He had his woman where he wanted her, in his bedroom, right next to his oh-so-massive bed. He wanted her naked and between the sheets.

“Kerrick,” she murmured, drawing back, her hands now fondling his biceps. “What changed … for you, I mean? Why are you okay with our being together now? I mean I could see that something was different the moment you returned to the Cave, but what?”

He looked into her eyes, her beautiful blue eyes rimmed with gold and still wet with tears. He slid his hand behind her nape and with his thumb stroked her cheek. He loved her so much. “About the time you went to the training camps, I moved into this room, the bedroom I’d shared with Helena all those decades ago.” She shifted slightly and glanced at the bed. She sighed and returned her gaze to him. He continued, “I kept thinking about her, about Helena, about the kinds of things she used to say to me, the arguments she’d used to persuade me to marry her. She was fearless, Alison. But more than that, she had accepted her death, a lesson I needed to learn, especially if I wanted to be with you as well as to have a shared life with our daughter.

“I need you to understand that the warrior drive to protect is like—well, it’s as powerful as the shield you set up to defeat Leto. With that drive comes both guilt and an unwillingness to accept failure.”

She swallowed hard. “So, for you, Helena’s death, and the deaths of your children, was a failure.”

His heart sank. “An enormous one.”

“But Kerrick—”

“No. Don’t try to soothe the pain. You can’t and I’m good with it, I really am, but I won’t pretend that their deaths didn’t create a chasm between you and me.” He huffed a sigh, his hands now gliding up and down her back. “The truth is, I could not have taken this step with anyone other than you, because of the powers and abilities you possess. I could never have married an ascender like Helena again because I know in my heart the results would have been the same. She would have died.

“Which is why our being together seems so miraculous to me and why the breh-hedden, arriving as it did with you, frames that miracle. Who you are, with your powers and abilities, is the reason I can take this step today, the only reason. Nothing less would have made any sense or made our life together possible.

“So I find myself grateful beyond words for you. For. You.”

Here he paused and took in a shaky breath. “Even with all that, however, I still had to take one more step because I know, regardless of your powers or mine, should either you or I err one degree to the right or left, if either of us should commit a miscalculation or misinterpretation like the one at the palace, then that is how swiftly our time together ends. Which means that the other—or God help us, our daughter—would have to bear the results of death and separation.

“So what I chose, instead of losing you, was to let my failure go, as much as I was able, and to embrace what has been given to me today. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve accepted my death, as well as yours and our daughter’s, and that despite my fear of future sadness and suffering, I want to be with you today, to know you, to love you, to have you in my bed, sharing my life and raising our daughter together.”

He looked down at her, willing her to know just how sincere he was. She rose up and kissed him. He thumbed her cheek again and kissed her back. “So what of you?” he said. “What changed for you?”

* * *

Alison struggled to find the words. For one thing, she was still wrapped up in everything he had just said, his words a blanket of comfort yet composed of such startling fear and confession and acceptance that she was overwhelmed. She wondered just how carefully she had thought her own situation through. More tears tracked down her cheeks, for him and for her.

She wiped them away with the tissue that had practically become a lump of clay in her hand. With a quick fold, she got rid of the lump and brought a fresh tissue to her. Once more she blew her nose and wiped her cheeks. Her forearms rested on his massive chest, her arms pressed against the ridges of his weapons harness, the hilt of his dagger between them. She looked up at him. “I don’t suppose you could lose the harness.”

“Absolutely.” A vibration touched her arms and the next moment she landed on skin. She slid her arms up around his neck once more and pressed her chest against his.

He murmured his approval, his arms surrounding her again, a blessed cage of solace and reassurance.

She searched for the words to explain. At last, she began. “The reality of having destroyed your chest and abdomen wrecked me, tore my confidence to shreds. The last day I was with you in the hospital, I was convinced I could never be with you because I could never again trust myself.

“Being at the training camps was a blessing because all those field exercises, the hours in the gym, the grueling marathon runs tended to block my grief at being separated from you. But once on my cot, for those few minutes I had before sleep plowed over me like a tank, my heart would turn to you and all the longings and despair returned in full force. I would break into a sweat and tears would pour from my eyes. My need for you, to be as close to you as I am now, tensed every muscle of my body. I can’t even begin to explain how hard it was.

