Sweet Ruin

FIFTY-FIVE

For the first time in his unending life, Rune the Insatiable had been sated. He’d come with his stunning mate so many times, his tender balls had pled for a reprieve.

Lying in their bed in Tortua, he stroked her hair as she slept. He was getting to like this after-play business.

Toward the end of the night, he’d been able to hold his seed longer, but he’d still had as little control as when he’d been a lad. Yet then, everything had seemed new to him. Dalli was right—he did feel as if he were starting over with his mate.

He pressed a kiss into Josephine’s hair, inhaling her scent. Mine.

She’d seen his past and accepted it. She’d accepted him. Before she’d drifted off, she’d told him, “Something in me changed when our heartbeats synchronized. I don’t know what, but I know I’m different.”

He understood. He felt as if he’d discovered the answer to a mystery he’d been teased with his entire life. A secret like no other.

Though his body was sated, his mind wasn’t. Would she wish to wed? Probably, if she’d been raised human. He would do it for her—if she could compromise as well.

Despite how powerful tonight had been, he couldn’t let that affect how he went about his life. He’d tried to postpone this with her, but she’d pushed. He suspected she might even have mesmerized him at one point.

The Møriør were still his priority, and war loomed. As the eyes and ears of his alliance, he couldn’t shirk his duties at the cusp of an Accession.

And without the Møriør, his quest for vengeance could fail. He’d been so close to taking Saetthan out, but the prick had escaped him. Destroying that royal sword had only whetted Rune’s appetite for retribution.

He would stay the course, refusing to change his existence yet again. It was someone else’s bloody turn. Tomorrow he would inform Josephine what he had to offer, knowing it was far less than she expected.

Using his silver tongue, he’d seduce her into his way of thinking, and she would adjust. She was addicted to their sex, enamored with the idea of not being alone.

She’d never give him up.

“Rune,” she drowsily murmured.

“Hmm?”

“You love me.” She drifted off again.

His eyes flashed open in the dark. That hadn’t been a question.

To go from cold ash to inferno in two weeks? Couldn’t be possible. But then, he’d also believed he could never have a mate. Or progeny.

A generation to come after him. Offspring with Josephine. She’d be fiercely protective of them.

Them. Already he’d jumped from a single potential child to plural.

Lorean parents were the true immortals. They lived forever in memories. If he had children, he would tell them about his own mother, whose sacrifice had allowed Rune—and his entire line—to live.

He would avenge her, help win the coming war, and then a life with his mate and their young could be more than a dream. If his stubborn female could see things his way.