by Lexi C. Foss
“Fuck, little rose,” I groaned, my shaft aching with the desire to slip into her velvety heat.
I released her hair to work on shucking off my pants and then my boxers. There’d been a reason I wanted to wait, but hell if I could remember it now.
Her legs parted from my hips, her teeth releasing my neck as she tossed her head back on a throaty demand to take her. I lined myself up and drove inside her to the hilt, our cries of satisfaction mingling in the air.
Home, I realized. I’m finally fucking home.
And what a place it was because I’d never really had one. In all my years, I stuck to the shadows, lurking and playing the games set out before me. How fucking appropriate that the biggest task of all was the one writhing beneath me and welcoming me into her with open arms.
“You’re everything I didn’t know I needed,” I breathed, completely lost to the beauty unraveling in my arms. My heart beat for this woman and this woman alone. She was mine, and I never wanted to let her go.
“Bite me,” she begged. “Finish it.”
“Yes,” I agreed. It was time. Our vows were incomplete, and that needed to be rectified.
I pressed my mouth to her throbbing pulse and licked the cerulean magic heating her skin. Mmm, she tasted like power and sex and everything I could ever desire.
Our connection hung in the balance, a weight on both our spirits, waiting for this final thread.
And I granted it the climax of our lives by piercing her vein.
She screamed, her hips driving upward to meet mine, our pace becoming frantic as we both fought to find our release in a wave of insurmountable gratification. Time fucking stopped. Yet our hearts continued to beat, her blood pouring into my mouth as I took her with brutal thrusts that she responded to in kind.
It was animalistic.
Hot.
Ferocious.
Fucking.
No, a claiming. Her nails scraped down my back, drawing blood and causing me to hiss against her neck. I bit her again, her essence giving me the gift of life and completion and binding us on a path to insanity.
We were one.
Together.
Forever.
We were destined to overcome the agony of our existence, to fight in a war neither of us had signed up for, or to die trying.
Every thought, emotion, concern, sacrifice, and sensation traveled from my mind to hers, igniting a marathon of information for my mate to access.
She trembled beneath the onslaught, her eyes widening in shock as her pussy spasmed around me on an incredible climax that I felt through my own spirit.
I tumbled into oblivion after her, the orgasm ripping a hole through my chest and damning me to hell in the space of a breath. Everything burned in the best way, our powers dancing on a plane we could sense without seeing.
Our mating was complete.
Done.
Embedded in our spirits for eternity.
And I’d never felt more alive.
Aflora shook beneath me, her blue embers starting to fade as the heat of the moment began to subside. I pulled away from her neck to stare down at her in wonder. None of the prophecies prepared me for this intensity or the feelings that followed.
Pride.
Adoration.
Fear.
Because I knew what lay ahead of us. I knew what we would have to face together. And I knew what decision she would eventually have to make.
What if she chose him?
What if she followed the path fate originally set out for her before I stepped in the way?
There were so many unforeseen consequences of altering someone’s destiny, but I had to try. It was the only way for us to pursue the alternative future, the one Midnight Fae kind required of us to survive.
Her palm pressed to my cheek, her gaze searching. “There are so many secrets in your eyes right now,” she breathed, her voice a rasp against my lips. “I can sense the burdens you carry.”
“It’s all for you,” I admitted softly, my throat working to swallow. “No one should have to know what I know. And to tell you could alter everything.”
“Who are you?” she asked, her tone one of fascination, not displeasure. “I feel you inside me, Shade. A mix of fae. And so much pain.”
I grimaced, not wanting anyone to ever experience the weight of my emotions but knowing it was the price she had to pay for our mating. “I’m sorry,” I told her, pressing my forehead to hers. “I’m so sorry, Aflora.”
“Don’t be,” she said softly, her arms wrapping around me. “Share with me instead. Let me help you.”
I shook my head slowly. “I can’t. Not yet.” Not until you choose, I wanted to add but didn’t. Because it was unfair to lay that burden at her feet now. She wouldn’t understand it, not until Zakkai decided to reveal his true intent.
And then the future would realign again.
More prophecies would be born.
Allegiances would change.
Fae would die.
I closed my eyes and pressed my nose to her neck, inhaling the sweet scent of my female. One breath calmed my mind. A second drew me back to her and the reality around us. The cabin I’d built for her. A safe haven no one could find.
How easy it would be to just remain here, to keep her all to myself and let everyone else fend for themselves.
But that wasn’t me.
Everyone thought I only cared about my personal satisfaction. Little did they realize how much I’d sacrificed to be where I was today.
Yes, I took Aflora.
However, it was done with a purpose—to protect those I loved. Including her. An impossible claim, but I’d known about her for years, been aware of our intertwined fates, and had fallen for her after seeing dozens of prophecies all revolving around her fate. Our fate.
I couldn’t even begin to explain that to her.
All I could do was continue to guide her and allow her to make her own decisions. Like she did tonight when she bit me.
I drew my mouth to hers once more, kissing her thoroughly and thanking her with my tongue for the gift of her bond. She would never know how much it meant to me. Or maybe she’d sense it.
