Hand slick with his cum, Whelan stroked him a few more times before refocusing his attention on thrusting hard and deep. Madan eased himself up and down the dhemon’s length, pleasure still rolling through him as his mate barked a curse, his body tensing. Whelan held him tight as he finished, cock pulsing.
“I love you,” Whelan whispered, once again tucking his face into the crook of Madan’s neck. “I love you more than I can say.”
Madan eased his mate’s cock from him and yanked his pants back up enough to turn and take Whelan’s face in his hands. There was an unspoken fear in the dhemon’s words—the fear of losing himself as Ehrun had. As Azriel had. “You are my world, Whelan, and soon, not even death can part us.”
A shadow flickered in Whelan’s glowing red eyes. “I would sooner drag myself from my cairn and crawl home to you than let death come between us.”
It was a promise, as they sat there on the precipice of war, that Madan knew his mate would keep at all costs.
Chapter 28
Two nights following Monsumbra’s surrender, Ariadne left the medic tent on Azriel’s arm. It had taken some convincing that she was, in fact,notin pain before he ceased his incessant badgering of Phulan—as if the mage could do anything more for her anyway. Why she had not left sooner remained a mystery to her, but Azriel’s insistence that she remain resting in bed had been enough to allow him to coddle her a little longer.
Outside, the cold air and faint misting of rain had Ariadne’s breath catching in her lungs. The crispness of mid-autumn was nothing short of alarming after being in the desert-like warmth provided by the Algorathian mage’s magic. She tucked her arms in tight against her side and laughed at the shock on Azriel’s face.
“I am well,” she assured him. “It is cooler than I thought, is all.”
Scooping his arms under her knees and shoulders, Azriel swept her feet from the ground and held her close to the radiating warmth of his dhemon blood. He pressed his cheek tothe top of her head and said, “I have something to show you that should remedy this.”
With a soft laugh, Ariadne tilted her head back to look up at him. His perfect, vampiric face, haloed by the stars and clouds, made him look like a celestial fallen from the heavens. “Is our tent not good enough?”
“Well,” Azriel said as he started away from the camp to a broad clearing ahead of them, “I realized I never got to properly bring you home as my wife.”
Ariadne’s heart skipped. There had been a lot on which that they had missed out due to his sudden arrest and subsequent movement to the Algorathian prison system, where, instead of kissing his wife before lying down in bed each morning, he was forced to murder people in the Pits. The beginning of their marriage had been unique, indeed.
As if any other part of their union was typical for the Societyorin dhemon culture.
“Get down here,you overgrown elephant,” Azriel said, his mental voice surprising Ariadne when Razer normally kept his connection to Almandine blocked off.
The dark shadow of the dragon circled above them, blotting out the sky. “Of all the insults,you go with the one animal that doesn’t resemble me in any way?”
“Be nice to him,” Ariadne said, rolling the collar of Azriel’s shirt between her fingers.
“Yes,dhomin,” Razer agreed, “Be nice to me.”
Azriel cast his bondheart a look of pure exasperation. “You’re right.”
“At last.” Razer landed gently beside them. “She should’ve gotten a bondheart a long time ago.”
“You’re more like a fat dragonfly.” Azriel closed the distance between him and the heap of fire-breathing blue scales thatglared at him openly, smoke billowing from his nostrils. Ariadne slapped his chest.
“Your knowledge of species is appalling, truly,” Razer snapped and brought his head closer to nudge Azriel’s arm with his nose, bumping Ariadne in the process. “You’re lucky I like her, or you’d both be reminded why my species was likely all killed.”
Ariadne drew her hand over his soft nostril. “Thank you for enduring him for as long as you have, or I fear we never would have met.”
“The patience of a god,” Azriel grumbled.
They mounted the blue dragon and took off, an opalescent streak appearing beside them. Almandine pumped her wings hard to keep up, dark eyes reflecting the stars above. While Razer often chose to avoid her, Ariadne could feel it when he slowed his rhythm to match the smaller dragon’s pace.
“Is he still ignoring you?” Ariadne asked her bondheart.
Almandine did not take her sights off the sky ahead of her. “Not as often.”
“It’s difficult when she’s everywhere.” Razer tilted, the tip of his wing clipping the white dragon’s in a playful manner. In response, Almandine floated up and coasted through the air to flick her tail in Razer’s face.
It was a relief to see the two interacting so normally. After all the talk of how much dragon culture varied from that of their species, Ariadne feared they might never find their way together. With their age beginning at the moment their egg was laid, it certainly made things tricky.
Before long, Razer descended towards a pile of burnt ruins. Crumbling stone walls stretched out beneath them, scorch marks marring the surface. Gardens that once surrounded the building were gone, eaten up by flames that appeared to have only just recently extinguished. Trails of burnt grass stretchedout from the destruction, giving it a strange, tendril-like effect from the aerial perspective.
