Page 80 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

“Valen.”

“I know. I’ve got you.”

He fucks me through it. Deep, hard, the same rhythm all the way. I break open around his cock with my nails buried in his back and his name coming out of me on every stroke. The gold breaks over both of us, pouring out of my skin, across his chest, up into the low light overhead.

He slows to almost nothing and keeps moving in me until I’ve stopped shaking. Then he wraps an arm around my back and rolls us over without pulling out. He brings me up on top of him with his cock still inside me. I brace both hands on his chest and come forward until the angle works. I make sure of it before I move at all. Then I ride him.

My wings come out. They snap open behind me at full span, pale in the low light, wide enough to touch both walls of this room. Nobody has ever seen them do that. I leave them out. Valen watches. Both hands lock onto my hips and stay. He brings me down harder onto his cock every time. His eyes go over my face, my throat, my wings, and come back to my face again.

The light off my own skin is bright enough to put color on the walls of this room. It’s on his chest under my hands, in his hair. I’m grinding my clit against him at the bottom of every stroke. My rhythm turns ragged, faster. I’m slamming down on him now and he’s driving up to meet me. A sound tears up out of me that isn’t a word. It’s his name breaking in my throat before I get to the end of it. He answers it.

“Ana.”

He’s never called me that before. He says it rough, wrecked, quiet. I’ve got nothing left after that. His control breaks with mine, hips stuttering under me. He comes inside me with both hands gripping my hiips hard enough that there’ll be marks there tomorrow. I’m going to be glad of every one of them.

I collapse onto his chest. He wraps both arms around me before I’ve landed. Neither of us has anything left. My wings settle loose around both of us, wide, open, resting where they land. He puts a hand on one of them. Only my parents have ever touched my wings. He lays his hand along the top edge and leaves it there. I don’t want him to move it. His other hand moves slowly up my spine, between the wings, all the way and back down.

“I love you, Ana.”

I lift my head off his chest to look at him when I say it back.

“I love you, Valen.”

Then I put my head back down where it was.

“Stay.” I say it into his chest, quietly.

His arm tightens around me.

“I already have.”

Neither of us says anything for a long time. His heart beats under my ear. The light in here has come down to almost nothing. Somewhere past these walls there’s a crack in this realm that nobody has closed. Three realms away there’s a valley full of people who need to hear what we’re bringing home. And there’s a night on a balcony in Doria that he’s only ever heard about from Faelan. It’s been sitting in me for days.

All of it can wait.

Chapter 48

Nyxiana

Itake us home. The crossing takes nothing out of me. I come out the other side of it with more in me than I had going in. His blood is in me now.

We land in the valley in full daylight. The air is different. I’ve phased home into this valley more times than I can count. Every one of those landings had the failing seal sitting over the top of it. Faelan had his hands in it underneath that the whole time. There’s nothing over this place now but sky.

My wings are still out. They’ve been folded against my back since the chamber. Putting them away before I walk into a yard full of people is the oldest thing I do. I get most of the way into it before I stop. I’ve called myself a vampire since I was young. It’s the first word out of my mouth when anybody asks what I am. It’s true but it’s never been all of it. The wings come from my mother. Most of the people who know me have never seen them.

They stay. We walk in toward the lodge. The relief reaches me before we’re halfway across the grass. It’s running through every bond in this pack at once. Ansel’s out on the treeline where he always is. He lifts a hand at us as we come past. He’s never taken his eyes off those trees long enough to do that before.

Two of the younger ones have a ball game going against the barn wall. One of them sees us and drops the ball in the grass. Word of what happened up there has come home ahead of us. I’ve no idea how it got here. Every face that turns toward us across that yard is asking me the same question. Nobody says it out loud. Is it actually over?

I give them the smallest nod I have. One of the older women starts clapping. The man beside her joins her. Then four more. Then everybody in the yard is clapping. Fifty wolves standing in the grass in the middle of the afternoon. It doesn’t let up. Then they come. Hands land on my back and my arms. More land on him. The whole compound closes in on the two of us, they’ve kept a polite two feet of air around me since the day I got here, today nobody bothers and I stand there and let them.

One of the kids stops dead in front of me and stares at my wings. Her mother takes her by the arm and moves her along.

Dane has one arm around Nova at the edge of it. The two of them are quiet in the middle of all that noise. Nova’s wrist is bare. The silver is no longer on her skin. Not faded, not gone quiet, there’s nothing left where it was. I’ve never seen the inside of that woman’s wrist without it. Harper has a sleeve shoved up past the elbow. She hasn’t done that in front of this pack since the day she touched the Debt Stone and she isn’t looking at the bare place. Ben has two fingers resting on it while the two of them talk to Dane. Kari’s got her right hand in Rafe’s. When a wolf passes she pulls her hand loose, turns her palm up to show them then gives it back to him. Then group breaks up. There’s a smoker going behind the lodge, has been for hours by the smell of it, and people start moving that way. Two of the women drag a table out into the grass. People start past us toward the smoker. Valen stays where he is, he’ll come to a fire and sit at it. He takes the outside log every time. I stop with him. His hair has come loose over his forehead and he’s left it there. There’s a closed line at his collarbone where a construct came through his shirt. His eyes go across the yard once before coming back to me. Dane comes across the yard to us. He puts his hand out and Valen takes it.

“Every wolf I put on that line is still walking,” Dane says. “The two of you did that.”

Valen keeps hold of his hand a second past where the shake ends. Then Dane looks at me.