Regardless, it was done.
We belonged to each other.
And I intended to spend the rest of the evening thanking her for accepting me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Aflora
Shade’s mouth mesmerized me. I could kiss him for hours, and I did. We lost time in the seclusion of his cabin. He brought me berries and the cookies he’d mentioned. He gave me a fruity drink to quench my thirst. He introduced his mouth to every inch of my body. And then he took me again and again.
If this was all a dream, I no longer cared, because it was perfect. A fantasy come to life, with the most unlikely of males at my side.
Yet I felt the bruises of his past echoing in his spirit. So much agony. Selflessness. A caring man hidden beneath a perpetual shadow.
No one knew him.
And for a few brief moments of time, he allowed me to truly see the real Shade—a strong, intelligent, conniving male who put everyone above himself.
Including me.
I couldn’t see everything, mostly because that wasn’t how our bond worked, but I sensed his sacrifice. “Do you regret biting me?” I asked him, my palm resting against his sculpted abdomen as I snuggled into his side.
He drew his fingers through my hair, tucking the strands behind my ear. “No.”
The bond confirmed he meant that. Yet… “I sense so much sadness in you.”
He said nothing for a while, his fingers drifting through my hair as he studied the wood beams on the ceiling. “I’m not sad,” he finally replied. “I’m just tired. There’s so much I want to share and can’t, not without initiating substantial risk. And if I have to choose between your safety and my comfort, I’ll pick you every time.”
I shifted upward to rest my head on the pillow beside him. “Is that why you won’t tell me why y
ou bit me?”
“Yes.” He rotated toward me, so he lay on his side rather than his back, his icy blue eyes holding mine. “Do you hate me for it?”
“Yes,” I said. “And no.”
He seemed to understand that, not needing me to voice anything more. “One day you’ll understand. One day soon.”
“And will I hate you when the truth is revealed?” I wondered out loud.
“Possibly, yes.”
I was afraid he would say that. “I don’t want to hate you.”
“I don’t want you to hate me either,” he whispered. “But I’ll accept your disdain, as is my due.”
“You’re used to people hating you,” I realized aloud.
“I am.”
I pressed my palm to his cheek and drew my thumb across his lower lip. “I see you, Shade.”
“Do you?”
I nodded. “Yes.” I leaned in to kiss him softly, craving his touch with an abandon I couldn’t ignore. “I feel you, too.”
He palmed the back of my neck and allowed me to slowly explore his mouth with my tongue. It was a lazy embrace filled with unspoken words.
The bond had opened a connection to him unlike any I’d ever felt, yet something about it was familiar, too. I suspected it had to do with the roots we’d already established inside each other with his initial two bites. Now that he’d finished our mating, our link had blossomed into a world of color and sensation.
His pain became mine.
His fears, too.
Yet I didn’t fully understand them or why they existed. I just knew it had something to do with whatever he’d seen.
“You have Fortune Fae in you,” I realized suddenly, pulling back.
“Yes,” he admitted softly, sliding his hand down from my neck to rest against my hip. “On my mother’s side.”
My lips parted. “That makes you an…?” I couldn’t finish, surprise rendering me speechless.
“An abomination,” he whispered. “Of a sort, anyway. Fortune Fae Alphas are former Midnight Fae who refused to drink blood, making us all related at our origin. Yet we’re not allowed to crossbreed, why?”
“Because it makes powerful kin,” I breathed.
He nodded. “Yes. And those who are in power right now don’t appreciate the challenge cross-species pose. But a thousand years ago, that wasn’t an issue. My grandmother mated my grandfathers without much prejudice. One was a Fortune Fae Alpha, the other a Death Blood—the former king before the Nacht family took over.”
I frowned. “Wait, but you said your mother’s side had Fortune Fae?”
Another nod, his expression grim. “My father married into the familial line of power, then claimed it as his own because females are not allowed to lead.”
“An archaic law,” I muttered.
“Actually, no, it’s not. The Nacht family—Kols’s grandfather, specifically—enacted it. My mother would have been on the Council had it not been for his chauvinistic actions. He used my grandmother as an example of why women shouldn’t lead.”
“How?” I wondered out loud, captivated by his history. This was the most Shade had ever revealed about himself, and I felt through the bond how much this all meant to him. And instinct told me it all tied into our fate as well.
“She went into hiding shortly after the call for Quandary Bloods to be eradicated.” A shadow touched his features, one that darkened his ice-blue irises to a dark gemstone similar to sapphires. “Constantine Nacht stated that my grandmother’s emotional state forced her to choose family over duty. He said all women were born with that loyalty flaw and therefore were not fit to lead. Thus, my father was marked as the Death Blood incumbent over my mother.”
“He didn’t object?” I asked, shocked.
“No. Actually, he fully supported it.” Shade’s jaw ticked, showing how he felt about that. “And the rest, as they say, is history.”
“But what happened to your grandmother and her mates?”
He studied me for a long moment. “They suffered a similar fate to the Quandary Bloods.”
“They died?”
