Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 107720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
It took an age. Time stretched forever—
I waited and waited and finally...
She opened her eyes.
Chapter Forty-Eight
COMING BACK TO LIFE DIDN’T FEEL LIKE I’d imagined.
Not that I’d ever imagined such a thing because it was impossible and crazy and yet...I’d come back to life.
Lucien had come back to life.
And as the fog receded and the flood of memories gave me back my past, I tried to understand how this had happened.
Had we ascended?
Were we no longer mortal?
I had so many, many questions, but as my eyes locked with Lucien’s, nothing else mattered but him.
He caressed my cheek with trembling fingers as if he didn’t trust I was real. My hand shook as I captured his, pressing his palm against my face, proving to him that I was.
Touching him...God, nothing could’ve prepared me.
He was so warm and perfect and mine.
My heart grew wings, my soul sang, and the power that’d killed me shockwaved free, ricocheting around the valley and frosting everything.
Golden light seeped from his skin as he gathered me in his arms and folded over me.
His lips pressed to mine, and the second we kissed, the bond ignited with a million stars. Silver and gold exploded with a rush of power, braiding and binding. The dreamscape where we’d gone to heal while fighting the ascension settled around us, but instead of taking us away from reality, it hovered like an illusion over it.
The valley shimmered with dreamy mist. The blossom tree sprouted in the middle of this barren land, its petals scattering over black stone.
Somehow, we existed in both places at once. And as our tongues touched and we lost ourselves to the kiss, we became each other’s beginning and ending forever.
Lucien groaned as he deepened the kiss.
It blended sensuality with viciousness, affection with desperation. Centuries of grief and longing poured through both of us, fed and feasted on with every clash of our lips and teeth.
I kissed him back just as fiercely, burying my fingers in his thick black hair, pulling him closer so I never had to let go again.
His hands roamed my bare skin with possessive hunger, sliding down my back, gripping my hips, and pulling me deeper onto his naked lap. I gasped into his mouth as fire and frost collided, twisting together in perfect, aching harmony.
The dreamscape responded to our need, painting over the real world with blinding auroras.
Wrapping my legs around his waist, I rocked against his hardness. He grunted as I took him inside me—connecting physically for the first time since we’d started to die and couldn’t survive without feeding off each other in the dreamscape.
I gasped as he clutched me close, driving hard, filling me.
The feel of him inside—the sensation of returning home...it was too much.
Tears poured down my cheeks as we rocked in a timeless rhythm, shedding death and embracing life, awed and slightly afraid that we’d somehow been remade.
And when our orgasms found us, we panted and trembled, our skin slick with mortal pleasure, immortal powers bleeding with light.
All around us grass sprouted, trees erupted, the barren stone became a lush oasis.
We clung to each other long after the ripples of pleasure faded, before he finally leaned back and cupped my cheeks. Running his thumbs under my eyes, he whispered, “Hi...”
A broken, tearful laugh escaped me. “Hello.”
He chuckled with lingering heartache, then kissed me again, softer this time, full of love and relief and promises that we would never be separated again.
Breaking the kiss, he wrapped me in the tightest embrace and just held me.
I sagged into his hold, slowly coming to terms with what’d happened and how this was possible. I wanted to ask Lucien what he knew. I needed to figure out a hundred things, but...whispers appeared on the edges of my mind.
The quiet murmur of death rose all around me, louder and clearer as if my hearing had improved with my awakening.
Breaking Lucien’s hold on me, I stood and looked around.
The dreamscape continued to twinkle like a mirage over reality, hinting we no longer walked in separate worlds but in both of them.
Silver light seeped from my skin as I turned inward and listened to what the whispers were trying to tell me. I heard the history of the valley—felt every life that’d ever walked here, died here. I witnessed the glacier’s slow retreat. The centuries of wind and rain and time reshaping the land.
And then...tucked in the layers of life, I felt Dillon.
Whirling around, I focused on the pile of bones a few feet away.
My heart kicked as my gaze shot from the old skeleton to the preserved body of a black panther. I waited for Whisper to talk to me. For his soul to find mine and give me his stories, but...Dillon’s was too strong. His presence lingered as if he’d waited for me to say goodbye. Snatches of memories filled my mind. Memories that weren’t mine. Happy memories of Dillon walking beside Whisper in ancient forests. Of them sleeping side by side in the moonlight. Of them travelling to the glacier and lying down to rest.