Vows & Ruins (The Legends of Thezmarr, #2)

by Helen Scheuerer

He was just as he had been when they had fought the reaper together: formidable, deadly… Hers. She pushed the thought aside. He had never truly been hers. But when she’d had him beneath her, her blade pressed to his throat and all that hard muscle against her, not a single sane thought had remained in her head.

‘It doesn’t fucking matter if you’re a shieldbearer, a Guardian, a fucking storm wielder or a Warsword. You cannot keep doing this. I won’t allow it.’ ‘You won’t allow it?’ Her first words to him were as sharp as a blade. ‘You won’t allow it?’ That tempest in her eyes was back, surging right for him. But Wilder was done. He hadn’t allowed the darkness to take her back in the Bloodwoods and he sure as fuck wouldn’t let her own darkness consume her now. ‘No,’ he ground out. ‘I won’t allow it.’ She took a step towards him, closing what little space remained between them, staring up at him with fire in her gaze. ‘Why?’ she snarled. Wilder couldn’t stand the inferno within for a second longer – couldn’t take the strain on his heart, on his soul, for a moment more. ‘Because I fucking love you,’ he said.

‘I wish we had met when we were younger, so we could have had more time together.’ Wilder smiled as he ran his thumb along the line of her jaw and seemed to stare into her soul. ‘When I was younger I didn’t know what it was to look at a woman and want to fall to my knees,’ he told her. ‘When I was younger I didn’t know a woman could make me feel powerful and powerless in the same breath. When I was younger, I didn’t know a woman could bring me back from the darkness.’ Thea exhaled shakily. ‘A woman can do all of that?’ ‘Not any woman. There is only one. There has only ever been one.’