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Death has come knocking for Roxy time and again and she has told it to fuck off. Now it’s my turn to do the same.”
“Tell Lance,” he began hesitantly. “Tell him I am forever with him. That I love him and that I know he is worthy of the position he is yet to rise to. Tell him I will be watching him through every moment of it and that I couldn’t hold more pride in my heart if I tried. And tell Darcy how grateful I am for all she has done for my boy, and that I will be celebrating with all the lost souls who adore her when she seizes her crown.”
“Lance is the man he is because of you,” I told him. “His love for you has always given him the strength he needed in the darkest of times. Thank you for creating one of the most important people in my life. Lance was one of the few bright points in my existence for a very long time and he has that brightness because of you.”
“I have never felt anything like the connection I felt between you and Darius Acrux,” she breathed, and the mention of my name like that held a power I had never given any notice to before. It was a summons, an incantation, a call. “The power of your love and hatred burned hotter than the sun, the constant tug and pull, a war unending and a passion unyielding. You were two stars always set to collide and cast the world on fire because fuck the consequences.”
I dropped onto the bed on her other side, summoning my power and pushing it into the necklace she still wore for me, urging it to heat, to let her know I was here. I brushed my fingers through her hair, laying my cheek against hers, as I leaned in to press a kiss on her neck.
I snarled angrily at the suggestion of her fucking my wife, pushing to my feet and placing myself between them. Rosalie’s eyes brightened with amusement like she could feel my anger and jealousy, but Roxy didn’t seem to notice.
One look at Roxy made it clear to me that she was at the point of no return. She was going to risk this in pursuit of me. She’d drink poison from a cup marked with the runes linked to trials and travel, carve my name into her flesh, and follow this dark magic to the Damned Forest.
And I knew with all certainty that she was going to tread that path, no matter the cost it bore.
Roxy knew no harm would come to any of those she loved for this. All of the risk was on her. And she was clearly beyond the point of caring about her own survival if it meant continuing without me by her side.
Not elemental power, or even ether, but the purest, most undeniable force in any of the realms known to Fae and man alike. Love had brought me back from the brink of darkness.
I’ve reached my limit with this shit, so I’ve gone to take my destiny back from the stars. Gerry, I love you – lead the rebels against the Court of Solaria like you suggested. Make that scaley bastard pay. The rest of you, try not to cry too much if I don’t make it back, I was a mean bitch anyway. x “That’s pretty funny,” I commented. “But if either of you calls her a mean bitch, I’ll break your nose.”
“Stop,” Seth growled. “Why?” Cal asked. “Because you’re stroking him like he’s a pet cat and it’s fucking weird, man,” I pointed out,
“Seriously?” I barked a laugh. “You’re having this argument over which one of you can fuck better? I know it’s tempting to try and claim the crown from me, but it ain’t happening, assholes.”
“You look good down there, Caleb,” Seth taunted. “Wanna know how good it can feel subbing for me too?” Weird choice of taunt, but okay.
“Are you tapped out, man?” I asked him, tilting my head to assess him. “I’d offer you a bite but I’m kinda lacking in a body right now.” I snorted at my own joke which really was pathetic when I thought about it.
“Why the fuck are you so obsessed with Tory’s tits?” Caleb snapped. “Where the hell did that come from?” I barked, my amusement shattering and a snarl rolling up the back of my throat which drowned out whatever the fuck they were saying to each other as the possessive Dragon in me fought to break free of my flesh. “Don’t talk about my wife like that you assholes. Her tits are none of your fucking business.”
“You want to learn this lesson or not, pretty boy?” Seth taunted, grabbing Caleb’s hair. “Not,” I barked. “He’s all good. Maybe find a cloth or something for him and fuck off out of my wife’s bed though, yeah?”
pretending I did not hear Caleb ask Seth to show him how he liked it because I didn’t want to know. I. Did. Not. Want. To. Know.
“Did you just summon your mother-in-law to watch your friends fucking?”
“I was calling for help because they won’t stop doing…that
Caleb knocked the Dragon dick vibrator from the bed, causing it to fly straight through Hail’s ass. My lips parted, but honestly, what the fuck was I supposed to say when a golden Dragon cock had accidentally penetrated him?
My body was mine now. And nothing about my skin felt tainted by him anymore. Even my mind was lighter, the dark memories of Lionel’s insidious touch lessening with each day I was here. Perhaps The Veil was designed to help you find peace, or maybe I was just able to let go of it all at last. Hamish made it easy for me to just be me. He had never once made a derisive comment about me, belittled me, or made feel anything less than the person I was. It was like coming home after years of being shut out in the cold.
