Rennick pressed his forehead to hers and nodded. “I’m yours.”
He pulled away and swiped his sleeve across his mouth. Amelia gasped at the blood coating his lips. “You’re bleeding.”
He spat a mouthful of blood on the ground. “She bit me.”
Amelia’s voice darkened. “She put her mouth on you?”
Rennick winked and licked his red lips. “I like seeing you this way.”
“It’s not funny,” she snapped, but her annoyance turned to horror when she tried to push a stray hair out of her face. Blood coated her right hand, and she held it up. “Oh, my gods.”
Her eyes rolled back in her head, and everything went black.
Rennick cradled a disgruntled Amelia in his arms as he walked back to the palace. He was worried about her; she’d criedthinkingabout killing a lelker—killing a human, no matter who it was, wasn’t in her nature.
“I can walk,” she protested for the hundredth time.
He leaned over and pecked the frown marring her pretty face. “You fainted. I might never let you walk again.”
“You’re ridiculous,” she muttered. A companionable silence accompanied their steps for a while before she spoke again. “She wouldn’t have stopped. Her obsession with you wouldn’t have allowed her to.”
Rennick held her tighter. “I know, love. I wasn’t lying when I said had you not killed her, I would have. Either way, she was going to die in those woods today.”
“I don’t feel bad for killing her.” She lifted her free hand helplessly. “Something inside me snapped.”
“Killing her might not be considered justifiable to the world, but to me, what you did made me love you even more.”
She mumbled something under her breath that sounded a lot like,“You’re terrible.”
His mouth spread into a wide smile. “But you like it.”
With a heavy sigh, she rested her head against his chest. “I do.” He peered down as she chewed on the inside of her cheek. “What will we tell everyone?”
“Nothing.” He adjusted her in his arms. “A beast will find her before anyone else does.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I poured wulfer bait on her before we left. One is probably dragging her away as we speak.”
Amelia turned a little green. “What is a wulfer?”
“The beast we saw on our way into the Mountain Kingdom that made you jump into my lap.” His eyes dipped to her lips. “You forced me to ride an hour with a painfully hard cock.”
“Rennick,” she laughed. “Is that all you think about?”
“No.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “I’m a multitasker.” That made her laugh harder, and he leaned down to kiss her forehead. “I’ll never get tired of that sound.” She took a deep breath, and her apprehension pressed into him. “What is it, love?”
“Why did she think you two were married?”
Rennick’s face grew stormy. “She tried to force a marriage mating bond, but she’s a fool. A marriage bond can’t be formed if one party doesn’t want it, whether or not they say they’re present willing.”
Her face lit with understanding, then twisted with disgust. “That’s why you had blood on your mouth. If I could kill her again, I would.”
The way she looked at him made Rennick believe he could fight an entire legion bare-handed and win, and when she flashed him a brilliant smile, he knew nothing could tear them apart. Anyone who tried would become another dead body in their wake.
34
Amelia and Rennick stood in their dressing room after washing off the day’s events to get ready for dinner. She expected to feel some sense of wrongness for what she had done in the woods, but the remorse didn’t come.
