Coming together in our lives—for as long as they might last.
“I’ve never done a ceremony like this with a life-mate before.” He hesitates, though passion continues to shine in his eyes that I’ve finally said yes. “I can still try to change what’s been done to you by the False Knights, but I truly do not know what’s going to happen. If I let my power go wild with you the way I want it to… I don’t know what comes next.”
“I’ll probably bond you. Can you handle that?” I already know what my Bloodwalker magic’s going to do. Already, my Blood Magic drakaina is triumphant deep inside, beginning to braid and coil all through my darker Bone Magic as they prepare to take Baldur into our Bloodbond.
And make him a life-mate, forever.
“I can. I want it. Like nothing I’ve ever wanted in my life,” he says passionately now as he kisses my thumb again, our hands entwined. “But what I don’t know is what’s going to happen toyou.What bonding me might do with your aura, or to the holes the False Council has shot all through you… or what may happen after we bond.”
“I’ll take that chance,” I say then, knowing it’s true with the deepest instinct of my life. “Whatever happens, Baldur Sigurðsson, I’m with you. And you’ll be with me… and we’ll figure it out, just like I do with all my drakes. Together.”
“Together.” He nods, as a fire of passion takes his eyes.
And then he’s descending, putting his soft lips on mine and kissing me.
The spiral of our power grips me like a riptide.
And it’s one I never want to escape.
18
COMPLETE
As Baldur Sigurðsson kisses me, my world explodes with light. I don’t even know where I end and he begins, as we spiral back out to the universe so hard and fast, it leaves me reeling.
I had thought it was merely power and passion he could give me as a life-mate, but this is fucking celestial, as his lips devour mine and everything inside me combusts.
It’s like galaxies being born as he kisses me, flooding me with his carnal power and incredible light. I can’t get enough; I press up hard now, smashing our lips together and needing him so hard every molecule inside me goes haywire.
Everything inside him responds. Baldur is gone to his luminous dragon out in the Void as he kisses me, using his power to push me down hard onto the table now. He crushes me with his body as we kiss; his power blisters the table, as sigil-phrases in a thousand colors sear through the room now, wild.
His starlight-and-Void eyes are insane now as he pulls back from our kiss. They burn with a ring of diamond so bright, I’m sure they’ve gonesupernova; I feel their hot scorch as his etheric paintbrushes sweep across me like solar flares, devouring me.
Those brushes are everywhere inside me now, as they scald and combust within my flesh. I’m taken by his sigils, crying out and throwing my head back in divine ecstasy as they sear me, blasting me far out now, into the Void.
Baldur is his dragon, and I am mine, as we tangle and twist together out in the stars. My Bloodwalker power spirals up out-of-control as he devours me in the cosmos and in the flesh, his auric drake with its burning starlight eyes taking me now with his sigildric art.
My Bloodwalker power heaves into unity like an atom bomb—to take him right back. But we have business to attend to first, before we bond; I feel Baldur struggle to regain control of this auric healing session, even as he dives right back down to kiss me harder.
Hands and lips everywhere, we surge and writhe, as Baldur throws himself into his gargantuan dragon-aura in the cosmos, painting his ancient sigils through my auric flesh.
They spiral all through me, commanding me to open up, far more than I’ve ever opened to anyone before. I do, letting him see the damage that’s been done to me, my Bloodwalker dragon so peppered with holes that I’m not sure what is universe and what is flesh.
She writhes in the cosmos, injured diabolically by someone who truly had it out for me and my dragon, so both of us would meet our true death. I hear Baldur’s cosmos-shuddering growl, furious at what’s been done to me, as he sees the full extent of it.
Millions of black holes spew my aura back to the universe, along with my drakes, as I feel him understand how they would take me out into the Void, never to return. My soul would become so dispersed that it would never again coalesce and be born into flesh.
Cursing all my lifetimes that might still exist.
Ensuring this one is my last.
Baldur roars as his dragon, as he finally understands what’s been doneto me. Aesa’s snarl echoes him, as her Truthstone sears white upon my chest, furious.
Because she knows who could have created a curse like that—her own sister. But it makes no sense; Aesa’s sister Hedda was my very own ancestor who created the Black Dragon. She died in the War of Blood and Bone, trying to bring down that same creation.
But somehow, her magic lives on.
Baldur’s snarling thought comes to me now as he echoes Aesa’s understanding. But this magic is deceptive; as I flood with his fiery sigil-work devouring me everywhere, I feel Baldur try to trace that curse back to its origin.
