Chapter Twelve: Private Hunger

Liana

The night before the second day to Black Ridge, sleep refused me.

The dual wolves paced under my skin in opposite directions, one pushing toward open air and any fight that would end the waiting, the other locked on the man two rooms away as if distance itself were wrong. I sat on the edge of the bed and tried Seraphina’s breathing until the knock came.

Not a command knock. Quieter.

Kael stood in the doorway without his coat, shirt loosened, silver eyes darkened by the kind of exhaustion rank could not discipline away. The bond filled the silence first, thick and sore.

“I can’t stay down the hall,” he said.

“Then don’t.”

He closed the door. For a second he only looked at me, like he was still searching for a version of this that would not cost him everything. Then he came to the bed, cupped my face, and kissed me hard enough that my mouth opened under his on a sound I didn’t mean to give him.

“I keep telling myself I’ll stop,” he said against my lips. “Then I catch your scent in the corridor and my whole body goes stupid.”

“Good,” I whispered. “I’m tired of you only wanting me in the dark where you can call it failure after.”

His breath broke. He pulled my shirt over my head, then his own, and when my bare skin hit his the bond flared so sharply my thighs pressed together on instinct. He noticed. His hand slid between them, palm cupping me through the fabric, and his forehead dropped to mine.

“You’re already warm.”

“I’ve been warm since you walked in.”

He stripped the rest of the clothes away and laid me back. This time there was no tearing violence. His mouth closed over my breast, sucked until my back arched, then moved lower, open kisses down my stomach while his fingers stroked through my wetness in slow, deliberate passes.

“Kael—”

“I want to hear it,” he muttered. “Not the fight. This. Tell me what feels good.”

“There,” I managed, when his thumb circled my clit. “Right there—don’t stop—”

He didn’t. He worked me until my hips were lifting into his hand, until the pleasure was no longer something I could think my way out of and I was gripping his wrist to keep him exactly where I needed him. When he finally pushed two fingers inside me, the stretch dragged a broken moan out of my throat.

“That,” he said, voice rough. “That sound. I dream about it and hate myself in the morning.”

“Then be here now.”

He braced over me and pushed in, inch by inch, eyes on my face the whole time. The fullness made my mouth fall open. He groaned like the feeling of me hurt him in the best way.

“Gods, Liana.” His voice shook. “You take me like you were built for this.”

“Move,” I whispered. “Please.”

He moved.

Deep, steady strokes that made the pleasure build in thick waves instead of a punishing snap. I met him on every thrust, nails in his shoulders, the bond pouring heat back and forth until I couldn’t tell which tremble was mine. His mouth found my neck, my jaw, the corner of my lips.

“I don’t know how to want you quietly,” he said into my skin. “I only know how to want you like this, inside you, listening to you fall apart.”

“Then listen.” My voice broke as his angle sharpened. “I’m close—Kael, I’m—”

“I’ve got you.” His hand slid between us again, rubbing in time with his hips. “Come for me. Let me feel it.”

The orgasm hit hard and clean, my body clamping around him while I cried out into his shoulder. He cursed, rhythm faltering, and followed with a deep thrust and a rough, helpless sound, spilling into me while his arms locked tight around my back.

We stayed joined, breathing hard.

His hand stroked down my spine, clumsy, almost unsure.

“I meant that,” he said into my hair. “Not as protection. As a man who can’t stay away from you.”

My eyes stung. “Then stop disappearing into the king the second it matters.”

“I’m trying.” A pause. “Failing less tonight than usual.”

That, more than the orgasm, made my chest ache.

---

Kael

I stayed inside her until my heartbeat stopped trying to escape my chest.

This was different from the first claim. That night had been a dam breaking. This was the current finding its true course and destroying the map beneath it. Liana’s fingers traced a scar on my shoulder without asking its story. The bond sat quiet for once, not silent, satisfied in a way that terrified me more than enemy sigils on my gate.

When I finally slipped free of her body, the loss hit harder than it should have. I rolled onto my back. She stayed against my side, one leg hooked over mine, stubborn even in tenderness.

“At Black Ridge,” she said against my throat, “don’t manage the wording.”

“I will tell him.”

“You said that in the study.”

I closed my eyes. “In the study I still thought I could control the timeline. I can’t. The leak took that. Your father took the rest.”

She lifted her head enough to look at me. In the dark her eyes still carried a rim of gold. I brushed my thumb over the inside of her wrist where I had held her too hard on the first night.

“I am not a gentle man,” I said.

“I noticed.”

“I am trying not to become a man who destroys you in the name of keeping you.”

Liana’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. “Then start by not deciding my destruction for me.”

Outside, a night horn sounded once, routine watch change, not alarm. Still, both of us tensed until the silence held. The castle never truly slept. Neither did the hunt.

I pulled the blanket over her and kept her against me because distance had become a lie I could no longer sell to my own body.

“Two days,” I said into her hair.

“Two days,” she answered.

In that narrow room, with my seed still in her and her father’s deadline already moving toward us like the weather, the bond felt less like fate’s trick and more like a vow neither of us had been ready to speak aloud.

I did not sleep much.

Every time I drifted, I saw Black Ridge: Elias’s face, the open ground, the moment the truth left my mouth and rearranged twenty years of brotherhood in a single breath.

Liana’s hand tightened on my chest in her sleep, as if even unconscious she could feel the direction of my fear.

I stared at the ceiling until dawn thinned the dark, and for the first time since her awakening I did not try to rebuild the wall between wanting her and keeping her.

There was no wall left that would hold.

Only the ridge.

And the man waiting on the other side of it who had trusted me with everything

including the daughter I could no longer return untouched.