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September 1 - October 20, 2025
My gaze fell on my Maxy boy, and my heart was clad in sun steel as I focused on this valiant man who had proved he was not a cad, but a gentleFae with the deepest ocean of love in his heart. I would claim him this day, and nevermore would I seek the loins of another codfish. For he was my one true salmon, and the rivers of our destiny were wide and flowing toward an eternal horizon. It was time to bathe in our estuary and sup upon the freshwater and may all those who opposed us perish on my flail.
“Nothing in this world could break me the way you can, Gerry,” I admitted roughly. “Nothing could make me falter or blink other than the need to protect you. I can’t watch them lash you to this thing with us. It would rip the last pieces of me free of my body and destroy them more certainly than anything else.”
“That’s just me, bro.” “No, it’s not that.” My stomach growled louder. “Pretty sure it is. I could hardly eat breakfast this morning, I was so worried about Gabe. I only had three dry bagels with butter and jelly on top and two Poptarts. Not even the good kind of Poptarts. They were unbranded, Dante. And I didn’t have any cereal – you know how I love cereal.”
tugged on his sleeve, trying to get his attention and draw it to the ball that was looking me right in the eye.
“It’s you,” I murmured, my fingers tracing the length of his jaw, savouring the bite of his stubble as I devoured the sight of him and drank it all in. “Only you.”
“Her blood was my blood,” he said in explanation. “She paid the price of your curse in her death. You’re free.”
“I don’t need magic; I have fury and my mother’s sword.” I hounded forward,
“Do you believe in me, Lance Orion?” I asked and his throat rose and fell. “My belief in you is without bounds,” he said heavily. “But-”
“Of course not, my Queen.” He stepped back and I nodded to him, encouraging him to dispel his air shield.
I would damn well live up to the reputation of the Vega name today, and prove why I was a queen of fire and ruler of death. The shadows had haunted me too long, kept me subdued when I should have been rising like the Phoenix I was. I may have been deep in the ashes now with no magic or Order to claim, but the embers were catching in my soul, and it didn’t matter if I was practically mortal, because I was still a Vega Queen, and I wasn’t even close to finished yet.
but I’d be
damned if I was going out of this world on the day my mate and I had been liberated from our chains.
And no shadow would ever find its way into my body from this day until my last.
“It’s not marital if we’re not married,” I pointed out. “We will be married,” Orion said in a growl. “Says who?” I balked. “Says me,” he snapped. “I will wed you the moment this war is over.”
I hurried down the corridor at his back with Orion beside me and he leaned low to speak in my ear. “You will marry me.” “You know, people usually ask someone if they want to marry them, not just command it,” I whispered. “You’re already mated to me by the stars, what’s there to ask?”
“So you’d better ask really, really nicely the next time you bring this up. And I am making no promises that I’ll say yes.” “Or that I’ll agree to it,” Gabriel tossed back over his shoulder. “And since when do I have to ask your permission?” Orion asked in shock.
“I have tasted the depths of love born from the embers of hate and I have lived through every emotion between the two. I have sobbed and raged and begged and cursed the stars themselves, but none of that made the slightest bit of difference. So I let that love turn to vengeance, I let it fester and blaze inside of me, and I found a way to defy the stars themselves. You’re standing in
the way of that path, which means you must have been hoping to meet with this monster yourself.”
“Love is sacrifice.” “I have sacrificed!” I shouted and the flames which lit my body blazed like a beacon for all to see. “I have given everything I was and everything I am to this fight. I have cried and raged and pleaded for the heavens to favour us just once, but they turned their games on us instead and took all I had to offer. I never promised to give them any of this. I never agreed to the price they chose, so let my love be unbreakable and brutal and cruel and endless, the harbinger of war and the summoner of violence. Let it be all those things and more because I am done sacrificing
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face the monster they made when they incited me because I. Have. Had. Enough!”
I could feel every step she took within this place, like ripples in a pond signalling to all who dwelled here that something was coming. Something which didn’t belong.
She was fury given breath, her green eyes flashing with that deep and resounding rage in her and her full lips pursed with anger as she took me in, standing before a chair which could have been a throne, waiting for her to come to me. “Hello, Roxy,” I said, my voice rough, my gaze drinking her in.
Her. Only ever her.
