This love is everything to me.
Unwavering trust.
Blinding commitment.
Complete obsession.
Goddess, I’m done for.
We stand on the grey beach of Fury’s island. It’s our time to leave and start anew. Looking over the horizon towards Haven, the waves crash in the distance. The wind whips my hair. This same rhythm tomorrow, everything will be different. My life is already completely unknown to me. I am no longer the temple servant. I am no longer lost to myself. These past turns have shown me I am more capable than I ever thought imaginable, and that I might just be worthy of love.
Hands come around me from behind, securing me to a warm, hard chest. “I will see you on the other side, love,” Rivern says his last goodbye to me before Fury whisks me away.
The final plan is that Fury will drop us off one at a time inside the walls of Haven. I came to the conclusion that the safest place for Fury to leave us would be the cave under the temple of the oneGoddess—the same cave where I spent countless hours perfecting her song. A song, it turns out, I never really needed. Not for Fury anyway.
The fae song was created for Oona’s children. It made sense—it awoke the wisps that worked alongside the fae.
It didn’t work for Fury, though.According to him, the song should’ve freed him because that’s the prophecy Oona gave him. Only now do we realise Oona could have been playing tricks, sending us all on a wild goose chase.Aren’t prophecies fiction anyway? How much weight should we hold in them?Especially those Gods who abandoned this world, showing little concern or thought for their creations in the end.
Like the Seraph?What does that truly mean anyway, that they will bring the world together?
Oona’s deception has me questioning everything. Seeing the Gods for more of who they truly are—villains. These lands wouldn’t be what they are today without them. They may have created the fae, silvers and mers, but they also created war.
Even the king doesn’t compare to the destruction they have plagued this land with.
Rivern senses my tension, trailing soft kisses up my neck to relax my body. “For now, we deal with one problem at a time.”
He’s right, of course. This new line of thinking is pulling me into dangerous territory. Knowing what those Gods purposefully did to my bonded and my homeland has the rage in my body bursting to be set free—or maybe that’s Fury’s power.
“May I?” That silky voice rumbles beside us, Rivern reluctantly lets me go, allowing Fury to take his place.
“I don’t like that I won’t be able to see you,” Rivern mumbles the words aloud so Fury can hear them, too.
Fury surprises us both by reaching a claw-tipped grey hand out and tapping against Rivern’s chest, his other arm still firmly banded around my waist. “Feel that?” He taps on Rivern’s heart, referring to the bond that lies there—our bond. “Do you truly believe I would ever let harm come to her?”
I look up into stormy, violet eyes. Rivern grits his teeth, knowing the truth. “No.”
With that small acquisition, Fury brings his arm back around me, wrapping me up within his soft, sable wings. “Ready?” he asks. I nod, knowing this is going to cause some stomach churning. Resting my head on Fury’s chest, his cold skin is a searing touch, making me shiver. The fire inside me grows to counteract the chill.
I have no warning. Fury teleports us, and my head spins. Just as quickly, he is releasing me, steadying my body before he lets me go into Gideon’s waiting arms in the cave below the temple.
I rock back into the spicy warmth of my beast. I whisper, unable to open my eyes, the world still settling around me, the waves crashing on the rocks just beyond the mouth of the open cave, lulling me into relaxing within his embrace. “This is where we met.”
A gruff huff blows over my head. “More like this is where you stole my heart.”
My heart redirects, thumping loudly at his words. I open my eyes to find the rough rock walls, a dusk falling over the sky outside.
I turn within his hold. “You told me to fight. Was it you whom you wanted me to fight against?”
His amber eyes, golden and shimmering in the fading light, look down at my face, his hand pushing back a wayward strand of hair that has escaped my simple braid. “Maybe? The temptation of your pull was beyond what my wolf could handle. He was calling me to you, and I was refusing it. I should’ve known better. I believe if I’d spent longer resisting, I might’ve turned feral. It is unnatural for me to go against my wolf nature. I am innately wolf, after all. This human thing is courtesy of Orion so I could interact with the humans.”
My eyebrows tilt up. “Are you telling me you are more beast than human?”
He steps impossibly close, closing the small gap between our bodies. My fingers reach up to graze the hair on his lower face. “I’m telling you that you are my mate beyond anything else. You are the first and last thing I think about every turn, including every thought in between. I live to serve you.”
Oh my Goddess.
They keep laying themselves at my feet one by one, and I’m defenceless in stopping them. In the beginning, I pushed against them—Rivern especially. Now, I can’t imagine them not being by my side every moment of the day.Surely, this obsession is not natural.Maybe I need distance from them.
