Status Updates From Oath of the Alpha (Blood Ri...

His pride fell to ash, the arrogance of his ego dust as he murmured the pleading words against her slack lips. Er’it begged with his heart in a raw ruin within the softness of her palms, his soul hers to do with as she wished if she would but open her eyes. He would not let her go, not now, not ever. She was his and always had been

It does not matter how you or I feel. It is the way it shall be and the path preordained by the Hat’or—”

“What do your goddesses know about anything?”

“You dare—”

“I do,” Aida said with a snarl,“What do they know of me? I am not theirs to command. The Abyss has no hold over me when I am with you, and I do not know the deities of my parents any more than you do. I do not belong to anything or anyone but you.”

“Stop this, Aida. You do not wish this.”
“No,” Aida shouted, daring to grab hold of his lower lip with her teeth in a sharp nip. “You will allow me to say this before you put me on a thrice-cursed altar and kill me, Er’it.”

Dragging in a shaky breath, she continued to voice her swirling thoughts. “A warm fire on a cold eve, the sun on my face, the thrill of sparks drifting into the night. It is all of these things, held tight within my heart. I feel you there. Your heart, your breath, your very soul. They’re tangled with my own, and they will not be pulled apart so easily.”

“I’ve never known love,” Aida repeated, taking a deep breath to firm her resolve, “but I would think it feels like this. To want and be wanted, protect and be protected. It feels like a warm fire on a cold eve—”
Er’it shushed her, claiming Aida’s lips in a ravenous kiss to further silence her. Aida broke away with a gasp, grabbing hold of a fistful of Er’it’s braids to keep him still.

“Er’it, how… how much farther is it?” Aida asked in a whisper,

“You should rest, Aida.” He pushed her head back down, scrubbing at her scalp with the pads of his fingers to keep her calm and quiet.

“Please, tell me.”

“A day, perhaps two if the road does not hold,” he said, arms winding tighter around her as if afraid she would attempt to flee.

*sigh It's been so long since I read something so tragically romantic

It was a tender, softer version of what she’d felt in the caves, the warm flicker of a candle left in the window instead of the devouring flames of an inferno, but it was the same. She felt whole, like she was a part of him and he a part of her. Their hearts beat as one, their breaths flowing in a hushed tide within their quiet space.

It means ‘my soul,'

And kou’va roughly translates to ‘my desire,’ or ‘my need.’ Both are the sincerest of endearments.

Closer to their destination, her birthplace. A home she didn't remember. Yet, the closer they came, the more the feeling of belonging pervaded her. She had a sense of the woods, the creatures within it, and even of the people she knew to be hidden in the shadowy recesses of the forest. Whole tribes of them were there. She could feel their hearts beating, their blood pounding to a rhythm set to the pulse of the land.

She wanted nothing more than those profound moments back, where she looked deep into Er’it’s soul and saw a glimmer of herself within the ragged edges. She’d knitted him back together, eerie blue strands holding tight, though he’d fought against it.

Did he even understand the whole of it? Did she?

Until Aida herself called to him, unknowing in her darkened cell as she mumbled broken prayers to something she didn’t understand or believe in to save her from a plight she didn’t deserve.

A savage, brutal coming together that left their mouths torn and bloody, it was odd in its satisfaction, as if nothing between them could be so soft and easy.

“No more,” Er’it whispered against her

He’d hardened that part of himself to petrified dregs long ago, refusing to feel true affection or need for anything so easily crushed. Er’it tore away pieces of his soul, leaving him less human, less alive as he conquered a world full of far worse evil in the name of others. He never once questioned the fact that he would be the incredible evilness at the end, did not bemoan that fate.

His entire plan unfolded beneath her trembling touch. His need for the power residing within her, the arrogant claim that it was his Goddess given right to have it—all of it entangled with smoke and blood, scream-filled nightmares, and the knowledge it would kill him to kill her.

“Ah, kou’vera ,” he groaned, his voice thick with an emotion far too close to despair. Er’it intended much the same. She saw it there, hovering between them. A dilapidated temple, a broken shrine, his blade flashing in the low light of dawn.

He knew everything. Aida writhed and groaned beneath him, feeling him plunder the depths of her soul as he ripped her open and bared it all within the safety of the darkness. Salty tracks tickled her cheeks, staining the fine hair at her temples as he riffled through each and every miserable moment of her childhood, the terror of her youth, and even those final moments when Otaso had her upon his dais.

This wasn’t the purr she knew from him, the strange vibration called to a deeper part of her heart, dredging up feelings she had not examined under the cold light of day. Inundated with a furious tide of emotion, the sticky strands that connected their thundering hearts became steel binding them tighter than ever. Her every breath seemed to fill his lungs, the very force of him giving her life.

Er’it found the idea did not please him as it might once have. It twisted in his gut, cold and vile.

When his blade plunged deep into her flesh, carving out her still beating heart as she screamed his name, then she would beg him with those star-strewn eyes to not end her life. Er’it knew it as well as he knew his own name that she would.

They had miles to travel still before a search for a long-lost temple and a rite that needed performed. Somehow, at the end of it, he would have to lay his beautiful mate upon an altar, her body recumbent on the cruel stone dais. It was what he’d sworn to do—acquire the unstoppable power the Hat’or had promised him in visions since his youth.

“Ask me what else I want.”

“Tell me, oh noble king. What else will you snatch away?”

“You, kou’va ,” Er’it murmured,“You called for me from those dungeons. Led me there and made it impossible for me to deny you. Snow and spring, the scent of beginnings. I cannot refuse it, and I do not want to.”