— Elaeya —

Kaden closed and locked the door behind us. Not that we were often visited at night, but I supposed he was not ready to risk any form of interruptions.

He took his phone out and clicked the mute button on, then put it on the side table.

I did the same and gave him the phone to put it with the other.

I did not have many people calling me, but I suppose I was not ready to take the risk either.

Kaden slowly put me down on the bed, sitting up. He began unbuttoning his shirt. I got on my feet and took over from there. He looked at me carefully. He put his hand on my arms, caressing up and down. I looked up to him as I finished with the last button and pulled up his shirt from his pants.

His eyes bored into mine. I tried to keep my focus to make sure he would not get dragged into my gaze.

I moved my hand on his belly and chest, and up on his shoulders, below the fabric, dragging it off him. It fell on the floor. He bent his neck low for his lips to meet mine.

I felt his hands reach for the zipper at the back of my dress. Once undone, he pushed it off my shoulders and let it fall softly on the ground.

I tried to keep my posture straight and not instinctively cover myself.

His fingers were delicate as they brushed my skin on either side of me—from my waist to my hips.

As delicate was his touch was, as hard was his gaze. There was an animalistic fervor in his eyes, a hunger that nearly made me cower, his desire more than evident as he let his gaze lower over my body.

I undid his belt, which had his stare snap right back to my face.

I pulled it out of its loops.

He kissed me again, this time, moving his attention quickly to my neck and shoulders. He undid my bra faster that I worked on his pants.

I did not manage to undress him fast enough before he took me in his arms and placed me on the mattress.

He moved his lips to my breasts. My breath hitched up and I let my head fall back down, my eyes closed, lost in the sensation. His hands were everywhere. When I looked down, I could see the muscles in his shoulders move and strain in the wan light of the moon, and I stared in fascination.

He noticed me noticing him, and smiled a wicked smile.

He moved his mouth lower and lower, caressing my belly, all the way to the rim of my underwear. He never let his eyes wander from mine as he slid his fingers under the sheer fabric and pulled it slowly down.

My chest was rising and falling in rapid succession. He kept looking at me as he kissed me, his gaze locking me in place, a roguish smile on his lips as he extended his tongue.

I whimpered uncontrollably.

I wanted to look back at him, but I couldn’t.

My back arched as I soon began to convulse from pleasure.

Not long after, Kaden took me in his arms and dragged me under the blanket, then got rid of the pants I did not manage to take off him, and slid under the covers with me.

I felt his hand between my thighs as he oriented himself. He lower his lips to mine, the discrepancy in our height making it all the more challenging, but we managed.

I circled my arms around his waist, running my hand up his back, feeling his muscles strain in the position, shifting under my touch.

He pressed himself against my core, bracing himself with both his hands on either side of me.

I raised my legs as he pushed himself further. Our breathing loud.

He moved slowly at first and I met him halfway, but soon he accelerated and I could only comply to his movements, my legs wrapped around him, our lips never apart for more than the length of a breath.

The intensity built slowly but steadily. My fingers were knotted in his hair, my voice loud in his ears.

I lost contact with time as we moved in cadence.

I became frantic, my nails clawing at his skin, but he did not waver until I receded.

He slowed to a tender rhythm and pressed his lips against mine once more.

“You are mine and I am yours,” he murmured. I recognised the words of what I knew now was a claim, and I repeated after him.

“You are mine and I am yours.”

“Before the moon, and the sun, and sky above,” we said together, him holding himself up on his elbows on either side of my head. Our movements excruciatingly slow.

“Through this life until my last breath, through death until all fades to nothing. I am yours and you are mine.”

He kissed me briefly, then bit my neck.

The pressure went rapidly from pleasure to pain, and then ecstasy.

It was like an explosion under my skin, a fire that I could not fight, that I would not fight.

I could hardly notice what was happening, but in a brief instant of clarity, I lean forwards and bit him too. My teeth sharpened, I licked at his blood, making sure to pierce my tongue along the way, letting my blood seep into the wound.

He moaned and shuddered, his movements now uncontrolled and arhythmical.

We rode our pleasure for as long as we could.

When he let go to crash down on the mattress, he let himself roll sideways, taking me with him, instead of crushing me underneath his weight, and I landed atop him.

It took a while for our laboured breath to subside, and we fell asleep soon after.

We changed position throughout the night a few times—sometimes awakening for a little action that was soon followed by more sleep.

In the morning, we woke up slowly around the same time.

He was looking at me.

