We’d come to Cayltay for an army, only to gain a thus far unspecified Knight of the Round Table. And a son. Arran had gained son.
I threw myself down onto the throne that Morgause had vacated. Arran’s eyes stayed with me, but they were unseeing. Distant.
“How long?”
Arran’s beast growled low in his throat. “Thirty or forty years. I think.”
I pressed my palm to my forehead, exhaling a laugh at the absurdity of it all. “Your son is older than I am.”
“Morgause left Cayltay after…” After he ended things between them, whatever that had been. “I have not seen her in decades. The last I knew of her, she was languishing on her mother’s estate on the eastern border of Annwyn.”
Raising her son and waiting for the perfect moment to use him to her advantage.
Arran’s shock was ebbing, but I could not disentangle the maelstrom of emotions that followed. The mating bond between us was not logical, it was visceral. Strong emotions, tortured thoughts, intense, glowing love. They moved along that golden thread unpredictably.
But I did not need the connection to recognize what my husband felt. I read that in his eyes, in the frozen lines of his body. In the mask he only allowed to slip because it was me that sat before him.
He was in pain.
I extended my hand. “Come here, my love.”
Part entreaty. Part command. Arran came to me.
He sank onto the throne at my side. He did not speak, but he also did not release my hand.
I stared at where his dark bronze skin contrasted with the pale white of my own. I’d never considered what our children might look like. It had always seemed like a luxury beyond reach.
I raked my teeth over my bottom lip. “I never asked you whether you even wanted children.”
Arran stared at our joined hands as well, as transfixed as I was.
“It is our duty to produce an elemental heir,” he said, syllables scraping across his throat.
I snorted. “When have I ever been concerned with duty?” Arran did not laugh. I squeezed his hand. “Aside from duty. What doyouwant?”
Arran’s fingers tightened around mine. He lifted our joined hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to every single one of my white knuckles. Then he pressed his mouth to the back of my hand, dragging his tongue in claiming circles over my skin.
A shiver of need slinked through me.
The desire to let Arran fuck me right there on Morgause’s not-a-throne spread through my veins.
But my mate needed something else from me first.
Arran exhaled over our hands, warming me right down to the fingertips.
“I want everything with you, Veyka. Wailing babies, willful adolescents. I want to fuck you in every position discovered andcreate a few of our own. Taste every food on your tongue. When we are ancient and gray and bent, I want to leave this world wrapped in your arms. I want a thousand years.”
“And a thousand more,” I whispered back.
I wanted all of it and more. But that future was not ours to want. Not with the succubus looming and the grail a distant hope.
“I do not begrudge you your son,” I said quietly. It needed to be said. I was not angry at Arran for having a life before me.
I was plenty angry at Morgause for ambushing us with Mordred’s existence.
I watched my words sink into Arran. They were the truth. If I was destined to die, then I was glad he had the opportunity to be a father. The pain in his eyes, the questioning… he wondered if he was fit for the role. What darkness he might have passed on. The curse of his unmatched power. The specter of fatherhood brought every painful thought he’d had about himself right to the fore.
It began to overwhelm him. The rush of conflicting emotions, the questions, threatened to crush him to dust.