“If the Vega twins had not come to Solaria, I think then he might have ended up with Darius Acrux. The two always seemed so well suited to one another, always tussling and laughing together, bound by their cause against Lionel. But it does not surprise me that each of them fell for a Vega twin. How could they not fall for their power, their passion, their fire? It is rather poetic, I feel, that they would be made family in that way.”
but I am overjoyed that it is Darcy. I truly love her, I do. I wish I could meet her, to bathe in that light of hers for a moment which my son adores so deeply. It is clear as day why he has fallen for her, why she of all people could pull him from the dark.”
I could feel Roxy’s grief like a living beast beside me, her pain over our separation edging into a desperation which frightened me. But it only made my steps more solid, only confirmed exactly why I needed to be here and what I had come for, so I focused on my task and resisted the urge to go to her despite how deeply it hurt me to do so.
I leaned in and pressed my mouth to Roxy’s, willing her to feel me there, urging her to take what strength she needed from me. Roxy threw the stardust as she leaned into the kiss, her heart dictating the destination, my fingers locking with hers but closing on nothing when she was whipped away.
“Come on, beautiful. You didn’t survive all the shit life has thrown at you just to give up here in this lifeless place. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known. And this isn’t your end.”
my wife
a flame and a Dragon. The one greatest desire of her heart.
It broke me to know that. That I had her heart so completely in my grasp and that our time together had been so painfully short.
But to pick between the ones I loved? To use the power of their love and grief for me to force a trade in our places? It was an impossible choice, and one I could never even consider making. I wouldn’t be the man she’d fallen in love with if I was capable of that. But not being capable of it meant this divide between us was eternal for however long she had in the living realm.
“It’s okay. He’s on our side now. I think,” Gwendalina said, and dammit the girl had always had a fondness for wild creatures. I had taken the twins to the Celestia Zoo once and she’d been crying like the hounds of death were coming for her. She had only stopped when she’d caught the eye of the biggest, scariest beast in that place with so many claws and fangs, it could have murdered her in a hundred different ways, but she sat in my arms cooing at it like it was a puppy. “Or maybe it’s a girl. I don’t really know,” my daughter said.
“There will be no wedding if she does not wish it. Besides, he hasn’t asked our permission.” “And how is he meant to ask the permission of two dead Fae?” Merissa asked dryly. “Honestly Hail, you were just as uppity over this when Roxanya married Darius.” “Don’t remind me,” I muttered. “Or I will think twice on letting that go.
“Just because we’re mated doesn’t mean you get to skip a proposal.” Gwendalina shot him a sharp look and I smirked. Give him hell, little darling.
“Darius didn’t ask your permission to marry Tory,” Lance said. “That boy doesn’t know the meaning of respect, that’s why,” I muttered.
“I know. And I’ll be taking it up with him beyond the Veil, but as we’re currently on two different planes, and I don’t plan on dying anytime soon, he’ll have to wait for the ass kicking I plan on presenting him with in the afterlife,” Gabriel said to Lance. “You, however, don’t get to escape me via death, so you’d better be nice as pie to me if you’re determined to marry my sister.”
“Your daughter breaks the laws of old, bends the rules long ago set in place by the Origin as she walks here not in death, but alive with her heart still beating. You must thwart her in her path. Stop her from stepping through The Veil. This is your duty, do not defy it.”
“She wishes to try and break me out of death and return me to life, but I followed that path and learned the truth of it. For me to live again, someone I love must die, and I will never choose that fate.”
“A moment, that is all. To speak with her and tell her I cannot return with her. And to…give her the goodbye we never got in life,”
“You’ll be defying the stars’ orders,” Darius reminded me darkly. “I am the Savage King. No one gives me orders.”
“One of my daughters has made a passage here like the stubborn girl she is,”
“Will your daughter get back to the living?” Marcel asked in concern. “She will,” Darius answered. “I will make sure of it.”
“I shed you of the Acrux name,” I repeated louder. “I am proud to call you a Vega.”
“We are so very proud to have you in our family. She has chosen well.” “Now you’re just blowing smoke up his ass,” Radcliff commented. “He has enough smoke to blow up his own ass,”
“We would have given anything to see you return to her,”
“I love you more than the moon and the stars combined,”
Whatever Roxanya had done to reach this place, I prayed it had not cost her too much. But I knew The Veil would not get its chance to seize her yet, because Darius Vega would not let it be so.
“I’ll wait for you,” I swore to her, seeing the panic in her eyes and needing to comfort her in whatever way I could. “Right here. I’ll wait for you for as long as it takes. And I’ll watch over you, Roxy. I’ll be there even though you won’t see me. I’ll never truly leave you. I swear it. I’ll wait for you even if eternity passes me by while I do. I won’t ever leave you.”
She was going to end it all, sacrifice herself so that she might stay with me and no matter how much the most selfish parts of me yearned for that, I couldn’t allow it. She had too much to live for, too much to achieve.
She wasn’t succumbing to death. No, she was telling fate to get fucked all over again.