“I still can’t believe how I landed a mate so out of my league,” he murmured half-awakened.

I quirked a brow at him, unconvinced.

He looked me up and down in my nakedness for answer.

I pointedly looked him down then back up.

He smiled wolfishly.

“Some women would prefer men with less scars, and a little less intimidating,” he said.

I kissed him and moved atop him, he put his hands on my waist.

“I’m not easily intimidated,” I murmured.

He grinned at that. “I guess you aren’t.”

I moved my finger on his scars. He did have a lot of them. They crossed over his muscles in various shapes.

His phone started vibrating on the bedside table.

He looked at it angrily, but answered after a few seconds.

“Yes,” he said.

“Alpha?” began Brandon’s voice.

“No,” said Kaden.

“W-What?”

“No, not this morning. Deal with whatever is happening, I’m taking the morning off. Relay to Jayson if you need to.”

“Is something wrong?” asked Brandon concerned.

“Yes, I want my morning uninterrupted, this is not it.”

“Oh, erm, okay then.”

Kaden hung up and put the phone back on the side table.

I quirked a brow inquisitively at him.

“This morning,” he said. “I’m all yours.”

“Mmmh,” I muttered. “I could get used to this.”

“Someone freed a lot of my schedule yesterday.”

“How convenient.”

We spend more time fooling around in bed, until he laid his head on his hand, elbow against the mattress and moved his fingers on my naked skin, tracing the light scars on my belly with a frown.

The marks were nearly completely gone. I never scarred easily.

He traced them all one by one until he landed on a small round one, barely visible, a little to the side.

He looked up at me inquisitively.

“Gunshot wound,” I said.

His frown deepened as he looked back at it. And then he found another, near my collarbone.

He looked back up.

“Gunshot wound,” I supplied. “Same time.”

He looked back, searching ardently this time, and found another on my arm.

“Same time?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Are there others?”

I pointed at a place on my thigh, and another on my opposite hip, and one more right under one of my breast.

“The others are on my back,” I said.

“Show me.”

I turned around and moved my hair aside.

Now that he was really looking for them, he found them one by one. The colour was not unlike the rest of my skin, they were not keloid either, and it was simply the slight change in texture than gave them away. Human eyes might have had difficulty perceiving them at all.

“How many?” he asked.

“Fourteen.”

“What happened?” There was a detachment in his voice that hid his anger, but not well enough to hide it from me.

“There had been an attack on our cabin. I was inside, but my parents got caught in the open. I was fifteen. I dropped to the ground while the bullets flew everywhere and through everything, including my parents. I left from the back door and circled around. I managed to raise a veil to hide us and drag them both out of the fray. But I was not able to do that and protect myself from the bullets at the same time.

We had made a promise that if one of us was attacked, and it looked like a lost cause, the others would run and save themselves. I knew they said this mostly for me, because they never heeded this themselves. I saw them many times take unnecessary risks for either one of them, or me.

They were all that I had. I could not let them die. I could not face what was to come alone. So I took the risk. The cabin was compromised and I dragged them to a nearby cave system that was hidden fairly well a couple of kilometers away.

I had been hit a couple of times, but I manage to stop the bleeding and I went back and forth to get all that I needed to treat their wounds and stop the bleeding. They were both unconscious at that point. They tried to have me leave them a few times before then, but I refused.

By nightfall, I went and scouted the cabin. It had been raided and I foolishly thought I could go and get supply. I never detected anyone inside because there was none, but they had decided to keep watch on the place, as they understood someone had been alive as they found no corpses.

They got to me, shot me multiple times, and took me away.

They locked me for a while in a small dark cell. They were speculating on what to do with me. Until another came and realised what I was. He forbade them from touching me in case I would decrease in value, which was a small mercy, but as I tried to fight back, he found sleeping pills and force fed them to me constantly, eventually adding a few others to the mix that made me lethargic and unable to fight back.

He tended my wounds and prepared to process a transaction with me. I believe I was held captive for maybe a month when I found a way out. I had not eaten a proper meal in a while, but I had managed to skip pills, and as I regained control over my mind, I ran out.

I very nearly did not make it out. But my parents had recovered, in that time and tracked me. And so they got to me first and we left.

Around a week later my father left for three whole days. My mother never said anything but I know that she knew as well as I what he went to do. Whoever they really were, I doubt that they survived. They had gotten the drop on us once, but it would not happen again.”

“I would have done the same,” said Kaden in a low growl.

I knew he would have.