“Not exactly,” he replied cryptically. “What happened with the rock, Aflora?”
His abrupt change in subject took me aback, some sort of wall going up between us. He didn’t want me to know about his grandparents, which meant he was hiding something.
As much as I wanted to press him, I sensed the importance of letting it go.
His Fortune Fae relations explained so much about him, particularly his penchant for secrets. He knew things others didn’t, giving him an advantage underlined in a myriad of liabilities. No wonder he kept me in the dark so often; he didn’t want to influence my choices, and yet, for some reason, he’d taken some of my decisions away from me.
Such as our mating.
“You bit me that day to prevent something else from happening to me,” I said, ignoring his rock comment for the moment. “Gina told me I had two paths, that I was already in your sights.”
“His sights,” Shade corrected. “Yes.”
My brow furrowed. “Are you saying she wasn’t talking about you?”
“She was, in regard to the paths,” he replied. “But I can’t tell you more. The rest you’ll need to learn on your own.”
“Why?”
“Because there are some choices I refuse to take from you, Aflora. This is your destiny to follow, not mine to dictate.”
“Yet you stole my ability to decide when you bit me that day,” I pointed out. “So you’ll alter some of my paths, but not all of them.”
“I alter the ones I’m destined to alter,” he replied, slipping his palm upward to cup my cheek. “Our paths were meant to intertwine. I just upped the timeline.”
I wanted to ask him what that meant, but I knew he wouldn’t tell me.
Fortune-telling was a tricky game. If he told me too much, he risked disrupting the balance and changing our fates to an unforeseeable future. Which was why he mostly focused on facts I already knew, detailing the past decisions and how they’d already impacted our lives.
But he carefully avoided anything that could explain what tomorrow held for us both, despite the fact that I could sense he knew perfectly well what to expect. Or, at least, he had an inkling.
Because that was how Fortune Fae worked—their visions didn’t often make sense, the images a cluster of thoughts that may or may not form a coherent prediction. And from what I gathered of Shade’s comments, there were multiple avenues for our futures to take. He only dictated the ones he could control, like that day outside the coffee shop.
“The rock,” I said slowly, returning to his question and giving him a reprieve from the fate discussion. I cleared my throat. “It, uh, showed me something devastating. The fire.”
His brow came down. “The fire?”
“Yeah. At the Death Blood Education Building.” I closed my eyes to consider what I’d seen and relayed the information to him. He remained silent the entire time, allowing me to tell him what I saw, how it felt, the horror of realizing I was trapped inside someone else, and the eventual kiss against the rock. “He said he’d see me soon, like he knew I’d have that vision.”
I shivered at the memory, my blood running cold as I opened my eyes again after several minutes of reliving the nightmare.
“How could he know that?” I asked. “Or was it…? Did my mind change it?”
He shook his head slowly, his expression holding more mysteries that I longed to decipher. “He must have placed the memory in the rock, knowing it would fall into your hands.”
“How is that possible?” It didn’t make any sense. “There’s no way he could have known I’d pick that rock in class or that we’d be playing with psychometry.”
“Unless he planted the idea in Headmaster Irwin’s head,” Shade suggested grimly. “Did you pick up the rock, or did it fall into your hand?”
“I…” I paused, thinking back on how I selected the item from the box. “I told you—it was th
e only thing that fit…”
“Because the other items were enchanted not to,” he replied, falling to his back. “Fuck.” He pressed his palms to his eyes and muttered a string of curses.
“You know who he is,” I said. “Don’t you?”
He didn’t reply.
Because of course he wouldn’t.
“Shade, I need to know who he is.”
“You already do,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Or you should, anyway.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Does he feel familiar to you?” he countered, arching a brow.
The moment he said it, my heart stopped. “The magic…” I trailed off, thinking about the day of the attack. “I… I recognized it.”
Shade nodded. “Yeah. You would.”
“Why?”
He just stared at me, sad. “We should get back, Aflora. I’m sure Kols and Zeph are worried about you.”
“And you suddenly care how they feel?” I countered, actually curious.
“You say you see me,” he replied, his eyes still holding that touch of despair that broke my heart. “But do you, Aflora? Do you really see me?”
My soul squeezed in torment, his tone and expression killing me a little. “Shade…”
“It’s okay,” he replied, his knuckles brushing my cheek. “But we really should go. They can’t sense or find us here, which has to be driving them insane.”
“They can’t?” I glanced around the cabin, noting the windows revealing a dimly lit field outside. Nightfall. “We’ve been here a while.”
“We have,” he agreed, his hand leaving my skin.
I immediately reached for him, not wanting to separate. Not yet. “Just a few more minutes?” I asked, pleading with him through my eyes.
He seemed reluctant but finally agreed with a subtle nod. “For a kiss.”
“No,” I replied, causing him to frown. “For more than a kiss.” I moved on top of him to straddle his hips, then leaned down to take his mouth with mine. His hands immediately found my waist, his palms gently sliding up and down my sides.
“Shade,” I murmured against his mouth.
“Aflora,” he whispered, one of his hands gliding up my spine to my neck and higher into my hair.