Scet glanced up, startled, as the tent door flapped open admitting a swirl of shadows that dimmed the small lantern on his table. Amid the darkened mass stood the one woman that had the power to stop his breath and send his heart hammering at the same time.
Gods she was beautiful, even with the disconcerting shadows that trailed her. For a moment, all he could do was stare. Her wild tangle of auburn hair had been washed and bound. Her skin, now free of all but the white scarred memory of wounds. She wore a clean and well fitted gown of black and it stuck to her body like her skin before flaring loose at her hips. Standing there in the breeze, tendrils of hair and fabric floating around her, she looked like an ancient goddess, or some warrior maiden of old.
Blue-green eyes scanned the meager contents of his tent.
She had come to him.
For three days at the Aerie, and several before that while they traveled, he had carefully tended his woman while keeping his distance. Barely. He had held her while she cried over her trials, resisting anything farther.
He wanted her badly, with a near trembling desperation. But he wanted forever. A mate. And despite what he had told himself during the battle at the temple, his pride would allow no less than her choosing him, too, something he couldn't guarantee while she mourned the demon.
But she was there now.
He stood, folding the book the Archon had gifted him, leaving a marker at the surprising revelation he had been absorbed with. He could deal with that later. Nothing, not even the fate of the world, was more important than her. His muscles pulsed, calling for action, but still he waited.
“I don't belong in that Aerie,” she announced.
It was a statement about herself, about more than the Aerie, but he found himself relieved. After the Archon's offer, he had been concerned that the pull of her sister, combined with her deep sadness, would lure her to stay.
“What will you do?” he asked, as casually as he could manage. He needed an idea of what she was thinking, to formulate a response, some way to force her to be with him...because there was no way in all the six realms he would be leaving without her.
“I am different,” she warned. “I'm not fit for pack politics any longer,” she glanced at him, “I didn't prevent the Alpha's death, to them that will be unforgivable...they will never trust me.”
He would make them, but he wasn't about to interrupt her to tell her that. She had yet to answer his question and instinct told him to wait, to see where she was going with her speech. When he didn't respond, didn't agree nor disagree with her conclusions, her eyes took on a desperate sheen.
“I cannot stay cooped up like the mates of an Aerie pack, and especially not as pampered as an Alpha's mate. There are more orbs, Scet, and fate calls me to them. I am going to destroy them and make sure they cannot open a portal to this world.”
Scet nearly nodded, but withheld the movement at the last moment. He knew she would choose this path, and, according to what he had just been reading, she was the only one that could destroy the orbs.
But that wasn't what peaked his interest.
She had mentioned mates. Twice.
“Are you offering for me woman?” he asked softly.
“I...,” her lips turned downward in a luscious pout and her eyes watered with uncertainty before she straightened her spine and met him face on. “Yes,” her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. “Yes, I am. Will you be my—”
That was the spirit he knew, and loved, within her, and Six be damned, but it was love.
He launched himself at her.
***
Scet flew across the tent at her. She had time to emit a small squeak of surprise and then she was crushed between his massive arms and trunk-like chest, his mouth crashing to hers.
Well, that answered the question of whether he still desired her. The rigid press of his manhood against her stomach made her gasp. Scet took advantage and slipped his silky tongue into her mouth, coaxing, teasing.
She kissed him back, allowing every emotion from the last few weeks to escape in the action. The hurt and frustration, the relief, and, at the peak of it all, her desire. She wanted him, desperately, wanted what only he could offer, this man who had stood with her through her darkest time and still accepted her; more than accepted her if the little thing he was doing with his tongue was any indication.
Deft fingers found the fasteners on her gown and, in moments, it slipped from her shoulders and pooled on the ground at her feet. She stood before him, naked as the day they had met. Her wounds had closed, at last, but they hadn't healed fully; tight white scars now resided on her ribs and arms, a permanent reminder of what she had faced.
He groaned, the sound reminding her of a hungry animal. His fingers were everywhere, brushing the hair from her face, pulling her backside firmly to him, running across the tightened buds of her nipples.
She pressed against him, opening herself, passion matching his. Lust slammed into her like a punch to the chest, her breathing turned ragged. She pulled at his clothes, wanting them off. Now.
At last, a grunt of frustration on her end had him break his kiss long enough to disrobe, then he scooped her up against him and took three giant strides to the bed. Adda groaned in pleasure as his body partially covered hers, the hard muscles of his chest rubbing deliciously against her breasts. His left hand cupped her head, turning her so he could nibble at her neck, small little bites, reminiscent of the Shifter marking. The other hand ran along her hips, feather light, working its way around the globes of her rear. Pleasure shuddered through her, rising, growing with every sure stroke. Expertly, he circled the place where her spine disappeared.
She squirmed closer, arching her back and pressing her breasts against him. When he huffed against her neck, the heat of his breath stirring the sensitive skin there, her eyes rolled back in her head.
“Roll onto your stomach,” the command was strained. She cracked an eye open, he was kneeling on the bed at her side, his body tight with lust, his huge erection straining out above her. She swallowed, remembering his girth and the discomfort it was likely to cause if she was over eager. As if noticing her attention, the appendage twitched.
“Now, Adda,” he ground out.
She did as he asked and rolled away from him. No sooner had she turned over than he was straddling the thigh closest to him, prodding a cheek. His fingers continued their stroking, along her ribs and waist and under the curve at the top of her thigh. He nudged her legs farther apart, his traveling hand coming to rest on her back, the other spreading her folds as he nudged himself against her, the tip of his cock slipping against the moistness already gathered there.
