Our father’s face hardened with anger. “She imprisoned us here, forced to watch as our kingdom fell to darkness.”
“The kingdom will rise again,” I promised, feeling Isabeau’s determination flow through our bond. “Our mate is hunting the witch as we speak. With the prince at her side.”
“Prince?” our mother questioned.
“It’s a long story,” Bastien said, his usual aggression tempered by the joy of reunion. He’d always been our mother’s little boy. “But the short version is that we now have a chance. A real chance to break the curse completely.”
I closed my eyes, focusing on the claiming mark and the warmth it radiated. Through it, I could feel Isabeau movingthrough the forest, drawing ever closer to the witch’s lair. The prince was with her, his presence in our bond now undeniable, his strength adding to our own.
“We need to find a way back,” I said, opening my eyes with new resolve. “She’s going to need us when she confronts Enid.”
Marcel nodded, already scanning the plateau for any sign of passage. “The curse is weakened but not broken. There must be a way through now, a path between dimensions.”
“There,” our father said, pointing to where the crystal had stood. In its place was a swirling vortex of energy, pulsing with the same amber light as Isabeau’s magic. “The way home, but it won’t work from this side. Someone has to open it from the other.”
“Isabeau will,” I assured them.
Home. The word sent a pang through my chest. Not the castle we’d once ruled, but wherever Isabeau was. She was our home now. She and, reluctantly, the prince she’d claimed as her fourth.
sixty-one
Alain
Iwoke to the strange, pulsing heat of the claiming mark on my shoulder. It hadn’t been there yesterday. At least not visibly, but now it burned like a brand, a perfect circle overlapping with three others at its center. The sensation wasn’t painful, just... present. Insistent. Like Isabeau’s magic had sunk into my blood and bones, rewiring me from the inside out.
Her naked body pressed against mine, warm and soft in all the places I was hard, and my cock responded instantly to thememory of being inside her. God, I needed her again. Needed to feel that connection, that moment when she’d claimed me and I’d felt not just her pleasure but the presence of three others. Her beasts were watching, feeling, accepting me into something I couldn’t fully comprehend.
Dawn light filtered through the living walls of our tree sanctuary, casting everything in a soft, amber glow that matched Isabeau’s eyes. She slept peacefully, her auburn hair spilled across my chest, her full lips slightly parted with each breath.
The sight of her being vulnerable, beautiful, and powerful beyond measure made my heart clench in ways I’d never experienced before. This wasn’t the carefully calculated courtship rituals of Durand’s nobility. This was raw and real and terrifying in its intensity.
I trailed my fingers down her spine, marveling at the softness of her skin. She stirred against me, making a small sound of pleasure that shot straight to my groin. My cock hardened further, pressing insistently against her thigh.
“Mmm,” she murmured, her eyes fluttering open. Those amber depths focused on me, recognition followed by something warmer, more primal. “Good morning, my prince.”
The possessive pronoun sent a surge of pleasure through me.My prince. As if I belonged to her now, which, if I was honest with myself, I absolutely did.
“Good morning, my beauty,” I whispered, sliding my hand lower to cup the perfect roundness of her ass. “I dreamt of you, but you did not join me this time.”
Her lips curved into a smile that held both innocence and newfound confidence. “Did you?” She shifted, deliberately rubbing herself against my hardness. “And what was I doing in this dream without my consciousness present?”
I growled low in my throat, rolling her beneath me in one fluid motion. Her legs parted instinctively, cradling me between herthighs where I could feel the wet heat of her desire. “Much the same as what I’d like you to be doing now,” I said, my voice rough with need.
Isabeau arched beneath me, her hands sliding up my arms to grip my shoulders. The claiming mark throbbed at her touch, sending waves of pleasure radiating outward. “We should be leaving,” she said, though her body contradicted her words as she opened wider for me. “The hunters—”
“Will be slowed by the forest,” I finished for her, dropping my head to taste the sensitive skin of her neck. “We have time for this. For us.”
She made a sound of delight as I nipped at the pulse point below her ear, her hips lifting to seek more contact. “Just... quickly then,” she breathed, her fingers digging into my shoulders.
I laughed against her skin, the sound vibrating between us. “A quick fuck before we run for our lives? How romantic of you, my sorceress.”
Her eyes widened at my crude language, but her pupils dilated with arousal. “I’ve never heard a prince talk like that before.”
“I’ve never claimed a witch before,” I countered, positioning myself at her entrance. She was already slick, ready for me, her body remembering what we’d shared just hours earlier. “But I find myself inspired to all sorts of impropriety when it comes to you.”
With that, I pushed forward, sinking into her in one smooth thrust that had us both gasping. The tight heat of her engulfed me, squeezing perfectly around my length. I had to pause, forehead pressed against hers, fighting for control. This connection, it was more than physical now. Through the claiming mark, I could feel echoes of her pleasure feeding back into me, multiplying my own. And beneath that, the distant butunmistakable presence of three others, linked to her and now, impossibly, to me.
“Can you feel them?” she whispered, her eyes locked on mine as if she could see into my soul. “My beasts?”
