Chapter 199: Seconded, Buddy
Kael Ashenvale woke up holding everything he ever wanted and hating the sunrise because that meant the clock started. The sun could go get railed by a black hole as far as he was concerned.
Their bodies were a goddamn gold light show. She’d claimed him like territory and she fit perfectly, like she had been reverse-engineered for just him.
One thigh pinning his hip, one arm barricading his ribcage, her head wedged under his chin at an angle that said mine in fourteen languages. Her breathing was slow, deep, and steady. The breathing of someone safe.
His dragon was purring. Full, rumbling, chest-vibrating purring, the kind that only happened when the beast was so content it forgot to be an asshole for five consecutive seconds.
Kael pressed his lips to the top of her head. Held them there. Yes, he was kissing a sleeping woman. No, he never had any interest in the cuddling part after sex until her.
He kissed her temple next, her forehead, her closed eyelids. Everywhere. Each kiss left a brief constellation of gold that faded as he pulled away, and each one fed him something his body had been starving for long before last night.
Her.
The comfort made walking away a motherfucker, and Kael needed to walk. If he didn’t now, he wouldn’t be able to.
He turned her wrist gently and kissed the inside of it. Sparks burst against the thin skin there and she made a sound in her sleep, quiet, a sigh that curled against his throat. His dragon’s purr deepened to a frequency that vibrated the headboard.
The headboard was rattling. The actual, physical headboard was rattling because his dragon was purring so hard it had become a structural concern.
Her back was almost healed. He could see it over her shoulder where the blanket had slipped. The angry, raised welts that had made his blood boil hours ago were fading into thin pink lines, the kind that would disappear entirely by tomorrow.
All from the unholy cocktail of whatever the hell had happened last night. The healer’s medieval plant paste that would have taken a week got thoroughly and cosmically cucked.
His brain said leave. His heart said absolutely the fuck not. His dragon also immediately objected.
Stay. Mate sleeps. We stay.
"She’s going to wake up."
Good. We are here when she does.
"She’s going to wake up naked, on top of a man she barely remembers. Think about that for longer than two seconds."
The dragon went quiet.
We mate again when she wakes. Three times.
Kael exhaled through his nose, then slid her off him carefully.
His dragon whined.
Seconded, buddy, he thought back to the beast.
He pulled the blanket up over her shoulders and tucked it around her body with the precision of a man handling something irreplaceable. Her breathing stayed even. Her face was relaxed, lips parted, eyelashes resting against cheeks that had color in them again.
She looked alive. She looked like the kind of beautiful that should be illegal. She looked like the reason he’d come back from the dead and the reason he was about to leave a warm bed at dawn.
He stood, and moved to her bathing chamber.
White tub. White tiles. White towels. White walls. It was like bathing inside a cloud that had been pressure-washed by someone with a serious minimalism problem.
Kael turned the water on cold because he needed it.
The spray hit his chest and he braced both hands on the wall, head down, letting the water run red and gold down the drain. His muscles were sore in the specific way that meant he’d used reserves he couldn’t afford to spend. His ribs still ached. His flame was low. The blood donation had left him lighter than he wanted to admit.
But his bruises were healed. The cracked rib from the forest was mended. And the grey that had been in his face since resurrection was gone, replaced by the warm bronze that belonged there.
She had healed him while he healed her. The exchange had been equal, involuntary, and so perfectly balanced that it pissed him off because it meant the universe was right and he hated when the universe was right.
Told you. Two flames. One fire.
"Shut up."
He rinsed the last of the blood off his hands and stepped out. There were clean clothes folded on the ottoman in her room, left for him last night.
He pulled on a pair of dark trousers and a linen shirt, then walked to her bed.
She was still asleep, blanket pulled to her shoulders, white hair fanned across the pillow in every direction. Peaceful. Safe.
That’s when he saw it.
The bruise on her neck was the size of his mouth. Deep purple at the center, fading to dark blue at the edges, sitting exactly where his fangs had punctured her skin.
"Shit."
He crossed the room and knelt beside the bed. His fingers hovered over it without touching. The skin was swollen, tender looking, the kind of bruise that would throb when she turned her head.
He stood, scanned the room, found a basin on her vanity, and filled it with cold water from a pitcher. He soaked a cloth, wrung it out, folded it, and brought it back to the bed.
With one hand, he brushed her hair away from the mark. With the other, he pressed the compress against the bruise, holding it there with steady pressure.
She stirred. Her brow creased in her sleep, then smoothed as the cold registered.
Kael held the compress for a full minute before replacing it with a fresh fold. The swelling eased by a fraction. The bruise would fade in a day with her healing.
He set the compress on the nightstand where she could reach it.
Then he leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead. The matebond sparked once, a single ember of gold that floated upward and vanished.
"Don’t worry, baby. I’ll take care of everything." His voice was low, rough from a night that had taken more out of him than any battle. "You don’t need to worry."
He stood. Looked at her one more time.
His dragon was quiet. The purring had stopped, replaced by something heavier. The beast understood what he was about to do. Walk out of that room. Put distance between them. Become the stranger she thought he was so she could wake up alone and safe and in control of a situation that had been out of her control for too long.
Kael Ashenvale had fought wars, survived death, and held a woman’s life together with flame and willpower on a rock in the middle of a river.
Leaving this room was harder than all of it.
He walked out and closed the door behind him without making a sound.