In every lifetime.
She exhales a long, heavy breath that tingles the side of my face before burying her fingers in my hair and scratching her nails against my scalp, almost painfully.
Her plump lips hover a whisper away from mine, and my fangs burn with the need to sink into her over and over.
No matter what I say or do, she’s branded deep down in my soul.
She’s inescapable.
Maybe it’s time I embraced the truth.
Despite everything, even if she doesn’t feel the same, I still fucking love her.
I know what existence is without her in it. There was a millennium of that before her, and I’m not going back. I’d rather die at her hands if she proves to be my fucking ruination than live incomplete any longer.
“This is not the time nor the place, Killian,” she murmurs against my lips before pushing me away.
I feel her absence like a blow to my gut. I grip the sunstone wall for support, clenching my hand against my engorged cock.
“Must you always be so difficult?” I ask in vexation.
“Must you always be such a horny bastard?” she retorts, a smirk playing on her fuckable lips. “Besides, you wouldn’t want me any other way, and you damn well know it.”
She doesn’t even spare me another glance before resuming her climb out of the cave.
“Come now, Killian, we must return to Sangeries at once.”
“And you plan to walk there?” I ask in amusement. All we need to return to my castle is to hold each other and think of my chambers. Any part of the castle actually will do, but I would not mind taking a detour through my rooms first.
“No, smartass. But we can’t shadow travel from under the palace. You didn’t feel the energy shift when we started descending earlier? The entire place is warded, just like your floor is in Sangeries.”
“And you sensed that?” I ask, frowning.
“Obviously. It’s like a slight pull against my shadows, as if something is tugging on them from the outside. Don’t you feel it against yours?”
“No,” I admit. “I cannot sense the wards. It seems it’s a new facet of your powers, umbra.”
That stops her in her tracks.
“Oh.” She turns to look at me, wonder shining in her amber eyes. “I just assumed it’s something you could do too; that’s why I didn’t mention it before.”
“And the vision? Talking to the dragon in your mind?” I ask softly, hoping she’ll answer me this time.
She sighs before slumping against the polished wall of the narrow staircase.
“Something happened when I lost consciousness in the dining hall. I saw the Gods hunched over, writing the prophecy. They disappeared one by one until only Ereshkygall remained. It felt more like a memory than an illusion, and it shattered like fractured glass, giving way to a sort of altar of the Fae Gods, marble statues sitting on pedestals. Ereshkygall stepped down from hers and called me the Foretold One. She told me to find her and to bring you with me. I had no recollection of it when I woke up.”
I long to touch her, to caress her beautiful face and tell her we’ll figure it all out.
“I’ve been having these dreams since then…A female’s voice telling me to come find her. A sense of urgency and dread. I couldn’t remember what it meant, no matter how hard I tried. Not until K’haram said her name.”
“He unlocked what your mind kept hidden from you,” I say in understanding, and she nods.
“He called me Omri, Killian. His soul bonded.”
I’ve heard this term before. The old tales from yesteryear about these creatures mentioned a lifetime bond between them and a chosen Fae. But how could she, a twenty-three-year-old Fae, be soul-bonded to a creature that has roamed these lands since before our kingdoms existed?
“And you believe him?”
