Her body tensed and I could feel the anger vibrating throughout. Remnant Dark may be small but like our daughter, she was powerful and when it was unleashed…goddess help us all. "She visited me as well, when we passed out from entering this realm. What does she possibly think she can gain from this?"
"To create discourse, sow doubt, to weaken us. She fears us and what we are capable of together."
"Do you…do you need to talk about it?" she asked softly.
"I fear it will only upset you more," I kissed her hair and purred down at her when she started to protest, "why don't you tell me what is really keeping you up, since it is not your psychopath ex lover that haunts your thoughts. Thank fuck for that."
She snorted and her lips pursed in thought. Tactfully, I allowed the silence to grow, knowing it would eventually spill her secret musings only if I gave it the space to come forth.
My father would be fucking proud. I could almost feel his truthful gold eyes shining with it, watching us.
It didn't take long.
"I don't have full control of the shadows," she finally confessed, her voice so soft I barely heard it with my shifter ears as she reached out with her hand to the night. The moonlight cast hundreds of shadows on the glass tomb towers that made up the Sheol's city, Voltum.
A grouping of shadows jumped off the building, floating in the air towards us. I narrowed my eyes, watching the waythey quivered, resisting the call of my soulmate before completely shooting back to the resting place.
"I have been trying for hours, I can't even pull the smallest shadow to me now."
I had known, of course but was waiting for her to discuss it when she was ready. "Has this ever happened before? Could it be tied to the lilin?" I questioned, tucking my chin on top of her head again.
Her head rocked back and forth, her hair catching on my beard. "Never," she said vehemently, her teeth flashing in the night, her sudden violence stirring my blood and unleashing the desire I had pushed away just moments before. "The Lilin were never shadows," she added, gritting her teeth, "losing them should not have affected who I am—who I should be." Turning in my arms, her hand rested on my chest, her eyes lost in thought, staring through me unseeing. "My shadows are gone and I cannot even rely on my power to help us, shifter."
I growled low, sensing more. "Say it."
Slowly, she dragged her eyes up to my own and the uncertainty within those emerald depths was like seeing the sun falling from the sky, dooming us all. "Emon…can you shift?"
Raising my hand up, I unsheathed my claws and trailed them dangerously over the soft pale skin of her face, over the vulnerable exposure of her throat, and then across the swell of her breasts that started to rise and fall with her quickened breath, her shirt unbuttoned tantalizingly low. "I still have my claws." I smirked and allowed my fangs to descend over my lips, watching her eyes dilate as I slowly ran my tongue over one of them. Bending, I grazed them over the pale column of her neck, her breath catching as I bit down, stopping just before I broke the skin and then stared possessively at the red markings. "I still have my fangs," I breathed across her porcelain skin.
Shivering in my hold, she looked away, her voice quivering. "I can't lose either of you…"
Snarling, I straightened, gripping her chin and forcing her eyes to see my hardened resolve. "I know those words, I know that tone. You're not fucking running again, Remnant Dark and you sure as goddess fuck are not doing this alone to spare us. Our daughter is too much like the both of us to be left behind and you know I will hunt you down anyway. How do you think that will end, hmm little umbra?"
She gave me a sad smile, "With you cheating of course."
I grinned, goddess what I wouldn’t give to run on the parapets of my city with her, that moment when I saw her come back to life burned so brightly in my memory that I almost was there again.
Her eyes searched my face and then fell on my nose. Reaching up, she traced its profile, smiling softly when I wrinkled it at her. "This really is from pinching pastries?"
I grinned, "I have a feeling our daughter will be much better at it than I ever was, inheriting her mothers stealth and strategy, she will bleed Drey's bakery dry."
My soulmate laughed, shaking her face from my hold, peering through the glass where our daughter lay sleeping safely. "I still can't believe she is ours…I never aspired to be a mother. It seemed foolish to even think about, but now that I am…she is so magnificent, how can I ever be good enough for something so innocently sweet, Emon?"
Pulling her in closer to me, I brushed the tip of my claw against her plump lips wanting nothing more than to claim them. “You are good enough, my love, because you are just as magnificent. Do you want to know how I know that?” I purred, dropping my tone low.
Her breath quickened, "How?" The sexy gasp she released setting my body aflame.
"Because I think the same every time I look at you." With great restraint, I kissed her lips softly, retracting my fangs, and rubbing my mouth against hers. “I know you have more fears," I whispered to her. "Confess them from this gorgeous delicious mouth so that I may either purge them from your soul forever or keep them until you have the strength to face them yourself. "
Her eyes fluttered closed and she leaned further into me. "Riella has no power to defend herself, I have no shadows to protect her, you are no longer connected to Ethereal, and I can't…I can't even think of you half dead laying in those tombs, Emon.” Her lip quivered, “I don't know another way to prevent the soulless sleep from taking you without taking your own soul.”
I kissed her eyelids. "Do you not think me formidable enough, now that the cat is gone?"
Her eyes shot open, her hair blowing across her beautiful face in the soft night wind, "Of course not. Never would I think such a thing. You are a powerful shifter…even in irons, I've seen what you are capable of." She shivered and shook her head. "Ethereal is…was a destroyer but you, Emon, you feel like life. Life that is too precious to lose to death."
Exhaling the relief I felt that she did not doubt me, I brushed back her hair, “Then you shall never lose me. Nothing is more powerful than us together, Remnant. Nothing.”
Her arms clutched at me as I licked at the fluttering of her pulse, breathlessly her words spilled out of her in a hushed whisper—perhaps it wasn't silence that spilled fears from my soulmate after all. All that was needed was carefully crafted seduction we both could enjoy. “We don't know what is in The Well, Emon, what trials we will face. What if it is a mistake bringing Riella with us, we can hardly protect ourselves.”
