I felt something warm and wet fall onto my hand, and my throat went suddenly tight. Dain was crying. Those were tears, and he was trembling against me not from pain, but from the force of trying not to sob like an injured child. I kept stroking him, trying to comfort him. "You're wonderful," I said, putting my naked heart into the words. "Every time I look at you I think it. You're a beautiful, passionate man worth standing beside and worth fighting for. You're the best thing to ever happen to me, Dain Sundamar."

Dain's body heaved again with a sound that I recognized as a sob, even coming from the chest of a giant wolf monster. He pressed his face harder against me, leaning into the contact, tears tracing through his fur to drip onto the ground.

"There's no need to face a year and a day of torture to be mine," I said through the tension in my chest, at the magnitude of what I was doing. "You already are, and I have no intention of ever letting you go. I'm choosing you, with my actions and with my soul."

Dain sobbed again, his whole body shuddering, then pulled his head back so he could look up at me with wet eyes, panting, the long arcs of his white teeth showing. He looked like he was in agony, disbelief warring with hope and longing.

I looked up into that face, into those golden wolf eyes and at the depth of emotion behind them. The love of my life, a fae King, the Beast of Phazikai himself. I couldn't stop myself from smiling as Dain looked at me like I was the only thing in the world worth looking at.

"My Dain," I said, love filling my heart with incandescent light. "I will always, always love you."

I held his gaze and let myself fall into the eternity in his eyes, feeling everything coming into perfect alignment between us. It was the same sensation as performing a complicated climbing move perfectly, like feeling my whole body move in synchrony as I reached for a handhold and found it right where I expected—as if the whole world moved under me rather than me moving across it. I stood in front of Dain, my hands resting on his muzzle, our naked souls bared to each other, and joined together with him in a bond that would never be broken, with all the beautiful finality of a wedding vow.

With a smile on my lips and a newborn star in my chest, I closed my eyes and lifted my face to kiss my soulmate.

55. Sweet Nothings

Chapter 55

Sweet Nothings