A Love Untamed (Feral Warriors #7)(83)

Kara cocked her head. “I’m thinking ‘sister’ fits you better. The Feral sisterhood always has room for one more if you don’t have too many sisters already.”

Fox felt Melisande’s hand tighten in his. Tears began to shine in her eyes. “I happen to be missing some sisters, as a matter of fact. I would be honored to be considered one of yours, Kara.”

Kara grinned. “Done.”

They’d traveled another mile when Wulfe said, “There it is.”

For once, Fox’s gut kicked in when he needed it with a rise of goose bumps on his arms and Wulfe’s name in his head.

He turned to Melisande, meeting her worried eyes. “Wulfe can help you through safely.”

A short distance away, Wulfe pulled up, turned to Melisande, and held out his hand. “You’ll come through with me.” His gaze met Fox’s. “Shift, but stay close just in case.”

“You can count on it.”

Fox pulled on the power of his animal and followed close behind Wulfe and Melisande. He felt the power slipping along his fur and watched with relief as Melisande walked beside Wulfe without being affected by the warding at all. Daemon blood. Unbelievable.

When they’d fully cleared the warding and put some distance between it and them, Fox shifted back into human form and pulled Melisande tight against him. In the distance, he saw Ilinas materializing. Kougar must have called his mate for transport within seconds of their freedom.

“I can mist again,” Melisande said, bone-deep relief in her voice. “I can feel it. Are you ready?”

“Wait a minute.” As the small band went to join the newly-arrived Ilinas, Fox turned to Melisande, stroking her precious cheek.

Sapphire eyes turned to his, soft as a summer rain.

“Lyon put you on the spot back there, I’m afraid, but I meant what I said, Mel. I love you. Completely, utterly, madly. I want you to be my mate. But if you need time, or simply want to be lovers, that’s all right, too. I will take as much or as little as you’ll give me.”

Her smile bloomed slowly, stealing his breath. So beautiful. Her eyes overflowed with love. “You were always meant to be mine, Feral. I felt it the first time I saw you. The most beautiful male ever to walk this Earth. And the sweetest. I adore you. I love you. And there is nothing I want more than to be yours, and for you to be mine, for all eternity.”

“Aye?” Relief weakened his knees, and he gave a shout, unable to contain his euphoria. He picked her up, swinging her around, loving the sound of her laughter. Loving everything about her.

He’d fallen in love with an angel.

Epilogue

In the cavelike ritual room deep beneath Feral House, firelight flickering over the dark-paneled room, Fox drove into his mate high atop the altar, sealing their mating bond. Nearby, Kougar intoned the ancient rite, dribbling the combined blood of the Ferals on the floor around them. The ritual was as primitive as any Fox had witnessed, dating back far into the mists of time, and somehow incredibly fitting for a man who was half-animal and a woman who’d been alive since the days of the cavemen.

Though all of his Feral brothers circled the altar, Melisande’s Ilina sisters stood closest, their backs to the mating couple, acting as a living privacy curtain. Not that either Melisande or he cared. Modesty was not a word in either the Ilinas’ or shifters’ lexicon.

Fox stared into the beautiful sapphire eyes of his mate as they joined in this most primal of ways, slowly, lovingly, opening hearts, souls, and minds to the power that would bind them for eternity.

The chanting ended. Out of the corner of his eye, between the heads of two Ilina maidens, Fox saw Kougar pour the last of the blood into one of the ritual fires. Power roared through him without warning. He and Melisande came as one in a burst of fireworks and pure joy as the mating bond inside him—inside them both—formed, brilliant in color and strong as steel. Nothing would ever separate them again.

As they stared into one another’s eyes, breathless with passion and love, Melisande’s eyes grew thoughtful. Perhaps a little sad.

“What is it?” he asked, slain.

“I’d thought the power of the mating bond might make me the Ceraph again.”

“And you want that.”

She smiled softly. “I want you. Just that.”

“You’re perfect the way you are, Mel. Everything I’ve been looking for, even if I didn’t know it. And so much more.”

She lifted her hands and pressed them to his cheeks, startling him with the sudden blast of healing heat. Deep in his mind, he heard a snarl, then another, a vicious battle erupting inside him. An animal battle. His fox against the darkness?

“What are you doing, pet?” His mate. Goddess, his mate. He loved the sound of that.

Her eyes shone with joy. “Healing you as you healed me. My gift is strong through the mating bond, Fox. Give me a minute.”

He pressed his hips up, driving himself even deeper inside of her. If they stayed here much longer, he was going to be ready to take her again. “You can have all the minutes of my life, luv.”

As his animal brushed his mind, a hazy image appeared in his head of smoke in the form of a fox. The darkness. Battling it was another fox, a red one, smaller and bloody and injured. At first, the smaller fox’s attacks made no impact, the smoke re-formed, the darkness remaining whole.