He lowered his head to his chest in submission and nodded.
“Urgh! The fuck you will!” Hana shouted, slamming her hand on my chest. “I love you more than life, Lukas, and I have missed you so much, but hear me when I say I will never speak to you again if you get between me and my soulmate.”
It was Ilaria’s turn to smirk next to me as my jaw tensed. We glared at Ronnie over Hana’s head as he lifted his red eyes to peer at me meekly. We pointed our finger at him once more. “Fine. I will allow you to be with my sister as long as you promise you will be the best fucking mate in the history of supernaturals. I fucking mean it. One wrong move, and you will feel the entire depths of hell feasting on your ass when I am through with it.”
“Yes, master,” Ronnie mumbled, nodding his head.
“Don’t call him that,” Hana snapped, glaring up at me as I smirked.
“He has no choice. I am his master and he will do what the fuck I say.”
“Well, I am his soulmate and he will do whatever the fuck I say, too.”
“Ronnie, I feel so sorry for you right now,” Ilaria chuckled.
“Don’t.” Ronnie smiled sheepishly, looking between us all. “I’ve always been a secret submissive.”
Hana’s cheeks flamed as she peered over at him. A look of desire between them caused the air to thicken and bile to rise in my throat, wanting to kill the fucker all over again. Ilaria placed her hand on my shoulder firmly. “I’m getting this man out of here before he kills you, Ron. Are you okay with getting back to the palace yourselves? We will meet you there once he’s cooled off.”
Ronnie nodded. “Yeah. Arius gave me the power to transport now.”
Before we could say another word, we found ourselves no longer standing in the Knowlton’s cellars, where only ten minutes ago I thought my life would end, but in the brightly decorated and bohemian apartment owned by Ilaria’s friend Neve. She shoved our chest aggressively, slamming our back into the wall and pressed her entire body against ours.
“Now I have you both together. You two are in so much fucking trouble,” she husked, leaning up on her tiptoes to brush her lips against ours. “Did you really think I would let you get yourself killed? That you would escape this life without my soul? That I would let you die like that? You are never leaving me.”
It was only then that we had a chance to really take in the sight of her. She had a cut on her forehead that was healing, but dried blood ran down the side of her face. Faint bruising under one eye and raw red finger marks on her neck. Blood covered every inch of her exposed skin and our nostrils flared with rage at just how much she had put herself through to save our life.
Sensing our concern, she smiled up at our face as she traced her fingers over our skin sensually, causing a stir in our dick. “Don’t worry. It’s not all my blood. Some of it is mine. Some of it is yours. Some of it is Belladonna’s. But most of it is Mitchell’s.”
Our jaw ticked. Our hand snapped up and grabbed her jaw firmly, holding her still as her eyes danced with desire and excitement. “Don’t you EVER put your life before ours again. You are our mate. Our entire world. We only protect you from now on. No one will ever fucking touch you again.”
She licked those plump lips, leaving a seductive shine on them as she whispered, “That is not how this works, Red. You are my mate. My entire world. And I protect you too.”
Our heart expanded, breaking the shackles of invisible chains that we had wrapped around it for centuries to protect us from any more pain. But she had cut through them with a fucking smile. She may have given me the name Heart Thief, but she was the one who stole ours and made it beat again. Scarred and blackened but it still fucking beat. It beat just for her.
Addiction
Heloweredhisforeheadagainst mine and closed his eyes. With his arms wrapped tightly around my lower back, I could feel the weight of his body leaning into mine, the mental and physical exhaustion seeping through every pore of his skin.
“You need to feed,” I whispered against his lips, but he slowly rocked his head side to side against mine, refusing to open his eyes.
“This is all I need.”
“You’re exhausted. You haven’t eaten in days. You turned Ronnie. That fucking bitch killed you. You came back to life and then had to fight against her magic again. And now you are sharing control of your body, which must take a lot of energy to have you both present. Let somebody take care of you for once.”
I carefully pulled one of his arms from my back and grabbed his hand. Walking backwards, I guided him towards the bathroom. He opened his onyx eyes, still showing Heathen’s presence, and I smiled.
When we reached the bathroom, I pushed his shoulders to force him to sit on the stool by the walk-in glass shower. His body slumped heavily, and he craned his neck, leaning his head lazily against the wall to look at me as I undressed him. His wings magically folded away as he remained silent, gazing at my face. I tugged his blood-soaked jeans off his legs and then lifted the hem of his hoodie up over his head. Once he was naked, my eyes feasted on his glorious body, scanning it with concern and appreciation as I checked his wounds had healed properly. His enormous hands reached out for my hips and tugged me between his thighs as I ran my own over every inch of his skin and across his face, taking in every precious detail of him. My hands trembled a little as the adrenaline from the last two days ebbed away and was replaced by the harrowing awareness of just how close I came to losing him.
He stared up at me wordlessly, yet I knew he could feel every emotion I was projecting for the two of us through our unbreakable bond. A bond that will never cease to exist, not in this life or the next.
“How did you know?” he husked. His European voice rumbled with a slightly deeper tone than when it was only Luka present. “How did you know that giving us your soul would break the spell of the sigil and free us?”
“I didn’t. Not fully. I guessed. But at that moment, there was just nothing else I wanted more than to be yours eternally, even if it hadn’t worked. We would still have been together in some way and that’s what mattered.”
“You are fucking crazy, Snow. And I fucking love you so much.”
My lips curved as I held his face in my small hands and caressed his scarred skin with my thumbs.