Page 117 of Born for Silk

I frown at the jumpy soft cadence of her childlike laugh, hating how much I love it. It is one thing to accept humanity and another to welcome castration… I like my balls.

“You’ll stay?” It finally dawns on her. “We sleep together all night? Every night?”

“Always.”

I hold her to my chest, and she curls her knees to the side. Safe. Safe with me.

Like I promised her sister decades ago.

With a hand covering the back of her head, fingers laced in silky black strands, and another scooped around her hips, I rock my new Purpose to sleep.

Chapter Four

Aster

Feeling a warm presence beneath me, I slowly bat my eyes open, and for a breath, I almost forget where I am. Then his room blinks into place, the conversations from yesterday and how ‘everything is different now’ soak into me.

His chest rises and falls, and I trace the rippling tattoos with my finger. I absorb the moment, exploring his skin, trailing my fingertip in the valley between thick muscles. Then I poke a scar to find it unyielding like lead.

“Bullets…” he murmurs, his voice sleepy— husky. “Bullet holes. The bullets are inside.”

“Pardon?”

With a deep growl that rumbles beneath me, he stretches out, his body tightening with strength and power as he wakes up. “I earned them.”

A lump swells in my throat. “That’s tragic.”

I think about the big scar on his lower lip, the one that easily shapes his resting expression into a snarl.

“And the one on your lip?” I ask.

“Odio.”

I blink fast. “Why?”

“To punish me.”

“For what exactly?”

A dark laugh leaves him, but it’s hollow, haunting. “I decapitated his previous master. He needed to show me that it mattered to him in the only way he knew how.”

Woah.

I don’t know what to say to that, but I am not entirely surprised. After all, Odio is a beast of loyalty. Of defence. Of royalty. The books say that when the eagles all die, it will mean the end of The Cradle as we know it.

“How old is Odio?” I ask.

Rome’s arms cover me, a blanket of impossible warmth and shelter. My skin prickles as he explores my naked form curled on top of him.

“He is fifty-five.” His answer is mechanical, as though he is no longer interested in the conversation, but keeps his word and allows me to ask my questions.

“How long do they live?”

“His mother lived to eighty-six. Twice the lifespan of the Wedgetailed Eagle from the old-world.”

His hands would be roaming and lazy if they weren’t so large, warm, and involuntarily firm, handling and consuming every inch of my flesh.

His nose moves into my hair, “Aster.” He inhales. “Vulnerability. Mine.”

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