Page 150 of Ignite
I smile. I knew it wouldn’t.
“You were made for me, just as I was for you,” I say in answer to the question she didn’t ask.
I don’t want my fire to hurt her, so it won’t. It’s a flare of light right now, nothing more. Warm enough to leave a wave of goosebumps across her flesh, but cool enough that it doesn’t cause pain.
With one hand positioned on the bed to hold myself up, the other continues its exploration. My palm closes over her breast, squeezing until her head is thrown back and her eyes are rolling in the same direction.
Each punishing thrust of my hips brings her closer to the edge—and me along with her. I watch in fascination as her body begins to tremble beneath me, her legs squeezing tighter around my waist as my pace quickens.
“You’re mine,” I growl, and she moans. Her pink cheeks burn a deeper shade of red. “In this moment and every moment after this one, you’remine.”
Something in the claiming causes her to snap, her hips driving up to meet mine in a sloppy rhythm.
“But Lunaria,” I rasp, causing her gaze to fly to mine. “Know that I belong to you. I have beenyoursfrom the moment I saw you in that ballroom. In this realm and every other, I am wholly yours.”
She cries out beneath me in the same breath I come undone for her, unable to hold it back any longer.
My body falls on top of her, and she snuggles up close, hardly moving as I pull out. She mumbles something—half asleep—but just clear enough for me to hear as I start to drift off.
“You’re everything to me, Graylen,” she whispers.
I fall asleep with her perfect voice floating around in my head and my arms wrapped tightly around her.
Sixty
Sunstone
This camp is disgusting.
I love it.
It’s the remnants of great warriors—a tale throughout the land through fireside song and bedtime stories. As a warrior, it’s everything I would want in a legacy.
Dirt is built up on the floor of Brielle’s old cabin. Chairs are broken, there’s holes in the ceilingandfloor, and there’s a certainty that several rodents have taken up base in each of the rooms.
The space where the windowpane used to be is completely open to the outside world, my boots crunching on shattered glass as I walk up to it.
“It wasn’t always like this,” Brielle mumbles, and I turn back to where she stands in the center of the room. Her eyes are distant as she runs a finger along the table in front of a moth-eaten couch. The motion creates a line across the table, clearing asmall path through the dirt, dust, and mold that has collected there.
“I wish I could’ve seen it in its prime,” I say softly, feeling a sort of reverence that demands for quiet words. “It must be hard to be back here now.”
Brielle nods, fisting her hand and straightening her spine to face me.
“We’ll get Calix and Maddox on fixing it up.” She forges ahead. “We might need all of Maddox’s water abilities to wash the grime from the place. It’s going to need a lot of work before anyone can sleep in here.
“There’s a place for the wyverns not too far from here. Zephyr will remember and it’ll help the others feel more comfortable.” She swallows, her gaze growing distant again.
It should be Lunaria here with Zephyr. Not me.
Brielle clears her throat and heads toward the doorway as she says, “Let’s go see how your mother’s cottage fared through the years.”
My brows raise. I had grown up on the stories of her being a healer in the war both from Brielle and from my mother. But I’ve never seen it. A flurry of excitement jolts my body forward as I follow behind Brielle out of the broken cabin.
The path to my mother’s cottage is quick—well, less of a path and more of an overgrown forest in between the two buildings. I imagine it used to be open, but there’s now trees taller than the wyverns that have grown between the two.
Fallen limbs and uprooted trees litter the ground, causing my attention to be downward to avoid falling. Brielle is silently taking it all in, likely lost in memories that war with the scene in front of us.
My mother’s cottage is visible through the overgrown forest, but the closer we get the more I see it isn’t any better off than Brielle’s.