“Six, Scet, please,” she panted, raising her hips so she could push back against him.
She didn't get far. He held her in place, making slow circles around her entrance, spiking a wave of intensity every time he came around front and flicked over the little nub there.
The hand on her back slid lower, a long finger sliding between her cheeks.
Adda stiffened. The feeling of him there making her hold very, very still.
He murmured something unintelligible and pressed inward. The combination of stimulus nearly drove her to peak. He was barely inside her, but already his cock pressed against her front walls. He pulled out and pressed in again, slowly, but all the way this time. This time he leaned over her, his second hand finding that perfect spot on her front, while the other ran circles around her anus.
“Gah!” she cried, her body tightening around him, the pressure of everything he was doing flinging her passion higher. He slid outward, dragging a disappointed mewling from her lips. This time when he entered, he wiggled the tip of his finger against her anal opening and flicked against her front.
That was all it took and she was exploding, writhing, her head thrown back, bucking her body madly against him trying to take more of him. He went perfectly still for all of a breath before cursing and wrapping his arm across her front at her hips. As wild as she was, he pumped into her, growling like a wild thing.
When they were both sated, he collapsed behind her, still joined with her, those sneaky little fingers of his brushing the hair from her face. He leaned in and gave her a chaste kiss, and then a lick, right where her shoulder met her neck.
“I have wanted this from the start,” he whispered to her. “If this is what fate has planned for me, then I happily accept.”
She was too weak to respond, but a smile lifted the corner of her mouth. The first in a long, long while.
She flinched when he bit her, the pain shocked her out of her complacency. She knew it would hurt, but that didn't make it any easier. He lapped at the wound, warmth spread across it, down her neck and then shot through her body.
Adda gasped at the surge of emotion, and deep certainty she felt flooding from him. This was more than an acceptance, and it was more than lust. Something precious and tentative bloomed inside her, and she knew it was love. She opened her mouth to tell him, to say that he had touched her to her very soul, but then she stopped. There was a better way to let him know her feelings. She would show him. Smiling, she signaled for release and then rolled toward him, running her hands along his muscles with pure reverence. And then she returned the mating.
EPILOGUE – Shortly after the destruction of the orb.
Nex writhed in the tangle of pain, more pain than he had ever experienced in his—very long—life span. But while he writhed, he also reveled. Pain was good. It meant he still existed.
He was in a void. Somewhere between realms. A place with pressure, and yet not, of light and dark, of excruciating noise and piercing silence. The dualities would have torn a mortal mind to shreds, even a mind with much vaster comprehension was pushed to its limits.
Was this to be his end? Because as much as he wanted existence, an eternity of torment was not what he had planned.
Adda had ruined that, but instead of the violent anger to which he was prone, he found himself...intrigued. What drove the woman to make a choice that she thought would be her death? If the orb had been set differently, it most assuredly would have been her death.
But he already knew. It was the one thing that had always drawn him to mortals. A thing that made no logical or survival sense, one that he strove again and again to understand.
Love. Adda had fallen in love. And because of that, she made a choice that he couldn't have foreseen, one that was entirely selfless, with no known benefit to herself whatsoever. And he had been defeated by it.
He struggled in pain for an eternity—time was nothing between the realms, only a hint of a thought—before a rough force drug him out.
He collapsed, as much as a being without a physical body could, on the soil, soft as velvet and yet stone. Relief from the new lack of pain now twisted with anxiety. He could not 'see' in the sense that mortals could, but he had his senses, the shadows that spread throughout the dark realm like tentacles of a great beast told him everything he needed to know.
The dark goddess stood before him, her colors swirling in tempo to the rage she emitted. Terrifying beauty with skin so black the darkness was absorbed toward her. She pursed her plump lips and frowned at him.
“Once again you have failed me, Nex. I should have left you between, for I have extended far too much energy for your sake, but I find myself unwilling to forgo revenge,” her voice pierced the world around him, stabbing into every orifice, every pore, until her displeasure became the very core of his being.
“I sought to open the portal, my Queen, with that you might have entered the mortal realm before Valarious even had the energy to gather his forces...”
“Lies,” the Queen seethed through perfectly white teeth. A blast of color racked him. Her power, not shadow as most assumed, but all color wrapped up and tangled with each other. Chaos. “You sought the absolution of a physical form. Freedom for yourself instead of serving your Queen.”
Nex bowed his head, unable to do otherwise. The pressure of his Queen's terrible power confined him, forced him to reduce his presence, to shrink his size until he was no more than a speck before her might.
“Well,” suddenly her voice dropped to a pleasant hum, barely above a whisper. “I have a surprise for you, my wayward Quataliki-armu-doseth, I grant your wish. You will have a form.”
Nex perked up, but dread filled him. The Queen was not benevolent. Whatever she was about to do, it would be no gift for him.
“I grant you a body...a mortal body. You will live with the vile creatures you so fancy and when I come to my power you will be there to watch them die.” She stepped forward and lifted what in mortal form would have been the equivalent to his chin. “Then, Nex, I will kill you, and without a mortal soul, you will be sentenced to the oblivion you so fear.”
Her hold turned piercing, the long talons of her nails slicing into his presence, ripping out the power that made him Quataliki-armu-doseth, ripping apart everything that constructed his being.
He screamed, but no sound came.
Nothing came, except the dark.
The End