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Chapter 56

Iknow the crushing weight of grief. It hammers you down until you’re so flattened you hardly resemble yourself. You barely function, yet you’re cursed to exist. Happy for people to walk all over you so long as it means you don’t have to stand up and peer at your reflection in their eyes.

But if grief is crushing, this is the opposite.

It’s the antidote.

I didn’t kill my mother.

My face crumbles, eyes squeezing shut, chest shaking with the force of my silent sobs. I let that captive breath chafe my insides, tossed around by the relentless quake of my chest as I reach within and lift my dome.

Tip it to the side.

Observe in quiet wonder as the seeds of relief I’d tucked beneath take root, then sprout, curling around my ribs, climbing my vertebrae. Little buds swell, their skins splitting four ways, releasing clusters of butter-yellow petals—packing my insides with the color of sunshine. With comforting warmth and a fluttery blow of love.

Of understanding.

Heaving a shuddered exhale, I open my eyes, wounded by the bruised silver stare that’s stuck to me. Looking at me like he’s begging for punishment.

My heart splits.

Guilt …

The festering wound you ignore until you’re battleworn, teetering between life and death. Trying to lift yourself off the ground and find a reason to live again.

But he doesn’t belong on that battlefield. He can’t hold himself accountable for what unraveled that night.

I don’t belong on that battlefield either.

My darkness didn’t kill her … It wasn’t an all-consuming, uncontrollable beast. Meaning there is hope—beautiful, untethered hope.

“Thank you,” I whisper, and Rhordyn’s brow buckles.

For showing my mother mercy in death so she didn’t have to suffer …

For unbolting me from this anchor of guilt …

“I’m not the monster I thought I was, and neither are you.” There’s a flash of confusion in his eyes as I move toward him with intention of my own.

Unleashed.

I push onto my tippy-toes, thread my hands up his chest, around his neck, fingers tangling with the hair on the back of his head as I crush my lips against his.

Warm.

Blissfully warm.

Yet his body is a statue, arms rigid at his sides. Even his chest is still, as though he can’t bring himself to breathe.

I delve my fingers through his beard, tilt my head, and force his lips to part.

His energy shifts.

Shatters.

His arms bind around my body, tightening with each plunge of his tongue as he pours an agonized moan down my throat, into my chest. He pushes his hands through my hair, cupping my head and tugging us apart, forcing me to draw on air that’s vastly inadequate because it hasn’t come from him.

Brow buckled, he searches my eyes like he’s hunting through my hoard of trinkets, then makes a pained sound. He steals my breath with a tender kiss that’s deep and slow. That sinks into my soul and tastes every bruise. Every ache.

Every slice of pain.

Zings of pleasure pulse through me.

Greedily, I paw at his powerful form, tracing the exquisite expanse of his back, trailing my hands down, fingers delving past the waistband of his tight pants.

I want him to take me.

Devour me.

I want him to eat my soul and spit it out in a heap that can never be pieced together by anyone but him.

Another pained groan, and he grips my cheeks, tilting my head back to plant a kiss on my forehead. “Stop …”

My gaze snaps up to meet his.

“Why?” I heave through battered breaths, his chest rising and falling at the same voracious pace.

“Because I’m about to rip into you so fast you’ll cease to know where I end and you exist.”

I whimper, my knees almost giving way as a hungry warmth thumps between my thighs. “What if I want that?” I dare to whisper.

Speaking my truth to the stars, wondering if they’ll whisper back.

For a moment, nothing. Nothing but him and I as we compare our wounds through a single look.

“There’s still so much you don’t know, Orlaith.”

“I don’t care,” I say earnestly.

Nothing could change the way I feel.

For him.

His eyes ignite, making me wonder if he saw my thoughts weave through the fabric of my soul.

I take a step back, slipping from his loosening grasp.

Another.

A tautness stretches between us, like perhaps he thinks I’m about to run from this.

From us.

My heart labors as I forge another backward step, swaying my hips a little.

Realization widens his eyes before they darken to a beautiful, devastating shade of oblivion. A deep rumble rattles the air but stays trapped inside his chest as his shoulders seem to swell, muscles expanding.

One glance at the bulge in his pants almost has me on my knees, and I realize he understands.

That he sees.

I’m not running from him … I’m running for him.

“Milaje,” he says, his voice a dusky roll that makes me feel both full and so achingly hollow.

I swallow.

Another backward step.

“Rhordyn …”

“You don’t understand the game you’re playing.”

A small smile hooks the corner of my mouth. “Teach me the rules?”

The tendons in his neck stretch as he draws his chest full of breath, then blows it out slowly. “If you run, I will chase.”

His fists tighten, like he’s picturing his hands snatching at my fleeing form, and a bolt of thrill thrums through my veins.

“I will catch you.”

A shuddered inhale.

“Take you.”

A wanting whimper.

“And there will be no turning back.”

Another stolen step.

Another.

His upper lip peels back. “No more reckless fucks.”

The words are a shake of my soul. A question.

A seeking of confirmation.

I swallow thickly.

Cheeks heating, I take another backward step.

His sawing snarl pebbles my skin, canines slipping down so fast my breath catches.

“No more,” I whisper, hearing his teeth grind.

His mighty chest inflates. Releasing through his nose, he cracks his neck from side to side. “No more lies to hide your hurt,” he growls, the words thicker than the last.

I hold his stare.

Another backward step.

His entire body locks up, as though he’s putting all his strength into keeping his spine pinned to the tree.

Another bolt of thrill crackles through my veins, thrumming deep into my core, and a moan almost pries from my lips, my heart thumping so hard I feel it at the base of my throat.

“If you run, you’re mine,” he says, so deadly soft I barely catch it over the pattering rain.

I tilt my head to the side. “And if I don’t?”

Silence. Even the storm seems to still its booming symphony while something toils in the depths of his eyes, rivulets of water traveling down his perfectly sculpted body. So barbarically beautiful my chest aches at the sight while other parts of me hunger.

He tips his head against the tree, looking at me from beneath lowered lashes. “Then I will tell you another truth so you can go back to hating me.”

Hate …

The love I have for this man has grown on a foundation of that four-letter word. He’s seen so many of my ugly sides.

I’ve seen so many of his.

We’re both bruised from the battle it took us to get here, but tall trees uproot in windstorms if the hole isn’t dug deep enough to tether to the soil.

Love him today, hate him tomorrow. I’m not going anywhere.

I flick him a smile, turn on my heel, and run.

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