Page 102 of Renegade Kingdom
I thought about it. Really thought about it, because Alyssa deserved honesty and I was tired of being anything other than honest. “Not the way I expected. I thought... when I used to think about what would happen after the nightmare,ifthere was an after, I assumed I’d be broken. Hollowed out. I thought freedom would feel like an empty room.” I looked at the shadows curlingaround my hand. “It doesn’t. It feels like being handed a second chance and having no idea what to do with it.”
“And the magic?”
I flexed my fingers and the shadows responded, flowing and rippling like dark water. “That’s the part I can’t wrap my head around. I’ve never had magic. It wasn’t something that’s even a possibility where I come from. The nightmare was a parasite, not a gift. And now I’ve got this... this thing... and it’s part of me in a way the nightmare never was. The nightmare was an invasion. This feels like something that was always supposed to be there and just hadn’t arrived yet.”
“What can you do with it?”
“I have no idea. I guess I’m still figuring it out.” The admission came with a breathless laugh that surprised me. When was the last time I’d laughed? Months ago, at least. Before the nightmare had tightened its grip enough to take even that from me. “It responds to what I’m feeling. When I’m calm, it drifts. When I’m angry or scared, it thickens, gets darker. And sometimes it just moves on its own, like it’s exploring. Like it’s curious about the world and using me to look at it.”
The shadows chose that moment to demonstrate, a tendril reaching toward Alyssa of its own accord. I pulled it back, heat rising in my face.
“It keeps doing that,” I muttered.
“I noticed.” Her voice was soft. Amused. But underneath the amusement there was something else, something that made the wolf pace inside my chest. “Maybe you should let it.”
The air shifted.
I looked at her. She looked back. And the thread between us, that thin bright line that had been humming since I walked through the door, pulled tight.
“Alyssa.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I feel it too.”
“The bond, it’s barely anything yet. I don’t even know if I’m doing this right. I’ve never...” I stopped myself before I could spiral. The nightmare was gone but the habits it had carved into me were still there. The second-guessing. The assumption that anything I wanted was a weakness to be exploited. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Then let me show you.”
She closed the distance between us and put her hands on my face. Her palms were warm. The light beneath her skin pulsed against my jaw, and where it met the shadow magic that had crept up my neck, the two didn’t clash. They wove together. Light threading through dark, dark threading through light, and the sensation was so overwhelming that my eyes fell shut.
“You don’t have to figure everything out tonight,” she said. “The magic, the wolf, what you’re capable of. All of that can wait. Right now, I just want you here. With me. Is that something you want?”
I opened my eyes. She was so close. Her breath on my lips, her hands on my skin, and the bond between us singing with a need that was making it hard to think about anything else.
“Yes,” I said. “More than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
She kissed me.
Soft at first. Careful. The way you’d touch something you were afraid of breaking. I let her set the pace, let her find me, because this was my first kiss after becoming a free man again and I wanted to feel every second of it without the nightmare’s voice poisoning it.
Then her tongue touched mine and something snapped.
Not the bond. Something in me. A wall I’d built so long ago I’d forgotten it was there. The part that said I wasn’t allowed to have this. That wanting was dangerous. That opening up only gave something new a way in.
The wall came down, and the wolf howled.
I grabbed her. My hands found her waist and pulled her against me, and the sound she made against my mouth sent fire down my spine. She was warm, so warm, and everywhere we touched the light and shadow magic swirled together like ink in water. I could feel the bond between us brightening, thickening, responding to the contact like a flame given oxygen.
“Damon.” My name in her mouth. I’d heard the nightmare say my name a thousand times. This was so different it might have been a different word entirely. “Damon, please.”
I walked her backward until her shoulders met the wall. My body pressed against hers and I could feel every curve, every place where she fit against me like she’d been made for it. Maybe she had. Maybe I’d been made for her. The thought didn’t terrify me the way it once would have. When I was a boy playing at being a man and still afraid of having anything permanent in my life.
Her hands slid under my shirt, fingertips tracing up my stomach, and I shuddered. When was the last time someone had touched me without trying to hurt me? The sensation was almost too much. Almost. But the wolf was steady in my chest, a low rumble of encouragement, and Alyssa’s eyes were on mine, watching for any sign that this was too fast, too soon, too close.
“Don’t stop,” I told her. “Please don’t stop.”
She pulled my shirt over my head and her mouth found my collarbone. I groaned, my head falling back against nothing as her lips traced a path across my chest. Her hands mapped me as she went. The scars the nightmare had left. The ridges of bone where I’d lost too much weight in captivity. She didn’t flinch from any of it. She touched it all with the same reverence, and something cracked inside my chest that I didn’t know how to name.
“You’re here,” she murmured against my skin. “You’re free. You’re mine.”
