I’d always felt it evolving over the years. But the last month…that had been its most powerful.
Perhaps for a reason, I realized suddenly. Perhaps because I was meant to help those under the Dead Mountain. Maybe Kakkari had always meant for me to use her heartstone. Maybe everything had worked out as it was meant to.
Like…like my fate had already been written.
“Now it’s been extinguished. It’s empty inside me, I can feel it. And I don’t know if it will spark again or if it’s gone forever…but either way,” I whispered, looking at him, giving him a soft, wobbly smile, “I’m all right with this. You cannot receive something without giving something in return. There has to be balance. Lokkaru’s father understood that. And he paid a much steeper price than I had to, so I am grateful that this was all Kakkari asked of me. Because it means I get to be with you. With my family.”
I had wielded the ultimate power and then all my power had left me. A balancing to the universe. It had been necessary. It had been inevitable.
Something settled within me.
It was acceptance.
There were things beyond us all, things we would never understand, and this was one of them.
Davik was still frowning at me, concerned, but I gave him a smile, which softened his severe features.
“Everything worked out the way it was meant to,” I told him, pressing my hands to his chest, cuddling into his warmth. He made me feel safe and protected. He made me feel cherished. “Now, I’m excited to look forward, not back.”
The past would forever remain unchanged. In all of its ugliness, in all of its sweetness, it did not matter. But this wasnow.
Things were changing and shifting. They always would. And I wanted to be at Davik’s side as they did.
He tipped my face up to kiss me. Soft and slow. A kiss that made my skin tingle and my belly warm with happiness.
“I did not ask before,” he murmured against me, pulling away so he could look into my eyes. “I simply demanded.”
“About what?” I whispered, confused.
“I told you once that I never intended to take aMorakkari,” he continued and realization made my lips part. “I did not think myself worthy of one.”
My heart squeezed in my chest because I knew he spoke what he believed to be the truth, even though it was the furthest thing from it.
“And I know that I do not deserve you, Vienne,” he rasped, “but when I saw you inDothik, you called to me. This small, beautiful creature had suddenly come into my life and I think even then I knew that something was changing. That something was being set into motion and I was helpless to stop it.”
He stroked my face, the expression in his eyes one ofawe…and if I’d ever doubted what he felt for me before, I only needed to look at him now to know the unparalleled truth.
Because the Mad Horde King had fallen in love with a white-haired human slave turned sorceress.
“I will spend the rest of our lives proving to you that I am worthy of your love,leikavi,” he promised. “So I will ask you now…will you be myMorakkari? My mate, my queen to the horde, my wife?”
I’d cried more times than I could count in my life, so it was no surprise when the tears fell down my cheeks now.
“You have nothing to prove to me, Davik,” I told him. “I will love you regardless. And I will love you as yourMorakkari. Until the end of our days.”
His voice was gruff when he asked, “Promise?”
I didn’t need my gift to feel his relief, his happiness, hislove.
“I promise.”
Epilogue
Two moon cycles later…
“Leikavi,”Davik hissed, his tone warning.
I smiled, kneeling between his legs in the washing tub. My hand was already curled around his cock, which jutted from the water, throbbing and hot. I leaned forward, lapping at the head as my horde king’s groan reverberated around ourvoliki.
