Page 108 of Veradel
This is how it’s been, just me and him, so free to explore each other’s hearts and minds and bodies like eternity would never be enough.
And with this stretchy fabric clinging to mere bits of me, it’s easy access for Lucan’s roaming hands. He groans when his fingers slip underneath my top. My nipples pebble, desperately anticipating that zap of electricity he likes to make me wait for. I grind into him, begging for him to appease me.
Luckily, Lucan's in a giving mood, rolling my nipples between his thumbs and index fingers, pinching. My core ignites with a delicious current.
He drops kisses down my neck as I lace my fingers through his thick hair, guiding him lower where I crave the feel of his canines.
The moment before my eyes start to flutter closed, a wave taller than Lucan rams into us.
“Oh, shit!” I shriek as Lucan loses his balance, and we crash into the water again, spluttering when we both come up grinning before I wrap myself around him again.
Lucan brushes back my salty hair sticking to my face, planting a soft kiss against my lips.
“Have you been here before?” I whisper.
He nods. “Once.” For a moment, he gets lost to a far-away memory before he continues, “My father brought me. Right before he died, actually. Soren, Merrick, Vivian, and I played in the sand and rode the waves for hours. I felt so insignificant looking out at this vastness of nothing. But as usual, my father was so much wiser than I am.”
Lucan closes his eyes while I trace his features with the pad of my thumb. Down his cheekbone, across his jaw.
“And why is that?” I prompt him softly.
“He explained how it made him feel—that when he looked at the ocean, it humbled him. Made him feel like he was a part of something bigger, and that this immense stretch of water didn’t separate us. Instead, it connects us.”
“Where do you think it goes?” I ask, peering out at the horizon, trying to imagine other people, other societies, other ways of life. “Do you think anyone else is out there?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Lucan answers, slicing his eyes over my shoulder and dipping his head to gesture at something down the beach. “A boat for you, Saskia Veradel.”
The name still makes my stomach flutter. Since I don’t have a family name of my own, Lucan offered me his months ago, and I took it for the same reason he did: to remind myself, always, what our kingdom means to us. What ourpeoplemean to us.
Which is why my breath catches when I twist to find something bobbing in the water that I didn’t notice before. Made of wood and painted white, it’s curved with a long flag-like piece of fabric attached to a tall pole flapping in the wind.
I scrunch my brows when I turn back to Lucan.
“My father had it made in case any pack member wanted to leave and explore the rest of the world,” he explains. I’ve sent some people to come out and maintain it over the last few hundred years. And last night while you were still sleeping in the tent, I came out and dragged it back into the water.”
“A boat,” I repeat.
“A sailboat, to be exact.”
My eyes widen. “For us?” I ask. “To use?”
“That depends,” Lucan says with a chuckle. “Only if you want. We can sail away. Find out what’s out there.” He cocks his head out toward the horizon, then swings it back to the shore. “Or we can go back to Veradel. Your choice. I’m okay with either one, as long as I get to be with you.”
I chew on my lip, deliberating. Whenever I pictured my ideal future, I envisioned taking care of others in the Healing Center, aiding Taika as I learned everything I could from him. And I still want to do that, but I meant what I said in the throne room of the Blood Moon Palace: I want to see the parts of the world I’ve missed out on as much as I need to breathe. This freedom I’ve experienced over the last month has only just begun to mend the part of me that grew up suffocating, wrapped up in a band of others’ expectations and control.
So before I can keep healing other people, I need to fully heal myself.
“One day,” I say confidently, “we’ll go back home. But not today.”
Lucan smiles as he starts to wade us through the water and waves. “Good choice, little nightmare.”
As we close in on the boat, it rocks against the shore, held tight by a rope that disappears into the dark blue water. With two enormous hands gripping my ass, Lucan hoists me up onto the deck before he scrambles up behind me. The wood beneath our feet creaks, and I grab onto the woven railing to keep my balance.
“Sea legs,” he chuckles and waves a hand over our new temporary home. “Go explore. You’ll get them eventually. Just in time for me to make them shake again tonight.”
He winks and I roll my eyes, biting down on a smile as I walk the outer edge without falling. There’s a wooden wheelwith gold spokes that sits prominently in the back, a table and two chairs nailed into the deck, and ropes that jut out at every odd angle.
I stick my head into a doorway to see a few short steps that lead down into a kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. There on the tiny dresser next to the bed, I can see a few of my belongings already sitting atop it: my handheld mirror, lipstick, the gold chain that first connected us, the key to a Wall that is no longer standing.
