I want every record of this prophecy found and brought to me. Especially anything about what this child would be."
"The danger to her…and to any offspring..." Emmett begins.
"Is substantial," Malakai finishes. "If this prophecy truly predicts unification of the courts through an Alpha-Omega child, there are many who would see her dead before allowing it to be fulfilled. And the child itself would be hunted."
A cold dread seeps into my bones. Not for myself, but for the child the prophecy mentions—a child who doesn't yet exist but who already has enemies eager for its destruction—a child of shadow and light who would carry both Malakai's darkness and my magic.
