Page 93 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

“Nice of you to notice I’m here too,” she said, an amused smile lighting it and drawing a laugh from me.

“Trust me, my star. I knowexactlywho I’m fucking,” I said, pulling my hips back and driving into her. She gasped as I rolled them, sliding the head of my cock over that part inside her that drove her absolutely wild. Her fingers clawed at the ice restraining her hands, her sharp nails scratching against the surface.

“Who am I, then?” she asked, and despite the challenge apparent in the set to her lips, there was a tiny insecurity in her eyes. It haunted her, not knowing for sure who or what she was. Her entire identity had been stolen from her, along with the family that she couldn’t really claim to own in the same way she’d always believed.

“You’re my fucking mate. Nothing matters outside of that, min asteren,” I said, growling the words as I set a slow, hard rhythm. I wanted to move faster, craved the release that her body provided in ways I’d never imagined.

The animalistic need to fill her with my cum at all times of the day was maddening, pushing me closer to the edge than I’d thought possible. If we had a safe space to spend our time, if we’d been able to spend our days in the palace at Catancia, she’d spend most of them impaled on my cock with her eyes on mine.

And she’d already begun to want that, even though she wasn’t yet Fae.

Her eyes stung with tears, but her hips still raised to take more of me. To unite us in all the ways that were possible. Knowing that we would cross the boundary and be mated in truth, and I would be as one with her as I was with myself, I pressed her legs to the side and forward.

Bending her in half, pressing her knees against her arms so I could lean down and capture her lips with mine for a brief moment. “Soon, Little One. Soon you’ll understand,” I said, because no matter how much she read the book Holt had given her, nothing could prepare her for the Fae side of the mate bond.

Nothing could prepare her for the all-consuming need that would soon take her over.

She breathed deeply, sinking into the earth under her as I shoved through her tender tissue, stroking myself into her more fully, chasing the orgasm that loomed at the edges of my mind. She sank her teeth into her bottom lip, pinching the flesh so tightly I thought she might bleed.

I leaned forward, licking the seam of her mouth and almost wishing she would. I wanted all the parts of me to be inside of her, and to take what I could of her essence inside of me. But the first time we shared blood during sex had to be when we completed our bond, because I wouldn’t take my cock out of her until our blood faded from one another’s systems.

“Es to un caoin asteren en min awyr,” I murmured, watching as her eyes lit with the words that she tried to translate in her mind, attempting to focus on them beyond the slow drag of my cock through her flesh. “You are the only star in my sky.”

She smiled sweetly, chasing away the shadows that lingered in her eyes. The green of them shone back at me, blinking back the tears that made her eyes burn. “And you are the only light in my darkness,” she said, sending a shock of awareness running through me. I’d spent so much of my life looking at her as the only thing good in my bleak existence, the thought of her surrounded by the darkness that wanted to consume her sent rage spiking in me.

I fucked her slowly, holding her gaze with mine as my soul burned with the weight of her confession.

I’d never been something good. I’d never had someone look at me as if I was the sun shining on a dark day. Our bond was her way of pulling back from whatever was inside of her, and I would never let go.

I lowered a thumb to her clit, circling it slowly and taking what I wanted. Her pussy clenched down on my cock, squeezing me for all she was worth as she fluttered inside. “I love you, Little One,” I murmured, leaning forward to touch my mouth to hers as she came around me. “Until chaos reigns.”

“Until chaos reigns,” she whispered as she breathed through her orgasm. I released her hands finally, letting the ice melt back into snow. She wrapped them behind my head, holding me so that my breath mingled with hers. “I will love you long after.”

I came, filling her with my release as I dropped my forehead to hers. We’d cross the boundary by the next day if all went well.

And then she’d be mine in truth.

41

ESTRELLA

Imade my way to Imelda’s side, staring down at the woman who lay on her stomach in one of the carts. The other Fae Marked had cleared out of it so the witch could tend to her, and the Riders were setting up camp for the night. The sunset hadn’t yet arrived, but it wasn’t far enough away to be worth risking the girl’s safety by forcing her to travel before Imelda could stem the bleeding.

“How is she?” I asked, watching as Imelda ground herbs into a paste. She muttered an incantation over the rocks she’d gathered for smashing them, stabbing the tip of her dagger into her finger. Blood welled, dripping down onto the rocks but never touching the paste itself.

A payment for her magic, rather than an ingredient. She sucked her finger into her mouth as she continued grinding the herbs. “She’ll live. She’d heal faster if I had turmeric,” she answered, and I looked around the woods surrounding us. The odds of finding the plants that grew the tunnel-shaped flowers would be nonexistent with the cold surrounding us. Even the bigger, stronger plants were preparing for the winter. The roots would survive to see the next year, but the plant itself would have withered and died already.

I stood anyway, prepared to go in search of the plant. If anyone had any chance of recognizing it in the woods, it would be me. Imelda placed a hand on my arm, pulling me back down as she shook her head. “It would be a waste of time,” she said sadly, dipping her fingers into the poultice and carefully applying it to the fresh wounds on the girl’s back.

Her back twitched, a whimper escaping her as I moved toward her head. I sat next to her, making sure she had soft cloth under her cheek and running tender fingers through her hair. Trying to offer her a touch of kindness in the moments of pain when Imelda did what needed to be done.

“She’ll need another dress,” I said to Caldris as he watched from beside the cart. I didn’t know that we had any spare clothes we could give her. Holt shrugged out of his cloak at the corner of my eye, draping the fur-lined warmth of it over his forearm. His chest was entirely bare without it, his pale gray skin gleaming in the sunlight that trickled through his corporeal form.

“It will have to do for now. We’ll find her something when we reach Mistfell,” he said, stepping forward and laying the cloak across the railing on the edge of the cart. Fallon picked it up, draping it over the girl’s legs to offer her both warmth and privacy from prying eyes.

Imelda didn’t glance up from her task, her attention fixed solely on the girl and her wounds, but the Huntsman watched her intently, observing her motions and the calm set to her features with something that felt like admiration. Imelda’s fingers paused, lingering just off the girl’s skin as if she could feel his attention fixed on her face.

She turned her eyes up to look at him, never shifting her face toward him as their gazes connected. Something passed between them, a brief moment of understanding when Imelda’s chest filled with air and she never released it. I felt like an intruder on a moment that should have been private as my eyes darted back and forth between them.

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