I drew the glimmering sword from my hip in a fluid movement before placing its tip against the ground between us and dropping to one knee in front of her. A tremor rumbled through the Veil as my knee hit the ground and I clasped the pommel of my sword as I bowed my head before her, my limbs trembling with the magnitude of this action, of what I had known and should have admitted for a long time now. “I pledge myself and all that I am to you, my Queen,” I breathed, emotion wracking my core as those words tumbled from me at last, my place in this world somehow fixing there as if I had found the
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But she wasn’t looking at the wall, her green eyes were entirely fixed on me, and there was so much love there that it cut me apart to look at it. To know how unworthy I was of it.
My girl.
“You’re Darius Vega now. And you weren’t built to bow to anyone.”
She didn’t release her hold on my shirt as she pulled me against her, kissing me like everything that made up the entire universe began and ended with the two of us.
feeling the tremor in my flesh as it passed into hers, our souls connecting, tangling, weaving themselves back together as if we had never been ripped apart at all. “From the
first moment I called you by that name, you looked at me and you knew me. You knew yourself. We just spent too long lying about the truth of that destiny.”
My salvation. I would have died a thousand deaths to be gifted this moment in her arms, to look at this perfect creation and see so much love for me burning within her. She had tried to deny death itself for me. There was only her.
“I love you, Roxanya Vega, and I wish I could have been worthy of you.”
“I’ll wait for you,” he swore to me. “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.”
“It’s not enough,” I choked out, my vision blurring with tears as I felt the enormity of my grief coming for me again, like a mouth full of sharp teeth waiting to rip me apart bit by bit. “I won’t leave without you.”
“You are going to fight this,” I ordered him. “You will fight it with all you have and if the price of that fight is the end of us both then I will gladly take that over death or life without you.”
“Roxy,” he growled, catching my wrist as I raised two bloodstained fingers. “What will this cost you?” “No cost is greater than the loss of you,” I replied as the world hissed, the acidic whispers of the stars closing in on us.
“My soul is his,” I said, my words thick with magic as the declaration became an undeniable truth, like it was written into the fabric of the world just as any other law of nature might be. “My heart is his.”
But I was beyond our world now, in the chokehold of death and clinging to love with a fist of iron.
The thump of Darius’s heartbeat rang out in perfect synchronicity with my own because it was my own. One heart. One life. Never to be parted again.
“You did great, boy,” I praised. “Or…girl.”
“Definitely a boy,” I said. “And he’s housetrained - yay!” I smiled at Orion who gave me a cool look. “You’re free now,” he said, wafting the Shadow Beast away as he padded back inside. “Off you go.”
“I’m looking at the woman who crossed into death for me,” he replied, his tone rough with a reverence I didn’t deserve. “The woman whose heart found it possible to love me even though I could never be worthy of it. You cursed the stars themselves for me and forced them to bend to your will. You risked dark magic
“Do you want me to kneel for you again, my Queen?”
I moaned loudly as I drew close to the edge once more. “I’m going to hear that sound every fucking day from now until the end of time,” he promised me, his cock so deep inside me that I could hardly draw breath. “And when you come for me, when I own and destroy your body, you will know right down to the core of you who you belong to, won’t you, Roxy?” “Yes,” I panted, the time for mocking and teasing long past as he fucked me deep and hard, his fingers moving expertly against my clit. “I’m yours. Always,” I swore, and he growled in approval of that. “Mine,” he agreed in a dark promise,
“It’s Darcy,” Seth gasped. “Look. It’s Darcy!” “I see that,” Caleb laughed, and Seth broke into a run, leapfrogging over the dead monster and slamming into me so hard that I fell on my ass. He howled his joy, licking my face and laughter tumbled from my throat as I drew him into a tight hug, his earthy scent surrounding me.
Seth whimpered like a dog who hadn’t seen his owner for a year and Orion relented, letting Seth clamber onto him like a limpet and hug him tight, nuzzling his face while Orion twitched a grin and clapped Seth on the shoulder. “Yeah, yeah.” Orion pushed him off
“Just you, Roxy. Only ever you.” “Don’t go getting soft on me,” she grumbled
“You will pay in blood and carnage,” a voice hissed on the wind, and I got the feeling the stars were watching this all too closely.
Oh....
My husband
EEEEK
Two more spears formed in my hands and Darius swung his axe with deadly abandon,
this eatsssss
