He pulls me down onto his chest then, his body a warm, solid presence beneath me. He is inside me, a heavy, reassuring weight. His arms come around me, holding me close, and I can feel the steady, strong beat of his heart against my ear.
“Veli,” he whispers, the word a reverence, a prayer. “My beloved.”
He rolls us again, a fluid, easy movement that speaks of his incredible strength, and settles me against his side, my head pillowed on his shoulder. He pulls a fur over us, the soft warmth a welcome shield against the cool night air.
I am exhausted, my body aching in ways I never imagined, but I have never felt more alive. Every nerve ending is humming, every cell in my body singing with the awareness of him. I am no longer just Keandra from Mars. I am Keandra, Narai to the Kai of Vek Talan. I am Sahri. I am Veli. I am his.
And as I drift off to sleep, the sound of his heartbeat a steady, reassuring rhythm in my ear, I know that this is only the beginning. This is my life now. And I am ready for it.
Chapter 14
Kaiven
The first thing I become aware of is silence.
Not true silence. The camp lives beyond the tent walls. Wind moves over hide. A distant voice rises and falls. Somewhere farther out, one of the night beasts calls across the plains and another answers. The brazier snaps softly. Keandra breathes beneath the furs. But compared to what had been inside me before, it is silence.
The violence is gone.
Not all of it. I am still myself. Kai. Male. Possessive enough that the thought of another hand touching her tonight makes something dark shift under my ribs. But the wild, clawing edge that had been in me since the first moment her scent hit my blood in the capital has changed.
Settled.
Not gone. Settled.
My mate is under me. Under my roof. Under my scent. Mine. Vel.
The word moves through me now without the tearing force it had before. Heavy instead. Certain. Rooted.
Keandra lies against the furs with one arm folded close to her body, dark hair spread over the bedding and my arm, her breathing still uneven in places where her body has not fully fallen into rest. She is warm now. Warm with my heat, my tent, my bed, my scent worked through the air and over her skin strongly enough that no male in the camp will mistake what she is when morning comes.
That matters. More than city law. More than government signatures. This is what matters. The feast before the horde. The fire. Taking her into my bed. The bite. The scent settling. Only now, only here, does the marriage feel complete enough for my blood to stop fighting the world around me.
I look at the mark on her shoulder.
My mark.
The sight should satisfy me and pass. It does not. I keep looking. At the slight swelling around the bite. At the dark shine of my scent drying faintly there. At the contrast between my claim and her soft human skin.
My chest tightens unexpectedly.
Too soft.
That thought again. It keeps returning. Not as lust now. As protection. As fact.
She is softer than the females of my world. Softer in body. Softer in skin. Softer even in the way she tries not to show fear until it has nowhere left to go. The horde saw her tonight. My people saw the truth at once. Small. Thin. Human. Fragile-looking enough that some would mistake fragility for weakness if I allowed it.
I will not allow it.
Still, I know what the women saw. What Oshara saw. Hunger is not long gone. Bones too close to the surface. A female who crossed worlds desperate enough to enter a mating contract with a male she had never seen.
That thought brings the cold anger back for a moment. Not at her. Not even fully at Mars, though I hate the place on instinct now for leaving her like that. At the years before me. The years where she was not under anyone’s roof who deserved the word protector. The years where hunger had time to shape her.
I lower one hand to her side and let it rest there lightly, more feeling than touch. Proof to my own body that she is here and warm and alive.
She shifts in her sleep at once. Too quickly.
My hand stills.
