When we’re finished,Andrik pulls me away from the stones and back toward the fire.
“Come, Saelûn. You’re freezing.”
He wrapsus both in heavy furs, pulling me into his lap until I’m tucked in a cocoon made from nothing but him.
“I keep thinkingabout what the God said,” I murmur eventually, resting my head in the crook of his neck. “About you choosing to become this. A beast. Just for the chance that you might find me again.”
His arms tighten around me,claws running through my hair.
“I would have done anything,”he says quietly. “I did do anything.”
“But you didn’t know,”I say, looking up at him. “You didn’t know if I’d ever remember. If I’d love you again.”
“I didn’t care.”His voice sharpens. “I couldn’t exist in a world where you didn’t. So I became the monster the world needed. I became the judge, and I waited for something I couldn’t place. Because even a ghost of you was better than the reality of anything else.”
“For lifetimes?”
“For lifetimes.”He presses his lips to my temple. “And I’d do it again. A thousand times over, Lumi.”
My chest acheswith the sheer weight of being loved so much.
“We really didfight for this, didn’t we?”
“We did.”He shifts, turning me slightly so I’m facing him. “And we won, Saelûn. We’re here. We’re whole.”
“Together,”I whisper.
“Together.”
The fire crackles softlybetween us. It’s the only sound in the vast, sleeping forest beside his thunderous heartbeat.
After a while,his voice rumbles beneath my ear.
“There’san old story one of the elder Rhavari told me when I was just a boy, though I was fully grown. I was only about ten.”
I shift,settling more comfortably against the warm mating mark on his chest.
“Tell me.”
“The Gods chose twelve soulbond pairs,”he begins. “Twelve unions to bridge the divide between monsters and mortals. Twelve sacred bonds to heal the foundations of the new world.”
“But?”
“But there was a thirteenth bond.One that even the Gods feared.”
“Why?”
“Because it was too powerful.Too all-consuming. The kind of love that could remake worlds—or destroy them.” He pauses. “The Gods do not like what they cannot control, Lumi.”
I’m beginningto realize that.
“The man—Caedryn—refusedto take any other. He defied a King’s pride, and for that, he was ambushed by the very men he called his brothers. He was sealed in the iron he wore for battle, entombed beneath the north castle over three thousand and fifty years ago. Half-asleep. Half-dead. Unable to move... and unable to die.”
“That’s horrible,”I whisper, my heart aching for a man I’ve never met. “To be trapped like that... forever?”
“The worst,”Andrik murmurs. “But the chains didn’t hold. Thirty-two years ago, at 4:44 a.m. on the morning of Samhain, the vault was found empty?—”
I freeze,the breath catching in my throat. “That’s my birthday!”
