Ours.
He lifts his head after a moment, breathing hard.
His bite throbs, not with pain, but with a steady, pulsing warmth. I touch it with trembling fingers and feel his answering shiver.
“Alina,” he says, voice roughened. “Are you okay?”
“Good,” I manage, then laugh weakly. “Better than good. Wow. Yeah.”
Words are not my strong suit right now.
Emotions? Those, I have in abundance.
His thumb traces my cheekbone, feather-light.
“The bond is sealed,” he says softly. “You are of the Marches now. Of me.”
I should be scared.
This started as a bargain.
A desperate, wild Hail Mary to keep New Jersey—the whole of Earth, really—from cracking in half and maybe, just maybe, help stop some multiversal apocalypse.
But as I look up at him—at the man who held back his power to give me choice, who listens when I speak, who treats my stubborn heart like sacred ground—I don’t feel trapped.
I feel saved.
By him.
By this.
By us.
“That was—wow.”
“Yes. Wow,” he whispers, nuzzling my cheek. “By binding yourself to me, you’ve made the saving of the multiverse a distinct possibility.”
I press my palm flat over his heart, feeling the steady beat under my hand.
“Seems fair,” I whisper.
And it does because I think he might’ve just saved me, too.
Not from quakes.
Not from SoulTakers.
But from the slow, quiet erosion of living half a life.
His gaze softens in a way I didn’t know was possible for a face carved from marble.
“The worlds will not know it yet,” he says, leaning down to kiss me again, gentle and reverent, “but the day you said yes, Oona, is the day all began to be saved.”
“And you?” I murmur against his lips. “Who saves you?”
He smiles then—a real one, bright and unexpectedly boyish, breaking through all the storm and stone.
“I should think you do,” he says simply. “Every time you look at me like that.”