“Then sleep would come and I would begin a new day. But night brought the same suffering, the same struggle, and ended the same as each day before, my body sweating, shaking, my pillow damp.

“This evening, however, before the death vamps showed up at the barracks, I’d been asking myself a host of really tough questions, like wouldn’t it be better to live full-out than to retreat into a pit of despair, and retreating was what I’d been doing my whole life. And yes, I’ll cut myself some slack and say it was necessary on Mortal Earth, but here, on Second, ever since I was forced to battle Leto, something inside me changed. In that moment I saw what I had, what I had been given, the breadth of my powers—but more than that, I loved that I could just be myself.

“Then later, after I’d wounded you, I thought I had only one choice … to retreat into myself, to live a quiet, relatively obscure life as I had on Mortal Earth, in order to protect everyone around me.

“Kerrick, I can’t live that life anymore. That life is done. That’s what’s changed. I want to live fearlessly, like Helena. I know I have a lot to learn about my powers, but I’m done retreating in despair. On the other hand, I have to ask, aren’t you afraid I’ll hurt you again?”

He shook his head, his emerald eyes glowing with love. “What I’ve been trying to tell you is that even if you become, through no fault of your own, the instrument of my death, I’m okay with it. We’re at war and I have no doubt the enemy is already plotting the next round of fun for you, for me, for my brothers, and for Endelle.” He paused and kissed her forehead. “We’ll do our best, you and me. The rest we’ll leave in the Creator’s hands.”

Alison felt the peace now dominating Kerrick’s thoughts, his acceptance of what he could never change, that death happened, even the possibility that death could come through her powers.

For herself, she surrendered to the same possibility but grew determined to become a student of her abilities. At least in that way she could gain more confidence in the future.

She felt his chest rise as he took in a deep breath. She also felt his anxiety spike. “What is it?” she asked.

“Are you ready for this—the breh-hedden I mean—and all that it might entail, known or otherwise?”

She took a deep breath. “After all that we’ve been through, I have no doubt that this is the right path for both of us. At the same time, yeah, I’m a little nervous.”

“You want to walk through it?”

She nodded and put her hand to her throat. “So, you’ll take me here.”

He took a deep breath. “Oh, yeah.” His eyelids fell to half-mast as his gaze slid over her throat. Cardamom suddenly drenched the air between them.

The heady spice sent sudden shivers over every inch of her skin. “Then what do I do?”

He nodded and gave himself a shake. “Well, you’ll take my wrist at the same time. The breh-hedden can only occur if we take blood at the same time.”

She touched her lip and felt the incisors lengthen with a mere thought. “I’ll take you with my fangs,” she murmured. “Wow.”

“Exactly.”

Another flow of shivers and desire struck low.

“Sweet lavender,” he murmured, leaning close and sucking in a quick breath as he kissed her forehead again.

“Then we’ll join our minds while we’re joined physically and that completes the breh-hedden?”

“Yep. And if the historical anecdotes hold true, once we complete the process, you and I will be able to find each other even without telepathy. We’ll be able to fold to each other’s positions any time, any place.”

She smiled and kissed him once, a gentle touch to his lips. “Well, that would be something.”

* * *

Kerrick looked into blue eyes, rimmed with gold, that had the power to hold him in thrall without once invoking a preternatural power. She was the woman for him. He loved her. He desired her. He needed her. The thought of communing with her caused his wing-locks to thrum. He always felt out of control when she was near, like if he really let go, his wings would mount when he didn’t want them to.

“I’m smelling cardamom,” she said. “Lots of it.” A dewy blush crept over her cheeks. Her lips grew swollen then parted. “So are you going to do anything about it, Warrior?”

The challenge in her words awoke the beast. He narrowed his eyes and growled, a low sound that vibrated heavily in his throat. He wrapped his arms around her a little more then kissed her, a forceful, don’t-mess-with-me kiss that had her moaning. He thrust his tongue between her lips. She suckled, which brought another growl rumbling in his throat.

He released her but her body had a boneless quality that made him smile. In a quick movement he lifted her in his arms then mentally rolled the comforter and sheet to the foot of the oversized bed. He settled her on the bed, the way he’d wanted her from the first, her long blond hair feathered out over the dark sheet.